6 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



Other friends or relatives of the Greenell family were 

 named Russell and Pugh, and are buried at Hertford. A 

 large gentleman's mourning ring in memory of Richard 

 Russell, Esq., was given me by Miss Roberts, as, I presume, 

 the person after whom I was given my second name, though 

 probably from an error in the register mine is always spelt 

 with one /, and this peculiarity was impressed upon me in 

 my childhood. Another ring is from Miss Pugh, a friend of 

 my mother's, and, I believe, one of the Russell family. We 

 also possess a very beautiful pastel miniature of Mrs. Frances 

 Hodges, who was a Miss Russell, and who died in 1809, and 

 is buried at All Saints, Hertford ; but the precise relationship, 

 if any, of the Russells to the Greenells I have not been able 

 to ascertain. 



One other point may be here mentioned. There seems 

 to have been some connection by marriage between the 

 Wallace and Greenell families before my father's marriage, as 

 shown by the fact that his elder brother, who died in infancy, 

 was named William Greenell Wallace, and it seems not 

 unlikely that his mother, Mrs. Dilke, had been a Miss 

 Greenell before her first marriage. 



I will now say a few words about my father's early life, 

 and the various family troubles which, though apparently 

 very disadvantageous to his children, may yet have been on 

 the whole, as is so often the case, benefits in disguise. 



My father, Thomas Vere Wallace, was twelve years old 

 when his father died, but his stepmother lived twenty-one 

 years after her husband, and I think it not improbable that 

 she may have resided in Marylebone near William Greenell 

 the architect, and that my father went to school there. The 

 only thing I remember his telling us about his school was 

 that his master dressed in the old fashion, and that he had a 

 best suit entirely of yellow velvet. 



When my father left school he was articled to a firm of 

 solicitors — Messrs. Ewington and Chilcot, Bond Court, Wal- 

 brook, I think, as I find this name in an old note-book of my 



