FRANK T. BULLEN.
Bournemouth,
Dec. 17, 1914.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Since these pages were printed Mr. Bullen has passed away. He had been in a precarious state of health for some years, and he himself was well aware that the end might come at any time.
He died at Madeira on February 26th, 1915, in his fifty-seventh year.
March 4, 1915.
CHAPTER I
MY EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS
A few years ago I was in the breakfast-room of the beautiful Hotel Frontenac at Quebec awaiting my meal at a sunny table, when I caught sight of the head waiter. He was so strikingly like the comedian W. H. Berry, to whom I can never be sufficiently grateful for his mirth-compelling performances, that I sent a waiter to request his attendance. He came on the instant, and I immediately asked him if he were any relation to Mr. Berry, although as I could not then recall that gentleman’s name, it took me some time to explain whom I meant. Smilingly the head waiter disclaimed the relationship, saying:
“There was never an actor in our family that I know of. I come from a suburb of London called Paddington.” (“So do I,” I interjected.) “I was born in a little turning off Jonson Place, Harrow Road, called Alfred Road.” (“So was I,” I interrupted again.) “At number —.” “Ah,” I said, “my number was next door.”
Why this chronicling of the smallest of small beer? Because I have never seen anybody more delighted than that bright and able man at meeting some one who was born in the same street as himself. We have no choice in the matter, but I doubt very much whether any tie draws men tighter when they meet abroad than that their place of birth was near each other—even in the same town is often enough to set up a friendship almost masonic in its intensity. Wherefore I recall the fact that I first saw the light in that poor street off Jonson Place, but have no recollection of its amenities. For before even I, precocious as I undoubtedly was, grew old enough to know intelligently, or say at eighteen months old, my father and mother quarrelled, the weaker vessel was thrown out, and myself, as well as an elder sister of whom I know nothing except that she did exist, were consigned to the care of a maiden aunt by my father, with a promise, never redeemed, to pay something towards the expense of keeping us.