odd corners. How they were dealt with, given my
father's precipitate and general charity, I can but feebly imagine; our
own concern, in the event, was with a sole selected presence, that of
Scotch Mr. Robert Thompson, who gave us his care from breakfast to
luncheon each morning that winter, who afterwards carried on a school at
Edinburgh, and whom, in years long subsequent, I happened to help R. L.
Stevenson to recognise gaily as _his_ early pedagogue. He was so deeply
solicitous, yet withal so mild and kind and shy, with no harsher
injunction to us ever than "Come now, be getting on!" that one could but
think well of a world in which so gentle a spirit might flourish; while
it is doubtless to the credit of his temper that remembrance is a blank
in respect to his closer ministrations. I recall vividly his fresh
complexion, his very round clear eyes, his tendency to trip over his own
legs or feet while thoughtfully circling about us, and his constant
dress-coat, worn with trousers of a lighter hue, which was perhaps the
prescribed uniform of a daily tutor then; but I ask myself in vain what
I can have "studied" with him, there remaining with me afterwards, to
testify--this putting any scrap of stored learning aside--no single
textbook save the Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare, which was given me as
(of all things in the world) a reward. A reward for what I am again at a
loss to say--not certainly for having "got on" to anything like the tune
plaintively, for the most part, piped to me. It is a very odd and yet to
myself very rich and full reminiscence, though I remember how, looking
back at it from after days, W. J. denounced it to me, and with it the
following year and more spent in Paris, as a poor and arid and
lamentable time, in which, missing such larger chances and connections
as we might have reached out to, we had done nothing, he and I, but walk
about together, in a state of the direst propriety, little "high" black
hats and inveterate gloves, the childish costume of the place and
period, to stare at grey street-scenery (that of early Victorian London
had tones of a neutrality!) dawdle at shop-windows and buy water-colours
and brushes with which to bedaub eternal drawing-blocks. We might, I
dare say, have felt higher impulses and carried out larger plans--though
indeed present to me for this, on my brother's so expressing himself, is
my then quick recognition of the deeper stirrings and braver needs he at
least must