There was a project for a railway here as soon as the main-line had reached Newton. My grandfather writes to my father on 25 April 1847:—“The surveyors have been from Newton to Okehampton, marking out a new line. They seem to be guided by the stream, and (if it takes place) they will go right up the meadows under here.... I cannot fancy it will take place, for people are a little cooled down, and not so mad for speculation. Had it been projected some little time ago, no doubt it would have taken.” The project came to nothing then, but some years afterwards it was revived; and he writes on 30 January 1861:—“I find there was a meeting at Moreton yesterday about this line of railway from Newton to Okehampton, and a meeting to-day at Newton, and at Okehampton on Saturday.”
The existing railway from Newton to Moreton was projected in 1858, and was carried out under the Moretonhampstead and South Devon Railway Act, 1862. My grandfather writes to my father, 8 February 1863:—“Mr Brassey has been down, and gone over the line marked out, but I cannot find what he thinks of it. He is staying at Torquay for the benefit of his health, and rides over some part of it every fine day. So I suppose something will be done, that is, if they can get the money, but people are not so forward with their money as heretofore for railroads.” Work was begun on 10 August 1863, but not near here till 9 November. In the autumn of 1864 surveys were made for an extension of the line from Moreton to Chagford; but nothing ever came of that. The line was opened to Moreton on 4 July 1866.
Financially the railway was a failure. There was a capital of £105,000 in shares and £35,000 in debentures, but the expenditure was £155,000. And the company was amalgamated with the South Devon company on 1 July 1872, the £105,000 in shares being exchanged for £52,500 in ordinary stock, and the £35,000 in debentures for £35,000 in debenture stock. And then the South Devon company was amalgamated with the Great Western company on 1 February 1876, each £100 of South Devon ordinary stock being exchanged for £65 of Great Western ordinary stock, and each £100 of South Devon debenture stock for £100 of Great Western 5% debenture stock. Thus £100 in
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shares came down to £32. 10s.0d.in stock; but part of the loss was wiped out afterwards, when Great Western stocks went up, £32. 10s.0d.of the ordinary stock selling for nearly £60, while £100 of the 5% debenture stock sold for nearly £200.
The navvies made things unpleasant here, while the line was building. My grandfather writes to my father on 17 November 1864:—“More than a hundred discharged on Monday, and a pretty row there was: drunk altogether, and fighting altogether, except one couple fought in the meadows for an hour and got badly served, I hear. The same night the villains stole all poor old*****’s fowls. He had them under lock and key, but they broke in and took the whole, young and old.... There is not a fowl or egg to be got hereabout.” Writing on 29 March 1865, he describes a visit from a drunken navvy the day before—“about as fine a built tall likely a fellow as you ever saw, and nicknamed the Bulldog.” He asked for meat and drink, and was sent empty away. “I learnt that he worked Saturday and Monday, and received 5s.6d.for the two days, slept in a barn and spent all his earnings at the public-house.... Not long after I saw the policeman who belongs to the line—not the Lustleigh man—and he said, ‘If anything of the kind occurs again, send for me, and I will soon put all right.’ But he spends all his time on the line keeping the navvies in order; and before he can be got mischief may be done.” One of the dogs here had been poisoned by meat thrown her by a navvy, 22 September 1864. After that, he kept a revolver.
Now that the cuttings and embankments are all overgrown and covered with verdure, one can hardly realize how hideous it all looked, when they were raw and glaring. In that respect this was the worst piece of the line, as there are four cuttings here in less than a mile, and embankments almost all the way between them. But some of the viaducts and bridges are worthy of all praise. Just below here the line crosses and re-crosses the Wrey at a height of rather more than forty feet above the stream, first on a viaduct of two arches and then on a viaduct of three. And these are built of granite, and so well proportioned, that there would be many pictures of them, could they be transferred toItaly and attributed to Roman or Etruscan builders. A little further up there is a splendid archway, where the road goes underneath the line before ascending Caseleigh hill.
The line was intended to curve round the outer slope of Caseleigh hill instead of cutting through it; but the curve was condemned as dangerous on so steep a gradient. And the plans were altered, to the disadvantage of the scenery, and also of the shareholders, as the cuttings were very costly.
The old people here would often speak of London as though it stood upon a hill. And they could give a reason:—“Folk always tell of goingupto London.” When the railway came, it was perplexing. This portion of the line ascends about 400 feet in about six miles, with gradients of as much as 1 in 40. Yet up trains went down, and down trains up.
Lustleigh station once had a signal-post, though it now has none. Seeing both arms lowered for trains to come both ways, I felt a little uneasy, there being only a single line. But the station-master said:—“Well, there isn’t an engine up at Moreton; and, if a truck did run away, it wouldn’t stop because the signal was against it.” Trucks do sometimes run away, but have never yet done serious damage.
This line was laid with the old broad-gauge rails on longitudinal sleepers, and was converted into narrow-gauge in 1892 by bringing the off-side rails and sleepers in towards the near-side. It has all been re-laid now with the usual narrow-gauge rails and transverse sleepers, excepting a few sidings.
On the broad-gauge there were eight seats in a compartment, first class, the narrow-gauge having only six. And in the Great Western carriages there was often a partition with a sliding door, making a sub-compartment on each side, each with two seats facing forward and two facing back. Passengers’ luggage used to be carried on the roofs of the carriages, being strapped down securely and covered with tarpaulins. But this was not peculiar to the broad-gauge. I remember it on narrow-gauge lines as well, especially the Great Northern.
Some of the old broad-gauge engines were worth seeing. On the Bristol & Exeter line there were engines that had a pair of driving-wheels nine feet in diameter, and four pairs of carrying-wheels set on two bogies fore and aft. These engines were taken over by the Great Western on the amalgamation of the companies; but the Great Western, I believe, had no engines of its own with driving-wheels of more than eight feet, except the Hurricane, whose driving-wheels were ten feet in diameter. I used to hear it said that Brunel had driven the Hurricane himself, and made her run a hundred miles an hour; and these Bristol & Exeter engines certainly ran more than eighty. It was one of these that came to grief at Long Ashton on 27 July 1876. She turned right over, and threw up her driving-wheels to such a height that they cleared the train, and came down upon the line behind it.
Engines were given names, just because stage-coaches had them. The most suggestive names—Crawley and Saint Blazey—are really names of places; and generally the choice of names is feeble. The managers of foreign lines have more imagination. I once met Lars Porsenna at Clusium—Chiusi—on the train for Rome.
A cousin of my father’s writes to him from Brighton, 28 April 1842:—“I was very glad to find from your note that you reached home safely, having escaped all the dangers of the railroad with its fearful tunnels. I think of returning [to London] by the good old stage coach, slow though it be: it is better to lose time than to run the risk of being crushed to pieces in those dark tunnels, where you have not even a chance of saving yourself by jumping out.”
There was an old gentleman near here, who was a reckless rider, and met with many accidents out hunting, yet could not bring himself to face the dangers of the railway. At last—in 1851, I think—he had to go to London on some urgent business, and then (to use his own words) he committed his soul to its Creator, and took a ticket by the train.
My grandfather did not travel in a train until 5 December 1846, and then he writes:—“I had not much inclination to go in it after reading of so many collisions and accidents, but now I think I could form a resolution to go anywhere in it; but I shall not do so, unless it is for special purposes.... I admit there is danger in all conveyances; but this, I think, with proper caution is by far the safest, and I shall in future (if ever I travel again) take about the middle carriage, for I see the hinder carriages are liable to be run into—therefore the danger is almost equal to that of the front, except the bursting of the engine.”
