to reconstruct a little the story of these early days and learn something of my mother's childhood.
The first mention of "Army" occurs in the following letter which bears the postmark of 1839. She was then two years old, but seems already to be a personage, and to have taken her place in the world.
13, Great Coram Street [ 1839].
Upstairs I can hear Anny playing with the squirrel and her "brooms to sell." She has very little childishness about her, not that she is beyond her years, but there seems a kind of reasonableness in all she does. Her love of pictures is very great and she can distinguish the forms of things ever so minute. I have been trying to teach her the names of colours but everything is either red or white. She knows not only the names of animals but the noise they make, so that when William called her a little donkey today she immediately began hee-haw hee-haw!
[ 1839.]
Where do you think William, William Ritchie, and Charles and Arthur Buller and half-a-dozen others went to the other day? Do not scream--to a boxing match! and I had only ordered a leg of mutton for dinner and in they all poured at six o'clock, not the boxers but the gentlemen. "I gave them no encouragement my dear," said William, "but they would come," at which there was a hearty laugh as if they thought it a very good joke. Nothing suffered but the leg of mutton. I could not help thinking William and Arthur had been engaging in pugilistic exercises themselves, they ate like famished wolves.
. . . I wish you would give me a list of airs in La Sonnambula, I sang that one, that everyone
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