His attitude to women was a guarded one. It was repugnant to him to have too much wife, and yet, not wife enough was also very painful; and so he had devised a way out of his embarrassment by saying to himself: “We two are only married to the extent that we desire to be; we will do exactly as we like.” And he found that by thinking this, and getting his wife, who was a clever woman, to say she thought it too, he remained extremely faithful. With regard to children, it had no doubt been difficult, for—after a year or two—to have children and not to have them had been found impossible. In this dilemma he had considered very seriously what course he should adopt, and having carefully weighed the pro’s and con’s had discovered them to be so very equal that he could come to no conclusion. In consequence of this he had two children; after which he found no difficulty in not wanting to have more.
The question of his residence had occasioned him some pain; for, supposing that he lived in town he missed the country, and supposing that he resided in the country he missed the town. He therefore lived a little in both town and country; so regulating things that when in London he wanted to be out, and when out of London he wanted to be in, which kept him healthy.
A moderate meat diet gave him a hankering after other diets, making him a vegetarian in theory, so that he was in accord with either school. He drank wine at times; at times he drank no wine; he smoked one cigar after every meal—no more, because more made him sick.
His feeling about money was that he ought to have enough, in order to have no feeling about money; and, to attain this vacuum, he mechanically restrained his wants, still more his wife’s—for, not being so beautifully adjusted as himself, when she wanted things, she wanted them.
In matters of religion he would not commit himself to any definite opinions. If asked whether he thought there were a future life, he would say: “I see no reason to believe there is; on the other hand, I see no object in believing that there isn’t; there may be, or there may not be; or, again, there may be a future life for some, no future life for others—a little of both, perhaps.”
Dogma of any sort, of course, he found offensive—you were committed by it, and to be committed was both repulsive and absurd.
Once or twice only in his life had he seriously felt careless, and these were on occasions when he found his carelessness was threatened by some person or event that tried to tie him down.
There was in him a sort of terror of being bound to anything; and when he was returned to Parliament, which happened after he was forty, he felt a natural uneasiness. Was he committed; if so, what was he committed to? Could he still get down on either side; and suppose he did get down, could he at once get up again? And he was happy when he found he could.
It was remarkable how national he was.
Yet he was not entirely conscious of his importance to the State, not recognising perhaps sufficiently how many other men were like him in every walk of life—not recognising that he was, in truth, the solid centre of the nation’s pudding.