CHAPTER I—­THE BROWN FAMILY

     “I’m the Poet of White Horse Vale, sir,
     With liberal notions under my cap.”—­Ballad

The Browns have become illustrious by the pen of Thackeray and the pencil of Doyle, within the memory of the young gentlemen who are now matriculating at the universities.  Notwithstanding the well-merited but late fame which has now fallen upon them, any one at all acquainted with the family must feel that much has yet to be written and said before the British nation will be properly sensible of how much of its greatness it owes to the Browns.  For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way, they have been subduing the earth in most English counties, and leaving their mark in American forests and Australian uplands.  Wherever the fleets and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sons of the Browns have done yeomen’s work.  With the yew bow and cloth-yard shaft at Cressy and Agincourt—­with the brown bill and pike under the brave Lord Willoughby—­with culverin and demi-culverin against Spaniards and Dutchmen—­with hand-grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet, under Rodney and St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and Wellington, they have carried their lives in their hands, getting hard knocks and hard work in plenty—­which was on the whole what they looked for, and the best thing for them—­and little praise or pudding, which indeed they, and most of us, are better without.  Talbots and Stanleys, St. Maurs, and such-like folk, have led armies and made laws time out of mind; but those noble families would be somewhat astounded—­if the accounts ever came to be fairly taken—­to find how small their work for England has been by the side of that of the Browns.

These latter, indeed, have, until the present generation, rarely been sung by poet, or chronicled by sage.  They have wanted their sacer vates, having been too solid to rise to the top by themselves, and not having been largely gifted with the talent of catching hold of, and holding on tight to, whatever good things happened to be going—­the foundation of the fortunes of so many noble families.  But the world goes on its way, and the wheel turns, and the wrongs of the Browns, like other wrongs, seem in a fair way to get righted.  And this present writer, having for many years of his life been a devout Brown-worshipper, and, moreover, having the honour of being nearly connected with an eminently respectable branch of the great Brown family, is anxious, so far as in him lies, to help the wheel over, and throw his stone on to the pile.

However, gentle reader, or simple reader, whichever you may be, lest you should be led to waste your precious time upon these pages, I make so bold as at once to tell you the sort of folk you’ll have to meet and put up with, if you and I are to jog on comfortably together.  You shall hear at once what sort of folk the Browns are—­at least my branch of them; and then, if you don’t like the sort, why, cut the concern at once, and let you and I cry quits before either of us can grumble at the other.