In a letter of 13 February 1852 he warns my father of another danger:—“I do hope you will leave the train at Exeter, when you come down, and not risk going on to Newton. The post is now arrived, near 3 o’clock: another landslip just as the mail train came up. This has been the fifth slip.” And really the dangers were considerable then. They were reduced, as years went on; but he never got quite reconciled to trains. When eighty years old and tired of life, he writes to my father, 8 June 1869:—“However glad I should be to receive my call, I would prefer home to a railway carriage.”
He writes on 27 April 1845 that Captain*****has just returned from London. By some misunderstanding he was driven to the wrong station there, South Western not Great Western; and at that date the South Western ran only to Gosport and Southampton. It being dark, he did not notice this, and got into the train, and started off; and then “they told him he must take another train and cross over to the Great Western; but he said ‘the Devil take the train, I’ll have no more to do with it, but coach it.’ So he coached it all the way home, and did not arrive until Monday instead of Saturday.”
Until the rail reached Newton, letters came by coach to Chudleigh. Writing to my father on 25 June 1843, my grandfather says:—“Our post is altered. There is a horse-post direct from Chudley to Moreton: the bag is merely dropt at the office locked: he takes no letters on the road. Now in future we shall be obliged to send to Bovey with and for letters.” They had hithertosent out to Kelly Cross upon the Moreton road; but Bovey was two miles further off. Several people here gave sixpence a week each to an old woman for bringing their letters out from Bovey and taking letters back; and he writes on 12 July 1845:—“The postwoman calls as regularly on Sunday mornings as on other mornings.” But on 15 February 1852 he writes:—“We have now a government appointed letter-carrier here: so the old woman, greatly to her discomfort, is out of a berth.... This man delivers free, and carries free.... He delivers from Bovey town on to Wooly, Knowle, here, and on to Lustleigh town, and so far as Rudge: all others, Parsonage, Kelly, etc., to fetch their letters from Lustleigh town.”
In the last years of coaching there were half-a-dozen daily services from London to Exeter and Plymouth, all serving different places on the way. Thus, one coach came down to Exeter by Shaftesbury and went on by Ashburton, while another came down by Dorchester and went on by Totnes. For coming here the best plan was to take a coach that passed through Chudleigh.
On 19 March 1841 my father started from Piccadilly in the Defiance coach at half past four, stopped at Andover for supper and at Ilminster for breakfast, and reached Exeter at half past ten. Allowing for stops, this meant travelling about ten miles an hour all the way, the distance being about 170 miles. He went on by coach to Chudleigh and drove from there, arriving here at half past one, twenty-one hours after leaving London. This was the last time that he came down all the way by road.
On 10 October 1842 he started from Paddington by the mail train at 8.55 p.m., reached Taunton at 2.55 a.m., and came on by the mail coach, stopping at Exeter from 6.15 to 7.0, and reaching Chudleigh at 8.0; and he was here soon after 9.0, “being only 12¼ hours from London to Wreyland.” Coming by the same train on 20 March 1845, he reached Exeter at 4.5 by rail instead of 6.15 by coach, and he was here soon after 7.0. On 8 August 1846 he came from Paddington to Exeter by the express train in only 4½ hours, 9.45 a.m. to 2.15 p.m. He came by rail as far as Teignmouth on 26 November 1846, and as far as Newton on2 April 1847. But the line from Exeter to Newton did not much improve the journey, as it added twenty miles by rail, and saved only seven miles by road.
He notes on 7 October 1847:—“Went from Dawlish to Teignmouth by railway on the atmospheric plan, and to Newton by locomotive.” Brunel was the engineer of the line, and he had come round to the opinion that locomotives were wrong in principle—there was needless wear and tear and loss of power with engines dragging themselves along: the engine should be stationary, and the power transmitted. And he induced the company to build the line with stationary engines, which pumped the air out from a pipe between the metals, and thus drew the train along by suction. But the leakage was so great that the system was abandoned.
Coming down by the Defiance coach the fare from London to Exeter was £3 for a seat inside, and by some of the other coaches it was £3. 10s.0d.When the railway had reached Taunton, the fare was £2. 18s.0d.for first class on the train and inside on the coach. After it reached Exeter, the fare was £2. 4s.6d., first class, and £2. 10s.0d.by the express. It now is £1. 8s.6d., first class by any train.
Writing to my father on 1 March 1840, my grandfather concludes:—“I have to request you do take an inside place in the coach. By no means go outside.” He had a notion that most people’s maladies could be traced to their travelling on the outside of a coach. He was himself a little deaf in one ear; and he always put this down to going across Salisbury Plain outside the coach on a freezing winter night.
In 1841 there was an innovation; and he writes to my father on 22 June:—“Moreton, they say, is all alive: there are three vehicles which they call Omnibusses. Wills goes from Exeter [through Moreton] to Plymouth, Waldron and Croot to Exeter and Newton.... All grades appear to go by this means, even the farmers go instead of horseback.”
My grandfather liked travelling in a leisurely way, “the time my own,” and had no patience with my father’s way of travellingabout the world, “packing and unpacking, from steam carriage to steam vessel, all bustle and hurry,” as he puts it when writing him upon the subject on 19 August 1844. On going up the Rhine with him, he writes, 23 July 1855:—“Two days more on the journey would have avoided the unpleasant part of it.” But my father went his own way, and my mother kept to it after his decease. She went up the pyramids at Gizeh and Sakkarah, when she was sixty-three, and down a sulphur mine in Sicily, when she was sixty-six.
The foreign diligences were heavier and bigger than the English coaches, and did not travel so fast. On 9 October 1842 my father arrived at Boulogne by diligence from Paris, “having been only 21¾ hours on the journey—140 miles—whereas in 1839 I was 27 hours.” Going to Switzerland and Italy in September 1840, he went by steamer from London to Havre in 22 hours, and by diligence in 16 hours from Havre to Paris and 75 hours from Paris to Geneva. Then in 9 hours from Martigny to Brieg—“tolerably good travelling, altho’ for a coach that takes the mail the delays are shameful”—and in 11 hours across the Simplon from Brieg to Domodossola. This took me 10 hours in September 1899, which was the last time that I crossed the Alps by diligence. Since then I have been through the Simplon tunnel half-a-dozen times, going from Brieg to Domodossola in 50 minutes.
I crossed the Alps for the first time in August 1869, going by the Splügen. I was with my father, mother, brother and sister; and we engaged a Vetturino—a man who owned the carriage and horses that he drove. We came back by the St Gothard in a carriage with post-horses. In travelling with a Vetturino, one had to wait at various places, while his horses rested; but in posting one sometimes had to wait still longer for fresh horses. In September 1873 we came over the Arlberg in a carriage with post-horses—there is a railway-tunnel underneath it now—and one day we did only nineteen miles. When the postmaster was innkeeper as well, it was not his interest to speed the parting guest.
In driving across the Splügen, we started from Coire, and halted for the nights at Thusis, Chiavenna and Varenna. There was rail to Thusis, and on from Chiavenna, when I came thatway again; and diligences went from Thusis to Chiavenna in about ten hours.
