Lady Trevelyan thus describes their life at Clapham: "I think that my father's strictness was a good counterpoise to the perfect worship of your uncle by the rest of the family.

To us he was an object of passionate love and devotion.
To us he could do no wrong.

His unruffled sweetness of temper, his unfailing flow of spirits, his amusing talk, all made his presence so delightful that his wishes and his tastes were our law.

He hated strangers; and his notion of perfect happiness was to see us all working round him while he read aloud a novel, and then to walk all together on the Common, or, if it rained, to have a frightfully noisy game of hide-and-seek.

I have often wondered how our mother could ever have endured our noise in her little house.