Читать книгу The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2) - Lady Isabel Burton - Страница 14

Classical Games.

Amongst other classical fads, we boys determined to imitate Anacreon and Horace. We crowned ourselves with myrtle and roses, chose the prettiest part of the garden, and caroused upon the best wine we could afford, out of cups, disdaining to use glasses. Our father, aware of this proceeding, gave us three bottles of sherry, upon the principle that the grocer opens to the young shopboy his drawers of figs and raisins. But we easily guessed the meaning of the kind present, and contented ourselves with drinking each half a bottle a day, as long as it lasted, and then asked for more, to the great disgust of the donor. We diligently practised pistol-shooting, and delighted in cock-fighting, at which the tutor duly attended. Of course the birds fought without steel, but it was a fine game-breed, probably introduced of old by the Spaniards. It not a little resembles the Derby game-cock, which has spread itself half over South America.

Chess.

There was naturally little variety in amusements. The few English families lived in scattered villas. Old Mrs. Starke, Queen of Sorrento, as she loved to be called, and the authoress of the guide book, was the local "lion," and she was sketched and caricatured in every possible way in her old Meg Merrilies' cloak. Game to the last, she died on the road travelling. An Englishman, named Sparkes, threw himself into one of the jagged volcanic ravines that seam the tongue of Sorrento; but there is hardly a place in Italy, high or low, where some Englishman has not suicided himself. A painter, a Mr. Inskip, brought over an introduction, and was very tipsy before dinner was half over. The Marsala wine supplied by Iggulden & Co. would have floored Polyphemus. The want of excitement out of doors, produced a correspondent increase of it inside. We were getting too old to be manageable, and Mr. Du Pré taking high grounds on one occasion, very nearly received a good thrashing. My father being a man of active mind, and having nothing in the world to do, began to be unpleasantly chemical; he bought Parke's "Catechism;" filled the house with abominations of all kinds, made a hideous substance that he called soap, and prepared a quantity of filth that he called citric acid, for which he spoiled thousands of lemons. When his fit passed over it was succeeded by one of chess, and the whole family were bitten by it. Every spare hour, especially in the evening, was given to check and checkmating, and I soon learned to play one, and then two games, with my eyes blindfolded. I had the sense, however, to give it up completely, for my days were full of Philidor, and my dreams were of gambits all night.

The dull life was interrupted by a visit from Aunt G. She brought with her a Miss Morgan, who had been governess to the three sisters, and still remained their friend. She was a woman of good family in Cornwall, but was compelled, through loss of fortune, to take service.

Miss Morgan was very proud of her nephew, the Rev. Morgan Cowie, who was senior Wrangler at Cambridge. He had had the advantage of studying mathematics in Belgium, where in those days the entering examination of a College was almost as severe as the passing examination of an English College. She was also very well read, and she did not a little good in the house. She was the only one who ever spoke to us children as if we were reasonable beings, instead of scolding and threatening with the usual parental brutality of those days. That unwise saying of the wise man, "Spare the rod and spoil the child," has probably done more harm to the junior world than any other axiom of the same size, and it is only of late years that people have begun to "spoil the rod and spare the child." So Miss Morgan could do with the juniors what all the rest of the house completely failed in doing. The only thing that was puzzling about her was, that she could not play at Chess. Aunt G. waxed warm in defence of her friend, and assured the scoffers that "Morgan, with her fine mind, would easily learn to beat the whole party." "Fine mind!" said the scoffers. "Why, we would give her a Queen."

Naples.

Naples after Sorrento was a Paris. In those days it was an exceedingly pleasant City, famous as it always has been for some of the best cooks in Italy. The houses were good, and the servants and the provisions were moderate. The Court was exceedingly gay, and my father found a cousin there, old Colonel Burke, who was so intimate with the King, known as "Old Bomba," as to be admitted to his bedroom. There was also another Irish cousin, a certain Mrs. Phayre, who for many years had acted duenna to the Miss Smiths (Penelope and Gertrude). Penelope had always distinguished herself in Paris by mounting wild horses in the Bois de Boulogne, which ran away with her, and shook her magnificent hair loose. She became a favourite at the Court of Naples, and amused the dull royalties with her wild Irish tricks. It is said that, on one occasion, she came up with a lift instead of the expected vol au vent, or pudding. She ended by marrying the Prince of Capua, greatly to the delight of the King, who found an opportunity of getting rid of his brother, and put an end to certain scandals. It was said that the amiable young Prince once shot an old man, whom he found gathering sticks in his grounds, and on another occasion that he was soundly thrashed by a party of English grooms, whom he had insulted in his cups. The happy pair had just run away and concluded the "triple alliance," as it was called (this is a marriage in three different ways, in order to make sure of it; Protestant, Catholic, and Civil), when our family settled in Naples, and they found Mrs. Phayre and Gertrude Smith, the other sister, in uncomfortable State, banished by the Court, and harassed by the police. All their letters had been stopped at the post-office, and they had had no news from home for months. My father saw them carefully off to England, where Gertrude, who had a very plain face and a very handsome figure, presently married the rich old Lord Dinorben. Poor Miss Morgan also suffered considerably at Naples from the stoppage of all her letters; she being supposed at least to be a sister of Lady Morgan, the "wild Irish girl," whose writings at that time had considerably offended the Italian Court.

Naples was perhaps the least strict of all the Italian cities, and consequently it contained a colony, presided over by the Hon. Mrs. Temple, Lady Eleanor Butler, Lady Strachan, and Berkeley Craven, who would somewhat have startled the proprieties of another place. The good-natured Minister was the Hon. Mr. Temple, Lord Palmerston's brother, who cared nothing for a man's catechism provided he kept decently clear of scandal. The Secretary of Legation was a Mr. Kennedy, who married a Miss Briggs, and died early. These were great friends of the family. On the other hand, the Consul, Captain Galway, R.N., was anything but pleasant. He was in a perpetual state of rile because his Consular service prevented his being received at Court; moreover, he heard (possibly correctly) that Mrs. Phayre and her two protégées were trying to put Colonel Burton in his place. He was also much troubled by his family, and one of them (the parson) especially troubled him. This gentleman having neglected to provide for a young Galway whose mamma he had neglected to marry, the maternal parent took a position outside the church, and as the congregation streamed out, cried in a loud voice, pointing to the curate, "Him the father of my child." Another element of confusion at Naples was poor Charley Savile, Lord Mexborough's son, who had quarrelled himself out of the Persian Legation. He was a good hand with his sword, always ready to fight, and equally ready to write. He always denied that he had written and sent about some verses which all Naples attributed to him, and they were certainly most scandalous. Of one lady he wrote—

"Society courts her, wicked old sinner,

Yet what won't man do for the sake of a dinner?"

