Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  and the great speech of Claverhouse to Morton in Old Mortality: —

  “When I think of death as a thing worth thinking of, it is in the hope of pressing one day some well-fought and hard-won field of battle, and dying with the shout of victory in my ear — that would be worth dying for; and more, it would be worth having lived for!”

  * Later Chief Justice of Calcutta, when Minto was Viceroy of India.

  His love of mountains never left him, and his last climbing adventure was in 1900, when he delayed his journey through the Rockies at Glacier in order to ascend Mount Avalanche — to the amazement of the imported Swiss guides, who could not believe that the Governor-General would get out of his train after a prolonged official tour and spend eleven arduous hours climbing a mountain. He wrote in his journal: “Ascended Mount Avalanche: two guides. Started 6:30 a.m., reached the summit 12:30. Left again 1:30 p.m. and arrived Glacier House 4:40. Very hard climb. We came down roped together, and glissading down a severe slope came to grief and finished the glissade on our backs, but no damage done.” He had taken the precaution of inscribing his name on a card which was placed inside a bottle and laid in the snow on the summit, on the chance of its coming to light as “the last message of the Governor-General” should anything untoward happen.

  In November 1866 Melgund passed the final examination at Cambridge, and on 13th December took his degree and bade farewell to the University in characteristic fashion. Steeplechasing had been forbidden by the authorities till the men had gone down, so it happened that the race for the Fitzwilliam Whip and the bestowal of degrees took place on the same day. “The Whip” had been twice won by Cecil Legard, who expected to carry it off for the third time and therefore retain possession of the trophy. Melgund determined to bring off the double event. He duly appeared in cap and gown, but under his academical dress he wore boots and breeches, and his spurs were in his pocket. A cob was waiting outside the hall, and as soon as the ceremony was over he was in the saddle and galloping for Cottenham. He reached the course not a moment too soon; rushed to the weighing room as the bell for the race was ringing and the horses were leaving the paddock; mounted his horse “Rival” and galloped to the starting-post, getting into line just as the flag fell. It was a desperate race, neck and neck the whole way; a breathless second of silence; then shouts of excitement from Melgund’s backers — Legard had been beaten by a head.

  Melgund’s next appearance in the Cambridge Senate House was forty-four years later, when he was given an honorary doctor’s degree.

  CHAPTER 2. STRENUOUS IDLENESS

  Having done with tutors and preceptors, Melgund had the world before him, but to one in his position the exact road to travel was not immediately clear. He was destined for the Army, but the Army in the late ‘Sixties was not a profession to absorb all the energies of a young man gifted with perfect health, untiring vitality, and a desperate love of enterprise. His education had been drawn less from books than from life, and his taste was more for action than for argument, for adventure of the body rather than of the mind. He could concentrate fiercely on what had captured his interest, and he was prepared to run any risk; indeed, the greater the risk in any business the more ardently he followed it. Supremely honest with himself and with all men, he had the courage which is a matter of instinct and inclination rather than of duty, and he pursued the “bright eyes of danger” for their own sake. Such a one must make a cast in many directions before he finds his true line. Life seems very good to him, and he warms both hands joyfully at its fire. It was this abounding appetite and unquenchable high spirits that marked him out from the other young men of his year who came down from Cambridge. He had no trace of laziness or indifference in his composition, but time must elapse before the flow of energy could be effectively canalized.

  In the spring of 1867 he was gazetted to the Scots Guards (then called the Scots Fusilier Guards). It was rather a dead time in the Army, those years between the Crimean War and the Cardwell reforms, and it was hard for Melgund to acquire much interest in home soldiering in London, or at Aldershot or Windsor, though many of his Eton and Cambridge friends were in the Guards or the Household Cavalry. But there were interesting links with the past. He notes in his journal in July 1868 that he dined with the old Field-Marshal, Sir Alexander Woodford: “He is really a wonderful old man: he told me all about the ball at the Duchess of Richmond’s at Brussels, just before Waterloo, and says he remembers four Highlanders of the 42nd being brought into the ballroom and dancing a reel, and that three of them were killed next day at Quatre Bras. Sir Alexander himself left the Duchess’s ball post-haste for the field, and remained four days campaigning in his dancing pumps. He commanded a battalion of the Coldstream at Waterloo, and he looks as fit as a fiddle now.”

