by John Buchan
“Have been reading this evening the Life of Brigadier-General Nicholson. What a splendid fellow he was! Yet I believe India could produce many such men. It is our school for great administrators, and as such alone is worth millions to this country; but many of our home-staying, book-taught, theoretical politicians are incapable of realizing this. I don’t suppose they would be able to appreciate a good frontier officer.”
During the summer he thought he saw a chance of work abroad. He heard from Lord Lansdowne that Charles Gordon, afterwards the defender of Khartum and then private secretary to Lord Ripon, the Viceroy of India, had resigned, and he was advised to become a candidate for the post. Having been a supporter of Lord Lytton’s frontier policy, he was in doubt whether he could work under a successor who was pledged to its reversal, but his Indian friends were anxious that he should apply, and he allowed his name to be put forward. A day or two later he learned that Mr. Henry Primrose of the Treasury had been chosen. The comment in the journal is: “Am sorry I did not get it in some ways; not the sort of work I should like, but still a first-rate appointment, and under a good Viceroy a very fine position. But I doubt this man, and do not expect anything great of him. In fact, I think as regards Afghanistan the first object for the Government at home will be to get out of anything that costs money, and probably Lord Eipon will work to orders.” That autumn, too, he received an invitation from Colonel Chermside to go with him to Central Asia, and by way of Meshed and Herat to Kandahar. He put the seductive proposal behind him; he wanted service and not adventure. The close of the year saw the end of the Afghanistan operations. Roberts was welcomed home early in 1881, and Melgund was present when he was given the freedom of the City of London and at the banquet at the Mansion House. “It was a magnificent sight,” he wrote. “At the close of the dinner the Loving Cup was passed round: an official told us to ‘charge our glasses’ as each toast was proposed, and claimed ‘silence’ in a voice of thunder for whoever was about to speak. Young Childers is reported to have said that he appeared to be educated for the last trump! Roberts’s speech was the best I ever heard, though in his entire condemnation of Cardwell’s system, which has really never been given a fair chance, I should not agree with him. Perhaps it is hardly fair to say he condemned it, as he spoke only of the shortservice system as in existence, which is no doubt very faulty; but I do not agree with him as an opponent to the theory of short service. He spoke without the slightest hesitation, and thoroughly from his heart, as if he felt he was doing a duty in speaking out: he has a very taking voice, and from being a little below par it may have been even more sympathetic than usual. He was very muc^ cheered. The speech has been received with rapture by nearly every soldier.”
Melgund was hunting a good deal with different packs during the winter months, but the notes of runs in the journal are scanty, and the reflections on public affairs voluminous. For in January 1881 tragic news had come from South Africa, of Sir George Colley’s repulse at Laing’s Nek and the Ingogo River, and then of his death at Majuba Hill. Melgund had known Colley and believed in him, and the tidings of the disaster made him move heaven and earth to get out to South Africa. His chance came unexpectedly. The entry in the journal for Saturday, 5th March, is written on board the Balmoral Castle: “I have never had such a time of it as the last few days. I think it was last Monday I dined with Polly Carew at White’s, when we suspected that Bobs would be ordered to the Transvaal, and next morning Polly came into my room before I was up with a telegram from the General saying he was appointed to the Transvaal and wished to see me. I saw him at the War Office, and he asked me to come out as his private secretary. Since that moment I have been hunted to distraction. What with ‘duns’ and preparations, life has been purgatory!”
He had an interesting voyage, visiting St. Helena on the way, and struggling to inform his mind by means of blue books on South African questions. “My impression,” he wrote, “is that the Government at home will probably square things, though how they can do so with decency I cannot see.” His journal records the fiasco.
“31st March.-We arrived at Capetown at about 8:30 on Monday evening: the Calabria with the 7th Hussars cheering us loudly as we steamed up the Bay, the men answering from our ship. A boat, however, soon came off from the town, and before she came alongside the people in her were shouting ‘Peace.’ We soon heard that Peace had been proclaimed, and that the General was to return home at once. Every one was disgusted. We got passages in the Trojan next morning. We seem to have made peace with a hostile force sitting down in our own territory of Natal, after having given us three lickings under poor Colley, besides other reverses. . . . The behaviour of the home Government is impossible to understand. We sailed yesterday afternoon, i.e., Wednesday 30th. As we stood on deck the crowd on the quay cheered the General loudly and groaned for Gladstone. One feels ashamed of one’s country, or rather of the wretched Government at the head of it. I believe thoroughly in England all the same. . . .
“1st April. — April Fool’s Day! We really ought to have arrived at Capetown to-day to make a proper ending of the farce the Government at home have staged!”
There was a proposal that Melgund should remain in South Africa and go to the Transvaal with the Military Commission as Sir Hercules Robinson’s guest in order to prepare some kind of history of the whole proceedings. This he declined for good reasons, and likewise an offer of service in Basutoland. He was out of temper with the country and the policy, for he considered that Roberts had been badly treated, and that the conduct of the British Government was a mere sowing of dragons’ teeth — a view on which, in the light of after events, disagreement is unfortunately impossible. He returned forthwith to England, very clear that he did right to come home, since if he stayed out on the chance of picking up odd jobs he “ran the risk of gaining the character of a loafer and adventurer.” The reason is characteristic of the man; he did not love the role of eager amateur, and longed in everything for professional status.
