He wouldn't even carve at lunch or dinner. Leah did, unless I was there.
It is but fair to say he worked as hard as any man I know. When he was not writing or drawing, he was thinking about drawing or writing; when they got to Marsfield, he hardly ever stirred outside the grounds.
There he would garden with gardeners or cut down trees, or do carpenter's work at his short intervals of rest, or groom a horse.
How often have I seen him suddenly drop a spade or axe or saw or curry‑comb, and go straight off to a thatched gazebo he had built himself, where writing materials were left, and write down the happy thought that had occurred; and then, pipe in mouth, back to his gardening or the rest!
I also had a gazebo close to his, where I read blue‑books and wrote my endless correspondence with the help of a secretary—only too glad, both of us, to be disturbed by festive and frolicsome young Bartys of either sex—by their dogs—by their mother!
Leah's province it was to attend to all the machinery by which life was carried on in this big house, and social intercourse, and the education of the young, and endless hospitalities.
She would even try to coach her boys in Latin and Euclid during their preparation times for the school where they spent the day, two miles off. Such Latin! such geometry! She could never master the ablative absolute, nor what used to be called at Brossard's le que retranché, nor see the necessity of demonstrating by A + B what was sufficiently obvious to her without.
"Who helps you in your Latin, my boy?" says the master, with a grin.
"My father," says Geoffrey, too loyal to admit it was his mother who had coached him wrong.
"Ah, I suppose he helps you with your Euclid also?" says the master, with a broader grin still.