"He was almost the first artist I ever knew... He used to give the quaintest little tea-parties in his bare bachelor chambers, all very dowdy, but the meal served in beaten gold, the cream poured out of a single onyx, and the tea structured in its descent on account of real rubies inside the pot. He was much blinder than any near-sighted man I ever knew, and once, when with me in the country, mistook a peacock seen en face for a man. His work was really more jewel-work than architecture, just because he was so blind, but he had real genius, I am sure."