The whole aspect of life at Dartington was changed.

The Archdeacon retired into himself and nursed his grief in silence, melancholy, isolated, austere.
This irreparable calamity was made by circumstances doubly calamitous.

Though destined to survive all his brothers and sisters, Anthony was a weak, sickly child, not considered never heard the mention of his mother's name, or was the Archdeacon himself capable of showing any tenderness whatever.

In place of a mother the little boy had an aunt, who applied to him principles of Spartan severity.
At the mature age of three he was ducked every morning at a trough, to harden him, in the ice-cold water from a spring, and whenever he was naughty he was whipped.

It may have been from this unpleasant discipline that he derived the contempt for self-indulgence, and the indifference to pain, which distinguished him in after life.