Читать книгу H. G. Hawker, airman: his life and work онлайн

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It would seem that Harry’s perfections have been exploited and his imperfections ignored, but I find the first so easy, my pen willingly covering many pages, and the second, not irksome, since his very imperfections were interesting, but hard to define.

Before our marriage he warned me of his terrible temper, which, he said, appeared at intervals, making him for a short time an unapproachable individual, and advised me that on such occasions I should leave him completely alone. I never witnessed one of these outbreaks and doubt if they ever occurred. Fits of irritability would seize him, sometimes for little or no apparent cause, and at others under great provocation, and while they lasted he was a very trying companion. But he would not be irritated for long; and these, I think, must have been his fits of terrible temper.

If neglect of his financial responsibilities, through disinterestedness, was a fault, then he had a big one. He was as unmercenary as it is possible for a normal man to be. He liked to have money in order to procure the necessaries of his hobby, but the matter of procuring proper payment for the work he did he left entirely in the hands of those for whom he was working, to pay him what they thought fit. And having received the money, the proper investment of it he ignored, until he was reminded, leaving his money idle in the bank. In his last year of life he began to look at these things more seriously, as his outgoings had increased and his income diminished, and, with the responsibilities of a company under his own name, probably another year would have made him a different man—a business man perhaps, but never so great a man.