Of another he wrote—

"You look so demure, ma'am,

So pious, so calm,

Always chanting a hymn,

Or singing a psalm.

Yet your thoughts are on virtue and heav'n no more

Than the man in the moon—you dreadful young bore."

This pasquinade led to some half-dozen challenges and duels. It was severe, but not worse than society deserved. Naples has never been strict; and about the forties it was, perhaps, the most dissolute City on the Continent. The natives were bad, but the English visitors were worse. In fact, in some cases their morals were unspeakable.

There was a charming family of the name of Oldham. The father, when an English officer serving in Sicily, had married one of the beauties of the island, a woman of high family and graceful as a Spaniard. The children followed suit. The girls were beautiful, and the two sons were upwards of six feet in height, and were as handsome men as could well be seen. They both entered the army. One, in the 2nd Queen's, was tortured to death by the Kaffirs when his cowardly soldiers ran away, and left him wounded. The other, after serving in the 86th in India, was killed in the light cavalry charge of Balakalava. The families became great friends, and I met them both in India.

Naples was a great place for excursions. To the north you had Ischia and the Solfatara, a miniature bit of Vulcanism somewhat like the Geyser ground in Iceland, where ignoramuses thought themselves in the midst of untold volcanic grandeur. Nothing could be more snobbish than the visit to the Grotto del Cane, where a wretched dog was kept for the purpose of being suffocated half a dozen times a day. There I was determined to act dog, and was pulled up only in time to prevent being thoroughly asphyxiated. The Baths of Nero are about equal to an average Turkish Hammám, but nothing more. To the south the excursions were far more interesting.

Beyond Herculaneum, dark and dingy, lay Pompeii, in those days very different from the tame Crystal Palace affair that it is now. You engaged a cicerone as best you could; you had nothing to pay because there were no gates; you picked up what you liked, in shapes of bits of mosaic, and, if you were a swell, a house or a street was opened up in your honour. And overlaying Pompeii stood Vesuvius, which was considered prime fun. The walking up the ash cone amongst a lot of seniors, old men dragged up by lazzaroni, and old women carried up in baskets upon lazzaroni's backs, was funny enough, but the descent was glorious. What took you twenty minutes to go up took four minutes to go down. Imagine a dustbin magnified to ten thousand, and tilted up at an angle of thirty-five degrees; in the descent you plunged with the legs to the knees, you could not manage to fall unless you hit a stone, and, arrived at the bottom, you could only feel incredulous that it was possible to run at such a rate. We caused no end of trouble, and I was found privily attempting to climb down the crater, because I had heard that an Englishman had been let down in a basket. Many of these ascents were made; on one occasion during an eruption, when the lava flowed down to the sea, and the Neapolitans with long pincers were snatching pieces out of it to stamp and sell, we boys, to the horror of all around, jumped on the top of the blackening fire stream, burnt our boots, and vilely abused all those who would not join us.

At Naples more was added to the work of education. Caraccioli, the celebrated marine painter, was engaged to teach oil-painting; but he was a funny fellow, and the hours which should have been spent in exhausting palettes passed in pencil-caricaturing of every possible friend and acquaintance. The celebrated Cavalli was the fencing-master; and in those days the Neapolitan school, which has now almost died out, was in its last bloom. It was a thoroughly business-like affair, and rejected all the elegances of the French school; and whenever there was a duel between a Neapolitan and a Frenchman, the former was sure to win. We boys worked at it heart and soul, and generally managed to give four hours a day to it. I determined, even at that time, to produce a combination between the Neapolitan and the French school, so as to supplement the defects of the one by the merits of the other. A life of very hard work did not allow me any leisure to carry out my plan; but the man of perseverance stores up his resolve, and waits for any number of years till he sees the time to carry it out. The plan was made in 1836, and was completed in 1880 (forty-four years).1

My father spared no pains or expense in educating his children. He had entered the army at a very early age. Volunteers were called for in Ireland, and those who brought a certain number into the field received commissions gratis. The old Grandmamma Burton's tenants' sons volunteered by the dozen. They formed a very fair company, and accompanied the young master to the wars; and when the young master got his commission, they all, with the exception of one or two, levanted, bolted, and deserted. Thus my father found himself an officer at the age of seventeen, when he ought to have been at school; and recognizing the deficiencies of his own education, he was determined that his children should complain of nothing of the kind. He was equally determined they none of them should enter the army; the consequence being that both the sons became soldiers, and the only daughter married a soldier. Some evil spirit, probably Mr. Du Pré, whispered that the best plan for the boys would be to send them to Oxford, in order that they might rise by literature, an idea which they both thoroughly detested. However, in order to crush their pride, they were told that they should enter "Oxford College as sizars, poor gentlemen who are supported by the alms of the others." Our feelings may be imagined. We determined to enlist, or go before the mast, or to turn Turks, banditti, or pirates, rather than undergo such an indignity.

Parthenope was very beautiful; but so true is English blood, that the most remarkable part of it was "Pickwick," who happened to make his way there at the time of the sojourn of our family. We read with delight the description of the English home. We passed our nights, as well as our days, devouring the book, and even "Ettore Fieramosca" and the other triumphs of Massimo d'Azelio were mere outsiders compared with it; but how different the effect of the two books—"Pickwick," the good-humoured caricature of a boy full of liquor and good spirits, and the "Disfida di Barletta," one of the foundation-stones of Italian independence.

At last the house on the Chiaja was given up, and the family took a house inside the City for a short time. The father was getting tired and thinking of starting northwards. The change was afflicting. The loss of the view of the Bay was a misfortune. The only amusement was prospecting the streets, where the most extraordinary scenes took place. It was impossible to forget a beastly Englishman, as he stood eating a squirting orange surrounded by a string of gutter-boys. The dexterity of the pickpockets, too, gave scenes as amusing as a theatre. It was related of one of the Coryphæi that he had betted with a friend that he would take the pocket-handkerchief of an Englishman, who had also betted that no man born in Naples could pick his pocket. A pal walked up to the man as he was promenading the streets, flower in button-hole, solemnly spat on his cravat, and ran away. The principal, with thorough Italian politeness, walked up to the outraged foreigner, drew his pocket-handkerchief and proceeded to remove the stain, exhorted the outraged one to keep the fugitive in sight, and in far less time than it takes to tell, transferred the handkerchief to his own pocket, and set out in pursuit of the barbaro.

Cholera.

