XVI 



HOME LIFE 405 



A few words as to his home life may perhaps be 

 fitly introduced here. Towards his children he had 

 the same union of underlying tenderness veiled beneath 

 inflexible determination for what was right, which 

 marked his intercourse with those outside his family. 



As children we were fully conscious of this side 

 of his character. We felt our little hypocrisies 

 shrivel up before him; we felt a confidence in the 

 infallible rectitude of his moral judgments which 

 inspired a kind of awe. His arbitrament was instant 

 and final, though rarely invoked, and was perhaps 

 the more tremendous in proportion to its rarity. 

 This aspect, as if of an oracle without appeal, was 

 heightened in our minds by the fact that we saw 

 but little of him. This was one of the penalties of 

 his hard-driven existence. In the struggle to keep 

 his head above water for the first fifteen or twenty 

 years of his married life, he had scarcely any time 

 to devote to his children. The "lodger," as he 

 used to call himself at one time, who went out 

 early and came back late, could sometimes spare 

 half an hour just before or after dinner to draw 

 wonderful pictures for the little ones, and these 

 were memorable occasions. I remember that he 

 used to profess a horror of being too closely watched, 

 or of receiving suggestions, while he drew. "Take 

 care, take care," he would exclaim, " or I don't know 

 what it will turn into." 



When I was seven years old I had the misfortune 

 to be laid up with scarlet fever, and then his gift 



