I FAMILY HISTORY AND BOYHOOD 5 



Sir Victor Alexander Brooke, Bart., was born at 

 Colebrooke, the ancestral home of his race, on the 5th 

 January 1843. His mother was Miss Anson, and had 

 been Maid of Honour to the Queen, and Her Majesty 

 graciously signified her wish to become godmother, 

 and gave the name. 



Originally of an English family, Sir Basil Brooke, 

 the ancestor of the subject of these Memoirs, went over 

 to Ireland in the time of Elizabeth and fought under 

 Lord Mountjoy, was made Governor of the town and 

 Castle of Donegal, and one of the Commissioners for 

 the Settlement of Ulster. His descendant, Sir Henry 

 Brooke, received a grant of lands in County Fermanagh, 

 the present seat of the family. It was here that Victor 

 Brooke passed the earlier years of his life, with his two 

 brothers, Harry and Basil. The house, one of large 

 size, lies in the midst of a very fine park, magnificently 

 timbered, with a river running through it, and extensive 

 woods dotted about the Demesne. There is also a 

 large deer park a few miles from the house, which had 

 been emparked under a Royal Charter of the time of 

 James I., and which was entirely devoted to deer, and 

 kept so completely secluded that the deer within it 

 were practically in a wild state. With these surround- 

 ings, and an inborn love for natural history, Victor 

 Brooke, from his earliest childhood, gathered an accurate 

 fund of information concerning birds and beasts. He 

 had a great power of imitating all the sounds they 

 made, and when a child caused his governess much 

 annoyance by imitating, under the schoolroom window, 

 the noise pheasants make preparatory to going to roost. 

 As soon as he and his brother could sit on a pony they 

 went out with their father, Sir Arthur, on his visits to 

 tenants in different parts of the estate. In 1853 he 

 was sent to a school in Cheshire, and moved thence, in 



