In our consular service there was no allowance for traveling expenses,
or provision of any kind for the extraordinary expenses which might
fall on the consul from contingencies like mine. The salary at Crete,
which had been $1500 during the war, was reduced to $1000 at its
close, and in future I had only that and what my pen might bring
me. Arrived at Florence on our way to Ancona, we found the Italian
government being installed there; and our minister to Italy, Mr.
Marsh, knowing my circumstances, insisted on my taking a thousand
francs, though his own salary, which was, as in my case, his only
income, was always insufficient for his official and social position
at the capital. I accepted it, and it was ten years before I paid it
all back.

Looking back on this period of my life from a later and relatively
assured, though never prosperous condition, I can see that most of my
straits in life have been owing to my having accepted the miserable
and delusive advantage of an official position under my government. I
was not indolent, and asked for an appointment not to escape work,
but to be put in the way of work which I wanted to do; and when I was
disappointed in the appointment to Venice I should have set to work at
home. But my position was a difficult one. The arts were for the
war times suspended; I could not get into the army, my mother in an
extreme old age was a pensioner at my brother Charles's house, and my
sister-in-law refused to allow me to remain in my brother's house. I
had, at an earlier date, in obedience to my brother's urgings and in
deference to the Sabbatarian scruples, refused all offers to go into
business, as he regarded me as his heir, and had formally and at more
than one juncture assured me that my future was provided for and that
I need have no anxiety as to money.