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to London—probably more out of curiosity than anything else—to see what his half-foreign son was like. I remember very well when I first saw him. He was very tall, taller than I am now, and wore a wig which looked as if it had seen better days. He had an enormous paunch, massive shoulders and a voice which I believe would have frightened even Bonaparte himself. I could well understand how he managed to have such powerful influence in the town of Rye and the other Cinque Ports, he would dominate any gathering. England was, and is, the richest, most powerful country in the world, and he was to me then a personification of England—tough, arrogant, self-opinionated and rude—but generous to a fault with his money, compassionate when something touched his heart, and unwaveringly loyal to his friends, to his king and country and to those principles which he believed were right and just.
    “ ‘Ho!’ he said, entering the room with steps which made the china tremble on the mantelpiece. ‘You look just like your mother! Never mind, you can’t help that. What’s your name?’
    “He nearly expired when I told him. His face went purple and his eyes were bright blue with rage. ‘Damned foreign nonsense!’ he roared. ‘I’ll call you George. What’s good enough for the king should be good enough for you. What’s all that Frenchified nonsense around your throat and wrists?’
    “It was the fashion in Vienna at the time for small boys to wear jackets with lace cuffs and a lace kerchief, but my English wasn’t good enough to tell him so. ‘Zounds!’ he said (or something equally old-fashioned), ‘the child can’t even speak his native tongue! Never mind, my boy, we’ll soon put that right.’
    “So he promptly removed me from my uncle’s care, much to my uncle’s relief, took me to Haraldsdyke and hired a tutor to teach me English. He had married again by this time, but my half-brothers Rodric and Vere were little more than babies and Ned was yet to be b orn , so I was a solitary child. When I was twelve he sent me off to Westminster in the hope that boarding school would complete the process of turning me into a young English gentleman.
    “I left there ignorant but tough at the age of eighteen and asked to go back to Vienna as I suspected my uncle of defrauding me and wanted to investigate how he was conducting his guardianship of my financial affairs. My father was very angry when he heard that I wanted to go back to Austria, but I remained firm and after he had roared and bellowed at me for an hour or more he realized I couldn’t be dissuaded.
    “So I went back to Austria—and became involved in the Austrian interests I had inherited from my mother. Eventually I married an Austrian girl of good family and—much to my father’s disgust and disappointment—settled in Vienna.
    “Yet my English education and my acquaintance with English people had left their mark. After my wife died I devoted myself more to my business interests and succeeded in establishing an outlet for my interests in London. After that I often journeyed to and fro between the two countries and occasionally managed to visit Haraldsdyke as well.
    “But my father never entirely forgave me for returning to Austria. He had three other sons now by his second marriage, and I was always aware of being a stranger there, a foreigner trespassing on English soil.”
    He stopped. Flames from the enormous fire nearby roared up the chimney. Hardly liking to interrupt his first long conversation with me I waited for him to continue but when he did not I said puzzled: “And yet he left Haraldsdyke to you when he died.”
    “Yes,” he said, “he left Haraldsdyke to me.” He was watching the leaping flames, his face very still. “I knew towards the end that he was disappointed in his three sons by his second marriage, but I never imagined he would cut them out of his will. Yet they received merely nominal bequests when he died.”
    “Why was that?