ABSTRACT
I never knew an individual towards whom I felt such a permanent and bitter antipathy as to my own father.
Watson to G. Combe, 9 July 1848
Personality is often a crucial factor in the degree of one’s success or failure in life, and so it was for Hewett Cottrell Watson. He was bom into a home which anyone would have judged to be very favorable. His father was a member of the upper middle class who took very seriously the discharge of his responsibilities - as he saw them - to family and society. Both Holland and Harriett Powell Watson were upstanding, religious citizens. Their child-rearing practises were probably typical of their class, and probably similar to those they had experienced as children themselves. Although they had ten children, this large family need not have seemed a liability, because they had servants.