Posting across the St Gothard, we started from Como, stayed a night at Lugano and another at Airolo, and took the steamer at Fluelen for Lucerne. The tunnel had not been begun then. It was finished in 1882; and I came through it for the first time in October 1883, reaching Lucerne in about seven hours from Como.
Coming through by railway, one misses some of the excitements of the older style of travelling. When we went over in 1869, the diligence had been attacked by brigands the night before in the narrow gorge below Airolo. It was twilight when we reached the gorge; and suddenly we heard men galloping towards us. My sister made up her mind at once that they were brigands; but they turned out to be an escort coming down to see us through, and they rode on with us, their carbines in their hands.
We came from Basle to London in 1869 in six-and-twenty hours, and in 1913 I came in fourteen hours. There were neither dining-cars nor sleeping-cars in 1869, nor were there any corridor-carriages, but only the old style of carriage that jolted one abominably. Yet my father kept talking of the speed and comfort of the train, for he was thinking of the journey in the diligence. I got little sympathy from him, when I felt tired in a train; and I have little sympathy with people who complain of travelling now. In fact, I sometimes feel a little jealous of their seeing things so easily that I saw only with trouble and discomfort. They have railways and hotels all over Greece; and, when I went there first in 1880, there were no hotels except at Athens, and no railways except from Athens to Peiræus, a distance of about five miles.
But there was a pleasant way of travelling that is unknown to them. When I first went to Holland in 1872, we travelled along the canals in a Trekschuit, a light barge drawn by two or three horses, tandem, that went along the tow-path at a trot. The seats were put up high enough to clear the banks of the canal;and you saw the country comfortably, as you went gliding through. They have only motors now.
These barges were formerly in use in Belgium also; and I found these entries in one of the old diaries here:—“25 July 1833. Dunkirk. By barge to Bruges.... Changed barges at Furnes, the Belgian frontier.... Changed barges again at Nieuport.... 27 July 1833. Bruges. Embarked in a superb barge, called the Lion, and drawn by five horses. It had carried Napoleon.... Arrived at Ghent in the evening.”
A steamboat was nicer than a diligence; and that really was the reason why people were always going up the Rhine. It was much the easiest way of getting to Switzerland and Italy. Going by the Rhine in 1855, my father notes that it was the seventeenth time that he had gone that way, either up or down the stream. That time he had his father with him, and chafed a little at the leisurely movements of the previous generation. But he never wished for anything more rapid than the steamboat on the Rhine, whereas I have found it tedious, and gone up by the train.
Looking at old diaries, I see that the cost of travelling on the Continent has varied very little in the last seventy or eighty years. There has been a decrease in the cost of transit; but this is counterbalanced by an increase in the charge for bedrooms. It used to be absurdly low; but the rooms were often very poor and sparsely furnished even at the best hotels. The charge for meals at table d’hôte remains about the same.
My own experience of foreign tables d’hôte now goes back fifty years, having begun at Paris, 15 September 1867, with a table d’hôte of four hundred people at the Louvre Hotel—then in the old building on the other side of the street. So far as I can judge, the meals used generally to be better than they are, and they certainly were more abundant. The decline had begun before my time. After dining at the table d’hôte at Meurice’s, my father notes in his diary, 3 September 1863:—“Not so good a dinner as they used to give there five-and-twenty years ago.” At the table d’hôte at Blinzler’s at Godesberg, 25 August 1852,the courses were:—“1, soup; 2, roast beef and potatoes; 3, mutton cutlets and vegetables; 4, fish and sauces; 5, ducks and salads; 6, hare and stewed fruits; 7, roast veal and salads; 8, shell-fish and puddings; 9, fruits, sweetmeats and cheese.”
Innkeepers have changed their policy. They used to make their profit on the table d’hôte, and they find they can do better now with people dining à la carte. In those days it literally was table d’hôte, mine host sitting at the head of the table, and being helped first to make quite sure that everything was good. I saw this done at the Cloche at Dijon so recently as 9 August 1912; but it was a long while since I had seen this anywhere else.
The queerest table d’hôte I ever saw, was at the Singe d’Or at Tournai, 26 March 1875. That was Good Friday; and it was a first-rate fish-dinner, lasting close upon three hours. There were eighty people there, mostly from the town, as there were few travellers about, and we were the only English. The citizens went steadily through the fifteen courses, and drank dozens of champagne, and then went home with a good conscience, feeling they had carried out the precepts of the Church in having a meatless day.
In ordering wine at small hotels my father had a rule, which I have followed with success:—Always order the wine of the country. You will get the wine of the country in any event, whatever you may have ordered; and, if you order it under its own name, you may get it unadulterated.
In travelling in Italy in 1851, my father took a chimney-pot hat to wear in the large towns, and he writes home on 9 September that another must be brought down to meet him on his reaching London, as he had given this away on going to the mountains. “It had become such an incumbrance that I gave it away to-day to a poor old man at Ala: he had a crowd soon around to see him in his new covering, for which he was very grateful.” He no longer took a chimney-pot, when I began to go abroad with him—1867—but I have seen chimney-pots since then in most unlikely places. On 20 March 1882 I met anAmerican near Jericho with chimney-pot and black frock-coat and everything to match: he said it was the best costume God ever made. On 28 December 1909 I met a Hindu on the cone of Mount Vesuvius; and he wore a chimney-pot and a very loud check suit.
Writing from Interlaken on 17 August 1849, my father says, “You would be amused at seeing what monkies the fashionable gentlemen do make of themselves in dress: perhaps one dressed like a mountaineer, or William Tell, will wear white kid gloves, or thin patent boots, or some other incongruity equally ridiculous.” People do things better now: even invalids are fully dressed for climbing.
Accidents in travelling were commoner then than now, and people took them more as matters of course. In an old diary here one page reads as follows, July 1850:—“17, Schaffhausen. 18, Zurich. 19, Lucerne. 20, do. 21, Escholzmatt. 22, Interlaken. 23, Lauterbrunnen, here I had the misfortune to fall over the Wengern Alp and break my leg, and was confined to my bed at this place 11 days, and then at Interlaken till Septr. 21. Expenses at hotels 730 francs, surgeon 330 do.—1060. 21, left Interlaken for Berne. 22, Berne. 23, Soleure. 24, Basle.” Writing to my father on 26 July “on my bed at Lauterbrunnen,” he takes it all quite calmly, just adding, “I shall have seen enough of snow and waterfalls.... How much more beautiful is the sweet vale of Lustleigh.”
Plenty of people went to Switzerland at the time when I first went—1869—far more than when my father went there thirty years before, but nothing like the crowds that go there now. They kept more to peaks and passes then; and they were always talking of Hannibal’s passage of the Alps. Junius was talked out: Tichborne and Dreyfus were yet to come; and Hannibal filled the gap. I used to hear them at home as well as there; and they all had their pet routes for Hannibal—Col d’Argentière, Mont Genèvre, Mont Cenis, Little Mont Cenis, Little St Bernard and Great St Bernard, and even Simplon and St Gothard. In 1871 I went looking for traces of the vinegar on the Great StBernard. My father upheld the Cenis routes as the only passes from which you can look down upon the plains of Italy. I doubt if Hannibal did look down. I think he may have shown his men their line of march upon a map, just as Aristagoras used a map to show the Spartans their line of march 282 years earlier.
