Upon the purple breast,
Where daylight sinks to rest.'
The Journal 1887, 1888, and 1889 is full of mention of pleasant dinners and meetings with interesting people. Young as Mr. Romanes was, he attained long before he died 'that which should accompany old age—honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,' and as one turns over the brief records of the Journal one is struck with the brightness of his outward life. He enjoyed constant pleasant intercourse with men and women differing widely in pursuits, in opinions, in social position; he was full of plans for work, work which led him into many different phases of intellectual life, and he had every year an admixture of country life and country pursuits, and the love for music and for poetry, which increased each year, kept him from growing too absorbed in science, from being at all one-sided. He used sometimes to say he had too many interests, but be that as it may, these interests gave him much enjoyment and made him the most delightful of companions.
A dear friend wrote of him after his death that 'In the home few men have been more surrounded by love, or have better deserved it,' and few men have been more loved by those outside his home. He had an unlimited capacity for loyal, true-hearted friendship. As one most truly said, 'Romanes was the most loyal of friends.'
There was something womanly in the tenderness which he felt for anyone in trouble of mind or body, and he was—what perhaps is even more rare—always ready to put aside his own work to help other people. He never grudged time or trouble to write letters or testimonials; he was always ready to go and see people who were sad or lonely; he was never too busy to be kind. He was intensely loved by those who served him, and few have been better served. There were very few changes in his household, and no one was ever more unwilling to give needless trouble, to find fault without cause, than he, or more ready to be really grateful for the ungrudging and loving and devoted service he received. 'You were the nicest master I ever served,' wrote a gamekeeper. 'To think I have lived for fifteen years with him and never heard a cross word,' was said the day he was taken from his home. In money matters he was generous and almost lavish in readiness to give and also to lend.
In Mr. Romanes there was a certain chivalrous temper which could be roused to strong indignation where it was encountered by injustice and oppression, and the following letter to the 'Times' is one of many such:
To the Editor of the 'Times.'
Sir,—On several previous occasions I have been instrumental in obtaining remission of grievous sentences at the police-courts by simply drawing attention in your correspondence columns to the cases as they appear in your police reports. Adopting this course, I think that the following, which appeared in your issue of the 29th ult., requires some explanation:
'At Wandsworth, James Clarke, aged 17, a weakly-looking lad, residing at Byegrove Road, Mitcham, was charged with stealing two turnips, value 3d., growing in a field belonging to Mr. H. Bunce, at Merton. The prosecutor having lost a quantity of produce, Police Constable Whitty was set to watch the property, and saw the prisoner pull the turnips and put them in his pocket. The accused said he had had nothing to eat all day, and being very hungry, he took the turnips! A previous conviction was proved against him for felony, and he was now committed by Mr. Denman for six weeks' hard labour.'
One would like to possess a good large field of turnips, where each turnip can be fairly valued at 1½d. But, taking this as the true value of the particular turnips in question, it appears that a starving man is now serving a week's hard labour for every half-penny's worth of the cheapest possible kind of food that he could steal. It is, of course, very right that he should have received some measure of punishment, if only as a warning to others in the neighbourhood; but the measure of punishment which he did receive seems, in the face of the matter, monstrous. We are not told what was the 'felony' for which this 'weakly-looking lad' was previously convicted; but, at any rate, we do know that on the present occasion his theft was not for any purpose of gain. It must have been, as he said, merely to alleviate the pains of hunger, for otherwise he would have carried some more capacious receptacle than either his pockets or his stomach. On the whole, therefore, I say—and say emphatically—this case demands some explanation.