The lazzaroni, too, were a perpetual amusement. We learned to eat maccaroni like them, and so far mastered their dialect, that we could exchange chaff by the hour. In 1869 I found them all at Monte Video and Buenos Ayres, dressed in cacciatore and swearing "M'nnaccia l'anima tua;" they were impressed with a conviction that I was myself a lazzarone in luck. The shady side of the picture was the cholera. It caused a fearful destruction, and the newspapers owned to 1300 a day, which meant say 2300. The much-abused King behaved like a gentleman. The people had determined that the cholera was poison, and doubtless many made use of the opportunity to get rid of husbands and wives and other inconvenient relationships; but when the mob proceeded to murder the doctors, and to gather in the market square with drawn knives, declaring that the Government had poisoned the provisions, the King himself drove up in a phaeton and jumped out of it entirely alone, told them to put up their ridiculous weapons, and to show him where the poisoned provisions were, and, seating himself upon a bench, ate as much as his stomach would contain. Even the lazzarone were not proof against this heroism, and viva'd and cheered him to his heart's content.

My brother and I had seen too much of cholera to be afraid of it. We had passed through it in France, it had followed us to Siena and Rome, and at Naples it only excited our curiosity. We persuaded the Italian man-servant to assist us in a grand escapade. He had procured us the necessary dress, and when the dead-carts passed round in the dead of the night, we went the rounds with them as some of the croquemorts. The visits to the pauper houses, where the silence lay in the rooms, were anything but pleasant, and still less the final disposal of the bodies. Outside Naples was a large plain, pierced with pits, like the silos or underground granaries of Algeria and North Africa. They were lined with stone, and the mouths were covered with one big slab, just large enough to allow a corpse to pass. Into these flesh-pots2 were thrown the unfortunate bodies of the poor, after being stripped of the rags which acted as their winding-sheets. Black and rigid, they were thrown down the apertures like so much rubbish, into the festering heap below, and the decay caused a kind of lambent blue flame about the sides of the pit, which lit up a mass of human corruption, worthy to be described by Dante.

Our escapades, which were frequent, were wild for strictly brought up Protestant English boys—they would be nothing now, when boys do so much worse—but there were others that were less excusable. Behind the Chiaja dwelt a multitude of syrens, who were naturally looked upon as the most beautiful of their sex. One lady in particular responded to the various telegraphic signs made to her from the flat terrace of the house, and we boys determined to pay her a visit. Arming ourselves with carving-knives, which we stuffed behind our girdles, we made our way jauntily into the house, introduced ourselves, and being abundant in pocket-money, offered to stand treat, as the phrase is, for the whole neighbourhood. The orgie was tremendous, and we were only too lucky to get home unhurt, before morning, when the Italian servant let us in. The result was a correspondence, consisting in equal parts of pure love on our side and extreme debauchery on the syrens'. These letters, unfortunately, were found by our mother during one of her Sunday visitations to our chambers. A tremendous commotion was the result. Our father and his dog, Mr. Du Pré, proceeded to condign punishment with the horsewhip; but we climbed up to the tops of the chimneys, where the seniors could not follow us, and refused to come down till the crime was condoned.

This little business disgusted our father of Naples, and he resolved to repair to a pure moral air. Naples is a very different place now; so is all the Italy frequented by travellers, and spoiled by railways and officialdom.

In 1881 a distinguished officer, and a gentleman allied to Royalty, wrote as follows: "You threw some doubts on the efficiency of the Italian posts, and I believe you; I don't think I was ever so glad to get home. At Malta it looks so clean after the filth of Naples. I think Italy, the Italians, their manners, customs, and institutions, more damnable every time I see them, and feel sure you will meet with less annoyance during your travels on the Gold Coast, than I met with coming through Italy. Trains crowded, unpunctual; starvation, filth, incivility, and extortion at every step; and, were it not that there are so many works of art and of interest to see, I doubt if any one would care to visit the country a second time."

(Here is an account of a purchase made to transfer home.) "A small table was packed in a little case, and firmly nailed down. At the station they refused to let it go in the luggage van, unless it were corded, lest it might be opened en route. The officials offered to cord it for bakshish, which was paid, but the cord not put on. They cut open my leather bag, and tried to open my portmanteau, but when I called this fact to the notice of the station-master at Rome, he simply turned on his heel and declined to answer. At Naples they opened the little case, because furniture was subject to octroi; and, on leaving, the case was again inspected, lest it might contain a picture (they were not allowed to leave the country)." It is no longer the classical Italy of Landor, nor the romantic Italy of Leigh Hunt, nor the ideal Italy of the Brownings, nor the spiritualized Italy of George Eliot, nor the everyday Italy of Charles Lever. They thought they were going to be everything when they changed Masters, but they have only succeeded in making it a noisy, vulgar, quarrelsome and contentious, arrogant, money-grasping Italy, and the sooner it receives a sound drubbing from France or Austria the better for it. It will then reform itself.

Marseille.

The family left Naples in the spring of 1836. The usual mountain of baggage was packed in the enormous boxes of the period, and the Custom House officers never even opened them, relying, as they said—and did in those good old days—upon the word of an Englishman, that they contained nothing contraband. How different from the United Italy, where even the dressing-bag is rummaged to find a few cigars, or an ounce of coffee. The voyage was full of discomforts. My mother, after a campaign of two or three years, had been persuaded to part with her French maid Eulalie, an old and attached servant, who made our hours bitter, and our faces yellow. The steamer of the day was by no means a floating palace, especially the English coasting steamers, which infested the Mediterranean. The machinery was noisy and offensive. The cabins were dog-holes, with a pestiferous atmosphere, and the food consisted of greasy butter, bread which might be called dough, eggs with a perfume, rusty bacon, milkless tea and coffee, that might be mistaken for each other, waxy potatoes, graveolent greens cuite à l'eau, stickjaw pudding, and cannibal haunches of meat, charred without, and blue within.

The only advantage was that the vessels were manned by English crews, and in those days the British sailor was not a tailor, and he showed his value when danger was greatest.

We steamed northwards in a good old way, puffing and panting, pitching and rolling, and in due time made Marseille.

The town of the Canebière was far from being the splendid City that it is now, but it always had one great advantage, that of being in Provence. I always had a particular propensity for this bit of Africa in Europe, and in after life in India for years, my greatest friend, Dr. Steinhaüser, and myself indulged in visions of a country cottage, where we would pass our days in hammocks, and our nights in bed, and never admit books or papers, pens or ink, letters or telegrams. This retreat was intended to be a rest for middle age, in order to prepare for senility and second childhood. But this vision passed into the limbo of things imagined (in fact, the vision of two hard-working and overworked men), and I little thought that at fifty-five I should be a married man, still in service, still knocking about the world, working hard with my wife, and poor Steinhaüser dead fifteen years ago.

