ENTERTAINMENT

This is a topic upon which I touch timidly; not only because Joe has talked of it himself in Some Eminent Victorians, but also because I had, perhaps less than most of his friends, the opportunity to appreciate his gifts as a public, or even a social, entertainer. In the long list of his after-dinner speeches there were not more than half a dozen that I was lucky enough to hear; and the little corner in the Garrick Club where I know he was wont to sit, quickly attracting thither the most appreciative spirits and keeping them all the evening in a ripple of laughter, was obviously a forbidden spot to me.

I think his celebrity in this matter needs no mention of mine; but I should like to quote one or two appreciations by distinguished literary men.

The first is in a letter to myself, where Anthony Hope draws a remarkable portrait of him: “He was a great arguer,” he writes; “for while his temper was always serene, his good humour did not blunt the edge of his tongue. Quite recently I have reread his last book with the keenest appreciation; it shows a broad, appreciative mind, and yet one quite clear for values and criterions.

“We have lost a man of rare gifts, a splendid companion, a generous, kindly, gracious friend. One is happy in having known him, happy too in feeling that life was to him a fine thing—a thing he loved, appreciated and used to the utmost. And his name will live—I think that will be proved true—in the memories of men and in their written records of these times.

“He was a figure and a presence amongst us.”

Another appreciation is by W. J. Locke and appeared in one of the leading papers:

“In a brief notice like the present it is impossible to dwell on the career of one of the most versatile of our profession. Everything he touched he adorned with his own peculiar sense of artistic perfection. He was an eminent art critic, a theatrical manager with high ideals, an editor of fine discernment, and a distinguished playwright. He was one of the finest after-dinner speakers of his generation, and one of the few men who earned, maintained, and deserved the reputation of a wit. A writer in a recent newspaper article wrongly charged him with being rather a monologuist in social talk than a conversationalist. Far from this being the case, no one more fully appreciated and practised the delicate art of conversation. It may be said, perhaps, that he was one of the youngest—he died in his sixty-eighth year—and one of the last of the great Victorians; for though his keen intellect never lost touch with the events and movements of recent years, yet his mental attitude was typically that of the second half of the nineteenth century in its sturdy radicalism, its search after essentials, its abhorrence of shams, and its lusty enjoyment of what was real and good in life. The honest workman with pen or brush always found at his hands generous praise or encouragement; for the charlatan, or ‘Jack Pudding,’ as he was fond of terming him, he had no mercy.

“Struggling against grievous physical disability, he died practically in harness. His last book, a treatise on painting, completed but a month or two ago, is said by those privileged to read the proofs, to reveal a vigour unimpaired by illness and an enthusiasm undimmed by age. An arresting and lovable figure has passed from us, one that linked us with a generation of giants whose work was ending when ours began. It is for us, with sadness, to say, Vale: but we know that their honoured shades will greet with many an ave the advent of ‘Joe’ Carr on the banks of Acheron.”

Two more extracts from letters, I have the permission of the writers to quote. One is from A. E. W. Mason:

“The traits and qualities which come back to me,” he writes, are “his boyish spirit, his sense of fun, his swiftness in dropping out of fun and suddenly touching upon great themes with the surest possible touch, his knowledge of Shakespeare, his passion for Dickens,” etc. And the other is in the letter of affectionate sympathy written to me at the time of his death by one of the oldest and most valued of his friends, Sir Frederick Macmillan:

“He was one of the most gifted and brilliant creatures I have ever known, and had such a kindly nature that no one could come across him without loving him.

“I am proud to think that it was my privilege to give him his last literary commission, and that it has resulted in such a fine piece of work in the region in which he had always been a master.”

This allusion is to The Ideals of Painting, published posthumously and still before the public.

The following notice appeared in the Manchester Guardian:

“The remarkable thing about Mr. Joseph Comyns Carr was that, while his reputation as a talker and after-dinner speaker was made in the late Victorian days, his gift was so genuine and so deep-set in human nature that even in these days when the whole poise of humour is changed, people still spoke of him as our best man. I doubt if anyone could stand the Victorian after-dinner speeches that established reputations, or if Wilde himself would keep the table quiet, but, until near the end, Carr was the person organisers of dinners first thought of when they wanted a toast list that would attract guests. He had a Johnsonian decisiveness and real brilliance of definition, with a freakish fancy and playfulness that at times had much of Henley’s saltness and ferocity.”

