CHAPTER II
1837–1840
On 6 July, 1837, we left England in the steam vessel, Leeds, for Bordeaux.
The party consisted of my father, mother, my sister, and my brother William, who had been born on October 25th, 1836, myself and a nurse. The weather was beautiful; scarce a breath of air ruffled the surface of the sea, the Bay of Biscay was most amiable, and this continued till we reached Bordeaux on the ensuing Saturday, having left Plymouth on the previous Wednesday. From Bordeaux, the party went by diligence to Bayonne by way of Pont de Marsan, travelling night and day. As there was full moon, and the weather was warm, my sister, then a babe, was wrapped in a cloak and strapped on top of the luggage on the roof of the diligence, where she slept soundly, being visited at the stations where we changed horses to see that she was all right.
We remained some time at Bayonne, where we had letters of introduction to the Labattes—agents for the Baring house, and with whom my grandfather had been intimate.
From Bayonne the whole party moved for the winter to Pau, where we took a flat on the Grande Place.
Curiously enough, one of my earliest recollections of Pau was with regard to a ruined wall in the park, but whether this was due to its being constructed of cobble-stones set in mortar, or because its existence as a ruin was inexplicable to me, I cannot say. But then, as a child, the glories of the view of the snowy range of the Pyrenees made no impression on me. A child sees only those things that are close at hand, and does not appreciate what is distant. It is as we grow old that the distant things become to us of the highest importance, and the older we grow the more
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