A funny little incident, told me in the small hours when Joe came home, described the dire discomfiture of one of his greatest admirers when, having invited him to supper that he might silence “a conceited young ass” by his superior wit, the “conceited young ass” so fancied himself as to monopolize the whole conversation: this fiasco, though not to his own glorification, caused Joe infinite delight; but the disgusted host was only consoled after he had arranged a duel for my husband with Robert Marshall, the playwright, a recognised wit--the condition being that neither should think before speaking: I consider that here an unfair advantage was taken--any one who was a friend of Joe’s knowing full well that this was just the whip of which he loved the lash. Be it added that this tilt between the two knights cemented their friendship. A host of these incidents took place in his well-loved Garrick Club, of which--by the testimony of many friends--he was the heart and soul and some add the good genius. I believe there were quarrels not a few that he averted or headed by his tact and kindly humour--quarrels that might sometimes have led to sorrowful decisions by the Club Committee to which he belonged. He told me one day of a humorous end to an earnest expostulation he had held with poor Harry Kemble--greatly beloved in spite of his known weakness: “Every word you say is true, my dear Joe,” the actor had replied with the tears streaming down his great cheeks--“but what if I like it?” It is good to remember that that colossal figure--of which our daughter, seeing it on the stage when she was a child, asked tremulously, “Is it a human being?”--remained to the end an honoured institution of the Club. Of Joe’s tactful capacity as a peacemaker I was a witness at the home of my mother’s family--the beautiful Gothic Abbey of Bisham near Marlow. We were staying with my cousin, George Vansittart, who was then the owner. He was the kindest of men, but had a peppery and ill-controlled temper, and nothing so inflamed it as the growing habit with trippers on the Thames of landing upon his grounds. His gardeners and keepers were sternly bidden to warn off these rash people, and he himself, if walking or shooting in Bisham woods--quite a mile from the Abbey--would angrily bid them begone. One day he and Joe were sitting in his ground-floor library facing the river, when he espied a boat containing a lady and a man making across stream towards the big trees shading his lawns. He jumped up--his face flushed, and watched the man rise, a powerful figure, ship his sculls and push into shore. “By----, the insolent brute! Under my very nose!” shrieked the incensed squire. And, seizing a heavy stick he strode out of the French window--Joe following somewhat alarmed.