MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR xxv 



a story (of which he was very fond) and possessing a 

 deep sense of humour, he was reserved in the 

 extreme about his own feeHngs, about things that 

 really mattered to himself. On the death of his 

 wife, perhaps the one bitter blow of his life, people 

 might have thought that he did not care. To the 

 outer world, to those who saw him at her funeral, 

 he might have seemed almost indifferent and 

 certainly cold, whereas he was merely too proud, 

 too haughty ever to let anyone see what he felt. 

 It was characteristic of him that, recording his 

 wife's death in his diary, he never wrote down that 

 she was dead, but made the story of a life-long 

 devotion and the stunning tragedy of her death 

 stand out, in five short words, like living fire. And 

 then, in the next few days after her death, follow 

 the most precise, formal statements as to " the 

 funeral," never once mentioning whose funeral. 



Very much, especially in later life, a creature 

 of habit, Mr. Foster-Melliar's life was ruled strictly 

 by the clock, and nothing put him out so much 

 as unpunctuality. As the clock struck ten every 

 night, he rang the bell for prayers, and, as it struck 

 eleven, he walked upstairs to bed. At a quarter 

 past eight every mornmg he stepped out of his 

 dressing-room on to the landing, where he stopped 

 for a minute to whistle to some canaries (always the 

 same tune), and then he walked downstairs and out 

 into the garden to look at the thermometer on the 

 wall. At half -past eight to the minute he rang the 

 bell for morning prayers. He was greatly disturbed 

 and upset when he had to leave home. He would 

 walk about, hours before the time fixed for his 

 departure, looking the picture of misery in his best 