At that date (1869) people used still to go round Venice with Byrons, just as they go round with Ruskins now. It was Byron’s Venice that attracted them—the Venice of Marino Faliero and the Foscari, not the Venice of Carpaccio. As they could not conveniently Stand Upon The Bridge Of Sighs, they used to stand upon the Ponte della Paglia, and spout the famous lines at it from there. And they all went to see the Armenian Monastery, because it was a place where Byron stayed. Hardly anybody goes there now.
My father used always to take a Byron with him, when he went abroad, and he used to write things in the margin. Thus, his comment on The Castled Crag is “Drachenfels. 31 July 1839. Good description—very correct.” I believe it was the usual thing to annotate your Byron as if it were a guide-book.
From my father’s diary, Exeter, 23 October 1838:—“When did I dream that the Ada of Childe Harold would ever appear to me as an ordinary, unnoticed and unadorned woman. I am half vexed I should have seen her, and yet would not have it otherwise.... I recollect, when I first saw Brougham, and was standing opposite to him, I could not believe he was the extraordinary man I had been accustomed to hear so much about. But, now some years have passed away, my idea of him is very little lessened by his actual presence at that time. So may it turn out here. I hope it will: but, until it does, I shall read Byron with diminished satisfaction.”
After a tour in Italy, my father writes home from Ragatz in Switzerland, 16 September 1851:—“From Italy one dared not write about the Government, for the Austrians open the letters; but the Government is the most despotic tyranny I ever heard of: an Italian cannot get a passport, or leave the country; nor can any foreign paper reach him; nor is he allowed to talk politics.
“Venice was placarded whilst I was there with a Government proclamation, by way of warning to the people, that six persons had just been sentenced to the galleys (some for ten years, and one of the persons a lady) for daring to speak disrespectfully of the Government and the Emperor. The prisons are full of prisoners for talking politics: that by the Bridge of Sighs is crammed.
“An Englishman was sent out of Florence for saying he thought the Government was right in having sentinels in the theatres. The Chief of the Police told him that the Government tolerated no remarks upon its acts, approving them or otherwise.
“One of my American acquaintance, a physician, says that Hell, as an Institution, will wholly fail, if these tyrants don’t get their deserts in the Pit hereafter. When an Englishman said at Milan he had seen, among other relics at a church, what the priests asserted was the veritable brazen serpent of Moses in the wilderness, the Doctor asked if they showed at the same time the darkness that came over Israel. When he said No, the Doctor said they might safely have offered to, as it overshadowed the whole land in the shape of the Austrian despotism.
“Venice and Milan are both under martial law, and soldiers swarm in them; and at Verona they were preparing for a review of the whole army before the Emperor.... To induce the inhabitants to attend, there was to be a lottery, and ticketsgivento all who chose to come. But the Italians will not be coaxed. At a previous review, not a single Italian came upon the ground.”
Writing from Frankfort two days later, he says:—“Here I encountered those evil spirits again, the Austrian soldiers. They are chiefly Hungarians and Croats, and sent to keep the people of this ‘Free’ City of the Empire from rising again.” He had gone from Darmstadt to Freiburg by way of Radstadt on 7 August 1849, and noted in his diary then:—“Baden abounds with Prussian troops: they were just shooting some of the insurgent prisoners at Radstadt.” He wrote from Interlaken, 17 August 1849:—“I saw two Prussian officers at the Wengern Alp on leave of absence from Baden. They told me their troops had now 15,000 prisoners in Baden, and every Prussian amongthem they were shooting. I asked why, and they enquired if I could point out anything else they could do with them: as if it were a case of no alternative.”
Having to wait a little while at Brescia station on 23 August 1869, I went into a show that was going on just outside. There was such riotous applause that I felt sure it must be something good, and I found it was the visit of General von Haynau to the brewery of Messrs Barclay and Perkins. Their brewery was one of the sights of London that all foreigners went to see, and he went to see it. The men discovered who he was, and nearly murdered him. And the Brescians were wild with joy at seeing this in the show, remembering the old Hyæna’s brutality to them in 1849.
That afternoon, in going across the field of Solferino, I heard a curious story of the battle, 24 June 1859:—Nugent was a Field Marshal in the Austrian army. He was past eighty, and was merely a spectator, having no command; but he wore his uniform. He was watching the battle from an outlying point, and the French either saw him or heard that he was there. They argued that an officer of that rank would not be there, unless there was a force behind him; and for a time this held them back from attacking the Austrian left.
Ten years had removed all traces of the battle except the monuments and graves; but on going over the field of Gravelotte on 7 August 1875, just five years after the battle, 18 August 1870, I saw several patches of barren ground, and I was told that these marked the position of the ambulances, the surgeons having used things that afterwards sterilized the soil. And thereupon my father said that he saw patches of wheat of an unusual colour on the field of Waterloo five-and-twenty years after the battle, and he was told that these were places where horses had been killed in masses, when the cavalry charged the squares.
In a letter of 18 September 1851 my father says:—“I visited the scenes of Bonaparte’s early victories in Italy: Rivoli, Roveredo, etc.... All the towns on the Adige bear mementoes ofhim in the cannon balls yet sticking into the houses, the inhabitants never having taken the trouble to extract them.”
He notes in his diary, Liège, 30 July 1839:—“There was an old gentleman in the diligence with me, whom I discovered to have known Napoleon. He was returning from his house at Brussels to his country house, but lived in Paris for many years in Napoleon’s reign, and left on his abdication. He met him daily, and was Auditeur du Conseil d’État, at the meetings of which Napoleon generally presided. He said the likenesses of Napoleon were generally good, but it was impossible to give any idea by painting of the expression of his eyes—they were piercing, and he said ‘you could not look at him: his glance would read your very heart.’ He was pleasant when in good humour, but that was not always the case. He would always have an answer instantly on asking a question, and if a person did not know what he was asked, he must answer and say so without a moment’s delay.”
Napoleon was brought into Torbay on the Bellerophon in July 1815. There were strict orders from the Admiralty that nobody should come on board; but my grandfather managed it somehow, and there saw Napoleon walking up and down the deck. My grandfather was not impressed by Napoleon’s appearance, and used to tell me that “Boney was a poor-looking creature after all.” I imagine that “Boney” was not looking quite his best just then.
In a box here I found a portion of a human skull, and written on it “The skull of a Turk, one of those put to death at Joppa by that fellow Buonaparte.” That was when he shot the soldiers who had surrendered there, 10 March 1799. This relic was brought home by George Renner Hillier (born 1776, died 1865) who was then a lieutenant on the Alliance, and took part in the defence of Acre, 18 March to 21 May 1799. The box came to me as his executor’s executor; but I did not know what it contained. In another box I found a note of his that Buonaparte had sent a message to Jerusalem that he was coming there as soon as he had taken Acre, and the first French soldier that fell in the attack should be buried in the Holy Sepulchre.
After finding that skull, I had hopes of finding the keys of Flushing church, as my father told me that he had seen them at this Captain Hillier’s house; but I was disappointed. He acquired them in this way:—In the Walcheren expedition he was “appointed by Sir Richard Strachan to make the last signal on the island, with strict orders to secure the said signal at the top of the church in a manner it could not be hauled down by the enemy before the rear guard was embarked.” The written instructions were in this box:—“Blake, Flushing Roads, December 23rd 1809. As soon as the day breaks you are to show the two balls on the steeple of Flushing, being the signal for the rear guard to embark and the flotilla to withdraw, and you are to come off with the army.” He did not see how he could stop the enemy hauling the signal down as soon as they reached the church, but he thought he might delay them for some minutes, if he locked up all the doors, and brought the keys away with him.