To return. However agreeable Provence was, the change from Italians to French was not pleasant. The subjects of Louis Philippe, the Citizen-King, were rancorous against Englishmen, and whenever a fellow wanted to get up a row he had only to cry out, "These are the misérables who poisoned Napoleon at St. Helena." This pleasant little scene occurred on board a coasting steamer, between Marseille and Cette, when remonstrance was made with the cheating steward, backed by the rascally captain. Cette was beginning to be famous for the imitation wines composed by the ingenuity of Monsieur Guizot, brother of the austère intrigant. He could turn out any wine, from the cheapest Marsala to the choicest Madeiran Bual.

But he did his counterfeiting honestly, as a little "G" was always branded on the bottom of the cork, and Cette gave a good lesson about ordering wines at hotels. The sensible traveller, when in a strange place, always calls for the carte, and chooses the cheapest; he knows by sad experience, by cramp and acidity of stomach, that the dearest wines are often worse than the cheapest, and at best that they are the same with different labels. The proprietor of the hotel at Cette, had charged his dame de comptoir with robbing the till. She could not deny it, but she replied with a tu quoque: "If I robbed you I only returned tit for tat. You have been robbing the public for the last quarter of a century, and only the other day you brought a bottle of ordinaire and escamoté'd it into sixteen kinds of vins fin." The landlord thought it better to drop the proceedings. From Cette we travelled in hired carriages (as Dobbin and the carriages had been sold at Naples) to Toulouse. We stayed at Toulouse for a week, and I was so delighted with student life there, that I asked my father's leave to join them. But he was always determined on the Fellowship at Oxford. Our parents periodically fell ill with asthma, and we young ones availed ourselves of the occasion, by wandering far and wide over the country. We delighted in these journeys, for though the tutor was there, the books were in the boxes. My chief remembrances of Toulouse were, finding the mistress of the hotel correcting her teeth with table d'hôte forks, and being placed opposite the model Englishman of Alexandre Dumas and Eugène Sue. The man's face never faded from my memory. Carroty hair, white and very smooth forehead, green eyes, a purple-reddish lower face, whiskers that had a kind of crimson tinge, and an enormous mouth worn open, so as to show the protruding teeth.

Pau—Bagnières de Bigorres.

In due time we reached Pau in the Pyrenees, the capital of the Basses Pyrénées, and the old Bearnais. The little town on the Gave de Pau was no summer place. The heats are intense, and all who can, rush off to the Pyrénées, which are in sight, and distant only forty miles. Our family followed suit, and went off to Bagnières de Bigorres, where we hired a nice house in the main Square. There were few foreigners in the Bagnières de Bigorres; it was at that time a thoroughly French watering-place. It was invaded by a mob of Parisians of both sexes, the men dressed in fancy costumes intended to be "truly rural," and capped with Basque bonnets, white or red. The women were more wonderful still, especially when on horseback; somehow or other the Française never dons a riding-habit without some solecism. Picnics were the order of the day, and they were organized on a large scale, looking more like a squadron of cavalry going out for exercise than a party of pleasure. We boys obtained permission to accompany one of those caravans to the Brêche de Roland, a nick in the mountain top clearly visible from the plains, and supposed to have been cut by the good sword "Joyeuse."

Contrabandistas.

Here we boys were mightily taken with, and tempted to accept the offer made to us by, a merry party of contrabandistas, who were smuggling to and fro chocolate, tobacco, and aguardienta (spirits). Nothing could be jollier than such a life as these people lead. They travelled au clair de la lune, armed to the teeth; when they arrived at the hotels the mules were unloaded and turned out to grass, the guitar, played à la Figaro, began to tinkle, and all the young women, like "the Buffalo girls," came out to dance. Wine and spirits flowed freely, the greatest good humour prevailed, and the festivities were broken only sometimes by "knifing or shooting."

We also visited Tarbes, which even in those days was beginning to acquire a reputation for "le shport;" it presently became one of the centres of racing and hunting in France, for which the excellent climate and the fine rolling country admirably adapted it. It was no wonder that the young French horse beat the English at the same age. In the Basque Pyrénées a colt two years old is as well grown as a Newmarket weed at two and a half.

When the great heat was over, the family returned to Pau, where they found a good house over the arcade in the Place Gramont. Pau boasts of being the birthplace of Henry IV., Gaston de Foix, and Bernadotte. Strangers go through the usual routine of visiting the Castle, called after the Protestant-Catholic King, Henry IV.; driving to Ortez, where Marshal Soult fought unjustifiably the last action of the Peninsular War; and of wandering about the flat, moor-like landes, which not a little resemble those about Bordeaux. The society at Pau was an improvement upon that of Naples. The most remarkable person was Captain (R.N.) Lord William Paget, who was living with his mother-in-law (Baroness de Rothenberg), and his wife and children, and enjoying himself as usual. Though even impecunious, he was the best of boon companions, and a man generally loved. But he could also make himself feared, and, as the phrase is, would stand no nonsense. He had a little affair with a man whom we will call Robinson, and as they were going to the meeting-place he said to his second, "What's the fellow's pet pursuit?" "Well!" answered the other, "I don't know—but, let me see—ah, I remember, a capital hand at waltzing." "Waltzing!" said Lord William, and hit him accurately on the hip-bone, which spoilt his saltations for many a long month. Years and years after, when both were middle-aged men, I met at Shepherd's Hotel, Cairo, his son, the boy whom I remembered straddling across a diminutive donkey—General Billy Paget. He had also entered the Anglo-Indian army, and amongst other things had distinguished himself by getting the better (in an official correspondence) of General John Jacob, the most obstinate and rancorous of men. "Billy" had come out to Egypt with the intention of returning to India, but the Red Sea looked so sweltering hot and its shores so disgustingly barren, that he wrote to Aden to recall his luggage, which had been sent forward, then and there retired from the service, married a charming woman, and gave his old friends a very excellent dinner in London.

There were also some very nice L'Estranges, one of the daughters a very handsome woman, some pretty Foxes, an old Captain Sheridan, with two good-looking daughters, and the Ruxtons, whom we afterwards met at Pisa and the Baths of Lucca. Certain elderly maidens of the name of Shannon lived in a house almost overhanging the Gave de Pau. Upon this subject O'Connell, the Agitator, produced a bon mot, which is, however, not fit for the drawing-room. Pau was still a kind of invalid colony for consumptives, although the native proverb about its climate is, "that it has eight months winter, and four of the Inferno." Dr. Diaforus acts upon the very intelligible system of self-interest. He does not wish his patients to die upon his hands, and consequently he sends them to die abroad. In the latter part of the last century he sent his moribunds to Lisbon and to Montpellier, where the vent de bise is as terrible as a black east wind is in Harwich.

