The Ancestrji of Francis Gallon 



51 



induced Samuel Tertius gradually to close the bank, which was ac- 

 complished in 1831, without the majority of people knowing anything 

 about it until nearly every account was paid off. The Galton Bank in 

 Steelhouse Lane afterwards became the Polytechnic Institution, later 

 a Children's Hospital, and afterwards (1897) was the house of a medical 

 man. It is now converted into a shop. In 1831, the Galtons' business 

 relations with Birmingham ceased, and Samuel Tertius retired to 

 Leamington in 1832. He had never lived at Duddeston, although he 

 purchased the freehold of it in 1820 for £8000, and it became later 

 a most valuable building estate. After his marriage, he lived at 

 Ladywood, then a mile from Birmingham, and here all his children 

 were born, except Francis who was born at the Larches (see 

 Plate XLV), one mile from Birmingham on the Warwick Road. This 

 house had been Dr Priestley's, being then called Fair Hill, and it was 

 the house burnt in the Birmingham Riots to which we have already 

 referred ; nothing was left but one room and the laboratory over the 

 stablest There was a good garden and three fields, and here the 

 children used to scamper about on the two small Welsh ponies — 

 Scamper and Fenella — to which Charles Darwin refers in his letter of 

 1853: 



" I should much like to hear something of your brothers Darwin and Erasmus ; 

 I very distinctly remember a pleasant visit at the Larches, now many years ago, and 

 having many rides with them on ponies without stirrups." 



Of this visit of Charles Darwin to the Larches Mrs Wheler writes 

 as follows in her Reminiscences : 



"My Uncle, Dr Robert Darwin, was a tall, very large man, weighing more 

 than 20 stone, but wonderfully active for his size and very fond of his garden. He 

 was extremely cheerful and agreeable, full of amusing anecdotes and considered a 

 very clever doctor. His son Charles was a very pleasant lad ; when about W, he was 

 staying with us and went out with my Father to practise shooting ; on his return we 

 asked if he had been successful. 'Oh,' said my Father, ' the birds sat upon the tree and 

 laughed at him.' Some time after my Fathers and Brothers went to Shrewsbury. My 

 Father had hardly sat down, when Charles begged him to come out on the lawn, where 

 he threw up a glove and hit it shooting, without missing, two or three times." 



In 1824 Samuel Tertius purchased Claverdon% an estate near 

 Warwick, which, at first a summer residence, became later almost the 



' It was rebuilt and occupied by Withering the botanist. 



- It is now in possession of his gi-andson, Mr Edward Wheler Galton, and contains 

 a valuable collection of Galton, Darwin and Barclay pictures and manuscripts. 



7—2 



