Wanstead, in Essex, about seven miles from the great metropolis of England, was the town, and 1798 the year, of my birth. Were it necessary to designate the place more particularly, it might be said that the part of Wanstead where I first struggled into being, was called Nightingale Place; a most musical name, conferred in honor of the nightingales which abounded in the vicinity.
Two years subsequently to my father’s demise, my mother became an inmate of the family of Lady Francis Spencer, daughter of the Duke of Grafton, and wife of Lord Spencer. As a consequence of this event, I was deprived of a mother’s care and consigned to the charge of my aunt Turner, whose family amounted to the very respectable number of twenty-two sons and two daughters. The transfer of a child from the care of its parent to that of another person, may appear, at first sight, to be a very unimportant incident; but trifling as it seems, it often exerts an influence which very materially changes the destiny of the child: it was so in my case. Most of my cousins were sailors, and some of them were constantly returning home, bringing, with true sailors’ munificence, the pleasing and curious productions of distant climes as presents to their parents and friends; then, seated round the bright hearth-side, they used to tell of wild adventures and hair-breadth escapes, spinning out the winter evening’s tale to the infinite delight of their willing listeners. Poor fellows! three of them died at sea; two more, John and Richard, perished in the ill-fated _Blenheim_, a seventy-four gun ship of the British navy, which went down off the Cape of Good Hope, with seven hundred as brave men on board as ever trod a plank. Notwithstanding these sad recollections, and though none perceived it, my three years’ residence among these “sailors bold” decided the nature of my future calling; it captivated my imagination and begat a curiosity, which ultimately led me to make my “home upon the bounding deep.”
An orphan is ever exposed to changes. The loss of either parent calls for a degree of sympathy and kindness from others, which they are rarely willing to expend except on their own. Such is the almost universal selfishness of human nature. My experience affords a verification of the truthfulness of the remark. For some cause or other, it became inconvenient for me to remain with my kind aunt Turner, and my next home was with a widowed aunt, at Wanstead, where I did not meet with the same kindness of treatment. The breaking of a cup, or any of the thousand-and-one offences found in the list of juvenile defects, was sure to bring upon me the infliction of the rod; and, what was equally painful, my most economical aunt exacted the full payment for all these losses from the little pocket money I obtained by holding a horse, running errands, or as new-year and Christmas presents; thus gratifying her temper and her covetousness at once, besides embittering, to some extent, the boyish hours of my unfortunate self.