A SUPER-LINK WITH THE PAST. [To the Editor of the
SPECTATOR.] DEAR MR. STRACIIEY,—I have been reading The Adventure of Living with great pleasure, and it has occurred to me that you might be interested in the following details concerning my father's Memorandum, which you mention on page 495 as a noteworthy link with the past.
The Memorandum is written between pencilled lines in the rounded characters of childhood, and his hand was doubtless guided in its execution It was first shown to me by my father when I was a boy, and lies before me as I now write. It runs as follows :—
" Lord Onslow told me that he had very often dined at his father's house in Company with one of the centinels at the execution of King Charles. His name was Augustin. He died aged 110 in the year 1740.—Oekham, Feb. 4, 1811."
In later years he added the following note to it :— " Written by me at five years old.—Lovelace."
My father died in 1893, and at that date, therefore, the three lives—his, Lord Onslow's, and Augustin the sentinel's— carried us back to the execution of the King in 1649, a period of 244 years.—Believe me, yours very truly,
Whitwell Hatch, Haslemere, Surrey. LOVELACE.
[I feel sure that the readers of the Spectator will read with interest this verification of one of the most memorable links with the past ever recorded. Such first-hand evidence that a child was in actual touch with an old man who had played a part in a great historic scene is necessarily rare. Lord Lovelace's father must have been an exceedingly intelligent child to have made such a memorandum at the age of five.
Sr. LOE STRACHEY, ED. Spectator.]
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