I remarked to him one day, "It seems to me perfectly extraordinary, seeing that you must spend at least half your life on the railway, that you escape trouble with your nerves. What with the incessant hurrying to catch trains——" He interrupted me with, "Ah, but you see, I never do that. I make it a rule to be at the station twenty minutes before the train starts. It is to that fact I attribute my immunity from nerves, as you express it."
I, shortly after this conversation, had practical experience not only of this, but of another remarkable feature in the life of a truly remarkable man.
I never knew anyone so absolutely intolerant of doing nothing. Rest was to him, emphatically, change of occupation. For instance, I have known him, when on a Sunday morning he had no pressing work that called for his attention, to devote his time to the making of a score of a string quartet from the parts that the performers had been using, shortly before, while rehearsing for the next day's "Monday Popular concert."
One can only characterise this as a very superfluity of strenuousness.
My other experience happened in this manner: Sir Charles was on the point of performing, at Manchester, a little known, in fact, entirely neglected, oratorio of Handel's, "Theodora," and he asked me to go down there with him and hear it.
The invitation was one that, I, naturally enough, accepted with keen pleasure, anticipat
ing as actually happened, a very pleasant and interesting experience.
Exactly at the appointed time (Sir Charles had been particularly insistent on this point) I was on the platform, at Euston, and found him pacing up and down in front of the train. Directly he saw me, he motioned to the guard, who unlocked the door of a reserved compartment, which we immediately entered. It had been scarcely relocked, when he produced a pack of cards, and we, at once, proceeded to play the old German game of "sechs-und-sechzig," of which he was very fond.
When, twenty minutes or so later, the train steamed out of the station, we were both so absorbed, that neither of us noticed the fact, and it was only after we had gone a considerable distance on our journey, that I, at least, realised it.