Next to these I think he loved the barbarians he belonged to on his father's side, who, whatever their faults, are seldom prigs or Philistines; and then he loved the proletarians, who had good, straightforward manners and no pretension—the laborer, the skilled artisan, especially the toilers of the sea.
In spite of his love of his own sex, he was of the kind that can go to the devil for a pretty woman.
He did not do this; he married one instead, fortunately for himself and for his children and for her, and stuck to her and preferred her society to any society in the world. Her mere presence seemed to have an extraordinarily soothing influence on him; it was as though life were short, and he could never see enough of her in the allotted time and space; the chronic necessity of her nearness to him became a habit and a second nature—like his pipe, as he would say.
Still, he was such a slave to his own æsthetic eye and ever‑youthful heart that the sight of lovely woman pleased him more than the sight of anything else on earth; he delighted in her proximity, in the rustle of her garments, in the sound of her voice; and lovely woman's instinct told her this, so that she was very fond of Barty in return.
He was especially popular with sweet, pretty young girls, to whom his genial, happy, paternal manner always endeared him. They felt as safe with Barty as with any father or uncle, for all his facetious love‑making; he made them laugh, and they loved him for it, and they forgot his Apolloship, and his Lionhood, and his general Immensity, which he never remembered himself.
It is to be feared that women who lacked the heavenly gift of good looks did not interest him quite so much, whatever other gifts they might possess, unless it were the gift of making lovely music. The little brown nightingale outshone the brilliant bird of paradise if she were a true nightingale; if she were very brown indeed, he would shut his eyes and listen with all his ears, rapt, as in a heavenly dream. And the closed lids would moisten, especially the lid that hid the eye that couldn't see—the emotional one!—although he was the least lachrymose of men, since it was with such a dry eye he wrote what I could scarcely read for my tears.
But his natural kindliness and geniality made him always try and please those who tried to please him, beautiful or the reverse, whether they succeeded or not; and he was just as popular with the ducks and geese as with the swans and peacocks and nightingales and birds of paradise. The dull, commonplace dames who prosed and buzzed and bored, the elderly intellectual virgins who knew nothing of life but what they had read—or written—in "Tendenz" novels, yet sadly rebuked him, more in sorrow than in anger, for this passage or that in his books, about things out of their ken altogether, etc.
His playful amenity disarmed the most aggressive bluestocking, orthodox or Unitarian, Catholic or Hebrew—radicals, agnostics, vegetarians, teetotalers, anti‑vaccinationists, anti‑vivisectionists—even anti‑things that don't concern decent women at all, whether married or single.
It was only when his privacy was invaded by some patronizing, loud‑voiced nouvelle‑riche with a low‑bred physiognomy that no millions on earth could gild or refine, and manners to match; some foolish, fashionable, would‑be worldling, who combined the arch little coquetries and impertinent affectations of a spoilt beauty with the ugliness of an Aztec or an Esquimau; some silly, titled old frump who frankly ignored his tea‑making wife and daughters and talked to him only—and only about her grotesque and ugly self—and told him of all the famous painters who had wanted to paint her for the last hundred years—it was only then he grew glum and reserved and depressed and made an unfavorable impression on the other sex.
What it must have cost him not to express his disgust more frankly! for reticence on any matter was almost a torture to him.