ABSTRACT
The William Graham Holfords’ domestic arrangements became, under these circumstances, increasingly bizarre. Marjorie did not like having ‘strange women’ around her, and so no nurse was engaged. When Holford was in London Marjorie relied for company upon the landlady of the adjacent Lascelles Hotel. Despite his withdrawal to consultant status in the Holford practice circumstances conspired to maintain the pressure upon him from this direction also. Although in practice most of the work was carried out in the Liverpool office of the firm, the client had insisted that the formal appointment be personal to Holford. Holford’s peculiar, subtle personal mystique had proved an advantage in the past, but in these last days it did so no longer. But Holford’s ordinary performance far excelled others’ best, and it was he himself who lost most through this, perhaps his worst fault. The personality Holford created was not a mere sham, for it was formed in accordance with a profoundly humane moral sense.
