Of old Deleglise's Sunday suppers, which, costumed from head to foot in spotless linen², he cooked himself in his great kitchen, moving with flushed, earnest face about the gleaming stove, while behind him his guests waited, ranged round the massive oaken table glittering with cut glass and silver, among which fluttered the deft³ hands of Madeline, his ancient whitecapped Bonne, much has been already recorded, and by those possessed⁴ of greater knowledge. They who sat there talking in whispers until such time as old Deleglise turned towards them again, radiant with consciousness of success, the savoury triumph steaming between his hands, when, like the sudden swell⁵ of the Moonlight Sonata⁶, the talk would rush once more into a roar, were men whose names were then—and some are still—more or less household words throughout the English-speaking world. Artists, musicians, actors, writers, scholars, droles, their wit and wisdom, their sayings and their doings must be tolerably familiar to readers of memoir⁷ and biography; and if to such their epigrams appear less brilliant, their jests less laughable than to us who heard them spoken, that is merely because fashion in humour and in understanding changes as in all else.

 

You, gentle reader of my book, I shall not trouble with second-hand¹¹ record of that which you can read elsewhere. For me it will be but to write briefly¹² of my own brief glimpse into that charmed circle. Concerning this story more are the afternoon At Homes held by Dan and myself upon the second floor of the old Georgian house in pleasant, quiet Queen Square. For cook and house-maid on these days it would be a busy morning. Failing other

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