to
what is called the Middle Class, and there was this further
resemblance between them that they each descended from families
which had been more than well-to-do in the eighteenth century,
and had gradually sunken in fortune. In both houses there had
been a decay of energy which had led to decay in wealth. In the
case of my Father's family it had been a slow decline; in that of
my Mother's, it had been rapid. My maternal grandfather was born
wealthy, and in the opening years of the nineteenth century,
immediately after his marriage, he bought a little estate in
North Wales, on the slopes of Snowdon. Here he seems to have
lived in a pretentious way, keeping a pack of hounds and
entertaining on an extravagant scale. He had a wife who
encouraged him in this vivid life, and three children, my Mother
and her two brothers. His best trait was his devotion to the
education of his children, in which he proclaimed himself a
disciple of Rousseau. But he can hardly have followed the
teaching of 'Emile' very closely, since he employed tutors to
teach his daughter, at an extremely early age, the very subjects
which Rousseau forbade, such as history, literature and foreign
languages.

My Mother was his special favourite, and his vanity did its best
to make a bluestocking of her. She read Greek, Latin and even a
little Hebrew, and, what was more important, her mind was trained
to be self-supporting. But she was diametrically opposed in
essential matters to her easy-going, luxurious and self-indulgent
parents. Reviewing her life in her thirtieth year, she remarked
in some secret notes: 'I cannot recollect the time when I did not
love religion.' She used a still more remarkable expression: 'If
I must date my conversion from my first wish and trial to be
holy, I may go back to infancy; if I am to postpone it till after
my last wilful sin, it is scarcely yet begun.' The irregular
pleasures of her parents' life were deeply distasteful to her, as
such were to many young persons in those days of the wide revival
of Conscience, and when my grandfather, by his reckless
expenditure, which he never checked till ruin was upon him, was
obliged to sell his estate, and live in penury, my Mother was the
only member of the family who did not regret the change. For my
own part, I believe I should have liked my reprobate maternal
grandfather, but his conduct was certainly very vexatious. He
died, in his eightieth year, when I was nine months old.