Читать книгу The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2) - Lady Isabel Burton - Страница 11

Richard Burton's Early Life.

I was born at 9.30 p.m., 19th March (Feast of St. Joseph in the calendar), 1821, at Barham House, Herts, and suppose I was baptized in due course at the parish church. My birth took place in the same year as, but the day before, the grand event of George IV. visiting the Opera for the first time after the Coronation, March 20th. I was the eldest of three children. The second was Maria Catherine Eliza, who married Henry, afterwards General Sir Henry Stisted, a very distinguished officer, who died, leaving only two daughters, one of whom, Georgina Martha, survives. Third, Edward Joseph Netterville, late Captain in the 37th Regiment, unmarried.

The first thing I remember, and it is always interesting to record a child's first memories, was being brought down after dinner at Barham House to eat white currants, seated upon the knee of a tall man with yellow hair and blue eyes; but whether the memory is composed of a miniature of my grandfather, and whether the white frock and blue sash with bows come from a miniature of myself and not from life, I can never make up my mind.

Barham House was a country place bought by my grandfather, Richard Baker, who determined to make me his heir because I had red hair, an unusual thing in the Burton family. The hair soon changed to black, which seems to justify the following remarks by Alfred Bate Richards in the pamphlet alluded to. They are as follows:—

"Richard Burton's talents for mixing with and assimilating natives of all countries, but especially Oriental characters, and of becoming as one of themselves without any one doubting or suspecting his origin; his perfect knowledge of their languages, manners, customs, habits, and religion; and last, but not least, his being gifted by nature with an Arab head and face, favoured this his first enterprise" (the pilgrimage to Mecca). "One can learn from that versatile poet-traveller, the excellent Théophile Gautier, why Richard Burton is an Arab in appearance; and account for that incurable restlessness that is unable to wrest from fortune a spot on earth wherein to repose when weary of wandering like the desert sands.

"'There is a reason,' says Gautier, who had studied the Andalusian and the Moor, 'for the fantasy of nature which causes an Arab to be born in Paris, or a Greek in Auvergne; the mysterious voice of blood which is silent for generations, or only utters a confused murmur, speaks at rare intervals a more intelligible language. In the general confusion race claims its own, and some forgotten ancestor asserts his rights. Who knows what alien drops are mingled with our blood? The great migrations from the table-lands of India, the descents of the Northern races, the Roman and Arab invasions, have all left their marks. Instincts which seem bizarre spring from these confused recollections, these hints of distant country. The vague desire of this primitive Fatherland moves such minds as retain the more vivid memories of the past. Hence the wild unrest that wakens in certain spirits the need of flight, such as the cranes and the swallows feel when kept in bondage—the impulses that make a man leave his luxurious life to bury himself in the Steppes, the Desert, the Pampas, the Sahara. He goes to seek his brothers. It would be easy to point out the intellectual Fatherland of our greatest minds. Lamartine, De Musset, and De Vigny are English; Delacroix is an Anglo-Indian; Victor Hugo a Spaniard; Ingres belongs to the Italy of Florence and Rome.'

"Richard Burton has also some peculiarities which oblige one to suspect a drop of Oriental, perhaps gipsy, blood. By gipsy we must understand the pure Eastern."

My mother had a wild half-brother—Richard Baker, junior, a barrister-at-law, who refused a judgeship in Australia, and died a soap-boiler. To him she was madly attached, and delayed the signing of my grandfather's will as much as possible to the prejudice of her own babe. My grandfather Baker drove in his carriage to see Messrs. Dendy, his lawyers, with the object of signing the will, and dropped dead, on getting out of the carriage, of ossification of the heart; and, the document being unsigned, the property was divided. It would now be worth half a million of money.

