154 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE 



Notwithstanding the Norway cruise, my health 

 remained out of sorts, and a little later in the year, 

 while some of my old fever was on me, I could not 

 resist a dangerous exposure in order to witness the 

 funeral of the Duke of Wellington. This made me 

 seriously ill ; I could hardly stand, but somehow 

 made my way to my mother's house at Claverdon, 

 where she and my sister Emma nursed me tenderly, 

 and then, as I got better, it was agreed that we 

 should all go together to Dover for a complete 

 chanoe. 



There I recovered completely, and became engaged 

 to my future wife, the daughter of the Very Rev. 

 George Butler, Dean of Peterborough, who had been 

 Headmaster of Harrow during many years. My 

 wife had three sisters and four brothers, the latter all 

 highly distinguished for scholastic and administrative 

 ability. 



I shrink, yet cannot wholly refrain from speaking 

 of the affection I freely received from them, their 

 relatives and their friends, all owing to that happy 

 marriage, which lasted forty-four years, and ended 

 at Royat in 1897, followed by a grave in the cemetery 

 at Clermont Ferrand. 



I shall say little about my purely domestic life, 

 which, however full of interest to myself, would be 

 uninteresting to strangers, so I attempt no more than 

 to give brief accounts of the friendships and events 

 that followed my marriage in 1853 up to about 1866. 

 This interval of thirteen years occupies a fairly well 

 defined part of my life owing to two reasons, namely, 

 that my scientific interests during its latter half 

 became concentrated on heredity, and because it was 



