I cannot go into all the details of [my brother Herbert’s] varied interests at this time: they were legion, but to each one he gave his utmost study and attention: commercial interests and musical ones, and, very prominently, political ones. All alike had of his best. He thought nothing of studying till two and even three in the morning, and at weekends would practise violin music for as long as nine hours on end, just having breaks for meals. This music may have been, as Shakespeare has it, the food of love, but his long-suffering mother and sisters did not bid him play on, for we soon had had “excess of it”!