I 



CHILDHOOD. 5 



she learned to love him. Love or no love, she made for 

 nearly forty years an ideal mainstay and central standard 

 of his family life. They were married at the parish 

 church of St. Nicholas, in the city of Worcester, on July 

 15, 1807. 



He had taken to a nomadic life, and where he wandered 

 she was bound to wander. They began a desperate flight 

 from town to town, equalled only in discomfort by the 

 hurried and incessant pilgrimages of the parents of 

 Laurence Sterne. The first movement was to Gloucester, 

 where no one could be found to sit for a portrait. In a 

 panic, the couple presently fled to Bristol, where they 

 lodged for a few months, near the Hot Wells, Thomas 

 Gosse painting " valetudinary " and other ladies and teach- 

 ing drawing with tolerable success. On April 24, 1808, 

 a son, William, who still survives, was born to them in 

 Bristol. After shifting out to Clifton, and then in again to 

 Bristol itself, they came to the conclusion that business 

 was exhausted in that neighbourhood, and in January, 18 10, 

 shifted again, this time back to Worcester ; thence to 

 Upton-on-Severn, thence to Evesham, and back once more 

 to Worcester, just in time for the auspicious incident to 

 take place of which the previous lines are but the necessary 

 prologue. 



Philip Henry Gosse, the second child of Thomas 

 and Hannah Gosse, was born in lodgings over the shop 

 of Mr. Garner, the shoemaker, in High Street, Worcester, 

 on April 6, 18 10. Short rest was given to the unfortu- 

 nate mother, for in July the family, now four in number, 

 made yet another migration, this time to Coventry, where 

 they took lodgings in West Orchard. For some months 

 Coventry proved to be a capital centre, and Mr. Gosse 

 had plenty of business, but in December of the same year 

 they were off again, and now to Leicester. Mrs. Gosse, 



