'Balzac! Balzac!' he said to me once, 'Oh, that was
the man the French bourgeoisie read so much a few years ago.' I
can remember him at supper praising wine: 'Why do people say it is
prosaic to be inspired by wine? Has it not been made by the
sunlight and the sap?' and his dispraising houses decorated by
himself: 'Do you suppose I like that kind of house? I would like a
house like a big barn, where one ate in one corner, cooked in
another corner, slept in the third corner & in the fourth received
one's friends'; and his complaining of Ruskin's objection to the
underground railway: 'If you must have a railway the best thing
you can do with it is to put it in a tube with a cork at each
end.' I remember too that when I asked what led up to his
movement, he replied, 'Oh, Ruskin and Carlyle, but somebody should
have been beside Carlyle and punched his head every five minutes.'
Though I remember little, I do not doubt that, had I continued
going there on Sunday evenings, I should have caught fire from his
words and turned my hand to some mediaeval work or other.
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