I was not then quite ten years old, though so tall and formed in my
person that I might have passed for twelve or thirteen. My brother
George was a few years younger. On our arrival in London we repaired to
my father's lodgings in Spring Gardens. He received us, after three
years' absence, with a mixture of pain and pleasure; he embraced us with
tears, and his voice was scarcely articulate. My mother's agitation was
indescribable; she received a cold embrace at their meeting--it was the
last she ever received from her alienated husband.

As soon as the first conflicts seemed to subside, my father informed my
mother that he was determined to place my brother and myself at a school
in the vicinity of London; that he purposed very shortly returning to
America, and that he would readily pay for my mother's board in any
private and respectable family. This information seemed like a
death-blow to their domestic hopes. A freezing, formal, premeditated
separation from a wife who was guiltless of any crime, who was as
innocent as an angel, seemed the very extent of decided misery. It was
in vain that my mother essayed to change his resolution, and influence
his heart in pronouncing a milder judgment: my father was held by a
fatal fascination; he was the slave of a young and artful woman, who had
availed herself of his American solitude, to undermine his affections
for his wife and the felicity of his family.

This deviation from domestic faith was the only dark shade that marked
my father's character. He possessed a soul brave, liberal, enlightened,
and ingenuous. He felt the impropriety of his conduct. Yet, though his
mind was strongly organised, though his understanding was capacious, and
his sense of honour delicate even to fastidiousness, he was still the
dupe of his passions, the victim of unfortunate attachment.