MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR XXV 
a story (of which he was very fond) and possessing a 
deep sense of humour, he was reserved in the 
extreme about his own feelings, about things that 
really mattered to himself. On the death of his 
wife, perhaps the one bitter blow of his life, people 
might have thought that he did not care. To the 
outer world, to those who saw him at her funeral, 
he might have seemed almost indifferent and 
certainly cold, whereas he was merely too proud, 
too haughty ever to let anyone see what he felt. 
It was characteristic of him that, recording his 
wife’s death in his diary, he never wrote down that 
she was dead, but made the story of a life-long 
devotion and the stunning tragedy of her death 
stand out, in five short words, like living fire. And 
then, in the next few days after her death, follow 
the most precise, formal statements as to “the 
funeral,’ never once mentioning whose funeral. 
Very much, especially in later life, a creature 
of habit, Mr. Foster-Melliar’s life was ruled strictly 
by the clock, and nothing put him out so much 
as unpunctuality. As the clock struck ten every 
night, he rang the bell for prayers, and, as it struck 
eleven, he walked upstairs to bed. At a quarter 
past eight every morning he stepped out of his 
dressing-room on to the landing, where he stopped 
for a minute to whistle to some canaries (always the 
same tune), and then he walked downstairs and out 
into the garden to look at the thermometer on the 
wall. At half-past eight to the minute he rang the 
bell for morning prayers. He was greatly disturbed 
and upset when he had to leave home. He would 
walk about, hours before the time fixed for his 
departure, looking the picture of misery in his best 
