The Cornhill Magazine (vol. XLI, no. 245 new series, November 1916)

by Various

CHAPTER XLI.

Little further remains to be told. The story of my life, that is of its more interesting and critical portion, which I began to write in the long summer mornings when hay harvest kept more than half the parish busy in the fields, has occupied my leisure hours until now, when the first December snow showers fling a glittering mantle about royal Hover, rising there across the valley amid the domes and spires of the mighty pines.

And, as the record nears completion, the question comes, what shall be done with it? Shall I lock it away with other treasured sacred things—a few letters, one or two faded portraits (early examples of the photographer’s doubtfully flattering art), a woman’s glove, too, and a tag of once white ribbon foxed by age—a little hoard to be burned unlooked on when the peaceful churchyard, here close at hand, receives the baser part of me, and my soul goes back to God who gave it? Or, when that time comes, undreaded yet uncraved for—since life still is sweet—shall this record pass into the hands of her who has been its chief inspiration, the Laura, worthy of how far more melodious a Petrarch, the Beatrice, worthy of how far more eloquent a Dante, than my obscure and humble self? Is it mere weakness, outcome of an old man’s doting and futile vanity, clutching at the shadow where the substance is, and always had been, beyond his grasp, which makes me thus desire—when revelation can no longer bring heartburnings or disquiet—those wise and glorious eyes should read the secret of my love and of my sacrifice at last?

Sentimental? And, after all, why not? For who am I to condemn sentiment, which, if it contain no corrupt and morbid elements, is surely the strongest driving power towards noble deeds and heroical ventures human history can show? To decry or fear sentiment is to decry or fear the finest achievements of art, of literature, of romance, I had almost said of religion itself—all that, in short, upon which spirit, as distinct from matter, feeds and thrives.

And this, quite naturally if not quite obviously, brings me back to the year Hartover was up at Cambridge. During the few days I spent there myself, while making my peace with the members of the deserted reading party and, to some extent, with the good Master himself, I contrived to find time for an afternoon at Westrea. Nellie Braithwaite must hear something of all which had lately happened; yet to inform her by letter appeared to me inadvisable. I did not approve of carrying on any sort of correspondence behind her father’s back. I must not raise hopes which might never be realised; but I might, without indiscretion, let her know Hartover was not only free, but fired, through that same freedom, with liberal ideas and worthy purposes—let her know, further, I had been faithful to my promise, and had thrown in my lot with the dear boy’s for good and all, so that nothing short of rejection on his part would make me leave him again.

But I speedily perceived, with mingled shame and admiration, any fear of raising undue hopes was quite uncalled for. I had underrated alike the courage and sensibility of Nellie Braithwaite’s nature. For her gladness at my news was veiled by a sweet reserve both of expression and inquiry—assurance of Hartover’s well-being bringing all her maidenly dignity into play. Henceforth, as I saw, she would wrap her love about with silence, hiding it even from me, her chosen friend, in delicate yet lofty pride. No finger would she raise to beckon Hartover or recall that early love passage; while, as I also saw, my presence in future would be less acceptable to her because, from my closeness to Hartover, I formed, in a measure, a link between him and herself.

I left Westrea, on my return journey to Cambridge, somewhat crestfallen. As reward of my zeal in fulfilling—and successfully, moreover—the promise I gave her, was I to be exiled from her confidence? That seemed arbitrary and, indeed, a little unjust. Whereupon I made a reflection—made how many thousand times already by how many thousands of my sex!—that the ways of woman, be she pure and noble or, alas! signally the reverse, are one and all mysterious, past forecasting and past finding out.

And at that I had to leave it. For Hartover, on his part, spoke no word, gave no sign. Hover, the moors, the stables, the kennels, and, as I observed with satisfaction, so much of the varied business of the great property as he could get in touch with, filled his time and mind to the exclusion of all question of—in his own phrase—‘petticoats.’ Was Nellie Braithwaite forgotten then? Once again I must be stern with myself; for how should it advantage me even if she was?

But specially did stables and kennels bulk big among the dear boy’s many interests and occupations during that pleasant long vacation, whereby Warcop was made the happiest of men. For one morning, about a fortnight after our arrival, Hartover threw a letter to me across the breakfast table.

‘Read that,’ he said. ‘The Rusher signs his abdication—gives up the hounds, moves his horses—or what he is pleased to call his—I think I know who has paid for them and their keep for a good dozen years now—and hunts in Leicestershire this winter. My father must not, of course, be worried, so her Magnificence forwards the letter to me. Really, it strikes me as rather pathetic, Brownlow. How are the mighty fallen! But, pathetic or not, the hounds must be hunted this season or the mouth of our enemy—Bramhall, to wit—will be altogether too extensively enlarged over us.—Oh! well, if it comes to that, I suppose I can hunt them well enough myself, with Warcop’s help, putting in a day every fortnight or so from Cambridge during term time. I’ll back myself to be a popular master before the end of the winter, though there will be prejudices to live down, no doubt. Gad! so much the better—carrière ouverte aux talents. After all, I can canoodle and coax against most people, you know, and be nine foot high, too, when I like.’

Which was perfectly true. Had I not experience thereof? I fell in with this idea the more readily since our English institution of fox-hunting plays so large a part in country life, bringing landlord and tenant together on equal terms, and establishing a friendly and wholesome relation invaluable as between class and class. Mastership of the Hover, though infringing somewhat upon the routine of his college work, was in my opinion calculated to prove an excellent introduction to those larger and immensely more important forms of mastership which, for Hartover, seemed to loom up by no means far ahead.

But creaking gates hang long, the proverb says. And this proved true of the invalid at Bath. The months passed, and yet Lord Longmoor, though increasingly fanciful, increasingly querulous, increasingly a sick man, in truth, still kept a feeble hold of life through autumn, winter, spring, and on into the golden heats of midsummer. The May term again drew to its close, and with it Hartover’s sojourn at Cambridge. How had the university affected and influenced him? Chiefly, I believed, as a pause, a place of recovery before further effort. Out of the great world he had come, surfeited by all too heavy a meal—for one of his age—of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Back into the great world, it was ordained, he must return. But he had rested by the way, had slept off the effects, so to speak, of that over-much and evil fruit-eating, had at once steadied and grown younger.

Meanwhile he was the darling of the college; where, from the good Master, through ranks of dons and gownsmen, down to gyps and bed-makers, he was an object of interest and of admiration. And this less from snobbery, the vulgar spirit—too common among us—which ‘loves a lord,’ than from his own charm and grace and the irresistible way he had with him. The affection he inspired and interest he excited, touched and amused him, when he happened to be conscious of it; but his eyes, so I fancied, were set on something beyond, and as the time of departure drew near I seemed to observe in him a growing preoccupation and restlessness.

