On the occasion of the Goddard joke, his only remark was, “D— stupid!”
At this period touting for brewers and wine merchants was the curse of the Army. Every club contained retired colonels and others who buttonholed one on every occasion. Before a troopship entered the harbour a tout came on board with the pilot; dining at an Army club, the man at the next table inquired if your regimental canteen was well served; indeed, they penetrated the most sacred precincts with the pertinacity of a sandstorm.
As a cranky old general once exclaimed “D— it, I thought we were safe when militia men were not eligible; but these touts and store-keepers and bonnet-shop keepers will make the Rag a den of thieves, by Gad!”
The association of these respective vocations in the old warrior’s mind was evidently based on the legend that then obtained that when the captain was inspecting the front rank of the Tower Hamlets the rear rank was faced about by way of precaution.
Every one who knew Jonas Hunt must have been astonished to read that he left over £35,000 at his death a few months ago. As brave as a lion, he would assuredly—had he not been such a rip—have received the Victoria Cross for his share in the Balaclava charge, and when he sold out two years later, he was literally without a shilling, and continued inthe same happy condition for twenty years after—not that Jonas stinted himself in anything, on the contrary, he would plunge to any extent, dunning you if chance made him your creditor, and forgetting any debt almost as soon as contracted. A bruiser of no mean class, he invariably suggested a round if any one had the temerity to remind him.
A highly objectionable individual, whose father was a buggy master in Calcutta, and actually got a commission in the “Blues” till ordered to sell out for writing anonymous letters to a celebrated beauty of the Sixties not long since dead, once had the impudence to remind Jonas of a debt, and was replied to as follows: “I should have thought it more in your line to have written anonymously to my wife, but if you prefer to settle the matter with your fists I am entirely at your disposal.” The man who procured the retirement of the anonymous letter-writer was at the time an officer in the Guards, and though still to be seen radiating between minor restaurants and 100 per cent. bureaus, has nothing left of his former self but a fly-blown prefix to his name, and even that has lost its commercial value amongst Hebrew financiers of shady enterprises.
Thecraze for “table-turning,” “spirit-rapping,” and every conceivable trash connected with the occult sciences, was in full blast in the long-ago Sixties, and old ladies would form tea parties and sit all day and half through the night at round tables with their knotty old mittened thumbs pressed convulsively against those of their neighbours waiting for the moving of the waters. Lord Ashburton, who lived near Portman Square, was the arch-priest and arch-culprit that disseminated this fashionable twaddle, and there was not a spinster in that (then) highly-fashionable district that did not devour the leaflets that were periodically issued broadcast by the inspired old humbug. Occasionally invitations were issued for séances, when refreshments (more or less light) were provided to fortify poor human nature against possible unearthly attacks after the lights had been judiciously lowered.
It was at one of these functions that I on one occasion found myself, and, possessing in those days an appetite like a cormorant, was terribly disillusioned after two hours’ waiting for the “spirits” to hear his lordship order the butler to “bring in the urn.” (In those long-ago days tea without an urn the dimensions of a safe was an absolute impossibility.) Nor did spiritualism end here, for numerous haunted houses were in the market where apparitions and unearthlysounds could be seen and heard and which no one would rent.
It is the experience of a man I knew intimately that I will now—without expressing an opinion—relate, as far as I can recollect, in his own words:
“Looking for a house with plenty of elbow room and of reasonable rent, my attention was attracted by a dilapidated building—with garden in front and noseless statues liberally besprinkling it—situated in the Marylebone Road. Proceeding to the agent’s, I was considerably surprised by his terms. ‘The house,’ he began, ‘has a bad name; no caretaker will live on the premises. In a word, sir, here’s the key, and if you are willing to occupy it you shall have it rent free for six months.’ I at once closed with his offer, and seeking out a chum—lately ordained—we spent the next night in the haunted house. It was in the dining-room we proposed to make a first night of it, and barely had we settled down for a chat when footsteps were distinctly heard in the hall. ‘Our lantern!’ I whispered as we excitedly opened the door. Nothing was to be seen, nothing to be heard. ‘Hush!’ whispered my friend, ‘I hear something behind me.’ I heard the sound also. ‘Who’s there?’ I called out. ‘Who’s there?’ I repeated; but still the silence of the Catacombs. Then the sound of footsteps ascending the uncarpeted stairs was unmistakable till they gradually died away in the attics. A moment of indescribable stillness followed; a cold blast chilled the very marrow of our bones, and our lantern went out like the crack of a pistol.“We returned to our armchairs after carefully locking the door, but we heard no more. And so we sat till welcome daylight made its appearance, and as the kettle simmered on the hob and the sound of awakening life made itself manifest in the Marylebone Road, it seemed impossible to realise the weird manifestations we had witnessed.“‘—,’ said my friend, ‘we have learnt a terrible experience; Satan has been unloosed amongst us. Let us pray.’”
“Looking for a house with plenty of elbow room and of reasonable rent, my attention was attracted by a dilapidated building—with garden in front and noseless statues liberally besprinkling it—situated in the Marylebone Road. Proceeding to the agent’s, I was considerably surprised by his terms. ‘The house,’ he began, ‘has a bad name; no caretaker will live on the premises. In a word, sir, here’s the key, and if you are willing to occupy it you shall have it rent free for six months.’ I at once closed with his offer, and seeking out a chum—lately ordained—we spent the next night in the haunted house. It was in the dining-room we proposed to make a first night of it, and barely had we settled down for a chat when footsteps were distinctly heard in the hall. ‘Our lantern!’ I whispered as we excitedly opened the door. Nothing was to be seen, nothing to be heard. ‘Hush!’ whispered my friend, ‘I hear something behind me.’ I heard the sound also. ‘Who’s there?’ I called out. ‘Who’s there?’ I repeated; but still the silence of the Catacombs. Then the sound of footsteps ascending the uncarpeted stairs was unmistakable till they gradually died away in the attics. A moment of indescribable stillness followed; a cold blast chilled the very marrow of our bones, and our lantern went out like the crack of a pistol.
“We returned to our armchairs after carefully locking the door, but we heard no more. And so we sat till welcome daylight made its appearance, and as the kettle simmered on the hob and the sound of awakening life made itself manifest in the Marylebone Road, it seemed impossible to realise the weird manifestations we had witnessed.
“‘—,’ said my friend, ‘we have learnt a terrible experience; Satan has been unloosed amongst us. Let us pray.’”
The house has long since been pulled down; majestic flats now occupy the site, and instead of the sepulchral moans of disembodied souls the untrained, throaty voice of lovely woman may be heard shrieking to the accompaniment of a hired piano, and producing a discord as damnable, if more up-to-date, than ever was heard in a haunted house.
In Surrey Street there was a house that rumour asserted had been hermetically sealed, and was not to be re-opened till a hundred years had passed, where, in the eighteenth century, a terrible tragedy had occurred during the progress of a bridal feast, and the distracted bridegroom, rushing out, had commanded that God’s sun should not again settle on the accursed board till the generation yet unborn was in being. And I have a vague recollection of having read, years later, a description of what was seen as the portals were thrown back after their century of peace, and light and air had percolated through the room. One can picture the table decked with its moth-eaten cloth, the piles of dust that represented the viands, the chairs pushed back in weird array, and the odour of the tomb that pervaded everything!
