Tall, gaunt, with sharp intellectual features, and eyes of singular beauty, the face of an enthusiast--under given circumstances, of a hero.

Poorly clad, of course, but with rigorous self-respect; his boots polished, _propria manu_, to the point of perfection; his linen washed and ironed by the indefatigable wife.

Of simplest tastes, of most frugal habits, a few books the only luxury which he deemed indispensable; yet a most difficult man to live with, for to him applied precisely the description which Robert Burns gave of his own father; he was 'of stubborn, ungainly integrity and headlong irascibility'.
Ungainly, for his strong impulses towards culture were powerless to obliterate the traces of his rude origin.

Born in a London alley, the son of a labourer burdened with a large family, he had made his way by sheer force of character to a position which would have seemed proud success but for the difficulty with which he kept himself alive.

His parents were dead.