Had my dear father lived, he would have been 200 years old this very day. He was a charming fellow, all laughs and toffees, until it all went sour, about 1830. Here is a beautiful picture of him by Whistler, who was a pal at Cambridge (tea rooms):
As you can see, he was given a fright while the picture was being painted. But I really think this portrait captures his eyes (shifty blue) and his moustache (though it was properly captured by the Royal Society in 1922, having got away from Daddy himself the previous year while he was swimming in the London Aquarium).
As a boy, he was a marvellous inventor - the Joe Meek of his day, really, including the murder but not the suicide. He invented stereo, but could never quite eliminate the slobber aspect. Here he is demonstrating a prototype while standing on the balance knob.
In 1878 he married Mummy, a rare beauty, though curiously as I was looking through my old albums I could only find pictures of her as a ghost:
Broken by his cruel and unhappy marriage and the unfortunate birth of myself, who took all their time by being too brilliant for a mere two parents to manage, Daddy ended his life as a ruin. Always appropriate in everything he did, he made sure to also live in a ruin:
He lived on the third floor, so as you can see it wasn't a very cheery arrangement. He died alone and friendless in 1957. I prefer to remember him in his heyday: the parties, the drinking, the feather dusters, the STDs. Men knew about balls in those days! And so did women.
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