Under England's flag

by Charles Boothby

Copy of Letter from Sir John Moore to Lieutenant Boothby, R.E., Augusta:—

Messina, August 18, 1807.

My dear Boothby—I had the pleasure of receiving your letter of the 22nd July, on my return from Palermo, two days ago. All I shall say at present is, that I have a strong wish to serve and to oblige you.

I shall speak both to Major Bryce and to General Oakes on the subject of your wishes, and when an opportunity offers, if the situation is thought eligible for you and can be managed, you shall have my interest.—I have the honour to remain with great regards, very faithfully,

John Moore.

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Augusta, Sept. 14, 1807.

My ever dearest Father—The arrival of the packet at Malta has relieved very strong apprehensions for her safety. If, as I hope, there are a great many letters for me, I shall not get them until they are delivered at Messina, and sent from thence hither. It always happens in this manner that my answers are never able to reach the return mail, but on this occasion I am determined to answer by anticipation.

I can at least assure you that I am perfectly well, which is all in the present press that I have time to do.

The heat of the summer caused an epidemic of fever, which has now, however, almost entirely subsided. It plagued me for about a week, since which I have been rudely well, though the weather has been hot to a most irksome degree, and I have been obliged to brave the sun at the peril of no other inconvenience than the prickly heat—if you know what that is. I have indeed been harassed more by anxiety than labour: the former, however, is nearly at an end now.

When I found my fever gone and my appetite returned, and nothing left but depression of spirits and a little languor, I puts me into a boat at night by a beautiful moon, more lovely than the sun, and starts me for Syracuse for the next day’s races, where I had a horse to run, and I knew there would be jollity.

I arrived much fatigued and slept a most excellent night, and breakfasted late next morning—no sooner finished, than the sporting gentlemen entered, and roused me up with a long pole, and the quicksilver mounted directly; for these were people that I much affect.

But first of all, for fear you should suppose that there is much extravagance in this affair, I must tell you how it goes.

The races have been generally about once in six weeks, subscribers pay a guinea, and each subscriber may, if he pleases, enter a Sicilian horse. The guineas thus collected are divided into four parts or three, according to the number of horses, which are also arranged in classes according to their merits. The winner of each class gets one of the divisions of the money, and then all the winners run for the last division. They are weighted by handicaps.

In this manner my horse has won for me upwards of twenty guineas. I should always subscribe whether I had a horse or not, because the meeting is more pleasant than anything in this horrid country, and I can afford it. With a little care I keep my head very well above water.

Well, on the race day I was very merry, and dined in the evening with the Jockey Club, which was entertained by a man by everybody loved and esteemed for his excellence of all sorts, and who was by me additionally regarded, because we were made acquainted by a letter from poor Gould,[12] who was his first cousin. Finding myself de buon appetito, I drank lots of champagne well iced, and since have enjoyed robustness of health.

I do not see where will be the sense in talking to you about what you will see in the papers. They now say that the seven islands are all strictly blockaded; and it appears, by a letter from our Consul at Corfu to Colonel Campbell, that Cæsar Berthier with 1500 men had taken possession of Corfu, and felt himself critically situated with so small a force in case of attack from us.

I fancy Zanti and the other islands are not yet occupied by the French. We are all in a bustle to put the fortresses in a good state of defence, and indeed, now the French have nothing else to do, it behoves us to be very much on our guard if we are to keep the island.

But I imagine that the immediate preparation was against any attempt that might be meditated from Corfu—the very island which now appears to have been in equal fuss on our account.

As I have been some time resident here upon other business, I was desired to draw up a full memoir upon the defences of the place,[13] which I set about reluctantly and fearfully, unwilling to write myself ass, and not knowing that it would so soon come in question.

The thing gave much anxiety and trouble, but it seems that I have not come very wide of the mark, as I am threatened with an order to execute most of my proposals. This is very pleasantly terminated, as I wrote to recommend that an older officer should be sent down (which some would call spiritless, but we call honest); and now I find that the Captain whom I particularly wished to have, is ordered to come here immediately.

September 27.—Since I last wrote I have been highly delighted with a visit to the crater of Mount Etna, which is not only more sublimely terrific and more dreadfully beautiful than anything else I ever beheld, but much more than my imagination had ever pictured. I had been so much occupied since my residence in this island, as to be prevented from joining any of the numerous parties of last year. Thus I began to be very apprehensive that I might labour under the reproach of residing near two years in Sicily without beholding one of the most stupendous objects of nature—the greatest of volcanoes. But the history of my ascent to Mount Etna must be suspended sine die.