To all which, my enlightened twentieth-century reader, there is probably another side. The whole thing may be an absolute fable.
In the days before Trade had made those gigantic strides which have since dumped its votaries amid the once sacred pages of Debrett, when knights were not as common as blackberries, and the Victorian Order had not become a terror in the land, when buttermen sold butter, and furniture-men sold furniture, and before huge emporiums for the sale of everything had come into existence, it was “bazaars” that supplied the maximum of selection with theminimum of locomotion, such as to-day is to be found in the huge caravanserai yclept “Stores” and in Tottenham Court Road and Westbourne Grove in particular.
In Soho Square, on the western side, where to-day—and all day—men with pronounced features, forbidding countenances, and of usurious tendencies may be seen in a first floor window exchanging views on the iniquitous restrictions associated with stamped paper, a bazaar existed in the long-ago sixties where dogs that squeaked and elephants that wagged their tails might have been bought by children of tender years who, for aught we know, may have since been plucked of their last feather by the vultures that now hover over those happy hunting grounds.
Turning into Oxford Street there was the Queen’s Bazaar, afterward converted into the Princess’s Theatre, still with us, with its dismal, dingy frontage and limited shelter for ladies with guttural voices; whilst almost opposite was the Pantheon, with perhaps the most chequered career of all, having been, in turn, the National Opera House, the accepted Masquerade house, a theatre, and a bazaar till 1867, when it attained its present proud position as the main tap for the supply of Gilbey’s multifarious vintages.
Still further west was the St. James’s Bazaar, built by Crockford, and soon converted into a hell, where more monies changed hands and more properties were sold than in all the other bazaars in the universe.
But perhaps the most tenacious of life was the Baker Street Bazaar. In its spacious area was situated an unpretentious shop (since spread half up the street) with two or three windows in Baker Street, while on the hinterland was the bazaar, and over it Tussaud’s Waxworks. Entering from King Street was the area occupied annually by the Cattle Show, whilst still further space was available—as we were lately informed by the police reports—for empty coffins,false beards, volatile dukes, lead and bricks in bulk, sleeping and reception rooms, scores of flunkeys, and addenda too multifarious to mention. Never having seen the subterranean Duke nor the bewhiskered Druce, one may be permitted to marvel where all this ghastly conglomeration found shelter, and whether the confusion that must have occurred amongst the Dutch dukes, the English shopmen, the cattle, and the Waxworks can in any way be held responsible for the startling contradictions with which we have lately been regaled.
But does any one who traverses the historic area between Soho Square and Charing Cross give a thought to the interest that once clustered round where Crosse and Blackwell’s factory now stands? Does any one realise whilst “held up” in a broken-down “Vanguard” in Shaftesbury Avenue that the neighbourhood once echoed with the Royalist battle-cry “So-ho” in the days of that greatest of Englishmen—Cromwell? Does any one ever give it a thought that Charing Cross was not so very long ago a resort of footpads, and that even so late as the Sixties the sweet waters of the somewhat putrid Thames oozed and bubbled where the District railway station now stands? And how few are aware that, when Drummond’s Bank was in course of construction, fossils of mammoth, cave lions, rhinoceros, and Irish deer were found; and that in future ages, excavations will probably unearth skeletons of hybrids we all try to dodge and whom naturalists will describe as voracious, living on suction, apt to beg, borrow, or steal, migratory to a limited extent, and usually to be met with between Charing Cross and St. Paul’s or on the plateaus that abut on the Criterion?
As an observant judge once remarked to one of these pariahs who filled up his cup of iniquities by snatching a fowl from a confiding poulterer’s, “God has given you intelligence; your parents have givenyou a good education; your country has provided you with excellent prospects both for the present and future, instead of which you go about stealing ducks.”
Passing still further west along the Strand, the changes of time and idea become more apparent as one contemplates that stronghold of Christianity—Exeter Hall—plastered with bills and lately passed into alien hands; and the period, the surging crowd, all lend themselves to the illusion, and one might almost fancy one heard the echo of 1,000 years ago, “Not this man, but Barabbas.”
Oh, the irony of Fate! methought; truly does Time turn the old days to derision; and one knows not whither one’s vapourings might have landed one as a zealous constable fixed his official eye upon the stoic who, deeming it advisable to “move on,” sought consolation, but found none, in an adjoining tobacconist’s by indulging in one of Salmon and Gluckstein’s real Havanas (five for a shilling).
Skimming (not wading through) the report of the Court of Inquiry lately dragging its monotonous length in the vicinity of the Chelsea embankment, one was struck by the change that has come over these senseless preliminaries, which occasionally end in smoke and sometimes in legalised military or civil tribunals. For such courts are as old as the hills, and are convened on every possible excuse. If a soldier loses a shoebrush it is (or was) a Court of Inquiry that established the interesting fact; if an officer was accused of a more heinous offence, it was a Court of Inquiry that heard what was to be said.
The only difference is that, whereas the old style cost no more than a few sheets of foolscap and the unnecessary lumbering of regimental records, the identical luxury cannot now be indulged in without an array of Old Bailey lawyers, who harangue the old warriors that constitute the court for hours, utterly oblivious of the fact that they are better judges ofthings military, and not likely to be carried away by those bursts of eloquence that so impress the twelve jack-puddings of which our bulwarks and liberties are said to be composed.
The earliest of these Courts of Inquiry was in ’41, when Lord Cardigan killed Captain Tucket in a duel—and ended in his trial and acquittal by his brother peers.
Later on, in ’44, Lord William Paget and the same bellicose Earl had a domestic squabble in which the former said “he had,” and the latter said “he hadn’t,” and this began by a Court of Inquiry and culminated in the High Court.
Again, in ’54 Lieutenants Perry and Greer were hailed before a Court of Inquiry for practical jokes of a pronounced character, but the inquiry ended in smoke, as it was “revised” by the Minister of War.
In ’61 was the Court of Inquiry in the 4th Dragoon Guards which, disclosing undoubted bullying on the part of Colonel Bentinck (the present Duke of Portland’s father), ended in a court martial, when nothing but interest saved the old gentleman’s bacon.
Later on, there was the Mansfield affair, when a disagreement arose between Sir William Mansfield (afterwards Lord Sandhurst), or his wife, and an aide-de-camp that elicited much that was amusing in regard to purloined jams and other preserves, for which her ladyship was supposed to be celebrated; all which instances ended in the usual way after an infinity of positive assertion met by flat contradiction.
Whether the farce lately enacted, with its lawyers and their speeches, affected the result, or benefited anybody except the lawyers, is a point upon which most people will agree; all which, however, sinks into insignificance in comparison with the question as to when and how did this interference withmilitary tribunals first become tolerated, and how can our Military Council or our Military anything, or the officers constituting the Court, submit to be harangued by “only a civilian,” as one of Robertson’s plays describes outsiders?
In all the military tribunals of the past such an innovation was unheard of. Colonel Crawley, on his trial, had words put into his mouth by Sir William Harcourt (whose reputation as an orator it made), but he was not permitted to address the Court. In the Robertson Court Martial it was the same, and in the Navy to-day a prisoner is defended by “a friend,” but no civilian would be permitted to “quarter deck it” in that conservative service.
