It is just
their fault if they have never read them, or if they have never heard of
her as Felix Mendelssohn's grandmother, a character in which she
appeared with great advantage to the grandson when she was twenty-four,
and he as a young man of nineteen paid his first visit to England. And
it is just their loss if they never saw the jet-black plaits as she wore
them coiled around her head when she was young, or the mass of silky,
snow-white hair of her later days that, when set free, would cascade
over and far below the shoulders that bore the weight of fourscore
years. On her face Time had left its mark. Every line, every wrinkle
gave character and expression to her features, and bore testimony to the
truly beautiful life she had led. The picture reproduced on the first
page of these reminiscences I painted when she was in her 83rd year.

But the story of my mother's life must be written in another volume. For
the present I return to earlier recollections.

When I was ten years old, I was dubbed a big boy, too big to be tied to
his mother's apron-strings, and I was sent to King's College to rough it
with other boys. Opportunities were not wanting for the roughing it. On
one occasion a boy called me a German sausage, and I retorted by
punching his head; and on another I met a University College boy, called
him a stinkermalee, and got my head punched in return. What the
appellation precisely meant, I didn't know, nor do I now, but it was
then the particular term, opprobrious and insulting, we King's College
boys had adopted to express our unbounded contempt for the hated rivals
in Gower Street.

I was generally allowed to walk to school and back by myself, for it
formed part of the scheme of education mapped out for me by my parents,
that I should start fair and see life for myself. My way lay through St.
Giles's and the Seven Dials, and there I did see life and did hear
English too, English as she was spoke in those parts, perhaps as she is
to this day; but as I pass that way now, I don't come across it; the
hand of Time has been moving across the Seven Dials, and all the old
landmarks are gone. Where in these degenerate times can a schoolboy hope
to see a bear, a real big brown bear, in a cage just in front of a
barber's shop? only a penny-shave place to be sure, but bold in its
advertisement, a notice in sprawling big characters proclaiming the
superiority of the establishment's bear's grease over any other grease