When I was sent out to India as a cadet, in 1842, I ran down to see the old house for the last time, and started off in a sailing ship round the Cape for Bombay, in a frame of mind to lead any forlorn hope wherever it might be. Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India, under similar circumstances threw himself under a tree, and formed the fine resolution to come back and buy the old place; but he belonged to the eighteenth century. The nineteenth is far more cosmopolitan. I always acted upon the saying, Omne solum forti patria, or, as I translated it, "For every region is a strong man's home."

Meantime my father had been obliged to go on half-pay by the Duke of Wellington for having refused to appear as a witness against Queen Caroline. He had been town mayor at Genoa when she lived there, and her kindness to the officers had greatly prepossessed them in her favour; so, when ordered by the War Office to turn Judas, he flatly refused. A great loss to himself, as Lord William Bentinck, Governor-General of India, was about to take him as aide-de-camp, and to his family, as he lost all connection with the army, and lived entirely abroad, and, eventually coming back, died with his wife at Bath in 1857. However, he behaved like a gentleman, and none of his family ever murmured at the step, though I began life as an East Indian cadet, and my brother in a marching regiment, whilst our cousins were in the Guards and the Rifles and other crack corps of the army.

At Tours.

The family went abroad when I was a few months old, and settled at Tours, the charming capital of Touraine, which then contained some two hundred English families (now reduced to a score or so), attracted by the beauty of the place, the healthy climate, the economy of living, the facilities of education, and the friendly feeling of the French inhabitants, who, despite Waterloo, associated freely with the strangers.

They had a chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Way (whose son afterwards entered the Indian army; I met him in India, and he died young); their schoolmaster was Mr. Clough, who bolted from his debts, and then Mr. Gilchrist, who, like the Rev. Edward Irving, Carlisle's friend (whom the butcher once asked if he couldn't assist him), caned his pupils to the utmost. The celebrated Dr. Brettoneau took charge of the invalids. They had their duellist, the Honourable Martin Hawke, their hounds that hunted the Forest of Amboise, and a select colony of Irishmen, Messrs. Hume and others, who added immensely to the fun and frolic of the place.

At that period a host of these little colonies were scattered over the Continent nearest England; in fact, an oasis of Anglo-Saxondom in a desert of continentalism, somewhat like the society of English country towns as it was in 1800, not as it is now, where society is confined to the parson, dentist, surgeon, general practitioners, the bankers, and the lawyers. And in those days it had this advantage, that there were no snobs, and one seldom noticed the aigre discorde, the maladie chronique des ménages bourgeoises. Knowing nothing of Mrs. Grundy, the difference of the foreign colonies was that the weight of English respectability appeared to be taken off them, though their lives were respectable and respected. The Mrs. Gamps and Mrs. Grundys were not so rampant. The English of these little colonies were intensely patriotic, and cared comparatively little for party politics. They stuck to their own Church because it was their Church, and they knew as much about the Catholics at their very door, as the average Englishman does of the Hindú. Moreover, they honestly called themselves Protestants in those days, and the French called themselves Catholics. There was no quibble about "their being Anglo-Catholics, and the others Roman-Catholics." They subscribed liberally to the Church, and did not disdain to act as churchwardens. They kept a sharp look-out upon the parson, and one of your Modern High Church Protestants or Puseyites or Ritualists would have got the sack after the first sermon. They were intensely national. Any Englishman in those days who refused to fight a duel with a Frenchman was sent to Coventry, and bullied out of the place. English girls who flirted with foreigners, were looked upon very much as white women who permit the addresses of a nigger, are looked upon by those English who have lived in black countries. White women who do these things lose caste. Beauséjour, the château taken by the family, was inhabited by the Maréchale de Menon in 1778, and eventually became the property of her homme d'affaires, Monsieur Froguet. The dear old place stands on the right bank of the Loire, halfway up the heights that bound the stream, commanding a splendid view, and fronted by a French garden and vineyards now uprooted. In 1875 I paid it a last visit, and found a friend from Brazil, a Madame Izarié, widow of my friend the French Consul of Bahía, who had come to die in the house of his sister, Madame Froguet.

