CHAPTER IV 



Life at Coxwold Vicarage My Welsh Tutor His strange Methods 

 of Teaching I myself set up as a Teacher No Dissent at 

 Coxwold Racing Associations The Coxwold Derby Sweep 

 (Macaroni's Year) Failure to see Tom King Early Shooting 

 My First Partridge Mr Kingsley and the Kites The 

 Kite String and the Magistrate's Hat My Fear of that 

 Magistrate Tom Brown's Schooldays sends me to Rugby 



COXWOLD is a delightful old village and was much 

 more in the world than Kilvington or Cundale. 

 This may have been due to the close proximity 

 of Newburgh Priory, where Sir George and Lady Julia 

 Wombwell used to entertain considerable house parties, 

 the Duke of Cambridge being a frequent guest, and other 

 such celebrities as Maria Marchioness of Ailesbury were 

 among the regular visitors. Needless to say, when these 

 appeared in church on Sundays they gave the gossips of 

 the village infinite food for conversation, and when the 

 vicar, the Rev. George Scott, joined the shooting-parties 

 and went to dinner with the notables, it can be well 

 understood that his family gave him no peace until he 

 told them all about everything, for, I should explain, he 

 had six daughters as well as his good wife. There were 

 also three sons, the eldest of whom, Tom, was about 

 four and a half years my senior, but backward in educa- 

 tion, and a curate had been engaged to act also as 

 private tutor to Tom and the second son, Mainwaring. 

 Somehow it was arranged that I should go to Coxwold 

 to have the advantage of this tutor, a Welshman named 

 Williams, who was a really good sort, and I learned a 

 very great deal from him in little more than a year, from 

 1863 to Easter, 1864. 

 His methods of teaching were remarkable, for instead 



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