unless among people he knew well he usually left the room backwards,
bowing to the company; nor of his punctiliousness, industry, and
painstaking attention to detail--he kept accurate accounts not only
of all his property by double entry but also of his daily
expenditure, which he balanced to a halfpenny every evening, and his
handwriting, always beautiful and legible, was more so at sixty-six
than at twenty-six; nor of his patience and cheerfulness during
years of anxiety when he had few to sympathize with him; nor of the
strange mixture of simplicity and shrewdness that caused one who
knew him well to say: "II sait tout; il ne sait rien; il est
poete."

Epitaphs always fascinated him, and formerly he used to say he
should like to be buried at Langar and to have on his tombstone the
subject of the last of Handel's Six Great Fugues. He called this
"The Old Man Fugue," and said it was like an epitaph composed for
himself by one who was very old and tired and sorry for things; and
he made young Ernest Pontifex in The Way of all Flesh offer it to
Edward Overton as an epitaph for his Aunt Alethea. Butler, however,
left off wanting any tombstone long before he died. In accordance
with his wish his body was cremated, and a week later Alfred and I
returned to Woking and buried his ashes under the shrubs in the
garden of the crematorium, with nothing to mark the spot.





The Humour of Homer {59}