"Lord Anglesea, (the General). 'Who lost a leg at Waterloo; a tall, well-made man; wild, martial face, high forehead, with a large hawk's nose, which makes a small deep angle where it joins the forehead. A great deal of ease in his manners. Lauderdale [Footnote: Lord Lauderdale, d. 1339; the friend of Fox; since 1807, under the Tories, an active member of the Opposition.] told us later that it was he who brought Lady Anglesea the intelligence that her husband had lost his leg at Waterloo. Contrary to his wishes she had been informed of his arrival, and, before he could say a word, she guessed that he had brought her news of her husband, screamed out, "He is dead!" and fell into hysterics. But when he said, "Not in the least; here is a letter from him," she was so wonderfully relieved that she bore the truth with great composure. He also related that, not long before the campaign, Anglesea was having his portrait taken, and the picture was entirely finished except one leg. Anglesea sent for the painter and said to him, "You had better finish the leg now. I might not bring it back with me." He lost that very leg.'
"The Minister. Lord Castlereagh. 'Of middle height; a very striking and at the same time handsome face; his manners are very pleasant and gentle, yet perfectly natural. One misses in him a certain culture which one expects in a statesman of his eminence. He speaks French badly, in fact execrably, and not very choice English. [Footnote: Lord Byron, in the introduction to the sixth and the eighth cantos of "Don Juan" says, "It is the first time since the Normans that England has been insulted by a minister (at least) who could not speak English, and that Parliament permitted itself to be dictated to in the language of Mrs. Malaprop."] The Princess rallied him on the part he played in the House of Commons as a bad speaker, as against the brilliant orators of the Opposition, which he acknowledged merrily, and with a hearty laugh. I am sure there is a great deal of thoughtless indifference in him, and that this has sometimes been reckoned to him as statesmanship of a high order.'"
In proof of Castlereagh's bad French we are told in a note that, having to propose the health of the ladies at a great dinner, he did it in the words—"Le bel sexe partoutte dans le monde."
Though looked down upon at the second table, Stockmar had thoroughly established himself in the confidence and affection of the Prince and Princess. He had become the Prince's Secretary, and in Leopold's own words "the most valued physician of his soul and body"—wirepuller, in fact, to the destined wirepuller of Royalty in general.
Perhaps his gratification at having attained this position may have lent a roseate tint to his view of the felicity of the Royal couple, which he paints in rapturous terms, saying that nothing was so great as their love—except the British National Debt. There is, however, no reason to doubt that the union of Leopold and Charlotte was one of the happy exceptions to the general character of Royal marriages. Its tragic end plunged a nation into mourning. Stockmar, with a prudence on which perhaps he reflects with a little too much satisfaction, refused to have anything to do with the treatment of the Princess from the commencement of her pregnancy. He thought he detected mistakes on the part of the English physicians, arising from the custom then prevalent in England of lowering the strength of the expectant mother by bleeding, aperients, and low diet, a regimen which was carried on for months. The Princess, in fact, having been delivered of a dead son after a fifty hours' labour, afterwards succumbed to weakness. It fell to Stockmar's lot to break the news to the Prince, who was overwhelmed with sorrow. At the moment of his desolation Leopold exacted from Stockmar a promise that he would never leave him. Stockmar gave the promise, indulging at the same time his sceptical vein by expressing in a letter to his sister his doubt whether the Prince would remain of the same mind. This scepticism however did not interfere with his devotion. "My health is tolerable, for though I am uncommonly shaken, and shall be yet more so by the sorrow of the Prince, still I feel strong enough, even stronger than I used to be. I only leave the Prince when obliged by pressing business. I dine alone with him and sleep in his room. Directly he wakes in the night I get up and sit talking by his bedside till he falls asleep again. I feel increasingly that unlooked for trials are my portion in life, and that there will be many more of them before life is over. I seem to be here more to care for others than for myself, and I am well content with this destiny."
Sir Richard Croft, the accoucheur of the Princess, overwhelmed by the calamity, committed suicide. "Poor Croft," exclaims the cool and benevolent Stockmar, "does not the whole thing look like some malicious temptation, which might have overcome even some one stronger than you? The first link in the chain of your misery was nothing but an especially honourable and desirable event in the course of your profession. You made a mistake in your mode of treatment; still, individual mistakes are here so easy. Thoughtlessness and excessive reliance on your own experience, prevented you from weighing deeply the course to be followed by you. When the catastrophe had happened, doubts, of course, arose in your mind as to whether you ought not to have acted differently, and these doubts, coupled with the impossibility of proving your innocence to the public, even though you were blameless, became torture to you. Peace to thy ashes, on which no guilt rests save that thou wert not exceptionally wise or exceptionally strong."
Leopold was inclined to go home, but remained in England by the advice of Stockmar, who perceived that, in the first place, there would be something odious in the Prince's spending his English allowance of L50,000 a year on the Continent, and in the second place, that a good position in England would be his strongest vantage ground in case of any new opening presenting itself elsewhere.
About this time another birth took place in the Royal Family under happier auspices. The Duke of Kent was married to the widowed Princess of Leiningen, a sister of Prince Leopold. The Duke was a Liberal in politics, on bad terms with his brothers, and in financial difficulties which prevented his living in England. Finding, however, that his Duchess was likely to present him with an heir who would also be the heir to the Crown, and being very anxious that the child should be born in England, he obtained the means of coming home through friends, after appealing to his brothers in vain. Shortly after his return "a pretty little princess, plump as a partridge," was born. In the same year the Duke died. His widow, owing to his debts, was left in a very uncomfortable position. Her brother Leopold enabled her to return to Kensington, where she devoted herself to the education of her child— Queen Victoria.
The first opening which presented itself to Leopold was the Kingdom of Greece, which was offered him by "The Powers." After going pretty far he backed out, much to the disgust of "The Powers," who called him "Marquis Peu-a-peu" (the nickname given him by George IV.) and said that "he had no colour," and that he wanted the English Regency. The fact seems to be that he and his Stockmar, on further consideration of the enterprise, did not like the look of it. Neither of them, especially Stockmar, desired a "crown of thorns," which their disinterested advisers would have had them take on heroic and ascetic principles. Leopold was rather attracted by the poetry of the thing: Stockmar was not. "For the poetry which Greece would have afforded, I am not inclined to give very much. Mortals see only the bad side of things they have, and the good side of the things they have not. That is the whole difference between Greece and Belgium, though I do not mean to deny that when the first King of Greece shall, after all manner of toils, have died, his life may not furnish the poet with excellent matter for an epic poem." The philosophic creed of Stockmar was that "the most valuable side of life consists in its negative conditions,"—in other words in freedom from annoyance, and in the absence of "crowns of thorns."
The candidature of Leopold for the Greek Throne coincided with the Wellington Administration, and the active part taken by Stockmar gave him special opportunities of studying the Duke's political character which he did with great attention. His estimate of it is low.
"The way in which Wellington would preserve and husband the rewards of his own services and the gifts of fortune, I took as the measure of the higher capabilities of his mind. It required no long time, however, and no great exertion, to perceive that the natural sobriety of his temperament, founded upon an inborn want of sensibility, was unable to withstand the intoxicating influence of the flattery by which he was surrounded. The knowledge of himself became visibly more and more obscured. The restlessness of his activity, and his natural lust for power, became daily more ungovernable.