During that war a good many French naval officers were sent to Dartmoor as prisoners; and the gravestones of some of them may be seen in Moreton churchyard, looking strangely out of place there with their French inscriptions. These officers were very popular down here; and I have been told that nobody, however poor, ever claimed the guinea reward that was offered for information of their going out of bounds.
In a letter to my father, 9 December 1839, my grandfather says:—“Your account of the French soldiers would not please a Frenchman.... I remember, when staying at Exeter, I saw a whole regiment of young fellows that had been taken prisoners: the eldest did not appear to exceed twenty-one: they were the most ugly and dirty set of fellows I ever saw, and very short: you could scarcely pick such a set from all our regiments.”
My father mentions in his diary, Nantes, 19 August 1847, that he had been talking to an old gentleman of over eighty, who had known Nantes since 1789. “In speaking of the horrible revolutionary scenes enacted at Nantes, he said that the most violent fanatics, who carried out the Butcheries and Noyades there,
THE AUTHOR’S GRANDFATHER
THE AUTHOR’S GRANDFATHER
THE AUTHOR’S GRANDFATHER
were chiefly small tradesmen, and continued to live there unmolested after the Restoration as if nothing had happened, and some few were living yet.” Nantes impressed my father very much at that time:—“I have not seen a finer town. It is really finer than Brussels or Frankfort, and, as a whole, even finer than Paris.”
In his diary, Paris, 18 October 1839, my father writes:—“The streets here are worse, much worse, than in London, except just the Rivoli and one or two others, where there are arcades in front of the houses with flag stones. Not half or quarter of the other streets are flagged, and the common pavement is dreadfully uneven, besides not being level. Each side falling towards the centre makes the walking very disagreeable—and that centre generally running with mud or water affords the chance of every carriage that passes giving the foot travellers a splashing from head to foot. Besides, most of the streets are narrow, and many are filthy and muddy.
“It really is a disgrace to the Parisians, who boast so much of the Invalides, to have such a vile public road to it, and infamously lighted. Amongst the trees and all in the dark I had to grope my way towards the Seine, nearly up to my ancles in mud. At last I reached the bridge, and then for a contrast came into the Place de la Concorde, covered all over with flag pavement, and with brilliant gas lights at every two or three yards, and often two together. But it is either the height of splendour or the height of meanness and misery here.”
I saw Paris first in September 1867. It was then in all its glory, with the wide streets and stately buildings constructed in the previous fifteen years. The place was thronged with people of all nations, who had come to see the Exhibition; and there was huge prosperity all round. The soldiers looked magnificent, especially the Zouaves and the Imperial Guard—long-service men with medals; and few people imagined that the Prussians could stand up to them. Yet there were some signs of insecurity. The official tune wasPartant pour la Syrie; and, if anyone even whistled theMarseillaise, the police were after him at once.
I saw Paris next in August and September 1871. And these are some of the things that I noted in my diary then:—In the Rue de Rivoli some blocks of houses had been blown up, others burnt, and all more or less damaged. Of the garden front of the Tuileries only the outer walls were left: the New Louvre had been a little damaged, and was being re-roofed: the fire had not reached the Louvre itself. At the Palais Royal, the palace itself had been burnt, but not the shops underneath. Neither the Bourse nor the Opera House was hurt. There was nothing left of the Hôtel de Ville except the outer walls and the chimneys with the statues on them; and these stood out well against the sky. Most of the neighbouring houses had been burnt. There were several shot holes through the Bastille Column. The remains of the Vendôme Column had already been removed, but the base was still there, a good deal broken on the side on which the pillar fell—and the man with the telescope was there as before. The arcade in the Rue de Castiglione was covered with bullet holes. In the Place de la Concorde the statue of Lille had been knocked to pieces by a shell, also one of the fountains—the further from the river—but the Luxor obelisk was safe. Out by the Auteuil Gate every house had been more or less damaged by shells, and a good many had been pulled down for fear of their collapsing. The stone fortifications were not much damaged, but the earthworks above them were covered with shell-holes. For 300 yards outside the fortifications the trees in the Bois de Boulogne had been cut down, but very few of the others had been damaged.
Paris has never recovered from that blow, and its slovenliness under the Republic contrasts badly with its smartness in the Second Empire. The damage was made good, but there has been little progress since; and meanwhile Vienna has become the finest town in Europe. Berlin has grown enormously; and the pleasant old town is lost amidst the dreariness of its extensions. It was after the events of 1870 that building started there, and started at Rome also in much the same style. But a style that does not matter in Berlin, is quite exasperating in such a place as Rome.
During the siege of Paris there was Aurora Borealis on the nights of 24 and 25 October 1870. I have never seen anything else so brilliant in the sky—the Krakatoa sunsets were nothing to it. A friend of mine was in Paris at the time, and his diary says:—“The colour was blood mixed with water.” People in London—myself among them—fancied that Paris was in flames, and that this was the reflexion in the sky. But, when the Communists did what the Germans did not do, there was no glare visible so far away.
Going from Calais to Paris on 15 August 1871, I noted in my diary that “the Prussians were still in possession of the station at Amiens”; and, returning on 11 September, “in passing St Denis, saw the Prussians packing their guns and ammunition on railway trucks, and preparing to evacuate the place.” The expresses were still made up with English carriages, as much of the French stock had been burnt.
Passing through Boulogne on 8 September 1873, I noted that “there were great rejoicings going on there on account of the payment of the Indemnity.” The final instalment had been paid on the 5th, and the army of occupation had begun its final move that morning, the 8th. It evacuated Verdun on the 13th, and crossed the frontier on the 16th. It had evacuated Nancy after the payment of the previous instalment on the 5th of August. And at Augsburg I noted in my diary, 12 August 1873:—“Drove to the Rath-haus, a fine old gabled building, internally in a state of great confusion, resulting from a banquet the night before to the Bavarians, who had just returned from the occupation of the French territory.”
From my diary, Nuremberg, 2 September 1874:—“The fourth anniversary of Sedan. The town in a state of utter excitement: every house with one or two banners (Bavarian or German), each several stories long, hung out from the upper windows, and wreaths of evergreens from all the rest; all the inhabitants either drinking beer or walking up and down the town without any particular object; bands of music marching about in a similar way. At ten I went to service at S. Sebald’s, which, largeas it is, was crammed: quite three thousand people, I should think. Some chorales sounded very well when sung by so many: they were afterwards repeated by a band on the top of the tower, apparently for the crowd outside to sing to, but the crowd did not seem much taken with the idea, and merely listened to the band. Walked about looking at the decorations for a long time. The place could not have looked prettier, as the flags hid the houses, which are plain, and one could only see the roofs, the most picturesque part. Left Nuremberg at two, and got to Frankfort at eight: a very hot journey. All the stations were much decorated, and fireworks were going on at Frankfort. Drove through the Zeil to the Taunus station, and went by rail to Biebrich on the Rhine, arriving at half past eleven.”
