J. Comyns Carr: Stray Memories, by His WifeCarr, Alice Vansittart Strettel
General
J. Comyns Carr: Stray Memories, by His Wife
Carr, Alice Vansittart Strettel
Carr, J. Comyns (Joseph Comyns), 1849-1916
I believe he got through a quite unusual amount of work in that
profession. Many an evening did I put back our little dinner while
he rushed off to Euston to give his copy of Art Criticism for the
_Manchester Guardian_ into the hands of the guard for early morning
delivery: he wrote on the same subject for the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and
the _Art Journal_, and what with criticism and social articles for the
_Saturday Review_ and _World_, he was never in bed till long after
midnight.
It must have been about this time that he took me with him to Paris for
a short so-called holiday while he wrote his criticism for the _Pall
Mall Gazette_ on the _Salon_ of the year.
A gladsome time it was in that most smiling of cities in spring. There
was a day on which a cry of dismay arose from our party--including his
fellow-worker and old friend, Adam Gielgud with his wife--when a letter
arrived from Edmund Yates refusing to let Joe off his weekly article in
the series of Skits on the London newspapers which were then attracting
attention in the _World_--I think the topic for that week was _The Old
Maid of Journalism_ (“The Spectator”) and perhaps that dignified lady
received a more caustic drubbing than she would otherwise have had
because of the distaste with which he set to his task.
Cheerful meals in the humblest of restaurants--whenever we could run
to it, in the excellent Café Gaillon--now the fashionable _Henry_, but
then of far simpler ambitions; merry meetings at the house of that good
comrade of Joe’s of whom he tells the tale of exchanged French
and English lessons at _Kettner’s_ restaurant in London, and
lastly a gorgeous feast in the suburban home of a fellow contributor
to _L’Art_, to both of which festivities my sister, Mrs.
Harrison--then Alma Strettell--was bidden as being of our party.
Both occasions were a pleasant peep into Parisian bourgeois life. Our
first host was eager to show that he could give us a _gigot_ of mutton
as well roasted as in London, and sorely crestfallen was the poor
man when the little joint came to table black as a cinder and blue
when cut. Joe quickly made capital out of the catastrophe, however,
by declaring that one didn’t come to Paris to eat home fare,
and that it served his friend right for putting his cook to such an
unworthy task.
Our second entertainment, though we did not meet such intellectual
company as the distinguished writers on the _Temps_ and the _Débats_,
who so courteously helped Joe to express brilliant ideas in daringly
lame French and paid such charming court to my sister and myself,
was more typical of its class; for, although the young couple of the
house were our entertainers, the old couple were our hosts, and it was
wondrous and delightful to see the respectful attitude of the son and
his wife to the parents and the undisputed supremacy which they held
from their two ends of the long table set out under the trees of the
flower-laden May.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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