And so the anniversary of his hurried journey to find me came round—the anniversary, too, of Fédore’s death. Did he remember it, I wondered—remember his torment of suspense and desolation? He never spoke of Fédore, or of the crowded events of those few rather desperate days. The recuperative power of youth is wellnigh unlimited. Was remembrance of them erased from his mind by a natural and healthy process of attrition, or was his silence intentional? Again I wondered.

When he left Cambridge I should go with him, and not for the long vacation merely. But, by the Master’s kind advice and permission, I was to retain both my fellowship and my rooms, putting in so much residence in the course of the year as I could manage. Of this I was glad. Not for an instant did I hesitate to follow Hartover; but it would, I own, have caused me a keen pang to sever my connection with the university entirely.

All day, on the anniversary of Fédore’s death, I had been packing and sorting my now not inconsiderable library, destroying—odious occupation—old letters and papers. While so engaged the thought of Nellie Braithwaite had been curiously, almost oppressively, present to me. Only thrice had I seen her during the past eight or nine months. I should, in all probability, see her even less frequently in future. Yes, Hartover’s emancipation, strangely enough, parted us far more effectually than Hartover’s wrongdoings or Hartover’s troubles ever had. Would she live on, without change of estate or of place, from girlhood to womanhood, womanhood to old age, busied with home and household, and the care of her father, still cherishing the exquisite yet unfruitful love of her youth? That was a lovely picture, but a sad one. As I destroyed papers, sorted and packed my books, I almost unconsciously placed another picture beside it. For years hence, when the shadows grew long, might it not be possible she would weary of such an existence? Then, in the twilight, might not my turn come, might not she and I grow old together, dwelling under the same roof, bearing the same name at last? A lovely picture too—if a little dim and pallid—lovely at least to me. I went on with my sorting and packing, a smile on my lips and grip of not unpleasant pain about my heart.

Went on, until it grew too dark for me to read the names of the books as I took them down off the shelves. I lighted the candles on my study table, using a wax vesta from an old silver box the dear boy had once given me. And, so doing, I recollected with a start that, absorbed in my own preparations for departure, I had not seen him all day. The occurrence was so unusual that, realising it, I felt somewhat uneasy. I recollected, moreover, that he had not put in an appearance at hall. This increased my uneasiness. I sent round to his rooms, in the big quadrangle, only to learn that he had gone out riding early, taking no groom with him, and leaving no information as to the probable time of his return or as to his destination.

Nine o’clock, half-past nine, ten o’clock struck. Darling of the college or not, at this rate my young lord ran a chance of being ignominiously gated. Uneasiness deepened into anxiety, anxiety into downright alarm.

It was not possible to sit still in this state of suspense any longer. I went out on to the landing, down my staircase, and half-way across the small court—charming in the warm gloom of the midsummer night, with its tinkling fountain, its squares and oblongs of lamplit window—when footsteps rang out under the archway, and a young man came towards me, not in regulation cap and gown, but high riding boots, white cord breeches, his coat and hat appearing white also, so thickly overlaid were they by dust.

Hartover slipped his arm within mine.

‘That’s right,’ he said, with a queer, gay, yet half-shy little laugh. ‘I could have sworn I should find you, every feather on end, clucking after your lost chick; so I came right on here, without stopping to change or have a brush.’

‘But where have you been, my dear boy?’ I cried, still agitated, struck, moreover, by a strangeness in his manner. Not that his gaiety was forced. On the contrary, it seemed to bubble up and overflow out of some depth of incontrollable gladness.

‘Doing the best day’s work of my life,’ he answered. ‘But let me come up to your rooms. We can’t talk here. And there are things to explain. Good as the day’s work is, you still have to put the finishing touch to it. Can’t do without you, you see, in good fortune any more than in bad—even if I wanted to, which, God knows, I don’t. But forty miles, dear old man, in dust and sun—or nearer fifty, for, like a fool, I lost my way coming back and gandered about for ever so long in those fenlands. Gad! how enchanting they are though, Brownlow!—The vast reed beds, and great meres like shining mirrors, holding miles of sky in their pretty laps, and the long skeins of wild-fowl rising off them and calling to the sunset. I have never understood the fascination of a flat country before. I must go and have another look at it all some day—some day—because it will speak to me of⸺’

He broke off. And again he laughed, mounting the dark stairs so rapidly beside me that I had some ado to keep pace with him.

Once inside, he threw hat, gloves, and crop down on the table, blew out the candles, and, crossing the room, lowered himself gingerly on to the window seat.

‘Let’s sit in the dark.—Jeshurun! I am stiff, though!—You don’t mind—the dark I mean—do you? It’s more peaceful.’

I minded nothing but delay, for a feverish impatience was upon me.

‘Yes,’ he went on; ‘the finishing touch has to be yours, Brownlow. There’s something I want you to do for me, as usual.’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘This: You remember that which happened a year ago to-day?’

His tone changed, sobered. I did remember, and told him so.

‘I have waited through a whole year as a penance—a penance self-inflicted in expiation of certain sins. During that year I have lived cleanly.’

And I felt, rather than saw, his eyes fixed on mine—felt, too, that his face flushed.

‘I knew perfectly well by waiting I risked losing what I supremely long for. But I accepted that risk as part of my penance—the very heart of it, in fact.’

‘Yes,’ I murmured, greatly marvelling to what his speech should lead up.

He leaned across and laid his hand on my knee.

‘I rode over to Westrea to-day,’ he said.

‘Westrea? What do you know—how have you heard about Westrea?’ I exclaimed.

‘From Warcop, when last we were at Hover. I could not say anything to you, Brownlow, because I would not have you involved. The Braithwaites were your friends, and I didn’t want, of course, to come between you and them, which could hardly have been avoided if—well, if things had turned out badly for me.’

Again that note of uncontrollable gladness in his voice.

‘I felt it would be unfair to ask questions of you, as I could not explain; and the penance had to be completed in full before I could talk of it. But Warcop was different. I had no scruple in finding out from him where they—where she—now lived. And⸺’

He turned, leaning his elbow on the window-sill, speaking softly, and looking out into the fair windless night.

‘I—I have seen her. I have been with her nearly all day. Braithwaite was away, luckily—at Thetford, I believe she told me—at some political meeting. She has not changed, except that she is even more beautiful than I remembered. And she loves me. She will marry me, when her father gives his consent.’

A minute or more of silence, for I could not bring myself to speak. But, absorbed as Hartover was in his own joy, he failed to notice it, I think. Presently he faced round, and once more I felt his eyes fixed on mine.

