i6 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



whom I have records had an average age of seventy years, 

 while the five Greenells had an average of seventy-six. Of 

 our own family, my brother John reached seventy-seven, and 

 my sister Fanny eighty-one. My brother William owed his 

 death to a railway journey by night in winter, from London 

 to South Wales in the miserable accommodation then 

 afforded to third-class passengers, which, increased by a 

 damp bed at Bristol, brought on severe congestion of the 

 lungs, from which he never recovered. 



I will now give a short account of my father's appearance 

 and character. In a miniature of himself, painted just before 

 his marriage, when he was thirty-five years old, he is repre- 

 sented in a blue coat with gilt buttons, a white waistcoat, a 

 thick white neck-cloth coming up to the chin and showing no 

 collar, and a frilled shirt-front. This was probably his wed- 

 ding-coat, and his usual costume, indicating the transition 

 from the richly coloured semi-court dress of the earlier 

 Georgian period to the plain black of our own day. He is 

 shown as having a ruddy complexion, blue eyes, and care- 

 fully dressed and curled hair, which I think must have been 

 powdered, or else in the transition from light brown to pure 

 white. As I remember him from the age of fifty-five onwards, 

 his hair was rather thin and quite white, and he was always 

 clean-shaved as in the miniature. He continued to wear the 

 frilled shirt and thick white neckties, but never wore any 

 outer clothing but black, of the cut we now term a dress- 

 suit, but the coat double-breasted, and the whole rather 

 loose fitting. He also wore large shoes and black cloth 

 gaiters out-of-doors. This dress he never altered, having at 

 first one new suit a year, but latterly I think only one every 

 second or third year ; but he always had one for Sundays 

 and visiting, which was kept in perfect order. The second 

 was for everyday wear ; and when gardening or doing any 

 other work likely to be injurious to his clothes, I think I 

 remember him wearing a thin home-made holland jacket and 

 a gardener's apron. 



In figure he was somewhat below the middle height. He 



