Gilbert's future political views. His parents had
made him a Liberal but it seemed to him later, as he notes in the
_Autobiography_, that their generation was insufficiently alive to the
condition and sufferings of the poor. Open-eyed in so many matters,
they were not looking in that particular direction. And so it was
only very gradually that he himself began to look.

Your Humble Servant read Oldershaw Elizabeth Browning's "Cry of the
Children," which the former could scarcely trust himself to read, but
which the latter candidly avowed that he did not like. Part and
parcel of Oldershaw's optimism is a desire not to believe in pictures
of real misery, and a desire to find out compensating pleasures. I
think there was a good deal in what he said, but at the same time I
think that there is real misery, physical and mental, in the low and
criminal classes, and I don't believe in crying peace where there is
no peace.

Of his brother, Gilbert notes, "Innocent Child's fault is not a
servile reverence for his elder brother, whom he regards, I believe,
as a mild lunatic." And Oldershaw recalls his own detestation of
Cecil, who would insist on monopolising the conversation when
Gilbert's friends wanted to talk to him. "An ugly little boy creeping
about," Mr. Fordham calls him. "Cecil had no vanity," writes Mrs.
Kidd, "and thoroughly appreciated the fact that he was not beautiful;
when he was about 14 he said at dinner one day: 'I think I shall
marry X (a very plain cousin); between us we might produce the
missing link.' Aunt Marie was shocked!"

Many of the games arise from the skill in drawing of both Gilbert and
his father. A long history of two of the Masters drawn by Gilbert
shows them in the Salvation Army, as Christy Minstrels, as editors of
a new revolutionary paper, "La Guillotine," as besieged in their
office by a mob headed by Lord Salisbury, the Archbishop of
Canterbury and other Conservative leaders. Getting tired at last of
the adventures of these two mild scholars, Gilbert starts a series of
Shakespeare plays drawn in modern dress.

Shylock as an aged Hebrew vendor of dilapidated vesture, with a
tiara of hats, Antonio as an opulent and respectable city-merchant,
Bassanio as a fashionable swell and Gratiano as his loud and
disreputable "pal" with large checks and a billy-cock hat. Portia was
attired as a barrister in wig and gown and Nerissa as a clerk with a
green bag and a pen behind his ea