ABSTRACT
When I knew John Muirhead first I was not quite thirteen. He must have been teaching at that time at Bedford College and the Royal Holloway College, but the important point for me was that he had married my Aunt Molly, the ideal aunt and teacher for a thirteen-year-old; and that I, newly come from a distant home to a London high school, and boarding with strangers, was free to resort to their house in one of the quiet little roads off Brook Green in Hammersmith. “Uncle John” was background rather than foreground at first in those heavenly afternoons and week-ends, but a most harmonious part of the background, as sunny and peaceful as his house and garden. He came further into the foreground as time went on, as the person most officially concerned with a part of the intellectual world on whose threshold it was exciting to stand. Distinguished men, or men of future distinction, came to the house sometimes, and now and then we went to hear one of them address the Ethical Society at Essex Hall; a place which for one adolescent at least was built in the country of romance.