‘And this is where your good offices come in, dear old man,’ he went on. ‘Of course I shall go to Braithwaite myself, and ask for her hand with all due form and ceremony. But I want you to see or write to him too, and back me up. Tell him I’m not the young rake and wastrel he probably imagines me to be—and which—well—I once was. Tell him he needn’t be afraid to trust her to me; for I know the world pretty thoroughly by now, and still find her the noblest and most precious thing in it. Tell him,’—and he laughed a little naughtily—‘he may just as well give in first as last, for have her I will, if I’m obliged to kidnap her, carry her off without with your leave or by your leave. Nothing will stop me short of death; so he’d best accept the inevitable. I am perfectly aware I belong to a class he’d like to exterminate—that he regards me as an absurd anachronism, a poisonous blotch on the body politic. But, as I was explaining to her to-day, I can’t help being who I am. This, anyhow, is not my fault.—Ah! and that’s so delicious about her, Brownlow!—Just what has made other women keen to catch me, actually stands in my way with her. She doesn’t care a row of pins, I verily believe, for money, or rank, or titles. It is I, myself, she loves, not what I can give her. Quaint, you know, after two or three seasons of London mothers with daughters on hand for sale—it strikes one as quaint, but, good Lord, how mighty refreshing!’

Again he leaned his elbow on the window-sill, turning his head. I could just make out the line of his profile, the lips parted in something between a sigh and laughter.

‘She’s so clever, too—so splendidly awake. Picture the endless delight of showing her beautiful things, new and beautiful places! And she is so well read—far better read than I. That’s very much thanks to you, Brownlow. She spoke of you so sweetly, and of the comfort and help your friendship had been to her. I’m very grateful; though, upon my word, I came deucedly near being jealous once or twice, and inclined to think she praised you a wee bit too highly. But, joking apart, dear old man, you will see Braithwaite and give me a good character?’

He rose as he spoke. It was time. I could not have endured much longer. For I had been racked if ever man had—each sentence of Hartover’s—merry, serious, teasing, eloquent, tender—an added turn of the screw under which muscles parted and sinews snapped. How thankful I was to the merciful darkness which hid me! My voice I could, to some extent, command, but by my looks I must have been betrayed.

Hartover felt the way across to the table, picked up his hat, gloves, and crop. Mechanically I rose too, and followed him out on to the landing.

‘The sooner the better,’ he said slyly. ‘Think how long I’ve waited! I ascertained Braithwaite will be at home all day. Couldn’t you go to-morrow?’

‘If I can get a conveyance,’ I answered.

‘There are my horses.’

But twenty miles’ ride out, and twenty back, with such an interview in the interval, was, I felt, beyond my strength.

‘Oh! well; leave it to me, then. I’ll arrange,’ the boy said, ‘if you’ll let me. Good-night, Brownlow, and God bless you! You’re the dearest and best friend living.’

He ran down the dark stairs, and swung across the little court. I listened, till the sound of his footsteps died out under the archway, and went back, shutting and locking both doors behind me. Then came the blackest hour of my life—worse than the racking—wherein I fought, in solitude, with the seven devils of envy, hatred, and malice, the devil of loneliness too; with the natural animal man in me, and with visions—almost concrete in their vividness and intensity—of what Nellie’s love must and would surely be to him on whom she bestowed it.

Of the following day I retain a strange memory, as of something unreal and phantasmal. I believe I looked much as usual, talked as usual, behaved in a reasonable and normal manner. But my speech and action were alike mechanical. My brain worked, my material and physical brain, that is; but for the time being soul and heart were dead in me. I felt no emotion, felt nothing, indeed, save a dumb ache of longing the day were over and I free to rest.

For I drove out to Westrea, of course. How could I do otherwise? True to his word, Hartover had made all necessary arrangement, as he sent word to me early. At the same time he sent round a note, with the request I would deliver it to Nellie—of which more hereafter. I found Braithwaite at home and greatly perturbed in mind; for, like the fearless and honourable being she was, Nellie had already told him both the fact and purpose of Hartover’s visit.

‘I know what brings you here, Brownlow,’ he said, as he met me in the porch. ‘And I could wish you a worthier errand. I confess I am very sore. I flattered myself this mad project had received its quietus long ago. I object to it as strongly as I ever objected, and for the same reasons. Such a marriage is equally contrary to my wishes and my convictions. Permitting it, I, having preached to others, should indeed become myself a castaway. What will those who share my views as to the iniquity of the aristocratic, the feudal system—which strangles the independence and stunts the moral and material growth of three-fifths of, so-called, free Englishmen—think of me, when they find me throwing principle to the winds for the vulgar satisfaction of seeing my daughter a countess?’

This, and much more to the same effect, weighted by sufficient substratum of truth to render it difficult to combat. Not only natural and genuine fear for Nellie’s future happiness, but all his native obstinacy was aroused. In vain, as it seemed, I pleaded the change in Hartover, the seriousness of his purpose, the depths of his affection, his growing sense of responsibility. In vain, too, I made a clean breast of certain family matters, spoke of Fédore’s unscrupulous pursuit, her ladyship’s complicity, and of the intrigues which had surrounded Hartover, as I feared, from childhood.

‘Granted all you say,’ he answered. ‘Granted the young man’s reformation is sincere and promises to be lasting, can you honestly advise me, my dear Brownlow, to let my daughter become part and parcel of a society thus permeated by low scheming and, on your own showing, by downright immorality? You are actuated by a fantastic and chivalrous devotion to this handsome young princeling, which blinds you to facts. Sensible fellow though you are, he has dazzled and bewitched you, just as he dazzles and bewitches my poor Nellie. But having an honest and deep-seated objection to anything in the shape of princelings, I retain my clearness of eyesight, and am actuated by common sense and prudence regarding the safety of my daughter.’

‘At the cost of breaking her heart?’ I rather wearily ventured.

Whereupon we started to argue the whole question over again. While thus engaged we had sauntered to the door of the pleasant low-ceilinged living-room opening on to the garden, which, brilliant in colour, rich with the scent of sweet-briar and syringa, of borders thick-set with pinks, sweet-williams and roses, basked between its high red walls in the still afternoon sunshine. On the threshold Braithwaite turned to me, saying almost bitterly:

‘Ah! Brownlow, I am disappointed. Why couldn’t you speak for yourself, man? How willingly would I have given her to you, had you asked me! Often have I hoped, since you stayed under my roof at Easter year, it might eventually come to that.’

Well for me I had been racked and devil-hunted last night till emotion was dead in me!

‘Why have I never spoken for myself? Because—well—look at Nellie. There is your answer.’

And I pointed to the upward sloping pasture. Now I divined the contents of that note which the boy had confided to me for delivery. I was not only his ambassador, but his despatch rider. My mission hardly unfolded, he followed daringly close behind.

For down across the turf walked Hartover leading his horse, hat in hand. Beside him, in blue-sprigged muslin gown and lilac sun-bonnet, walked Nellie. As we stepped out of the doorway she caught sight of us, and the sound of her voice came in soft but rapid speech. The young man, whose head inclined towards her, looked up and gallantly waved his hat. They reached the bottom of the slope, and as they stood side by side on the bank, the great brown hunter, extending its neck, snuffed the coolth off the water. Only the brimming stream and bright garden lay between them and us.

