My Life as an Author | Page 4

books and writings, especially those
which are absolutely out of print, or, haply have never been published.
No doubt, in such excerpts, exhibited at their best, the critical
accusations of unfairness, self-seeking, and so forth, will be made, and
may be met by the true consideration that something of this sort is
inevitable in autobiography. However, for the matter of vanity, all I
know of myself is the fact that praise, if consciously undeserved, only
depresses me instead of elating; that a noted characteristic of mine
through life has been to hide away in the rear rather than rush to the
front, unless, indeed, forced forward by duty, when I can be bold

enough, if need be; and that one defect in me all know to be a dislike to
any assumption of dignity--surely a feeling the opposite to self-conceit;
whilst, if I am not true, simple, and sincere, I am worse than I hope I
am, and all my friends are deceived in their kind judgment of me.
But let this book speak for itself; I trust it is honest, charitable, and
rationally religious. If I have (and I show it through all my writings) a
shrinking from priestcraft of every denomination, that feeling I take to
be due to some ancient heredity ingrained, or, more truly, inburnt into
my nature from sundry pre-Lutheran confessors and martyrs of old,
from whom I claim to be descended, and by whose spirit I am imbued.
Not but that I profess myself broad, and wide, and liberal enough for all
manner of allowances to others, and so far as any narrow prejudices
may be imagined of my idiosyncrasy, I must allow myself to be
changeable and uncertain--though hitherto having steered through life a
fairly straight course--and that sometimes I can even doubt as to my
politics, whether they should be defined Whig or Tory; as to my
religion, whether it is most truly chargeable by the epithet high or low;
as to my likings, whether I best prefer solitude or society; as to
literature, whether gaieties or gravities please me most. In fact, I
recognise good in everything, though sometimes hidden by evil, right
(by intention, at least) in sundry doctrines and opinions otherwise to my
judgment wrong, and I am willing to believe the kindliest of my
opponents who appear to be honest and earnest. This is a very fair
creed for a citizen of the world, whose motto is Terence's famous
avowal, "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto."
CHAPTER II.
INFANCY AND SCHOOLDAYS.
In a short and simple way, then, and without any desire ostentatiously
to "chronicle small beer," as Iago sneers it, I suppose it proper to state
very briefly when and where I was born, with a word as to my
parentage. July 17, 1810, was my birthday, and No. 20 Devonshire
Place, Marylebone, my birthplace, at that time the last house of London
northward. My father, Martin Tupper, a name ever honoured by me,

was an eminent medical man, who twice refused a baronetcy (first from
Lord Liverpool, and secondly, as offered by the Duke of Wellington);
my mother, Ellin Devis Marris, being daughter of Robert Marris, a
good landscape artist, of an old Lincolnshire family, and made the
heiress, as adopted child, of her aunt, Mrs. Ellin Devis, of Devonshire
Place and Albury.
My father's family have sojourned 336 years in Guernsey, having
migrated thither from Thuringia, viâ Hesse Cassel, owing to religious
persecution in the evil days of Charles V., our remote ancestors being
styled Von Topheres (chieftains, or head-lords) of Treffurth (as is
recorded in the heraldic MSS. of the British Museum), that being the
origin of our name.
Of my mother's family (in old time Maris, as "of the sea," with
mermaids for heraldry), I have the commissions of one who was an
Ironside cavalry officer, signed by Cromwell and Fairfax; and several
of her relatives (besides her father) were distinguished artists. In
particular, her uncle (my wife's father), Arthur William Devis, the
well-known historical painter, and her great-uncle, Anthony Devis, who
filled Albury House with his landscapes.
Some of our old German stock crossed the Atlantic in Puritan times,
and many of the name have attained wealth and position both in
Canada and the United States; notably Sir Charles Tupper northwards,
and sundry rich merchants in New York, Virginia, and the Carolines
southwardly.
Of my infancy let me record that I "enjoyed" very delicate health,
chiefly due, as I now judge, to the constant cuppings and bleedings
whereby "the faculty" of those days combated teething fits, and
(perhaps with Malthusian proclivities) killed off young children. I
remember, too, that the broad meadows, since developed into Regent's
Park and Primrose Hill, then "truly rural," and even up to Chalk Farm,
then notorious for