"Blinded by the language of his admirers, and too much elated to estimate correctly his own powers, he impatiently and of his own accord abandoned the proud position of the victorious general to exchange it for the most painful position which a human being can occupy—viz., the management of the affairs of a great nation with insufficient mental gifts and inadequate knowledge. He had hardly forced himself upon the nation as Prime Minister, intending to add the glory of a statesman to that of a warrior when he succeeded, by his manner of conducting business, in shaking the confidence of the people. With laughable infatuation he sedulously employed every opportunity of proving to the world the hopeless incapacity which made it impossible for him to seize the natural connection between cause and effect. With a rarenaivetehe confessed publicly and without hesitation the mistaken conclusions he had come to in the weightiest affairs of State; mistakes with the commonest understanding could have discovered, which filled the impartial with pitying astonishment, and caused terror and consternation even among the host of his flatterers and partisans. Yet, so great and so strong was the preconceived opinion of the people in his favour, that only the irresistible proofs furnished by the man's own actions could gradually shake this opinion. It required the full force and obstinacy of this strange self-deception in Wellington, it required the full measure of his activity and iron persistency, in order at last, by a perpetual reiteration of errors and mistakes, to create in the people the firm conviction that the Duke of Wellington was one of the least adroit and most mischievous Ministers that England ever had."
Stockmar formed a more favourable opinion afterwards, when the Duke had ceased to be a party leader, and become the Nestor of the State. But it must be allowed that Wellington's most intimate associates and warmest friends thought him a failure as a politician. To the last he seemed incapable of understanding the position of a constitutional minister, and talked of sacrificing his convictions in order to support the Government, as though he were not one of the Government that was to be supported. Nor did he ever appreciate the force of opinion or the nature of the great European movement with which he had to deal.
It seems clear from Stockmar's statement, that Wellington used his influence over Charles X to get the Martignac Ministry, which was moderately liberal, turned out and Polignac made Minister. In this he doubly blundered. In the first place Polignac was not friendly but hostile to England, and at once began to intrigue against her; in the second place he was a fool, and by his precipitate rashness brought on the second French Revolution, which overthrew the ascendency of the Duke's policy in Europe, and had no small influence in overthrowing the ascendency of his party in England. It appears that the Duke was as much impressed with the "honesty" of Talleyrand, as he was with the "ability" of Polignac.
A certain transitional phase of the European Revolution created a brisk demand for kings who would "reign without governing." Having backed out of Greece, Leopold got Belgium. And here we enter, in these Memoirs, on a series of chapters giving the history of the Belgian Question, with all its supplementary entanglements, as dry as saw-dust, and scarcely readable, we should think, at the present day, even to diplomatists, much less to mortal men. Unfortunately the greater part of the two volumes is taken up with similar dissertations on various European questions, while the personal touches, and details which Stockmar could have given us in abundance, are few and far between. We seldom care much for his opinions on European questions even when the questions themselves are still alive and the sand-built structures of diplomacy have not been swept away by the advancing tide of revolution. The sovereigns whose wirepuller he was were constitutional, and themselves exercised practically very little influence on the course of events.
In the Belgian question however, he seems to have really played an active part. We get from him a strong impression of the restless vanity and unscrupulous ambition of France. We learn also that Leopold practised very early in the day the policy which assured him a quiet reign—that of keeping his trunk packed and letting the people understand that if they were tired of him he was ready to take the next train and leave them to enjoy the deluge.
Stockmar found employment especially suited to him in settling the question of Leopold's English annuity, which was given up on the Price's election to the Crown of Belgium, but with certain reservations, upon which the Radicals made attacks, Sir Samuel Whalley, a physician leading the van. In the course of the struggle Stockmar received a characteristic letter from Palmerston.
"March 9,1834
"MY DEAR BARON,—I have many apologies to make to you for not having sooner acknowledged the receipt of the papers you sent me last week, and for which I am much obliged to you. The case seems to me as clear as day and without meaning to question the omnipotence of Parliament, which it is well known can do anything but turn men into women and women into men, I must and shall assert that the House of Commons have no more right to enquire into the details of those debts and engagements, which the King of the Belgians considers himself bound to satisfy before he begins to make his payments into the Exchequer, than they have to ask Sir Samuel Whalley how he disposed of the fees which his mad patients used to pay him before he began to practise upon the foolish constituents who have sent him to Parliament. There can be no doubt whatever that we must positively resist any such enquiry, and I am very much mistaken in my estimate of the present House of Commons if a large majority do not concur in scouting so untenable a proposition.
"My dear Baron,
"Yours sincerely,
"The Baron de Stockmar"
That the House of Commons cannot turn women into men is a position not so unquestioned now as it was in Palmerston's day.
Stockmar now left England for a time, but he kept his eye on English affairs, to his continued interest in which we owe it seems, the publication of a rather curious document, the existence of which in manuscript was, however, well known. It is a Memoir of King William IV., purporting to be drawn up by himself, and extending over the eventful years of 1830-35 'King William's style,' says the uncourtly biographer, "abounds to overflowing in what is called in England Parliamentary circumlocution, in which, instead of direct, simple expressions, bombastic paraphrases are always chosen, which become in the end intolerably prolix and dull, and are enough to drive a foreigner to despair." The style is indeed august; but the real penman is not the King, whose strong point was not grammatical composition, but some confidant, very likely Sir Herbert Taylor, who was employed by the King to negotiate with the "waverers" in the House of Lords, and get the Reform Bill passed without a swamping creation of peers. The Memoir contains nothing of the slightest historical importance. It is instructive only as showing how completely a constitutional king may be under the illusion of his office—how complacently he may fancy that he is himself guiding the State, when he is in fact merely signing what is put before him by his advisers, who are themselves the organs of the majority in Parliament. Old William, Duke of Gloucester, the king's uncle, being rather weak in intellect, was called "Silly Billy." When King William IV. gave his assent to the Reform Bill, the Duke, who knew his own nickname, cried "Who's Silly Billy now?" It would have been more difficult from the Conservative point of view to answer that question if the King had possessed the liberty of action which in his Memoir he imagines himself to possess.
The year 1836 opened a new field to the active beneficence of Stockmar. "The approaching majority, and probably not distant accession to the throne, of Princess Victoria of England, engaged the vigilant and far- sighted care of her uncle, King Leopold. At the same time he was already making preparations for the eventual execution of a plan, which had long formed the subject of the wishes of the Coburg family, to wit, the marriage of the future Queen of England with his nephew, Prince Albert of Coburg." Stockmar was charged with the duty of standing by the Princess, as her confidential adviser, at the critical moment of her coming of age, which might also be that of her accession to the throne. Meanwhile King Leopold consulted with him as to the manner in which Prince Albert should make acquaintance with his cousin, and how he "should be prepared for his future vocation." This is pretty broad, and a little lets down the expressions of intense affection for the Queen and unbounded admiration of Prince Albert with which Stockmar overflows. However, a feeling may be genuine though its source is not divine.
Stockmar played his part adroitly. He came over to England, slipped into the place of private Secretary to the Queen, and for fifteen months "continued his noiseless, quiet activity, without any publicly defined position." The marriage was brought about and resulted, as we all know, in perfect happiness till death entered the Royal home.
Stockmar was evidently very useful in guiding the Royal couple through the difficulties connected with the settlement of the Prince's income and his rank, and with the Regency Bill. His idea was that questions affecting the Royal family should be regarded as above party, and in this he apparently induced the leaders of both parties to acquiesce, though they could not perfectly control their followers. The connection with the Whigs into which the young Queen had been drawn by attachment to her political mentor, Lord Melbourne, had strewn her path with thorns. The Tory party was bitterly hostile to the Court. If Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Odger wish to provide themselves with material for retorts to Tory denunciations of their disloyalty, they cannot do better than look up the speeches and writings of the Tory party during the years 1835-1841. What was called the Bedchamber Plot, in 1839, had rendered the relations between the Court and the Conservative leaders still more awkward, and Stockmar appears to have done a real service in smoothing the way for the formation of the Conservative Ministry in 1841.