  Melgund found the routine of duty with his regiment at the Tower, Chelsea, or Wellington Barracks too monotonous for an active man, and the journal contains few professional incidents beyond the “review” held in Windsor Park in June 1869 for the Khedive of Egypt. He had never in his life a taste for gambling, and play in the Guards in those days was high, for he records that a poverty-stricken friend of his lost £3000 in one night, and that bets of £5000 and £7000 would be laid on a rubber of whist. Nor did orgies of meat and drink amuse him, as when sixty gentlemen in barracks consumed at dinner one hundred bottles of champagne in addition to other wine. He tells his mother darkly that the woods at Minto will have to be cut down to pay his mess bills.

  The boredom of his profession did not prevent him from enjoying a variety of social life. Old letters which have been preserved are full of chaff and gossip — stories of boxing and fencing at Angelo’s, boisterous evenings at “Billy Shaw’s” or “Evans’,” and now and then a stately function such as the Queen’s Ball on July 2, 1868, after which, in company with Lord Lansdowne and Lord Charles Beresford, and with the help of the Fitzwilliams’ terriers he indulged in a cat hunt — a picture for the historical artist of three future most eminenl servants of the Crown, all in gala clothes, whooping and careering among the sober shades of Berkeley Square. He describes a breakfast at the Palace in the following to which he went in “a blue evening coat and brass buttons with a thistle on them, light trousers and a white waistcoat, being the costume the Prince of Wales wished people to wear.” In his letters to his mother, delightful letters full of badinage and affection, he tells of the pretty girls he met, and the races he rode, and the utter ennui of the hours spent on duty. Here is an extract: “I was driven over (to Ascot) every day on some kind friend’s drag, which, as I daresay you know, is a vehicle drawn by four horses, which generally have never been together before, and driven by an individual who considers himself a coachman, but is without any idea of holding horses together. The smashes in the first day’s racing were really without end — my coachman drove me over an iron railing, luckily without upsetting me, and on the way home, though quite unable to drive myself, I had to take the reins and stop the horses by main force . . . One coach which left barracks arrived on the course with no leaders, and another with its roof bathed in blood, which, the driver said, was owing to the horses having been all over the top of the coach.” Those were lighthearted days, as witness the bitter complaint of his brother Hugh: “The Oxford and Cambridge match commenced yesterday at Lord’s. I met Berty in the Pavilion of the M.C.C., a place set apart specially for members, neither of us being members. The brute had the impudence to try and have me turned out as a nonmember! . . . I must say Berty is devoid of all principle.”

  The serious business of those years was horses. Melgund kept up his rowing and running for some time after leaving Cambridge, but it was in riding that he found his true interest. Whenever he could get leave from his regiment he was off hunting or steeplechasing. In 1868 we find him riding “The Begum” second in the race for the Household Brigade Cup, and winning the Hunters’ Handicap at Aylesbury on “Darkness.” In October of that year he paid his first visit to Limber Magna the home of his friend Mr
. John Maunsell Richardson, and so began that association with Lincolnshire which was to be one of the happiest episodes of his life. “Cat” Richardson had been one of the old group at French’s, and the friendship which Melgund began at Cambridge ended only with his death. No greater gentleman-rider lived during the last half-century than the man who won the Grand National on “Disturbance” in 1873, and on “Reugny” in 1874. A visitor to his Cambridge rooms once asked for a book to pass the time of waiting, and was told by his servant that Mr. Richardson did not possess a book of any sort; but so strong was the “Cat’s” character that he could shut himself up and read for a solid year in order to pass his examinations.

