ce was the type
which the great artist who had married me loved to paint. I remember
sitting to him in armor for hours and never realizing that it was heavy
until I fainted!

The day of my wedding it was very cold. Like most women, I always
remember what I was wearing on the important occasions of my life. On
that day I wore a brown silk gown which had been designed by Holman
Hunt, and a quilted white bonnet with a sprig of orange-blossom, and I
was wrapped in a beautiful Indian shawl. I "went away" in a sealskin
jacket with coral buttons, and a little sealskin cap. I cried a great
deal, and Mr. Watts said, "Don't cry. It makes your nose swell." The day
I left home to be married, I "tubbed" all my little brothers and sisters
and washed their fair hair.

Little Holland House, where Mr. Watts lived, seemed to me a paradise,
where only beautiful things were allowed to come. All the women were
graceful, and all the men were gifted. The trio of sisters--Mrs.
Prinsep--(mother of the painter), Lady Somers, and Mrs. Cameron, who was
the pioneer in artistic photography as we know it to-day--were known as
Beauty, Dash, and Talent. There were two more beautiful sisters, Mrs.
Jackson and Mrs. Dalrymple. Gladstone, Disraeli and Browning were among
Mr. Watts' visitors. At Freshwater, where I went soon after my marriage,
I first saw Tennyson.

As I write down these great names I feel almost guilty of an imposture!
Such names are bound to raise high anticipations, and my recollections
of the men to whom some of the names belong are so very humble.

I sat, shrinking and timid, in a corner--the girl-wife of a famous
painter. I was, if I was anything at all, more of a curiosity, of a
side-show, than hostess to these distinguished visitors. Mr. Gladstone
seemed to me like a suppressed volcano. His face was pale and calm, but
the calm was the calm of the gray crust of Etna. To look into the
piercing dark eyes was like having a glimpse into the red-hot crater
beneath. Years later, when I met him again at the Lyceum and became
better acquainted with him, this impression of a volcano at rest again
struck me. Of Disraeli I carried away even a scantier impression. I
remember that he wore a blue tie, a brighter blue tie than most men
would dare to wear, and that his straggling curls shook as he walked. He
looked the great Jew before everything. But "there is the noble Jew," as
George Meredith writes somewhere, "as well as the bestial Gentile.