Page himself attributed the popularity of his house to his wife.  Mrs. Page certainly embodied the traits most desirable in the Ambassadress of a great Republic.  A woman of cultivation, a tireless reader, a close observer of people and events and a shrewd commentator upon them, she also had an unobtrusive dignity, a penetrating sympathy, and a capacity for human association, which, while more restrained and more placid than that of her husband, made her a helpful companion for a sorely burdened man.  The American Embassy under Mr. and Mrs. Page was not one of London’s smart houses as that word is commonly understood in this great capital.  But No. 6 Grosvenor Square, in the spaciousness of its rooms, the simple beauty of its furnishings, and especially in its complete absence of ostentation, made it the worthy abiding place of an American Ambassador.  And the people who congregated there were precisely the kind that appeal to the educated American.  “I didn’t know I was getting into an assembly of immortals,” exclaimed Mr. Hugh Wallace, when he dropped in one Thursday afternoon for tea, and found himself foregathered with Sir Edward Grey, Henry James, John Sargent, and other men of the same type.  It was this kind of person who most naturally gravitated to the Page establishment, not the ultra-fashionable, the merely rich, or the many titled.  The formal functions which the position demanded the Pages scrupulously gave; but the affairs which Page most enjoyed and which have left the most lasting remembrances upon his guests were the informal meetings with his chosen favourites, for the most part literary men.  Here Page’s sheer brilliancy of conversation showed at its best.  Lord Bryce, Sir John Simon, John Morley, the inevitable companions, Henry James and John Sargent—­“What things have I seen done at the Mermaid”; and certainly these gatherings of wits and savants furnished as near an approach to its Elizabethan prototype as London could then present.

Besides his official activities Page performed great services to the two countries by his speeches.  The demands of this kind on an American Ambassador are always numerous, but Page’s position was an exceptional one; it was his fortune to represent America at a time when his own country and Great Britain were allies in a great war.  He could therefore have spent practically all his time in speaking had he been so disposed.  Of the hundreds of invitations received he was able to accept only a few, but most of these occasions became memorable ones.  In any spectacular sense Page was not an orator; he rather despised the grand manner, with its flourishes and its tricks; the name of public speaker probably best describes his talents on the platform.  Here his style was earnest and conversational:  his speech flowed with the utmost readiness; it was invariably quiet and restrained; he was never aiming at big effects, but his words always went home.  Of the series of speeches that stand to his credit in England probably