The Eldest Son’s Recollections

Abstract

(I) My first recollections of my father date from a time when we were living in Devonshire Terrace, and just after his return from his first visit to America [in June 1842]. One of the clearest of them is in connection with a certain American rocking-chair, which I presume he had brought back with him from the States, and in which he often used to sit of an evening singing comic songs to a wondering and delighted audience consisting of myself and my two sisters. The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman, in the composition of which my father, and Thackeray, and George Cruikshank were all supposed to have had some sort of hand, was one of these ditties, and used to be sung with a prodigious dramatic effect…