Then he packed them off to Pisa, where the tropics and Norway meet, and to damp, muggy, reeking Madeira, where patients have lived a quarter of a century with half a lung, but where their sound companions and nurses suffer from every description of evil which attend biliousness. They then found out that the dry heat of Teneriffe allowed invalids to be out after sunset, and, lastly, they discovered that the dry cold of Canada and Iceland, charged with ozone, offers the best chance of a complete cure. I proposed to utilize the regions about the beautiful Dead Sea, about thirteen hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean, where oxygen accumulates, and where, run as hard as you like, you can never be out of breath. This will be the great Consumptive Hospital of the future.

Pau Education.

At Pau the education went on merrily. I was provided with a French master of mathematics, whose greasy hair swept the collar of the redingote buttoned up to the chin. He was a type of his order. He introduced mathematics everywhere. He was a red republican of the reddest, hating rank and wealth, and he held that Le Bon Dieu was not proven, because he could not express Him by a mathematical formula, and he called his fellow-men Bon-Dieusistes. We were now grown to lads, and began seriously to prepare for thrashing our tutor, and diligently took lessons in boxing from the Irish groom of a Captain Hutchinson, R.N. Whenever we could escape from study we passed our hours in the barracks, fencing with the soldiers, and delighting every piou-piou (recruit) by our powers of consuming the country spirit (the white and unadulterated cognac). We also took seriously to smoking, although, as usual with beginners in those days, we suffered in the flesh. In the later generation, you find young children, even girls, who, although their parents have never smoked, can finish off a cigarette without the slightest inconvenience, even for the first time.

Smoking and drinking led us, as it naturally does, into trouble. There was a Jamaica Irishman with a very dark skin and a very loud brogue, called Thomas, who was passing the winter for the benefit of his chest at Pau. He delighted in encouraging us for mischief sake. One raw snowy day he gave us his strongest cigars, and brewed us a bowl of potent steaming punch, which was soon followed by another. Edward, not being very well, was unusually temperate, and so I, not liking to waste it, drank for two. A walk was then maliciously proposed, and the cold air acted as usual as stimulant to stimulant. Thomas began laughing aloud, Edward plodded gloomily along, and I got into half a dozen scrimmages with the country people. At last matters began to look serious, and the too hospitable host took his two guests back to their home. I managed to stagger upstairs; I was deadly pale, with staring eyes, and compelled to use the depressed walk of a monkey, when I met my mother. She was startled at my appearance, and as I pleaded very sick she put me to bed. But other symptoms puzzled her. She fetched my father, who came to the bedside, looked carefully for a minute at his son and heir, and turned upon his heel, exclaiming, "The beast's in liquor." The mother burst into a flood of tears, and next morning presented me with a five-franc piece, making me promise to be good for the future, and not to read Lord Chesterfield's "Letters to his Son," of which she had a dreadful horror. It need hardly be said that the five francs soon melted away in laying in a stock of what is popularly called "a hair of the dog that bit."

What we learnt last at Pau was the Bearnais dialect. It is a charmingly naïve dialect, mixture of French, Spanish, and Provençale, and containing a quantity of pretty, pleasant songs. The country folk were delighted when addressed in their own lingo. It considerably assisted me in learning Provençale, the language of Le Geysaber; and I found it useful in the most out-of-the-way corners of the world, even in Brazil. Nothing goes home to the heart of a man so much as to speak to him in his own patois. Even a Lancashire lad can scarcely resist the language of "Tummas and Mary."

Argélés.

At length the wheezy, windy, rainy, foggy, sleety, snowy winter passed away, and the approach of the warm four months, warned strangers to betake themselves to the hills. This time the chosen place was Argélés. In those days it was a little village, composed mainly of one street, not unlike mining Arrayal in Brazil, or a negro village on the banks of the Gaboon. But the scenery around it was beautiful. It lay upon a brawling stream, and the contrast of the horizontal meadow-lands around it, with the backing of almost vertical hills and peaks, thoroughly satisfied the eye. It had cruel weather in winter time, and a sad accident had just happened. A discharged soldier had reached it in midwinter, when the snow lay deep and the wolves were out, and the villagers strongly dissuaded him from trying to reach his father's home in the hills. He was armed with his little briquet, the little curved sword then carried by the French infantry soldiers, and he laughed all caution to scorn. It was towards nightfall; he had hardly walked a mile, before a pack came down upon him, raging and ravening with hunger. He put his back to a tree, and defended himself manfully, killing several wolves, and escaped whilst the carcases were being devoured by their companions; but he sheathed his sword without taking the precaution to wipe it, and when he was attacked again it was glued to the scabbard. The wolves paid dearly for their meal, for the enraged villagers organized a battue, and killed about a score of them as an expiatory sacrifice for the poor soldier.

We two brothers, abetted by our tutor, had fallen into the detestable practice of keeping our hands in by shooting swifts and swallows, of which barbarity we were afterwards heartily ashamed. Our first lesson was from the peasants. On one occasion, having shot a harmless bird that fell among the reapers, the latter charged us in a body, and being armed with scythes and sickles, caused a precipitous retreat. In those days the swallow seemed to be a kind of holy bird in the Bearnais, somewhat like the pigeons of Mecca and Venice. I can only remember that this was the case with old Assyrians and Aramæans, who called the swift or devilling the destiny, or foretelling bird, because it heralded the spring.

The Boys fall in Love.

There was a small society at Argélés, consisting chiefly of English and Spaniards. The latter were mostly refugees, driven away from home by political changes. They were not overburdened with money, and of course looked for cheap quarters. They seemed chiefly to live upon chocolate, which they made in their own way, in tiny cups so thick and gruelly, that sponge-cake stood upright in it. They smoked cigarettes with maize-leaf for paper, as only a Spaniard can. The little cylinder hangs down as if it were glued to the smoker's lower lip. He goes on talking and laughing, and then, by some curious movement of a muscle developed in no other race, he raises the weed to the horizontal and puffs out a cloud of smoke. They passed their spare time in playing the guitar and singing party songs, and were very much disgusted when asked to indulge the company with Riego el Cid. There was a marriage at Argélés, when a Scotch maiden of mature age married M. Le Maire, an old French mousquetaire, a man of birth, of courtly manners, and who was the delight of the young ones, but his plaisanteries are utterly unfit for the drawing-room. There was also a Baron de Meydell, his wife, her sister, and two very handsome daughters. The eldest was engaged to a rich young planter in the Isle of Bourbon. We two lads of course fell desperately in love with them, and the old father, who had served in the Hessian Brigade in the English army, only roared with laughter when he saw and heard our polissoneries. The old man liked us both, and delighted in nothing more than to see us working upon each other with foil and sabre. The parting of the four lovers was something very sad, and three of us at least shed tears. The eldest girl was beyond such childishness.

