In 1820 my father married Emma Caroline, the youngest of the three daughters of Admiral Michell (and my father's uncle, Benjamin Wood, M.P. for Southwark at the time, married the second daughter, Maria, the "Aunt Ben" of this book). She was eighteen. My father was still at Cambridge. The improvident young pair found it difficult to live on the small allowance that was {2} considered sufficient for my father at college. They appear to have been very happy notwithstanding their difficulties, which were augmented a year later by the birth of a son; and while my father became "coach" to young men of slower wit, my mother, who was extremely talented with her brush, cheerfully turned her beautiful miniature painting to account for the benefit of her young husband and son. She soon became an exhibitor of larger works in London, and the brothers Finden engraved several of her pictures. She and my father seem to have idolized their first child, "Little John," and his early death, at about four years old, was their first real sorrow. The boy was too precocious, and when he was three years old his proud young parents were writing "he can read well now, and is getting on splendidly with his Latin!" Constable, the artist, was a friend of my mother's, who thought highly of her work, and gave her much encouragement, and the young people seem to have had no lack of friends in the world of art and letters. Of my mother, Charles Sheridan said he "delighted in her sparkling sallies," and the young Edwin Landseer was "mothered" by her to his "exceeding comfort." My mother was appointed bedchamber woman to Queen Caroline, and became very fond of her. The consort of George IV. appears to have taken the greatest interest in "Little John," and I had until a short time ago--when it was stolen--a little workbox containing a half-finished sock the Queen was knitting for the little boy when her fatal illness began. My parents then lived in London for some years while my father did duty at St. Peter's. In 1832 my father became vicar of Cressing, in Essex, and he took my {3} mother and their (I think three) children there, leaving a curate in charge of St. Peter's. Thirteen children in all were born to my parents (of whom I was the thirteenth), and of my brothers and sisters there were seven living at the time of my birth.