Even as a young main, a Fellow at 25, Pater had seemed inscrutable. His dress might be striking—ties of apple green, gloves of palest yellow—but there was distance in his smile, a 'weary courtesy' in his greeting. His approach was oblique, cautious rather than camp. Mostly he walked alone, treading 'delicately'; furtively even, with 'evasive eyes and... surreptitious manner'; his face the colour of old ivory; pondering a phrase, 'like one listening to his own thoughts, occupied with mystical visions of the unseen'. — J. Mordaunt Crook quoting A.C. Benson, George Moore, and others.
Last modified 8 October 2012