“I return your papers that they may not be wasted. I wish you all the success you deserve, which is all you can desire. But I can do nothing. My hands are full here, and my pockets are empty.
“Two months ago I succeeded in forming a local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty in this place.
“We have ordered prosecutions every week since, and have obtained convictions in every case. And these local operations are all that I can undertake or assist.
“Believe me, yours sincerely,
“Henry Taylor.”
He was also actively interested in an effort to improve the method of slaughtering cattle by using a mask with a fixed hole in the centre, through which a long nail may be easily driven, straight through the exact suture of the skull to the brain, causing instant death. Sir Henry specially approved the masks for this purpose, made, I believe, under his own direction at Bournemouth, by Mr. Mendon, a saddler at Lansdowne.
Mr. Lewis Morris has also written some beautiful and striking poems touching on the subject of scientific cruelty, and I have reason to hope that a younger man, who many of us look upon as the poet of the future in England, Mr. William Watson, is entirely on the same side. In short, if the Priests of Science are against us, the Prophets of Humanity, the Poets, are with us in this controversy, almost to a man.
It will be seen that we had Politicians, Historians, and thinkers of various parties among our friends in London; but there were no Novelists except that very agreeable woman Miss Jewsbury and the two Misses Betham Edwards. Mr. Anthony Trollope I knew but slightly. I had also some acquaintance with a very popular novelist, then a young man, who was introduced in the full flush of his success to Mr. Carlyle, whereon the “Sage of Chelsea” greeted him with the encouraging question, “Well, Mr. —— when do you intend to begin to do something sairious?”
With Mr. Wilkie Collins I exchanged several friendly letters concerning some information he wanted for one of his books. The following letter from him exhibits the “Sairius” spirit, at all events (as Mr. Carlyle might admit), in which he set about spinning the elaborate web of his exciting tales.
“90, Gloucester Place, Portman Square, W.,