servants to the Housekeeper's Room for dessert. In later years when the tale of servants had diminished, this room was used by my Uncle Rollo as a laboratory. There was no library in the house, but there was a large bookcase in my grandmother's sitting-room, a smaller one of her own books in my aunt's sitting-room, and a great many in a room known as the school-room which was given to me later for my room.

The Russell ideas of life differed in almost every respect from those in which I had hitherto been brought up. While the attitude of my father and mother was to face life unashamed and unafraid with the unbowed head of Henley, the Pembroke Lodge attitude was one of halting, of diffidence, of doubts, fears and hesitations, reticences and suppressions, and of a sort of mournful Christian humility. My grandmother Lady John, or as she then was, Countess Russell, was one of the best women who ever lived. She was witty, amusing, kind, even devoted, full of a sense of duty, and of considerable toleration, though rather from loyalty to the traditions of the Whigs than from any inborn conviction that other points of view were really tolerable. My Aunt Agatha had a tendency to rather more robust common sense, but adapted herself quite completely to the colour of her environment. My Uncle Rollo possessed the outward figure of a man, but was a perfect production of the sheltered life, the extreme instance of what a man can become when he spends his whole life surrounded by adoring females. They treated him. in the best Jane Austen manner as the male to be looked up to as their natural protector, as the counsellor to be relied uponI think it probable that in his own eyes he was an Atlas supporting upon his strong shoulders the burden of decisions almost too grievous to be borne. In actual fact he passed his whole life under domination either of people or of phantoms, and never once knew the meaning of freedom. He was scientifically inclined, and did some good meteorological work-why is it that kind of person is always weatherwise? In speech he was halting, inconclusive and nervous: in appearance small and shy. It will have been gathered that I did not admire him, and this tendency not to admire was increased by the way in which he was looked up to, quoted and deferred to by the rest of the household. To come from the free air of Ravenscroft into this atmosphere of insincerities, conventions, fears, and bated breath, was like a nightmare to me, young as I was, and during all the years I had to endure it the P. L. atmosphere never ceased to be a nightmare.

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The first and immediate effect upon me was the great circumscription and constriction of my life. I was not allowed to go about barefoot; I who had freely scampered about the country on my pony was never allowed to go beyond the grounds into the park for fear I should get run over or lost. The village of Petersham, or town of Richmond were unthinkable; there was always a possibility of scarlet fever or of my meeting someone who was not nice. No moment of my day was free from supervision, although I learnt in time to use the roofs of Pembroke Lodge as I had used the roofs at Ravenscroft, and in a desire to be occasionally alone I developed great skill in climbing trees and remaining aloft. I had to attend morning prayers: I was taken to church for the first time in my life. Much of my time I received lectures on morals, ethics and conduct with which I did not agree, and for the first time in my life answers were refused to my searching questions. I was not allowed to be much alone with Bertie: he was the angel child, and I was supposed to have a bad influence on him. (They were less sure about his being an angel child afterwards, when he insisted on marrying to please himself and not them.) One of the indignities I most disliked was having to appear on Fridays and Sundays, which were At Home days, with my hair nicely brushed, my hands washed, and my clothes tidy.

In those early days I had a bedroom to myself in the long passage, near my Uncle Rollo's. I generally began the day by visiting my grandmother, still in bed, when I had to learn innocuous poems by heart. The only one that intrigued me was that one of Wordsworth's which begins: "What is good for a bootless bene?" I have spent my life speculating about Jack and the Beanstalk fitting his beans with boots. After breakfast I used to have more or less regular lessons with my tutor, Mr. Holl, and then be instructed to amuse myself in the grounds with him. “Run away and play, dearest Frank," just when I had settled down with a book or with something I should like to do, was among the phrases I most disliked. I think in the afternoons I used sometimes to go for a discreet chaperoned walk or be taken with my grandmother for a drive in the carriage, and in the earlier days I remember riding soberly and with a saddle and stirrups with my Uncle Willy. I also remember later riding with my Uncle Rollo, dreadful rides of five miles or so in which the horses were never put beyond a walk for fear of rabbit holes and because although my uncle liked to think he was an equestrian, he wasn't. In the evenings I had to

read aloud-in later years when I was allowed to sit up after dinner I remember reading Dean Farrar's Sermons aloud. How I loathed Dean Farrar! He had the perfect P. L. touch. allowed to read Shakespeare, and this I enjoyed.

