I THE OCCASION AND THE SCENE OF THE decade after a great war brings more than their normal share of parental anxiety upon the professional classes. The army and the navy are reducing their warswollen lists of officers, and accepting very few. The value of fixed incomes is low. Manners and morals, essential factors in the mental equipment of the professional man, are still molten and formless from the crucible of war. At such a time, the task of a clergyman, in training and finding careers for a large family of boys, always an anxious one, must challenge all his resource of purse and character. When, therefore, in 1820,-a year of gloom even for post-Napoleonic England-William Marchant Bussell, perpetual curate' of St. Mary's, Portsea, Hants, died suddenly, leaving a widow under forty, and nine young children, the call to succour the widow and the fatherless was clamant and plain. His parishioners eased, by such monetary aid as they could give, the burden of the children's education. John Garrett Bussell, the eldest son, was at Winchester, ' on the foundation', a likely candidate for the close scholarship at New College, and intended, in the family counsels, for holy orders. William, the second boy, was to enter the Royal College of Surgeons, and the third, Lenox, the navy. What was to be done for Charles, Vernon and Alfred, aged at their father's death nine, six, and four? The girls, Mary, Frances, and Elizabeth would presum B |