Even Colonel Dawkins—who, by the way, was a Household Brigade man—amongst all his eccentric experiences, never got so far as suggesting that a civilian should bridge the chasm that has hitherto existed between the Law Courts and the Horse Guards by all this special pleading, and one wonders what old Sir George Browne or General Pennefather would have said (or sworn) if such a suggestion had been proposed to them! It may be too much to say there would have been an earthquake, but the foundations of the house would certainly have vibrated.
And it is the ignorance of what the present privileges of the Guards are that makes it difficult to form any opinion on the merits of the case. The friction that these “privileges” used to cause when a Household regiment was occasionally brigaded at Aldershot or Dublin or the Curragh with regiments of the line was, however, undeniable.
It pained old captains with Crimean and Indian medals to be “turned out” by a field officer with a fluffy upper lip and a youthful voice that had not long before sounded at Eton; it was irritating (at least) for colonels commanding distinguished regiments to see a Guard’s sentry fumbling with his rifleand deliberately coming to the “carry,” and five minutes after “presenting” to a brevet major of the Guards, who was trundling a hoop when the old warrior was in the trenches before Sebastopol; it was annoying to read in general orders special reminders as to the prohibition regarding imperials and capricious shaving, and to see half-a-dozen Guards officers with beards like pioneers; it was amusing to hear (as one did) the son of old Sir Percy Douglas (who was for a little season in the Guards) inform a distinguished field officer that the “executive” command could only be given by a Guardsman to a Guardsman; and still more amusing to hear the retort which made mincemeat of the privilege, at least, on that occasion—all which nonsense has, however, been considerably modified. By all means let the Guards retain their privileges and licences—but let them in mercy be “consumed on the premises.” And if the physique of these favoured regiments is not as fine as of yore, no one will deny that their “marching past” and their “dressing” are far superior to that of the line and “pretty” enough to please even Admiral Scott himself.
It may further be conceded without fear of contradiction that the Queen’s Company of the Grenadiers in 1862 was a magnificent specimen of physique and drilled to perfection under Lord Henry Percy and Micky Bruce.
Beards, indeed, have always been a cause of offence. In the tropics (except in India) a man is compelled to shave; with the thermometer below zero, the same regulation is rigidly enforced.
It was Colonel Crealock’s beard at Gibraltar that was the indirect cause of an officer being tried by Court Martial; it was Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar’s and Colonel Phillip’s beards that led to invidious remarks in the Dublin Division; and, until the razor is abolished beyond the precincts of the four-mileradius, so long will a link remain between the grand old days of the muzzle loader and cold steel and the modern requirements for potting an enemy at a thousand yards rise.
When the Metropolitan Board of Works was at the zenith of its power, and thoroughfares were being projected, and whole streets were disappearing and ancient rookeries being demolished, it was incredible the leakage that appeared to exist, and how the friends of indiscreet or dishonest employés reaped a harvest by acquiring dilapidated buildings for a song, and standing out for huge compensation when the day for demolition drew nigh.
An astute former hanger-on at Faultless’s cock-pit in Endell Street surprised me considerably on one occasion as he stood at the door of a dilapidated beer-house in Covent Garden by informing me that he had bought it for a trifle, and six months later I was literally staggered by again meeting the rascal shovelling out potatoes at a little greengrocery shop where now stands the London and Westminster Bank opposite the Law Courts.
He explained that he had a brother in a humble but trusted position at Spring Gardens, and that his old beer-house had ceased to exist, and he expected his “present property” would “come down” before long.
Green Street, leading from Leicester Square, was another channel for the acquisition of large profits, and when every house was a bug-walk, and demolition a matter of a few months, the news was actually “offered” to a man I knew well able to find the requisite purchase money, but rejected from misplaced prudential motives.
The present London Pavilion was another glaring instance of jobbery, and years before it was necessary to hustle the ex-Scott’s waiter from the cosy nest-egg he so diligently nursed, the Board of Works descendedon him like an avalanche with a peremptory notice to quit.
At this stage one Villiers comes upon the scene, but whether he was a scion of the noble house of Jersey or Clarendon is not clear. Suffice that tradition credited him with having once been a considerable actor who had made a great hit in a minor part in theOverland Routeat the Haymarket during the fifties. Later, he appears to have become lessee of the transpontine Canterbury Hall, where he was a dismal failure, and spent the latter portion of his tenancy in bed—a victim of gout and the importunities of irrepressible bill-stickers.
It was in these darkest hours that the Board of Works entered into his life, and in an incredibly short space of time he had enlisted the co-operation of a sporting furrier, had hustled the unhappy Loibel out, and was in undisputed possession of the London Pavilion. How the £103,000 was found to pay the out-going man is of no particular importance, suffice that so indecent was the haste that an auction was deemed superfluous; the entire contents were turned over at a valuation, and as Loibel toddled out Villiers toddled in, and—undisturbed by parochial or other demands—he gradually rose to affluence, periodically visited Continental watering-places, was a person to be reckoned with in a mushroom political club, and died recently worth a considerable personalty.
The juggle over the Pavilion never attracted much interest, and the gladiators being respectively a German and a Jew the transaction was forgotten almost at its inception.
Passing through the Opera Colonnade I tried not long ago to locate the exact shop—once a cigar merchant’s—in which the Raleigh, originally known as the “Old Havana Cigar Club,” may be said to have had its being, for it was whilst sitting on tubs one afternoon in the fifties that three or four Mohawksof the first order persuaded Tod Heatly—the ground landlord—to provide some sort of superior night-house which, by opening its doors at 10 p.m. and not closing them till the last roysterer had reeled home, would “meet a want long felt,” as modern advertisements occasionally describe their worthless wares.
It was later—in the early seventies—that the proprietorship changed hands, and was worked on more commercial lines by the Brothers Ewen (triplets), who, believing in quantity rather than quality, periodically sat as a committee under the chairmanship of an amiable old gentleman (Lord Monson) and elected everything and everybody capable of producing the increased subscription.
It was in the solitary long room of the Tod Heatly era that details were arranged for the duel (which never came off) in regard to an accusation of foul play that was made in a Pall Mall club, when an old gentleman, who was in Court dress, was considerably astonished at receiving a flip on his calf from an erratic trump. And in this room, too, enough Justerini’s brandy was consumed of a night to float the motors which now lumber that once-sacred chamber. For whisky and other emanations of the potato were then practically unknown and only heard of by the privileged few who had seen an illicit Boucicault still on the stage.
Proceeding yet further west I passed the College of Surgeons—presented by George IV. in a fit of after-dinner generosity to that distinguished body to be held for all time on a pepper-corn rent. One can almost picture the burst of humble gratitude that gushed forth at the gracious act, and the bland smile that illumined the anointed features at the consciousness of having done a generous deed without being one penny the worse for it. It was condescensions such as this that endeared “the first gentleman” to a loyal and dutiful people. And then across thesquare, where Northumberland House once stood, I wondered if one human being could locate the spot within fifty yards, and whether the old lion that topped it pointed his tail to the east or west, a subject on which more bets have been made than ever fell to the lot of man or beast.
Theprovidential success of Playfair in the Cambridgeshire of ’72 had released more than one of our clique from the jaws of the usurer, and Bill Stourton, by the judicious investment of a fiver, was in expectation of being the proud owner of £300 on the following Monday.
Dashing down to Somersetshire overflowing with filial duty and in anticipation of our early embarkation for Gibraltar, a considerable scare was created one morning by a groom running up to the house and reporting that the sheriff’s carriage and two grimy beaks from Taunton had pulled up at the “George” and were making tender inquiries as to Mr. William’s whereabouts.
