Chapter 21 - Page 2

sometimes recalled his father's affection for old books; and most
of these had been bought in Venice, where frequent visits to the
noted curiosity-shops had been his one bond of habit with his tourist
countrymen in that city. They matched the carved oak and massive
gildings and valuable tapestries which had carried something of Casa
Guidi into his first London home. Brass lamps that had once hung inside
chapels in some Catholic church, had long occupied the place of the
habitual gaselier; and to these was added in the following year one of
silver, also brought from Venice--the Jewish 'Sabbath lamp'. Another
acquisition, made only a few months, if indeed so long, before he left
London for the last time, was that of a set of casts representing the
Seasons, which were to stand at intervals on brackets in a certain
unsightly space on his drawing-room wall; and he had said of these,
which I think his son was procuring for him: 'Only my four little heads,
and then I shall not buy another thing for the house'--in a tone of
childlike satisfaction at his completed work.

This summer he merely went to St. Moritz, where he and his sister were,
for the greater part of their stay, again guests of Mrs. Bloomfield
Moore. He was determined to give the London winter a fuller trial in the
more promising circumstances of his new life, and there was much to
be done in De Vere Gardens after his return. His father's six thousand
books, together with those he had himself accumulated, were for the
first time to be spread out in their proper array, instead of crowding
together in rows, behind and behind each other. The new bookcases, which
could stand in the large new study, were waiting to receive them. He did
not know until he tried to fulfil it how greatly the task would tax his
strength. The library was, I believe, never completely arranged.

During this winter of 1887-8 his friends first perceived that a change
had come over him. They did not realize that his life was drawing to a
close; it was difficult to do so when so much of the former elasticity
remained; when he still proclaimed himself 'quite well' so long as he
was not definitely suffering. But he was often suffering; one terrible
cold followed another. There was general evidence that he had at last
grown old. He, however, made no distinct change in his mode of life. Old
habits, suspended by his longer imprisonments to the house, were resumed
as soon as he was set free. He still dined out; still attended the
private view of every, or almost every art exhibition. He kept up his
unceasing correspondence--in one or two cases voluntarily added to it;
though he would complain day after day that his fingers ached from
the number of hours through which he had held his pen. One