I am bound to say I never heard the ferocity, but then there were ladies present when I was. His chaff was sometimes keen, it is true, and at our friends’ houses I sometimes sat quaking for fear it should give offence; but even I underrated the power of his personality and the deep affection in which he was universally held, and I did not guess till he was gone the wealth of friends who missed him.

“There should be a monument erected to him for having cheered more folk and made more laughter than anyone did before him,” said one; and so it was even in the less inspiring surroundings of his own home.

My mind goes back to the first frugal little dinners of our early life, given when we had moved from the rooms over the dispensary in Great Russell Street to a proper house in Blandford Square, now the Great Central Railway Station.

He always did his own carving, and later taught our daughter to be nearly as expert as he was at it; no amount of pleading for the “table decoration” from our handsome parlour-maid would deter him, and she and I had cause to weep over splashed brocade table-centres which were the fashion of the hour.

“What is this bird, my dear?” he asked one night about some moderate-priced game which I thought I had “discovered.”

“Hazel-grouse, Joe,” faltered I, guessing that some reproof was coming.

“Nasal-grouse, you mean,” said he; promptly adding for my consolation, “She’s a bit of a foreigner, you see, so they take her in about our English birds. Never mind, dear! This bird’s muscles are less tough, at all events, than those of your country fowl who walked from Devonshire last week.” And he turned to his friends and added: “I can give you nothing but the plainest of food, but I always take a pride in its being the best of its kind.”

That was his unfailing word: “The best is good enough for me!” he would say; and he would go himself to the butcher if the Sunday beef had not been succulent, and say kindly: “You need not trouble to send me anything but the best.”

That was why his friends set so much store by his gastronomic opinion—he was a great judge of food, he had it both from his Irish mother and his Cumberland father; he knew good meat when he saw it, as that astute friend of his, the Hertfordshire butcher already mentioned, would tell him; and no one appreciated this more than the late Lord Burnham. They both agreed that plain fare was always the finest—but it must be of the best. A cold sirloin must be served uncut, yet the host of those memorable week-end parties at Hall Barn always knew whether it would be “prime” when cut and would beg Joe to keep a good portion of his appetite for the tasting of it. Neither of them gave the first place to made-dishes, though Joe could enjoy these when perfect—as they were at that bountiful table.

The made-dishes of unknown cooks he always mistrusted, especially when he had reason to fear that the dinner would be of what he called “the green-grocer’s and pastry-cook’s” class; and I remember his wicked assertion that his “inside was rattling like a pea in a canister” with all the tinned food that he had eaten at one such entertainment.

Alas, that he should have been condemned to some of it, through war necessities, at the end of his life!

He would take pains sometimes in instructing me and our own humble cook in the concoction of some new dish from a good receipt; but nothing was to be spared in the cost of the necessary ingredients: the soup, fish or entree must be made “of the best,” not forgetting that the “pig and onion were the North and South poles of cookery;” and, I think, he might have added also the oyster.

His Christmas turkey was almost always boiled, after his mother’s Irish method, stuffed with oysters and served with fried pork sausages and a lavish oyster sauce or a vol-au-vent of the same; latterly the oysters always came in a barrel from our kind friend “Bertie” Sullivan.

Yes, his friends esteemed him highly as a food expert; there is a letter from Edward Burne-Jones (quoted, I think, by Joe) in which he begs him to order the dinner for some entertainment of his own. “Oh, dear Carr, save my honour,” he writes, “I know no more what dinner to order than the cat on the hearth—less, for she would promptly order mice. Oh, Carr, order a nice dinner so that I may not be quoted as a warning of meanness ... yet not ostentatious and presuming such as would foolishly compete with the banquets of the affluent. O, Carr, come to the rescue!”