Stockmar, looking at Peel from the Court point of view, was at first prejudiced against him, especially on account of his having, in deference probably to the feelings of his party against the Court, cut down the Prince Consort's allowance. All the more striking is the testimony which, after long acquaintance, the Baron bears to Peel's character and merits as a statesman.
"Peel's mind and character rested on moral foundations, which I have not seen once shaken, either in his private or his public life. From these foundations rose that never-failing spring of fairness, honesty, kindness, moderation and regard for others, which Peel showed to all men, and under all circumstances. On these foundations grew that love of country which pervaded his whole being, which knew of but one object— the true welfare of England of but one glory and one reward for each citizen, viz., to have contributed something towards that welfare. Such love of country admits of but one ambition, and hence the ambition of that man was as pure as his heart. To make every sacrifice for that ambition, which the fates of his country demand from everyone, he considered his most sacred duty, and he has made these sacrifices, however difficult they might have been to him. Wherein lay the real difficulty of those sacrifices will perhaps hereafter be explained by those who knew the secret of the political circumstances and the personal character of the men with whom he was brought in contact; and who would not think of weighing imponderable sacrifices on the balance of vulgar gain.
"The man whose feelings for his own country rested on so firm a foundation could not be dishonest or unfair towards foreign countries. The same right understanding, fairness, and moderation, which he evinced in his treatment of internal affairs, guided Peel in his treatment of all foreign questions. The wish frequently expressed by him, to see the welfare of all nations improved, was thoroughly sincere. He knew France and Italy from his own observation, and he had studied the political history of the former with great industry. For Germany he had a good will, nay, a predilection, particularly for Prussia.
"In his private life, Peel was a real pattern. He was the most loving, faithful, conscientious husband, father, and brother, unchanging and indulgent to his friends, and always ready to help his fellow-citizens according to his power.
"Of the vulnerable parts of his character his enemies may have many things to tell. What had been observed by all who came into closer contact with him, could not escape my own observation. I mean his too great prudence, caution, and at times, extreme reserve, in important as well as in unimportant matters, which he showed, not only towards more distant, but even towards his nearer acquaintances. If he was but too often sparing of words, and timidly cautious in oral transactions, he was naturally still more so in his written communications. The fear never left him that he might have to hear an opinion once expressed, or a, judgment once uttered by him, repeated by the wrong man, and in the wrong place, and misapplied. His friends were sometimes in despair over this peculiarity. To his opponents it supplied an apparent ground for suspicion and incrimination. It seemed but too likely that there was a doubtful motive for such reserve, or that it was intended to cover narrowness and weakness of thought and feeling, or want of enterprise and courage. To me also this peculiarity deemed often injurious to himself and to the matter in hand; and I could not help being sometimes put out by it, and wishing from the bottom of my heart that he could have got rid of it. But when one came to weigh the acts of the man against his manner, the disagreeable impression soon gave way. I quickly convinced myself, that this, to me, so objectionable a trait was but an innate peculiarity; and that in a sphere of activity where thoughtless unreserve andlaisser allershowed themselves in every possible form, Peel was not likely to find any incentive, or to form a resolution to overcome, in this point, his natural disposition.
"I have been told, or I have read it somewhere, that Peel was the most successful type of political mediocrity. In accepting this estimate of my departed friend as perfectly true, I ask Heaven to relieve all Ministers, within and without Europe, of their superiority, and to endow them with Peel's mediocrity: and I ask this for the welfare of all nations, and in the firm conviction that ninety-nine hundredths of the higher political affairs can be properly and successfully conducted by such Ministers only as possess Peel's mediocrity: though I am willing to admit that the remaining hundredth may, through the power and boldness of a true genius, be brought to a particularly happy, or, it may be, to a particularly unhappy, issue."
Of the late Lord Derby, on the other hand, Stockmar speaks with the greatest contempt, calling him "a frivolous aristocrat who delighted in making mischief. "It does not appear whether the two men ever came into collision with each other, but if they did, Lord Derby was likely enough to leave a sting.
Stockmar regularly spent a great part of each year with the English Royal Family. Apartments were appropriated to him in each of the Royal residences, and he lived with the Queen and Prince on the footing of an intimate, or rather of a member, and almost the father, of the family. Indeed, he used a familiarity beyond that of any friend or relative. Having an objection to taking leave, he was in the habit of disappearing without notice, and leaving his rooms vacant when the fancy took him. Then we are told, letters complaining of his faithlessness would follow him, and in course of time others urging his return. Etiquette, the highest of all laws, was dispensed within his case. After dining with the Queen, when Her Majesty had risen from table, and after holding a circle had sat down again to tea, Stockmar would generally be seen walking straight through the drawing-room and returning to his apartment, there to study his own comfort. More than this, when Mordecai became the King's favorite, he was led forth on the royal steed, apparelled in the royal robe, and with the royal crown upon his head. A less demonstrative and picturesque, but not less signal or significant, mark of Royal favor was bestowed on Stockmar. In his case tights were dispensed with, and he was allowed to wear trousers, which better suited his thin legs. We believe this exemption to be without parallel, though we have heard of a single dispensation being granted, after many searchings of heart, in a case where the invitation had been sudden, and the mystic garment did not exist, and also of a more melancholy case, in which the garment was split in rushing down to dinner, and its wearer was compelled to appear in the forbidden trousers, and very late, without the possibility of explaining what had occurred.
Notwithstanding the enormous power indicated by his privileged nether limbs, Stockmar remained disinterested. A rich Englishman, described as an author, and member of Parliament, called upon him one day, and promised to give him L10,000 if he would further his petition to the Queen for a peerage. Stockmar replied, "I will now go into the next room, in order to give you time. If upon my return I still find you here, I shall have you turned out by the servants."
We are told that the Baron had little intercourse with any circles but those of the court—a circumstance which was not likely to diminish any bad impressions that might prevail with regard to his secret influence. Among his intimate friends in the household was his fellow-countryman Dr. Pratorius, "who ever zealously strengthened the Prince's inclinations in the sense which Stockmar desired, and always insisted upon the highest moral considerations." Nature, in the case of the doctor; had not been so lavish of personal beauty as of moral endowments. The Queen was once reading the Bible with her daughter, the little Princess Victoria. They came to the passage, "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him." "O Mamma," cried the Princess, "not Dr. Pratorius!"