The winter of 1881-82 was occupied with hunting, and, to judge from the journal, with anxious reflections and discussions on public affairs, in which he did not see eye to eye with Her Majesty’s Ministers. Here are a few extracts: —
“9th January. — I used for a long time to keep a journal for every day of my life. After I got that fall at Liverpool in ‘76 I gave it up for a bit, as I was so knocked up I fancied it tried me writing it in the evening. I have been so much behind the scenes lately in the two last campaigns, Afghanistan and the Transvaal, that I have heard many things which I regret not having written down, and I have also been thrown very much with men, particularly soldiers, of whom I might have written much. I therefore mean in future to try and put down more of interest than I have hitherto done in my journals. Besides the usefulness of making notes of anything worth remembering, a journal gives practice in getting one into the habit of writing one’s experiences quickly, and if one can write them in fairly respectable English, which I shall endeavour for the sake of practice to do, it will help one elsewhere.”
“5th February.-Aston Clinton. Had a long conversation with Sir Garnet this evening on Egyptian affairs. We agreed that the Power who should have befriended us there is Turkey, and that we have lost her friendship, though Sir Garnet thinks that she may send a force to Egypt for the sake of asserting her suzerainty, which may be on the wane. I don’t think so. We have snubbed Turkey too much to expect her to do our dirty work, and she is now friends with Bismarck. If I was a Turk I would be damned if I would send troops to Egypt to help Gladstone out of a hole.
“Sir Garnet very agreeable and talking thoroughly practical sense, which so few people do. I like Lady Wolseley very much too. She is more cautious than he is, but very taking and clever — the sort of cleverness which comes from knowledge of the world and other people. I will not call it ‘cleverness’ as I am beginning to hate clever people, they are so damnably silly — I mean unpractical. The more I see the more I look down upon the learning obta
ined from books alone. The ordinarily accepted clever men and women of the world have drawn most of their knowledge from reading. Goodness knows, I know well enough the help, even the necessity, of information only to be obtained from books. At the same time those whose character is formed by such means alone can bear no comparison to the man who is naturally first-rate, has no book learning, but has gained all his experience in the school of a world of many sets, societies, and adventures. Combine the book learning and the experience of the world and you get something very rare. Sir Garnet is the best example I have seen of such a man. The book-taught man or woman is enthusiastic, brilliant, unpractical, and perfectly sickening. Then again there is the entirely untaught, uneducated, clever, conversational, full-of-repartee creature of London society, generally recognized as ‘so clever,’ but with no experience except that of his own society world. Horrible people!”
Meantime the Egyptian problem was growing more confused, and there were the first mutterings of Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Home Rule. But towards the end of March politics were for a moment driven out of his head, when Lord Manners won the Grand National on his own horse “Seaman” by a head from Mr. Besley’s “Cyrus.” It was the kind of thing to fire Melgund’s imagination. Here was an amateur who had bought the horse on purpose to win the great race, who had ridden very little before, who was by no means fancied by the public, and who won by sheer grit and skill. Melgund’s feelings were a little like those of Lord George Bentinck, when, after he had given up racing for the public service, he saw “Surplice,” which had once been his, win the Derby.
“It was a very great performance, and he deserves all credit. I do not know Manners at all, and I have never seen the horse either. It does seem strange that some of the best men over a country, who have been riding all their lives, such as ‘Doggy’ Smith, E. P. Wilson, and Bob L’Anson, should never have won the Liverpool, and that Manners, who had no experience and made no reputation in first-class company, should come and win a fine race by a head. I would have given anything to have won it at one time, but it is plainer than ever that one might toil away all one’s life and never win that particular race. Of the steeplechase riders I have seen I shall always put ‘Pussy’ Richardson first either amongst gentlemen or professionals; Bob L’Anson facile princeps amongst the latter. He is a really fine horseman which so few of the professionals are; at least don’t understand riding over a country; they put their hands down and go from end to end, as in a hurdle race; but they have no idea of putting a horse properly at a fence, or of correcting him if he has got it out of his stride; and then they wonder horses fall! Perfect horsemen are scarce, and in riding, and particularly in steeplechase riding, the public are very often gulled into thinking certain riders good by their hardness and dash, which may probably give them a run of luck for a bit. Immense practice is necessary to put a fine horseman at the top of the tree in race riding, and when I talk of the top of the tree I don’t mean the men who have won most races, but the men who combine horsemanship, good hands, good seat, knowledge of the right way to put a horse at a fence, with the necessary qualities of the jockey; first and foremost knowledge of pace, then dash and a cool head, and the power of seeing what every other horse in the race is doing. And when one is talking of these really first-rate riders I don’t admit them as perfectly excellent unless they are also first-rate to hounds. ‘Pussy’ Richardson has all the qualities — as good to hounds as he was on a racecourse, and he was a finished artist on the flat against the best professionals, and the best steeplechase rider of his day. When one hears society talk of so and so, and so and so, and so and so as the best rider in England, what bosh it is! Probably they only know the one trade, viz., hunting, or the other trade, perhaps race riding. Amongst the best men to hounds you find young men who are riding the best horses that money can buy — how can they lay claim to the horsemanship of men who have passed through every stage of schooling young horses of every sort? Horsemanship is not learned in a day or in a few seasons’ hunting. Hard riding is a different thing.”
