When he was a baby in arms his mother took him for a walk on a summer afternoon along the Southborough Road out of Tunbridge Wells. She rested awhile on a seat in the shade of a hedge. A gipsy caravan came along and trudging beside it was a wrinkled old crone. Catching sight of the mother with her baby, she hobbled across to the seat. Lifting the white veil she looked into the child’s face, and holding the tiny hand she said in a husky voice: ‘Put a pen in his hand and he’ll never want for a living.’