W. R. Macdonell 
283 
with their business. He chose, as the best thing obtainable from Coj^enhagen, 
Madvig's edition of Cicero De Finihus, and thought that they were pleased with 
his choice. 
Macdonell was chairman of the Chamber of Commerce in Bombay, and 
additional member of Council there, 1893-1895. Then he came home, and for 
some time worked in the London office of his firm. He retired from business in 
1899. He had carried out his plans, and earned his leisure. Probably few men 
are to be trusted with leisure at the age of 47, but Macdonell made the most of his 
life. He never lost interest in any study that once had engaged his attention, 
though he had so many interests — in books, pictures, music and travelling — 
that naturally he could not always attend to everything. He never forgot a friend. 
He had been six years married when he came home from India, and the friend 
that was made welcome by his wife, and his children, as well as himself in his 
house at Enfield has much to thank him for. He made new friends as he went on, 
through common interests for the most part, and particularly through the investi- 
gations in which he took part along with Weldon and Pearson. He felt very 
deeply the loss of friends; he could scarcely bear to speak of the death of Neil 
of Pembroke. 
He inherited his love of books; one of his early recollections was the farm- 
house in the Highlands where it was the custom to read aloud in the evenings, 
usually from some of the English classics but sometimes Don Quixote to the 
farm-servants ; light being provided for the reader from a stock of pine splinters, 
lighted in succession one from another : one of the party was employed in cutting 
these brands, and a boy held up the light over the book, and renewed it from the 
supply that was passed to him. Macdonell's people were Catholics, and his study 
of the hnmanities may have owed something to the traditions of the Church. 
Among his friends was Monsignor Eraser, Rector of the Scots College in Rome. 
I remember Macdonell bringing back from a visit to Rome a story of a pibroch 
heard at night there, and how the music was traced to the roof of the College — 
a story that would have delighted Sir Walter Scott. 
No weakness of the human race gave Macdonell more amusement than the 
vanity of biographers, and I can almost see him looking over these notes of mine, 
and making disrespectful remarks about them. But I am glad to have been 
allowed to write them, such as they are. 
W. P. Ker. 
University College, London. 
3 July 1916. 
19—2 
