The Villa Torlonia was the idyll where Conrad lived his first eight years. Rome and Frascati; he tells us, is romantically beautiful and the inhabitants have a sunny disposition and natural charm a blessing on all who know them. It is a former Ducal residence of imposing terraces and sunken gardens.

                        His Grandfather Aecheson Ffrench had once visited the area when doing The Grand Tour in 1834. Conrad remembers stories of Brigands which terrorized the local populous told to him by his grandfather over the large kitchen grate. An entry in his Grandfathers diary reads.

 

"Well, thank God. I have passed the most dangerous road today without molestation. Before I started from Rome numerous friends endeavored to dissuade me from making the journey on foot owing to the likely attack from brigands....." DM p9

 

The Ffrench's were never to be dissuaded by the prospect of attendant danger if their mind was set. A trait Conrad inherited with aces. 

                        His Father Harry was in his element. He became an active participant in the Roman Society circle. The Villa Torlonia was the scene of many lavish parties and was visited by good and great of Rome and "princes of the Church and members of foreign nobility" (dm 10). Conrad’s mother on the other hand was not a wholehearted participant in these events. She wished for peace and tranquility and the opportunity to enjoy these romantic environs with her beloved husband. There were times when these two worlds coincided and Conrad recalls blissful summer evenings of scented air and strains of Schumann and Mendelssohn floated down from the drawing room terrace.

I could hear my father at the piano within, his touch strong and resonant. Having finished a Schumann arabesque he would accompany my mother in some Mendelssohn songs, her voice not strong but true." (dm p11)

This rarefied and essentially privileged lifestyle contrasted darkly with the spectacle of the beggars in their abjection and the sight of overburden beasts being driven mercilessly by "ignorant peasants" along the sunken road of the Grotto Ferret overlooked to the North. These earliest recollections illustrate perhaps? the beginnings of Conrads ethical life-view and the societal orbit which was to make him such a consummate master of infiltration and intelligence gathering. Conrad was to play the role of wealthy playboy and sportsman. These early impressions and experiences already prefigure the realm he was to inhabit for King and country.

                        Eventually the idyll was to end and the Ffrench's for the sake of their children's education they moved to Florence living in a house called the Piazza della Indidendenza close to an elementary school head mastered by a Mr Begg. So his education began with Tutored tours of Florence’s galleries and Cathedrals. Rollo his brother was coming of school age this formative interlude was soon over. There followed the inevitable return to Britain so the studies of Conrad and his brother Rollo, 8 and 9 respectively, could begin in earnest. His family moved into a large house in Sussex Square Gardens Brighton. Their school the Rostellian was just across the square. Soon afterward his mother a devout Protestant decided to have Yvonne Conrad’s infant sister baptized into this faith. The upshot was that Harry his father left. Conrad was never to know the full reasons for his father’s departure but he tells his father becoming very angry then he just “picked up his hat and walked out of the house never to return.". During these upheavals Conrad looked to Rollo for support. Soon he was to join him at The Wick Prepatory School in Hove Brighton. Conrad never the natural academic did badly and suffered emotionally because of it. His brother was the opposite and enjoyed success in his studies. Rollo helped his brother and Conrad grew more devoted to him.                                                                The family moved again to Montpellier Hall a property owned by an Aunt further inland and not as grand as the Square it was nevertheless large and comfortable. It was here that Conrad met Mr Nye a retired coal merchant who lived next door. Mr Nye was master and huntsman of the Brighton Foot Beagles. Conrad writes "It was then I awoke to the instinct of the hunt" he was soon a member of the hunting fraternity and wore his hunt button with pride on his new tweed jacket. His early teens were caught up in the country pursuits and soon he had his own dog a Cocker Spaniel, Nell a ferret Tino and later Boxer a Springer Spaniel. He followed his new interests with a passion he had truly found a role he felt at home in. He became a junior member of the Ledbury Fox Hounds the following year. The hunts master was George Thursby was his mothers cousin. Conrad was an enthusiastic huntsman and it became an abiding pastime throughout his life. The hunt scene was the private territory of then established order in Britain. Stuart Menzies was a keen huntsman and to some extent ran his secret service from atop of a hunter in the field. What more private a place can one imagine for secrets to be exchanged?  

           After the summer holidays in 1909 Rollo went away to study at Wellington College and Conrad to Bradley court an Agricultural College In the forests of Dean. Just after his sixteenth birthday Conrad was summoned to the Headmasters office Rollo was dead. An accident during a game of football had cost him his life. Conrad left Bradley and returning home began to study practical farming with a Mr Gazalet in the Evesham Valley. But for Conrad it was the freedom of the open field and nature. One day out chasing rabbits with Nell Conrad made a new friend. He was a retired Canadian Rancher from Saskatchewan. He turned out to be a Justice of the Peace. He told Conrad about the Canadian Mounted Police and the wild frontier and suggested he think about joining. The following spring Conrad sent letters and in the April of 1910 aged 17 he boarded the Empress of Britain sailing for Quebec and thence overland to Buffalo Lake and a new life in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.