Augustus Hare
Augustus John Cuthbert Hare (13 March 1834 – 22 January 1903) was an English writer and raconteur.
He was the youngest son of Francis George Hare of Herstmonceux, East Sussex, and Gresford, Flintshire, Wales, and nephew of Augustus William Hare and Julius Hare. Augustus Hare was born in Rome; later he was adopted by his aunt, the widow of Augustus Hare, and his parents renounced all further claim to him. His autobiography The Story of My Life details both a devotion to his adopted mother, Maria, and an intense unhappiness with his home education at Buckwell Place. He spent one year at Harrow School in 1847 but left due to ill health. In 1853, he matriculated at University College, Oxford, graduating in 1857 with a BA.
Hare was the author of a large number of books, which fall into two classes: biographies of members and connections of his family, and descriptive and historical accounts of various countries and cities. To the first belong Memorials of a Quiet Life (about his adoptive mother), Story of Two Noble Lives (about Charlotte Canning, Countess Canning and Louisa Beresford, Marchioness of Waterford, sisters and artists), The Gurneys of Earlham (about the bankers and social reformers of Earlham Hall near Norwich), and an autobiography in six volumes. This last included a number of accounts of encounters with ghosts. A reviewer in the New York Times concluded that "Mr Hare's ghosts are rather more interesting than his lords or his middle-class people".[2]
He also compiled numerous travel books, including a couple for John Murray, as well as many others under his own name, such as Walks in Rome, Walks in London, Wanderings in Spain, Cities of Northern, Southern, and Central Italy (separate works), Days near Rome and Sussex. He used the money he obtained on his house Holmhurst St Mary in Hastings.
In his biography of Somerset Maugham, writer Ted Morgan mentions that Hare, whom he refers to as "the last Victorian," befriended Maugham who became a frequent guest at his country house, Holmhurst in Baldslow, Sussex.[
“Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.”
“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch. ”
“Most painters have painted themselves. So have most poets: not so palpably indeed, but more assiduously. Some have done nothing else.”