To Miss Paget.
18 Cornwall Terrace, Regent's Park: December 27, 1887.
Dear Miss Paget,—If my sonnet gave half as much pleasure as your note, I am sure we have both the best reasons to be glad. The letter was as much a surprise to me as the former was to you, because, far from seeing the 'ungraciousness' of yesterday, even then I thought that my reward was much in excess of my deserving. But your further response of to-day has given me a greater happiness than I can tell; let it, therefore, be told in some of the greatest words of the greatest man I ever knew. These you will find in the first nine lines of a letter on page 323, vol. ii., of the 'Life of Darwin,' and in one respect you have conferred an additional benefit, for, unlike him, I did not previously know that my own feelings of friendship were so fully reciprocated. If you think that this amounts to a confession of dulness on my part, my only excuse is that I formed too just an estimate of my own merits as compared with those of a friend. All that the latter were, or in this estimate must ever continue to be, I shall not now venture to say; for, if I did, the peculiar ethics of the Paget family (which you have been good enough to explain) would certainly pound this letter into a pulp. But there are two remarks which I may hazard. The first is, that I make it a point of what may be called æsthetic conscience never to write anything in verse which is not perfectly sincere. The next is, that my dulness is not so bad as to have prevented me from observing the Sebastian attachment.
Last Christmas I lost my greatest and my dearest friend.[39] This Christmas I have found that I had a better friend than I was aware of. For the seasonable kindness, therefore, of your truly Yule-tide consolation, gratias tibi ago.
Ever yours, most sincerely,
G. J. Romanes.
For some years a delightful society existed in London, known as the 'Home Quartet Union,' the members of which met at different houses and listened to perfect music performed by first-rate artists under perfect conditions.
There were few happier evenings in his life than those spent in such a way.
Of all composers, Beethoven represented to him everything that was highest in art or poetry; for Beethoven, Mr. Romanes had much the same reverence and admiration which he felt for Darwin, and perhaps Beethoven, in other and very different ways, taught him and influenced him much.
He was very catholic in his musical tastes, except perhaps that Italian opera never greatly fascinated him. Wagner's operas, on the other hand, became a great delight, particularly after a visit to Baireuth in 1889, where he saw Parsifal and Meistersinger.