Tours was in those days (1820–30) the most mediæval City in France. The western half of the city, divided from the eastern by the Rue Royale, contained a number of old turreted houses of freestone, which might have belonged to the fifteenth century. There also was the tomb of the Venerable St. Martin in a crypt, where lamps are ever burning, and where the destroyed cathedral has not yet been rebuilt. The eastern city contained the grand Cathedral of St. Garcien, with its domed towers, and the Archévêché or Archbishop's palace with beautiful gardens. Both are still kept in the best order. In forty-five years the city has grown enormously. The southern suburbs, where the Mall and Ramparts used to be, has become Boulevards Heurteloup and Béranger; and "Places," such as that of the Palais de Justice, where cabbage gardens fenced with paling and thorn hedges once showed a few pauper cottages defended by the fortifications, are now Crescents and Kiosks for loungers, houses with tall mansarde roofs, and the large railway station that connects Tours with the outer world. The river, once crossed by a single long stone bridge, has now two suspension bridges and a railway bridge, and the river-holms, formerly strips of sand, are now grown to double their size, covered with trees and defended by stone dykes.

I remember passing over the river on foot when it was frozen, but with the increased population that no longer happens. Still there are vestiges of the old establishments. The Boule d'Or with its Golden Ball, and the Pheasant Hotel, both in the Rue Royale, still remain. You still read, "Maison Piernadine recommended for is elegance, is good taste, is new fashions of the first choice." Madame Fisterre, the maker of admirable apple-puffs, has disappeared and has left no sign. This was, as may be supposed, one of my first childish visits. We young ones enjoyed ourselves very much at the Château de Beauséjour, eating grapes in the garden, putting our Noah's ark animals under the box hedges, picking snail-shells and cowslips in the lanes, playing with the dogs—three black pointers of splendid breed, much admired by the Duke of Cumberland when he afterwards saw them in Richmond Park, named Juno, Jupiter, and Ponto. Charlotte Ling, the old nurse, daughter of the lodge-keeper at Barham House, could not stand the absence of beef and beer and the presence of kickshaws and dandelion salad, and after Aunt Georgina Baker had paid us a visit, she returned with her to Old England. A favourite amusement of us children was swarming up the tails of our father's horses, three in number, and one—a horse of Mecklenburg breed—was as tame as an Arab. The first story Aunt Georgina used to tell of me was of my lying on my back in a broiling sun, and exclaiming, "How I love a bright burning sun!" (Nature speaking in early years). Occasional drawbacks were violent storms of thunder and lightning, when we children were hustled out of our little cots under the roof, and taken to the drawing-room, lest the lightning should strike us, and the daily necessity of learning the alphabet and so forth, multiplication table, and our prayers.

I was intended for that wretched being, the infant phenomenon, and so began Latin at three and Greek at four. Things are better now. Our father used to go out wild-boar hunting in the Forêt d'Amboise, where is the château in which Abd-el-Kadir was imprisoned by the French Government from 1847 to 1852, when he was set free by Napoleon III., at the entreaties of Lord Londonderry. (It is said that his Majesty entered his prison in person and set him free. Abd-el-Kadir, at Damascus, often expressed his obligations to the English, and warmly welcomed any English face. On one occasion I took a near relation of Lord Londonderry's to see him, and he was quite overcome.) My father was periodically brought home hurt by running against a tree. Sport was so much in vogue then as to come between the parson and his sermon.

His First School.

