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.”