All this occurred on Monday, when, as it happened, Billy was speeding towards London to realise at Tattersall’s the result of his sagacity at Newmarket. And so, when the oleaginous visitors inquired at the ancestral porch, the reply they received was discouraging in the extreme.
“That is Mr. William’s bedroom,” pointing to a window, was the ingenuous servitor’s reply; “you can go and examine it if you wish; but I give you my word he left for London this morning.” And so it came to pass that the astute “Fitch and Son,” of Southwark, failed to serve the capias, and the rascally Israelite who had made “affidavit” as to his intention of “leaving the kingdom” (as embarking withthe regiment might certainly be construed by a quibble) had to pay the cost of the imposing coach that had been provided for his conveyance to Taunton.
The faithful butler had omitted to add that the young reprobate was returning the same evening, and that the dog-cart was to meet him at nine.
But the reprieve was not of long duration, and within a year Bill had sold his commission and become a full private in the Blues.
Passing into the Horse Guards one day a former brother officer chanced to inquire of the sentry the way to the military secretary’s, and was considerably startled by the reply, “First door to the left, Polly.”
The sentry was ex-Lieutenant Stourton.
Gibraltar then—as now—was a favourite winter resort, and the “Club House Hotel” opposite the main guard did a roaring trade.
Here Lady Herbert of Lea and her youthful son, the present Lord Pembroke, sojourned for some weeks in the Sixties, and it was to the inquiring turn of mind of the young nobleman’s tutor that Gibraltar was almost indebted for a very promising row.
In one room, it appears, a cantankerous Irishman and his wife were staying, in the next the tutor, and whilst the Irishman positively swore he had one morning seen the prying tutor’s face glued to the fanlight as vehemently did the pedagogue swear on a sack of bibles that he had never glued his nose to a fanlight in his life.
What there was to peep at was not quite clear, for the supposed “object” in any costume was not fair to look upon, and so after mutual recriminations and mutual apologies the affair was hushed up, and expectant Gibraltar was robbed of a lawful excitement.
A fly-leaf that appeared weekly—why, no one could explain—although less original than one might havewished, yet possessing a symbolism that was unquestionable, on one occasion appeared with a verbatim extract from a Spanish paper of the escapades of an adventurer who was exploiting the neighbourhood of Madrid.
Weeks apparently had elapsed before it had caught the eye of our lynx-eyed editor, and one day when Ansaldo invited certain of us to compare a recent resident at his hotel with the description in the very latest “local intelligence” it became apparent to all that a lately departed wayfarer was the redoubtable personage referred to. “By Jove! I lost fifty to him last week at loo, and then gave him a shakedown,” remarked one; and, “D—d if I didn’t lend him my horse to go as far as Cadiz, and it’s not to be back till to-morrow,” added another; and then the local tailor came running down to the Club House, and Ansaldo remembered he had paid his hotel bill by a cheque, and within a week a dozen victims realised that they had assisted in one way or another to make the gentleman’s Mediterranean trip a pleasant one.
But money at the Rock was literally a drug, thanks to the existence of Sacconi, a Genoese grocer. This extraordinary man was everybody’s banker; if one lost at the races it was Sacconi who settled the account; mess bills were paid by Sacconi; fifty—one hundred Isabels—were only to be asked for to be obtained by initialling the amount at the shop.
Apparently indifferent to risk, the astute Italian was, however, working on a certainty. Immediately a regiment was under orders for the Rock, a list of every officer’s “length of tether” was transmitted by Perkins, his London agent, a city knight; whilst, in addition to the value of one’s commission, the impossibility of leaving the Rock without his knowledge, and the “Moorish Castle” frowning on the heights, enabled Sacconi to amass a huge fortune,to marry his daughters to officers of the garrison, and be an honoured guest in after years at the “Convent,” the Governor’s official residence.
But all this was in the days of purchase.
Meeting the ex-Governor, Sir William Codrington, one day in Bond Street on the point of being run over, he jocosely remarked, as I went to his assistance, “Different from Gibraltar, eh?”
To any but enthusiasts of riding, Gibraltar was (and probably is) a most overrated station, with nothing to recommend it but its proximity to London. Every afternoon was devoted to couples riding to the Cork woods, and returning from its shaded glades just before gun-fire.
No one ever dreamt of riding with his own wife; indeed, so accepted was this custom that on one occasion a couple having been seen riding together, an excited newsmonger rushed about inquiring, “What’s up? Holroyd has been seen riding with his own wife!”
But the advent of Fitzroy Somerset gave an immense fillip to sport, and when, later, six couples of cast hounds came direct from Badminton every jack-pudding purchased a screw and became an ardent fox-hunter.
A German apothecary, who had not straddled a quadruped since he left the Vaterland, became an enthusiastic rider, and thrilled the less daring horsemen by descriptions of runs, and how “der ’orse svearved to him right, and I ’it ’im on the ’ead to his left, and den he svearved to the left, and I ’it ’im on the ’ead to his right,” till everybody became more or less horsy, and not to keep a crock with four legs, or three, was tantamount to an admission that one was literally past praying for.
Every youngster purchased a quadruped—some vicious and young, others blind and in the last stage of senile decay—and Staines, an assistant surgeon,was so frequently sent whirling into space that his animal was christened “Benzine-Collas,” because it was “warranted to remove Staines.”
Here, too, was a fox-hunting chaplain known as “Tally-ho Jonah,” who ended his days as shepherd of a peculiarly desirable flock amidst the rich pastures of the Midlands.
On his death-bed some years ago, his valet consoled him with the assurance that he was going to a better land, to which the worthy divine replied: “John, there’s no place like old England.” R.I.P.
But the mania by no means ended here, and Grant, the Principal Medical Officer—a bony Scot with the largest feet ever inflicted on man—literally paralysed a group who one day saw him in the distance leisurely approaching on horseback.
“Great heavens!” was the universal exclamation as he came nearer, “why, it’s ‘Benzine-Collas’ going as quiet as a lamb,” and it was agreed that the fiery little Mogador stallion was being imposed upon by old Grant, under the impression that he was between the shafts.
Across the bay was Tangier, and many found an inexhaustible store of delight in visiting that most Oriental of towns.
Within four days of Paris, it seemed incredible that here was a spot that civilisation had apparently overlooked, and which still retained all the barbaric pomp of a thousand years ago. Fowls with their throats cut lay about the streets awaiting preparation for pilau; malefactors for the most trifling offences had their hands hacked off in the leading thoroughfares; whilst under the windows of the Sherif of Wazan’s palace half a dozen naked musicians blew their insides out from morning to night, and discoursed a series of diabolical sounds that made the contemplation of anything but their music impossible.
Here Martin—late messman of theRacoon—hadstarted the “Royal Hotel,” and after providing his visitors with an excellent dinner, favoured them with morceaux on a flute, of which he prided himself on being a virtuoso.
Martin was as black as the blackest hat, and from the suspicious slits in his ears justified the assumption that he was a liberated West Indian slave. The music he emitted with eyes closed, possibly the most soulful, was certainly the most doleful, and had evidently been picked up when watching the anchor being weighed on H.M.S.Racoon.
“Where do you come from, Martin?” on one occasion inquired an inquisitive officer.