As the mountain fog began to roll down upon the valley, our father found that his poor chest required a warmer climate. This time we travelled down the Grand Canal du Midi in a big public barge, which resembled a Dutch trekschuyt. At first, passing through the locks was a perpetual excitement, but this very soon palled. The L'Estranges were also on board, and the French part of the company were not particularly pleasant. They were mostly tourists returning home, mixed with a fair proportion of commis-voyageurs, a class that corresponds with, but does not resemble, our commercial traveller. The French species seems to have but two objects in social life: first, to glorify himself, and secondly, to glorify Paris.

Monsieur Victor Hugo has carried the latter mania to the very verge of madness, and left to his countrymen an example almost as bad as bad can be. The peculiarity of the commis-voyageur in those days, was the queer thin varnish of politeness, which he thought it due to himself to assume. He would help himself at breakfast or dinner to the leg, wing, and part of the breast, and pass the dish to his neighbour when it contained only a neck and a drumstick, with a pleased smile and a ready bow, anxiously asking "Madame, veut elle de la volaille?" and he was frightfully unprogressive. He wished to "let sleeping dogs lie," and hated to move quiet things. It almost gave him an indigestion to speak of railways. He found the diligence and the canal boat quite fast enough for his purpose. And in this to a certain extent he represented the Genius of the Nation.

With the excellent example of the Grand Canal du Midi before them, the French have allowed half a century to pass before they even realized the fact that their rivers give them most admirable opportunities for inland navigation, and that by energy in spending money they could have a water line leading up from Manches to Paris, and down from Paris to the Mediterranean. In these days of piercing isthmuses, they seem hardly to have thought of a canal that would save the time and expense of running round Spain and Portugal, when it would be so easy to cut the neck that connects their country with the Peninsula. The rest of the journey was eventless as usual. The family took the steamer at Marseille, steamed down to Leghorn, and drove up to Pisa. There they found a house on the south side of the Lung' Arno, belonging to a widow of the name of Pini. It was a dull and melancholy place enough, but it had the advantage of a large garden that grew chiefly cabbages. It was something like a return home; a number of old acquaintances were met, and few new ones were made.

Drawing.

The studies were kept up with unremitting attention. I kept up drawing, painting, and classics, and it was lucky for me that I did. I have been able to make my own drawings, and to illustrate my own books. It is only in this way that a correct idea of unfamiliar scenes can be given. Travellers who bring home a few scrawls and put them into the hands of a professional illustrator, have the pleasure of seeing the illustrated paper style applied to the scenery and the people of Central Africa and Central Asia and Europe. Even when the drawings are carefully done by the traveller-artist, it is hard to persuade the professional to preserve their peculiarities. For instance, a sketch from Hyderabad, the inland capital of Sind, showed a number of mast-like poles which induced the English artist to write out and ask if there ought not to be yards and sails. In sending a sketch home of a pilgrim in his proper costume, the portable Korán worn under the left arm narrowly escaped becoming a revolver. On the chocolate-coloured cover of a book on Zanzibar, stands a negro in gold, straddling like the Colossus of Rhodes. He was propped crane-like upon one leg, supporting himself with his spear, and applying, African fashion, the sole of the other foot to the perpendicular calf.

Music.

But music did not get on so well. We all three had good speaking voices, but we sang with a "voce di gola," a throaty tone which was terrible to hear. It is only in England that people sing without voices. This may do very well when chirping a comic song, or half-speaking a ballad, but in nothing higher. I longed to sing, began singing with all my might at Pau in the Pyrenees, and I kept it up at Pisa, where Signor Romani (Mario's old master) rather encouraged me, instead of peremptorily or pathetically bidding me to hold my tongue. I wasted time and money, and presently found out my mistake and threw up music altogether. At stray times I took up the flageolet, and other simple instruments, as though I had a kind of instinctive feeling how useful music would be to me in later life. And I never ceased to regret that I had not practised sufficiently, to be able to write down music at hearing. Had I been able to do so, I might have collected some two thousand motives from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, and have produced a musical note-book which would have been useful to a Bellini, or Donizetti, or a Boito.

We had now put away childish things; that is to say, we no longer broke the windows across the river with slings, or engaged in free fights with our coevals. But the climate of Italy is precocious, so, as the Vicar of Wakefield has it, "we cocked our hats and loved the ladies." And our poor father was once appalled by strange heads being put out of the windows, in an unaccustomed street, and with the words, "Oh! S'or Riccardo, Oh! S'or Edoardo."

Madame P——, the landlady, had three children. Sandro, the son, was a tall, gawky youth, who wore a cacciatore or Italian shooting-jacket of cotton-leather, not unlike the English one made loose, with the tails cut off. The two daughters were extremely handsome girls, in very different styles. Signorina Caterina, the elder, was tall, slim, and dark, with the palest possible complexion and regular features. Signorina Antonia, the younger, could not boast of the same classical lines, but the light brown hair, and the pink and white complexion, made one forgive and forget every irregularity. Consequently I fell in love with the elder, and Edward with the latter. Proposals of marriage were made and accepted. The girls had heard that, in her younger days, mamma had had half a dozen strings to her bow at the same time, and they were perfectly ready to follow parental example. But a serious obstacle occurred in the difficulty of getting the ceremony performed. As in England there was a popular but mistaken idea that a man could put a rope round his wife's neck, take her to market, and sell her like a quadruped, so there was, and perhaps there is still, in Italy, a legend that any affianced couple standing up together in front of the congregation during the elevation of the Host, and declaring themselves man and wife, are very much married. Many inquiries were made about this procedure, and at one time it was seriously intended. But the result of questioning was, that promessi sposi so acting, are at once imprisoned and punished by being kept in separate cells, and therefore it became evident, that the game was not worth the candle. This is like a Scotch marriage, however—with the Italian would be binding in religion, and the Scotch in law.

