An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

AUTOBIOGRAPHY ment was broken off in less than a year, 1 chiefly because I saw on 12th February, 1865, someone I liked better, though nothing came of that, either except my writing a little book on "The legal and advisable ornaments of the Church of England,'' with the idea of ingratiating myself with her brother, who was a Ritualist ! It was published in 1866 (see post). ~efore I was 21 I had got to run fairly well, viz., 54¾ secs. for a quarter, 2 mins. 8½ secs. for a half, and 4 mins. 58 secs. for a mile. On the 9th July, 1864, I went to the Record Office for the first of very many honrs. On 31st August, 1864, I went to Liverpool and ran in a half mile race at an open meeting. I was suftering from a bad cold, but it made no difference as it happened, for the man who beat me was W. D. Hogarth, of Liverpool, who afterwards turned out a great crack, and was uu beaten till Guy Pym frightened the heart out of him in a match which he ought to have won. However, I got second and beat the others. Fro:n Liverpool I went on with Howlett for a walking tour in Wales, round by Chester and Conway by Llanrwst and Capel Curig to Tan-y-Bwlch Cottage, where we hired a guide and went up Snowdon in the dark mist with a guide, who I beat easily enough after all my training, and slept the night in a dirty, damp cabin, where they charged us a guinea each for the roughest possible accommodation. Next morning, very luckily for us, a gust of wind blew away the mist for half an hour, and we had a grand view of Anglesea and the Irish Coast. We came back by the easy Llanberis way, and by lakes to Carnarvon over the Menai Bridge at Anglesea, and thence with a tremendous rear wind behind us, which literally lifted us off our feet, by Bangor Cathedral (very poor and small), under Penmaenmawr to Conway. In October I came across a wonderfully interesting man called Thorn, who I described in my diary as "the jolliest, most benevolent little mono– maniac.'' He wrote under the pen name of" Le Chevalier au Cygne," and his hobby was the god Thor, and the six hundred, three score and six of the Revelations, and received me most affably as a possible descen,dent of the Tonys and Beaufoys. I adopted his mascot of the Fylfot 1 She was a friend of the Kingsleys, and I remember in my temporary capacity going with her to H. Kingsley's wedding on 19th July, 1864, when I saw Dumaurier for the first time. '