Here in the rambling unpretentiousness of Ivy House, among her treasures, surrounded by her pets, she was completely herself. Here such parties as she gave took place. They were small parties, and the “chosen” who were invited were old friends and colleagues. Although the parties were small in size, the food was abundant and superlative. On her American tours she had discovered that peculiarly American institution, the cafeteria. After rehearsals, she would often pop into one with the entire company. Eyes a-twinkle, she would wait until all the company had chosen their various dishes, then select her own; after depositing her heavily laden tray at her own table, she would pass among the tables where the company was seated and sample something from every dish. Pavlova adored good food. She saw to it that good food was served at Ivy House and, for one so slight of figure, consumed it in amazing abundance. One of these Ivy House parties in particular I remember vividly, for her old friend, Féodor Chaliapine, that stupendous figure of the world of the theatre who had played such an important part in my own life and career, was, on this occasion, the life of the party. He was in a gargantuan mood. He had already dined before he arrived at Ivy House. I could imagine the dinner he had put away, for often his table abounded with such delicacies as a large salmon, often a side of lamb, suckling pigs, and tureens of _schchee_ and _borscht_. But despite this, he did ample justice to Pavlova’s buffet and bar. His jokes and stories were told to a spellbound audience. These were the rare occasions on which I have seen this great musician, with his sombre, rather monkish face, really relax. This night Pavlova was equally animated, and Chaliapine and she vied with each other in story-telling. I studied them both as I watched them. Pavlova had told me of her own origins and first beginnings; about her father, her mother, her childhood poverty. Here she sat, sprung from such a humble start, the world’s greatest dancer, the chatelaine of a beautiful and simple home, the entire world at her feet. Facing her was another achievement, the poor boy of Kazan, who, in his early life, suffered the pangs of hunger and misery which are the common experience of the Russian poor. He had told me how, as a lad of seventeen in the town of Kazan without a kopeck in his pocket, day after day, he would walk through the streets and hungrily gaze into the windows of the bakers’ shops with hopeless longing. “Hurok,” he had said, “hunger is the most debasing of all suffering; it makes a man like a beast, it humiliates him.”