CHILDHOOD AT COATE FARM 39 



that over there lay Southampton and the sea, for not once 

 or twice only is it mentioned that the Marlborough road 

 ' led towards the ships,' sixty miles off. And on one of 

 these early days, I think, he saw a skeleton disinterred by 

 the brook, the * Roman brook ' by Wanborough Nythe. 

 He describes such a disinterment made accidentally by 

 a horse, and the skeleton haunts him in ' The Gamekeeper,' 

 in ' Meadow Thoughts,' in ' The Story of My Heart,' and 

 elsewhere. One sorrowful impression of this kind can 

 furnish an acid by means of which even joyous things bite 

 deeper into the brain. 



I do not know how early he went to the sea, but he 

 visited the Lewes Downs as a child, and was taken to the 

 shore, probably at Eastbourne, Worthing, and Brighton, 

 by his aunt and uncle, the Harrilds. When he was a 

 little child he went to London, and stayed for months at 

 a time with the Harrilds at Shanklin Villa, Sydenham. 

 There he went to a small private school, and was a ' good ' 

 and docile, but not a brilliant, child. He was fond of 

 drawing what he saw with much laboured precision. 

 Taken to lengthy religious meetings at Exeter Hall, he 

 kept himself happy in the crowd with his pencil and 

 paper. He sat quietly for hours with any picture-books, 

 such as Punch. 



Very soon he was a fisherman in the brook, and then 

 in the Reservoir. In 1856, before he was eight, he wrote 

 that he had been ' out shooting with papa. We shot 

 several Rabbits. I have rowed the Boat from one end 

 of the water to the other with Mama and two others. I 

 have caught some fishes, but they are dead.'* Before 

 he was nine, he was ' climbing trees, shooting, fishing, 

 swinging, blowing my trumpet all over the place, and up 

 to all sorts of tricks. 'f Three months later he wrote : J 



' I have been on the Reservoir many times, and out 

 with Papa shooting rabbits to Hodson, and have shot one 

 myself. ... I should like to come and see you again soon. 



* To Mrs. Harrild. f To the same, July 2, 1857. 



X To the same, October 19, 1857. 