Stockmar's administrative genius effected a reform in the Royal household, and as appears from his memorandum, not before there was occasion for it. "The housekeepers, pages, housemaids, etc., are under the authority of the Lord Chamberlain; all the footmen, livery-porters and under-butlers, by the strangest anomaly, under that of Master of the Horse, at whose office they are clothed and paid; and the rest of the servants, such as the clerk of the kitchen, the cooks, the porters, etc., are under the jurisdiction of the Lord Steward. Yet these ludicrous divisions extend not only to persons, but likewise to things and actions. The Lord Steward, for example, finds the fuel and lays the fire, and the Lord Chamberlain lights it. It was under this state of things that the writer of this paper, having been sent one day by Her present Majesty to Sir Frederick Watson, then the Master of the Household, to complain that the dining-room was always cold, was gravely answered: 'You see, properly speaking, it is not our fault, for the Lord Steward lays the fire only, and the Lord Chamberlain lights it.' In the same manner the Lord Chamberlain provides all the lamps, and the Lord Steward must clean, trim and light them. If a pane of glass or the door in a cupboard in the scullery requires mending, it cannot now be done without the following process: A requisition is prepared and signed by the chief cook, it is then countersigned by the clerk of the kitchen, then it is taken to be signed by the Master of the Household, thence it is taken to the Lord Chamberlain's office, where it is authorized, and then laid before the Clerk of the Works under the office of Woods and Forests; and consequently many a window and cupboard have remained broken for months" Worse than this—"There is no one who attends to the comforts of the Queen's guests on their arrival at the Royal residence. When they arrive at present there is no one prepared to show them to or from their apartments; there is no gentleman in the palace who even knows where they are lodged, and there is not even a servant who can perform this duty, which is attached to the Lord Chamberlain's department. It frequently happens at Windsor that some of the visitors are at a loss to find the drawing-room, and, at night, if they happen to forget the right entrance from the corridor, they wander for an hour helpless, and unassisted. There is nobody to apply to in such a case, for it is not in the department of the Master of the Household, and the only remedy is to send a servant, if one can be found, to the porter's lodge, to ascertain the apartment in question." People were rather surprised when the boy Jones was discovered, at one o'clock in the morning, under the sofa in the room adjoining Her Majesty's bedroom. But it seems nobody was responsible—not the Lord Chamberlain, who was in Staffordshire, and in whose department the porters were not; not the Lord Steward, who was in London, and had nothing to do with the pages and attendants nearest to the royal person; not the Master of the Household, who was only a subordinate officer in the Lord Steward's department. So the King of Spain, who was roasted to death because the right Lord-in-Waiting could not be found to take him from the fire, was not without a parallel in that which calls itself the most practical of nations. Stockmar reformed the system by simply inducing each of the three great officers, without nominally giving up his authority (which would have shaken the foundations of the Monarchy), to delegate so much of it as would enable the fire to be laid and lighted by the same power. We fancy, however, that even since the Stockmarian reconstruction, we have heard of guests finding themselves adrift in the corridors of Windsor. There used to be no bells to the rooms, it being assumed that in the abode of Royalty servants, were always within call, a theory which would have been full of comfort to any nervous gentleman, who, on the approach of the royal dinner hour, might happen to find himself left with somebody else's small clothes.
In 1854 came the outbreak of public feeling against Prince Albert and Stockmar, as his friend and adviser, to which we have referred at the beginning of this article. The Prince's lamented death caused such a reaction of feeling in his favor that it is difficult now to recall to recollection the degree of unpopularity under which he at one time laboured. Some of the causes of this unpopularity are correctly stated by the author of the present memoir. The Prince was a foreigner, his ways were not those of Englishmen, he did not dress like an Englishman, shake hands like an Englishman. He was suspected of "Germanizing" tendencies, very offensive to high churchmen, especially in philosophy and religion. He displeased the Conservatives by his Liberalism, the coarser Radicals by his pietism and culture. He displeased the fast set by his strict morality; they called him slow, because he did not bet, gamble, use bad language, keep an opera dancer. With more reason he displeased the army by meddling, under the name of a too courtly Commander-in-Chief, with professional matters which he could not understand. But there was a cause of his unpopularity scarcely appreciable by the German author of this memoir. He had brought with him the condescending manner of a German Prince. The English prefer a frank manner; they will bear a high manner in persons of sufficient rank, but a condescending manner they will not endure; nor will any man or woman but those who live in a German Court. So it was, however, that the Prince, during his life, though respected by the people for his virtues, and by men of intellect for his culture, was disliked and disparaged by "Society," and especially by the great ladies who are at the head of it. The Conservatives, male and female, had a further grudge against him as the reputed friend of Peel, who was the object of their almost demoniac hatred.
The part of a Prince Consort is a very difficult one to play. In the case of Queen Anne's husband, Prince George of Denmark, nature solved the difficulty by not encumbering his Royal Highness with any brains. But Prince Albert had brains, and it was morally impossible that he should not exercise a power not contemplated by the Constitution. He did so almost from the first, with the full knowledge and approbation of the Ministers, who had no doubt the sense to see what could not be avoided had better be recognised and kept under control. But in 1851 the Court quarrelled with Palmerston, who was dismissed from office, very properly, for having, in direct violation of a recent order of the Queen, communicated to the French Ambassador his approval of the coup d'etat, without the knowledge of Her Majesty or the Cabinet. In 1854 came the rupture with Russia, which led to the Crimean war. Palmerston, in correspondence with his friend the French Emperor, was working for a war, with a separate French alliance. Prince Albert, in conjunction with Aberdeen, was trying to keep the Four Powers together, and by their combined action to avert a war. Palmerston and his partizans appealed through the press to the people, among whom the war feeling was growing strong, against the unconstitutional influence of the Prince Consort and his foreign advisers. Thereupon arose a storm of insane suspicion and fury which almost recalled the fever of the Popish Plot. Thousands of Londoners collected round the Tower to see the Prince's entry into the State Prison, and dispersed only upon being told that the Queen had said that if her husband was sent to prison she would go with him. Reports were circulated of a pamphlet drawn up under Palmerston's eye, and containing the most damning proofs of the Prince's guilt, the publication of which it was said the Prince had managed to prevent, but of which six copies were still in existence. The pamphlet was at last printedin extensoin theTimes, and the bottled lightning proved to be ditchwater. Of course Stockmar, the "spy," the "agent of Leopold," did not escape denunciation, and though it was proved he had been at Coburg all the time, people persisted in believing he was concealed about the Court, coming out only at night. The outcry was led by theMorning Post, Lord Palmerston's personal organ, and theMorning Advertiser, the bellicose and truly British journal of the Licensed Victuallers; but these were supported by the Conservative press, and by some Radical papers. A debate in Parliament broke the waterspout as quickly as it had been formed. The people had complained with transports of rage that the Prince Consort exercised an influence unrecognised by the Constitution in affairs of State. They were officially assured that hedid; and they at once declared themselves perfectly satisfied.
Our readers would not thank us for taking them again through the question of the Spanish marriages, a transaction which Stockmar viewed in the only way in which the most criminal and the filthiest of intrigues could be viewed by an honest man and a gentleman; or through the question of German unity, on which his opinions have been at once ratified and deprived of their practical interest by events. The last part of his life he passed in Germany, managing German Royalties, especially the Prince and Princess Frederick William of Prussia, for whom he had conceived a profound affection. His presence, we are told, was regarded by German statesmen and magnates as "uncanny," and Count K., on being told that it was Stockmar with whom an acquaintance had just crossed a bridge, asked the acquaintance why he had not pitched the Baron into the river. That Stockmar did not deserve such a fate, the testimony cited at the beginning of this paper is sufficient to prove. He was the unrecognised Minister of Constitutional Sovereigns who wanted, besides their regular Parliamentary advisers, a personal adviser to attend to the special interests of royalty. It was a part somewhat clandestine, rather equivocal, and not exactly such as a very proud man would choose. But Stockmar was called to it by circumstances, he was admirably adapted for it, and if it sometimes led him further than he was entitled or qualified to go, he played it on the whole very well.