I well remember that journey. I was going in the morning with my father, mother, brother and sister; but at the station we found that a bundle of umbrellas had been left at the hotel, and I was deputed to secure it and follow by a later train. And the guards and passengers were all very inquisitive as to how it came about that an English boy of sixteen should be travelling across Germany, all by himself, with no other luggage than a bundle of umbrellas.
From my diary, Freiburg, 2 September 1875:—“Great firing of cannon early in the morning to celebrate Sedan: the town pretty generally decorated with flags, but the inhabitants not so enthusiastic as the Nurembergers on the last anniversary.... Left Freiburg at half past twelve, and reached Strassburg at half past three.... The inhabitants either do not rejoice very greatly at Sedan, or do so very quietly.”
I was in Rome on 20 September 1876, which was the sixth anniversary of the taking of the city, and again on the same day in 1897. There was a parade of Garibaldians each time, and in 1876 it ended in some rioting. The citizens had done better with the Pope than they were doing with the King just then, and they had no kindly feelings for the people who had brought about the change.
Garibaldi had picked his men, and they looked firm and grim,giving one the notion that they would stick at nothing to attain their ends. As a rule, they did not look much like Italians; and in 1897 they made rather a display of their contempt for the little conscripts of the Italian infantry.
I saw Garibaldi several times in London; but the surroundings did not suit him, and he looked more slovenly than heroic with his dingy cloak and unkempt hair. He had a great ovation, when he made almost a triumphal entry into London on 11 April 1864. But he was in an open carriage, and the crowd was so very friendly and so anxious to shake hands with him, that at last they pulled the rumble off the carriage, together with the solemn footmen who were seated there. That happened in Pall Mall, and I did not actually see it.
I chanced to see another sort of entry into London on 24 March 1889. I was walking along the top of Trafalgar Square, and noticed an open carriage coming up from Charing Cross, followed by a shouting rabble. When it came abreast of me, I saw Rochefort and Boulanger sitting in it side by side, Rochefort with the air of a showman, and poor Boulanger holding a ridiculous bouquet and bowing to this mob. I think he wished himself back in his command, taking the salute.
Abdul-Aziz, the Sultan of Turkey, came to England in 1867, and was present at a review at Wimbledon on 20 July. He was riding along the ground with the Prince of Wales and the Staff, when suddenly a mass of well-dressed men broke through the barriers, and made a rush towards him. And then two squadrons of the Life Guards came down at a gallop, knocked over the leaders of the rush, and closed up round the Sultan. I was on the Grand Stand, and saw the whole thing admirably. The explanation was that the Sultan’s saddle-cloth was studded with diamonds, and the “swell-mob” thought that it could grab them. But it looked more like an attempt at assassination; and he must have taken it for that, judging by the way he managed his horse. However, he had nearly nine years more of absolute power before he was deposed and bled to death.
At one time or another I have seen a good many people of renown; but I have never seen anything more magnificent thanthe Emperor Frederick, when Crown Prince, seated on his horse and wearing the white dress of the Cuirassiers. He was grander even than the statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni.
I saw the Mahmal at Cairo on 11 February 1882. There was a vast crowd, and the Mahmal was received with a salute of sixteen guns, and the Khedive with a salute of twenty-one; but neither made so great a show as Arabi. On 2 February he had made himself Minister of War, and there was a notion that he would choose this occasion for making himself Khedive; but nothing happened then. I had passed through Tell el-Kebir on 4 February, and should have looked at it more closely, had I foreseen what would be happening there on 13 September. I sailed from Alexandria on 11 March, and never imagined then that there would be a massacre there on 11 June, and a bombardment on 11 July.
On the morning of the procession I saw the Mahmal saddled on its camel: after which the camel went out to meet the Mecca Caravan, and then marched into the city with the pilgrims, as though it had come all the way from Mecca. As a matter of fact, the Mahmal is nothing but a pair of panniers with a canopy above, such as women ride in when they make the pilgrimage, only more ornate. There is nothing whatever inside it. The story is that queen Sheger ad-Durr made the pilgrimage in very splendid panniers about the year 1250; and such panniers have been sent each year since then, though nobody has ever ridden in them. The procession was too straggling to be impressive as a whole, but some things in it were striking—particularly the Sheikh of the Camel. That holy man kept wagging his head from side to side, as if he wished to shake it off; and he was said to go on wagging it all the way from Cairo to Mecca and back.
I went to Siena to see the Palio in August 1898. It has not been vulgarized like the Carnivale, as it comes at a season when few people go to Italy.—In my opinion, people generally choose the wrong time of year for going there. To see Italy in all its glory, one must be there at the Vintage.
Strictly speaking, the Palio is the banner which forms the prize in a race of ten horses, representing ten of the seventeen wards into which the city is divided; seven of the wards being selected by rotation and three by lot. There are trial races on the 14th and 15th, and the race itself is on the 16th. It is run in honour of God and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by statute of 17 June 1310; and the horses go to church before the race, and are blessed and sprinkled with holy water after certain prayers on their behalf.
The whole history of such festivals is given inPalio and Ponteby William Heywood, 1904. On looking into this, I found references to the Palio of 1898, and on plate 22 I found the top of my straw hat in the foreground of the picture. The hat is unmistakeable—built specially for me at Christys’ with wider brim and lower crown than was usual at that period.
Siena is still a mediæval city; and the race is run inside the city in a semicircular space enclosed by fine old buildings. But the race itself is not as interesting as the procession that precedes it. The city and its seventeen wards are represented by about 180 men, all in costumes of the Fifteenth Century, and the chief in splendid armour: the horses go with the members of the wards for which they run: the Palio is carried on a wagon in the middle; and the procession ends with the standard of the city on the mast of the Carroccio, the great wagon round which the struggle centred at that Battle of the Standard fought at Montaperto on 4 September 1260. I have seen as brilliant a sight with the bull-fighters entering the Plaza de Toros in procession—Madrid, 9 September 1877—but this was more impressive with its stately movement round that venerable place, the deep notes of the ancient drums and trumpets, and the great bell—the Campanone—roaring in its tower.
From my diary, Antwerp, 20 August 1872:—“Saw the Procession of the Giant from a house in the Rue de Chaperon. This procession takes place every third year on the last day of the Kermis: it commemorates the killing of a giant who held a castle on the banks of the Scheldt. First came an immensefigure of a dolphin.... Then a basket-work figure of the Giantess, about twenty-five feet high: seated and holding in one hand a spear and in the other a shield with the city arms. Then the Giant, another figure of the same sort: in armour and carrying a club and sword.”
The procession was performed out of due season on 19 September 1843 for the benefit of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; and they went afterwards to the studio of Gustaf Wappers, and commissioned him to paint a picture of it. The picture is in the King’s collection, and is engraved in Hall’sRoyal Gallery of Art. It depicts three ladies at an open window, looking down on the procession as it passes through the Place de Meir, the Giant in the middle distance, and the Cathedral spire in the background. I have the preliminary sketch in oils; and this gives a second window, showing the palace in the Place de Meir, and the royal party on the balcony.
The three ladies in the picture were the painter’s wife and her sisters. They were the daughters of John Knight, a brother of my mother’s mother, and thus were cousins of mine. John Knight was paymaster of a battalion of the King’s German Legion from 1814 to 1816. He was with his battalion at the battle of Waterloo, and after the campaign he married the beautiful (and wealthy) daughter of the banker through whom he drew the pay at Brussels. The marriage brought him into contact with large financial interests on the Continent, and he settled at Antwerp as a banker; and there he made the acquaintance of Wappers. I remember Wappers very well. In his later years he lived in Paris, and I used to go to his house there. He had been a success as a painter, had been made a Baron, and so on; and was altogether very well contented with the world. He died in 1874.
