the time I did not realize it, even in those days he was rather un- Almost the only neighbours with whom we were on visiting terms were the Gallengas, who lived at the Falls of Llandogo. He was in some way associated with the plots of Mazzini, and had had to fly from Italy in consequence. The principal member of the family I remember was a boy two or three years older than I who pursued my bare legs with bits of puzzle monkey tree to my annoyance and discomfort and quite futile rage. At the beginning of this period I used to sleep in a cot placed at the foot of my parents' big bed. My mother used to give me instruction in the morning at the other end of the big bedroom which was used as a sitting-room, and somewhere about the time when I was seven or eight I remember that one of the tasks I did was to observe and pick the wild flowers of the country, fasten them on to a sheet of paper, and write on the sheet of paper in my own hand the botanical name, the common name, the properties and the habitat of the flower. I have often wished that I could find the considerable manuscript book which these leaves had made, but I have never seen it since. I have no recollection of learning to read and write and think I must have managed to do it without much difficulty, although there are people who say I cannot write even now. On the other hand, I recollect my brother learning to read much later at Pembroke Lodge out of a book called "Reading Without Tears," which certainly did not justify its title. However, he has made up for it since. I have been told by my Aunt Maude that I could read at five, and I do remember as a fact that I had read the whole of Walter Scott's novels for my own amusement before I was eight. In fact I learnt swearing from them and used to say 'zounds and 'sdeath without having the least idea what they meant; except when German governesses inclined me in preference to Potztausend and Donnerblitzen. I used to read enormously, everything I could lay hands on, and I do not think any books were forbidden to me. I remember that I used to wake up in the middle of the night-this was later when I had the new room that was built-and read for an hour. And I further remember that, as I was allowed no candle, I constructed an ingenious apparatus for myself of a sort of dish of candle grease with one of the little floating tin wicks that I found in Price's night-lights. One night, however, I must have gone to sleep unexpectedly and the apparatus was discovered in the bed with grease all over the bed clothes, which put an end to that dangerous habit. It was this same curious night reading that got me into the habit, which I have never lost, of walking about the house in the dark with great confidence. If I wanted a book in the middle of the night I used to walk down to the drawing-room in pitch darkness, knowing the way perfectly and without any trouble or any apprehension. Nor have I ever been afraid of walking in the dark, probably because my childish mind was not allowed to be filled with ridiculous stories of ghosts, bogies, and the like, by ignorant nursemaids. One curious faculty is with me to this day and I have never discovered anyone else who seems to possess it with the same degree of certainty. It is that of knowing in the dark when I am coming to a shut door at least two or three feet before I reach it. I never fail to feel a sort of oppression in my forehead on nearing the obstruction, and as a very convenient practical result have never bumped my head against a shut door in the dark. My early recollections are concerned with the making of the little square garden beyond the drawing-room verandah. It had a wall about four feet high on the left hand which made a right angle turn, gradually sloping down towards the front walk, and was practically enclosed in a little square. This was quite wild on our arrival and I remember my father and mother and Williams all working to get it into shape and tidying it and making the beds and planting fuchsias, one of the earliest garden flowers with which I was acquainted. Meanwhile I pottered round with my little wheelbarrow, treated quite seriously as one of the working party. What I most vividly recall in connexion with it is the discovery and killing of a snake, probably not dangerous, but to me as to most people all snakes are terrifying and repulsive. I think the impressions made on the plastic mind of youth go so deep and are so ineffaceable that no number of palimpsests serve completely to obscure them. Certainly it was this particular little square garden that I most clearly visualized when I read Kipling's account some thirty or forty years later of the mongoose's fight with a cobra in "Rikki Tikki Tavy." The next work I remember was the construction of the rockery, and this was a considerable labour, occupying, I think, quite a year. It was a perfect circle about 50 to 60 feet in diameter with four entrances, very large slabs of the local sandstone for the back shelving gradually down to the gravelled centre. You came in by a broad walk from the drawing-room window and the opposite exit led through a short wood to the Log House. On the right hand through another small piece of wood to the meadow and ultimately to the top of Llandogo Falls, and on the left hand to a little sort of half-concealed stone cave where my governess and I used very often to sit for work or play in later years. Along the walk to the right I recollect on an occasion when my father had sold some oak trees being very much interested in the white peeled stems whose bark had been carefully removed for the local tan-yards of Tintern. I remember nothing of the construction of the Log House except that my father was bitten by one of the large red ants whose great swarming heaps are a characteristic of the Monmouthshire woods. I do, however, remember frequently sitting in the Log House after it was built, sometimes at a sort of picnic tea and sometimes by myself, and I have a water colour of my Aunt Maude's depicting me as Little Boy Blue with yellow hair sitting on the top of the steps gazing over the Wye Valley. For I had forgotten to say that this was not an ordinary summer-house level with the ground but was raised on piles so that the upper part was some ten