A discussion which was raised some time ago by a very pleasant article of Professor Wilson in theCanadian Monthlydisclosed the fact that Wright's "Life of Wolfe," though it had been published some years, was still very little known. It is not only the best but the only complete life of the soldier, so memorable in Canadian annals, whom Chatham's hand launched on our coast, a thunderbolt of war, and whose victory decided that the destiny of this land of great possibilities should be shaped not by French but by British hands. Almost all that is known about Wolfe is here, and it is well told. Perhaps the biographer might have enhanced the interest of the figure by a more vivid presentation of its historic surroundings. It is when viewed in comparison with an age which was generally one of unbelief, of low aims, of hearts hardened by vice, of blunted affections, of coarse excesses, and in the military sphere one of excesses more than usually coarse, of professional ignorance and neglect of duty among the officers, while the habits of the rank and file were those depicted in Hogarth'sMarch to Finckleythat the life of this aspiring, gentle, affectionate, pure and conscientious soldier shines forth against the dark background like a star.
Squerryes Court, near Westerham, in Kent, is an ample and pleasant mansion in the Queen Anne style, which has long been in the possession of the Warde family—they are very particular about thee. In later times it was the abode of a memorable character in his way—old John Warde, the "Father of Fox-hunting." There it was that the greatest of all fox-hunters, Asheton Smithe, when on a visit to John Warde, rode Warde's horseBlue Ruinover a frozen country through a fast run of twenty-five minutes and killed his fox. On the terrace stands a monument. It marks the spot where in 1741, James Wolfe, the son of Lieut-Col. Wolfe, of Westerham, then barely fourteen years of age, was playing with two young Wardes, when the father of the playmates approached and handed him a large letter "On His Majesty's Service" which, on being opened, was found to contain his commission in the army. We may be sure that the young face flushed with undisguised emotion. There cannot be a greater contrast than that which the frank, impulsive features, sanguine complexion, and blue eyes of Wolfe present to the power expressed in the commanding brow, the settled look, and the evil eye [Footnote: The late Lord Russell, who had seen Napoleon at Elba, used to say that there was something very evil in his eye.] of Napoleon.
James Wolfe was a delicate child, and though he grew energetic and fearless, never grew strong, or ceased to merit the interest which attaches to a gallant spirit in a weak frame. He escaped a public school, and without any forfeiture of the manliness which public schools are supposed exclusively to produce, retained his home affections and his tenderness of heart. He received the chief part of his literary education in a school at Greenwich, where his parents resided, and he at all events learned enough Latin to get himself a dinner, in his first campaign on the Continent, by asking for it in that language. He is grateful to his schoolmaster, Mr. Stebbings, and speaks of him with affection in afterlife. But no doubt his military intelligence, as well as his military tastes, was gained by intercourse with his father, a real soldier, who had pushed his way by merit in an age of corrupt patronage, and was Adjutant-General to Lord Cathcart's forces in 1740. Bred in a home of military duty, the young soldier saw before him a worthy example of conscientious attention to all the details of the profession—not only to the fighting of battles, but to the making of the soldiers with whom battles are to be fought.
Walpole's reign of peace was over, the "Patriots" had driven the nation into war, and the trade of Colonel Wolfe and his son was again in request. Before he got his commission, and when he was only thirteen years-and a-half old, the boy's ardent spirit led him to embark with his father as a volunteer in the ill-fated expedition to Carthagena. Happily, though he assured his mother that he was "in a very good state of health," his health was so far from being good that they were obliged to put him on shore at Portsmouth. Thus he escaped that masterpiece of the military and naval administration of the aristocracy, to the horrors of which his frail frame would undoubtedly have succumbed. His father saw the unspeakable things depicted with ghastly accuracy by Smollett, and warned his son never, if he could help it, to go on joint expeditions of the two services—a precept which the soldier of an island power would have found it difficult to observe.
Wolfe's mother had struggled to prevent her boy from going, and appealed to his love of her. It was a strong appeal, for he was the most dutiful of sons. The first in the series of his letters is one written to her on this occasion, assuring her of his affection and promising to write to her by every ship he meets. She kept all his letters from this one to the last written from the banks of the St. Lawrence. They are in the stiff old style, beginning "Dear Madam," and signed "dutiful;" but they are full of warm feeling, scarcely interrupted by a little jealousy of temper which there appears to have been on the mother's side.
Wolfe's first commission was in his father's regiment of marines, but he never served as a marine. He could scarcely have done so, for to the end of his life, he suffered tortures from sea-sickness. He is now an Ensign in Duroure's regiment of foot. We see him a tall slender boy of fifteen, in scarlet coat, folded back from the breast after the old fashion in broad lapels to display its white or yellow lining, breeches and gaiters, with his young face surmounted by a wig and a cocked hat edged with gold lace, setting off, colours in hand, with his regiment for the war in the Low Countries. If he missed seeing aristocratic management at Carthagena, he shall see aristocratic and royal strategy at Dettingen. His brother Ned, a boy still more frail than himself, but emulous of his military ardour, goes in another regiment on the same expedition.
The regiment was accidentally preceded by a large body of troops of the other sex, who landing unexpectedly by themselves at Ostend caused some perplexity to the Quartermaster. The home affections must have been strong which could keep a soldier pure in those days.
The regiment was at first quartered at Ghent, where, amidst the din of garrison riot and murderous brawls, we hear the gentle sound of Wolfe's flute, and where he studies the fortifications, already anxious to prepare himself for the higher walks of his profession. From Ghent the army moved to the actual scene of war in Germany, suffering of course on the march from the badness of the commissariat. Wolfe's body feels the fatigue and hardship. He "never comes into quarters without aching hips and thighs." But he is "in the greatest spirits in the world." "Don't tell me of a constitution" he said afterwards, when a remark was made on the weakness of a brother officer, "he has good spirits, and good spirits will carry a man through everything."
All the world knows into what a position His Martial Majesty King George II., with the help of sundry persons of quality, styling themselves generals, got the British army at Dettingen, and how the British soldier fought his way out of the scrape. Wolfe was in the thick of it, and his horse was shot under him. His first letter is to his mother—"I take the very first opportunity I can to acquaint you that my brother and self escaped in the engagement we had with the French, the 16th June last, and, thank God, are as well as ever we were in our lives, after not only being canonnaded two hours and three quarters, and fighting with small arms two hours and one quarter, but lay the two following nights upon our arms, whilst it rained for about twenty hours in the same time; yet are ready and as capable to do the same again." But this letter is followed by one to his father, which seems to us to rank among the wonders of literature. It is full of fire and yet as calm as a dispatch, giving a complete, detailed, and masterly account of the battle, and showing that the boy kept his head, and played the part of a good officer as well as of a brave soldier in his first field. The cavalry did indifferently, and there is a sharp soldiery criticism on the cause of its failure. But the infantry did better.
"The third and last attack was made by the foot on both sides. We advanced towards one another; our men in high spirits, and very impatient for fighting, being elated with beating the French Horse, part of which advanced towards us, while the rest attacked our Horse, but were soon driven back by the great fire we gave them. The Major and I (for we had neither Colonel nor Lieutenant-Colonel), before they came near, were employed in begging and ordering the men not to fire at too great a distance, but to keep it till the enemy should come near us; but to little purpose. The whole fired when they thought they could reach them, which had like to have ruined us. We did very little execution with it. As soon as the French saw we presented they all fell down, and when we had fired they got up and marched close to us in tolerable good order, and gave us a brisk fire, which put us into some disorder and made us give way a little, particularly ours and two or three more regiments who were in the hottest of it. However, we soon rallied again, and attacked them again with great fury, which gained us a complete victory, and forced the enemy to retire in great haste."
