164 THE ANTARCTIC VOYAGE : PERSONAL 
be expected to exercise taste, when the parents have no 
models to show them. My own taste on such subjects was 
never formed ; though, hke most persons, I knew what 
pleased me, and was much soothed when I was told (on 
regretting the circumstance) that Sir Joshua Reynolds never 
could appreciate any part of a painting till he had seen it 
several times. Sir Walter Scott, I think, in ' Paul's Letters 
to his Kinsfolk,' says, when speaking of the Louvre in its 
palmy days, that the beauties of the finest pictures do not 
strike him at once. Without comparing myself to either 
of these great men, I must say that next to the want of 
Society, the want of music and painting is one of the most 
irksome which a sea Voyager is bound to endure. When 
I have been weary of work, even a tinkling musical-box has 
sounded most charming ; but all the boxes have, at last, 
been either broken or given away, and my sole consolation 
remains in whisthng those tunes which most recall pleasant 
scenes to my memory, —though this is sorely to the annoy- 
ance of my neighbours, who growl, hke free-born Britons, 
at the noise I make. 
Letters already quoted point to the smallness of his intimate 
circle. It embraced his nearest relations, and beyond these 
but a few who could really be called friends. This inner 
circle was grievously broken during his absence. First his 
brother WiUiam died suddenly of yellow fever in Jamaica. 
Then his two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary Harriette, at school 
in Kensington at Little Campden House, were threatened 
with consumption and taken away for special treatment at 
Leamington, afterwards wintering in Jersey. Elizabeth, the 
first to give anxiety, gradually recovered ; Mary Harriette, 
who fell ill later, faded away all too swiftly. Joseph had 
expected to hear of his grandfather Hooker's death before 
long ; but the octogenarian, with the vitality which he handed 
on to his male descendants who passed much of their youth 
in the open air, lived on and was happily moved from Glasgow 
to Kew, a heavy journey in those days. 
The first bad news caught him cruelly at a moment of joyful 
expectation. Save for a letter sent to Madeira, which had 
overtaken him at the Cape, his first budget of news met him 