‘Mr. Braithwaite,’ Hartover called, ‘shall I be forced to run away with her? Time and place favour it; and, Gad! sir, my horse has plenty left in him yet.’

He slipped his arm round the girl’s waist and made a feint of tossing her on to the saddle.

‘Confound the fellow’s impudence!’ Braithwaite growled, as he moved back into the house.

But his eyes were wet. He was beaten. Youth and love had won the day, and he knew it.

Thus came the end, or rather the beginning. For the end—as I look across the valley this morning at royal Hover, wrapped in that glittering mantle of new-fallen snow—is not, please God, for a long time yet.

Still, in point of fact, Nellie Braithwaite never became Lady Hartover. For Braithwaite exacted an interval of six months before the wedding; and before those same six months were out the poor creaking gate, away at Bath, had creaked itself finally out of earthly existence, and into—let us charitably hope—a more profitable heavenly one; while—such after all is the smooth working of our aristocratic and hereditary system, with its le roi est mort, vive le roi—over his great possessions his son, my always very dear, and sometime very naughty, pupil, reigned in his stead.

As to myself, Cambridge and Hover, Hover and Cambridge, till, the home living falling vacant, I removed myself and my books here to this pleasant parsonage, where learned and unlearned, gentle and simple, young and old, are good enough to come and visit me, and confide to me their hopes, and joys, disappointments, sorrows, and sometimes—poor souls—their sins.

THE END.

THE TERCENTENARY OF RICHARD HAKLUYT.

November 23, 1616.

These is nothing more essentially English than the passion for adventure and exploration, for seeing and colonising the world. It is a strange passion: it leads men to leave the fair and comfortable villages, the meadow-lands and sheltering woods to which they were born, for desolation and strange seas, to exchange the temperate airs of England for the rigours of Arctic nights and the burning of tropic mornings, to give up security and good living for starvation and hardship, for death by thirst or famine, or the cruelties of ‘salvages.’ Yet to this call of the blood few Englishmen turn an utterly deaf ear—for century after century, and generation after generation, they have followed the call and strewed their bones about the world, while those who came home again simply inflamed others to follow their adventuring footsteps.

We look upon the Elizabethan age as our perfect flowering time in poetry and drama and the courtly arts. We know, moreover, how in that reign our seamen first fully realised themselves, and one of the greatest among them accomplished his fruitful circumnavigation of the globe. It is singularly fitting, therefore, that such a time should have produced the man who realised the epic quality of the voyagings and travels done in his day and in times past, and who dedicated his life to setting down some worthy record of those things. That man was Richard Hakluyt—or Hacklewit, as his name was commonly pronounced and often spelt by his contemporaries, and that spelling gives it a native English look more in keeping with his nature than the accepted form. Three hundred years ago, in November 1616, the same year as Shakespeare, he died, bequeathing to posterity the work of his life in that noble book called by him ‘The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or Overland to the Remote and furthest Distant Quarters of the Earth at any time within the Compasse of these 1600 Yeares.’

Such a work grew from no common inspiration; it was not compiled, as many later ‘monumental’ works have been, from other men’s researches: it was part of the very fabric of his life. He spent laborious days and nights, he gave long patient years to his self-imposed task, he studied and he travelled, he talked with living men and inquired of the works of dead ones; all knowledge was his province, so that it bore on his great subject. It is doubtful if the annals of literature can show a more passionate and more persistent devotion. As Hakluyt himself said to ‘The Reader’ in the second edition of his ‘Voyages’:

‘For the bringing of which into this homely and rough-hewen shape, which here thou seest; what restlesse nights, what painefull dayes, what heat, what cold I have endured; how many long and chargeable journeys I have travelled; how many famous libraries I have searched into; what varieties of ancient and moderne writers I have perused; what a number of old records, patents, privileges, letters, etc., I have redeemed from obscuritie and perishing; into how manifold acquaintance I have entered; what expenses I have not spared; and yet what opportunities of private gaine, preferment, and ease I have neglected; albeit thyselfe canst hardly imagine, yet I by daily experience do finde and feele; and some of my entier friends can sufficiently testifie. Howbeit (as I told thee at the first) the honour and benefits of this Common weale wherein I live and breathe hath made all difficulties seeme easie, all paines and industrie pleasant, and all expenses of light value and moment unto me.’

The records of his life are scanty: that autobiographical passage, and one other, are almost all he tells us about himself. He was content with personal obscurity so long as his work was accomplished. It is significant that, although buried in Westminster Abbey, the place of his grave is not known, nor is any portrait of him believed to be in existence. He called himself simply Richard Hakluyt, Preacher, and though he meant that in the clerical sense which was his profession, we may give it another meaning as well, for he was Preacher of Empire to England, and of the splendid words of Ecclesiasticus, ‘Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.’

His life story is singularly complete and quite undeviating in aim. The great object for which he was to work was revealed to him early, and cannot be better told than in the grave simplicity of his own words, in his ‘Epistle Dedicatorie’ to Sir Francis Walsingham:

‘I do remember that being a youth, and one of Her Majestie’s scholars at Westminster that fruitfull nurserie, it was my happe to visit the chamber of Mr. Richard Hakluyt my cosin, a Gentleman of the Middle Temple, well knowen unto you, at a time when I found lying open upon his boord certeine bookes of Cosmographie, with an universall Mappe: he seeing me somewhat curious in the view thereof, began to instruct my ignorance, by shewing me the division of the Earth into three parts after the olde account, and then according to the latter, and better distribution, into more: he pointed with his wand to all the knowen Seas, Gulfs, Bayes, Straights, Capes, Rivers, Empires, Kingdomes, Dukedomes, and Territories of each part, with declaration also of their speciall commodities, and particular wants, which by the benefit of traffike, and entercourse of merchants, are plentifully supplied. From the Mappe he brought me to the Bible, and turning to the 107 Psalme, directed me to the 23 and 24 verses, where I read, that they which go downe to the sea in ships, and occupy by the great waters, they see the works of the Lord, and his woonders in the deepe, etc. which words of the Prophet together with my cousins discourse (things of high and rare delight to my young nature) tooke in me so deepe an impression, that I constantly resolved, if ever I were preferred to the University, where better time, and more convenient place might be ministered for these studies, I would by God’s assistance prosecute that knowledge and kinde of literature, the doores whereof (after a sort) were so happily opened before me.’

It was a true vocation the young Hakluyt had found, and he faithfully followed it all the days of his life. He took his degree as Master of Arts at Oxford in 1577, having learned five languages for the sake of his maritime inquiries; and then lectured ‘in the common schools,’ demonstrating the advances of geography—in his own attractive words, he ‘had waded on still farther and farther in the sweet studie of the historie of Cosmographie.’ His first book appeared in 1582, dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, and called ‘Divers voyages touching the discoverie of America and the Ilands adjacent unto the same, made first of all by our Englishmen.’

