Page:Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1904).djvu/72

 On such occasions, Rossetti would relinquish his poetry or painting, and devote half-an-hour or so to allotting to his guests the several places that they were to occupy.

"Dunn," he would say to me, "we'll have Howell here; so-and-so is slow and he shall sit next to him; he'll be sure to be amused and wake up when that droll fellow begins pouring out his Niagara of lies. And here," he would add, "Sandys84 shall have his place, just opposite, so that whatever Howell relates, Fred shall have a chance of capping his romances with some more racy."

And thus with each guest; all were placed as he considered would be most conducive to the harmony of the evening. And so happily did Rossetti arrange matters, that his dinners never failed to be indeed festivals of exuberant hilarity. Christopher North's Noctes Ambrosianæ might have equalled, but certainly did not surpass them, for wit and humour danced rampant up and down the table. At such times, would be present Burne-Jones, George Augustus Sala,85 Westland Marston,86 Ford Madox Brown, Morris, and other well-known men.

But it was not really until the feast was over, and an adjournment to the studio came about, that the night's enjoyment commenced. If the conversation took a turn to suit Rossetti's humour, he was pretty sure to be first and foremost in the fun.87 Howell was the greatest romancer of all the Rossetti circle, and he had always some monstrous story to tell about anybody who happened