“Everything was there to hand: raptures, tenderness, and poetry. In reality that love of mine was the result, on the one hand of her mamma’s and the dressmakers’ activity, and on the other of the superabundance of food consumed by me while living an idle life. If on the one hand there had been no boating, no dressmaker with her waists and so forth, and had my wife been sitting at home in a shapeless dressing gown, and had I on the other hand been in circumstances normal to man⁠—consuming just enough food to suffice for the work I did, and had the safety valve been open⁠—it happened to be closed at the time⁠—I should not have fallen in love and nothing of all this would have happened.”