Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography | Page 3

company that I could remember the
burning of Covent Garden Theatre, I have noticed a general expression
of surprised interest, and have been told, in a tone meant to be kind and
complimentary, that my hearers would hardly have thought that my
memory went back so far. The explanation has been that these good
people had some vague notions of Rejected Addresses floating through
their minds, and confounded the burning of Covent Garden Theatre in
1856 with that of Drury Lane Theatre in 1809. Most people have no
chronological sense.

Our home was at Woburn, in a house belonging to the Duke of Bedford,
but given by my grandfather to my parents for their joint and several
lives. My father's duties at the House of Commons kept him in London
during the Parliamentary Session, but my mother, who detested London
and worshipped her garden, used to return with her family to Woburn,
in time to superintend the "bedding-out." My first memory is connected
with my home in London; my second with my home in the country, and
the rejoicings for the termination of the Crimean War.
Under the date of May 29, 1856, we read in Annals of Our Time,
"Throughout the Kingdom, the day was marked by a cessation from
work, and, during the night, illuminations and fireworks were all but
universal." The banners and bands of the triumphal procession which
paraded the streets of our little town--scarcely more than a village in
dimensions--made as strong an impression on my mind as the
conflagration which had startled all London in the previous March.
People who have only known me as a double-dyed Londoner always
seem to find a difficulty in believing that I once was a countryman; yet,
for the first twenty-five years of my life, I lived almost entirely in the
country. "We could never have loved the earth so well, if we had had
no childhood in it--if it were not the earth where the same flowers come
up again every spring, that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as
we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass--the same hips and haws on the
autumn hedgerows.... One's delight in an elderberry bush overhanging
the confused leafage of a hedgerow bank, as a more gladdening sight
than the finest cistus or fuchsia spreading itself on the softest
undulating turf, is an entirely unjustifiable preference to a
Nursery-Gardener. And there is no better reason for preferring this
elderberry bush than that it stirs an early memory--that it is no novelty
in my life, speaking to me merely through my present sensibilities to
form and colour, but the long companion of my existence, that wove
itself into my joys when joys were vivid."
I had the unspeakable advantage of being reared in close contact with
Nature, in an aspect beautiful and wild. My father's house was
remarkable for its pretty garden, laid out with the old-fashioned

intricacy of pattern, and blazing, even into autumn, with varied colour.
In the midst of it, a large and absolutely symmetrical cedar "spread its
dark green layers of shade," and supplied us in summer with a kind of
al fresco sitting-room. The background of the garden was formed by
the towering trees of Woburn Park; and close by there were great tracts
of woodland, which stretch far into Buckinghamshire, and have the
character and effect of virgin forest.
Having no boy-companions (for my only brother was ten years older
than myself), of course I played no games, except croquet. I was
brought up in a sporting home, my father being an enthusiastic
fox-hunter and a good all-round sportsman. I abhorred shooting, and
was badly bored by coursing and fishing. Indeed, I believe I can say
with literal truth that I have never killed anything larger than a wasp,
and that only in self-defence. But Woburn is an ideal country for riding,
and I spent a good deal of my time on an excellent pony, or more
strictly, galloway. An hour or two with the hounds was the reward of
virtue in the schoolroom; and cub-hunting in a woodland country at 7
o'clock on a September morning still remains my most cherished
memory of physical enjoyment.
"That things are not as ill with you and me as they might have been is
half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and now
rest in unvisited tombs." Most true: and among that faithful number I
must remember our governess,--Catherine Emily Runciman--who
devoted forty years of her life, in one capacity or another, to us and to
our parents. She was what boys call "jolly out of school," but rather
despotic in it; and, after a few trials of strength, I was emancipated
from her control when I was eight. When we were in