An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

72 AUTOBIOGRAPHY e.g., in a trial be gave my friend Howlett's son, then at \,Vestminster, IO yards and a 3 yards beating over 300 yds., 33¾, and at Easter won the open half-mile at Norwich, beating Ayton, of Dereham, then thought to be the coming local man, by 6 yards at the Carrow ground, literally through pools of water. The "Thames Tent" was this year on my lawn at Putney to see the start for the Boat Race and about I 20 attended. On the 7th June I saw W.J.W., wh0 had been away for some time, but was thinner and weaker. I :find that on Friday, the 13th, I broke a looking glass, but strange to say nothing ca.me of these treble forebodings. During the summer my wife was at Brighton a good deal for her health. No doubt I took my usual autumn holiday on the Broads, but my diary is a perfect and absolute blank. In November, J.B. Rye won the open half-mile handi– cap at University College, Oxford, from scratch in 2.2, and ran fairly well in the Exeter 2 miles, which be did as good as 10.30, but was never a distance runner any more than his father was. Another of my sons, who at one time thought of going into journalism was then staying with the widow of G. B. Jay, the author of the History of St. George, Tombland, incidentally keeping a tame goat on the roof of the tower of an adjoining church. As to his journaUstic career, bis sauce to a Master Printer which summarily closed it, is still remembered with regretful admiration in a -certain Norwich "Chapel." The Christmas holidays of 1890 were spent inspecting an old trading wherry called the "Alma," once a very fast boat built at Barton, which I afterwards bought and <'ouverted into a pleasure wherry. After Christmas B. L. Tungate and I drovE' over to Cley for duck shooting with poor success as the cold was intense, the washing water in our bedrooms freezing in the basins close to our beds. I was working hard restoring the Maid's Head and on antiquities all the spring of 1891, and made the acquaintance of the Revd. Haweis and his wife at the house at Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, once Rossetti's, but did not fall a victim to bis favourite snare of the mediceval self-locking chair. In May F. G . Rye went to Sandford's at Cromer. Holman Hunt was a neighbour at a quaint old house at Fulham. and I often saw him at work. He painted my