Chapter Thirty Eight.
Concerning War Correspondents.
There is a sadness attached to the task of describing Henty’s capabilities as a war correspondent, from the fact that so many of his colleagues and brothers of the pen who knew him well and went to the front have passed away. Some who shared the lot of the brave officers and men, ran the same risks, and died the same deaths. Cameron was shot soon after being at a farewell dinner at his club, where he sat next to the writer of these lines; Pearce, though he lived through the horrors and starvation of the siege of Ladysmith—to see by the strange working of fate his own son ride up in the train of Lord Dundonald with the gallant relief party, as one of the volunteers—came back a mere shadow of his former self and died soon after, weakened by the privations connected with his duties; Archibald Forbes, possibly the hardest worker and most energetic of all, shortened his life in the cause of duty; and the same may be said of Henry Stanley; while of those who might have supplied many recollections or anecdotes, and who knew Henty well, death has claimed a long roll of brothers of the pen and correspondents, including Charles Williams, Godfrey Turner, Walter Wood, and Robert Brown.
One good old friend, active as ever, William Senior, now editor of The Field, gives a genial tribute to Henty’s memory from personal knowledge when he says, that as a special correspondent his readiness to help, and the practical manner in which he set about his work, combined with the thoroughness with which he took care of every small detail, were at once an encouragement and a stimulus to his colleagues.
Fortunately one has at command Henty’s own description of what he considers a special correspondent should be. To begin with, he says that he should be a man capable of supporting hardships and fatigues; that he should possess a certain amount of pluck, a good seat in the saddle such as would enable him to manage any mount whose services he could command; and lastly, that he should have the manners of a gentleman and the knack of getting on well with all sorts and conditions of men. This is a good deal to expect from one man, but without being eulogistic it may rightly be said that Henty possessed all these qualifications.
To a certain extent he was gifted with these qualities by nature, and where he felt himself to be wanting in any one point, his energy urged him to strengthen that weakness and strain every nerve until he had mastered the failing.
Accident has had much to do with the making of war correspondents, as in his own case; but Dr Russell and Wood of the Morning Post had both been connected with the press before being sent to the Crimea. Sometimes, however, military men with a ready gift of writing have offered their services to report on the wars in which their regiments were engaged, as in the case of Captains Hozier and Brackenbury, who made excellent correspondents and still continued in the army. Archibald Forbes, when quite a young man, served in a cavalry regiment, and after leaving the army did a little reporting before going out with a sort of roving commission to the Franco-German War. Thence he sent divers reports to a London newspaper, with the unpleasant result of being recalled, and this, too, at a time when he was primed with news of the most important nature. So special was his information, and of such extreme value, that, without writing a line, as he told the writer, he hurried over to England with all the speed possible, presented himself at the Times office, and asked to see the editor. In most newspaper offices, when the application is made by a perfect stranger, this is a privilege that the busy head of an important paper is rather loath to grant, and a messenger was sent out to Forbes asking his business. Forbes’s reply was that he had come straight from the front with most important news, and he was told, after sending in that message, that if he would write an article containing what he had to communicate, the editor would consider his manuscript, and, if it were approved, use and pay for it. Forbes told me in his sharp military way that he was not going to write and be treated like that, knowing how important was his information; and he said, “I went out from the Times office, walked into Fleet Street, and stood at the edge of the pavement half-way between, hesitating as to whether I should go to the Telegraph office, or down Bouverie Street to the Daily News.”
His hesitation did not last long. He went down the latter street and asked to see the manager. He was shown in at once to the office of my old friend, the late Sir John Robinson (Mr Robinson in those days), who listened to what he had to say, and like the keen man of business that he was, he grasped the value of Forbes’s information, and told him to go into a room which he pointed out and write a column. This he did, and it was put into type as fast as it was written. Soon after it was done he asked to see the manager again, and being shown in once more, Sir John Robinson said, “Have you got any more?”
“Yes,” said Forbes; “plenty.”
“Then go and write another column.”
