1853-1859] Early Memories of Down 163 



am glad that you were tipped, but that makes no difference 

 in my repaying your outlay. By the way have you no 

 paper, so that you cross your letter, or do you think your 

 handwriting is too clear ? You want pitching into severely. 

 I have had a letter from Mr Mayor (about his banker's 

 mistake) in which he says he heard so grand an account 

 of your future master's, Mr Temple's attainments, that he 

 wants to persuade me to leave you at Rugby till October. 

 Mr Mayor says he shall very much miss you. Think over 

 this well and deliberately, and do not be guided by fleeting 

 motives. You shall settle for yourself; whatever you think 

 will be really best, not pleasantest, shall be done. . . . 



In 1857 Fanny Allen wrote: "The summer has been 

 perfect and will long be remembered by the young as if it 

 were the customary summer and not a stray beauty." The 

 wonderful months of sunshine in the summers of 1857 and 

 1858 are associated in the minds of those whose memories 

 reach back so far, with the horrors of the Indian Mutiny, 

 and in 1858 with the great comet stretching half across the 

 sky. 



This year I broke down in health. The entries in my 

 mother's diary show what years of anxiety she suffered, 

 first with one child and then another. Sometimes it is my 

 health which is thus chronicled day by da}^ sometimes one 

 of the boys. Both parents were unwearied in their efforts 

 to soothe and amuse whichever of us was ill; my father 

 played backgammon with me regularly every day, and my 

 mother would read aloud to me. I particularly associate 

 Cowper's Winter Walk at Noon with these readings. Cowper 

 was a great favourite with her both his letters and poetry. 

 In the summer of 1858, when we were going to the sea on 

 my account, I was allowed to take my kitten. As we went 

 first to Hartfield, then Portsmouth, Sandown, and Shanklin, 

 a sacred kitten, to be thought of first of all, must have added 

 to the troubles of travelling with a sick child. But in spite 

 of all the troubles connected with our ill-health those first 

 fifteen years at Down must have been full of happiness. 

 I see a constant come and go of the relations chronicled in 

 her diary, and a certain amount of sociability with our 

 neighbours also visits from my father's scientific friends. 



I am sorry to say that as growing-up children we were 

 sometimes impatient of her kindness to the unprosperous. 



