An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

44 AUTOBIOGRAPHY enile, died at 6, Drayton Terrace. Everything being very melancholy for the family, my wife and I spent our Christmas at Salisbury, driving over to see Stonehenge in a snow torm, the effect being very weird and lonely. During this year I published an account of the family of Rye. About r877 being driven from " The Limes" by the jerry-builder, I took a much more pretentious and expen– sive house, at 9, St. Anne's Hill, on the high land above the main street, my partner Eyre coming to live with us. Here again the garden was the inducement, for besides the ordinary garden, beautifully shrubbed, there were two or three acres of fruit garden rnnning at right angles behind it, right down to Alfarthing Lane, with a duck pond. Down its middle we made a straight turf path for archery 1 on which we held an athletic meeting with a straight teeplechase, with every possible obstacle, including a water jump for which several "cracks·, ran, including Junker, the Russian. We also made an oval running path of 350 yds. or so round which our T.H. & H. team used to train in the winter months. I either kept no diary during 1877 or lost it, and cannot record anything noticeable happening, but I see that in r877, to oblige the then treasurer of the L.A.C., I wrote a pamphlet on "Sir John Bennett and the Ward of Cheap," dealing with the City's right to object to any alderman whose character was not above suspicion. During the year, at St. Anne's Hill, Philip Sparrow Townsend Rye was born, but died almost at once in great pain, it turning out he had cancer on the liver. He was buried in a grave I bought in Putney Cemetery [B Nos. 512- 513], where I gave the second site for a grave for my brother, E. C. Rye, who also lies buried there. John L'Estrange died this year to my great regret, and the circumstances under which he died were most painful to me and his numerous other antiquarian friends. His portrait will be found opposite. 1 Archery always bad a great attraction for me, but I never did a public performance of any merit, though I have made very good scores iu private. The nervousness which has always been the curse of my life in athletics, and which made me fail to show anything like as good time in public what I could do in private attacked me here with the same results.