12 MY LIFE 



proposes, in fact, to commence another magazine with a dif- 

 ferent name, which he says will cost only sixty guineas a num- 

 ber, and can be published at half a crown. He refers to the 

 General Chronicle as if that were the title of the recently de- 

 funct magazine, and he admits that my father may rightly 

 consider himself an ill-used man, though wholly denying that 

 he, Mr. Rendall, had any part in bringing about his misfortunes. 

 The result was that my father had to bear almost the 

 whole loss, and this considerably reduced his already too 

 scanty income. Whether he made any other or what efforts 

 to earn money I do not know, but he continued to live in Mary- 

 lebone till 1816, a daughter Emma having been born there in 

 that year; but soon after he appears to have removed to St. 

 George's, Southwark, in which parish my brother John was 

 born in 1818. Shortly afterwards his affairs must have been 

 getting worse, and he determined to move with his family of 

 six children to some place where living was as cheap as pos- 

 sible; and, probably from having introductions to some resi- 

 dents there, fixed upon Usk, in Monmouthshire, where a suf- 

 ficiently roomy cottage with a large garden was obtained, and 

 where I was born on January 8, 1823. In such a remote dis- 

 trict rents were no doubt very low and provisions of all kinds 

 very cheap — probably not much more than half London prices. 

 Here, so far as I remember, only one servant was kept, and my 

 father did most of the garden work himself, and provided the 

 family with all the vegetables and most of the fruit which was 

 consumed. Poultry, meat, fish, and all kinds of dairy pro- 

 duce were especially cheap ; my father taught the children him- 

 self ; the country around was picturesque and the situation 

 healthy; and, notwithstanding his reverse of fortune, I am in- 

 clined to think that this was, perhaps, the happiest portion of 

 my father's life. 



In the year 1828 my mother's mother-in-law, Mrs. Rebecca 

 Greenell, died at Hertford, and I presume it was in conse- 

 quence of this event that the family left Usk in that year, and 

 lived at Hertford for the next nine or ten years, removing 

 to Hoddesdon in 1837 or 1838, where my father died in 1843. 



