Authors -- Fiction; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Martians -- Fiction; Paris (France) -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
"We, and the others you tell me you mention, had a capital time in
Düsseldorf. I remember the beautiful Miss Royce they were all so mad
about, and also Miss Gibson, whom I admired much the most of the
two, although she wasn't quite so tall--you know my craze for lovely
giantesses.
"Josselin and I came to London at about the same time, and there
again I saw much of him, and was immensely attracted by him, of
course--as we all were, in the very pleasant little artistic clique
you tell me you describe; but somehow I was never very intimate with
him--none of us were, except, perhaps, Charles Keene.
"He went a great deal into smart society, and a little of the
guardsman still clung to him, and this was an unpardonable crime in
those Bohemian days.
"He was once seen walking between two well-known earls, in the
Burlington Arcade, arm in arm!
"Z---- (to whom a noble lord was as a red rag to a bull) all but cut
him for this, and we none of us approved of his swell friends,
Guardsmen and others. How we've all changed, especially Z----, who
hasn't missed a levée for twenty years, nor his wife a drawing-room!
"Josselin and I acted in a little French musical farce together at
Cornelys's; he had a charming voice and sang beautifully, as you
know.
"Then he married, and a year after I did the same; and though we
lived near each other for a little while, we didn't meet very often,
beyond dining together once or twice at each other's houses. They
lived very much in the world.
"It will be very difficult to draw his wife. I really think Mrs.
Josselin was the most beautiful woman I ever saw; but she used to be
very reserved in those early days, and I never felt quite at my ease
with her. I'm sure she was sweetness and kindness itself; she was
certainly charming at her own dinner-table, where she was less shy.
"Millais's portrait of her is very good, and so is Watts's; but the
best idea of her is to be got from Josselin's little outlines in
'The Discreet Princess,' and these are out of print. If you have
any, please lend them to me, and I will faithfully return them. I
have more than once tried to draw her in _Punch_, from memory, but
never with success.
"I used to call her '_La belle dame sans merci._'
"I've often, however, drawn Josselin, as you must remember, and
people have recognized him at once. Thanks for all his old sketches
of school, etc., which will be very useful.
"I wish I had known the Josselins better. But when one lives in
Hampstead one has to forego many delightful friendships; and then he
grew to be such a tremendous swell! Good heavens!--_Sardonyx_, etc.
I never could muster courage even to write and congratulate him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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