Memoirs of Eighty Years. Thomas Gordon Hake
of the first Gordon are the Aberdeen family. In the reign of one David, King of Scotland, a Norman prince of name forgotten, settled on a territory called Gordon, north of the Tweed. The elder branch failed after three or four generations; an only daughter succeeding to the territory, married a Seton, of Seton, who took the name of Gordon, so that this branch, the most successful one, having become barons, earls, marquisses, and finally dukes, are a younger branch of the Setons; baronets of Touch, still existing, while the Aberdeens, the second branch of Gordon, are the true descendants.
The centuries that have elapsed must have wholly eradicated the blood of Gordon in this family that still bears the name, and had the marquisate from early Scottish kings, whose daughter one of them married: Arabella.
There is something very dry in family history, because no one cares for other people’s relations. What I note down is to show that I belong to all classes. I have a cousin who is a baronet named Key; another who is an earl named Ranfurly; and, as I was told, one of my family was a butcher named Bedford. In fact, while not a true Briton, which I am glad of, I have a full share to my name of the Saxon blood. As regards my mother’s family, they were comparatively obscure in the middle of this century, and are so still, except in the instance of one individual who has a statue in Trafalgar Square, set up by the Conservative Government in perpetual disapproval of the neglect which the hero of Khartoum experienced at the hands of the Gladstone-Granville administration. But for that he would have been, like Cromwell, without a statue. Of him I shall give my opinion in the proper place; and as his name is public property, I shall trace some of the families from which, in common with him, I have derived my origin.
I may say, then, that our grandfather, Captain William Augustus Gordon, was an officer somewhat distinguished in the service. He was at the taking of Moro Castle, Havanna, Louisburg, and Quebec. At the siege of Quebec he was on the staff of General Wolf, and saw him die happy. He retired early from the army, in which he made many powerful friends—married a lady of many high qualities and great personal beauty, named Clarke, whose family belonged to Hexham, in Northumberland, the sister of the Rev. Slaughter Clarke, incumbent of that place, at whose house he first met her while stationed in the town on military duty. He had a family by her of four daughters and three sons, of which my mother was the firstborn.
III.
I had a sister; she came two or three years before me, and died at the age of four or five and twenty, of typhoid fever. She was attended, but in vain, by men of skill—Dr. J. A. Wilson, physician to St. George’s, and Mr. Nussey, the king’s apothecary.
Then I have a brother, who came last—two years after me—my oldest friend.
We both had good abilities, as time has since shown, but being let to run wild, we had no serious use for them, so we devoted them to mischief. It seems a settled purpose in nature for children to destroy whatever things they can lay their hands on, by way of testing the strength of materials, and to privately annoy all who come within their reach, not out of wickedness, but for fun. I and my brother fully entered into these views, and did all in our power to assist them; the consequence was, we were a good deal disliked. Another failing that we indulged in was a love of the village boys’ society, and this caused us to be looked down on by gentlemen’s sons. The street boys we found the best company, and they were amenable to our orders, which could not be said of the genteel class.
All this is defensible in children who are allowed to follow their own devices, and is a sign of health, for good little boys and girls are never very well. There is no intellectual endowment of such value as a sense of the ridiculous; it argues the existence of imagination, to which it is a supplement and corrective.
Can any one say he has more than one friend who makes him part of himself? I have one—my brother. I used to say once, “If you want friends, you must breed them;” but experience tells us that this method has only an average success. Acquired friends must be engrafted in youth, or before, while growth is going on. Friendships made later are only impressions; they are not an integral part of us; and, though they may flourish, are liable to be overturned. Stately as they may become, like the elm, they have no tap-root.
I said, the other day at dinner, before one of my brother’s sons, but playfully, “I and my brother are fonder of each other than we are of our own children; but we have known each other longer than we have known them.”
A child to be healthy should not be too clever; he should only have receptive power and humour. How grown-up children even differ in this respect!
IV.
Soon after I was seven I went away to school. My mother had inherited a small income in bank-stock, and was able to go where she liked, which she did freely. It was now Exmouth, now Teignmouth, Dawlish, Budleigh Salterton, Tiverton, and other places, but she never found peace of mind in any. She was throughout a long life in search of the Ideal which she never found, and she handed the passion with the same result down to me. She had a married sister, named Wallinger, at Gainsborough; so she took us there. This sister, a year younger than herself, played the great lady throughout as long a life as my mother’s: her husband, Captain Wallinger, was the son of the Wallinger of Hare Hall in Essex, a county family; he had been in the Dragoon Guards, and at a venture might be called the finest and handsomest man of his time.
I remember the house where we lived at Gainsborough, and that of the Wallingers, so well, that I could describe both to the satisfaction of an artist, together with the surroundings, and the roads leading to them, not forgetting a white wooden bridge that spanned the Trent, and which we crossed in due time in a post-chaise into Yorkshire, where we visited relations, the Rimingtons of Hillsborough, near Sheffield, the beautiful grounds of which are now, perhaps, cut up for buildings by a knife-grinding population. A descendant of this family is Rimington Wilson of Bromhead, a famed grouse manor; another is Lord Ranfurly. I remember even sitting on the left side of the carriage, and looking out of the window at the water as we crossed the Trent.
One does not read faces from an early age, but I have a good recollection of certain features; for instance, I can recall our “cousin” Rimington’s powdered head. But after I was seven, I never forgot a face, and often knew schoolfellows again, despite the changes time had worked, whom I had not met for half a century.
It is not the features one recollects, but the demeanour and general expression. One does not, as a rule, observe the features of others. A man who had seen me every day for a year, said, “Well, I always imagined your eyes were blue, but I now observe that they are hazel.”
In his novel of “Coningsby” Disraeli has introduced the character of Sir Joseph Wallinger, the same Christian name as my uncle’s. There being no other family of that name, I have often felt curious to learn what circumstance led him to its selection. He may have been a visitor at Hare Hall in his younger days. I shall have occasion to revert frequently to the Wallingers.
We made a long visit to the Rimingtons; I retain the recollection of it as one of much enjoyment. I remember the housekeeper promising me a penny if I would sit still for an hour, which I did, and lost my money five minutes after while rolling it about the floor; a suggestive episode. I remember Mr. Rimington giving me sixpence, which I no sooner got than I dropped it into a water-tank beyond recovery, as many have done since who have shares in submarine telegraph companies.
This wealthy family, which must still dwell in the memory of many Sheffielders, had only one son, whose three children may still live, with the exception of Lady Ranfurly; the eldest is Rimington of Bromhead Hall, with the suffix of Wilson.
Bromhead Hall manor must have the best grouse shooting in Yorkshire, except that of Studley Royal. My grandmother’s sister, Mrs. Wilson, was our cousin Rimington’s mother, and was a very stately lady. She lived at Upper Tooting, where I once spent