Anthony Hope

He started life-or was started in it-in a series of surroundings of unimpeachable orthodoxy-Eton, Christ Church, the Grenadier Guards. He left each of these schools of mental culture and bodily discipline, not under a cloud-that metaphor would be ludicrously inept-but in an explosion. That, having been thus shot out of the first, he managed to enter the second-that, having been shot out of the second, he walked placidly into the third-that, having been shot out of the third, he suffered no apparent damage from his repeated propulsions-these are matters explicable only by a secret knowledge of British institutions.
His father was strong, his mother came of stock even stronger; he himself-Ambrose Caverly as he then was-was very popular, and extraordinarily handsome in his unusual outlandish style. His father being still alive-and, though devoted to him, by now apprehensive of his doings-his means were for the next few years limited. Yet he contrived to employ himself. He took a soup-kitchen and ran it; he took a yacht and sank it; he took a public-house, ruined it, and got himself severely fined for watering the beer in the Temperance interest.