^ajoc 1RIlbpte=-/lDelpme 417 



To each and all of these questions there was but one 

 sad answer — ' Never.' 



And it was not only in the hunting-field that Whyte- 

 Melville had made fast friends. His charity and benevo- 

 lence had won the hearts of the poor. At a time when for 

 every novel he wrote he received ;^I500 down, it was his 

 rule never to spend upon himself a farthing of the money 

 earned by his pen. His income from this source was 

 entirely devoted to charitable objects. Among many 

 munificent gifts his last was that of a ' Working Man's 

 Club and Reading Room ' to Northampton, now known 

 as ' The Melville Institute,' which he not only erected 

 and supplied with books and papers at his own cost, 

 but to the endowment of which he contributed a sum 

 of i^50o. 



For a man who hunted so regularly Whyte-Melville 

 had singularly few falls. In January 1867, he, for the first 

 time in twenty years, met with a bad accident, caused, as 

 he said, ' by riding a young horse as if he were an old 

 one.' His right arm was broken, and he was kept out of 

 the hunting-field for several weeks. But he had no 

 other mishap of any consequence until the fatal fall 

 which ended his life, and that, strange to say, occurred, 

 not in the course of a run, but whilst he was quietly 

 trotting from one covert to another. 



He was a man of striking appearance, slight of frame, 

 but well knit, and a gentleman all over, from the white 

 hat with black band to the natty boots. His face gener- 

 ally wore a thoughtful and almost sad expression. But 

 it lighted up in society, and there were few brighter and 

 better talkers, few more ready at repartee than he. He 

 had humour, too, as the following anecdote shows. When 

 he was introduced to Miss Strickland, the well-known 



2 D 



