Note 15 — XVI IN MY SOLITARY LIFE

This was my first meeting with Everard Primrose, afterwards for many years one of my most intimate friends. He had a cold manner, which was repellant to those who did not know him well, and in conversation he was tantalising, for nothing came out of him at all comparable to what one knew was within. But no young man’s life was more noble, stainless, and full of highest hopes and purposes. He died—to my lasting sorrow—of fever during the African campaign of 1885. His mother printed a memoir afterwards, which was a beautiful and simple portrait of his life—a very model of biographical truth.