Excerpt from My Time, and What I've Done With It: An Autobiography, Compiled From the Diary, Notes, and Personal Recollections of Cecil Colvin, Son of Sir John Colvin, Bart;, Of the Late Firm of Colvin, Cavander Co

When I entered upon the scene, nobody was put out, everybody was prepared. The traditionary basket was on the neatly appointed table. Grandmamma Pritchard, my mother's mother, was enthroned in state. The special nurse was in waiting. The doctor, representing science, was on the spot to receive me. My father, Sir John Colvin (of the Old stockbroking firm of Colvin, Wingle, and co., with Wingle long since out Of it, and co. No where), was in his dressing-room, SO bewildered and helpless as to be able to do nothing more than sit and stare at the fire. My extraordinary punctuality had completely taken him by surprise. His energies were paralysed. To be a father at all was startling; but to be a father before he had thoroughly prepared himself for the part, had scared him. Nurse Davis, my informant on a good many matters connected with my early history, has said, that he sat like one dazed, as though he were complaining to the fire and saying, 'look here, what next He had been married scarcely three years when my mother died and I, christened Cecil, after her, was left to my father s care.

We were not, on my appearance, in our own house, owing to my father's want of faith in the calculations above mentioned. It was not yet ready to receive us, and thus my first character chanced to be that Of a lodger. Yet it really was a capital place to be born in. If I had my time over again, I couldn't wish for a better.

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