John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

64 IN THE INDIA HOUSE. 1841-1848.
As soon as the Aberdeen winter session was over, in the
middle of April, 1842, I went to London, and remained there
five months. The day after arriving, I walked down to the
India House with Robertson, and realized my dream of meeting
Mill in person. I am not likely to forget the impression he
made upon me, as he stood by his desk, with his face turned
to the door as we entered. His tall slim figure, his youthful
face and bald head, fair hair and ruddy complexion, and the
twitching of his eyebrow when he spoke,
attention : then the vivacity of his manner,
first arrested the
his thin voice
approaching to sharpness, but with nothing shrill or painful
about it, his comely features and sweet expression would have
all remained in my memory though I had never seen him again.
To complete the picture, I should add his dress which was
constant a black dress-suit with silk necktie. Many years
after that he changed his dress-coat for a surtout ; but black
cloth was his choice to the end.*
* I trust that some one that served under the East India Company, will
leave to future historians, and lovers of picturesque effects, a full description
of the Company s dingy, capacious, and venerable building in Leadenhall
Street. In common with a goodly number of persons, I have a vivid recollec
tion of the great front, the pillared portal, and the line of passages conducting
to Mill s room, from which I never had any occasion to deviate. On entering
we passed the porter in his official uniform, including cocked hat, and walked
straight forward by a long passage not less, I should think, than a hundred feet;
then up two pair of very unpretentious flights of stairs. At the landing was a door,
"
bearing on the top-lintel the inscription, Examiner s Office". We entered a
little room occupied by the messengers, where they could make tea for the
officials (Mill had his breakfast provided in this way, on arriving at ten o clock :
tea, bread and butter, and a boiled egg). Leaving this room we entered, by a
baize spring door the long clerks room. To the right of the matted passage,
were the clerks screened boxes adjoining the windows. At the far end just on
emerging was a huge fire (in winter), which gave the room a sickly, stuffy tem
be found
perature : nevertheless, as was natural, two or three of the clerks might
standing in front, for additional warmth, or perhaps still more for conversation.
Passing the fire, and throwing open a spring door, we were in a passage
leading to the private rooms. One of these, the second I believe, was Mill s.
There was an outside green baize door, always latched back to the wall ;
reminding us that the officials were servants of the Secret Committee, and
might have to hold very confidential interviews. The room itself was very