er of
mine, somewhat of a pickle, and a classmate of his, who in after years
blossomed into a Ritualistic clergyman, and who was the son of a
gentleman, living in the Lower Close, not remarkable for personal beauty.
One morning, as he was coming up the school, the sound of weeping reached
old Valpy's ears: straightway he stopped to investigate whence it
proceeded. 'Stand up, sir,' he cried in a voice of thunder, for he hated
snivelling; 'what is the matter with you?' 'Please, sir,' came the
answer, much interrupted by sobs and tears, 'Bob Drake says I'm uglier
than my father, and that my father is as ugly as the Devil.'"

Another old Norwich story may come in here, of two middle-aged brothers,
Jeremiah and Ozias, the sons of a dead composer, and themselves
performers on the pianoforte. At a party one evening Jeremiah had just
played something, when Ozias came up and asked him, "Brother Jerry, what
was that _beastly_ thing you were playing?" "Ozias, it was our
father's," was the reproachful answer; and Ozias burst into tears.

{Monk Soham Rectory: p14.jpg}

When my father went up to Cambridge, his father went with him, and
introduced him to divers old dons, one of whom offered him this sage
advice, "Stick to your quadratics, young man. _I_ got my fellowship
through my quadratics." Another, the mathematical lecturer at
Peterhouse, was a Suffolk man, and spoke broad Suffolk. One day he was
lecturing on mechanics, and had arranged from the lecture-room ceiling a
system of pulleys, which he proceeded to explain,--"Yeou see, I pull this
string; it will turn this small wheel, and then the next wheel, and then
the next, and then will raise that heavy weight at the end." He
pulled--nothing happened. He pulled again--still no result. "At least
ta should," he remarked.

Music engrossed, I fancy, a good deal of my father's time at Cambridge.
He saw much of Mrs Frere of Downing, a pupil of a pupil of Handel's. Of
her he has written in the Preface to FitzGerald's 'Letters.' He was a
member of the well-known "Camus"; and it was he (so the late Sir George
Paget informed my doctor-brother) who settled the dispute as to
precedence between vocalists and instrumentalists with the apt quotation,
"The singers go before, the minstrels follow after." He was an
instrumentalist himself, his instrument the 'cello; and there was a story
how he, the future Master of Trinity, and some brother musicians were
proctorised one night, as