Page:The Poems and Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, volume 1 (1869).djvu/19

Rh removed to Liverpool, where he settled and went into business as a cotton merchant, and where his four children were born. When Arthur was about four years old, his father migrated to Charleston, in the United States, where he passed several years, and this was the home of Arthur's childhood till he went to school. We give here a few recollections furnished by his sister, the next to him in age in the family, which bring before us the scenes in which his childhood was passed, and the influences which even then began to tell strongly upon him.

'The first distinct remembrance,' she says, 'that I have of my brother is of his going with me in a carriage to the vessel which was to take us to America. This must have been in the winter of when he was not quite four years old. My next recollection is of our home at Charleston, a large, ugly red brick house near the sea. The lower story was my father's office, and it was close by a wharf where from our windows we could see the vessels lying by and amuse ourselves with watching their movements.

'In the summer of this year (1823) we went to the North, and stayed some time in a at New York, and afterwards with some friends who lived on the banks of the Hudson, and had a large and pleasant garden. It was here, I have heard, that Arthur learned to read. In the autumn we returned to Charleston, having made the passage there and back by sea.

'The two following summers (1824 and 1825) we again visited the North; both times we went to New York, and the first year on to Albany and Lebanon Springs, and the second time as far as Newport. After our return to Charleston in the autumn my father was obliged to go to England, and he took with him my eldest brother Charles, who was old enough to go to school. Arthur and I and my youngest brother George remained in the red brick house at Charleston with my mother Rh