tie had been strengthened rather than diminished throughout the passing of
generations by the propinquity of the two branches.

In the commencement of his naval career, Cuthbert Collingwood, on board
the _Lennox_, had attracted the hearty approbation of Mrs Stanhope's other
relation, Admiral Roddam, [2] the grand old veteran who had been in the
service about thirty-seven years before his young neighbour from
Northumberland had become his midshipman. In 1787 he won as warm an
appreciation from her husband when he stayed at Cannon Hall and first made
the acquaintance of Walter Stanhope, who then formed for him a lifelong
friendship. During the all-too-brief period when Collingwood was on shore,
there occur entries in Stanhope's Journal recording many a quiet rubber of
whist played with the man whose harsh fate was to render such moments of
happy social intercourse a precious recollection through long, lonely
years. Returned to his post, Captain Collingwood's thoughts clung to that
family circle he had left-to the man who basked in the happiness of a home
life from which he, personally, was debarred. Year by year Collingwood
kept his kinsman Stanhope in touch with all his movements. Year by year,
Stanhope and his wife responded, supplying the absent seaman with news of
the chief events which were happening in the political world at home. And
the letters from Collingwood, with their stern grip of a strenuous life,
with their deep underlying tragedy of a profound loneliness, afford a
curious contrast to the shallow utterances of other correspondents. Over
the intervening miles of ocean, from that isolated soul on guard, they
reached the family in Grosvenor Square, bearing, so it seemed, something
of the freshness and the force of the wind-rocked brine which they had
traversed. Into that restless routine of London life, they carried the
echo of a distant clash of arms, the mutterings of a brooding storm. They
told how the sea-dogs upon the alert were playing a desperate game of
tactics with their country's foe, the outcome of which none could foretell