Amongst other things by Wappers, I have a portrait in pencil of my great-aunt Mary Knight, signed and dated 1843, and a portrait in oils of Charley (a King Charles spaniel) signed and dated 1849 with inscription to “oncle Chᵗ Knight,” that is, his wife’s uncle, my great-uncle Christopher Knight, the owner of the dog.
The dog’s portrait hangs here next its master’s, a big three-quarter length in naval uniform with medal and clasps and the K.H. This portrait of him came to my mother after his decease, and was hung in the dining-room of our house in London. There happened to be a dinner-party soon after it arrived, and some of the guests were rather finding fault with it both as a work of art and as a likeness of the man, when unexpectedly a little voice proclaimed:—“I painted it.” It was the voice of Frederick Havill, a painter who had met with some success, but was a long way from achieving greatness. They had all forgotten who the painter was; and on finding they were face to face with him they discovered many merits in his work.
This old Captain Knight was on the Impregnable at the bombardment of Algiers, 27 August 1816, and next day he did a conscientious drawing of the ship, showing all the shot-holes in the hull and the damage to the rigging. I have it here, with two other water-colours that he did then. One of them shows the ships taking up their positions for the bombardment, the Queen Charlotte carrying Lord Exmouth’s flag as Admiral of the Blue: which flag, now nearly black, may still be seen in Christow church, about five miles from here. The other shows the bombardment in progress—clouds of smoke with the Impregnable and the Rear Admiral’s flag just showing through.
As works of art these water-colours are of little merit, but probably would please such critics as James on Turner’s Battle of Trafalgar,Naval History, vol. 3, p. 473, ed. 1902:—“The telegraphic message is going up, which was hoisted at about 11.40, the mizentopmast is falling, which went about 1.0, a strong light is reflected upon the Victory’s bow and sides from the burning Achille, which ship did not catch fire until 4.30 ... and the Redoutable is sinking under the bows of the Victory, although she did not sink until the night of the 22nd, and then under the stern of the Swiftsure.” He was on the Minotaur at the bombardment of Copenhagen, 5 September 1807, but made no drawings then.
Instead of drawing what they saw—which might be interesting now—people used to occupy themselves with copies; and I haveinherited many portfolios of these uninteresting things. But there are copies after Prout by my mother’s sister, Emma King; and, on comparing one of these with its original, I found wonderfully little difference. Many of Prout’s best water-colours went into the collection of the late Martin Swindells of Bollington; and he lent them to my aunt to copy, while she was staying at a house near there. It must have been between 1850 and 1858, but I do not know exactly when. There are a dozen of them framed and hung here.
I once did a water-colour that I thought worth framing; but friends said such unkind things about it, that I took it down and put it in a drawer. It was meant for the apse of a cathedral—no cathedral in particular, though I suspect I had Toledo in my mind. Looking at it thirty years afterwards, I fancied that it was not such a failure after all—unquestionably, some parts of it were excellent: so I took it out again, and hung it up. And then the friends explained to me:—“The picture’s just as bad as ever, only your eyesight has got worse.” I took it down once more.
In a letter of Edward Knight, my great-grandfather—I have seen the letter, but have not got it here—he speaks of meeting the Prince Regent at a dinner at Brighton, “and H.R.H. was pleased to say that Eliza was an uncommon pretty girl.” Eliza was my grandmother; and she must have been uncommonly pretty, if she was really like a miniature of her by William Wood that I have here. I have drawings by Stroehling of her brother Joseph Knight and of her husband H. T. King—my maternal grandfather—and Joseph had fine features then, though in old age (when I remember him) his nose suggested port. I have been told that he was one of the three best-looking men in London in his time, and that Byron was one of the other two, but I cannot remember who the third was. I have also been told that there were letters to him from Byron, and they fell into the hands of one of my great-aunts; and she destroyed them as “things that no right-minded person would desire to read.”
In my library there are many volumes that belonged to these great-aunts; and they are just the books that all “right-minded” persons would desire to read. There are three editions of Pascal’sPenséesand none of hisProvinciales; and there are five Tassos to one Dante, and that one has nothing but theParadiso.
The last of these great-uncles and great-aunts lived on till 1886. I remember several of them in my earliest years, especially at Cheltenham; and, when I first readCranfordsome years after that, I felt that I had met the characters before. Cheltenham was perhaps more opulent, but the people were the same. They were full of genuine kindness, but incredibly slow and ceremonious, always giving precedence to the wife of my great-uncle Joseph, because she was the daughter of a Peer. I can hardly imagine people of that type except in shaded drawing-rooms with china bowls of rose-leaves; yet some of them had figured in less tranquil scenes.
As a lieutenant in the 15th Light Dragoons—now 15th Hussars—my great-uncle Edward Knight was in command of Sir John Moore’s escort at Corunna. He was close by, when Moore was hit, and he helped to bury him, 17 January 1809; and in after years he inveighed against the celebrated poem on the Burial. It was not like that, and “had no damned poetry in it.”
He went through the rest of the Peninsular War; and, as a major, he took over the command of the 11th Portuguese Dragoons at the battle of Vittoria, 21 June 1813. He received the gold medal and several foreign decorations, and retired with brevet of lieutenant-colonel. His brother Henry Knight went through the whole of the Peninsular War, 1808 to 1814, as paymaster of the 5th battalion of the King’s German Legion; and he was at the battle of Waterloo, 18 June 1815, as was his brother John Knight, then paymaster of the 2nd battalion. They were both in La Haye Sainte; and the position was shown me carefully, when I visited the battlefield, 13 August 1868. The buildings had been loopholed; and I was told that it was very unpleasant inside, when the enemy put their muskets through the loopholes and began to fire in.
John and Henry had the Waterloo medal, and Henry also had the Gwalior star, as he was at the battle of Punniar, 29 December 1843. He was then in the 9th Lancers, to which he was transferredin 1819. He was with his old battalion at the taking of Copenhagen, 7 September 1807; and curiously his brother Christopher Knight was there also, as a midshipman on the Minotaur.
These four great-uncles of mine saw a great deal of hard fighting without ever being wounded; but I find it recorded of Christopher at the bombardment of Algiers, 27 August 1816, that “the gallant officer had the misfortune to be severely contused.” When the old wooden ships were hit by heavy shot, great chunks of wood came flying off inside; and, if you were hit by one of these, you were not wounded but contused.
Edward had a son Godfrey Knight, a captain in the 64th—now Staffordshires—who was in the Indian Mutiny and Persian War. When he came to stay with us, his anecdotes outshone Aladdin and Sindbad in my youthful mind: the Jinn seemed tame beside the Gwalior Rebels as described by him. And he loomed up pretty large himself, when I saw him in his uniform with medals and clasps. He wore the long whiskers of that period with eye-glass and moustaches; and the eye-glass seemed to be a fixture, but in an action in the Mutiny, “unfawt’nately I dwopped my glass, and the demm’d Pandies nearly got me, haw!” He died at sea on his way out again, 24 August 1862. Troop-ships still took three months on the voyage, going by the Cape.