This pleasant life came to a close one day. We were three: I was six, Maria four, and Edward three. One morning saw the hateful school-books fastened with a little strap, and we boys and our little bundle were conveyed in a small carriage to the town, where we were introduced into a room with a number of English and French boys, who were sitting opposite hacked and ink-spotted desks, looking as demure as they could, though every now and then they broke out into wicked grins and nudges. A lame Irish schoolmaster (Clough) smiled most graciously at us as long as our father was in the room, but was not half so pleasant when we were left alone. We wondered "what we were doing in that Galère," especially as we were sent there day after day, and presently we learnt the dread truth that we were at school at the ripe ages of six and three. Presently it was found that the house was at an inconvenient distance from school, and the family transferred itself to the Rue de l'Archévêché, a very nice house in the north-eastern corner of what is still the best street in the town (Rue Royale being mostly commercial). It is close to the Place and the Archbishop's palace, which delighted us, with small deer feeding about the dwarf lawn.

Presently Mr. Clough ran away, leaving his sister to follow as best she could, and we were transferred to the care of Mr. John Gilchrist, a Scotch pedagogue of the old brutal school, who took an especial delight in caning the boys, especially with a rattan or ferula across the palm of the hand; but we were not long in discovering a remedy, by splitting the end of the cane and inserting a bit of hair. We took lessons in drawing, dancing, French, and music, in which each child showed its individuality. Maria loved all four; Edward took to French and music and hated drawing; I took to French and drawing, and hated music and dancing. My brother and I took to the study of Arms, by nature, as soon as we could walk, at first with popguns and spring pistols and tin and wooden sabres, and I can quite well remember longing to kill the porter at five years old, because he laughed at our sabres de bois and pistolets de paille.

I was a boy of three ideas. Usually if a child is forbidden to eat the sugar or to lap up the cream he simply either obeys or does the contrary; but I used to place myself before the sugar and cream and carefully study the question, "Have I the courage not to touch them?" When I was quite sure of myself that I had the courage I instantly rewarded resolution by emptying one or both. Moreover, like most boys of strong imagination and acute feeling, I was a resolute and unblushing liar; I used to ridicule the idea of my honour being any way attached to telling the truth, I considered it an impertinence the being questioned, I never could understand what moral turpitude there could be in a lie, unless it was told for fear of the consequences of telling the truth, or one that would attach blame to another person. That feeling continued for many a year, and at last, as very often happens, as soon as I realized that a lie was contemptible, it ran into quite the other extreme, a disagreeable habit of scrupulously telling the truth whether it was timely or not.1

The school was mostly manned by English boys, sprinkled with French, and the mixture of the two formed an ungodly article, and the Italian proverb—

"Un Inglese Italianato

È un Diavolo incarnato"

may be applied with quite as much truth to English boys brought up in France. To succeed in English life, boys must be brought up in a particular groove. First the preparatory school, then Eton and Oxford, with an occasional excursion to France, Italy, and Germany, to learn languages, not of Stratford-atte-Bowe, and to find out that England is not the whole world. I never met any of my Tours schoolfellows save one—Blayden Edward Hawke, who became a Commander in the Navy, and died in 1877.

We boys became perfect devilets, and played every kind of trick despite the rattan. Fighting the French gutter-boys with sticks and stones, fists, and snowballs was a favourite amusement, and many a donkey-lad went home with ensanguined nose, whilst occasionally we got the worst of it from some big brother. The next favourite game was playing truant, passing the day in utter happiness, fancying ourselves Robinson Crusoes, and wandering about the strip of wood (long since doomed to fuel) at the top of the Tranchée. Our father and mother went much into the society of the place, which was gay and pleasant, and we children were left more or less to the servants. We boys beat all our bonnes, generally by running at their petticoats and upsetting them. There was one particular case when a new nurse arrived, a huge Norman girl, who at first imposed upon this turbulent nursery by her breadth of shoulder and the general rigour of her presence. One unlucky day we walked to the Faubourg at the south-east of the town, the only part of old Tours now remaining; the old women sat spinning and knitting at their cottage doors, and remarked loud enough for us boys to hear, "Ah ça! ces petits gamins! Voilà une honnête bonne qui ne leur laissera pas faire des farces!" Whereupon Euphrosyne became as proud as a peacock, and insisted upon a stricter discipline than we were used to. That forest walk ended badly. A jerk of the arm on her part brought on a general attack from the brood; the poor bonne measured her length upon the ground, and we jumped upon her. The party returned, she with red eyes, torn cap, and downcast looks, and we hooting and jeering loudly, and calling the old women "Les Mères Pomponnes," who screamed predictions that we should come to the guillotine.

