But he had not been reared in a literary atmosphere.
He had been brought up among horses and dogs, with grooms and keepers, on the moors and the sea.

He describes it himself as "the old wild scratch way, when the keeper was the rabbit-catcher, and sporting was enjoyed more for the adventure than for the bag." He never lost his love of sport, and he gave his own son the same training he had himself.

Even in his last illness he liked the young man to go out shooting, and always asked what sport he had had.

His own father had been a country gentleman, as well as a clergyman, and his brothers, while their health lasted, all rode to hounds.

He himself never forgot how he had been put by Robert on a horse without a saddle, and thrown seventeen times in one afternoon without hurting himself on the soft Devonshire grass.