ards, one of the greatest of
treats to have a solitary talk with his father. He was, however, rather
unsociable and earned the nickname of 'Gruffian' for his occasionally
surly manner. This, with a stubborn disposition and occasional fits of
the sulks, must have made it difficult to manage a child who persisted
in justifying 'naughtiness' upon general principles. He was rather
inclined to be indolent, and his mother regrets that he is not so
persevering as Frederick (Gibbs). His great temptation, he says himself,
in his childhood was to be 'effeminate and lazy,' and 'to justify these
vices by intellectual and religious excuses.' A great deal of this, he
adds, has been 'knocked out of him'; he cannot call himself a sluggard
or a hypocrite, nor has he acted like a coward. 'Indeed,' he says, 'from
my very infancy I had an instinctive dislike of the maudlin way of
looking at things,' and he remembers how in his fifth year he had
declared that guns were not 'dreadful things.' They were good if put to
the proper uses. I do not think that there was ever much real
'effeminacy' to be knocked out of him. It is too harsh a word for the
slowness with which a massive and not very flexible character rouses
itself to action. His health was good, except for a trifling ailment
which made him for some time pass for a delicate child. But the delicacy
soon passed off and for the next fifty years he enjoyed almost unbroken
health.

In 1836 he explains some bluntness of behaviour by an argument learnt
from 'Sandford and Merton' that politeness is objectionable. In August
occurs a fit of obstinacy. He does not want to be forgiven but to be
'happy and comfortable.' 'I do not feel sorry, for I always make the
best of my condition in every possible way, and being sorry would make
me uncomfortable. That is not to make the best of my condition.' His
mother foresees a contest and remarks 'a daring and hardened spirit
which is not natural to him.' Soon after, I should perhaps say in
consequence of, these outbreaks he was sent to school. My mother's first
cousin, Henry Venn Elliott, was incumbent of St. Mary's Chapel at
Brighton and a leading evangelical preacher. At Brighton, too, lived his
sister, Miss Charlotte Elliott, author of some very popular hymns and
of some lively verses of a secular kind. Fitzjames would be under their
wing at Brighton, where Elliott recommended a school kept by the Rev. B.
Guest, at 7 Sussex Square. My mother took him do