My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

10 MY LIFEin life ; and as we all, I think, inherited from myfather a certain amount of constitutional inactivity orlaziness, the necessity for work that our circumstancesentailed was certainly beneficial in developing whateverpowers were latent in us ;and this is what Iimplied when I remarked that our father's loss of hisproperty was perhaps a blessing indisguise.Of the five daughters, the first-born died whenfive months old ; the next, Eliza, died of consumptionat Hertford, aged twenty-two. Two others, MaryAnne and Emma, died at Usk at the ages of eightand six respectively ; while Frances married Mr.Thomas Sims, a photographer, and died in London,aged eighty-one.On the whole, both the Wallaces and the Greenellsseem to have been rather long-lived when they reachedmanhood or womanhood. The five ancestral Wallacesof whom I have records had an average age of seventylungs, from which he never recovered.I will now give a short account of my father'sappearance and character. In a miniature, paintedjust before his marriage, when he was thirty-five yearsold, he is represented in a blue coat with gilt buttons,a white waistcoat, a thick white neck-cloth coming upto the chin and showing no collar, and a frilledyears, while the five Greenells had an average ofseventy-six. Of our own family, my brother Johnreached seventy-seven, and my sister Fanny eightyone.My brother William owed his death to a railwayjourney by night in winter, from London to SouthWales in the miserable accommodation then affordedto third-class passengers, which, increased by a dampbed at Bristol, brought on severe congestion of theshirtfront.This was probably his wedding-coat, and his