Hakluyt was convinced, as he set forth in his book, that for the future development of exploration and ‘plantation’ (as colonisation was called in those days) by the English, our principal necessity was a good system of education in nautical affairs. This need he continued to urge upon men of influence throughout his life; to Lord Howard of Effingham, the year after the Armada, he wrote (‘as being the father and principall favourer of the English Navigation’), pointing out—

‘the meanes of breeding up of skilfull sea-men and mariners in this Realme. Sithence your Lordship is not ignorant,’ he continued, ‘that ships are to little purpose without skilfull sea-men; and since sea-men are not bred up to perfection of skill in much less time (as it is said) than in the time of two prentiships; and since no kinde of men of any profession in the common wealth passe their yeres in so great and continuall hazard of life; and since of so many, so few grow to gray heires: how needfull it is, that by way of Lectures and such like instructions, these ought to have a better education, than hitherto they have had: all wise men may easily judge. When I call to minde, how many noble ships have bene lost, how many worthy persons have bene drenched in the sea, and how greatly this Realme hath bene impoverished by losse of great Ordinance and other rich Commodities through the ignorance of Our Sea-men, I have greatly wished there were a Lecture of Navigation read in this Citie, for the banishing of our former grosse ignorance in Marine Causes, and for the increase and generall multiplying of the sea-knowledge in this age, wherein God has raised so generall a desire in the youth of this Realme to discover all parts of the face of the earth, to this Realme in former ages not knowen.’

To the advancing of navigation, which he justly called ‘the very walls of this our Island,’ he was most anxious that a lectureship should be established ‘in London or about Ratcliffe.’ Sir Francis Drake shared this wish, and offered twenty pounds a year towards its support, but as another twenty was needed and no one offered it, Hakluyt’s dream of the training of the complete navigator came to naught. Perhaps it was not so much needed as he thought in his anxious care, for during the whole of Elizabeth’s reign only one dockyard-built ship, the small Lion’s Whelp, was lost by stress of weather or grounding, while English ships weathered gales in which whole Spanish fleets foundered at sea. But Hakluyt’s desire was fundamentally a sound one, for in those early days when science was in its infancy, and tradition and rule-of-thumb the only guide, his mind reached forward to the value of technical training. Another matter in which he was in advance of his time was his concern in the ‘curing of hot diseases,’ wherein he had a far-off vision of our modern schools of Tropical Medicine. Hakluyt’s ‘industry,’ which indeed was on a colossal scale, was much commended by his contemporaries, but while doing full homage to that unflagging zeal, we perceive other qualities which engage our affection as industry alone could not do. No one can read his beautiful dedications and prefaces without being touched by his ardour, the freshness of his enthusiasm for all that pertains to the sea-greatness of England, which he both recorded and foresaw. The splendid fervour of Elizabethan poetry is in them. He gives to his great book all the riches of his mind, and regards the achievements it chronicles with a most passionate pride. He tells the reader that ‘it remaineth that thou take the profits and pleasure of the worke: which I wish to bee as great to thee, as my paines and labour have bene in bringing these raw fruits unto this ripeness, and in reducing these loose papers into this order.’ To him ‘Geographie and Chronologie’ are ‘the Sunne and the Moone, the right eye and the left of all history,’ and all history is but the ‘prologue to the omen coming on’ of English greatness at sea. He sees the unknown regions of the globe as the scene, past and to come, of that great drama of exploration where our seamen by their ‘high heart and manly resolution’ were to win new lands for England by ‘their high courage and singular activity.’ In seas uncharted, in a world imperfectly known and full of fantastic terrors, he yet believed that

‘Where the dishevelled ghastly sea-nymph sings,

Our well-rigged ships shall stretch their swelling wings,’

and he desired, as might be expected from his thoroughness, not only to write of those things, but to experience them. He planned to accompany Drake’s West Indies voyage of 1585, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s fatal one in 1583, but happily some unknown cause prevented his embarking with Gilbert. England could ill have spared him with his great task unaccomplished.

In 1589, the year after the defeat of the Armada, the fruit of his labours appeared in the first edition in one folio volume of ‘The Principal Navigations.’ After another ten years of labour the second and final edition in three folio volumes was published in 1598-1600. When that work appeared he might justly have said with Drake, ‘I am the man I have promised to be.’ He had accomplished the toil he had set himself, and doing so produced a work which is nearer being the epic of the English people than any other book we have. Every activity of his busy life was made to serve that central purpose. He went abroad, he lived for five years in France as chaplain to Queen Elizabeth’s Ambassador; he gained ecclesiastical preferment, becoming prebendary of Bristol, rector of Wetheringsett in Suffolk, archdeacon of Westminster, and Chaplain of the Savoy. He married, he had a son—but all these things are shadowy to us: Hakluyt is the chronicler of the ‘Voyages,’ the mouthpiece of Elizabethan England at sea, and as such he would wish that we remembered him. Drayton showed the responsiveness of his contemporaries when he sang:

‘Thy voyages attend

Industrious Hackluit,

Whose reading shall inflame

Men to seek fame

And much commend

To after times thy wit.’

We do not feel that Hakluyt cared greatly about commending to after times his wit, but that his book should inflame ‘men to seek fame’ was its very object and purpose. He lived in the age of exploration and great attempts; Englishmen were just fully awakening to their heritage, and determined no longer to be forestalled by the Spaniards and Portuguese in the adventure of the globe. The regions left them to explore were more dangerous and difficult than what Hakluyt calls ‘the mild, lightsome, temperate, and warm Atlantic Ocean, over which the Spaniards and Portugals have made so many pleasant, prosperous and golden voyages.’ But from the rigours of harsh latitudes they won their fame and their hardihood. We love Hakluyt’s gorgeous Elizabethan pride when he speaks favourably of the Northern voyages of the Dutch, but ‘with this proviso; that our English nation led them the dance, brake the yce before them, and gave them good leave to light their candle at our torch.’

What a father he was to his seamen, how he rejoiced in their triumphs, sympathised in their affections, and understood their ‘sea-sorrows’! Many and bitter are those sorrows, as recorded in his ‘Voyages,’ and the men of that day, many of whom had known the savageries of Spain, and all of whom had lived through the coming of the ‘Invincible Armada,’ would thrill to the grand Biblical opening of that poignant narrative of John Hartop, ‘Man being born of a Woman, living a short time is replenished with many miseries, which some know by reading of histories, many by the view of others’ calamities, and I by experience.’

