Life and letters of Thomas Hodgkin / by Louise Creighton.

  • Thomas Hodgkin
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Life and letters of Thomas Hodgkin / by Louise Creighton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    quoted from his old Nurse Betsy, ' My Dear, it all depends upon your behaviour.’ The real fact was that nothing was ever kept from him. His children found him the loveliest person to tell secrets to, because, if they did not interest him, he would be safe to forget them after having given all the needful sympathy at the time. He was particular in his observation of birthdays and other anni¬ versaries. Writing to a sister on this subject, he said : The remembrance of one another’s birthdays ought not to be allowed to become anything of a bondage, and no one of us should feel in the slightest degree hurt when the day slips by unnoticed. Still, it is pleasant to find that though our lives are flowing on in such widely different channels, one stream is, so to speak, within hearing of another, and the sound of the water falling over these little weirs, which we call birthdays, does not pass unnoticed. His love of fun and nonsense made him always ready to join in his children’s games, and not only to join in them but to enjoy them as if he were a child himself. He was very good at all writing games, at Lavaters and epigrams. ore serious games, such as chess or whist, he did not greatly care for. It was the games he could play with his children and other young people, games in which his overflowing sense of fun found scope, that he enjoyed. In the same spirit he enjoyed reading aloud to them at all times. No schoolboy enjoyed the first Sherlock Holmes more than he did. When his youngest son was twelve and he was sixty- two he read to him ‘ The Blue Carbuncle,’ enjoying it quite as much as the boy himself. Opportunities of all kinds were seized for reading aloud. On a driving tour in 1900, when three of the family were in a wagonette, climbing slowly up the valley of the Teviot to Mosspool, in spite of jolts and jars he read to them an important speech just made by Lord Rosebery, to the great pleasure of the whole party. He had plenty of poetry stored up in his memory, knowing much Shelley and Milton by heart, and would repeat it on journeys when it was too dark to read. His happiness was never kept to himself. It had to come out, and he always wanted some one to share his joys. Once having gone to Holland after the rest of his