Early Life
Horne was born at Edmonton, London, son of James Horne (died 1810), a quarter-master in the 61st Regiment. Horne was raised at the home of his rich paternal grandmother and sent to a school at Edmonton and then to Sandhurst, as he was designed for the army. Horne appears to have had as little sense of discipline as Adam Lindsay Gordon showed at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and like him was asked to leave. It appears that he caricatured the headmaster, and took part in a rebellion. He began writing while still in his teens, but he was intended for the army, and entered at Sandhurst, but receiving no commission, he left his country and in 1825 went as a midshipman to the Mexican expedition, was taken prisoner and joined the Mexican navy. He served in the war against Spain, traveled in the United States and Canada, returned to England in 1827, and took up literature as a profession.
Read more about this topic: Richard Henry Horne
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images. . . . Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child’s life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“My life has crept so long on a broken wing
Through cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear,
That I come to be grateful at last for a little thing.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)