ITS STORY AND TIMES BY LADY ALICE ARCHER HOUBLON VOLUME I Ici au milieu d'un grand Peuple Nous y avons trouvés La Patrie. London ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY, LTD. 1907 LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS PREFACE THERE are few families whose history can warrant a detailed account designed for publication, and the assumption, that any interest can be attached to such a record outside its immediate circle, demands justification. The plea which is here offered is, that the career of the Houblons affords a picture at once social and typical of their times. That the larger issues of patriotic and historic development, in the midst of which their lives were cast, have come to fill her horizon with matter scarcely within the scope of an ordinary biographical work, the author offers no apology; for this blending of the historical and biographical alone constitutes such originality and interest as her book may possess, and is the excuse for its publication. Even as in painting, the introduction of small figures gives life and proportion to the great landscapes of Salvator Rosa and Turner, the story of a family may perhaps serve to give life and point to that greater landscape of surrounding circumstance, in which its. members lived and moved. The narrative falls naturally into two parts, each containing the history of five generations; and while the first volume tells of the mercantile career of the Houblons, the second finds them once more on the land, from which they were originally drawn. From Picardy to Flanders, from Flanders to London, and b from London to the Eastern Counties, has been the life-journey of this English family. For the assistance of those persons to whom the ramifications of a somewhat intricate genealogical tree may be of interest, a paragraph pedigree has been annexed at the end of each volume, together with a skeleton chart. The individuals mentioned in the narrative, when bearing the same Christian name, are distinguished by a number immediately after it and below the line. These numbers are also given in the pedigree charts, and in the index. The two volumes are dealt with separately. It remains for the author to tender her thanks to those who have shown an interest in these sketches of bygone days. To Mrs. Andrew Lang, who kindly undertook the pruning of an over-voluminous manuscript and the perusal of its proofs. To Mr. C. R. Ashbee, whose intimate knowledge of the industrial conditions under which the lives of the earlier generations of the Houblon family were passed made his advice and criticism valuable; and to Miss Lena Diver, without whose patient and intelligent searches among the musty treasures of the Record Office and elsewhere, the narrative, as it is here presented, would have been impossible to the author. |