It may seem incomprehensible, even ridiculous, to some persons, but it is nevertheless true, that we were none of us ever on intimate terms with him.  I mean by this, that he was a father to us, but never a companion.  There was something in his manner, his quiet and unchanging manner, which kept us almost unconsciously restrained.  I never in my life felt less at my ease—­I knew not why at the time—­than when I occasionally dined alone with him.  I never confided to him my schemes for amusement as a boy, or mentioned more than generally my ambitious hopes, as a young man.  It was not that he would have received such confidences with ridicule or severity, he was incapable of it; but that he seemed above them, unfitted to enter into them, too far removed by his own thoughts from such thoughts as ours.  Thus, all holiday councils were held with old servants; thus, my first pages of manuscript, when I first tried authorship, were read by my sister, and never penetrated into my father’s study.

Again, his mode of testifying displeasure towards my brother or myself, had something terrible in its calmness, something that we never forgot, and always dreaded as the worst calamity that could befall us.

Whenever, as boys, we committed some boyish fault, he never displayed outwardly any irritation—­he simply altered his manner towards us altogether.  We were not soundly lectured, or vehemently threatened, or positively punished in anyway; but, when we came in contact with him, we were treated with a cold, contemptuous politeness (especially if our fault showed a tendency to anything mean or ungentlemanlike) which cut us to the heart.  On these occasions, we were not addressed by our Christian names; if we accidentally met him out of doors, he was sure to turn aside and avoid us; if we asked a question, it was answered in the briefest possible manner, as if we had been strangers.  His whole course of conduct said, as though in so many words—­You have rendered yourselves unfit to associate with your father; and he is now making you feel that unfitness as deeply as he does.  We were left in this domestic purgatory for days, sometimes for weeks together.  To our boyish feelings (to mine especially) there was no ignominy like it, while it lasted.

I know not on what terms my father lived with my mother.  Towards my sister, his demeanour always exhibited something of the old-fashioned, affectionate gallantry of a former age.  He paid her the same attention that he would have paid to the highest lady in the land.  He led her into the dining-room, when we were alone, exactly as he would have led a duchess into a banqueting-hall.  He would allow us, as boys, to quit the breakfast-table before he had risen himself; but never before she had left it.  If a servant failed in duty towards him, the servant was often forgiven; if towards her, the servant was sent away on the spot.  His daughter was in his eyes the representative of her mother:  the mistress of his house, as well as his child.  It was curious to see the mixture of high-bred courtesy and fatherly love in his manner, as he just gently touched her forehead with his lips, when he first saw her in the morning.