Our father and mother had not much idea of managing their children; it was like the old tale of the hen who hatched ducklings. By way of a wholesome and moral lesson of self-command and self-denial, our mother took us past Madame Fisterre's windows, and bade us look at all the good things in the window, during which we fixed our ardent affections upon a tray of apple-puffs; then she said, "Now, my dears, let us go away; it is so good for little children to restrain themselves." Upon this we three devilets turned flashing eyes and burning cheeks upon our moralizing mother, broke the windows with our fists, clawed out the tray of apple-puffs, and bolted, leaving poor mother a sadder and a wiser woman, to pay the damages of her lawless brood's proceedings.

Talking of the guillotine, the schoolmaster unwisely allowed the boys, by way of a school-treat, to see the execution of a woman who killed her small family by poisoning, on condition that they would look away when the knife descended; but of course that was just the time (with such an injunction) when every small neck was craned and eyes strained to look, and the result was that the whole school played at guillotine for a week, happily without serious accidents.2

Trips.

The residence at Tours was interrupted by occasional trips, summering in other places, especially at St. Malo. The seaport then thoroughly deserved the slighting notice, to which it was subjected by Captain Marryat, and the house in the Faubourg was long remembered from its tall avenue of old yew trees, which afforded abundant bird's-nesting. At Dieppe the gallops on the sands were very much enjoyed, for we were put on horseback as soon as we could straddle. Many a fall was of course the result, and not a few broken heads, whilst the rival French boys were painfully impressed by the dignity of spurs and horsewhips.

Grandmamma Baker.

At times relations came over to visit us, especially Grandmamma Baker (Grandmamma Baker was a very peculiar character). Her arrival was a signal for presents and used to be greeted with tremendous shouts of delight, but the end of a week always brought on a quarrel. Our mother was rather thin and delicate, but our grandmother was a thorough old Macgregor, of the Helen or the Rob Roy type, and was as quick to resent an affront as any of her clan. Her miniature shows that she was an extremely handsome woman, who retained her good looks to the last. When her stepson, Richard Baker, jun., inherited his money, £80,000, he went to Paris and fell into the hands of the celebrated Baron de Thierry. This French friend persuaded him to embark in the pleasant little speculation of building a bazaar. By the time the walls began to grow above ground the Englishman had finished £60,000, and, seeing that a million would hardly finish the work, he sold off his four greys and fled Paris post-haste in a post-chaise. The Baron Thierry followed him to London, and, bold as brass, presented himself as an injured creditor at grandmamma's pretty little house in Park Lane. The old lady replied by summoning her servants and having him literally kicked downstairs in true Highland fashion. That Baron's end is well known in history. He made himself king of one of the Cannibal Islands in the South Sea, and ended by being eaten by his ungrateful subjects.

Grandmamma Baker was determined to learn French, and, accordingly, secured a professor. The children's great delight was to ambuscade themselves, and to listen with joy to the lessons. "What is the sun?" "Le soleil, madame!" "La solelle." "Non, madame. Le so—leil." "Oh, pooh! La solelle." After about six repetitions of the same, roars of laughter issued from the curtains—we of course speaking French like English, upon which the old lady would jump up and catch hold of the nearest delinquent and administer condign punishment. She had a peculiar knack of starting the offender, compelling him to describe a circle of which she was the centre, whilst, holding with the left hand, she administered smacks and cuffs with the right; but, as every mode of attack has its own defence, it was soon found out that the proper corrective was to throw one's self on one's back, and give vigorous kicks with both legs. It need hardly be said that Grandmamma predicted that Jack Ketch would make acquaintance with the younger scions of her race, and that she never arrived at speaking French like a Parisian.

