An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

tI6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY lovely but steep country, and by Dorking and Redhill, where I trained to Edenbridge and saw my old friend E.R.B., who was very ill. Then by rail to London and by the old road by Edgware to Hemel Hempstead to see my sister. On the 4th, she was able to walk round the garden with me, and I rode on to St. Albans and to Hertford (Salisbury Arms), but it became so excessively hot that I went through to Bishop Stortford, where I found a good lunch at the "Boar's Head" opposite the Church, and wisely took train back to Norwich, where I was met with a terrific storm and rain. In July, E.R.B. died, and I went on the r3th to his funeral at Edenbridge and stayed with his son :it Westminster. He was a very good sort and never recovered the loss of his wife, whose funeral I had also attended some years before. On the 20th was our second Norwich garden party, about 60. August was noticeable from my seeing S. F. Edge's motor car drive up Gas Hill, which had hitherto seemed impossible, for a visit from Miss Jermyn, sister of my old friend the Rev. E. B. Jermyn, who came to search local wills, and for a very fine ride (37½) I had on the r8th where I had the luck to see two swallow-tail butterflies on the wing at Ranworth. This had been my entomological dream for years, but though I had taken the larvre, I had never seen the imago itself. I remember sitting breathless and noiseless 011 my saddle for a quarter of an hour, watching them feed on bramble bloom. Later on I saw one fly across Wroxham Broad. Later in the month I paid a short visit to Simms Reeve at Brancaster, where he and his wife (jointly and severally, for they owned separate cellars) gave me some extremely good port, and he introduced me to the last of the smugglers. a fine old chap in a rough tall hat, who alleged he could have kept up the game to the present date but for the unfair prices asked by the French, whose selfishness he alleged had mined a thriving local industry. Feeling almost convinced me that my grandfather's early prosperity had arisen from being a London agent to the Norwich Smugglers' Company (Limited), I quite sympath– ised with him.