I raise the curtain with tales of my grandfather, and stories of my father and his family, including myself.
MY grandfather, George Keppel, sixth Earl of Albemarle, was born in 1799. I remember him quite well. He was always a delightful raconteur, and many is the yarn we heard from him at Quidenham, when in the winter evenings he gathered us round him before the old library fire. He would tell us how as a child he had been frightened into obedience by the cry of " Boney is coming!" and he recalled quite clearly the alarm produced in England by the avowed intention of Napoleon to invade our country. As a boy he often stayed in London with his maternal grandmother, the Dowager Lady de Clifford, who was governess to the Princess Charlotte of Wales. She lived at No. 9, South Audley Street, within a stone's throw of Mrs. Fitzherbert, the wife of George, Prince of Wales. It was in this house that he was first presented to the Prince, afterwards George IV, a tall, good-humoured man with laughing eyes, pouting lips
