Recollections of George John Cayley 



he liked you he could make every hour of the day seem 

 worth a hundred days without him. 



How hard it is to crystallise into words the remembrance 

 in which his long-ago neighbours hold him ! What things 

 tangible have come down to them from him ? A pot he 

 turned upon the wheel, a brooch, a comb, a bracket, verses. 



For a few more years the Cayleys lived in Algiers. 

 They moved to another house above the Fontaine Bleue. 

 That house was of Moorish architecture, with a Moorish 

 garden. There was an outer court, rooms built round the 

 inner court, flat roof above. Mr. Cayley as long as it was 

 possible — longer, it might almost be said — played tennis in 

 the outer court, the "jeu de paume." His health failed 

 surely, if slowly. He bore the gradual loss of physical 

 power with stoic fortitude, ignoring it as far as might 

 be ; of sympathy he would have none. A friend of earlier 

 days bidding him what proved to be a last farewell, betrayed 

 more emotion than was due to an ordinary parting that 

 might once more have been only the prologue to their next 

 meeting. George Cayley said, " Ah, I see you know that 

 I am dying." He started to return to Algiers, and died on 

 the way, in Kent, at the house of a relative. 



"The Bridle Roads of Spain" has been for many years 

 lost to the knowledge of the public, but there have always 

 been a few who prized it ; a few from time to time have 

 discovered it ; now and then strangers have fraternised over 

 their common knowledge of it. This book of his is said by 

 an authority to be of the very spirit and essence of Spain — 

 to the three neighbours it seems of the very essence and 

 spirit of George Cayley. 



E. M. COBDEN SICKERT. 



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