Walter Frank Rapliael Weklon. 1 800— 1906. 
5 
expression to a paradox, their volume of life was too great to be compatible with its 
normal length. There are men — not the least favoured of the Gods — who live so 
widely and so deeply, that they cannot live long. Discussions on the inheritance 
of longevity now come back to the memory, wherein Weldon referred to stocks of 
short-lived but intense life, and the personal experience and its moulding effect on 
character are now clear, where at the time the mind of the listener i-an solely on a 
correlation coefficient. 
In one respect Raphael Weldon differed widel}^ from his father. Walter 
Weldon turned naturally to the mystical to satisfy his spiritual cravings ; he was 
a Swedenborgian, and ipso facto a believer in intercourse with another world. 
Whether owing to a difference of training or of temperament, these things were to 
Raphael Weldon uncongenial. He was through the many years the present writer 
knew him, like his hero Huxley, a confirmed Agnostic. Sympathetic as every 
cultured mind must be with the great creations of religious faith ; knowing more 
than many men of religious art — painting, sculpture, and music — he yet fully 
realised that these things had for him only emotional, no longer intellectual value*. 
It may be that the difference of training made this distinction between father and 
son, for the latter's mind was keenly alive to spiritual influences. A solitary fort- 
night with the beloved Dante was not solely pleasure ; the re-perusal of the Inferno 
left its sombre influence on Weldon's thoughts for long after, testifying not only to 
its author's supremacy, but to the spiritual impressibility of the reader's nature. 
It may be that the difference was due to heritage from the mother's side. Of 
Anne Cotton we know little, she died in 1881, when Raphael Weldon had just 
taken his degree. She appears to have exercised a rather stern discipline, which 
had greater influence on Raphael, than on his brother Dante. She was a devoted 
companion to Walter Weldon, and a resourceful helpmate in his early struggling 
daysi*. A daughter Clara born in 18.5.5 died in 1861 . Of his childhood Weldon rarely 
spoke. He was born in the Highgate district, and shortly after his birth his 
parents removed to a three-gabled house on the West Hill still standing. Here 
we get occasional peeps of a solitary child who would retire for hours under the 
dining-room table with his Shakespere, learning whole acts by heart. At six years 
old he appears in Mary Howitt's letters as staying at Claygate near Eshei". 
great and useful lessons. His father came up and added that when Kaphael was older he would see 
those lessons more clearly than he could now." 
The prophecy was fulfilled, in perhaps rather a different way. The little Eapliael became a big 
Eaphael who did not look to art "for great and useful lessons," and who refused to study Ibsen 
because undiscerning critics made current the idea that his art was subservient to inculcating a lesson. 
* The "fulness of life" admitted, nay demanded, many a visit to cathedral service, especially in 
Italy, Even a study of Gregorian music was entered upon, and the writer recollects many a summer's 
afternoon spent in visiting the churches of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, — the cycle ride, the keen eye 
on surrounding nature, not only from the standpoint of the biologist, but of the artist ; then the break 
to the religious past, the " biometric tea" at the village inn; the return journey towards evening 
and the discussion which touched many things, from Draha venxi to the Norsemen in Sicily. The 
"volume of life" was there, as it was in the midnight talks in Wimpole Street or in the discussions in 
the study at Merton Lea. 
t See R. S. Proc. Vol. xlvi. " Obituary Notice of Walter Weldon," p. xix. et acq. 
