In his diary my father states the following:
“My daughter Ethel has just married (1887) Alec Tweedie, son of an Indian Civil Servant and grandson of Dr. Alexander Tweedie, F.R.S., formerly of 47, Brook Street, whose portrait hangs in the Royal College of Physicians, London. Old Dr. Tweedie’s work on fever was very well known, and the London Fever Hospital was built under his auspices. Strangely enough, he examined me when I first came to London to take the membership of the Royal College of Physicians.
“But the connecting-link is even stronger, for Alec Tweedie is first cousin to Sir Alexander Christison, my old Edinburgh chum, who took his degree with Murchison and myself on the same day in Edinburgh. My son-in-law is therefore a nephew of dear old Sir Robert Christison, whose classes I attended as a student.
“On his mother’s side, Alec is the grandson of General Leslie, K.H., and great-grandson of Colonel Muttlebury, C.B.K.W., a very distinguished soldier, who was in command of the 69th at Quatre Bras.
“My son-in-law is also a nephew of General Jackson, who was in the famous charge of Balaclava, so that on his mother’s side he is as much connected with the army as he is on his father’s with medicine.”
Being a young person with a mind of her own, I rebelled against hideous sugar flowers on my wedding-cake. I loved wedding-cake, and my father, knowing this form of greed, laughingly said:
“You had better get a wedding-cake as big as yourself and then you will be happy.”
I did, that is to say it weighed nine stone four pounds, my own weight, which is barely a stone more when these pages go to press.
Well, thereupon, I repaired to Mr. Buszard, junior—whose father, attired in a large white apron and tall hat, I, as a baby, had known in his then little shop in Oxford Street.