We were fortunate in finding the crater in an incessant state of fiery eruption—tremendous indeed! It threw out red stones very near us. The guide was alarmed. Hereafter I may relate more at length an excursion strongly impressed upon my mind.

An expedition is on the eve of departure from Sicily. It will have about 7000 men, commanded by General Moore and General Paget—the Guards and Moore’s own regiment (52nd),—in short, the flower of the army.

I wrote to go, and was gratified to find that I was in the arrangement. I am told that it is intended to place me on the staff. At any rate I am delighted to go.

Nobody can guess our destination. All parts of the world have been conjectured, England and Ireland not excepted.

I have been very lucky never to be ill on these occasions, and am much pleased at being remembered, though in this out-of-the-way place, and being placed immovably on the list.

I long to see General Moore wave his hat, and hope we are to trim the real French—and no auxiliaries nor Turks.

Burgoyne is Commanding Engineer, and almost all my friends and people to whom I am attached are going, which gives much huzza to my feelings. I should certainly have hanged myself had I been left in this hole after the Guards had left it, and when all my world had gone forth. Perhaps my being on the expedition may much expedite my return to God’s dearest blessings, which I prize so far above all other earthly goods. It is fortunate for a man’s piety when the objects of his gratitude are so undeniably great as to fill his heart and make him know how good God has been to him. I have come to that state when I would be thought truly pious—I had always a hankering after it,—as I find that nothing encourages half so much the gladness of the heart or the sublimity of the mind.

With infinite love, your truly affectionate

Charles.

October 17.—At the time the above was written the fleet was getting under way, and was to rendezvous at Syracuse, where it was to be joined by the troops from Egypt, who were already at Messina. Colonel Campbell had no idea of the destination of the expedition. An order has since gone out for its recall to Sicily.

“Elizabeth” Transport, Mediterranean Sea,
240 miles from Gibraltar. Foul wind, fresh.
November 29, 1807. 30 days at sea.

My dearest Louisa—I know nothing more efficacious in my present misery than writing to you, by which for the moment I may lose the consciousness of it. Do not be alarmed; they are only the miseries of this restless element and stinking prison to which I allude.

On leaving Sicily some one persuaded me that our undoubted destination was Palermo. When that was passed, we all thought Lisbon the mark. Now we learn by the Minstrel (which spoke the Queen about ten days ago) that the Prince Regent of Portugal has declared against us; and I am inclined to think that this event may make the object of this army a secret to Sir John Moore himself; but Brazil is the general speculation. For my part I think our return more likely, as it appears of increasing importance to rivet Sicily as our perpetual colony—a measure which I am persuaded would be unattended with difficulty in the execution, and, as far as I can judge, filled with advantage in the end.

But leave we this to the wise, while we content ourselves with ourselves.

I find complaints about not writing so unavailing that I am quite puzzled how to act. I will have no letter that can be written in a day; I will have a journal! a compilation! Why do I see others—Colonel Campbell, for instance—receive packet upon packet copiously filled? Do you think that because he is a great man his friends write to him about State affairs, which are better treated in the papers—or Philosophy, or History perhaps? No, no; they write to him those heaps of gossip which are interesting only to him, but which of course delight him a thousand times more than any other subjects. Those incidents, dear Lou, which you think too trivial to send two thousand miles, never considering that domestic anecdotes so many thousand miles as they travel are so many thousand times more valuable to a man of affections than if sent to him a trifling distance, which you would not scruple to do.

It surprises me the more that you, my dearest lass, are silent, who write with such apparent facility and impress your expressions with the graces of your nature—the true secret to make correspondence delightful—when that which I have long loved in yourself breathes through your letters and gives them the air of your conversation.

I therefore recommend that you would keep a regular journal, enough to make me an immense letter once a month; and don’t be particular about a subject, so as you talk about what is actually going on amongst you. If “Molly Morley be brave to what she war,” it is very interesting to hear so, and if you still keep your taste for barley sugar! which I doubt not! But Brookes’ exploits must always be productive, with his badgers and things, and I thank you again for those anecdotes. I wrote the lad a letter some time ago. How I long to see him! Nobody makes me laugh half so much as he does, and I love a hearty laugh.