feet high. From near the Log House a mossy path wound round the woods near the Duke of Beaufort's boundary, and came out at the kitchen-garden. The meadow in front of the house contained many fine old trees with gnarled and knobby trunks where I used to spend many happy hours with my German governess listening to stories of fairies and elves with whom we peopled the trees. At the far corner of the meadow near the top of the Falls was a cottage belonging to a man named Richards, who I think was in our employ as cowman or under-gardener. The Falls of Llandogo deserve a word of description and had a great fascination for me in my youth. The stream which feeds them is an insignificant little brook, but sometimes has quite a lot of water in it. Just beyond Richards's cottage it enters the steeply sloping wood through which it tumbles in a series of cascades bright with the rich vegetation of the Wye Valley down to a stone trough just above the village of Llandogo, after which it runs quietly into the Wye. A few hundred yards above Richards's cottage this same brook made a deep quiet pool in the meadow where I used to bathe, and about a hundred yards above that again was a wide place where sheep washing used to take place. Close to this was the cottage of an old Welsh woman, who was quite a character and always feeding her donkeys in our wood, but she entirely won my heart by gifts of bread and butter with thick brown sugar. I used in consequence often to visit the cottage. The man wore and the woman made those blue smocks embroidered with white cord which were then the normal wear of the peasantry, and have since become fashionable among simple lifers. I believe Cobden-Sanderson wears one to this day when he desires to be impressive. So far as artistic or æsthetic tastes are concerned, the Russells had some, the Stanleys none. My father had a harmonium in his study on which he used to play for his own amusement; my mother painted in water colours as one of the accomplishments of a young lady, but not well and never kept it up after her marriage. I am primarily a Stanley, and the only sign of anything in the way of artistic inclinations that I have inherited is an appreciation of literature. I cannot sing a note on the whole I dislike music and singing-although I enjoy in my own way Gilbert and Sullivan, a violin solo or an organ recital. I have never cared about painting, and have no appreciation of colour, although in recent years I do find myself enjoying a Turner sunset or sunrise (but I mean the real thing and not the painted one), and even a violet-grey landscape. I like etchings; in fact, I think probably any artistic sense I have is that of an engineer rather than an artist, as I have a clear appreciation of line, and in music of time. Even in literature, while I adore Virgil and "In Memoriam " I cannot bring myself to like the modern formless poets. My mother also thought it right that I should not be ignorant of the domestic arts or as incapable of looking after myself as an average man is. For this reason during a long period of at least two years I tidied my own room, made my own bed, emptied my own slops and laid my own fires. As a result I have always been rather impatient of being valeted and have retained the capacity for making a better fire than any housemaid-not that that is anything to boast of. I seem to have said nothing about my father and mother. My mother was Kate Louisa Stanley, the daughter of Lord Stanley of Alderley and still more Lady Stanley of Alderley who started life as one of the Irish Dillons. If I mention my mother first it is I suppose because I am a Stanley in appearance and largely in tem perament, although I have inherited from the Russells bad eyes, some sense of art, a certain capacity for speech and writing coupled with a certain inherent ineffectiveness and hesitation which prevent my being good at games, taking any interest in competition, and blustering my way through life with the superb assurance and selfsatisfaction of the true Stanley. My brother on the other hand is a Russell in appearance, physique, artistic qualities, but certainly not ineffective, although perhaps with a touch of the Russell instability. My grandmother Stanley was a competent woman, and I shall have much more to say of her afterwards. Of her daughters two became countesses and my mother would have done if she had lived, one became rich though untitled, and one, Maude Stanley, died unmarried, the support of her mother's age and the beloved confidant of the whole family. The career of the sons was rather less according to plan: the eldest of the sons who inherited the title, picked up some half-breed Spanish woman somewhere and married her three times at least, although it was not until after both his death and hers that it was finally discovered that none of these marriages had been legal. Luckily she had no issue and therefore it was not necessary to raise the question officially. The second son, Lyulph Stanley, was making a career for himself in the House of Commons, but in a moment of exuberance when the Irish members were complaining that there was no sport for them in Ireland and nothing left for them to shoot, he hurled across the House the single word: "Landlords." This lost him the Irish. Vote in his constituency at Oldham, and he never returned to Parliament until he entered the Upper House after his brother's death. He directed his activities to the London School Board, of which he became the permanent Chairman, and where he did an enormous amount of useful detail work due entirely to his great driving power. The natural apathy of men, or perhaps let me say the apathy of the natural man, instinctively resented this; and when Mr. Balfour's Bill handed education over to the County Council, the L.C.C. refused to make him an Alderman, and I have little doubt that all the London schools have suffered in consequence. Like so many men in the House of Lords he now disguises himself under an alias as Lord Sheffield. My Uncle John, whom I do not remember, if he had lived would no doubt have been carried to fame by his wife as successfully as Lord St. Helier subsequently was. Algernon was put into the Church, at that time one of the natural careers for a younger son; |