There soon proved to be a complete absence of harmony in the tastes of
Butler and Pauli, who had really nothing in common. Yet they settled
together, when they arrived in London, in rooms in Clifford's Inn, Fleet
Street. There Butler lived for all the rest of his life, thirty-eight
years; but presently Pauli went elsewhere. Then the relations of the two
became incomprehensible. Pauli was very irritable, and constantly found
fault with Butler. He refused to let Butler know his address, and yet
was continually sponging upon him. He said that he could get no help
from his own parents, and that Butler stood between him and starvation.
For three years Pauli did not attempt to work. At last, in 1867, he was
called to the Bar. He lunched with Butler three times a week, when he
always said that he was earning nothing. Butler's own statement, written
in 1898, the year after Pauli's death, is as follows:
I have no means of ascertaining how much Pauli had from me between
the years 1864 and 1881 (but it exceeded £3,500). I kept no
accounts; I took no receipts from him; the understanding was that
he would repay me when he came into his reversion.... In 1879 I
only admitted to my father having helped Pauli from time to time;
the fact was, I had done everything.... I had more than shared
every penny I had with him, but I believed myself to be doing it
out of income, and to have a right to do it.
Throughout the long periods in which Butler was hard pressed for
sufficient money to exist--times in which there were painful and
unseemly squabbles about an allowance between his father and himself--he
was supporting Pauli, whose means of subsistence he took no pains to
investigate, and who, in full cognition of Butler's attenuated sources
of income, punctually took half for himself. Mr. Festing Jones's
statement is amazing:
Pauli was called to the Bar in 1867, and took chambers in Lincoln's
Inn for his work. He told Butler where they were, so that he could
write if he had any communication to make to him that would not
wait till they met; but Butler was not to go there. Of course, he
could have gone, but he did not. He could have found out in a
hundred ways where Pauli lived if he had set about it; but, knowing
that Pauli did not wish it, he did nothing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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