Amongst old letters here, I found one from a distant relative, Lucknow, 1 May 1857:—“The Bengal Army has been in a sad state lately owing to an idea that Government were issuing cartridges in the making up of which cows and pigs fat was used, the mere handling of which (to them) impurities would destroy their caste. From what I have heard from excellent authority there is no doubt of some objectionable material having been used, and it was shameful of the Government attempting to issue them. I was told by our Brigadier (but as a secret) that the propriety of doing so had been canvassed in Council, so whatever happens lies on their shoulders. I could hardly have believed any old Indians would have been so foolish. The matter is now dying away, and the men practising at the Enfield Rifle schools have ghee served out to them to grease the wads.” On 30 May the Mutiny reached Lucknow. His horse was shot under him that evening, and the Brigadier was killed not two yards off; but he came safely through the Siege.
There are many letters from my old nurse. After leaving us, she went into the service of a family in France. She writes to me from Sully, 25 January 1871:—“I must begin by telling you of our flight. I am writing in a very old castle on the borders of the Loire. The marquis, thinking we were in danger, sent us off here; there were three carriages, all the horses, and the pack of hounds. We had to pass thro’ a black forest at night, we were stopped from time to time by French guards; they looked terrifying on horseback with their long white cloaks. You may guess that we did not arrive at the end of our journey without sundry frights. We are with a friend of the family, and have been here more than two months, and no means of leaving.
“The castle is surrounded by water, two of the towers are in complete ruins, what is left of them is covered in ivy. The part we inhabit is in good condition, the rooms are very ancient, the walls and the ceilings are fresco, the dining-room is hung with tapestry, also the best bedrooms, the staircases are of stone, ropes passed thro’ iron rings in the walls supply the place of banisters, the walls are five feet thick; it will stand the cannon of the enemy, I have no fear in this good old place. The picture gallery is very interesting to visit, of course all family portraits, at the end of that is the old theatre; it is now converted into an ambulance for the wounded.
“We had been quiet a few days when the terrible battle of Bellegarde began not far from here, the poor wounded soldiers both French and Prussians were brought here in carts; the first two days they were about fifty and increased in number every day. It is well for your tender heart that you were not here, you could not have endured to witness their sufferings.
“Now for another scene we had General Bourbaki with his army encamped before the castle. How I wished you were here then. I looked out of my window, the moon was in its full, showing its bright light over the scene, the whole of the park was covered in tents, among the trees we could see the fires and the soldierssitting around them in their different costumes; they had with them 150 cannons all arranged in order ready for an attack.
“The next morning was the worst of all; the Prussians were making for here on the other side of the Loire. The first thing the General thought of doing was cutting their march, so he ordered the bridge to be burnt. We watched the arrival of the enemy, and quite enjoyed their disappointment at finding themselves the wrong side of the river. They fired over here, I did not feel very brave that day. This last week they have been firing on the castle; there is no danger for us, the walls are thick enough to resist.”
She writes again, 6 February 1872:—“We have been staying a few days at the Château of Sully. I enjoyed the visit more this time, we could walk about without fear of the Prussians.... Maréchal de MacMahon with his son, a very nice boy, has been here for a few days shooting.” There is much praise of MacMahon in her letters: he is kind and good and brave and noble, and he comes round to the nursery and tells the children tales.
She left our house when I was old enough to do without a nurse; but other servants never left, unless they were going to be married. Ann came to us when she was sixteen, and stayed till she was sixty-three, when she retired on a pension. In another household her sister Betsy did the same. They were both past ninety, when they died; and so also were Mary and Martha, who were fellow-servants with Ann. I went to tea with Mary on her ninety-fifth birthday; and she sang “I’m ninety-five,” a song well known in earlier times.
In their later years they lived a good deal in the past. At some dinner-party at our house in London the soup was handed round as mock-turtle, whereas it was real-turtle, and Mary was proud of having made it. She never let the others hear the last of that. There was to be another party there, for which great preparations had been made. But, as Ann told me quite angrily, “on the very morning of the party, King William went and died, and the party had to be put off, and all the things were spoilt.” And she was very cross about it still.
There were illuminations for Queen Victoria’s wedding; and the house was decked with night-lights in little globes of coloured glass. Ann put them carefully away, and brought them out in 1887 for the Jubilee. There were illuminations for the wedding of the Prince of Wales; and I had a night out, 10 March 1863. At the top of Trafalgar Square a wheel of our brougham got locked into the wheels of another carriage; and it was impossible to lift them clear, owing to the pressure of the crowd. We stayed there for hours.
The illuminations in 1863 were things that people would not look at now. There were gas-pipes twisted into stars and monograms and crowns, with little holes punctured for the gas: there were some transparencies, mostly with oil lamps behind; and there were a few devices in cut glass. The crowd was feebler also. People say we are degenerate now, but I think it is the other way: some of the worst types seem to be extinct.
We moved into a new house in London on 23 June 1864, and I meant to celebrate the jubilee by moving out on 23 June 1914, but was not ready then, and did not finish my move till 23 November. Being newly built, the house had a hot-water cistern in the bath-room, fed automatically by the kitchen boiler more than forty feet below. That was a novelty in 1864; and, when people came to call, they went upstairs to look at it, and could not make it out. A gifted Fellow of King’s was quite disturbed about it till he thought of Heracleitos and the maximPanta Rhei, and that enabled him to place our cistern in its true position in the Universe. Of course, these people knew that hot water was lighter than cold, and would go up while cold went down, yet were unable to follow the theory into practice. I have noticed the same thing several times, when going to Gibraltar by the P. & O. People on board have said the clock was being altered because we were going south. They knew theoretically what the reason was, but could not apply their knowledge.
A good many of the people here are of opinion that the Earth is flat; and I do not know of any simple and decisive way of proving it to be a globe. I failed miserably with Aristotle’s argument (De Cælo, ii. 14. 13) from the shape of the Earth’s shadow on the Moon in an eclipse. They very soon showed me that they could cast as round a shadow with a platter or a pail as with a ball of wool. And this, I imagine, was the reasoning of Anaximander and those others, who suggested that we might be living on the flat surface of a cylinder or disk.
There is the Horizon argument; but that is not for people living in a region of high hills, where no horizon can be seen. And the Circumnavigation argument is answered in this way:—In thick mists on the moor you think that you are going straight on, but you always go round in a circle till you come back to where you were before. The other arguments are too subtle to be grasped at all.
When people have come up for their first visit to London, I have seldom found them much impressed with the big public buildings. They have seen photographs, generally taken from some favourable point of view: so they know what to expect, and the reality is not always equal to their expectation. The buildings that impress them are the private houses at the West End. The houses may not be finer than they had expected; but it is the cumulative effect of street on street and square on square of large and wealthy houses, stretching out for miles in all directions.
A country cousin coming up to stay with me in London, I made out a list of sights that should be seen. Besides these sights, she saw a fire at a house close by. There were lots of engines and escapes, and I felt rather grateful to Providence for making this addition to my list; but I felt less grateful three nights afterwards, when Providence added a burglary, not at a neighbour’s house, but at my own.
In chatting with a small boy who was staying here, I was telling him about the fig tree, and showing him that on the outer parts the leaves had five lobes each, but further in (where they received less light) the leaves had only three lobes, and in the densest part they had only one. He listened very attentively, and then he went indoors, and said to everyone he met, “I know all about fig-leaves.”