Grandmamma Burton.

Grandmamma Burton was also peculiar in her way. Her portrait shows the regular Bourbon traits, the pear-shaped face and head which culminates in Louis Philippe's. Although the wife of a country clergyman, she never seemed to have attained the meekness of feeling associated with that peaceful calling. The same thing is told of her as was told of the Edgeworth family. On one occasion during the absence of her husband, the house at Tuam was broken into by thieves, probably some of her petted tenantry. She lit a candle and went upstairs to fetch some gunpowder, loaded her pistols, and ran down to the hall, when the robbers decamped. She asked the raw Irish servant girl who had accompanied her what had become of the light, and the answer was that it was standing on the barrel of "black salt" upstairs; thereupon Grandmamma Burton had the pluck to walk up to the garret and expose herself to the risk of being blown to smithereens. When my father returned from service in Sicily, at the end of the year, he found the estate in a terrible condition, and obtained his mother's leave to take the matter in hand. He invited all the tenants to dinner, and when speech time came on, after being duly blarneyed by all present, he made a little address, dwelling with some vigour upon the necessity of being for the future more regular with the "rint." Faces fell, and the only result was, that when the rent came to be collected, he was fired at so frequently (showing that this state of things had been going on for some sixty or seventy years), that, not wishing to lead the life of the "Galway woodcock," he gave up the game, and allowed matters to take their own course.

Aunt G.

Another frequent visitor was popularly known as "Aunt G."—Georgina Baker, the younger of the three sisters, who was then in the heyday of youth and high spirits. An extremely handsome girl, with blue eyes and dark hair and fine tall figure, she was the life of the house as long as her visits lasted. Her share of the property being £30,000, she had of course a number of offers from English as well as foreigners. On the latter she soon learned to look shy, having heard that one of her rejected suitors had exclaimed to his friend, "Quelle dommage, avec cette petite ferme à vendre," the wished-for farm, adjoining his property, happening then to be in the market. Heiresses are not always fortunate, and she went on refusing suitor after suitor, till ripe middle age, when she married Robert Bagshaw, Esq., M.P. for Harwich. She wanted to adopt me, intending to accompany me to Oxford and leave me her property, but this project had no stay in it. At the time she was at Tours, Aunt G. had a kind of "fad" that she would marry one of her brother-in-law Burton's brothers. Her eldest sister Sarah had married my uncle Burton, elder brother of my father, who, sorely against his wish, which pointed to the Church, had been compelled by the failure of the "rint" to become an army surgeon—the same who had the disappointment at St. Helena.

At last it became apparent that Tours was no longer a place for us who were approaching the ticklish time of teens. All Anglo-French boys generally were remarkable young ruffians, who, at ten years of age, cocked their hats and loved the ladies. Instead of fighting and fagging, they broke the fine old worked glass church windows, purloined their fathers' guns to shoot at the monuments in the churchyards, and even the shops and bazaars were not safe from their impudent raids. The ringleader of the gang was a certain Alek G——, the son of a Scotchmen of good family, who was afterwards connected with or was the leading spirit of a transaction, which gave a tablet and an inscription to Printing House Square. Alek was very handsome, and his two sisters were as good looking as himself. He died sadly enough at a hospital in Paris. Political matters, too, began to look queer. The revolution which hurled Charles X. from the throne, produced no outrages in quiet Tours, beyond large gatherings of the people with an immense amount of noise, especially of "Vive la Chatte!" (for La Charte), the good commères turning round and asking one another whom the Cat might be that the people wished it so long a life; but when Casimir Périer had passed through the town, and "the three glorious days of July" had excited the multitude, things began to look black, and cries of "À bas les Anglais!" were not uncommon. An Englishmen was threatened with prison because the horse he was driving accidentally knocked down an old woman, and a French officer of the line, who was fond of associating with English girls, was grossly insulted and killed in a dastardly duel by a pastrycook.

