SIR BERNARD MALLET
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Your readers will have read in their daily newspapers full accounts of Sir Bernard Mallet's official life as an admirable civil servant whose public career ended when he ceased to be Registrar-General. Throughout that career he served the country well and became an expert in an important sphere which to many people would seem involved in dull statistics. But he made this interesting to himself and to others, as a master of his subject so often can. After his retirement he carried on his work in statistics both at home and abroad, where he was welcomed as the British representa- tive at international meetings. His health was not good, as anyone could See in his pale, refined features, but he was always ready to go abroad, not only for his health, but also for the work in which he was specially interested, or again to -show his affection for 'the French family tree of which he could claim to be a branch. The Spectator must have a particularly strong feeling for him derived from personal causes, for he was one of Mr. St. Loe Strachey's most intimate friends. Their affection began in Oxford days before they lived together in London as bachelors. They agreed over Free Trade and other political questions, and Sir Bernard often wrote In your columns. -Indeed I know that he contributed to them anonymously a very short time age. He worked on in London at the C.O.S: to the last, and was always ready to help good works in Chelsea. His was a good life to watch -for it was full of value to others and of happiness to himself, for no man had' and kept more devoted friends (witness the great congregation at his funeral service at St. Margaret's last Tuesday) and in his home he had the contentment that cornea from great happiness, due to those whose loss is now the greatest and at the last to the .hopeful delight that came with small grandchildren.—! am, Sir, &c., C.
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