My son is alive and busy. He has now an idea of what work is, and this mission at Paris is of a very different stamp from Otiosa Neapolis. However, work is good for the young. The time will arrive, and how rapidly! when we must all say tempus abire, and happy those who are en règle, and are blessed besides, like you, with a strong and philosophic mind,—both of which are wanting to me, who would gladly prefer them to gold and gastric juice.
In December 1856 Ford accepted the appointment to serve, with Lord Broughton, the Dean of St. Paul’s, Michael Faraday, George Richmond, and Charles Robert Cockerel, on a Royal Commission “to determine the site of the National Gallery, and to report on the desirableness of combining with it the Fine Art and Archæological Collection of the British Museum.” But eight days after the announcement had appeared in the London Gazette (December 15th, 1856), he was obliged to withdraw his consent to act, as he found that his health incapacitated him from discharging the duties of the commission. The newspapers of the day bore witness to the regret that was felt at his inability to serve. “We expressed a fortnight ago,” says the Illustrated London News for January 3rd, 1857, “the general satisfaction that was felt in Mr. Ford’s appointment. His place is not easily to be supplied. His practical good sense, and the general esteem in which he is held, peculiarly fitted him for the appointment.”
Ill though Ford was, he was able to enjoy the promise of his son’s success in the diplomatic service. Promoted to be a paid attaché in March 1857, Clare Ford passed an examination which, as his father proudly reports to Addington, was “the most brilliant ever passed in international law.” In the summer of the same year (June 22nd, 1857) he married Annie, second daughter of the Marquis Garofalo, the head of a family distinguished in the history of Naples. Ford was at his son’s wedding; but after that date he went less and less into society. His last article in the Quarterly Review, “Rugby Reminiscences,” which appeared in October 1857, was a review of Tom Brown’s Schooldays. For him
Velasquez Pinx. Emery Walker Ph. Sc.
Dona Margarita Mariana of Austria
wife of Philip IV. of Spain.
the subject had two special attractions. Arnold was an old schoolfellow at Winchester, and ‘Tom’ Hughes had married Ford’s niece, the daughter of his brother James. It is interesting to learn that Arnold had not impressed his contemporaries at school with any “great promise of future excellence,” though his “love for history rather than for poetry, and for truth and facts in preference to fiction,” was already conspicuous. But Ford traces Arnold’s encouragement of games and attention to the supply of proper food at Rugby, to his own experience of “the cheerless condition of Commoners,” and “the ‘Do-the-boys’ dietary” which had prevailed at Winchester.
Ford’s last letter to Addington, dated December 20th, 1857, is written from 123, Park Street:—