“Devonshire,” was the unexpected reply; “but I left home in my infancy.”
He had made this assertion so often that there is no doubt he believed it.
Returning from Tangier on one occasion, I brought with me a quantity of Kuss-Kuss cloth, which catching the eye of a voracious brother subaltern he inquired where I had got it.
“Oh,” I said, “the Sherif of Wazan sent it over for distribution in return for the guard of honour we supplied last month when he was here.”
“Then I’m entitled to some?” he remarked.
“I’m afraid it’s all been claimed,” I replied, and to keep up the illusion I got half a dozen youngsters to cross and re-cross the square with a piece under their arms and deposit it somewhere, for another to fetch it and leave it elsewhere. It seemed, indeed, that the traffic was never to end, and next morning an official complaint was made by the aggrieved one, and he discovered he had been the victim of a practical joke.
Apropos of this class of grumbler, an amusing story was once told me by the captain of a P. and O. It was in the days that the skipper “messed” the passengers, and it was this officer’s habit to have asaucerful of porridge every morning about seven on the bridge.
The feeding on a P. and O. is proverbially liberal, yet not content with the enormous breakfast provided, certain grumblers complained that considering the price they paid they surely were entitled to porridge. Inwardly chuckling, the skipper reluctantly consented, with the result (as he told me) that instead of devouring two mutton chops, eggs, and marmaladead libitumat eight, he was a considerable gainer by the satisfying effect of two-pennyworth of porridge at seven.
During my two years at Gibraltar cholera appeared, and anything more terrible than such a visitation in such a circumscribed spot can hardly be conceived. With a strict “cordon” established, there was no getting away from it, and men who the night before were in rude health were often buried at gun-fire.
To be afraid of it was tantamount (so doctors asserted) to courting it, and so regimental bands were ordered to play daily on the Alameda by way of diverting the public mind, and not a drum was heard at the numerous military funerals that wended their way towards the north front.
By night the “corpse-lights” over the burial ground emitted a weird glow, and many a subaltern visiting the sentries before daylight would shiver and his teeth rattle as he skirted the unearthly illumination.
To such an extent did downright funk seize upon some that an officer now living in London—a C.B. of overwhelming interest—asked everybody the best preventive, and jokes were indulged in at his expense, and he swallowed tablespoonfuls of salt and raw porpoise liver, as this or the other prescribed.
Distracted, one afternoon he sought consolation by proceeding to the house of a fair scorpion (persons born on the Rock) he had known in happier days,and literally collapsed as he met her coffin emerging from her door.
Apropos of this terrible scourge, an instance that many can vouch for occurred some years previously in India.
My regiment was being decimated by cholera, and corpses were hurriedly placed in an outhouse that was infested with rats.
The sentries had orders to periodically tap with their rifles on the door, and on one occasion tapping too hard, the door opened, and the Armourer Sergeant, who had been brought in a few hours previously, was seen sitting up on the trestle.
Years after I saw the man daily, and he completed his twenty-one years’ service instead of being buried alive, as many a poor wretch has been.
Colonel Zebulon Pike was by way of being a consul representing the United States in South Africa and the most amusing liar I have ever had the good fortune to meet.
The embodiment of generosity, no yarn he ever spun could have injured a fly; that there never was a word of truth in them was an accepted axiom.
“Yes, sir,” as he invariably prefixed his remarks, “it was when I was commanding my regiment during the rebellion that Captain Crusoe reported to me he had captured a spy. ‘Bring him before me,’ I said sternly, and when the rascal appeared I pointed to the sun, saying: ‘Before yon luminary disappears behind yon hills you die’; and turning to Crusoe, I added: ‘Remove him, Colonel Crusoe.’ ‘Colonel, sir?’ inquired he. ‘Yes, sir,’ said I, ‘you’re colonel from this very moment.’”
The Colonel once expressed a desire to attend the Governor’s levée; but bewailing the fact that he had not brought his uniform, he proceeded to describe it.
“The pants, sir, are a rich blue, with a broad lacestripe down their sides; my tunic is also blue, and my breast is covered with medals—I have a drawerful of them. Around my waist, sir, is a crimson sash, and in my hat a long ostrich feather sweeps down to my shoulder.”
“But that’s all easily arranged, Colonel,” we explained, and on the eventful day we proceeded to truss him.
Never was a more imposing sight, and as the guard of honour marched down to Government House the Colonel stood on the pavement, immovable as a rock, with hand to his feathered billycock. And the men (as had been arranged) came to the “carry,” and passed him with all the “honours of war.”
“My God, sir, it brought tears to my eyes,” he afterwards told us in his pride, “to see yon fine fellows swinging past; it reminded me of my own regiment. I thank you, gentlemen, for the compliment you paid a comrade.”
These colonial levées of the past were often held of an evening to enable the introduction of refreshments, without which the attendance would certainly have been meagre.
The local grandees liberally prepared for the coming feast, and having eaten to repletion proceeded to fill their pockets.
“You may as well have the sauce,” once interposed an irate A.D.C. as he saw a native pocketing a fowl, and he deliberately poured the contents of a tureen into his lap.
At these “go-as-you-please” functions, speeches more or less impromptu invariably took place, and it was then that the “Colonel” was literally in his element.
Panting for his opportunity, it was only after some wag had proposed his health, and described how we had “one amongst us who had seen the mighty buffalo on its native prairie” (which he assuredly never had),etc., that the Colonel rose and delighted his hearers with a string of most amusing lies.
Lady Shand, the wife of the Chief Justice, once sitting near him, after one of his flowery orations, began to tell him of her own native home in Scotland, and of the loch that stretched for miles before the ancestral hall, and was considerably surprised by the Colonel’s rejoinder: “Aye, and the swans; I can see them now.”
“But there were no swans, Colonel,” she gently corrected; but henceforth held her peace when the staggering retort was given: “Oh, yes there were; at least, in my time.”
No function was considered complete without “the Colonel,” and he was a frequent guest at one place or another. Apparently capable of dispensing with sleep, no matter how late the night’s orgy daylight found him on the verandah with a green cigar, after which he proceeded towards the Grand river ostensibly to bathe.
“Can’t do without my morning swim,” he once told a man who met him with a bath-towel over his arm; but the towel showed no signs of having been used, and it was recognised that the Colonel never stripped, and that his ablutions were primitive to a degree.
But the Cape Town of to-day has undergone quite as much change as our modern Babylon, and where a railway station as big as St. Pancras now exists, a wooden shanty with a single line fifty miles long was all that represented railway enterprise in the long-ago sixties.
It was by the courtesy of Captain Mills, the Assistant Colonial Secretary—afterwards Sir Charles Mills, agent general in London—that a delightful party was organised for the shooting of the “Sicker Vlei,” a vast expanse of water in the vicinity of Wellington.
This magnificent lake is the resort of every kind ofwild beast and bird. Strings of flamingoes wade leisurely about it, whilst wild geese and swans of enormous proportions float lazily over one’s head; antelopes and buck of every description come down to water, and the Cape leopard—the most treacherous and cowardly of four-footed creatures—is to be met with in considerable numbers as day begins to break. The procedure that obtains is similar to that in all ordinary mountain loch shooting, with the solitary exception that it necessitates a start about 3 a.m., so that every one is posted amongst the rushes at two hundred yards’ intervals an hour before daybreak. The excitement, the delight, the profound silence of that hour when Nature seems to rouse itself for its daily routine of activity, requires an abler pen than mine to describe.
