vividness to three accidents—in the logical sense of the term: his silky milk-white locks, his Spanish servant who wore earrings—and whom, by the way, I used to confound with Courvoisier, often there at the same time with his master Lord William Russell, for the murder of whom he was hanged, as all the world knows—and his fox terrier Nettle, which, as a special favour, I was allowed to feed with Abernethy biscuits.
He was at Longford, my present home, on a visit to my father in 1835, when, one evening after dinner, the two old gentlemen—no one else being present but myself—sitting in armchairs over the fire, finishing their bottle of port, Lord Lynedoch told the wonderful story of his adventures during the siege of Mantua by the French, in 1796. For brevity’s sake, it were better perhaps to give the outline in the words of Alison. ‘It was high time the Imperialists should advance to the relief of this fortress, which was now reduced to the last extremity from want of provisions. At a council of war held in the end of December, it was decided that it was indispensable that instant intelligence should be sent to Alvinzi of their desperate situation. An English officer, attached to the garrison, volunteered to perform the perilous mission, which he executed with equal courage and success. He set out, disguised as a peasant, from Mantua on December 29, at nightfall in the midst of a deep fall of snow, eluded the vigilance of the French patrols, and, after surmounting a thousand hardships and dangers, arrived at the headquarters of Alvinzi, at Bassano, on January 4, the day after the conferences at Vicenza were broken up.
‘Great destinies awaited this enterprising officer. He was Colonel Graham, afterwards victor at Barrosa, and the first British general who planted the English standard on the soil of France.’
This bare skeleton of the event was endued ‘with sense and soul’ by the narrator. The ‘hardships and dangers’ thrilled one’s young nerves. Their two salient features were ice perils, and the no less imminent one of being captured and shot as a spy. The crossing of the rivers stands out prominently in my recollection. All the bridges were of course guarded, and he had two at least within the enemy’s lines to get over—those of the Mincio and of the Adige. Probably the lagunes surrounding the invested fortress would be his worst difficulty. The Adige he described as beset with a two-fold risk—the avoidance of the bridges, which courted suspicion, and the thin ice and only partially frozen river, which had to be traversed in the dark. The vigour, the zest with which the wiry veteran ‘shoulder’d his crutch and show’d how fields were won’ was not a thing to be forgotten.
Lord Lynedoch lived to a great age, and it was from his house at Cardington, in Bedfordshire, that my brother Leicester married his first wife, Miss Whitbread, in 1843. That was the last time I saw him.
Perhaps the following is not out of place here, although it is connected with more serious thoughts:
Though neither my father nor my mother were more pious than their neighbours, we children were brought up religiously. From infancy we were taught to repeat night and morning the Lord’s Prayer, and invoke blessings on our parents. It was instilled into us by constant repetition that God did not love naughty children—our naughtiness being for the most part the original sin of disobedience, rooted in the love of forbidden fruit in all its forms of allurement. Moses himself could not have believed more faithfully in the direct and immediate intervention of an avenging God. The pain in one’s stomach incident to unripe gooseberries, no less than the consequent black dose, or the personal chastisement of a responsible and apprehensive nurse, were but the just visitations of an offended Deity.
Whether my religious proclivities were more pronounced than those of other children I cannot say, but certainly, as a child, I was in the habit of appealing to Omnipotence to gratify every ardent desire.
There were peacocks in the pleasure grounds at Holkham, and I had an æsthetic love for their gorgeous plumes. As I hunted under and amongst the shrubs, I secretly prayed that my search might be rewarded. Nor had I a doubt, when successful, that my prayer had been granted by a beneficent Providence.
Let no one smile at this infantine credulity, for is it not the basis of that religious trust which helps so many of us to support the sorrows to which our stoicism is unequal? Who that might be tempted thoughtlessly to laugh at the child does not sometimes sustain the hope of finding his ‘plumes’ by appeals akin to those of his childhood? Which of us could not quote a hundred instances of such a soothing delusion—if delusion it be? I speak not of saints, but of sinners: of the countless hosts who aspire to this world’s happiness; of the dying who would live, of the suffering who would die, of the poor who would be rich, of the aggrieved who seek vengeance, of the ugly who would be beautiful, of the old who would appear young, of the guilty who would not be found out, and of the lover who would possess. Ah! the lover. Here possibility is a negligible element. Consequences are of no consequence. Passion must be served. When could a miracle be more pertinent?
It is just fifty years ago now; it was during the Indian Mutiny. A lady friend of mine did me the honour to make me her confidant. She paid the same compliment to many—most of her friends; and the friends (as is their wont) confided in one another. Poor thing! her case was a sad one. Whose case is not? She was, by her own account, in the forty-second year of her virginity; and it may be added, parenthetically, an honest fourteen stone in weight.
She was in love with a hero of Lucknow. It cannot be said that she knew him only by his well-earned fame. She had seen him, had even sat by him at dinner. He was young, he was handsome. It was love at sight, accentuated by much meditation—‘obsessions [peradventure] des images génétiques.’ She told me (and her other confidants, of course) that she prayed day and night that this distinguished officer, this handsome officer, might return her passion. And her letters to me (and to other confidants) invariably ended with the entreaty that I (and her other, &c.) would offer up a similar prayer on her behalf. Alas! poor soul, poor body! I should say, the distinguished officer, together with the invoked Providence, remained equally insensible to her supplications. The lady rests in peace. The soldier, though a veteran, still exults in war.
But why do I cite this single instance? Are there not millions of such entreaties addressed to Heaven on this, and on every day? What difference is there, in spirit, between them and the child’s prayer for his feather? Is there anything great or small in the eye of Omniscience? Or is it not our thinking only that makes it so?
CHAPTER II
Soon after I was seven years old, I went to what was then, and is still, one of the most favoured of preparatory schools—Temple Grove—at East Sheen, then kept by Dr. Pinkney. I was taken thither from Holkham by a great friend of my father’s, General Sir Ronald Ferguson, whose statue now adorns one of the niches in the façade of Wellington College. The school contained about 120 boys; but I cannot name any one of the lot who afterwards achieved distinction. There were three Macaulays there, nephews of the historian—Aulay, Kenneth, and Hector. But I have lost sight of all.
Temple Grove was a typical private school of that period. The type is familiar to everyone in its photograph as Dotheboys Hall. The progress of the last century in many directions is great indeed; but in few is it greater than in the comfort and the cleanliness of our modern schools. The luxury enjoyed by the present boy is a constant source of astonishment to us grandfathers. We were half starved, we were exceedingly dirty, we were systematically bullied, and we were flogged and caned as though the master’s pleasure was in inverse ratio to ours. The inscription on the threshold should have been ‘Cave canem.’
We began our day as at Dotheboys Hall with two large spoonfuls of sulphur and treacle. After an hour’s lessons we breakfasted on one bowl of milk—‘Skyblue’ we called it—and one hunch of buttered bread, unbuttered at discretion. Our dinner began with pudding—generally
