We’ll sing one song and sing it from the heart.
Just one song more: you guess the song I mean:
Our brave time-honoured hymn, ‘God save the Queen.’”
He continued also to act as mentor to his younger brothers, two of whom went in due course to Cambridge, and, to his great delight, pulled in their college racing boat (Trinity Hall), which was then at the head of the river. He often visited them at Cambridge, and, whenever he could manage it, would spend some part of the vacation with them, joining them in all their amusements, and helping them in their studies. You may judge of the sort of terms they were on, by this extract from a letter to his mother in August 1856:—
“We shall be very happy to join you in Scotland. I want to know whether good fishing tackle is procurable at Stirling, or in the neighbourhood of Callender. At Edinbro’ and Glasgow I know it can be obtained, and much cheaper than in London. Perhaps Harry can inform me, if he is not too much occupied in discovering the value of χ, which I believe is the great object of mathematics (I speak it not profanely). Tell Harry and Arthur I expect to find them both without breeches.
‘Those swelling calves were never meant
To shun the public eye,’
as Dr. Watts remarks, or would have remarked if he had written on the subject.”
Such occupations as these, with magistrate’s work, and field sports taken in moderation, served to fill up his time, and would have satisfied most men situated as he was. But he could never in all these years get the notion quite out of his head (though it wore off later) that he was not doing his fair share of work in the world, and was a useless kind of personage, for whom no one was much the better but his wife and children, and whom nobody but they would miss. This feeling showed itself in his immense respect for those who were working in regular professions, and in the most conscientious scrupulousness about taking up their time. Often he has come to my chambers, and, after hurrying through some piece of family business, has insisted on going away directly, though I might not have seen him for a month, and was eager to talk on fifty subjects. The sight of open papers was enough for him; and he had not practised long enough to get the familiarity which breeds contempt, and to know how gladly the busiest lawyer puts aside an Abstract, or Interrogatories in Chancery, for the chance of a pleasant half-hour’s gossip.
I think, however, that I can show you clearly enough, in a very few words, what his real work in the world was during these years, and how perfectly unconscious he was that he was doing it faithfully. In 1857, your grandfather had a dangerous attack of illness, from which he never recovered. George was with him and nursed him during the crisis. As soon as he was well enough to use a pen, he wrote as follows to Lady Salusbury:—