With a rifle in hand and a shot gun at one’s side, there is, however, nothing for it but to wait for daybreak, wondering whether buck or antelope, cheetah or wild fowl will be the first to come within range.
“Trekking” with our span of oxen to a farmhouse, where only two cots were available, it was our nightly custom to play “nap” as to who should occupy the beds and who the kitchen table and dresser, and the excitement ran just as high as it did in the days when fifties and hundreds were at stake in the card room of the old Raleigh.
But the losers did not lose much, for almost before one was asleep it was time to be up for our usual 3 a.m. start.
With me was placed dear old Arthur Barkly, the worst shot and most passionate of good fellows, last Governor of Heligoland, and long since gone over to the majority, and it evokes a smile when even now I think of how, having missed with both barrels two huge wild geese that leisurely floated twenty yards over his head, he threw a cartridge box and then a ramrod in his passion at the unoffending birds.
But the shot had scared other denizens of the plain, and bang, bang in every direction indicated that all our guns were in action as cheetahs and antelopes might be seen scuttling on all sides. Nothing further being left for us, we proceeded to count our bag and return to the farmstead.
After a few days devoted to “braying” the skins and “curing” the antelope meat for future consumption, we resumed our dreary bumping “trek” into the interior in the hope of meeting with big game.
Lions are occasionally, but rarely, met with in these parts, and it is with reference to a dramatic incident that might have ended fatally that I will confine my present remarks. Returning one evening to our location, with literally only three ball cartridges amongst us, one of the Kaffir boys descried in the distance a lion and lioness and three cubs. With bated breath and excitement running high, a council of war was hastily convened, and the pros and cons., the direction of the wind, and the dearth of ammunition having been variously discussed, it was decided that to attack them would be unwise, if not absolutely foolhardy. A wounded lion or lioness with its cubs is probably as dangerous as a man-eating tiger; yet, despite all our entreaties to the contrary, one daring spirit determined to attempt to stalk them.
Loading both barrels of his rifle with ball, with the other solitary cartridge placed handily in his pocket, and divested of all other impediments, he hastily retired to make a circuit and so get within shot against the wind.
Suddenly we heard the sharp report of his rifle, and then, after a second, we saw the lion make for the spot whence the smoke had come, whilst the lioness and the cubs scampered off in the opposite direction.
Again there was a report, and next we saw Fellowes running with all his might, followed by the lion.
What ensued may best be given in his own words, as narrated to us that night.
“I had evidently missed my first shot, and whilst putting in my other cartridge, I saw the brute making for me; again I fired, and I saw it staggered him, but still he came on, and seeing a small pond a few yards off I decided to make for that. Barely had I risen to my feet when, with a roar, the brute was close behind me, and at the very moment I dashed into the pond he aimed a blow at me which grazed my forehead, and I fell prostrate into it. On recovering I cautiously peeped, and there the brute stood on the edge within three yards of me. Again I submerged, but every time I moved for air he roared, although afraid to enter the water. This went on for an hour, when conceive my delight at seeing him roll over from loss of blood.
“Cautiously approaching, I found he was stone dead.”
Fellowes had literally escaped death by a hair’s breadth; but the scar he carried with him to his grave affected his brain, and he was never the same man again. Had the lion been one inch nearer his skull would have been smashed like an egg shell. Years after I saw the lion’s head and shoulders at a well-known naturalist’s in Piccadilly, depicted life-like dashing out of the rushes that encircled the African pond.
Our excitement for big game being temporarily satiated after our comrade’s narrow escape, we decided to direct our steps towards more peaceful pastures in the neighbourhood of Stellenbosch. Here large ostrich farms exist, and it was a unique experience to watch drafts of these huge birds being transferred from one farm to another. The procedure is original. Two or three mounted Kaffirs with long driving whips circle round and round the twenty or thirty birds, lashing them unmercifully on their bare legs till theystart into a trot, which eventually ends in a pace that the riders at full gallop have difficulty in keeping up with. In my search for information I was assured that the feathers so much in demand for “matinee hats” were moulted from the birds; but this I found to be not strictly accurate, and much cruel “plucking” passed under my own observation. Ostrich egg omelette is delicious; six of us breakfasted offoneegg, and my sensations were as if I had swallowed an omnibus.
But perhaps the most ridiculous experience to be obtained in South Africa is associated with the (apparently) inoffensive penguin. Any one looking at these sedate creatures at the Zoological Gardens would hardly believe that they can bite and take a piece out of one’s calf with the dexterity of a bull-terrier. It was shortly after the experience above related that we turned our steps towards Penguin Island, which lies to the south of Table Bay. We had been offered a “cast over” in one of the fishing boats that proceed there periodically in the interests of the lessee who, renting this valuable island for a few pounds a year, makes an enormous income by the sale of the guano.
We had landed cheerily, and were roaring at the absurd attitudes taken up under every ledge and stone by these pompous old birds, when poor Bobby, going a little too close, was seized by the leg with the grip of a rat-trap.
When the guano parties visit the island they combine another industry, and collect some thousands of eggs, which are considered a delicacy by the Africander gourmets.
Personally, I found them too strong, although I plead guilty to having massacred some fifty penguins by knocking them on the head for the sake of their breasts. The oil that exhales from them for months, despite the alum and sifted ashes, is incredible; butthey will repay the trouble, and after scientific manipulation by a London furrier are highly appreciated for muffs and boas.
The albatross that swarm in the vicinity of Table Bay, and which are caught in large numbers by the Malay fishermen, enabled me to create a new industry. Finding that the flesh only was used by the Malays, I offered the handsome price of one penny for every pair of pinion bones duly delivered at the barracks; these I forthwith filed off at each end, and tying them into bundles, stuffed them into ants’ nests. Within a week they were as clear as whistles, and within a month I possessed a fagot of some hundreds. The recital of an absurd sequel may not be amiss. Albatross quills of twelve and fifteen inches are a popular species of pipe stem, which, when encircled with a threepenny silver band attached to a shilling amber mouthpiece, may be seen in leading tobacconists’ labelled twenty shillings. Entering a palatial establishment in Regent Street on my return home, I got the proprietor into conversation, and was assured that they were very difficult things to procure, and that he would gladly “pay anything” if only he could get some more. Having thoroughly compromised him, I returned next day with a cab full, and although exceptionally long and perfect, I was surprised to hear they were by no means up to the mark, and in my desperation accepted a box of cigars in exchange for what he probably cleared £50 on.
Yet another experience—not strictly of a sporting character—was connected with sticks. On my return home I brought with me some hundreds of the rarest specimens from Ceylon, Mauritius, and the Cape. Conceive my disappointment, after an animated barter with Briggs, of St. James’s Street, to be grateful to accept any three of my own sticks mounted to order in exchange for what must have supplied half thegolden calves of the West End with sticks varying from two to three guineas a-piece.
The above two incidents exemplify what is described as the encouragement of British industries.
At the risk of wearying the reader I will give an absurd incident that once occurred in India. We had organised a party to hunt up a tiger that had been seen near the village of Dharwar, not far from Belgaum. On our way to the rendezvous—where the serious search was to commence—one of our party who had wandered a little out of his course rushed frantically up to us, exclaiming: “I came suddenly within thirty yards of the brute fast asleep at the foot of the nullah.”
