Herbert Bedford, the painter who married that delightful composer Liza Lehmann, was another once desirous to do a miniature of me. Accordingly, one terribly foggy morning in January, 1909, he arrived with his little box and ivory. He started; but of all things for a miniature a good light is the most necessary and fate was not kind. The fog deepened and blackened, till we were thoroughly enveloped in one of “London’s particulars.” I really think it was one of the worst fogs I remember; and that is saying a good deal, for I have not only had much experience in London, but have seen denser specimens in Chicago, and almost as bad in Paris and Christiania. He waited an hour, but working was hopeless, so he departed. Next time he came, the morning was beautifully bright, but ill-fate pursued us, and we had no sooner settled down to work than Cimmerian darkness came on again. A week later a third attempt was made, and incredible as it may appear, the blackest of all smoky, yellow, carboniferous fogs arrived that day also. Verily, it was a black month. Though the morning was always fine when we started, the darkness arrived as soon as we were well settled down to work, as if from very “cussedness.” November is named the month of fogs, but as a Londoner I should say they rarely come before Christmas, generally in January; and three or four during the entire winter is now our usual number. They seldom last more than a few hours; but they are so awful when they do come, that that is quite long enough, and the sooner science robs us of their presence the better. They certainly are less frequent and less severe than when I was a child. Poor old London climate! how we abuse it, and yet we have much to be thankful for. We do not get prickly heat or mosquitoes, sunstroke or ticks, neither do we have frost-bite or leprosy. The Marquis de San Giuliano, late Italian Ambassador in London and now Minister of Foreign Affairs in Rome, always maintained that London possesses the best climate in the world, and wondered why people ever left England with all its comforts in the winter, for the South with its cheerless houses and treacherous winds. Madame Liza Lehmann has one of the most interesting faces I ever saw: fragile, delicate, refined. Once a well-known singer, but always shivering with nervousness, she left the public platform when she married, about 1894, and began composing. No woman has had more success.