Edward distinguished himself, too. "I sometimes thought I had lost poor Ned, when I saw arms and legs and heads beat off close by him. He is called 'The old Soldier,' and very deservedly." Poor "Old Soldier," his career was as brief as that of a shooting star. Next year he dies, not by sword or bullet, but of consumption hastened by hardships—dies alone in a foreign land, "often calling on those who were dear to him;" his brother, though within reach, being kept away by the calls of duty and by ignorance of the danger. The only comfort was that he had a faithful servant, and that as he shared with his brother the gift of winning hearts, brother officers were likely to be kind. James, writing to their mother, some time after, shed tears over the letter.
Though only sixteen, Wolfe had acted as Adjutant to his regiment at Dettingen. He was regularly appointed Adjutant a few days after. His father, as we have seen, had been an Adjutant-General. Even under the reign of Patronage there was one chance for merit. Patronage could not do without adjutants. From this time, Wolfe, following in his father's footsteps, seems to have given his steady attention to the administrative and, so far as his very scanty opportunities permitted, to the scientific part of his profession.
Happily for him, he was not at Fontenoy. But he was at Laffeldt, and saw what must have been a grand sight for a soldier—the French infantry coming down from the heights in one vast column, ten battalions in front and as many deep, to attack the British position in the village. After all, it was not by the British, but by the Austrians and Dutch, that Laffeldt was lost. We have no account of the battle from Wolfe's pen. But he was wounded, and it is stated, on what authority his biographer does not tell us, that he was thanked by the Commander-in-Chief. Four years afterwards he said of his old servant, Roland: "He came to me at the hazard of his life, in the last action, with offers of his service, took off my cloak, and brought a fresh horse, and would have continued close by me had I not ordered him to retire. I believe he was slightly wounded just at that time, and the horse he held was shot likewise. Many a time has he pitched my tent and made the bed ready to receive me, half dead with fatigue, and this I owe to his diligence."
But between Dettingen and Laffeldt, Wolfe had been called to serve on a different scene. The Patriots, in bringing on a European war, had renewed the Civil War at home. Attached to the army sent against the Pretender, Wolfe (now major), fought under "Hangman Hawley," in the blundering and disastrous hustle at Falkirk, and, on a happier day, under Cumberland at Culloden. Some years afterwards he revisited the field of Culloden, and he has recorded his opinion that there also "somebody blundered," though he refrains from saying who. The mass of the rebel army, he seems to think, ought not to have been allowed to escape. These campaigns were a military curiosity. The Roman order of battle, evidently intended to repair a broken front, was perhaps a lesson taught the Roman tacticians on the day when their front was broken by the rush of the Celtic clans at Allia. That rush produced the same effect on troops unaccustomed to it and unprepared for it at Killiecrankie, and again at Preston Pans and Falkirk. At Culloden the Duke of Cumberland formed so as to repair a broken front, and when the rush came, but few of the Highlanders got beyond the second line. Killiecrankie and Preston Pans tell us nothing against Discipline.
There is an apocryphal anecdote of the Duke's cruelty and of Wolfe's humanity towards the wounded after the battle,—"Wolfe, shoot me that Highland scoundrel who thus dares to look on us with such contempt and insolence." "My commission is at your Royal Highness's disposal, but I never can consent to become an executioner." The anecdotist adds that from that day Wolfe declined in the favour and confidence of the Commander-in-Chief. But it happens that Wolfe did nothing of the kind. On the other hand, Mr. Wright does not doubt, nor is there any ground for doubting, the identity of the Major Wolfe who, under orders, relieves a Jacobite lady, named Gordon, of a considerable amount of stores and miscellaneous property accumulated in her house, but according to her own account belonging partly to other people; among other things, of a collection of pictures to make room for which, as she said, she had been obliged to send away her son, who was missing at that critical juncture. The duty was a harsh one, but seems, by Mrs. Gordon's own account, not to have been harshly performed. If any property that ought to have been restored was kept, it was kept not by Wolfe but by "Hangman Hawley." Still one could wish to see Wolfe fighting on a brighter field than Culloden, and engaged in a work more befitting a soldier than the ruthless extirpation of rebellion which ensued.
The young soldier is now thoroughly in love with his profession. "A battle gained," he says, "is, I believe the highest joy mankind is capable of receiving to him who commands; and his merit must be equal to his success if it works no change to his disadvantage." He dilates on the value of war as a school of character. "We have all our passions and affections roused and exercised, many of which must have wanted their proper employment had not suitable occasions obliged us to exert them. Few men are acquainted with the degrees of their own courage till danger prove them, and are seldom justly informed how far the love of honour and dread of shame are superior to the love of life." But now peace comes, the sword is consigned to rust, and in promotion Patronage resumes its sway. "In these cooler times the parliamentary interest and weight of particular families annihilate all other pretensions." The consequence was, of course, that when the hotter times returned they found the army officered by fine gentlemen, and its path, as Napier says, was like that of Satan in "Paradise Lost" through chaos to death.
Wolfe would fain have gone abroad (England affording no schools) to complete his military and general education; but the Duke of Cumberland's only notion of military education was drill; so Wolfe had to remain with his regiment. It was quartered in Scotland, and besides the cankering inaction to which the gallant spirit was condemned, Scotch quarters were not pleasant in those days. The country was socially as far from London as Norway. The houses were small, dirty, unventilated, devoid of any kind of comfort; and habits and manners were not much better than the habitations. Perhaps Wolfe saw the Scotch society of those days through an unfavourable medium, at all events he did not find it charming. "The men here," he writes from Glasgow, "are civil, designing, and treacherous, with their immediate interest always in view; they pursue trade with warmth and a necessary mercantile spirit, arising from the baseness of their other qualifications. The women coarse, cold and cunning, for ever enquiring after men's circumstances; they make that the standing of their good breeding." Even the sermons failed to please. "I do several things in my character of commanding officer which I should never think of in any other; for instance, I'm every Sunday at the Kirk, an example justly to be admired. I would not lose two hours of a day if it would not answer some end. When I say 'lose two hours,' I must complain to you that the generality of Scotch preachers are excessive blockheads, so truly and obstinately dull, that they seem to shut out knowledge at every entrance." If Glasgow and Perth were bad, still worse were dreary Banff and barbarous Inverness. The Scotch burghers, their ladies, and the preachers are entitled to the benefit of the remark that the Scotch climate greatly affected Wolfe's sensitive frame, and that he took a wrong though established method of keeping out the cold and damp. When there is nothing in the way of action to lift the soul above the clay his spirits, as he admits rise and fall with the weather and his impressions vary with them. "I'm sorry to say that my writings are greatly influenced by the state of my body or mind at the time of writing and I'm either happy or ruined by my last night's rest or from sunshine or light and sickly air; such infirmity is the mortal frame subject to."
Inverness was the climax of discomfort, coarseness and dulness, as well as a centre of disaffection. Quarters there in those days must have been something like quarters in an Indian village, with the Scotch climate superadded. The houses were hovels, worse and more fetid than those at Perth. Even when it was fine there was no amusement but shooting woodcocks at the risk of rheumatism. When the rains poured down and the roads were broken up there was no society, not even a newspaper, nothing to be done but to eat coarse food and sleep in bad beds. If there was a laird in the neighbourhood he was apt to be some 'Bumper John' whose first act of hospitality was to make you drunk. "I wonder how long a man moderately inclined that way would require in a place like this to wear out his love for arms and soften his martial spirit. I believe the passion would be something diminished in less than ten years and the gentleman be contented to be a little lower than Caesar in the list to get rid of the encumbrance of greatness."
