"A little dinner-party in the Addison Road region of London was my first introduction to John Henniker Heaton, then freshly arrived from Australia. Our host was Dr Rae, a hero of mine in my boyhood when he went on his Arctic Expedition in search of Franklin. He did not find the Explorer, but he found the explorer's spoons, and I remember an old rumour of dispute as to whom these relics really belonged to, Dr Rae or the surviving relative of Sir John—a ease in which law and feeling might indeed be sharply sundered. Mrs Rae, in charm and character the youngest woman who wore white hair, and her sister, Miss Skeffington Thompson, were ardent friends of Irish Nationality, and my impression is that the man from the Antipodes rather shared their sympathies.
"Gladstone had not then affixed the Liberal label to Home Rule; and I remember many Conservatives who were favourable in those days to a cause from which party loyalty later alienated them.
"As to Party ties, though it was part of Heaton's loyalty of character to respect them, I do net think that Party animus found any lodgment in his disposition. He had his friends among men of all opinions; and, associating ideas of practical service with political life, after the manner of most Colonials, he did not come to England wearing any party badge; and it was accident rather than design that gave him his opportunity for National usefulness as Conservative Member for Canterbury.
"My first meeting with him in that environment led to a friendship broken only by Sir John Henniker Heaton's death. In the busy life of London, diners-out meet and like one another, and say they hope to meet again, and then lapse into a nothingness that is just kept in evidence by a casual nod across a clubroom, or in the street.
"But there was something genial about Heaton that put you at once on terms almost of intimacy.
K
