After Michael’s birth, his parents moved to the north side of the
Thames, living for a short time in Gilbert Street, but removing in
1796 to rooms over a coach-house in Jacob’s Well Mews, Charles Street,
Manchester Square, where they lived till 1809. In that year, young
Michael being now nearly eighteen years old, they moved to 18, Weymouth
Street, Portland Place. Here in the succeeding year James Faraday, who
had long been an invalid, died; his widow, who for some years remained
on at Weymouth Street, maintaining herself by taking in lodgers until
her sons could support themselves and her, survived till 1838. Though
a capable woman and a good mother, she was quite uneducated. In her
declining years she was wholly supported by her son, of whom she was
very proud, and to whom she was devoted.
Michael received very little schooling. One of his nephews tells
the following tale of his boyhood. He was at a dame’s school; and,
either from some defect in his speech or because he was too young
to articulate his _r_’s properly, he pronounced his elder brother’s
name “Wobert.” The harsh schoolmistress, bent on curing the defect by
personal chastisement, sent the aforesaid “Wobert” out with a halfpenny
to get a cane, that young Michael might be duly flogged. But this
refinement of cruelty reacted on itself; for Robert, boiling with
indignation, pitched the halfpenny over a wall, and went home to tell
his mother, who promptly came down to the scene of action and removed
both boys from the school. From the age of five to thirteen Michael
lived at Jacob’s Well Mews, spending his out-of-school hours at home or
in the streets playing at marbles and other games with the children of
the neighbourhood.
[Illustration: RIEBAU’S SHOP.]
[Sidenote: BOOKBINDER’S ERRAND-BOY.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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