It is in his dreary quarters at Inverness at the dead of night perhaps with a Highland tempest howling outside that the future conqueror of Quebec thus moralizes on his own condition and prospects in a letter to his mother:
"The winter wears away, so do our years and so does life itself, and it matters little where a man passes his days and what station he fills or whether he be great or considerable but it imports him something to look to his manner of life. This day am I twenty five years of age, and all that time is as nothing. When I am fifty (if it so happens) and look back, it will be the same, and so on to the last hour. But it is worth a moment's consideration that one may be called away on a sudden unguarded and unprepared, and the oftener these thoughts are entertained the less will be the dread or fear of death. You will judge by this sort of discourse that it is the dead of night when all is quiet and at rest, and one of those intervals wherein men think of what they really are and what they really should be, how much is expected and how little performed. Our short duration here and the doubts of the hereafter should awe the most flagitious, if they reflected on them. The little taken in for meditation is the best employed in all their lives for if the uncertainty of our state and being is then brought before us who is there that will not immediately discover the inconsistency of all his behaviour and the vanity of all his pursuits? And yet, we are so mixed and compounded that, though I think seriously this minute, and lie down with good intentions, it is likely I may rise with my old nature, or perhaps with the addition of some new impertinence, and be the same wandering lump of idle errors that I have ever been.
"You certainly advise me well. You have pointed out the only way where there can be no disappointment, and comfort that will never fail us, carrying men steadily and cheerfully in their journey, and a place of rest at the end. Nobody can be more persuaded of it than I am; but situation, example, the current of things, and our natural weakness, draw me away with the herd, and only leave me just strength enough to resist the worst degree of our iniquities. There are times when men fret at trifles and quarrel with their toothpicks. In one of these ill-habits I exclaim against the present condition, and think it is the worst of all; but coolly and temperately it is plainly the best. Where there is most employment and least vice, there one should wish to be. There is a meanness and a baseness not to endure with patience the little inconveniences we are subject to; and to know no happiness but in one spot, and that in ease, in luxury, in idleness, seems to deserve our contempt. There are young men amongst us that have great revenues and high military stations, that repine at three months' service with their regiments if they go fifty miles from home. Soup andvenaisonand turtle are their supreme delight and joy,—an effeminate race of coxcombs, the future leaders of our armies, defenders and protectors of our great and free nation!
"You bid me avoid Fort William, because you believe it still worse than this place. That will not be my reason for wishing to avoid it; but the change of conversation; the fear of becoming a mere ruffian; and of imbibing the tyrannical principles of an absolute commander, or, giving way insensibly to the temptations of power, till I become proud, insolent and intolerable;—these considerations will make me wish to leave the regiment before the next winter, and always if it could be so after eight months duty; that by frequenting men above myself I may know my true condition, and by discoursing with the other sex may learn some civility and mildness of carriage, but never pay the price of the last improvement with the loss of reason. Better be a savage of some use than a gentle, amorous puppy, obnoxious to all the world. One of the wildest of wild clans is a worthier being than a perfect Philander."
Wolfe, it must be owned, does not write well. He has reason to envy, as he does, the grace of the female style. He is not only ungrammatical, which, in a familiar letter, is a matter of very small consequence, but somewhat stilted. Perhaps it was like the "Madam," the fashion of the Johnsonian era. Yet beneath the buckram you always feel that there is a heart. Persons even of the same profession are cast in very different moulds; and the mould of Wolfe was as different as possible from that of the Iron Duke.
Wolfe's dreary garrison leisures in Scotland, however, were not idle. His books go with him, and he is doing his best to cultivate himself, both professionally and generally. He afterwards recommends to a friend, evidently from his own experience, a long list of military histories and other works ancient and modern. The ancients he read in translations. His range is wide and he appreciates military genius in all its forms. "There is an abundance of military knowledge to be picked out of the lives of Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII., King of Sweden, and of Zisca the Bohemian, and if a tolerable account could be got of the exploits of Scanderbeg, it would be inestimable, for he excels all the officers ancient and modern in the conduct of a small defensive army." At Louisburg, Wolfe put in practice, with good effect, a manoeuvre which he had learned from the Carduchi in Xenophon, showing perhaps by this reproduction of the tactics employed two thousand years before by a barbarous tribe, that in the so-called art of war there is a large element which is not progressive. Books will never make a soldier, but Wolfe, as a military student, had the advantage of actual experience of war. Whenever he could find a teacher, he studied mathematics, zealously though apparently not with delight. "I have read the mathematics till I am grown perfectly stupid, and have algebraically worked away the little portion of understanding that was allowed to me. They have not even left me the qualities of a coxcomb for I can neither laugh nor sing nor talk an hour upon nothing. The latter of these is a sensible loss, for it excludes a gentleman from all good company and makes him entirely unfit for the conversation of the polite world." "I don't know how the mathematics may assist the judgment, but they have a great tendency to make men dull. I who am far from being sprightly even in my gaiety, am the very reverse of it at this time." Certainly to produce sprightliness is neither the aim nor the general effect of mathematics. That while military education was carried on, general culture was not wholly neglected, is proved by the famous exclamation about Gray's Elegy, the most signal homage perhaps that a poet ever received. At Glasgow, where there is a University, Wolfe studies mathematics in the morning, in the afternoon he endeavours to regain his lost Latin.
Nor in training himself did he neglect to train his soldiers. He had marked with bitterness of heart the murderous consequence to which neglect of training had led in the beginning of every war. Probably he had the army of Frederick before his eyes. His words on musketry practice may still have an interest. "Marksmen are nowhere so necessary as in a mountainous country; besides, firing at objects teaches the soldiers to level incomparably, makes the recruit steady, and removes the foolish apprehension that seizes young soldiers when they first load their arms with bullets. We fire, first singly, then by files, one, two, three, or more, then by ranks, and lastly by platoons; and the soldiers see the effects of their shots, especially at a mark or upon water. We shoot obliquely and in different situations of ground, from heights downwards and contrariwise."
Military education and attention to the details of the profession were not very common under the Duke of Wellington. They were still less common under the Duke of Cumberland. Before he was thirty, Wolfe was a great military authority, and what was required of Chatham, in his case, was not so much the eye to discern latent merit, as the boldness to promote merit over the head of rank.
In a passage just quoted Wolfe expresses his fear lest command should make him tyrannical. He was early tried by the temptation of power. He became Lieut.-Colonel at twenty-five; but in the absence of his Colonel he had already been in command at Stirling when he was only twenty- three. This was in quarters where he was practically despotic. He does not fail in his letters to pour out his heart on his situation. "Tomorrow Lord George Sackville goes away, and I take upon me the difficult and troublesome employment of a commander. You can't conceive how difficult a thing it is to keep the passions within bounds, when authority and immaturity go together: to endeavour at a character which has every opposition from within, and that the very condition of the blood is a sufficient obstacle to. Fancy you see me that must do justice to good and bad; reward and punish with an equal unbiassed hand; one that is to reconcile the severity of discipline with the dictates of humanity, one that must study the tempers and dispositions of many men, in order to make their situation easy and agreeable to them, and should endeavour to oblige all without partiality; a mark set up for everybody to observe and judge of; and last of all, suppose one employed in discouraging vice, and recommending the reverse, at the turbulent age of twenty-three, when it is possible I may have as great a propensity that way as any of the men that I converse with." He had difficulties of character to contend with, as well as difficulties of age. His temper was quick; he knew it. "My temper is much too warm, and sudden resentment forces out expressions and even actions that are neither justifiable nor excusable, and perhaps I do not conceal the natural heat so much as I ought to do." He even felt that he was apt to misconstrue the intentions of those around him, and to cherish groundless prejudices. "I have that wicked disposition of mind that whenever I know that people have entertained a very ill opinion, I imagine they never change. From whence one passes easily to an indifference about them, and then to dislike, and though I flatter myself that I have the seeds of justice strong enough to keep from doing wrong, even to an enemy, yet there lurks a hidden poison in the heart that it is difficult to root out. It is my misfortune to catch fire on a sudden, to answer letters the moment I receive them, when they touch me sensibly, and to suffer passion to dictate my expressions more than my reason. The next day, perhaps, would have changed this, and earned more moderation with it. Every ill turn of my life has had this haste and first impulse of the moment for its cause, and it proceeds from pride." Solitary command and absence from the tempering influences of general society were, as he keenly felt, likely to aggravate his infirmities. Yet he proves not only a successful but a popular commander, and he seems never to have lost his friends. The "seeds of justice" no doubt were really strong, and the transparent frankness of his character, its freedom from anything like insidiousness or malignity, must have had a powerful effect in dispelling resentment.
