CHILDHOOD 7 



waters of the Wandle the naturalist that was to 

 be found new wonders every day for his enter- 

 tainment. In the autumn his parents generally 

 took a house at Brighton, his father not devoting 

 himself very regularly to business, but giving 

 the best of his time and attention to his mathe- 

 matical studies. 



Daguerre, in France, had recently completed 

 that invention for the taking of daguerreotypes 

 by which his name is remembered. The sight 

 of those primitive photographic records affords 

 more amusement than admiration to-day, but 

 they were wonders in their time, and Lord 

 Avebury used to recall how the French inventor 

 sent the first of his machines that ever came to 

 England to Sir John Lubbock. It arrived at 

 Mitcham, and at the age of four or five Lord 

 Avebury assisted at, or, as he suggests, impeded, 

 the taking of the first picture ever recorded 

 by the sun in England. That picture may be 

 looked on as the parent, or at least the eldest 

 collateral, of every photograph since taken in 

 this country. 



The grandfather died in 1840, and the Mitcham 

 Grove house was given up, Lord Avebury's 

 parents taking up their residence at High Elms, 

 which was entirely rebuilt. 



It must have been very shortly before this 

 removal that Lady Lubbock, his mother, began 

 to keep a systematic record of the sayings and 

 doings of her children, and, perhaps with a little 

 allowance to be made for a mother's natural 

 partiality, this record may be accepted as a 

 valuable indication of their characteristics and 



