Peter Plymley's Letters, and Selected Essays

From the opening

SYDNEY SMITH, of the same age as Walter Scott, was born at Woodford, in Essex, in the year 1771, and he died of heart disease, aged seventy-four, on the 22nd of February, 1845. His father was a clever man of wandering habits who, when he settled in England, reduced his means by buying, altering, spoiling, and then selling about nineteen different places in England. His mother was of a French family from Languedoc, that had been driven to England by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Sydney Smith’s grandfather, upon the mother’s side, could speak no English, and he himself ascribed some of his gaiety to the French blood in his veins.

He was one of four sons. His eldest brother Robert—known as Bobus—was sent to Eton, where he joined Canning, Frere, and John Smith, in writing the Eton magazine, the Microcosm; and at Cambridge Bobus afterwards was known as a fine Latin scholar. Sydney Smith went first to a school at Southampton, and then to Winchester, where he became captain of the school. Then he was sent for six months to Normandy for a last polish to his French before he went on to New College, Oxford. When he had obtained his fellowship there, his father left him to his own resources. His eldest brother had been trained for the bar, his two younger brothers were sent out to India, and Sydney, against his own wish, yielded to the strong desire of his father that he should take orders as a clergyman. Accordingly, in 1794, he became curate of the small parish of Netherhaven, in Wiltshire. Meat came to Netherhaven only once a week in a butcher’s cart from Salisbury, and the curate often dined upon potatoes flavoured with ketchup.

The only educated neighbour was Mr. Hicks Beach, the squire, who at first formally invited the curate to dinner on Sundays, and soon found his wit, sense, and high culture so delightful, that the acquaintance ripened into friendship.

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