An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

AUTOBIOGRAPHY of the painter, very amusing. Had to wait at Waterloo Street and feed on whelks. In the spring of this year (14th March, 1874), was another long run of the T . H. & H. round Croydon, Morden, &c. I was not well enough to join, but saw it from the Commissary General's trap (Howick), and luckily for Rucker found him nearly dead in a ditch near the "Crown" at Morden. [During the year I published my third book, a history of the family of Cubitt, of Norfolk, 1873.J Having made the antiquarian acquaintance of Sir Charles Isham at Lamport Hall, Northampton, I paid him on 2nd-6th April the first of many pleasant visits to the Hall, then beginning to calendar his MSS. He was a most interesting and highly educated man, though a thorough mystic, and had a great glass globe in which he thought he saw spirits. A year or two later (1875) I printed the journal of Thomas Isham, of Lamport, 1671, I writing the long introduction. I tried walking again at the end of April, but though I got to do a mile in 7 min. 13 secs. could not get near my old form, and at Richmond on grass only did 7 min. 42 secs. and 16 min. 9 secs. Just at this time was the crisis of my life, for having had to buy the practice from my father, who was retiring at the age of 71. 1 I bad the greatest difficulty in :finding the money to pay him (as he declined to give me credit, having become senile and lost all nerve and belief in anybody), but by the most kind and volunt~ered help of our counsel, J obn Caldecott, I did so only to be met with the further difficulty that my father would not transfer the lease of 16, Golden Street, to me. This further difficulty, however, was got over by Sir George Bramwell, my father's old friend and co-student, voluntarily taking a transfer of it and granting me a sub -lease. I was then at last started on my own account, though I had already practised for some years privately. All this year I suffered from the irritation of the bowels or quasi-dysentery, which was the result of my long walk from Boston to Lynn in 1871, and which has troubled me all the rest of my life. 1 I retired myself at 56.