Book Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SIR JOHN HAY DRUMMOND HAY CHAPTER I. BOYHOOD. 1816-1834. IN 1816, my father, at that time Major in the 73rd Regiment, was on the staff of Lord Lynedoch?then in command of the army of occupation?and held the post of ' Majeur de Place' at Valenciennes; where my mother, after the conclusion of peace, had joined him. Here I was born on the 1st of June of that year, and my name was inscribed as a French citizen at the Mayoralty. After my father retired from the army, he was offered by his relative the Earl of Kinnoull, hereditary Lord-Lyon, the office at Edinburgh of Lord-Lyon Clerk. At Edinburgh we resided first in an old-fashioned house at Deanhaugh? the boards of the room where I slept were stained with the blood of a tenant who had committed suicide there? the garden adjoined that attached to the house where the painter Raeburn dwelt. Later, we moved into a house in Athol Crescent, one of the first of the new buildings in Edinburgh in those days; I have a little sketch, from a window at the back of the house, of the pretty country seen therefrom and which is now all built over. With my elder brother, I was sent as day-boarder to the Academy. Early in the morning, after a breakfast of porridge, and having been given by my mother a penny to buy a 'bap' for my luncheon, I started off, with my satchel on my back, for school. Near Stockbridge I would meet 'daft Jamie'?walking up and down in all weathers, bareheaded, with his hands behind his back?and often gave the poor fellow half my bap: one day he had disappeared, and afterwards I learnt he had been one of the first victims of the murderers Burke and Hare, who sold bodies for dissection to the eminent surgeon, Knox. Being an indolent boy, and having great difficulty in learning by heart any lesson, I was always at...