84 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE 



or again in service as an officer in the Militia. My 

 elder brother Darwin was a great favourite among 

 his friends from his early life onwards. He used 

 me as his fag when I was a boy, and taught me to be 

 fairly smart. I imbibed many common-sense maxims 

 from him, but our ideals of life differed to an almost 

 absurd degree : he had not the slightest care for 

 literature or science, and I had no taste for country 

 pursuits. Our differences of temperament became 

 more marked the older we grew. These few remarks, 

 in connection with what has previously been said, 

 will give a supplementary idea of what my surround- 

 ings had been during much of my boyhood. It was 

 now the year 1845, when I was twenty-three years 

 old, and the acuteness of my late bereavement had 

 passed away. 



After the necessary legal business was finished, 

 the members of the family gradually adapted them- 

 selves to their new conditions. My sister Emma 

 lived thenceforth with my mother, whose house, 

 whether at Claverdon or Leamington, I always 

 thought of as "home." Emma soon became my 

 loving and beloved correspondent, continuing so 

 during the remaining seventy years of her long life, 

 ever devoted to my interests and keenly sympathetic. 

 I was indeed fortunate in possessing such an unselfish 

 and affectionate sister. My sister Lucy was in 

 suffering health, from the results of acute rheumatic 

 fever when a child, and lived only three years longer. 

 My sisters Bessy and Adele were then either married 

 or about to be married ; my eldest brother Darwin 

 was married and living with his young wife and her 

 mother, Mrs. Philips, at her country house, called 



