XV SUNDAY EVENING GATHERINGS 391 



ample size. Thus from 1874 onwards he was enabled 

 to see something of his many friends who would come 

 as far as St. John's Wood on a Sunday evening. No 

 formal invitation for a special day was needed. The 

 guests came, before supper or after, sometimes more, 

 sometimes fewer, as on any ordinary at-home day. 

 There was a simple informal meal at 6.30 or 7 o'clock, 

 which called itself by no more dignified name than 

 high tea — was, in fact, a cold supper with varying 

 possibilities in the direction of dinner or tea. It was 

 a chance medley of old and young — friends of the 

 parents and friends of the children, but all ultimately 

 centring round the host himself, whose end of the 

 table never flagged for conversation, grave or gay. 



Afterwards talk would go on in the drawing-room, 

 or, on warm summer evenings, in the garden — nothing 

 very extensive, but boasting a lawn with an old apple- 

 tree at the further end, and in the borders such flowers 

 and trees as endure London air. Later on, there was 

 almost sure to be some music, to which my father 

 himself was devoted. His daughters sang ; a musical 

 friend would be there; Mr. Herbert Spencer, a 

 frequent visitor, was an authority on music. Once 

 only do I recollect any other form of entertainment, 

 and that was an occasion when Sir Henry Irving, then 

 not long established at the Lyceum, was present and 

 recited " Eugene Aram " with great eff'ect. 



In his London Letters Mr. G. W. Smalley ^ has 



^ Another interesting account from the same pen is to be found 

 in the article " Mr. Huxley," Scribncrs Magazine, October 1895. 



