feared the effect of my own despondency upon his sensitive nature. For my business had failed and left me embarrassed with debt, and I saw no prospect of re-establishing myself. So my welcome to him was dashed with bitterness; and, though I strove to conceal it, my depression must have made itself apparent.
One evening, shortly after his arrival, he came out to me on the verandah with his pipe, and said: ‘Addie tells me things are not very blooming with you, Dad. Well, I’ve got £50, and that will square off the household debts, at all events.’ I accepted the money after a faint struggle, being vaguely conscious that I was wrong to do so; and he paid it into my bank account next day.
<He was for a few days alert, cheerful, and happy; and he had what in one of his letters he expresses a wish for—‘a quiet room and an easy chair’ to sit at work in; but gradually I could see that the oppression of the surroundings made itself felt. He thought he could get some small employment sufficient to keep him going; but he was so wanting in ‘push’ and pretension that he soon saw this was next to impossible His grandmother was invalided and confined to her bed; and family troubles helped to weigh us down. I myself was hopeless about everything, and quite unfit to cope with the melancholia that I plainly saw oppressed him. I have sat in a room with him for perhaps hours at a time, silent, and enraged with myself that I could not say something cheerful. I have made efforts to rouse him, but their stilted artificiality only sickened me the more, and produced no effect upon Bartie Once I suggested that he should join me in business somewhere in the country. He just raised his head, but answered never a word.
He remained with us from December till May, his only earnings being a few guineas received for odd contributions to The Bulletin. His last composition was ‘An Easter Rhyme,’ published in that journal on 7th May, 1892.
