We are all well now, and I am just going with the two Ethels to a children's service, which they both enjoy. It is very pretty to hear the little one singing with the other children, which she does perfectly in tune.
They are waiting for me now, so with best love from all,
Yours ever the same,
George.
In 1885 came the first warnings of ill-health. Mr. Romanes had a short but very sharp illness, and after that year he suffered frequently from gout, which necessitated visits to various foreign 'cures.' He was a perfect travelling companion, he liked to have arrangements made for him, and was never discomposed if anything went wrong, never put out by any of the ordinary mischances of travel. Although he always professed indifference to architecture and art, he would grow quite boyishly enthusiastic over some cathedral, as his sonnets to Amiens, and Christ Church, Oxford,[46] testify, and for sculpture he had a real love.
In May 1885 came the first marked public utterance which showed that Mr. Romanes was now in a very different mental attitude to that in which he wrote his 'Candid Examination of Theism.'
He delivered the Rede Lecture at Cambridge, and in it he criticises the materialistic position. (It must be remembered that his anti-Theistic book was published anonymously, and at that time he had no intention of ever referring to it.)
The reaction set in very soon after the 'Candid Examination' was published.
He was severe, as it seemed often to those who knew him best, unduly severe with himself, and often described himself as utterly agnostic when possibly 'bewildered' would have better described him.