‘I by experience’—that is the very voice of Hakluyt’s ‘Voyages,’ its unique and authentic value, the quality which makes it no book but a living document of the English people. In his labour to make it that Hakluyt drew to himself all he needed, from the humble and from the great. He tells us how many ‘virtuous gentlemen’ helped him, and gives us a galaxy of great Elizabethan names—Sir John Hawkins (who knew something of ‘sea-sorrows,’ for when he returned from his West Indies voyage he said to Walsingham, ‘If I should write of all our calamities I am sure a volume as great as the Bible will scarce suffice’), Sir Walter Ralegh, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Francis Walsingham, Lord Howard of Effingham, the Lord Treasurer Burghley, Sir Robert Cecil, foreign cosmographers and scholars like Mercator, Ortelius, and Thevet, were his friends and correspondents. He valued them all, and not less did he value each humble sailor he came across, such as Mr. Jennings and Mr. Smith, ‘the master and master’s mate of the ship called the Toby, belonging to Bristol,’ or a nameless seaman, ‘One of mine acquaintance of Ratcliffe.’ He travelled two hundred miles on horseback to speak with one Thomas Buts, the sole survivor of a Labrador voyage. From the lips of all he learned, and nothing was insignificant to him if it bore upon the sea or far countries or the restless adventures and heroisms of the men of his race. It is the story of the travels of individual men, he truly says, which brings us to a full knowledge of the world, ‘not those weary volumes bearing the titles of Universal Cosmography, which some men that I could name have published as their own.’ It came too late for inclusion in his book; but how he would appreciate the saying of Sir Henry Middleton when the Red Sea was ‘discovered’ (a hundred years after the Portuguese discovered it), and the Turks claimed it as a close sea. ‘To come into this sea,’ Middleton answered splendidly, ‘I needed no leave but God’s and my King’s,’ and followed up his answer with cannon shot. Hakluyt, like most passionate pioneers of Empire, lacked the humour that was Shakespeare’s: ‘Master,’ says one of the fishermen in Pericles, ‘I marvel how the fishes live in the sea,’ and was answered: ‘Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.’ The gravity of a great purpose is seldom seasoned with humour, and more to Hakluyt’s liking than Shakespeare’s jest would have been the thought of Samuel Daniel:

‘And who, in time, knows whither we may vent

The treasure of our tongue? to what strange shores

This gain of our best glory shall be sent

To enrich unknowing nations with our stores?’

He was filled with a spacious philanthropy to the unknown world, and would bestow on it the benefits of our tongue and our laws. His gentleness and wisdom did not fail him even on the thorny question of the propagation of the Christian religion among the ‘salvages’ of the Indies:

‘The means,’ he says, ‘to send such as shall labour effectually in this business is, by planting one or two colonies of our nation upon that firm [mainland] where they may remain in safety and first learn the language of the people near adjoining (the gift of tongues being now taken away) and by little and little acquaint themselves with their manners, and so with discretion and mildness distill into their purged minds the sweet and lively liquor of the gospel.’

His sagacity and good judgment is shown by the way in which he dealt with and arranged the enormous mass of material he accumulated. The wild and fantastic methods of some Elizabethan historians were not to his mind: he launched not out into a Universal History of the World on Ralegh’s plan, and by his very restraint and the value of his material produced a book which will live as long as the English language, while Ralegh’s ambitious effort has gone to dust, which weighs light in the balance compared with the jewelled lines of his lyric, ‘If all the world and love were young.’ Hakluyt shirks none of the pedestrian necessities of his task: he carefully records the name of the historian of each voyage, as well as the name of the voyager, so that every man may ‘answer for himself, justify his reports, and stand accountable for his own doings.’ Moreover, he exercises a stern supervision over the superfluous—a necessity if he was to get as many voyages and as much information as possible into the compass of his volumes, for as Professor Walter Raleigh says in his inspiring Introductory Essay to Maclehose’s edition of Hakluyt, ‘It was the habit of his age to begin even a nautical diary with a few remarks on the origin of the world, the history of man, and the opinions of Plato.’ Delightful though such remarks would now be to the student of Elizabethan literature, Hakluyt had little use for them. He had a stern, a great, and a practical intent in compiling his ‘Principal Navigations,’ and a far better thing to him than literary graces would be the knowledge that the profits of the East India Company were increased by £20,000 through the study of his book. He classified and arranged his voyages in three series: first the voyages to the South and South-East; then the North-Eastern voyages; and last the voyages to the West, ‘those rare, delightfull and profitable histories,’ and ‘the beginnings and proceeding of the two English Colonies planted in Virginia,’ of which Ralegh said, ‘I shall yet live to see it an English nation.’

Such, in rough outline, is that great work of his, which perhaps might justly represent us to the world, with the Plays of Shakespeare, in the two aspects of which we are most proud, our seamanship and our poetry, were two books only to be taken from our literature. Shakespeare and Hakluyt, who by a singular coincidence both died in the same year, make together an epitome of the English people. In a large number of cases they share the fate of classics, especially classics on the great scale, and are ‘taken as read.’ But no matter: their thought and their passion, different though they are in degree, have permeated the very marrow of our minds, we absorb them unconsciously simply because we are English. The most unlettered seaman is a ‘pilgrim’ of Hakluyt’s and an embodiment of his hopes; the most casual or most glorious Englishman is a type of Shakespeare’s, and to be found in that ‘universal gallery’ of his plays. In Hakluyt we enjoy the English combination of the poetic and the practical, and delight in his shrewdness and his pure enthusiasm.

He set out to prove, in a partially discovered world, that in the splendid saying of an earlier Englishman, Robert Thorne, ‘There is no land unhabitable, nor sea innavigable.’ That might be the motto of his book; while as to him and all the seamen he fathered and gloried in we may take the delightful words of Fuller and see them as ‘bound for no other harbour but the Port of Honour, though touching at the Port of Profit in passage thereunto.’

E. Hallam Moorhouse.

THE OLD CONTEMPTIBLES: FIGHTING STRENGTH.

BY BOYD CABLE.

The fighting strength of the three batteries of a Brigade of Field Artillery, at the time of the First Expeditionaries, totalled 18 guns, 18 officers, and about 650 non-commissioned officers and men. You might remember those figures, or when you have finished the reading of this tale just refer back to them.

The Brigade was posted before the action opened in a cornfield which lay on the banks of a canal, and the guns were ‘concealed’ behind some of the innocent-looking stooks of cut corn which were ranged in rows along the field. It was the Brigade’s first action, and every officer and man waited with expectant eagerness for the appearance of the enemy. On the other side of the canal there was a wide stretch of open ground, but to the gunners it appeared too good to be true that the enemy would advance across that open and give the guns a chance of sweeping them off the earth with shrapnel. At some points tongues and spurs of thick wood ran out towards the canal, and it was rather through and under cover of the trees that the artillerymen expected the enemy to try to press in on the front which ran roughly along the line of the canal. Such an advance would not give the guns so visible and open a target for so long a time; but, on the other hand, there was still an open space between the nearest parts of the woods and the canal bank, and if the attack were confined to the approaches through the woods it meant that the guns could concentrate on a much narrower front, and there was never a gunner of them there but believed his own battery alone, much less the whole Brigade, capable of smashing up any attempt to debouch from the woods and of obliterating any force that tried it. Nevertheless, all their training and teaching and manœuvres and field-days of peace times indicated the woods as the likeliest points of attack, because it had been an accepted rule laid down in peace—and there were plenty of men in the batteries who remembered the same and very much sterner rule laid down in the South African War—that infantry could not, across the open, attack entrenched positions held by infantry and covered by artillery.

