George Harley, F. R. S. : the life of a London physician / edited by his daughter Mrs Alec Tweedie.

Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: George Harley, F. R. S. : the life of a London physician / edited by his daughter Mrs Alec Tweedie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    disappear from our circle, and that those whom he loved should never know their grief found a deep reflection in the regrets of those who knew him outside his home.' At a big literary dinner in June, ] 898,1 met the Rev. Edward Hawkins, whose brilliant son ' Anthony Hope ' was in the chair. The former began asking me if I had nearly finished my father's Life. ' I never now enter the Savile Club,' he went on, ' without missing the cheery smile' of George Harley and his brilliant conversation. The place has never been the same since. He was one of the centres of talk there during the last twenty-five years.' Edward Clodd was another of George Harley's close friends. They had much in common, and discussed the ' Childhood of Religions,' the ' Childhood of the World,' and the ' Story of Creation,' before the days when those well- known works saw the light. Writing to me recently Mr. Clodd says : ' Your dear father's brilliant and informing talks were always enlivened by some bit of personal reminiscence, when the members gathered together in the smoking-room, where his chair was always reserved. I must apply to him that immortal tribute which Callimachus pays to his dead friend Heraclitus. Let me quote it for the beauty and pathos that inspired words thus Englished by William Cory : ' They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead; They brought me bitter news to hear, and bitter tears to shed; I wept when I remembered how often you and I Had tired the sun with talking, and sent him down the sky. ' And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, A handful of gray ashes, laid long ago at rest, Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake : For Death, he taketh all away, but these he cannot take.' This is enough to show that my father was one of a little circle of friends. He always spoke with the greatest affection and esteem of those who clustered round him over his cup of tea.
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