His first regimental minute, of which his biographer gives us an abstract, evinces a care for his men which must have been almost startling in the days of "Hangman Hawley." He desires to be acquainted in writing with the men and the companies they belong to, and as soon as possible with their characters, that he may know the proper objects to encourage, and those over whom it will be necessary to keep a strict hand. The officers are enjoined to visit the soldiers' quarters frequently; now and then to go round between nine and eleven o'clock at night, and not trust to sergeants' reports. They are also requested to watch the looks of the privates, and observe whether any of them were paler than usual, that the reason might be inquired into and proper means used to restore them to their former vigour. Subalterns are told that "a young officer should not think he does too much." But firmness, and great firmness, must have been required, as well as watchfulness and kindness. His confidential expressions with regard to the state of the army are as strong as words can make them. "I have a very mean opinion of the Infantry in general. I know their discipline to be bad and their valour precarious. They are easily put into disorder and hard to recover out of it. They frequently kill their officers in their fear and murder one another in their confusion." "Nothing, I think, can hurt their discipline—it is at its worst. They shall drink and swear, plunder and murder, with any troops in Europe, the Cossacks and Calmucks themselves not excepted." "If I stay much longer with the regiment I shall be perfectly corrupt; the officers are loose and profligate and the soldiers are very devils." He brought the 67th, however, into such a condition that it remained a model regiment for years after he was gone.
Nor were the duties of a commanding officer in Scotland at that period merely military. In the Highlands especially, he was employed in quenching the smoking embers of rebellion, and in re-organizing the country after the anarchy of civil war. Disarming had to be done, and suppression of the Highland costume, which now marks the Queen's favourite regiment, but then marked a rebel. This is bad, as well as unworthy, work for soldiers, who have not the trained self-command which belongs to a good police, and for which the Irish Constabulary are as remarkable as they are for courage and vigour. Even Wolfe's sentiments contracted a tinge of cruelty from his occupation. In one of his subsequent letters he avows a design which would have led to the massacre of a whole clan. "Would you believe that I am so bloody?" We do not believe that he was so bloody, and are confident that the design, if it was ever really formed, would not have been carried into effect. But the passage is the most painful one in his letters. The net result of his military administration, however, was that the people at Inverness were willing to celebrate the Duke of Cumberland's birthday, though they were not willing to comply with the insolent demand of Colonel Lord Bury, who had come down to take the command for a short time, that they should celebrate it on the anniversary of Culloden. It is a highly probable tradition that the formation of Highland regiments was suggested by Wolfe.
In a passage which we have quoted Wolfe glances at the awkward and perilous position in which a young commander was placed in having to control the moral habits of officers his equals in age, and to rebuke the passions which mutinied in his own blood. He could hardly be expected to keep himself immaculate. But he is always struggling to do right and repentant when he does wrong. "We use a very dangerous freedom and looseness of speech among ourselves; this by degrees makes wickedness and debauchery less odious than it should be, if not familiar, and sets truth, religion, and virtue at a great distance. I hear things every day said that would shock your ears, and often say things myself that are not fit to be repeated, perhaps without any ill intention, but merely by the force of custom. The best that can be offered in our defence is that some of us see the evil and wish to avoid it." Among the very early letters there is one to his brother about "pretty mantua makers," etc, but it is evidently nothing but a nominal deference to the military immorality of the age. Once when on a short visit to London, and away from the restraining responsibilities of his command, Wolfe, according to his own account, lapsed into debauchery. "In that short time I committed more imprudent acts than in all my life before I lived in the idlest, [most] dissolute, abandoned manner that could be conceived, and that not out of vice, which is the most extraordinary part of it. I have escaped at length and am once more master of my reason, and hereafter it shall rule my conduct; at least I hope so." Perhaps the lapse may have been worse by contrast than in itself. The intensity of pure affection which pervades all Wolfe's letters is sufficient proof that he had never abandoned himself to sensuality to an extent sufficient to corrupt his heart. The age was profoundly sceptical, and if the scepticism had not spread to the army the scoffing had. Wolfe more than once talks lightly of going to church as a polite form; but he appears always to have a practical belief in God.
It is worthy of remark that a plunge into London dissipation follows very close upon the disappointment of an honourable passion. Wolfe had a certain turn of mind which favoured matrimony "prodigiously," and he had fallen very much in love with Miss Lawson, Maid of Honour to the Princess of Wales. But the old General and Mrs. Wolfe opposed the match —apparently on pecuniary grounds. "They have their eye upon one of L30,000." Miss Lawson had only L12,000. Parents had more authority then than they have now, Wolfe was exceedingly dutiful, and he allowed the old people, on whom, from the insufficiency of his pay, he was still partly dependent, to break off the affair. Such at least seems to have been the history of its termination. The way in which Wolfe records the catastrophe, it must be owned, is not very romantic. "This last disappointment in love has changed my natural disposition to such a degree that I believe it is now possible that I might prevail upon myself not to refuse twenty or thirty thousand pounds, if properly offered. Rage and despair do not commonly produce such reasonable effects; nor are they the instruments to make a man's fortune by but in particular cases." It was long, however, before he could think of Miss Lawson without a pang, and the sight of her portrait, he tells us, takes away his appetite for some days.
At seven and twenty Wolfe left Scotland, having already to seven years' experience of warfare added five years' experience of difficult command. He is now able to move about a little and open his mind, which has been long cramped by confinement in Highland quarters. He visits an old uncle in Ireland, and, as one of the victors of Culloden, views with special interest that field of the Boyne, where in the last generation Liberty and Progress had triumphed over the House of Stuart. "I had more satisfaction in looking at this spot than in all the variety that I have met with; and perhaps there is not another piece of ground in the world that I could take so much pleasure to observe." Then, though with difficulty, he obtained the leave of the pipe-clay Duke to go to Paris. There he saw the hollow grandeur of the decaying monarchy and the immoral glories of Pompadour. "I was yesterday at Versailles, a cold spectator of what we commonly call splendour and magnificence. A multitude of men and women were assembled to bow and pay their compliments in the most submissive manner to a creature of their own species." He went into the great world, to which he gains admission with an ease which shows that he has a good position, and tries to make up his leeway in the graces by learning to fence, dance, and ride. He wishes to extend his tour and see the European armies; but the Duke inexorably calls him back to pipe-clay. It is proposed to him that he should undertake the tutorship of the young Duke of Richmond on a military tour through the Low Countries. But he declines the offer. "I don't think myself quite equal to the task, and as for the pension that might follow, it is very certain that it would not become me to accept it. I can't take money from any one but the King, my master, or from some of his blood."