Ixvi MEMOIR 



come to deal with his telegraphic voyages and give some taste 

 of his correspondence, the reader will still find him at twenty- 

 five an arrant schoolboy. His wife besides was more thoroughly 

 educated than he. In many ways she was able to teach him, 

 and he proud to be taught ; in many ways she outshone 

 him, and he delighted to be outshone. All these superiori- 

 ties, and others that, after the manner of lovers, he no doubt 

 forged for himself, added as time went on to the humility of his 

 original love. Only once, in all I know of his career, did he 

 show a touch of small ness. He could not learn to sing correctly ; 

 his wife told him so and desisted from her lessons ; and the mor- 

 tification was so sharply felt that for years he could not be in- 

 duced to go to a concert, instanced himself as a typical man 

 without an ear, and never sang again. I tell it ; for the fact 

 that this stood singular in his behaviour, and really amazed all 

 who knew him, is the happiest way I can imagine to commend 

 the tenor of his simplicity ; and because it illustrates his feeling 

 for his wife. Others were always welcome to laugh at him ; if 

 it amused them, or if it amused him, he would proceed undis- 

 turbed with his occupation, his vanity invulnerable. With his 

 wife it was different : his wife had laughed at his singing ; and 

 for twenty years the fibre ached. Nothing, again, was more 

 notable than the formal chivalry of this unmannered man to the 

 person on earth with whom he was the most familiar. He was 

 conscious of his own innate and often rasping vivacity and 

 roughness ; and he was never forgetful of his first visit to the 

 Austins and the vow he had registered on his return. There 

 was thus an artificial element in his punctilio that at times 

 might almost raise a smile. But it stood on noble grounds ; for 

 this was how he sought to shelter from his own petulance the 

 woman who was to him the symbol of the household and to the 

 end the beloved of his youth. 



Pro- I wish in this chapter to chronicle small beer ; taking a 



diffi 10na nas ty glance at some ten years of married life and of professional 



culties. struggle ; arid reserving till the next all the more interesting 



matter of his cruises. Of his achievements and their worth, it 



is not for me to speak : his friend and partner, Sir William 



