MY RELATIVES AND ANCESTORS 17 



wine whenever he had the opportunity; and during some 

 years at Hertford he rented a garden about half a mile away, 

 in order to grow vegetables and have some wholesome exer- 

 cise. He had had some injury to one of his ankles which 

 often continued to trouble him, and gave him a slight lame- 

 ness, and in consequence of this he never took very long 

 walks. He was rather precise and regular in his habits, quiet 

 and rather dignified in manners, and somewhat of what is 

 termed a gentleman of the old school. Of course, he always 

 wore a top-hat — a beaver hat as it was then called, before silk 

 hats were invented — the only other headgear being sometimes 

 a straw hat for use in the garden in summer. 



In character he was quiet and even-tempered, very religious 

 in the orthodox Church-of-England way, and with such a 

 reliance on Providence as almost to amount to fatalism. He 

 was fond of reading, and through reading clubs or lending 

 libraries we usually had some of the best books of travel or 

 biography in the house. Some of these my father would 

 read to us in the evening, and when Bowdler's edition of 

 Shakespeare came out he obtained it, and often read a play 

 to the assembled family. In this way I made my first 

 acquaintance with Lear and Cordelia, with Malvolio and Sir 

 Andrew Aguecheek, with the thrilling drama of the Mer- 

 chant of Venice, with Hamlet, with Lady Macbeth, and other 

 masterpieces. At one time my father wrote a good deal, 

 and we were told it was a history of Hertford, or at other 

 times some religious work; but they never got finished, and 

 I do not think they would ever have been worth publishing, 

 his character not leading him to do any such work with suffi- 

 cient thoroughness. He dabbled a little in antiquities and 

 in heraldry, but did nothing systematic, and though he had 

 fair mental ability he possessed no special talent, either 

 literary, artistic, or scientific. He sketched a little, but with 

 a very weak and uncertain touch, and among his few scrap- 

 and note-books that have been preserved, there is hardly 

 anything original except one or two short poems in the 

 usual didactic style of the period, but of no special merit. 

 I will, however, give here the only two of these that my 