Sometimes I was

Among other prohibitions most books were forbidden me. I remember in particular Captain Marryat. But as the school-room had a good many books in it, particularly on the upper shelves, and the older people had forgotten what they were, I managed to put in a good deal of promiscuous reading unobserved. When I think of the way in which slushy innocence was being continuously extolled and forced upon my independent mind, I think it is much to my credit that I did not plunge headlong into vicious

excesses.

My Aunt Agatha as she was the youngest was also the most alive of the inhabitants of my prison. At the foot of the hill of Petersham Park about ten minutes from the house was what would in these days be called a "provided " school, built and given by my grandfather to Petersham under the auspices of one of the School Societies of those days. The master was a weird figure called Ebenezer Smith, and at the school was kept a village lending library. Twice a week my Aunt Agatha used to go down there and sit for an hour for the purpose of exchanging books. I think they had to pay a penny a week to belong to the library, and she also collected and booked subscriptions. Pauperization was a word of dread in those days, and pennies were also exacted for the Penny Readings we used to have. The school fees were also so many pennies a week, but of course it was in fact supported and run by my grandfather and afterwards by my grandmother. Here, also, I think my Aunt Agatha did most of the work, and wrestled with the various codes issued by the Education Office, which had to be complied with for the purpose of earning a grant. The Penny Readings which took place in the school-house were wonderful affairs the élite would sit in front, then the general public of Petersham and at the back the children. The entertainment consisted of songs, recitations, actual readings, and I think once or twice my grandmother got the children to do a short scene from Shakespeare with two actors. Of course all the talent was local and unpaid. Choruses were not joined in by the audience, smoking, of course, was not allowed, and the whole affair was proper and insipid to a degree: a potential drunkard who preferred it to the public-house could hardly have been much in need of reform.

Among the other self-imposed duties of my Aunt Agatha was my musical education. We used to have Moody and Sankey hymns at morning prayer, and I never by any chance sang a note right. I have no ear, which I have discovered to be an expression musicians use with their natural perversity when what they mean is you cannot reproduce the right note. The Tonic Sol-Fa System became the rage about this time, and I was duly experimented with, but without beneficial result. In instrumental music I was not much more successful. I learnt to read music quite well, and to pick out notes on the piano, indeed I can still do it easily; but after about two years of the devoted labours of my Aunt the high-water mark was reached when I was able to play "Sing a Song of Sixpence with both hands. In later years attempts were made to teach me drawing and tutors were actually engaged to labour upon me. With great éclat I produced a quite recognizable reproduction of a five barred gate. It is no good-I am not artistic. But I can make beautiful plans of an engineering character with rulers, even as I apparently could at the age of seven when I enclosed Rachel a plan of Selkirk in my letter-though what on earth anybody wanted a plan of Selkirk for I cannot think, nor when I had been there.

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CHAPTER VI

CHEAM SCHOOL

DO just remember my grandfather when he was still an erect old man, and an occasion at Pembroke Lodge when I must have been about eight or nine years old, when he desired me to make a fourth at whist, and I do not think I ever touched a card again until I was nearly thirty. One of his jokes, quite of the old-fashioned type, was to pat me on the head and say: "Frank by name and frank by nature." I expect P. L. found me distressingly frank. When I first came to live at P. L. he still preserved some measure of activity, and my Uncle Rollo and my tutor acted to some extent as his secretaries. Mr. Holl did not last long, and another man, called Barber, was engaged to fill both capacities. He left after about six months in distressing circumstances with considerable unpaid debts to the Richmond tradesmen. About this time the whole household was moved bodily to Broadstairs, where we took a large house for the sake of my grandfather's health. I remember my great-uncle George Elliot coming down occasionally and teaching me to play billiards. A new tutor was obtained called Cardew, who afterwards married the daughter of Dean Kitchin and whose brother was later Electrical Adviser to the Board of Trade. He was a well informed and interesting man, and my people liked him because he played the fiddle. He had not, however, the necessary patience to endure the education of youth, and I intensely disliked him, chiefly because he was sarcastic. After a time I found life so intolerable that I decided to run away. I got up quietly in the night and took £3 of my grandmother's money that I found somewhere and the traditional bundle and went to Broadstairs station to inquire about the next train to London. I found there was none till the morning, and was unfortunately recognized by a policeman who took me back to the house. The household was aroused, and I was handed over to old McAlpin, who left me in his pantry while he went to inform the authorities. Long before he returned I had slipped out of the side window and was off again. On this occasion, warned by my previous experience, I struck across country,