On the whole, the Brigade were very well satisfied with the look of things, and having taken careful ranges to the different points of the probable targets, with special attention to the wood edges, uncapped a goodly number of fuzes, given a last look to the mechanism of guns and gear, put some finishing touches to the cunning arrangement of corn stooks, they lit pipes and cigarettes and settled down comfortably to wait developments.

The developments came rapidly, but being at first more or less after the expected routine as laid down in their teaching, the Brigade were not unduly disturbed. The first fire of the enemy artillery was, as far as the Brigade could see, not particularly well aimed, and although it made a great deal of noise and smoke appeared to be doing little harm to the infantry trenches, and none to the artillery behind them. Presently the men watched with great interest, but little realisation of its significance, a grey dove-winged shape that droned up out of the distance across the line, swung round and began a careful patrol along its length. But after that the shells commenced to find the infantry trenches with great accuracy, and to pour a tremendous fire upon them. The Brigade listened and watched frowningly at first, and with growing anger and fidgetings, the screaming and crashing of the German shells, the black and white clouds of smoke that sprang so quickly up and down the infantry lines before them. They were at last given orders to fire, and although at first they were firing at an invisible target, the gunners brisked up and went about their business with great cheerfulness. All along the line the other British batteries were opening with a most heartening uproar that for the time filled the ear and gave the impression that our guns were dominating the situation. That, unfortunately, did not last long. The German rate and weight of fire increased rapidly, until it reached the most awe-inspiring proportions, and it began to look as if the British infantry were to be smothered by shell-fire, were to be blown piecemeal out of their scanty trenches, without being given a chance to hit back.

The Artillery Brigade whose particular fortunes we are following had, up to now, escaped quite lightly with nothing more than a few slight casualties from chance splinters of high-explosive shells that had burst some distance from them.

But suddenly the gunners were aware of a strange and terrifying sound rising above the thunder-claps of their own guns, the diminishing whinny of their own departing shells, the long roll of gun-fire on their flanks, the sharp tearing crashes of the enemy shell-bursts—a sound that grew louder and louder, rose from the hissing rush of a fast-running river to a fiercer, harsher note, a screaming vibrating roar that seemed to fill the earth and air and sky, that drowned the senses and held the men staring in amazement and anticipation of they knew not what. Then when the wild whirlwind of sound had reached a pitch beyond which it seemed impossible for it to rise, it broke in a terrific rolling c-r-r-r-ash that set the solid earth rocking. One battery was hidden from the other two by a writhing pall of thick black smoke, out of which whirled clods of earth, stones, and a flying cloud of yellow straw. When the smoke dissolved, and the dust and straw and chaff had settled, the other two batteries could see a gun of the third overturned, the gunners rolling or limping or lying still about it, an odd man here and there staggering from the other guns—but all the rest of the gunners in their proper and appointed places, the five remaining guns firing one by one in turn as regularly as if on a peace practice. The Brigade had been introduced to something quite new to it, and that it certainly never expected to meet in open field of battle—a high-explosive shell from one of the heaviest German pieces. But unexpected as it was, more terrible than the gunners had ever imagined, there was no time now to think about such things. The German infantry attack was advancing under cover of their artillery, a crackling roll of rifle fire was breaking out from the infantry trenches, sharp orders were shouting along the lines of guns. There was a pause while fuses were set to new times, while fresh aim was taken and new ranges adjusted.

‘Target, infantry advancin’—open sights...!’ said one of the gun-layers in repetition of his orders. ‘But where’s the bloomin’ infantry to get my open sights on?’

‘Where?’ shouted his Number One, and pointed over the layer’s shoulder as he stood up to look over the gun shield for a wider view. ‘Can’t you see ’em there? ’Ave you gone blind?’

‘That?’ said the layer, staring hard. ‘Is that infantry?’ He had been looking for the scattered dots of advancing men that were all his experience had told him to see of an advancing line. He was quite unprepared for the solid grey mass that he actually did see.

‘That’s infantry,’ snapped his sergeant. ‘Did you think it was airyplanes? Get to it now.’

The layer got to it, and in a few seconds the whole of the Brigade was pouring shells on the advancing mass as fast as the guns could be served. The Battery commanders had a vague idea that the enemy infantry had made some terrible mistake, had in error exposed themselves in mass in the open. When the guns had brought swift retribution for the mistake the mass would vanish; but meantime here was the guns’ opportunity—opportunity such as no gunner there had ever hoped to have. But when the mass persisted and pushed on in the teeth of the fire that every one knew must be murderous beyond words, the rate of gun-fire was slowed down, and the batteries set themselves deliberately to wipe this audacious infantry out of existence.

But then suddenly it began to look as if it were to be the Brigade that would be wiped out. A number of German guns turned on it, battered it with heavy high-explosive, lashed it with shrapnel, rent and tore and disrupted it with a torrent of light and heavy shells, a scorching whirlwind of fire, with blasts of leaping flame, with storms of splinters and bullets. One after another guns of the Brigade were put out of action, with guns destroyed or overthrown, with ammunition waggons blown up, with gun detachments killed or wounded. Gun by gun the fighting strength of the Brigade waned; but as each gun went the others increased their rate of fire, strove to maintain the weight of shells that a Brigade should throw. The guns that were destroying them were themselves invisible. To the Brigade there was no movement of men, no tell-tale groups, no betraying flash even, to show where their destroyers were in action. It is true that the Brigade spent no time looking for them, would not have spent a round on them if it had seen them. Its particular job had been plainly indicated to it—to stop the advancing infantry—and it had no time or shells to spare for anything else.

But grimly and stoically though they took their punishment, gamely and desperately though they strove to fulfil their task, it was beyond them. The grey mass was checked and even stopped at times, but it came on again, and at the guns the ranges shortened and shortened, to a thousand yards, to eight, seven, six hundred. After that it was a hopeless fight, so far as this Brigade was concerned. Most of their guns were out of action, their ammunition was nearly all expended, they were under a rifle fire that scourged the guns with whips of steel and lead, that cut down any man who moved from the shelter of his gun’s shield. Such guns as were left, such men as could move, continued to fire as best they might at ranges that kept getting still shorter and shorter. No teams could bring up ammunition waggons, so the rounds were carried up by hand across the bullet-swept field, until there were no more rounds to bring.