“Well,” we all asked, “why didn’t you shoot him?”
“’Pon my word, I had half a mind to,” was the heartfelt reply—“but, so help me bob, I funked it.”
Touching the fringe of these vast hunting grounds will, I hope, be forgiven me, for although six thousand miles from London, they nevertheless bring up very happy memories of the long-ago sixties.
Sir John Bissett, afterwards commanding the Infantry Brigade at Gibraltar, but at the time a resident at Grahamstown, was the Great Nimrod of the Cape.
It was he that organised the elephant hunts for the Duke of Edinburgh, at one of which the Prince shot the immense beast whose head confronted one on entering Clarence House. Although I did not actually see it shot, I was not far distant at the time.
It was weeks after our party’s return to Cape Town that Colonel Zebulon Pike brought me two splendid stuffed specimens of the boatswain bird, the rarest of the gull tribe.
As I admired their mauve and white plumage and the two long scarlet feathers that constitute their tail, I could not resist remarking: “Why, Colonel, where did you get these?” To which he replied:“I shot them one morning after bathing, before you fellows were up.”
There was not a boatswain bird within fifty miles of where we had been, and the specimens had evidently been cured for years.
It was only a righteous lie, such as the generous “Colonel” could never resist.
Perhapsno ingredients are more certain to produce an explosion in a limited space than a Post Captain proceeding as a passenger on the ship of an officer some months his junior. It was my privilege once to watch one of these preliminary simmerings during the latter sixties and the subsequent inevitable dénouement.
George Malcolm, who in his younger days had had a distinguished career as flag-lieutenant at Portsmouth, but for a decade had lived the indolent life of a German at Frankfort, being compelled by the regulations to put in sea time as a Post Captain, was proceeding with a new crew to recommission theDanaeon the West Indian station. It was not long before he developed his Teutonic acquirements. Smoking half the night in his cabin, he intimated to his crew that they might smoke when they pleased. Keeping his lights burning after hours, he next came into collision with the master-at-arms, who reported the irregularity to the captain, a peremptory order being issued that Malcolm was not to be made an exception, and that the regulations were to be enforced. The little man—Captain Grant, of theHimalaya—who thus entered the lists at the first challenge was well-known throughout the Navy as a veritable tartar. Standing little over five feet high,he had the body of a giant; his lower proportions were short and far from comely. These were the combatants for whom the arena was now cleared. Malcolm opened the attack by repeating the light-burning after hours. Grant retorted by ordering the master-at-arms to enter if necessary and carry out his orders. Next morning the two captains met in presence of their respective first lieutenants, and abused and accused each other of insubordination and mutiny.
The crews meanwhile took up the quarrel, and some of theDanaemen had the temerity to cheek the master-at-arms. To this little Grant replied by tying up six of them to the shrouds, and giving them four dozen apiece with the cat. This checked the effervescence, and a few days later the ship entered Port Royal.
Then followed reports. But the admiral was one of the psalm-singing school, and not possessing sufficient character to adjudicate upon it himself, referred the matter home. Meanwhile theDanaewas recommissioned and sailed away, theHimalayareturned to Portsmouth, and so the matter ended.
A flogging in the old days was a very “thorough” affair, and lost nothing in the matter of detail. Four stalwart boatswains stripped to their shirts stood like statues, on the deck reposed four green baize bags, each containing a cat.
When all was ready the captain’s warrant was read—for it may or may not be generally known that every skipper, from battleship to pigboat, is a justice of the peace, and has the power of life and death on the high seas—and then the operation began. Occasionally some genius, having prearranged to outwit the authorities, would feign collapse by suddenly tucking up his legs; but a feel of the pulse and a nod soon adjusted matters, and the culprit was in “full song.” And then the little man made a speech, not too long, but very much to the point: “Now, my lads,when you want any more, you know where to come for it.” After which he cocked his cap, and descended to his cabin with his sword clanking behind. It’s a way they had in the Navy.
All this, of course, was before the central authority was transferred from Whitehall to Whitechapel, and without expressing an opinion on the merits or demerits of corporal punishment, one may be permitted to ask: Are the bluejackets of to-day any better than Peel’s Naval Brigade in the Crimea, or the tough old tars that helped to quell the Mutiny? Are the specimens one occasionally meets smoking cigarettes and Orange Blossom tobacco superior to the old sea dogs that chewed what would have killed a rhinoceros and rolled quids of ’baccy saturated in rum? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Be that as it may, flogging has ever been found the only deterrent for a certain class of scum which occasionally rises to the surface even in the Navy.
On another occasion, when I was embarking at Portsmouth, barely had theHimalayaleft the side of the quay when the Honourable Mrs. Montmorency (afterwards Lady Frankfort), accompanied by her father, Sir John Michel, and a crowd of sisters, cousins, and aunts, might have been seen rushing frantically towards the slowly-moving trooper; but the cries fell on deaf ears, and the good ship continued her course.
Next night in Queenstown Harbour a bumboat might have been seen struggling against wind and tide to reach the trooper lying a mile out at sea, which, on getting alongside, was found to contain the lady, who, since we last saw her, had undertaken a journey of four hundred miles, attended by every discomfort that travelling flesh is heir to, and all because she did not know little Grant, and expected to impress him by arriving five minutes late. The same lady very nearly had a similar experience amonth later at St. Helena, and only just reached the deck as the “blue Peter” was being hauled down.
It was on this same voyage that a subaltern, whose duties compelled him to be on deck at daylight, remarked to the navigating-lieutenant later in the day: “How splendid the sun looked this morning rising over the hills.” “Oh! yes,” was the snubbing reply, “we call that Cape Flyaway. Why, man, we are five hundred miles from the West coast.”
That night, when hammocks were being issued, a cry of “Land on the port bow” brought all hands on deck, and lo! we were steaming full speed for land with 1,400 souls on board. Almost in front of us was an angry surf, a little beyond it tropical foliage was distinctly visible, and then followed the silence as when engines are stopped, and with extra hands at both wheels, the shout of “Hard a-starboard!” pierced the darkness, and we were going full speed in the opposite direction.
Cape Flyaway cost poor little Piper a reprimand and half-pay for life, and an innocent wife and family—God help them—may still be suffering for that disregarded sunrise.
When dear old Admiral Commerell succeeded Purvis as Commander-in-Chief at the Cape, things at Government House hummed as they had never done before, and the energy that the little man put into his hospitality was as conspicuous as when fighting on sea or on land. With more than the lives attributed to a cat, it is incredible that he should have survived a blunderbuss full of slugs on the Prah a few years later, which, fired point blank, drove half a monkey-jacket into his lungs. Though brought to Cape Town on theRattlesnake, more as a formality than with any hopes of recovery, and for months after spitting up pieces of blue serge, he rallied as he had often done before, and the last time I saw him was in a Maxim gun show-room in Victoria Street, where,as “Managing Director,” he explained the intricacies of the weapon to every ’Arry that chose to look in, and so trade laid hands in his declining years on as brave a recipient of the Victoria Cross as ever trod a quarter-deck.
