young life before me, with letters concerning him still
coming to me from all parts of the world, I feel that
I owe a duty to his memory and to humanity to tell
his story. Let the wisdom of my interpretation of
this call be judged by the following consideration of
the materials upon which it is founded.
IV.
Frank Hatton was born at Horfield, Gloucestershire,
a suburb of Bristol, England, on the 31st of August,
1861. I was at th a t time in my twenty-third year
and editor of a famous west-country journal, the
Bristol Mirror. Connected on my side witl* journalism
and music, his mother brought him the health
and common sense of the sturdy yeomanry of Lincolnshire.
Frank was her second child, and she was
his mother at the age of nineteen. Soon after his
birth we went to live at Durham. Our home is described
in the novel of | Clyte.” Old Waller and his
granddaughter are, to their author, very real persons;
and there are quiet, sad hours in which he sees a
radiant child gathering flowers in their garden. I t
will always be to him the house in which the old
organist watched over the wayward belle of the
cathedral city, but with a bright infantile face looking
up at him while he is designing a fictitious story far
less pitiful than that of which the boy at his knee is
destined to be the hero.
From the north we went to Worcester. Here I
became proprietor of Berrow’s Worcester Journal,
a town councillor, an officer of volunteers, and editor
of the Gentleman's Magazine, dividing my days
between London and the pleasant cathedral city. We
lived at Lansdown, overlooking the pastoral valley
of the Severn, which stretched away under our
windows to the Malvern Hills. Frank had the full
benefit of this pure Worcestershire air. The keeper
of the toll-gate on the London road often opened the
bar to him as he rode through on an obstreperous
wooden horse, prancing along in mock solemnity
towards the city of Dick Whittington. Having lived
on the Wear and the Severn we migrated to the
Thames, and finally settled down by the north gate of
Begent’s Park.
At the age of ten Frank went to his first public
school, an establishment in St. John’s Wood, conducted
by Mr. Berridge. Soon afterwards he became
a pupil at the better-known establishment of Mr.
Barford, Upper Gloucester Place. His chief prizes
during several years were for good conduct. He
gave no indication at this time of the strong individuality
which distinguished him a few years later.
At home he cultivated a taste for music and war.
Under the friendly tuition of a neighbour he became
an expert on the drum. He had played the piano fairly
well for years, his first teacher being the well-known
organist of Worcester Cathedral, Mr. Done. His leisure
hours were chiefly taken up with the construction of
wooden fortifications, defended by a motley assemblage
of toy troops and captured under the fire of real
cannon. He was a collector of arms, pistols, swords,
and knives, and his bedroom was quite an arsenal. A
frequent visitor at the Zoological Gardens, he would
bring home any stray dog or cat that would follow him.