As he never talked for talking's sake, he was always ready to give his whole attention to the person he was talking to, or none at all; and consequently he never had a middle reputation—some praising his courtesy, as an old lady with whose querulous complaints about ingratitude and rheumatism he had borne and sympathized; others, his abrupt atrocious manner—"Turned his back on me with a scowl, and didn't say another word," as a sporting fast married lady said to me, who had attempted to tell him an improper story. "I didn't mean to offend him; young men generally like it. I hate a young man to be a prude and a Puritan. Why, he isn't even going into the church, I understand!"
One of his colleagues in the school where he was a master, told me that Arthur had once given him a most delicate and pointed rebuke on the practice into which he had fallen, of appealing to a boy's home feelings before the class.
"Some things ought to be said to people when they are alone; besides, we must not seethe the kid in his mother's milk."
The same man told me that he heard him give a little address to the boys in his class, on the two main virtues of a schoolboy—purity and honesty—on the words, "And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords; and he said unto them, It is enough."
Those are the only two anecdotes I have heard of his professional life, both illustrating that extraordinary gift of apt quotation and seeing unexpected connections, which, to my mind, is as adequate an external symbol of genius as can be found, though sometimes illusory.
He took the greatest delight in the society of children. He writes—
"What wonderful lines those are of Tennyson's"—they had just come out,—"'Who pleased her with a babbling heedlessness Which often lured her from herself!' There is nothing more absolutely refreshing when one is overdone or anxious, or oppressed by the vague anxieties of the world, than the conversation and the society of children, the unconscious ignoring of all grave possibilities, yet often accompanied by that curious tact which divines that all is not well with their older friend, and prompts them to employ all their resources to beguile it. I have been thanked by worldly mothers, in country houses, with something like a touch of nature, for being so good to their boys—'I am so afraid they must have been troublesome to you,'—when they have not only saved me from vapid hard gabble and slanderous gossip, but let in a little breath of paradise as well. I often accept an invitation with reference to the children I shall see. 'To meet Lord and Lady D——, and Mrs. G——, such an amusing woman—tells such stories, they make you scream!' the invitation runs; and I accept it, to see Johnny and Charlie, to play at Red Indians in the wilderness, and to dig up the tin box of date-stones and cartridge-cases that we buried in the bed of the stream."
If I seem to have given rather a priggish picture of Arthur, it is a totally erroneous one. He was far too casual and too retiring to be that; he had no appearance of self-importance, though an invincible reserve of self-respect. The prig wears chain armor outside, and runs at you with his lance when he catches a glimpse of you. Arthur wore his chain armor under his shirt, and it was not till you closed with him that you felt how sharp his dagger was.
I give a perfectly disinterested sketch of him, which a lady, who met him several times, wrote out at my request. It is hard for me to help speaking from inside knowledge.
"Dear Mr. Carr,