When the flying squadron under Beauchamp Seymour was expected at Ascension on its return from the Cape, great excitement prevailed from the possibility of a visit, and a trooper that was “laying off” was in such deadly fear of any want of smartness being observable that the washing by the soldiers’ wives that had been permitted was made short work of, and petticoats, shirts, and socks that were fluttering in the breeze were ruthlessly ordered down, for fear some signalman should detect a strange signal and note it in the log-book. For this lynx-eyed race is incapable of being hoodwinked; indeed, so dexterous did they become in the Channel Squadron some years ago (and doubtless are so still) that they read the signals for fleet manœuvres before the flags were broken, necessitating the entire bunch being rolled into one, and so giving every ship an equal chance of displaying their smartness. Of the turtle we discussed recently, the “last phase” is to be seen in the smoking-room of a well-known hostelry in Leadenhall Street, where, peeping through the tanks, numerous specimens may be seen blinking and winking as if in reproach at the unfair advantage taken of them by perfidious Albion in leading them into captivity when guests of the nation and in an interesting condition.
Ascension, as most of us are aware, is on the direct road to the Cape and within easy distance of St. Helena—a by no means unpleasant place, despite an unjust prejudice that attaches to it.
It was on board a Union steamer that the absurd incident I witnessed took place, when the diamond fields were coming into notice and attractingspeculators in every kind of ware likely to find favour amongst the natives, who had not then been educated in Houndsditch ways to the extent they have since arrived at. The genius who contemplated a rich harvest not discounted by any such absurd formalities as paying “duty,” declaring contraband, or propitiating officials apt to be too inquisitive, was a Hebrew jeweller of a pronounced type with the unusual adornment of carroty hair, who afterwards developed into a Bond Street shopkeeper, and may still be seen shorn of his sunny locks, which nevertheless still retain a pleasing suspicion of the blaze they once emitted. The chief officer was a shrewd individual, who long before we arrived at Table Bay had taken his passenger’s measure, and what added insult to injury was a presentation to him of a wretched ring the wholesale price of which could not have exceeded ten shillings. Had he pressed a five-pound note into his hand it would have proved a less expensive procedure. The sequel was disastrous, as, passing through the dock gates, ’Enery was requested to turn out his pockets, and the percentage to the informant amounted to a very handsome sum. Who the informant was—actuated by duty!—it is needless to discuss, but our friend got to the Fields at last and turned a considerable profit on his “Brummagem” wares.
Years later his enterprise again brought him into notice by providing a young ass (whom many will recollect), who had come into £70,000 on attaining his majority, not only with a flat, but completely furnishing it, and then smothering him with bracelets and bangles for personal wear, and trinkets and gimcracks that made him rattle to a greater extent than the historical lady of Banbury Cross.
The sequel was more melodramatic. Within a year the entire £70,000 was gone, within another year the prodigal was in his grave, and, despite the strenuousefforts of an elder brother to recover a trifle from the clutches of a philanthropist, a feather merchant, and dramatic author—all since gathered into Abraham’s bosom—the shekels never changed hands—s’help me—and ’Enery is still one of the most respected Elders in Israel.
It was in ’65 on the island of Ascension, where I happened temporarily to be, that an awful tragedy was on the verge of being investigated by a Court of Inquiry, but it was realised that the terrible Atlantic rollers that perpetrated the cruel deed and the innocent children that were the victims had left no data for the groundwork of the conventional farce.
It was on that dismal rock whose only merits are its strategical coaling position and its inexhaustible supply of turtle that during the season when those insidious rollers of unbroken water, without sound, without warning, suddenly spread over the sandy beach, two or three children of an officer of Marines were suddenly swept off their legs and carried by the back-wash with the velocity of a millstream towards the coral reefs a hundred yards out at sea, where death awaited them.
On the one side an expanse of sand that forthwith resumed its placid, shining surface, on the other a ripple literally bristling with fins of the most voracious species of shark known to naturalists.
In a second it was all over, and the crimson pall that covered the face of the blue Atlantic told all there was to tell of the terrible catastrophe.
The few observation boxes containing niggers on the look-out for turtle had seen nothing, heard nothing; the only eye-witness was the helpless nursemaid, and only because there was nothing to tell was the farce of a “Court of Inquiry” abandoned.
The turtle industry is simplicity itself: so soon as one advances sufficiently inland a couple of niggers rush out and turn her over and lug her into the tank,when her laying days are over, for it is the female only that is captured as she comes to deposit her eggs, and no human eye has ever seen nor any alderman ever guzzled amid the green fat of the male animal.
Ascension is best described as the most God-forsaken spot in creation, except perhaps Aden, to which must be given the palm. Here the naval garrison seem to have grown into a mechanical routine, and only change their monotonous wading through sand by an occasional day’s leave to Green Mountain, on whose summit the only three blades of grass on the island struggle for existence. How these gallant men are chosen for this dreary duty it is difficult to say; no alien princeling attached to the British Navy ever appears to have his turn; and one must assume that “merit tempered with non-interest” is the qualification that controls the roster. Of the turtle there can be no two opinions; in unlimited supplies, two huge tanks, through which the tide ebbs and flows, contain some hundreds of these delectable creatures, delectable only with the aid of the highest embellishments, but the most nauseous sickening of “plats” in the shape of rations. Every man-of-war calling at Ascension is compelled to ship a dozen, which lie for weeks on deck, their heads resting on a swab, and the hose playing on them of a morning, while a stench more insidious than the vapours of a fried-fish shop attaches itself to everything; one’s hair-brush reeks like a turtle fin, and whether one eats, drinks, or smokes, it’stoujours tortue.
During the Ashanti war, Ascension appeared at its best; in its comfortable hospital the wounded from spear and slug, and the dying from West Coast fever, obtained the best of attendance. In it I saw Thompson, of the Inniskilling Dragoons, just brought down from the Prah—one of the most popular men in theArmy—die; whilst from it many a brave man has been carried to his last home, and many a sufferer who has entered its portals in apparently the last stage of fever and ague has been pulled round, and put on board with renewed life to return to England to bless the surgeons and curse Ascension.
It was on my return home in ’69 that I met old Toogood (whom everybody knew) at Aden—who, rushing up to me, whispered, “Come along, I’ve secured a carriage,” and following with that glee that all who have crossed the Desert will appreciate, I was horrified to find he had all his bundles in the quarantine carriage.
“Great heavens,” I exclaimed, “do you know what this means?” and he hardly gave me time to explain the pains and penalties before he was in full cry after the rascally Egyptian guard, who, realising he was dealing with a novice, had accepted a sovereign for placing him in a carriage by himself.
In those long-ago days—and possibly still—every train had a quarantine carriage, entering which meant vigorous isolation till fumigation had taken place, and “even betting” that one’s cabin in the trooper at Cairo would have remained vacant homeward bound.
When the Japanese were airing their aspirations at becoming the great naval power they now are, I witnessed one of their virgin attempts at navigating a warship under the control of British officers. Confident of their ability, and fretting to show what they could do, they one day insisted on landing their instructors and assuming temporary control of the ship. The development was not long in coming. Away flew the ship, in graceful circles round and round the bay, when suddenly a dashing manœuvre beyond the comprehension of the most enlightened observer, and, lo! she was steaming full speed for the shore. Within the hour she was well wedged ona sandy bottom, and a tidal wave not long after having considerately lifted her a few hundred yards higher up, the hull was converted into an hotel, and for years gave ocular proof of Japan’s first triumph in navigation. That was in the later sixties, when Togo was still in the womb of futurity.