This dear friend cared comparatively little for the pleasures of the table, but Joe was even privileged to pass on one of his receipts to an acknowledged gourmet: it was the simmering of a ham half the time in stock and vegetables, and the remainder in champagne—or, failing that, in any good white wine; and as for his salads, he was famed for them.

I can see the pretty little plate of chives and other chopped herbs, with yoke and white of hard-boiled mashed egg, that our French bourgeoise cook would send up ready for his meticulous choice in the mixing of either a Russian or a lettuce salad: “a niggard of vinegar, a spendthrift of oil, and a maniac at mixing,” was the old adage he went by.

Our cooks were always as proud as I was to try and follow out his ideas, and we were invariably praised for success: I remember an occasion when the confused damsel—partly because she happened to be very pretty—was summoned to the dining-room to receive her meed; and when it was blame, I caught the brunt of it and mitigated the dose downstairs.

But as it was always in the form of fun I never minded; I was always proud to be the butt of it. Sometimes I scored, as when the dessert came at that first party, and he said, offering a dish of sweets to his neighbour:

“Try a preserved fruit; they’ve stood the move from Bloomsbury wonderfully well,” and I was able to produce the freshly opened box, just arrived from a choice foreign firm, and prove my hospitality to be less stinted.

I had my partisans in those days. Pellegrini, the Vanity Fair caricaturist, was one of them. I hailed from his own country, and I can hear him say:

“Never minder Joe! You and I we ’ave de sun in de eyes.” And then we would discuss the proper condiment for maccaroni, and next time he came he would bring it ready cooked in a fireproof dish, tenderly carried on his lap in the hansom, which he insisted upon placing on the proper spot of the kitchen stove to warm: on such nights, he ate little of our British fare.

My husband and he were fast friends nevertheless. If Joe had not “de sun in de eyes” he had it in the heart, and Pellegrini adored him, even going so far once as to break his oath never to sleep out of his own lodgings, that he might visit us at a cottage on the Thames, where—although he allowed that the moon “she is a beauty”—he used cold cream and kid gloves to counteract the ill-effects of hard water, and sat up all night rather than retire to a strange bed.

Several tales of this lovable and laughable character are told in Eminent Victorians, most of them referring to those happy little homely dinner parties where Joe shone so pleasantly, and which his friends not only graced with their presence, but even sometimes contributed to by little kindly presentations of delicacies.

Perhaps few have received as much kindness as Joe did, and though always grateful, he was never overwhelmed. Of the pride which resents gifts he had none. “I wouldn’t take a jot from any but a friend,” he would say. “But if a friend, who has more than I, likes to share it with me, why should I refuse? I would do the same for him. I have no money, but I give him what I possess.”

And none who knew him—rich or poor—in any of his many spheres, but would testify to this: he gave the young of his wise and tactful advice in their careers, sparing no time or trouble to advance those who were steadfast of purpose; he gave to his contemporaries of his untiring sympathy—known only to those who received it; he gave of his cheerful optimism to all: no form of envy ever crossed his mind.

“I can enjoy fine things just as well when they belong to others as to me,” he would say. Of none are the words truer: “Having nothing yet possessing all things.”

But this graver digression has led me far from that merry Christmas party, when the parlour-maid, whose beauty was an attraction of our first home, and whose charm and devotion for eleven years are one of its sweetest memories, was forced to retire to the sideboard to compose her face; which sort of thing did not only occur at our own table, but at far smarter houses where decorous butlers would bow their heads lower to conceal their smiles, the mistress of one of them even declaring that her maggiordomo had not considered the company that evening worthy of Joe, and had suggested a different choice for a future party.

There was one over-cultured house to which we used to be bidden where the learned hostess was mated to a meek alien, who never presumed to understand her conversation. One evening, before the fish was removed, she leant forward and called down the table to Joe: “Mr. Comyns Carr, would you kindly inform us ‘what is style?’”

Joe scarcely paused before he replied with his sunniest smile, “Not before the sweets, Madam.” And he turned pleasantly to the amazed host and began complimenting him on the excellence of his claret.

I think, although I am afraid I have heard him call that host a “Prince of Duldoggery,” he preferred him that night to the lady of culture, though she was too serious to be included in his pet aversions, the “Lady Sarah Volatile’s” or “jumping-cats” of Society.

