An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 35 Neither of us was any good at the game, but we lost our tempers and aruused the public greatly by belabouring one another towards the finish, not even attempting to guard. Result he bad to take a cab to his office, and for nearly a week I could not put my shirt on without help. In the spring of 1871 I complained in the "East Anglian" that Mr. Fitch, 1 the Hon. Secretary of the N. & N.A.S., had not kept his promise to continue printing my Calendar of Norfolk Fines. He denied this, and a somewhat acrimonious correspondence took place between us, in which in the face of the distinct remem– brances of myself and my wife, he denied he had ever made such a promise. I offered to refer the matter to the Hon. F. Walpole, or to the Rev. Mr. Munford, of East Winch, the author of the Norfolk Domesday, but nothing came of it, though the latter in a letter to me of the 24th March, 1871, refers to my po ·ition as being invulnerable. This was the beginning of a long series of differences between me and the officials of the Archreological Society, whose incompetence and laziness, except during the Rev. W. H. Hudson's tenure of office, has ever been extreme. It has now practically developed into a society for "outings" as against real antiquarian work, and now the ''outings'' themselves have wearied those to whose houses visits have been made. About the same time (18th Febrnary) I took the bags with Sydenham Dixon in perhaps the longest paper-chase run ever undertaken by the Thames Hare and Hounds, or any other club, as 'Ye covered about 24 miles round Epsom, Ewell, &c., and had to send on two relays of scent. The first "hound " in was J. Scott, who as well as the two "hares," were still alive and well thirty years afterwards. Working still at the Wandsworth Night School I had the satisfaction of receiving on 16th March the Inspectors' report that it was the best in the whole S.W. district. 1 I can't help thinking he was the original of the local antiqnary satirized in the local novel '' Julian Clonghton," a11d he certainly was the "Sunnofer Bitch," F.S.A., of "Rubbish and onsense." In turn he, too, was neglected by the Society with which he had had so much to do. When he ruade the City the present of the very :fine collection, now contained in the "Castle Museum," I sank all former differences and called on him at the "Woodlands" to thank him personally, and well reweruber his saying very feelingly, that it was the :first time anyone bad corue to thank him, and he wa& bis "enemy" who did so when his friends neglected him.