Foxhall Clifford—Richard Osborne Elliott

Foxhall Clifford—Richard Osborne Elliott is one of the most substantial friendships in the Paris episodes: the two American artists share a studio, dogs, professional surroundings, and an intimacy that allows affection to appear as mockery, reprimand, and practical protection. Elliott repeatedly criticizes Clifford’s unstable romantic pursuits, yet he also accommodates them, making the friendship less a simple contrast between irresponsibility and restraint than a durable bond in which irritation and loyalty continually reinforce one another.

Shared Home and Artistic Companionship

Clifford tells Hastings that he lives opposite him, in the studio situated in the garden with almond trees and blackbirds. He identifies the residence not as a solitary lodging but as the place where he is with Elliott, establishing their domestic arrangement as part of the studio’s defining identity. The setting joins artistic work and informal communal life: the studio is a home, a workplace, and a social environment in which unexpected visitors, romantic entanglements, and comic disorder may all converge.

Inside the studio, Elliott is found smoking and sketching with charcoal by the window. His artistic activity gives him a settled, observant presence, sharply different from Clifford’s restless movement through Parisian society. Yet the contrast does not separate them. Clifford enters, discourages the caresses of two brindle bulldogs, and sinks onto the sofa as though returning to a familiar household. The dogs, the sofa, the window, and Elliott’s uninterrupted sketching make the scene recognizably domestic; Clifford’s arrival is not a formal visit but the return of one inhabitant to another.

Loyalty Expressed Through Reproof

Clifford worries that Hastings may be too innocent for the atmosphere of the studio and recalls the earlier occasion when Elliott had to hide Colette in an armoire. The reference reveals that Elliott’s role is not merely that of a companion who shares rent or artistic space. He is also the person expected to manage the consequences of Clifford’s behavior, including the awkward concealment of a woman from an unwelcome visitor. Clifford’s uneasiness about Hastings therefore becomes a concern about protecting the household and preserving Elliott’s friendship.

When Clifford says that he has asked Hastings to announce his visits so that any intended orgy can be postponed, Elliott reacts indignantly to the formulation. Clifford admits that he did not put the matter to Hastings in precisely that way, then becomes serious: he does not want anything in the studio to trouble Hastings, whom he calls a good fellow, and he regrets that he and Elliott cannot be more like him. Elliott responds that he is already doing something admirable by merely living with Clifford, turning domestic tolerance into a joke while quietly acknowledging how much patience the arrangement requires.

The relationship’s emotional center is therefore not solemn confession but the ability to reprimand without abandoning. Elliott’s scorn is sharp, yet it is directed toward Clifford’s conduct rather than toward the friendship itself. Clifford, for his part, accepts the criticism, continues to seek Elliott’s attention, and treats him as a true friend even when Elliott is visibly exhausted by the same recurring pattern.

Elliott as Clifford’s Counterweight

Elliott’s most sustained function is to oppose Clifford’s romantic volatility. When Clifford prepares to go elsewhere while the artistic set is dining at Boulant’s, Elliott complains that Clifford is impossible to track and accuses him of abusing both the indulgence of the Latin Quarter and Elliott’s own good nature. He invokes Cécile and the many other women after whom Clifford has pursued, or is likely to pursue, his next attachment. The complaint is not an isolated quarrel: Elliott has repeatedly been forced to make excuses for Clifford and arrange affairs that Clifford neglects.

Elliott’s anger culminates in an ultimatum. He declares that he will go to Boulant’s, make excuses for Clifford, and arrange matters as usual, but threatens to sever himself from the whole pattern if Clifford does not appear the next day with his sketching kit under one arm and Cécile under the other. The exaggeration is comic, yet the practical details are revealing. Elliott does not simply condemn Clifford from a distance; he continues to repair the social damage, preserve the engagement, and insist that Clifford return to his obligations.

Their conflict is also marked by Elliott’s awareness that Clifford repeatedly mistakes recurrence for transformation. In the Luxembourg Gardens, Elliott accuses him of having attached himself to yet another woman and lists Clémence, Marie Tellec, Cosette, Fifine, Colette, and Marie Verdier as previous examples. Clifford maintains that each woman was charming and that he had been faithful to one at a time; Elliott immediately adds the qualification that each attachment lasted only until the next arrived. Clifford then insists that the present case is genuinely different and that he is broken-hearted. Elliott initially reacts with helplessness, but finally listens because there is nothing else to do. His skepticism has become a form of care: he knows the pattern well enough to doubt the claim, but remains close enough to hear it again.

