Perhaps if he had felt his
bondage very acutely he would not have put up with it, but he was
constitutionally timid, and the strong hand of his father knitted
him into the closest outward harmony with his brother and sisters.
The boys were of use to their father in one respect. I mean that
he played them off against each other. He kept them but poorly
supplied with pocket-money, and to Theobald would urge that the claims
of his elder brother were naturally paramount, while he insisted to
John upon the fact that he had a numerous family, and would affirm
solemnly that his expenses were so heavy that at his death there would
be very little to divide. He did not care whether they compared
notes or no, provided they did not do so in his presence. Theobald did
not complain even behind his father's back. I knew him as intimately
as anyone was likely to know him as a child, at school, and again at
Cambridge, but he very rarely mentioned his father's name even while
his father was alive, and never once in my hearing afterwards. At
school he was not actively disliked, as his brother was, but he was
too dull and deficient in animal spirits to be popular.
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