  At first Melgund went to Limber principally for the hunting, which to him and the “Cat” meant conjugating all the moods and tenses of that verb. On off days there was racing, which consisted in riding one of the Limber stable chasers, or getting a mount wherever one was available, no matter whether bad or good, for the possibility of broken bones was not considered. The fascination of the Limber life decided Melgund to send in his papers. Brother officers like “Bar” Campbell and Lord Abinger begged him not to “make a damned fool of himself,” and assumed that there was some woman at the bottom of it, and that he wanted to get married. Nothing was further from his mind. Melgund was very susceptible to a pretty face if possessed by what he termed “a good sort”; and he would spend a whole evening in the society of a favourite partner. In those stiff days of etiquette his behaviour horrified the chaperones; when taken to task for his conduct in making a lady conspicuous he would laughingly declare that he was “a friend of the family”; and next day she would be forgotten in the excitement of those breathless matches round the Limber race-course, schooling the best blood on the turf over hurdles. He sought a life which would give outlet to his restless energies, and he believed he had found it in that career of peripatetic jockeydom of which Richardson was already a brilliant exponent. Throughout that spring he was posting about to race meetings all over the country, having adopted the serious business of a gentleman jockey.

  II

  Melgund’s racing life began when he settled at Limber with the Richardsons in 1870, and practically closed in ‘76 with his mishap at the Grand National, though he continued to ride occasionally for some time. The four years in the Lincolnshire country house form a curious and strenuous interlude in a life which never lacked variety. To begin with, when the “Cat” was still at the height of his racing success, Melgund toured the land, riding whenever he could get a mount, but chiefly at north-country meetings, so that Mr. John Corlett, of pious memory, was moved to observe in the Sporting Times that “Mr. Roly has taken to riding like the devil.” After the “Cat” gave up riding in 1874 Melgund rode almost entirely for the Limber stables, Lord Downe, Captain Machell, and Sir J. Astley being among the owners who had their horses trained there. The whole episode was characteristic of his serious simplicity in the pursuits which attracted him. Whatever he did he was determined to do in a workmanlike way: he hated the slipshod amateur, and had no love for half-heartedness in any walk of life, since it seemed to him that if a thing was worth doing at all it was worth doing well. It may be hard to explain why an education in horses is also an education in human nature, but it is the truth; and those years of mixing with all classes on a common ground were for him an invaluable training in the understanding and management of men. He was quite aware that many people looked askance at the jockey, but he was never prepared to accept conventional views for which he saw no valid defence. He writes to his mother: “I could not help smiling at your remarks on my ‘jockeyship.’ I believe the word ‘jockey’ conveys some horrible meaning to non-racing people. As long as one rides badly and sticks to country races I suppose it does not matter how much one rides; but directly one rides in the great races one is considered a jockey, which is a dreadful thing! My reasons against riding are that it takes too much time and is certainly not a thing to make a career of. Otherwise it is the finest game I know, requiring more head and more energy than other games. No doubt there is much blackguardism connected with it, but I should like to know one single profession in which there is not blackguardism. Certainly politics will not bear looking into.” This was written when he had turned his back upon steeple-chasing, but there were still longing looks behind, and years after, when Viceroy of India, he told Francis Grenfell with a sigh that he wished he had been a trainer.

  But the Limber days were marred by no looking before or after. He had found a task which absorbed all his energies, and he was supremely happy. The four years were spent in a discipline almost as rigid as that of a religious order. Old Mrs. Maunsell, Mr. Richardson’s grandmother, used to say, “I pity the girls when he looks at them with those beautiful eyes of his.” But the handsome young man cared only for horses. There were neighbours of the hard-riding persuasion, like the Yarboroughs and the Listowels, and the Rev. H. G. Southwell, who was Mr. Richardson’s stepfather, and with whom Melgund formed an enduring friendship. On Sundays church was attended with exemplary regularity. Visitors came occasionally, famous racing men like Captain Machell and Captain “Bay” Middleton, and old Cambridge friends like Cecil Legard, now a sporting parson, and Aberdour and Wodehouse. But the party as a rule consisted of Melgund, the “Cat,” his brother and sister, a very happy and well-agreed quartette. Miss Richardson in her biography of her brother has drawn a charming picture of the life: the long days in the open, the hungry party at dinner living over again the day’s run, the sleepy evenings thereafter, each nodding in his chair. Nobody played cards or gambled; “drinks would come in, but they would go out again untasted night after night, for there were no drinkers.” The “Cat” and Melgund did not smoke: never was seen a more blameless and healthy existence. But high spirits and hard conditions were sometimes too much for decorum and there would be bear fights, when the panes in the book-cases would be shattered and good dress-coats rent from collar to tail.

