The first authentic trace of Filmer on the page of history is
a document in which he applies for admission as a paid student
in physics to the Government laboratories at South Kensington,
and therein he describes himself as the son of a "military bootmaker"
("cobbler" in the vulgar tongue) of Dover, and lists his various
examination proofs of a high proficiency in chemistry and
mathematics. With a certain want of dignity he seeks to enhance
these attainments by a profession of poverty and disadvantages,
and he writes of the laboratory as the "gaol" of his ambitions,
a slip which reinforces his claim to have devoted himself exclusively
to the exact sciences. The document is endorsed in a manner that
shows Filmer was admitted to this coveted opportunity; but until
quite recently no traces of his success in the Government institution
could be found.

It has now, however, been shown that in spite of his professed zeal
for research, Filmer, before he had held this scholarship a year,
was tempted, by the possibility of a small increase in his immediate
income, to abandon it in order to become one of the nine-pence-an-hour
computers employed by a well-known Professor in his vicarious
conduct of those extensive researches of his in solar physics--researches
which are still a matter of perplexity to astronomers. Afterwards,
for the space of seven years, save for the pass lists of the
London University, in which he is seen to climb slowly to a double
first class B.Sc., in mathematics and chemistry, there is no evidence
of how Filmer passed his life. No one knows how or where he lived,
though it seems highly probable that he continued to support
himself by teaching while he prosecuted the studies necessary for
this distinction. And then, oddly enough, one finds him mentioned
in the correspondence of Arthur Hicks, the poet.