Edward and I made acquaintance with a lot of Italian medical students, compared with whom, English men of the same category were as babes, and they did us no particular good. At last the winter at Pisa ended, badly—very badly. The hard studies of the classics during the day, occasionally concluded with a revel at night. On one hopeless occasion a bottle of Jamaica gin happened to fall into the wrong hands. The revellers rose at midnight, boiled water, procured sugar and lemons, and sat down to a steaming soup tureen full of punch. Possibly it was followed by a second, but the result was that they sallied out into the streets, determined upon what is called a "spree." Knockers did not exist, and Charleys did not confine themselves to their sentry-boxes, and it was vain to ring at bells, when every one was sound asleep. Evidently the choice of amusements was limited, and mostly confined to hustling inoffensive passers-by. But as one of these feats had been performed, and cries for assistance had been uttered, up came the watch at the double, and the revellers had nothing to do but to make tracks. My legs were the longest, and I escaped; Edward was seized and led off, despite his fists and heels, ignobly to the local violon, or guard-house. One may imagine my father's disgust next morning, when he was courteously informed by the prison authorities that a giovinotto bearing his name, had been lodged during the night at the public expense. The father went off in a state of the stoniest severity to the guard-house, and found the graceless one treating his companions in misfortune, thieves and ruffians of every kind, to the contents of a pocket-flask with which he had provided himself in case of need. This was the last straw; our father determined to transfer his head-quarters to the Baths of Lucca, and then to prepare for breaking up the family. The adieux of Caterina and Antonia were heartrending, and it was agreed to correspond every week. The journey occupied a short time, and a house was soon found in the upper village of Lucca.

The Baths of Lucca.

In those days, the Lucchese baths were the only place in Italy that could boast of a tolerably cool summer climate, and a few of the comforts of life. Sorrento, Montenero, near Leghorn, and the hills about Rome, were frequented by very few; they came under the category of "cheap and nasty." Hence the Bagni collected what was considered to be the distinguished society. It had its parson from Pisa, even in the days before the travelling continental clergyman was known, and this one migrated every year to the hills, like the flight of swallows, and the beggars who desert the hot plains and the stifling climate of the lowlands. There was generally at least one English doctor who practised by the kindly sufferance of the then Italian Government. The Duke of Lucca at times attended the balls; he was married, but his gallant presence and knightly manner committed terrible ravages in the hearts of susceptible English girls.

The queen in ordinary was a Mrs. Colonel Stisted, as she called herself, the "same Miss Clotilda Clotworthy Crawley who was" so rudely treated by the wild Irish girl, Lady Morgan. I was also obliged to settle an old score with her in after years in "Sinde, or the Unhappy Valley." And so I wrote, "She indeed had left her mark in literature, not by her maudlin volume, 'The Byeways of Italy,' but by the abuse of her fellow authors." She was "the sea goddess with tin ringlets and venerable limbs" of the irrepressible Mrs. Trollope. She also supplied Lever with one of the characters which he etched in with his most corrosive acid. In one season the Baths collected Lady Blessington, Count D'Orsay, the charming Lady Walpole, Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the poetess, whose tight sacque of black silk gave us youngsters a series of caricatures. There, too, was old Lady Osborne, full of Greek and Latin, who married her daughter to Captain Bernal, afterwards Bernal Osborne. Amongst the number was Mrs. Young, whose daughter became Madame Matteucci, wife of the celebrated scientist and electrician of Tuscany. She managed, curiously to say, to hold her own in her new position. Finally, I remember Miss Virginia Gabriell, daughter of old General Gabriell, commonly called the "Archangel Gabriel." Virginia Gabriell, "all white and fresh, and virginally plain," afterwards made a name in the musical world, composed beautiful ballads, published many pieces, and married, and died in St. George's Hospital by being thrown from a carriage, August 7, 1877. She showed her savoir faire at the earliest age. At a ball given to the Prince, all appeared in their finest dresses and richest jewellery. Miss Virginia was in white, with a single necklace of pink coral. They danced till daylight; and when the sun arose, Miss Virginia was like a rose amongst faded dahlias and sunflowers.

There was a very nice fellow of the name of Wood, who had just married a Miss Stisted, one of the nieces of the "Queen of the Baths," with whom all the "baths" were in love. Another marking young person was Miss Helen Crowley, a girl of the order "dashing," whose hair was the brightest auburn, and complexion the purest white and red. Her father was the Rev. Dr. Crowley, whose Jewish novel "Salathiel" made a small noise in the world; but either he or his wife disliked children, so Miss Helen had been turned over to the charge of aunts. These were two elderly maiden ladies, whose agnosticism was of the severest description. "Sister, what is that noise?" "The howling of hymns, sister." "The beastly creatures," cried she, as "Come across hill and dale" reached her most irreverent ears. I met both of these ladies in later life, and it was enough to say that all three had terribly changed.

Amongst the remarkable people we knew were the Desanges family, who had a phenomenon in the house. A voice seemed to come out of it of the very richest volume, and every one thought it was a woman's. It really belonged to Master Louis, who afterwards made for himself so great a name for battle-scenes (The Desanges' Crimea and Victoria Cross Gallery) and also for portraits.3 The voice did not recover itself thoroughly after breaking, but sufficient remained for admirable comic songs, and no man who ever heard them came away from "Le Lor Maire" and "Vilikens et sa Dinah" without aching sides. There was another learned widow of the name of Graves, whose husband had been a kinsman of my father. Her daughter prided herself upon the breadth of her forehead and general intellectuality. She ended by marrying the celebrated historian Von Ranke. Intellectual Englishwomen used to expect a kind of intellectual paradise in marrying German professors. They were to share their labours, assist in their discoveries, and wear a kind of reflected halo or gloria, as the moon receives light from the sun; but they were perfectly shocked when they were ordered to the kitchen, and were addressed with perhaps "Donner—Wetter—Sacrament" if the dinner was not properly cooked.

These little colonies like the "Baths of Lucca" began to decline about 1850, and came to their Nadir in 1870. Then they had a kind of resurrection. The gambling in shares and stocks and loans lost England an immense sum of money, and the losses were most felt by that well-to-do part of the public that had a fixed income and no chance of ever increasing it. The loss of some five hundred millions of pounds sterling, rendered England too expensive for a large class, and presently drove it abroad. It gained numbers in 1881, when the Irish Land Bill, soon to be followed by a corresponding English Land Bill, exiled a multitude of landowners. So the little English colonies, which had dwindled to the lowest expression, gradually grew and grew, and became stronger than they ever did.

The Boys get too Old for Home.

