“During Mr. Lowell’s service as Minister to England,” writes Mr. R. R. Bowker, who was at this time resident in London, “Mrs. Lowell was constantly an invalid, as the after effect of typhus fever while in Spain, and it was delightful to see Mr. Lowell’s gallantry--for no other word expresses it--as she was brought down in her invalid chair to the dining-room or drawing-room. But she never lost the happy laugh so characteristic of her, and her charm of direct and pleasant manner. Her condition made it impossible for Mr. Lowell to give receptions or large dinners, so that his household guests were confined to a few Americans. In an invitation to dine on Christmas day of 1880, he writes: ‘We shan’t be very jolly, but there will be a spice of home.’ It was at that dinner, I think, that Mrs. Lowell had quite set her heart on having cranberry sauce with the turkey, and so had obtained from that wonderful American storehouse at 45 Piccadilly a supply of cranberries. But the servants, who had mostly come with the Lowells from Spain, could not be made to understand what was wanted, and it was only when, two or three courses after the turkey, Mrs. Lowell hit upon calling for the ‘compote rouge’ that we obtained our cranberry sauce as a separate course.... “Mr. Lowell was always charmingly gallant, and on one occasion at the house in Lowndes Square there was present a young American actress from whom he asked some recitation. She offered to read the balcony scene from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ but said she had no Romeo, whereupon Mr. Lowell volunteered, the Juliet reciting from behind the sofa, and the most charming of Romeos, though somewhat elderly for the part, reading from in front.”