“As Mr. Browning often dines with us,” the hostess said, “I always show him the list of guests and let him choose who shall sit beside him: to-night you are to have the honor.” I felt it a very great honor indeed, and awaited his coming with beating heart. In conventional evening dress Browning, then about sixty-five years old, looked less the traditional poet than his portraits. He was spruce, with waxed mustache and a man-of-the-world air, not at all like the pictures of Byron or Shelley, our own Walt Whitman, or the silvery Longfellow. When we were seated at table he adjusted his monocle and glanced at the _menu_. “I know this cook’s best dishes,” he said, “I will advise you in choosing the _plats_.” It was unreasonable, but I was shocked! To come trembling into the presence of the adored poet and find him only a man and an epicure was a cruel disillusionment. What did I expect? _Quien sabe?_ Soon after I had an opportunity to visit Tennyson in the Isle of Wight. I promptly refused the invitation. I had heard of the Laureate’s being rude to some Americans and would not risk another disappointment in poets. Edmund Gosse proved a stanch friend to us as he has to many other Americans made welcome at his Sunday afternoons. He was a man of charm and simplicity: my memories of him are in harmony with his enchanting autobiography, “Father and Son.” Mrs. Gosse was both aesthetic and good looking. We met at her house her two sisters, Mrs. Alma-Tadema and another whose name I have forgotten. These three charmers were the daughters of Mr. Epps, and were known by the adjectives in his famous cocoa advertisement, “Grateful, Comforting, Delicious.” All were pretty women. Mrs. Tadema, the handsomest, was I think “Delicious.” She painted extremely well, and her husband was proud of her pictures. I once heard him say: “Take notice that I wish to have it put on my tombstone, ‘Here lies the husband of Mrs. Alma-Tadema’!” The Alma-Tadema house had certain classical features,--an atrium like those at Pompeii with marble columns and seats, a fountain playing in a marble basin filled with rose leaves; the floors were strewn with panther and tiger skins. Tadema often painted this interior in his pictures of Roman and Greek life, which were much admired and brought enormous sums. Edmund Yates of the _London World_ was one of the prominent men about town. His witticisms at the expense of his rival, Labouchère, editor of _London Truth_, were much quoted. The two editors chaffed each other in a weekly paragraph. People looked in _Truth_ for Labouchère’s screed beginning, “My dear Edmund”, and in the _World_ for a corresponding paragraph opening with, “My dear Labbie”! The jesting was good-humoured, neither hitting below the belt.