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                            WHAT I REMEMBER


                                VOL. I.

                [Illustration: THOMAS ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE

                   _From a painting by Maria Taylor_

                     London: Richard Bentley & Son

                          _Printed in Paris_]




                            WHAT I REMEMBER


                                  BY
                       THOMAS ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE


                       [Illustration: colophon]


                           _IN TWO VOLUMES_

                                VOL. I


                           _SECOND EDITION_


                                LONDON
                        RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON
            Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
                                 1887




                        RICHARD CLAY AND SONS,
                          LONDON AND BUNGAY.




                          OMNIBUS WICCAMICIS


                         T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE

                  B. M. DE WINTON PROPE WINTON COLL.

                             OLIM ALUMNUS

                              GRATO ANIMO

                               D. D. D.




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER I.
                                                                    PAGE
EARLY DAYS IN LONDON                                                   1

CHAPTER II.
EARLY DAYS IN LONDON                                                  28

CHAPTER III.
AT HARROW                                                             57

CHAPTER IV.
AT HARROW                                                             81

CHAPTER V.
AT WINCHESTER                                                         94

CHAPTER VI.
AT WINCHESTER                                                        125

CHAPTER VII.
VISIT TO AMERICA                                                     150

CHAPTER VIII.
VISIT TO AMERICA                                                     168

CHAPTER IX.
AT OXFORD                                                            190

CHAPTER X.
OLD DIARIES                                                          221

CHAPTER XI.
OLD DIARIES                                                          228

CHAPTER XII.
OLD DIARIES                                                          243

CHAPTER XIII.
OLD DIARIES.--AT PARIS                                               261

CHAPTER XIV.
AT BRUGES.--AT HADLEY                                                290

CHAPTER XV.
GERMAN TOUR.--IN AUSTRIA                                             306

CHAPTER XVI.
IN AUSTRIA                                                           328

CHAPTER XVII.
AT BIRMINGHAM                                                        344

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS                                              355

CHAPTER XIX.
MESMERIC EXPERIENCES                                                 362

INDEX                                                                397




WHAT I REMEMBER




CHAPTER I.


I have no intention of writing an autobiography. There has been nothing
in my life which could justify such a pretension. But I have lived a
long time. I remember an aged porter at the monastery of the “Sagro
Eremo,” above Camaldoli, who had taken brevet rank as a saint solely on
the score of his ninety years. His brethren called him and considered
him as Saint Simon simply because he had been porter at that gate for
more than sixty years. Now my credentials as a babbler of reminiscences
are of a similar nature to those of the old porter. I have been here so
many, many years. And then those years have comprised the best part of
the nineteenth century--a century during which change has been more
rapidly at work among all the surroundings of Englishmen than probably
during any other century of which social history has to tell.

Of course middle-aged men know, as well as we ancients, the fact that
social life in England--or rather let me say in Europe--is very
different from what it was in the days of their fathers, and are
perfectly well acquainted with the great and oftentimes celebrated
causes which have differentiated the Victorian era from all others. But
only the small records of an unimportant individual life, only the
memories which happen to linger in an old man’s brain, like bits of
drift-weed floating round and round in the eddies of a back-water, can
bring vividly before the young of the present generation those ways and
manners of acting and thinking and talking in the ordinary every-day
affairs of life which indicate the differences between themselves and
their grandfathers.

I was born in the year 1810 at No. 16, Keppel Street, Russell Square.
The region was at that time inhabited by the professional classes,
mainly lawyers. My father was a barrister of the Middle Temple to the
best of my recollection, but having chambers in the Old Square,
Lincoln’s Inn. A quarter of a century or so later, all the district in
question became rather deteriorated in social estimation, but has, I am
told, recently recovered itself in this respect under the careful and
judicious administration of the Duke of Bedford. The whole region
appeared to me, when I was recently in London, about the least changed
part of the London of my youthful days. As I walked up Store Street,
which runs in a line from Keppel Street to Tottenham Court Road, I spied
the name of “Pidding, Confectioner.” I immediately entered the shop and
made a purchase at the counter. “I did not in the least want this tart,”
said I to the girl who was serving in the shop. “Why did you take it,
then?” said she, with a little toss of her head. “Nobody asked you to
buy it.” “I bought it,” rejoined I, “because I used to buy pastry of Mr.
Pidding in this shop seventy years ago.” “Lor’, sir!” said the girl,
“did