  One episode deserves recording. Melgund and Richardson had a friend, a lady, whom they used alternately TO pilot out hunting. They each urged her to buy a favourite hunter. One evening a demand was received for the horse to be sent on trial, and an argument arose as to which horse should be sent. So serious became the dispute that their friends declared that the only way to settle the business was to fight it out. “Accordingly the combatants stripped to the waist and in a neighbouring wood had six rounds of the best. Both were severely punished; but Richardson, who was the bigger man of the two, remained the victor. Peter Flower was Melgund’s second, Hugh Lowther* acted for the ‘Cat,’ and Colonel Machell witnessed this desperate and absurd encounter. An hour later the combatants, with their wounds bandaged, met at dinner on the best of terms, drank each other’s health, and spent a merry evening.”

  * Now Earl of Lonsdale.

  A chronicle of old races is apt to make dull reading for the uninitiated, but some of Melgund’s performances must be noted. In 1874, when Richardson won the Grand National for the second time, Melgund was fourth on “Defence.” The same year he won the French Grand National at Auteuil on his own Limber mare “Miss Hungerford,” being the only gentleman rider in the race with seventeen professional starters. Melgund rode the Liverpool course altogether nine times, and competed four times in the Grand National. The Limber stable began the year 1875 very well at the Lincoln Spring Meeting: the five horses competing all won in the hands of “Mr. Rolly.” He rode “Miss Hungerford” in the Grand National: “I always think she would have won,” he wrote afterwards to Finch Mason, “if I had not been knocked over the second time round. I was quite by myself on the left-hand side of the course to keep out of the crowd, and an Irish jockey on ‘Sailor’ deliberately jumped into my quarters.”

  In the Grand National of 1876 he very nearly came by his end. He was riding “Zero,” a Limber bay with magnificent shoulders, much fancied by the public. Here is his own account: “The horse was going splendidly and coming to Valentine’s Brook I got a real g
ood steadier at him—’Shifnal’ and ‘Jackal’ were leading, and I was next to them. ‘Zero’ got the fence exactly in his stride and never touched it, and, as far as I know, tumbled head over heels on landing.* I jumped the fence almost touching the left-hand flag. I got up directly and found tom Cannon standing by me, who walked back to the weighing room with me. On our way we heard that Joe Cannon had won on ‘Royal,’ at which I was very pleased, for besides his fine horsemanship he was an excellent fellow.” Melgund thought he had only lacerated internally a large muscle, but Sir James Paget, who was telegraphed for, confirmed the view of the other doctors that he had literally broken his neck. “You are one of those extraordinary people,” said the great surgeon afterwards, “who have broken their necks and recovered. Your backbone should be very valuable.” Melgund offered to leave it to him in his will. “Oh,” said Sir James, “I shall be dead long before you, but the College of Surgeons will be very glad to have it.” After being practically a cripple for months Melgund consulted Mr, Wharton Hood, the bone-setter, who advised exercise, and his own will power and the coming of the hunting season revived him. “I rode ‘Weathercock’ at Sandown Park in November, which I ought never to have done as I was still weak and ill and in pain from the fall in March, and tumbled head over heels at the fence going down the hill, ‘Zero,’ strange to say, falling by my side with Marcus Beresford on him.” It was a crazy escapade, but a miraculous proof of nerve.

  * Mr. John Osborne maintained that the horse put his foot, on landing, inttt an under-drain, which for some obscure reason had been overlooked by the authorities of the course.

  Though this incident may be said to have ended Melgund’s career as a jockey his interest in sport and horses never abated. At the farewell banquet given in his honour by the Turf Club at Calcutta at the close of his term of office as Viceroy he breathed again the atmosphere of comradeship among racing men, and in returning thanks for the toast of his health he said: —