"Another characteristic of his treatment of his children was his respect for their liberty, and for their personality. Even as quite a little girl, I remember rejoicing in this sense of freedom. Our father and mother would not even wish to know what we were doing or thinking unless we wished to tell. He always made us feel that we were each of us creatures whose opinions and thoughts were valuable to him, so that whatever there was best in us came out in the sunshine of his presence.
"I do not think his exaggerated sense of our good qualities, intellectual or moral, made us conceited, as might perhaps have been expected, but rather more humble and grateful to him. The reason being no doubt that the influence of his character, of his sincerity and greatness of nature, had a much deeper and more lasting effect than any small exaltation which his praises or admiration may have caused to our vanity."[58]
As head of a household he was much loved and respected; he always spoke to servants with politeness, using the expression, "would you be so good," in asking for anything. He was hardly ever angry with his servants; it shows how seldom this occurred, that when, as a small boy, I overheard a servant being scolded, and my father speaking angrily, it impressed me as an appalling circumstance, and I remember running up stairs out of a general sense of awe. He did not trouble himself about the management of the garden, cows, &c. He considered the horses so little his concern, that he used to ask doubtfully whether he might have a horse and cart to send to Keston for Sundew, or to the Westerham nurseries for plants, or the like.
As a host my father had a peculiar charm: the presence of visitors excited him, and made him appear to his best advantage. At Shrewsbury, he used to say, it was his father's wish that the guests should be attended to constantly, and in one of the letters to Fox he speaks of the impossibility of writing a letter while the house was full of company. I think he always felt uneasy at not doing more for the entertainment of his guests, but the result was successful; and, to make up for any loss, there was the gain that the guests felt perfectly free to do as they liked. The most usual visitors were those who stayed from Saturday till Monday; those who remained longer were generally relatives, and were considered to be rather more my mother's affair than his.
Besides these visitors, there were foreigners and other strangers, who came down for luncheon and went away in the afternoon. He used conscientiously to represent to them the enormous distance of Down from London, and the labour it would be to come there, unconsciously taking for granted that they would find the journey as toilsome as he did himself. If, however, they were not deterred, he used to arrange their journeys for them, telling them when to come, and practically when to go. It was pleasant to see the way in which he shook hands with a guest who was being welcomed for the first time; his hand used to shoot out in a way that gave one the feeling that it was hastening to meet the guest's hands. With old friends his hand came down with a hearty swing into the other hand in a way I always had satisfaction in seeing. His good-bye was chiefly characterised by the pleasant way in which he thanked his guests, as he stood at the hall-door, for having come to see him.
These luncheons were successful entertainments, there was no drag or flagging about them, my father was bright and excited throughout the whole visit. Professor De Candolle has described a visit to Down, in his admirable and sympathetic sketch of my father.[59] He speaks of his manner as resembling that of a "savant" of Oxford or Cambridge. This does not strike me as quite a good comparison; in his ease and naturalness there was more of the manner of some soldiers; a manner arising from total absence of pretence or affectation. It was this absence of pose, and the natural and simple way in which he began talking to his guests, so as to get them on their own lines, which made him so charming a host to a stranger. His happy choice of matter for talk seemed to flow out of his sympathetic nature, and humble, vivid interest in other people's work.
To some, I think, he caused actual pain by his modesty; I have seen the late Francis Balfour quite discomposed by having knowledge ascribed to himself on a point about which my father claimed to be utterly ignorant.
It is difficult to seize on the characteristics of my father's conversation.
He had more dread than have most people of repeating his stories, and continually said, "You must have heard me tell," or "I daresay I've told you." One peculiarity he had, which gave a curious effect to his conversation. The first few words of a sentence would often remind him of some exception to, or some reason against, what he was going to say; and this again brought up some other point, so that the sentence would become a system of parenthesis within parenthesis, and it was often impossible to understand the drift of what he was saying until he came to the end of his sentence. He used to say of himself that he was not quick enough to hold an argument with any one, and I think this was true. Unless it was a subject on which he was just then at work, he could not get the train of argument into working order quickly enough. This is shown even in his letters; thus, in the case of two letters to Professor Semper about the effect of isolation, he did not recall the series of facts he wanted until some days after the first letter had been sent off.
When puzzled in talking, he had a peculiar stammer on the first word of a sentence. I only recall this occurring with words beginning with w; possibly he had a special difficulty with this letter, for I have heard him say that as a boy he could not pronounce w, and that sixpence was offered him if he could say "white wine," which he pronounced "rite rine." Possibly he may have inherited this tendency from Erasmus Darwin who stammered.[60]