They leave Tours.

At last, after a long deliberation, the family resolved to leave Tours. Travelling in those days, especially for a large family, was a severe infliction. The old travelling carriages, which had grown shabby in the coach-house, had to be taken out and furbished up, and all the queer receptacles, imperial, boot, sword-case, and plate-chest, to be stuffed with miscellaneous luggage. After the usual sale by auction, my father took his departure, perhaps mostly regretted by a little knot of Italian exiles, whom he liked on account of his young years spent in Sicily, and whose society not improbably suggested his ultimate return to Italy. Then began the journey along the interminable avenues of the old French roads, lined with parallel rows of poplars, which met at a vanishing point of the far distance. I found exactly the same thing, when travelling through Lower Canada in 1860. Mighty dull work it was, whilst the French postilion in his seven-league boots jogged along with his horses at the rate of five miles an hour, never dreaming of increasing the rate, till he approached some horridly paved town, when he cracked his whip, like a succession of pistol shots, to the awe and delight of all the sabots. Very slow hours they were, especially as the night wore on, and the road, gleaming white between its two dark edges, looked of endless length. And when at last the inn was reached, it proved very unlike the inn of the present day. A hard bargain had to be driven with a rapacious landlady, who, if you objected to her charges, openly roared at you with arms akimbo, "that if you were not rich enough to travel, you ought to stay at home." Then the beds had to be inspected, the damp sheets to be aired, and the warming-pans to be ordered, and, as dinner had always to be prepared after arrival, it was not unusual to sit hungry for a couple of hours.

The fatigues of the journey seriously affected my mother's health, and she lost no time in falling very ill at Chartres. Then Grandmamma Baker was sent for to act garde-malade, and to awe the children, who were wild with delight at escaping school and masters, with the weight of her sturdy Scotch arm. The family passed through Paris, where the signs of fighting, bullets in the walls, and burnt houses, had not been wholly obliterated, and were fortunate enough to escape the cholera, which then for the first time attacked Europe in its very worst form. Grandmamma Baker was very nearly as bad, for she almost poisoned her beloved grandchildren, by stuffing our noses and mouths full of the strongest camphor whenever we happened to pass through a town. The cold plunge into English life was broken by loitering on the sands of Dieppe. A wonderful old ramshackle place it was in those days, holding a kind of intermediate place between the dulness of Calais and the liveliness of "Boolone," as the denizens called it. It wanted the fine hotels and the Établissement, which grew up under the Second Empire, but there was during the summer a pleasant, natural kind of life, living almost exclusively upon the sands and dipping in the water, galloping about on little ponies, and watching the queer costumes of the bathers, and discussing the new-comers. Though railways were not dreamt of, many Parisians used to affect the place, and part of the French nature seems to be, to rush into the sea as soon as they see it.

1. N.B.—From that he became a man wholly truthful, wholly incorruptible, who never lost his "dignity," a man whose honour and integrity from the cradle to the grave was unimpeachable.—I. B.

2. N.B.—This kind of indulgence should never be allowed by parents or tutors. During our eighteen years in Austria, there were some parents up the Slav district who allowed their two eldest children, boy and girl, six and seven, to see the pigs killed for a treat. They saw everything, to the hanging up of the pigs ready for buying. Next day the mother went down to the Trieste market, father to work, and the children were left in charge of the cottage. When the parents got near the cottage in late afternoon, the two children ran out and said, "We have had such fun, mamma; we have played all day at killing pigs, and we have done baby beautifully, and he squealed at first just like a real pig." The horrified parents rushed in, and found truly that baby was beautifully done, hanging up by the legs, his poor little stomach kept open by a bit of wood just like a real pig, and had been dead for hours.—I. B.