I have said that they made their own world; and they were well able to do it, for they were a very remarkable family. The Doctor was a very tall, dark man, very strict with his boys, to whom he was schoolmaster as well as parent. He was a scholar, and unusually well read, and possessed a good library. Clever, too, he was with his hands, and carved the stone chimney-piece in the dining-room, which his man Horlins built under his direction. He and his wife were a great contrast, for she was very small and gentle and highly sensitive. Edward FitzGerald speaks of her as "one of the most innocent and tender-hearted ladies I ever saw"; and the Poet depicts her in "Isabel," where he speaks of her gentle voice, her keen intellect and her Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign The summer calm of golden charity. Mary was the letter-writer of the family, and a very clever woman, and her letters show that she knew her Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, and Coleridge as well as her brother's poems. They were a united family, but Charles and Alfred were nearest to her in age. She writes to one of her great friends: "O my beloved, what creatures men are! my brothers are the exception to this general rule." Accordingly, of Charles she writes: "If ever there was a sweet delightful character it is that dear Charley," and of Alfred: "A. is one of the noblest of his kind. You know my opinion of men in general is much like your own; they are not like us, they are naturally _more_ selfish and _not so affectionate_." She adds: Alfred is universally beloved by all his friends, and was long so before he came to any fame.... We look upon him as the stay of the family; you know it is to him we go when anything is to be done. Something lately occurred here which was painful; we wrote to Alfred and he came immediately, after, I am told, not speaking three days scarcely to any one from distress of mind, and that _not_ for himself, mind, but for others. Did this look like selfishness? After leaving Somersby she felt the loss of these brothers sorely. Alfred's devotion to his mother was always perfect. In October 1850 Mary writes from Cheltenham: Yesterday, Mamma, I, and Fanny went to look for houses, as Alfred has written to say that he should like to live by his Mother or in the same house with us, if we could get one large enough, and he would share the rent, which would be a great deal better. He wishes us to take a house in the neighbourhood of London, if we can give up ours, with him, or to take a small house for him and Emily[9] on the outskirts of Cheltenham till we can move; so what will be done I know not, but this I know that Alfred must come here and choose for himself, so we have written to him to come immediately, and we are daily expecting him.