Page:Quiller-Couch - Noughts and Crosses.djvu/2

 Couch. Of his parentage A. T. Quiiler Couch writes: " I am just twenty-seven years old, stand 5.11, and weigh 12.3. Was born in Cornwall of Cornish parents. ( Couch is Cornish for ' red,' which accounts for the animal's name.) Family has lived, as far back as one can trace, in the tew square miles between the estuaries of Fowey and Loor rivers in South Cornwall. You'll find out all about my grandfather, Jonathan Couch, in the ' Diet, of Nat. Biog.' He had sons : Richard Quiiler Couch, a naturalist ; see ' Diet, of Nat. Biog.' for him too ; Thomas Quiiler Couch (my father), inci- dently mentioned in the ' Diet.' as author of a ' His- tory of Polpero,' the fishing town we come from. Was an antiquary, scholar, naturalist, and rather a skilful surgeon. Used to drive about the country in a queer-shaped carriage filled with books, and read all the way. Very often you'd meet the carriage first filled with halt, maimed, and blind, who had crowded him out ; and the old man following on foot, zig-zagging along the road, with his nose in a book ; a very sweet-natured man, with a fine ear for English. Worshipped especially Fuller, Bunyan, Latimer's Sermons, Sterne, and Carlyle, and among poets, Hood ! An odd list. You may add Artemas Ward and Mark Twain, whose works would make him roar and weep with laughter, as he was driven along the country lanes, and arrived at his patient's bedside, to undergo torture in keep- ing a solemn face." Many of the characteristics here noted appear in the personages of Mr. Couch's books. " The queer-shaped carriage filled with books " is not un- like the vehicle that carried the madman of Bleakirk'. The novelist of the future proceeds to talk of himself. He says : "My father sent me to school at Newton Abbot, Devonshire, whence I went to Clifton with a scholarship. Then with a scholarship to Trinity College, Oxford, where I got first in Moderations, second in Greats, rowed four years in the eight, and wrote verses for the Oxford Magazine. For one or more of these reasons they made me a Lecturer in Classics, when I took my degree ; but as soon as the ' Greats ' list was out I began to write ' Dead Man's Rock ' and sent it to Cassell's." Of his personal habits he adds : " My tastes are moderate, and I prefer the open air to a house. With a sheet of water, a book, a few pounds of to- bacco, and a cake of Gibbs' soap I can get along. Like Cardinal Newman ( whose rooms I had, by the way, at Trinity for three years, No. 7 staircase,