148 A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, xi 



had never appealed to him, but in old boyish days he had 

 worked at chemistry, and hence my father still sometimes 

 called him Philos, short for philosopher, his nickname 

 thus earned at school. They were very different in char- 

 acter and disposition, and made admirable foils in their talk 

 with each other. My father always spoke of him with the 

 warmest admiration, and also up to the end of his life with 

 something of a younger brother's reverence. He felt a 

 tender sympathy for his loneliness and ill-health " poor 

 dear old Philos," I can almost hear him say. 



There are some words in an essay by Mrs Meynell, 1 

 called A Remembrance, which strangely bring back his per- 

 sonality, and seem like a remembrance of him : ' Men 

 said that he led a dilettante life. They reproached him 

 with the selflessness that made him somewhat languid. 

 Others, they seemed to aver, were amateurs at this art or 

 that; he was an amateur at living. So it was, in the sense 

 that he never grasped at happiness, and that many of the 

 things he had held slipped from his disinterested hands. . . . 

 It was his finest distinction to desire no differences, no 

 remembrance, but loss among the innumerable forgotten. 

 And when he suffered, it was with so quick a nerve and yet 

 so wide an apprehension that the race seemed to suffer in 

 him." 



His house (6, Queen Anne Street) was a second home to 

 his nephews and nieces, including in this term his dearest 

 of all, the children of Hensleigh Wedgwood. We especially 

 remember the warmth of his welcome. There was indeed 

 something quite unique in his attitude towards the young. 

 We came into that simply furnished, somewhat ascetic 

 London drawing-room, looking out on the bare street, 

 knowing that he was weary and ill, and had been alone, and 

 would be alone again, and yet went away with a glow 

 reflected from his atmosphere a sense that the world was 

 better for his presence. There was no possibility of for- 

 getting the respect due to an elder, but he met us so entirely 

 on our own level, that in our intercourse with him we felt 

 as free as if he were our own age, and yet there was the added 

 interest due to our being of different generations. 



He was a delightful playfellow for little children, and 

 could draw just the pictures children like. In a letter to one 

 of the little Hensleigh Wedgwoods he wrote : " I have nobody 

 to play with, so I hope very soon to see you again when you 

 have done travelling about the country. What a great 



1 The Ehythm of Life, by Alice Meynell. 



