Owing to his urbanity, his knowledge of life, and his pleasant face, Wylde became a great favourite with the royal family, the queen, the princes and princesses, all of whom loaded him with presents. Prince Albert pressed on him a baronetcy, which, from a mistake in the bestowal of his early affections, he could not accept. It was an arbitrary act of the Duke of Cambridge to break through the rules of the service and give him a brigade which was due to another, to a friend; perhaps he should have refused, but doubtless the pressure on all sides was heavy, not to mention that Wylde had a family which would have been large if divided between two.
What made this brigade business more aggravating was, that the duke had contracted an intimacy with my uncle and his family, and was really his friend.
XVII.
Leaving Woolwich, I went on a long visit to my relations, the Wallingers, with whom I had passed so many happy holidays while at school.
Seaford occupies a line on the southern coast most charming to the eye, but its beauty has been its ruin. A picturesque expanse of back water extends from its magnificent cliff to Newhaven, and the time came when its decaying vegetation generated typhoid fever, which destroyed the reputation of the place, while it decimated the inhabitants.
Another calamity followed: a high spring tide, not so many years ago, washed away the houses in front of the sea, and overflowed the streets. Repairs have been made, new structures raised, private houses, hotels, and a convalescent hospital; but it is no longer the Seaford it was of old, in its rotten-borough days.
I was once more there with my kind aunt, and an uncle whose brow smiled while it frowned. There were two branches of Wallinger; my uncle was a cadet of the elder branch, then represented by the Rev. John Wallinger, the disinherited heir of Hare Hall, who went from the law to the Church for the love of Calvin.