was the housekeeper, but such cares did not take up much of my time. The
result of so much solitude and lack of occupation was that I became
restless and dissatisfied. Mere reading without any definite object did
not and could not suffice me; to write when there seemed no prospect of
ever being read, and keenly alive as I was to my own deficiencies, did not
attract me; friends I might say I had none, for the few people my father
knew were interested in him and not in us children, and ceased to frequent
our house after his death. Caroline's musical friends did not appeal to
me, so that the whole interest of my life was centred round my brother.
When he came home we used always to be together, and conversation never
flagged. Never having been to school he had none of the schoolboy's
patronising contempt for a sister. We had always been chums and
companions, and so we continued, but whereas, as children, it was I, with
my more passionate and enterprising nature, who took the lead, now it was
he who, mixing with the outer world, provided the stimulus of new ideas
and fresh activities for which I craved. Brought suddenly face to face,
after the studious seclusion of home, with the hard facts of life as seen
in a London hospital, he had begun to take a deep interest in social
questions. The frightful havoc of life and happiness necessitated by the
economic conditions of nineteenth-century society, impressed him deeply,
and he felt that any doctor who looked upon his profession as other than a
mere means to make money must tackle such problems. Following up this line
of thought he became interested in economics and labour questions. His
views were the result of no mere surface impression, but the logical
outcome of thought and study, and he arrived at socialism by mental
processes of his own, uninfluenced by the ordinary channels of propaganda.
I shared his interests and read on parallel lines. We had no friends in
Socialist circles, no personal interest of any kind balanced our judgment.
The whole trend of our education had been to make independent thinkers of
us. What we saw in the whole problem was a question of justice, and for