In England a man can be
extraordinarily ordinary and material; but the men of culture are, as
a rule, remarkably forcible in unique and deep-cut characteristics,
both of face and of mind, with a prevailing freedom from
self-analysis--except privately, no doubt.
The strong features of Henry Bright, at any rate, made a total of
ravishing refinement. He and my father would sit on opposite sides of
the fire; Mr. Bright with a staring, frosty gaze directed unmeltingly
at the sunny glow of the coals as he talked, his slender long fingers
propping up his charming head (over which his delicately brown hair
fell in close-gliding waves) as he leaned on the arm of his
easy-chair. Sometimes he held a book of Tennyson's poetry to his
near-sighted, prominent eyes, as closely as two materials could remain
and not blend into one. He recited "The Brook" in a fine fury of
appreciation, and with a sure movement that suggested well the
down-tumbling of the frolicking element, with its under-current of
sympathizing pathos, the life-blood of the stream. "For men may come,
and men may go, but I go on for ever!" rang in my empty little head
for years, and summed up, as I guessed, all of Egyptian wisdom and
spiritual perpetuity in a single suggestive fact. Mr. Bright had a way
of laughing that I could never cease to enjoy, even in the faint echo
of retrospect. It always ended in a whispered snort from the great
mountain range of his nose. He laughed often, at his own and my
father's remarks, and at the close of the tumbling diction of "The
Brook;" and he therefore frequently snorted in this
sweeping-of-the-wind fashion.
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