In April of this year Melgund was suddenly summoned to his parents at Bournemouth, and on 21st April his mother died. She was fifty-seven years old, but no shadow of middle age had fallen upon her spirit. To the end her letters had the gaiety and the eager interest of youth. Melgund had not altered since his boyish days when she had analysed his character and professed her complete trust in it, and no mother and son were ever in more frank and intimate accord. He made fun of her staunch Liberalism and her fidelity to the political traditions of her youth, and posed now and then as a ruthless Cromwellian in order to elicit her gentle expostulations. It is not easy to overestimate the influence which her gay wisdom and fortitude exercised over one who was still in process of finding himself. It provided a perpetual incentive to honourable ambition, and an undogmatic and unostentatious idealism. Such a man as Melgund was too robust to be dominated by mere emotion, and at the same time too deeply affectionate and generous to be ruled solely through his reason. His mother’s combination of a keen critical mind with the happy glow of romance and the warmth of love made her influence supreme, and her personality when alive, and after death her memory, were the chief shaping forces in his life.
During the early summer of 1882 Irish affairs seemed to be marching to dire confusion, and in May came the tragic news of the murder in Phoenix Park of Lord Frederick Cavendish, the new Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Mr. Burke, the Permanent Under-Secretary. Melgund at once wrote to Sir Garnet Wolseley offering himself for service in that country should the occasion arise. Talking with old Lord Strathnairn of this appalling tragedy, the latter said that he could soon put Ireland to rights: “it only wanted a little determination, and of course he would avoid unnecessary bloodshed!” At that time Melgund saw a good deal of this old warrior, who was renowned for his blunt speech and his many idiosyncrasies. Once, arriving for dinner, he found the table laid for sixteen, but they dined tete-a-tete, all the other invitations having somehow miscarried!
In July he celebrated his thirty-seventh birthday amid the stir of preparation for an Egyptian campaign. When war was declared Sir Garnet Wolseley was appointed to the command, and he applied for Melgund as private secretary, but there was some difficulty about employing an officer not on the active list. Wolseley therefore wrote to him officially regretting that he could not make the appointment, but at the bottom of the page there was a “P.T.O.” and on the other side “Come along, Rolly.” Privately he was advised to procure a couple of horses and present himself in Egypt. He left London on 4th August, travelling from Brindisi in the dispatch boat with Sir John Adye, Neville Lyttelton, and some of Sir Garnet’s staff. On the 11th he was reconnoitring Arabi’s position with Lord Methuen, and in the next few days he was feverishly scouring Alexandria for horses. Then Wolseley arrived, and on the 17th Melgund was gazetted as captain in the Mounted Infantry, a force the strength of which was 4 officers and 73 men. After some delay and much uncertainty they were sent to Ismailia, and landed on the 22nd August, proceeding to the cavalry lines. Of the action on the 24th an account may be transcribed from the journal: —
“29th August. — On Wednesday we received orders to parade at 4 a.m. Accordingly we fell in on Thursday morning in the dark. The Household Cavalry and some guns were to have come with us, but the guns were late and delayed the Cavalry, so we accordingly marched off alone: the Cavalry caught us up at daylight, but not the guns. About 5:30 we came across some Bedouins on foot who fired at us. The Mounted Infantry were ordered to attack them, which we did, driving them off and taking eight prisoners. We galloped a considerable distance after them. The country here was chiefly hard sand and very good going, but in some parts there was grazing ground, intersected by wet ditches. During part of our chase I galloped towards what I supposed to be a line of men about to fire, but on getting close found that they were a line of long-legged birds!
“After chasing the Bedouins and taking prisoners we thought the morning’s work
was over till we saw, rather to the left of the point to which we had pursued some skirmishers on a low ridge of hills. The enemy was now advancing in earnest. I saw little of what went on on our left, we being wholly on the right of our line. The action commenced with the Household Cavalry. The enemy advanced with large bodies of troops — infantry, and cavalry behind them, who remained on the high ground. I wondered at the time why our guns did not at once begin and play upon the enemy masses which offered such a rare mark for artillery. It turns out that the guns were not there: they had got stuck somewhere, and though they came up before long, we never got more than two guns in action. The first order given was about 6 a.m. for the Mounted Infantry to engage the enemy on our right flank. As it happened, the Corps only mustered forty-three men that morning, and we could only dismount half at a time. Throughout the morning we were always under fire, generally from our front, very often from our right flank, and sometimes from our right rear. We were required to draw out and keep in check the whole of the enemy’s left flank with twenty dismounted men. In front of us the enemy was in considerable strength. I hear now that he had ten battalions of infantry on the ground, besides cavalry, and, I think, twelve guns, which were employed entirely against our left flank, where our two guns were.
