And in regard to this business of starting the young man she had been careful to let it be known that she would do no more than start him.  In the formal document, by means of which she had made the proposal to her brother, she had been careful to let it be understood that simple education was all that she intended to bestow upon him ‘and that only,’ she had added, ’in the event of my surviving till his education be completed.’  And to Hugh himself she had declared that any allowance which she made him after he was called to the Bar, was only made in order to give him room for his foot, a spot of ground from whence to make his first leap.  We know how he made that leap, infinitely to the disgust of his aunt, who, when he refused obedience to her in the matter of withdrawing from the Daily Record, immediately withdrew from him, not only her patronage and assistance, but even her friendship and acquaintance.  This was the letter which she wrote to him: 

’I don’t think that writing radical stuff for a penny newspaper is a respectable occupation for a gentleman, and I will have nothing to do with it.  If you choose to do such work, I cannot help it; but it was not for such that I sent you to Harrow and Oxford, nor yet up to London and paid 100 pounds a year to Mr Lambert.  I think you are treating me badly, but that is nothing to your bad treatment of yourself.  You need not trouble yourself to answer this, unless you are prepared to say that you will not write any more stuff for that penny newspaper.  Only I wish to be understood.  I will have no connection that I can help, and no acquaintance at all, with radical scribblers and incendiaries.

Jemima Stanbury.  The Close, Exeter, April 15, 186 .’

Hugh Stanbury had answered this; thanking his aunt for past favours, and explaining to her or striving to do so that he felt it to be his duty to earn his bread, as a means of earning it had come within his reach.  He might as well have spared himself the trouble.  She simply wrote a few words across his own letter in red ink:  ’The bread of unworthiness should never be earned or eaten;’ and then’ sent the letter back under a blank envelope to her nephew.

She was a thorough Tory of the old school.  Had Hugh taken to writing for a newspaper that had cost sixpence, or even threepence for its copies, she might perhaps have forgiven him.  At any rate the offence would not have been so flagrant.  And had the paper been conservative instead of liberal, she would have had some qualms of conscience before she gave him up.  But to live by writing for a newspaper! and for a penny newspaper!! and for a penny radical newspaper!!!  It was more than she could endure.  Of what nature were the articles which he contributed it was impossible that she should have any idea, for no consideration would have induced her to look at a penny newspaper, or to admit it within her doors.  She herself took in the John Bull and the Herald, and daily groaned