This was written in turn, and after it was done Forbes, still rather indignant about his previous ill-successes with the press, and not being blessed with Henty’s way of dealing with all sorts and conditions of men, took offence at some words spoken by Sir John, which roused his acerbity and resulted in his being highly offended and leaving the manager’s room in dudgeon. The Daily News “chief” was taken by surprise at the way in which the hot-blooded Scot had quitted him, and, hurrying down the stairs out into Bouverie Street, he overtook the angry ex-dragoon in Fleet Street. Having thus captured him and brought him back to his own room, he explained to him laughingly that he wanted him to go on writing until he had exhausted his information, and then he was to go off back immediately to the front as the representative of the Daily News, with full munitions, and to send over at his discretion all information that he could collect concerning the war.
This was a strange commencement of the important career of one who in the opinion of journalists began at once to make a brilliant name for himself, for this, Forbes’s first literary coup, placed him at one stride in the same rank as William Howard Russell of the Times, the well-known author of My Diary in India. The opinion of the journalistic world was directly endorsed by the British public, who proved it by sending up the circulation of the Daily News to a wonderful extent throughout the war; and this lasted until the day when, passing by the Daily News publishing office in Fleet Street, the writer saw posted up Forbes’s terse telegrams announcing to an astonished world the utter defeat of the French. The rest is familiar history.
Henty states that a good seat upon a horse is one of the valuable qualifications for a war correspondent, for it may come to pass that when at great risk and effort the gleaner of intelligence has obtained his requisite information by following the vicissitudes of the campaign wheresoever the battle rages, he may find himself perhaps thirty or forty miles away from the nearest telegraph station. There is nothing to be done in such a case but for the correspondent to write his valuable despatch as crisply and as carefully as possible, and then ride away at full speed so as to get the message at the earliest moment upon the wires. This task accomplished, he must, after a brief rest, mount once more and return to the front.
Later, it was in this way that, during the Zulu War, Forbes was the first to send home an account of the Battle of Ulundi, bearing with him, so trusted was he, some of the general’s despatches as well as his own report. Where, however, the telegraphic facilities are not within reach, it is necessary for the correspondent to entrust the report he has written to the official post-bag, for he dare not absent himself long from the front, not knowing what events of importance may happen while he is away.
In the Franco-German war another correspondent, Beattie Kingston—polished gentleman, scholar, and able musician, who had been representing the Daily Telegraph in Vienna and elsewhere—was acting as correspondent with the German army; and of other war correspondents it remains to mention the familiar names of Bennett Burleigh and E.F. Knight, the latter of whom distinguished himself by writing the brilliant little account of The Cruise of the “Falcon”, which reads as graphically as if it had come from the pen of Defoe. After Knight had taken up the risky duties of reporting wars, and had been sent to the Pamir to report our little frontier engagement with the restless mountain tribes, he did something more than go to the front, for in one of the engagements he was with a little column whose officers were all shot down, and with the splendid energy and pluck of the fighting penman he dashed into the fighting line, took the place of the fallen leader, and led the men to success.
This struggle—not his own special fight, for he is too simple and modest a man to play the part of Plautus’s braggart captain—he recorded in his work, Where Three Empires Meet. Later, when journalism claimed him again to be the war correspondent and he went out to the Boer War, news came to the little club of which he is one of the most popular members, that he was with the advancing line of the 42nd Highlanders at Magersfontein and had been shot down. He lay with the rest of the unfortunates of that saddening day, trusting for first aid to one of the sergeants of the regiment who knelt down to bandage his shattered arm, panting with excitement to be off the while.
Another sufferer this in the great cause of gathering the freshest news, for E.F. Knight paid dearly for his well-earned fame. He was sent down with another wounded man picked out from about forty hopeless cases, “just to give me a chance,” and though he suffered the complete loss of an arm, he finally recovered, thanks to Sir Frederick Treves. After this he studied and practised the art of writing quickly and clearly with his left hand, and from the Far East sent graphic reports of the Russo-Japanese War. That is the kind of stuff of which George Henty’s friends and companions were made.