An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 15 seized him by the neck and back, ran him out into the street, threw him about 8 feet into the road, and then came back and said thoughtfully aud apologetically to us two, who were highly delighted at our parent's vigour, " Perhaps I was a trifle too hasty," which passed into a family byeword. 10. Walter Rye, the writer, born at Chelsea on the 31st October, 1843, All Hallows Eve, was the seventh child of his parents, which facts ought to have qualified him to see ghosts but didn't. I owe my Christian name to the great love and admiration my mother had for Walter Scott, who in her and my opinion was the best man, as well as the best novelist the world bas ever seen. I was born of long-lived and sturdy families, both on my father's and mother's side, the average of my ancestors for the last few generations being 77.I My father being a very studious man, and my mother very fond of gardening,. I was left chiefly in the hands of an old aunt (M.A. Tuppen) who spoiled me extremely. One of my earliest remem– brances was being taken by my father when only nine years old to see the lying in state of the Duke of Wellington in 1852, and being nearly crushed to death there. I was sent when very young to a school of a very pretentious character called "St. Peter's Collegiate School," Eaton Square, in connection with King's College, which had been started in 1830, and to which my elder brothers, E. C. Rye and Chas. Rye, had previously gone. The Head Master may or may not have been a very clever man,2 but he certainly was wantonly brutal and· severe to a degree, and was justly hated by all his pupils. Among the scholars I remember were Atter, of Stam– ford (now Towu Clerk and Steward there); Paul Bedford,. son of the actor-author; Sir W. Balliol Brett, afterwards a 1 The average ages of my direct ancestors (excluding a woman who died in childbirth) being no less than 77, while of the present generation my eldest sister was 73 when she died. I am just the same, and I have two others " not out" at 86 aud 79, a present average· of 78 ! Not so bad for a family whose two grandparents were, to say the least of it, not teetotallers. For myself I have only lost one out of ten, and he died while only a few days old. Temperance faddists please note ! 2 Note by a schoolfellow: "He had not the qualifications of a fourth-form schoolboy.'' His brother whom he ousted from the Headmastership was a brilliant scholar but an eccentric man.