Page:The life and letters of Sir John Henniker Heaton bt. (IA lifelettersofsi00port).pdf/25



MAN of Kent, John Henniker Heaton was born at Rochester, on the 18th of May, 1848. He was the only son of Lt.-Colonel John Heaton, of Heaton, Lancashire, born 1810, who married. May 8th, 1841, Elizabeth Anne, daughter of John Henniker, of Rochester, and died 1856.

The early years of John Henniker Heaton's life were spent in the old Cathedral city of Rochester, where his father was quartered. His happiest memories of boyhood were those of the long summer hours he spent bathing in the Medway and, after a swim, lying on the banks reading and re-reading his favourite books, "The Pathfinder" and "The Last of the Mohicans," and dreaming the long, long dreams of boyhood.

He had an almost passionate love for books of adventure and sea voyage, a love intensified, perhaps, by the rigid discipline of his home, where day-dreams were forbidden, and unquestioning obedience enjoined as the chief virtue of childhood. 3