It was evident that the Burton family was ripe for a break up. Our father, like an Irishman, was perfectly happy as long as he was the only man in the house, but the presence of younger males irritated him. His temper became permanently soured. He could no longer use the rod, but he could make himself very unpleasant with his tongue. "Senti come me li rimangia quei poveri ragazzi!" (Hear how he is chawing-up those poor lads!) said the old Pisan-Italian lady's-maid, and I do think now that we were not pleasant inmates of a household. We were in the "Sturm und drang" of the teens. We had thoroughly mastered our tutor, threw our books out of the window if he attempted to give a lesson in Greek or Latin, and applied ourselves with ardour to Picault Le Brun, and Paul de Kock, the "Promessi Sposi," and the "Disfida di Barletta." Instead of taking country walks, we jodelled all about the hillsides under the direction of a Swiss scamp. We shot pistols in every direction, and whenever a stray fencing-master passed, we persuaded him to give us a few hours of "point." We made experiments of everything imaginable, including swallowing and smoking opium.

The break-up took place about the middle of summer. It was comparatively tame. Italians marvelled at the Spartan nature of the British mother, who, after the habits of fifteen years, can so easily part with her children at the cost of a lachrymose last embrace, and watering her prandial beefsteak with tears. Amongst Italian families, nothing is more common than for all the brothers and sisters to swear that they will not marry if they are to be separated from one another. And even now, in these subversive and progressive days, what a curious contrast is the English and the Italian household. Let me sketch one of the latter, a family belonging to the old nobility, once lords of the land, and now simple proprietors of a fair Estate. In a large garden, and a larger orchard of vines and olives, stands a solid old house, as roomy as a barrack, but without the slightest pretension of comfort or luxury. The old Countess, a widow, has the whole of her progeny around her—two or three stalwart sons, one married and the others partially so, and a daughter who has not yet found a husband. The servants are old family retainers. They consider themselves part and parcel of the household; they are on the most familiar terms with the family, although they would resent with the direst indignation the slightest liberty on the part of outsiders. The day is one of extreme simplicity, and some might even deem it monotonous. Each individual leaves his bed at the hour he or she pleases, and finds coffee, milk, and small rolls in the dining-room. Smoking and dawdling pass the hours till almost mid-day, when déjeuner à la fourchette, or rather a young dinner, leads very naturally up to a siesta. In the afternoon there is a little walking or driving, and even shooting in the case of the most energetic. There is a supper after nightfall, and after that dominoes or cards, or music, or conversazione, keep them awake for half the night. The even tenor of their days is broken only by a festival or a ball in the nearest town, or some pseudo Scientific Congress in a City not wholly out of reach; and so things go on from year to year, and all are happy because they look to nothing else.

Schinznach and England.

Our journey began in the early summer of 1840. My mother and sister were left at the Baths of Lucca, and my father, with Mr. Du Pré, and Edward and I, set out for Switzerland. We again travelled vetturino, and we lads cast longing eyes at the charming country which we were destined not to see again for another ten years. How melancholy we felt when on our way to the chill and dolorous North! At Schinznach I was left in charge of Mr. Du Pré, while my father and brother set out for England direct. These Hapsburg baths in the Aargau had been chosen because the abominable sulphur water, as odorous as that of Harrogate, was held as sovereign in skin complaints, and I was suffering from exanthémata, an eruption brought on by a sudden check of perspiration. These eruptions are very hard to cure, and they often embitter a man's life. The village consisted of a single Establishment, in which all nationalities met. Amongst them was an unfortunate Frenchman, who had been attacked at Calcutta with what appeared to be a leprous taint. He had tried half a dozen places to no purpose, and he had determined to blow his brains out if Schinznach failed him. The only advantage of the place was, its being within easy distance of Schaffhausen and the falls of the Rhine.

When the six weeks' cure was over, I was hurried by my guardian across France, and Southern England, to the rendezvous. The Grandmother and the two aunts, finding Great Cumberland Place too hot, had taken country quarters at Hampstead. Grandmamma Baker received us lads with something like disappointment. She would have been better contented had we been six feet high, bony as Highland cattle, with freckled faces, and cheek-bones like horns. Aunt Georgina Baker embraced and kissed her nephews with effusion. She had not been long parted from us. Mrs. Frank Burton, the other aunt, had not seen us for ten years, and of course could not recognize us.

We found two very nice little girl-cousins, who assisted us to pass the time. But the old dislike to our surroundings, returned with redoubled violence. Everything appeared to us so small, so mean, so ugly. The faces of the women were the only exception to the general rule of hideousness. The houses were so unlike houses, and more like the Nuremberg toys magnified. The outsides were so prim, so priggish, so utterly unartistic. The little bits of garden were mere slices, as if they had been sold by the inch. The interiors were cut up into such wretched little rooms, more like ship-cabins than what was called rooms in Italy. The drawing-rooms were crowded with hideous little tables, that made it dangerous to pass from one side to the other. The tables were heaped with nick-nacks, that served neither for use or show. And there was a desperate neatness and cleanness about everything that made us remember the old story of the Stoic who spat in the face of the master of the house because it was the most untidy place in the dwelling.

The Family break up.

Then came a second parting. Edward was to be placed under the charge of the Rev. Mr. Havergal, rector of some country parish. Later on, he wrote to say that "Richard must not correspond with his brother, as he had turned his name into a peculiar form of ridicule." He was in the musical line, and delighted in organ-playing. But Edward seemed to consider the whole affair a bore, and was only too happy when he could escape from the harmonious parsonage.

In the mean time I had been tried and found wanting. One of my father's sisters (Mrs. General D'Aguilar, as she called herself) had returned from India, after an uninterrupted residence of a score of years, with a large supply of children of both sexes. She had settled herself temporarily at Cambridge, to superintend the education of her eldest son, John Burton D'Aguilar, who was intended for the Church, and who afterwards became a chaplain in the Bengal Establishment. Amongst her many acquaintances was a certain Professor Sholefield, a well-known Grecian. My father had rather suspected that very little had been done in the house, in the way of classical study, during the last two years. The Professor put me through my paces in Virgil and Homer, and found me lamentably deficient. I did not even know who Isis was! worse still, it was found out that I, who spoke French and Italian and their dialects like a native, who had a considerable smattering of Bearnais, Spanish, and Provençale, barely knew the Lord's Prayer, broke down in the Apostles' Creed, and had never heard of the Thirty-nine Articles—a terrible revelation!

1. "The Sword," in three large works nobly planned out, when after the first part was brought out, death frustrated the other two.—I. B.

2. There are three hundred and sixty-five of these pits, one for every day in the year.—I. B.

3. In 1861 he painted Richard's and my portraits as a wedding gift.—I. B.