448 Life and Letters of Francis Gallon 



taste likewise. He enjoyed his food as keenly as a child, although he was a very small eater 

 and most abstemious in every way. He delighted in after-dinner coffee, of which he allowed 

 himself two teaspoonfuls, and that only when 1, or some other coffee-drinker, was staying with 

 him to set a bad example! 



The joie de vivre remained strong in him even after he had lost the power of walking, and 

 when he could not rise from his chair without help, and then only with pain. Still he was as 

 keen and full of zest as ever, and I believe that if a ten, or even a twenty years' extension of 

 life had been offered him he would gladly have accepted it, for his heart was bound up in his 

 beloved " Biogenics" and he would have loved to watch its progress, even at the cost of prolonged 

 pain, weariness and suffering. 



Whilst he was still able to move about a little, his indomitable energy prompted him to do 

 extraordinary things. For instance, at a time when he could hardly stand alone, I have known 

 him (by holding on to things) climb out of the staircase window on to a sort of lead roof, where 

 he would spend an hour or so in the open air. It was a perilous proceeding, and on one occasion 

 lie had the narrowest possible escape from an accident which, if it had actually occurred, would 

 certainly have killed him. 



He was touchingly "grateful for small mercies." I remember his telling me one day that 

 he had had a "glorious time" that afternoon. The "glorious time" was just sitting in a bath- 

 chair, helpless and unable to move, in a garden-shelter watching the trees and sunshine. Any 

 little ingenious contrivance was an absolute delight to him, and I have known him amuse 

 himself for quite a long time with some penny toy such as those hawked about the London 

 streets. I do not think he could "do nothing." His brain was always busy even when his 

 hands were idle. It is true that sometimes when I asked him what he had been doing, he 

 would quote from Punch: "Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I only sits" — but 

 I never believed it. 



He was fond of reading aloud, and he read better than almost anyone I ever heard. He 

 enjoyed reading Tennyson and Shakespeare to me, but I think he excelled himself in reading 

 the Bible. On one occasion he read the Book of Esther right through, and although I had 

 imagined I knew it well enough already, he convinced me I had never known it at all before 

 then. The whole scene started into life, I was transported into the Oriental surroundings, 

 thousands of years back — the dramatis personae lived and moved, and I felt as if I had dived 

 into another world. If it had all been acted before me, the impression could not have been 

 more vivid. 



I think he cared little for fiction unless he was tired or poorly. On those occasions I found 

 Don Quixote was oftenest in requisition. In novels he evidently preferred fun to sentiment and 

 last year (1910) he delighted in Countess von Arnim's Princes.* Priscilia's Fortnight, The 

 Caravanners, etc. Art to a certain extent, and Music entirely, seem to have been omitted in 

 his composition — an inheritance perhaps (or rather non-inheritance) from his Quaker ancestry. 

 He delighted, however, in the artistic nature of his great-niece, Eva Biggs, as much as she in 

 her turn prided herself in his science. Music, I think, he positively disliked, although he only 

 confessed to "not caring for it." His brothers and sisters were also, one and all, absolutely 

 unmusical. Certainly he was a living refutation of Shakespeare's "The man that hath no 

 music in himself etc." — for never was any man further from "Treasons, stratagems and spoils! " 



It would be hard to find anyone with so high an ideal of duty as his, and I do not hesitate 

 to affirm that nothing — not self-interest, praise, blame, or anything else, would have made him 

 swerve a hair's breadth from what he conceived to be right. To that which he believed to be 

 true, he felt bound to give utterance, even though it cost him the disapprobation and even the 

 deep sorrow of some whose love and sympathy he most valued. This was especially the case 

 when his work on Human Faculty came out in 1883, with a chapter on prayer, which 

 I rejoice to find is suppressed in a recent edition*. Although the chapter in question only 

 attacked the crudest and most materialistic notion of prayer, and was obviously written under 

 a complete misapprehension of the real Christian position with regard to it, nevertheless a 

 storm of indignation was raised, and some whom he most loved, and whose good opinion was 

 dearest to him, were distressed and scandalised. I always felt that his attitude with regard to 

 Religion was absolutely misunderstood. I have heard him called hard names — "Atheist," 

 "Unbeliever" and so on. My own description of his creed would be that of a Religious 

 Agnostic. Faith was denied him, and, as he has often told me, all intuitive witness to the 



* At the urgent request of the publishers. 



