xviii MEMOIR 



him. c It keeps me warm and makes you grow,' lie used to say. 

 And the stripes were not altogether wasted, for the dunce, 

 though still very ' raw,' made progress with his studies. It was 

 known, moreover, that he was going to sea, always a ground of 

 pre-eminence with schoolboys ; and in his case the glory was 

 not altogether future, it wore a present form when he came 

 driving to Rye behind four horses in the same carriage with 

 an Admiral. 'I was not a little proud, you may believe,' 

 says he. 



In 1814, when he was thirteen years of age, he was carried 

 by his father to Chichester to the Bishop's Palace. The Bishop 

 had heard from his brother the Admiral that Charles was likely 

 to do well, and had an order from Lord Melville for the lad's 

 admission to the Royal Naval College at Portsmouth. Both the 

 Bishop and the Admiral patted him on the head and said, 

 4 Charles will restore the old family ; ' by which I gather with 

 some surprise that, even in these days of open house at Northiam 

 and golden hope of my aunt's fortune, the family was supposed 

 to stand in need of restoration. But the past is apt to look 

 brighter than nature, above all to those enamoured of their 

 genealogy ; and the ravages of Stephen and Thomas must have 

 always given matter of alarm. 



What with the flattery of bishops and admirals, the fine 

 company in which he found himself at Portsmouth, his visits 

 home, with their gaiety and greatness of life, his visits to Mrs. 

 Buckner (soon a widow) at Windsor, where he had a pony 

 kept for him and visited at Lord Melville's and Lord Harcourt's 

 and the Leveson-Gowers, he began to have ' bumptious notions,' 

 and his head was * somewhat turned with fine people ; ' as to 

 some extent it remained throughout his innocent and honour- 

 able life, 



Goes to In this frame of mind the boy was appointed to the Con- 



queror, Captain Davie, humorously known as Gentle Johnnie. 

 The captain had earned this name by his style of discipline, 

 which would have figured well in the pages of Marryat : ' Put 

 the prisoner's head in a bag and give him another dozen ! ' 

 survives as a specimen of his commands ; and the men were 