But even among such, how prompt he was to detect the tiniest spark of genuine knowledge or enthusiasm, the most foolishly concealed quality of true womanliness and devotion.

I remember a girl-friend of his daughter’s, boasting to him in defiance of his counsel, that she would drive to Ascot alone in an admirer’s car.

“No you won’t,” said Joe quietly.

And loudly as she persisted that night—she did not.

I could multiply these instances by the score, for even in middle age he was the darling of all girls, though he always told them home-truths, and many was the match he made or wisely marred in the confidential corner of a drawing-room.

Whether in the quiet or the open, of course, he always talked the better for his cigar, and to some the sight of the matches he wasted while seeking the positively apt word was a joy in itself—or an annoyance, as the case might be.

I know one dear friend who could not listen for irritation, and would burst out at last: “Light your pipe, first, old man, do!”

Yet there were times when he had no pipe to light—in smart drawing-rooms or theatre stalls, for instance. He was very naughty in the latter, and kept me in a fever lest, being so well known, some one should overhear him who could make mischief.

Once he was reproved by the management for making his party laugh immoderately in the stage-box at a sorely dull farcical comedy.

“Pray present my compliments to the manager,” said Joe suavely to the attendant who had brought the message, “and assure him that we were not laughing at anything on the stage.”

The speech he was proud to make every 8th of January in honour of his dear old friend, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s birthday, and the good wishes which for many years he voiced for many friends at Sir George and Lady Lewis’ New-Year parties, will not perhaps be altogether forgotten, nor could I recall the topical interests of the moment after so long.

But those who knew him best knew that the opportunities for witty rejoinder and humorous invention were by no means limited to set occasions; they were instantly seized on provocation which no one else would have perceived, and as often in the simplicity of domestic life as in the society of clever people who might have been supposed to inspire him.

Who but Joe, when a picnic was spread beneath the trees in the woods at Walton, and a combative young curate, claiming to have secured the spot, swooped down upon us with his Sunday-school flock, would have whispered merrily: “Never mind! We’ll cut him according to his cloth!”

Or who, on being asked by a lady which was my “At Home” day, would have replied: “Let me see! Sunday is the Lord’s Day, and Monday is my wife’s day;” or, in the days of my slenderness and his more opulent figure, would have declared that, taking the average, we were the thinnest couple in London?

These trivial jokes will seem poor to the friends who have heard his later and more brilliant bon-mots and have listened to his longer orations; but, as I have said, I know little of those public speeches. The most notable of these at which I remember being present was at a dinner of the Royal Literary Fund, when he spoke long and with deep illumination on his beloved Charles Dickens; he always spoke at the various commemorative entertainments given in the great novelist’s honour, but never so brilliantly and so profoundly as that time.

When the occasion was more formal—as when he took the chair at the Actors’ Benevolent or the Dramatic and Musical Fund—he would sometimes recite to me beforehand part of the speech which he intended to deliver, but I believe he rarely stuck to his plan, and I have heard him say that he preferred merely to prepare the “joints” of his subject—i.e. each new departure—and to leave all the filling-in to the inspiration of the moment as influenced by the foregoing speaker or any unforeseen incident.

I recollect that the peroration of a speech for the Dramatic and Musical Fund ended: “I plead not so much for the deserving as for the undeserving,” and I believe that he added: “of whom I am one.”

I know that he told me next day—half in glee, but much also in pride—that the Toastmaster had told him that he had never stood behind a chair and seen so much money raked in.

It was certainly to his mastery of the impromptu that he owed the triumph of his oration before the U.S. Ambassador, Mr. Bayard, at a moment when war seemed suddenly possible with our great English-speaking neighbour; and I recollect that Ellen Terry, who was then in New York, told me later that when Joe’s speech appeared in the papers en rÉsumÉ (it never could be wholly reported owing to his making no notes) there was a marked change in the tide of feeling.

He has related a part of this incident in his Eminent Victorians, but he has not mentioned this last particular, neither has he told how his triumph was won by his large appreciation of the love lavished upon the giants of our English literature by our “friends across the seas.”