’And if it be the heart of man
Which our existence measures,
Far longer is our childhood’s span
Than that of manly pleasures.
’For long each month and year is then,
Their thoughts and days extending,
But months and years pass swift with men
To time’s last goal descending.’
Isaac Williams.
The united force of the younger generation has been
brought upon me to record, with the aid of diaries
and letters, the circumstances connected with Chantry
House and my two dear elder brothers. Once
this could not have been done without more pain than
I could brook, but the lapse of time heals wounds,
brings compensations, and, when the heart has ceased
from aching and yearning, makes the memory of what
once filled it a treasure to be brought forward with
joy and thankfulness. Nor would it be well
that some of those mentioned in the coming narrative
should be wholly forgotten, and their place know
them no more.
To explain all, I must go back to a time long before
the morning when my father astonished us all by exclaiming,
’Poor old James Winslow! So Chantry House
is came to us after all!’ Previous to that
event I do not think we were aware of the existence
of that place, far less of its being a possible inheritance,
for my parents would never have permitted themselves
or their family to be unsettled by the notion of
doubtful contingencies.
My father, John Edward Winslow, was a barrister, and
held an appointment in the Admiralty Office, which
employed him for many hours of the day at Somerset
House. My mother, whose maiden name was Mary
Griffith, belonged to a naval family. Her father
had been lost in a West Indian hurricane at sea,
and her uncle, Admiral Sir John Griffith, was the
hero of the family, having been at Trafalgar and
distinguished himself in cutting out expeditions.
My eldest brother bore his name. The second
was named after the Duke of Clarence, with whom my
mother had once danced at a ball on board ship at
Portsmouth, and who had been rather fond of my uncle.
Indeed, I believe my father’s appointment
had been obtained through his interest, just about
the time of Clarence’s birth.
We three boys had come so fast upon each other’s
heels in the Novembers of 1809, 10, and 11, that
any two of us used to look like twins. There
is still extant a feeble water-coloured drawing of
the trio, in nankeen frocks, and long white trowsers,
with bare necks and arms, the latter twined together,
and with the free hands, Griffith holding a bat,
Clarence a trap, and I a ball. I remember the
emulation we felt at Griffith’s privilege of
eldest in holding the bat.
