FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS
[Sidenote:  Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]

The different stages of his children’s lives were of profound interest to him, and as they grew up they found in him an elder brother as well as a father.  As soon as Margaret was old enough she began to share and then almost entirely to take my post as reader-aloud in the studio.  Beside many other books she went through the whole of Thackeray twice in this way; Dickens was my special province.  She and Edward had their own world of fun, and for her he invented a “little language,” besides the most unheard-of names.  I remember hearing him and Millais once talk to each other about their daughters, each boasting that he was the most devoted father.  “Ah, but you don’t take your daughter’s breakfast up to her in bed,” said Edward, certain that the prize belonged to him.  Millais’ triumphant “Yes, I do!” left them only equal.

“ANNA KARENINA” [Sidenote:  Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]

“Don’t lend me any sad stories—­no, not if they are masterpieces.  I cannot afford to be made unhappy, and I suspect that book ’Anna Karenina’—­I suspect it is Russian, and if it is I know what to expect, and I couldn’t bear it.  There would be a beautiful woman in it—­all that is best in a woman, and she would be miserable and love some trumpery frip (as they do) and die of finding out she had been a fool—­and it would be beautifully written and full of nature and just like life, and I couldn’t bear it.  These books are written for the hard-hearted, to melt them into a softer mood for once before they congeal again—­as much music is written—­not for poets but for stockjobbers, to wring iron tears from them for once; that is the use of sorrowful art, to penetrate the thick hide of the obtuse, and I have grown to be a coward about pain.  I should like that Anna so much and be so sorry for her and wish I had been the man instead of that thing she would have—­and it wouldn’t be happy.  Look! tells me it ends well and that the two lovers marry and are happy ever afterwards, and I’ll read it gratefully—­and I shall wait your answer.”

TWO TRIALS
[Sidenote:  Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]

Whilst the Commission was sitting he went once or twice with Sir George Lewis to the Law Courts and closely listened and watched, sitting where he could see the face of Mr. Parnell clearly.  “Charles Stewart Parnell,” he once said, “God only knows what he really was, but I saw him in court and watched him the day long:  he was like Christ.”

Of the miserable Pigott, the perjured witness against Parnell, he wrote:  “And I have grown philosophical—­it came of seeing Pigott in the witness-box, who looked like half the dreary men one meets, and I don’t see why the rest of the Pigotts shouldn’t be found out too.  So it made me reflect on crime and its connection with being found out and made me philosophical and depressed.”