Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/129

Rh questions, incubate, do not die, but work themselves into prominence later.

My grandfather, William Baring-Gould, was born in 1770, and was the son of Charles Baring and of Margaret, daughter and heiress of William Drake Gould, of Lew Trenchard and Pridhamsleigh in Staverton. He came into the property when aged twenty-five, and married Diana Amelia, daughter of Joseph Sabine of Tewin, Herts, when her father and mother were staying at Teignmouth. They were married at Littleham, in 1801.

By royal licence, William Baring assumed the name and arms of Gould in addition to those of Baring, in 1795. Unhappily he supposed that he possessed the Baring capacity for business, and he launched forth in speculations, and was much in Spain, France and Russia. But he made no money, lost a good deal, and eventually had to give up being a merchant. He was at Cattaro in Dalmatia when the news arrived of the execution of Louis XVI and of Marie Antoinette, and I have a letter from him to his brother-in-law, Samuel, afterwards Sir Samuel Young, Bart., expressing his horror at the tidings.

But a single letter of my grandmother to him has been preserved; he received it when at St. Petersburg, and in it she rated him in no measured terms for his squandering money, and prophesied that he would bring himself with her and the family to beggary. He put the letter away in his red leather pocket-book, forgot it—and so it has come down to the present day.

He was a very handsome man with lustrous blue eyes like sapphires, a ruddy complexion and white hair, as I knew him. When living at Larkbeare, near Exeter, he went by the name of the Devonshire Adonis. He was sweet-tempered, genial and possessed the gracious manners of the old school. My grandmother was somewhat embittered by his pecuniary losses, and also by having to live in Lew—then much out of the world. Sir Edward Sabine said to me one day: "If I were God Almighty and made a world, I would create all men like William Gould, and then it would be a happy and a perfect world." I asked, "What about the Eves? Should they be like your sister?" In his quick way the old General answered: "Too sharp a tongue"—then after a pause he added: "I never saw a man