But my home letters feel always so skinny between the finger and thumb that I am always sure there cannot be much in them, and every line I read I grudge, for fear of coming to the end. When once I do get home what a zest will my absence give to every blessing; for whereever I go or whatever I see, I may say with the feeling Goldsmith—

My heart, untravelled, fondly turns to thee,

Still wanders o’er the peaceful scenes I love,

And drags a lengthening chain at each remove.

I long incessantly to return to the bosom of that family to which may be applied the words of a less celebrated poet—

Nor last, tho’ noticed last by me,

Appears that happy family,

No pen can do strict justice by,

And mine should be the last to try—

Wher’ever going—there approved

And only known to be beloved.

Couch, canto ii.

This letter will probably be concluded from Gibraltar, where I may have a better idea of my destination. At present I am tired out with this tedious passage and tossing about from one side of the cabin to the other. The soup in my lap! and my fist in the pudding. Oh dear! Oh dear! But now, please Neptune, we may have a fair wind, and may run into Gibraltar in two or three days. The only amusement on board ship is light reading and making verses. It is quite impossible to bore.

Since I came on board I have read with a good deal of attention for the first time Dryden’s Virgil and Pope’s Homer, from which in themselves I did not derive half so much pleasure as the conviction of Milton’s decided superiority to both.

A man reading a translation cannot of course judge of the language or numbers of the original, but these I believe are not of the first consequence, and Pope is generally esteemed a greater master of both than Milton (though I am myself quite of a contrary opinion); but it is in the thoughts that Milton so astonishingly surpasses, I think, both Homer and Virgil; for surely nobody who reads Paradise Lost, and the Iliad by Pope, can doubt how cumbersome rhyme is to an epic poem, or how much it relaxes the energy of the verse, or how much grander a translation of Homer Milton could have furnished than that for which we are so greatly obliged to Pope. I prefer the Odyssey to the Iliad, and the Georgics to the Æneid, for the latter is something like a servile imitation of the Greek.

By the way, if you have never read Boswell’s Life of Johnson, let me recommend you to a most delicious entertainment. Although the biographer portrays himself an inconceivable goose, I never met with anything so interesting as his book, nor so wonderful as the conversation and universal wisdom of Johnson, whom he will never believe to be a coward, though it were proved in fifty thousand courts—and this indissoluble attachment is with me called rectitude of heart.

* * * * *

Gibraltar, December 4, 1807.

After a most unpleasant passage of thirty-six days, we arrived here on the 1st inst. We have received no intelligence of any sort. Sir John Moore has sailed alone to the westward, and it is supposed that his object is to concert what may be best, by what he may find to have happened at Lisbon. All thoughts of South America seem to have subsided; and if in the end we do return, our advance and enterprise do not seem to be yet quashed, from the orders which the General gives us.

I have been much gratified by a letter from the mother of my friend,[14] promising that the epitaph I sent should be placed on his tomb, and professing to have derived much comfort from my sympathy, and from the affectionate tribute paid to her son’s memory. It has in a manner set my heart at rest on this melancholy subject, for there is a great mental satisfaction, if no solid sense, in the consideration that I have performed the last sad duty to his ashes, by establishing a little register of his virtues and our friendship, which otherwise would have sunk with me and those who loved him into oblivion, the idea of which is horrible.

5th December.—The mail closes to-morrow and I have no time to alter or peruse anything—so take it as it is—it’s just a talk.—Yours,

Charles.

* * * * *

Isle of Wight,
St. Helens, December 29, 1807.

Ever dearest Father—If you have not been prepared for it, my arrival in England will be to you an agreeable surprise, as in fact it is almost to me.

We had a favourable passage of thirteen days, and came to anchor last night. When I have seen Sir John Moore in Portsmouth and General Morse in London, I shall be better able to fix my movements; at present my thoughts are to stay here two or three days, then to London, and so meet you at Sudbury before the 9th.

Hereafter I shall probably wish to adhere to General Moore, who has intimated a disposition entirely friendly to me. But I cannot help hoping to spend the greater part of the winter with you—a hope, however, too flattering to be implicitly trusted. I heard, by means of Colonel Campbell, the valuable intelligence that you were all well on the 12th November. As I trust we shall meet very soon I need not lengthen this letter, farther than to say how much I am, my dearest Dad, your ever most affectionate

Charles.

P.S.—There is not such an air of happiness in this letter as my situation may be supposed to inspire. The fact is, I fear giving myself too much up to certainty which may possibly forerun disappointment.—Adieu.