One day Whistler accused Joe of making a joke at the expense of his friend--a false accusation in reality, though sometimes lightly true--to which Joe quickly answered: “Well, I can make a friend most days, but I can only make a good joke now and then:” assuredly only half a truth, too. “Ha! ha!” laughed Whistler with his shrill cackle, “I wish I had said that myself!” “Never mind, Jimmy, you will,” retorted Joe. And the cackle broke forth again whole-heartedly, whereas Wilde might possibly have been offended. But very few folk were ever offended at my husband’s fun. One of the members said to him one day at the Garrick Club, in a whimsical and deprecating manner: “These fellows tell me that I have the reputation of a wit, my dear Carr.” To which Joe replied: “Don’t worry! you’ll live that down in an afternoon.” And I am told that the friend was wont to repeat this against himself. Again, the mother of a pretty young girl, whom he was openly flattering, asked him, laughing, whether his intentions were serious, to which he replied: “Serious, but not honourable, madam.” But if this lady was not offended perhaps it was because he had known her since the time when she was fourteen years old herself. An evening in Lady Lewis’ pretty drawing-room at the Walton cottage comes vividly back to me. We were playing some geographical game with the children, in the course of which Oscar Wilde--with a view to grown-up applause--found occasion to ask: “Where is the capital of the Rothschilds?” The children looked blank. “Why, in Behring Straits,” said Joe promptly, and I remember old Sir George Lewis’ smile, for it was at the time of the famous city crisis when, but for that capital, the great firm of Baring might have stopped payment. Even in that most precarious form of fun, the practical joke, Joe was never known to hurt even the most thin-skinned. One day he and Mr. Hallé, his co-director at the New Gallery--made an excursion to Sir Edward Burne-Jones’ home--The Grange, Kensington--and sent up a message to the artist asking if he would receive two gentlemen who had called to ask whether he would take shares in the _Great Wheel_. The maid must have been sore put to it to keep her countenance, for the rage with which the painter viewed the monstrosity that climbed the sky above his garden wall was well known in his household. He rushed downstairs, palette in hand, only to find “little Carr,” as he affectionately called him, waiting demurely in the hall on quite other business. At the sweet Rottingdean home a similar joke was played: Burne-Jones’ loathing of the “interviewer” was a very open secret; so one summer evening Joe crept up to the front door and sent in an audacious name, purporting to be that of an American who hoped for a few words with the distinguished artist.