Social Mediation and Protective Instinct

The friendship extends beyond private arguments into the management of social situations. When Rowden unexpectedly brings Hastings into a private dining room at the Hôtel Terminus, Clifford reacts with alarm, while Elliott receives Hastings with extreme courtesy and introduces him to Cécile, Colette, and Jacqueline. The gathering is supposed to lead to an excursion to La Roche, and Elliott helps make Hastings welcome by encouraging the others to include him. Clifford privately tells Rowden that he has acted foolishly, but Elliott recognizes that the situation can still be salvaged, frowns on Clifford, and finds an opportunity to reassure Rowden that everyone will make the best of it.

This episode shows Elliott performing the social labor that Clifford resists. Clifford sees the unplanned arrival as a threat to the intended arrangement; Elliott treats it as a circumstance to be absorbed. His courtesy protects Hastings from embarrassment, while his intervention prevents Rowden from collapsing under Clifford’s displeasure. The friendship thus gives Clifford a dependable intermediary: Elliott can criticize him openly and still translate his behavior into something the surrounding company can endure.

The same protective impulse appears in the studio, where Clifford worries about disturbing Hastings and Elliott’s earlier concealment of Colette remains part of their shared history. Elliott’s loyalty is active rather than sentimental. He manages guests, excuses absences, absorbs insults, and keeps the household functioning while Clifford follows impulse. That practical usefulness explains why his indignation never quite becomes departure.

Persistence, Dependence, and Comic Contrast

The Luxembourg scene makes their dependence especially visible. Clifford walks leisurely with Elliott beside him and two bulldogs behind them. Elliott reads Gil Blas and suppresses his amusement into discreet smiles, judging boisterous laughter unsuitable to Clifford’s state of mind. Clifford notices the restrained amusement but says nothing until the garden’s beauty and the quiet companionship prompt him to call Elliott a true friend. Elliott immediately rejects the sentimental opening, declaring that Clifford makes him ill and accusing him of having kept him away from Julian’s merely to describe the perfections of another foolish young woman.

The exchange reveals an attachment structured by an enduring pursuit-and-reproach cycle. Clifford turns toward Elliott when emotionally distressed, seeking recognition and an audience; Elliott withdraws into irony, then returns to attention when Clifford’s distress becomes unmistakably serious. Neither man escapes the other’s habits. Clifford depends on Elliott’s presence even while resisting his discipline, and Elliott condemns Clifford’s antics while repeatedly arranging, accompanying, and listening to him.

Their contrast also gives the relationship its comic form. Clifford is impulsive, romantic, and perpetually convinced that the newest attachment is exceptional. Elliott is skeptical, organized, and burdened with the consequences of Clifford’s self-dramatization. But Elliott is not detached from the disorder he criticizes: he lives with Clifford, shares his movements through Paris, keeps the bulldogs, participates in the excursions, and continues to call him a friend. The result is not a stable moral opposition but a complementary pair whose intimacy depends on the very difference that produces their quarrels.

Narrative Significance

Foxhall Clifford—Richard Osborne Elliott gives the Paris narrative a durable social and emotional counterpoint to its succession of flirtations. Clifford’s romantic history appears repetitive because Elliott remembers its names and exposes its repeated language; each new declaration of seriousness is measured against the catalogue of earlier declarations. At the same time, Elliott’s presence prevents that repetition from becoming merely solitary self-indulgence. Every new passion generates a second story about the friend who must listen, object, make excuses, protect other people, and remain.

Their shared studio condenses this pattern. It is an artistic space, but also a porous household vulnerable to visitors, concealed guests, postponed orgies, and the consequences of Clifford’s next attachment. Elliott’s charcoal sketching and smoking suggest composure, while Clifford’s entrances, confessions, and sudden departures continually disrupt it. Yet the disruption is absorbed rather than resolved. The friendship survives not because Clifford becomes constant or Elliott ceases to be exasperated, but because Elliott’s reproach repeatedly proves compatible with loyalty and Clifford’s dependence repeatedly acknowledges the value of the man he frustrates.