Since they were useless there, an attempt was made to bring the guns out of action and back under cover. It failed when after a minute or two half the remaining men had been cut down by bullets, and the commanders saw that nothing could move and live in the open. Then the order was passed to leave the guns and retire the men as best they could. That was at high noon, and for the next two or three hours the gunners tried in ones and twos to run the gauntlet of the fire and get back to cover. Some tried to crawl or to lie prone and wriggle out on their bellies; others stripped off bandoliers and haversacks and water-bottles, some even their jackets and boots to ‘get set’ like runners in a hundred-yard dash, crouching in the shelter of the gun shield, leaping out and away in a desperate rush. But crawl or wriggle or run made little odds. Some men went half the distance to safety, a few went three-quarters, one or two to within bare places of cover; but none escaped, and most went down before they were well clear of the gun. The few that from the first refused sullenly to abandon their guns, that swore amongst themselves to stick it out till dark if necessary and then drag the crippled guns away, came off best in the end because they lay and crouched under the scanty cover the guns gave, and watched the others go out to their deaths. They lay there through the long dragging hours of the afternoon with the bullets hissing and whistling over and past them, with the shells still crumping and crashing down at intervals, with the gun shields and wheels and steel waggon covers ringing and smacking to the impact of bullet and splinter, with one man here and another there jerking convulsively to a fresh wound—his first or his twenty-first as the case might be—groaning or cursing through set teeth, writhing in pain, or lying silent and still with all pain past.

Late in the afternoon there came a lull in the firing and a lessening of the bullet storm, and the order—a very imperative order—was passed for every man who could move to retire from the guns. So the few whole men came away, helping the wounded out as best they could; and even then they would not come empty-handed, and since they could not bring their guns, and they knew it was a retirement from the position, they stayed to collect the gun fittings, crawling about amongst the disabled pieces and shattered carriages, with the bullets still hissing and snapping about their ears, throwing dust spurts amongst their feet, whisking and swishing through the scattered corn stooks. They brought away the sights and breech mechanisms and sight- and field-clinometers, and every other fitment they could carry and thought worth having (and in that they were even wiser than they knew, for in those days such things as dial-sights were precious beyond words, and once lost could scarcely be replaced). And laden down under the weight and unhandiness of these things—the breech fittings alone weigh some forty pounds, and make a most unpleasantly awkward thing to carry—the handful of men left in each battery doubled laboriously out across the field and into comparative safety. At the cost of persistent attempts and some more men a gun was also manhandled out.

The battery that had salvaged its gun brought it safely through the Retreat which followed the action. The other batteries had to be content to keep their pitifully scant ranks together and stagger wearily over the long miles of the great Retreat lugging their cumbersome breech-blocks and dial-sights and gun gear with them. They clung at least to these as the outward and visible sign of being Gunners and the remains of Batteries, and they marched and hung together, waiting eagerly and hopefully for the day that would bring new guns to them and reserves to ‘make up the strength.’

An unknown General passed them one day where they were halted by the roadside for what one of the gunners facetiously called ‘inspection of gun-park an’ stores.’ And ‘just see all the batteries’ guns is in line an’ properly dressed by the right,’ he added, with a glance at the one gun left to them.

‘What—er—lot is this?’ asked the General of the officer who was ‘inspecting.’

‘The Umpty-Noughth Brigade, Field Artillery, sir,’ said the officer; ‘Umptieth, Oughtieth, and Iddyieth Batteries.’ (It may have sounded pathetically ridiculous, but it was no more or less than the bare truth; for it was as units and batteries that these remnants had marched and hung close together, and, given new guns and fresh drafts, they would be batteries and units again. After all, it is the spirit of and as a unit that counts.)

The General looked at the drawn-up ranks of the batteries, the gun detachments represented by two or three men, or by one man, or by an empty gap in the line; he saw the men grey with dust, with torn clothing, with handkerchiefs knotted at the corners replacing lost caps, with puttees and rags wound round blistered feet—but with shoulders set back, with heads held up and steady eyes looking unwinking to their front. He looked, too, at the one gun, scarred and dented and pitted and pocked with splinter marks and bullet holes, at each little pile of breech-blocks and sights and fittings that lay spread out on handkerchiefs and haversacks and rags in the place of the other guns; and he noticed that dirty and dusty and dishevelled as the men might be, the gun parts were speckless and dustless, clean and shining with oil.

The General spoke a few curt but very kindly words to the officer quite loud enough for ‘the Brigade’ to hear, saying he remembered hearing some word of their cutting up and the fine finish they had made to their fight, congratulating them on the spirit that had held them together, wishing them luck, and hoping they would have their new guns before the time came to turn and hit back and begin the advance.

‘I hope so, sir,’ said the officer simply; ‘and thank you.’

The General saluted gravely and turned to go, but halted a moment to ask a last question. ‘How many of you—how many of the Brigade came out of that show?’ he said.

‘Only what you see here, sir—one gun, one officer, and fifty-three men,’ said the officer.

You may remember what was the full fighting strength of a Field Artillery Brigade; but you must also remember that there is another sort of ‘fighting strength,’ greater far than mere numbers, the sort of strength that this poor shattered remnant of a Brigade still held undiminished and unabated—the stoutness of heart, the courage, the spirit that made the old ‘Contemptible Little Army’ what it was.

Press Bureau: Passed for Publication.

SQUIRES AND TRADE IN OLDEN TIMES.

When did the idea that trade was derogatory to men of good birth, otherwise the Continental point of view based on a different social structure, creep into England? No writer, so far as I know, has ever attempted an explanation of what suggests a paradox. That it is an alien importation and in conflict with the facts of English life up to a certain period seems indisputable, and all evidence would point to the Hanoverian succession as roughly marking this mysterious change of attitude. Eliminating, and for obvious reasons, the greater and more powerful Houses, the record of most old English families is a contradiction in terms of the rigid but quite logical observance of a Continental noblesse. There is about an even chance that sooner or later you tap the root of the family and its fortunes in a woolstapler, a goldsmith, a vintner, an iron-forger, a flockmaster, a haberdasher, or a grocer, and last, but assuredly not least, in a successful lawyer. What is more, we find these worthies seated upon their newly acquired acres with a coat of arms, inherited or acquired, without any apparent consciousness of being upstarts or parvenus. In the modern sense they were probably not so regarded by their longer-seated country neighbours. As the latter’s near relations, to say nothing of their collaterals, were themselves largely engaged in trade of some sort or in various avocations assuredly not more aristocratic, such an attitude would be inconceivable!

We all know the modern ideas about such things, and need not waste words over them. Nor is it of any consequence how much they may have modified in the last fifty years. For our point lies in the fact that they could not well have existed at a period to which a popular superstition attributes a rigid and long-lost exclusiveness. The ‘very respectable family’ of Blankshire in Jane Austen’s time undoubtedly looked askance at trade. Yet it seems probable that their own great-great-grandfathers would not even have understood what such an attitude meant. It does seem rather whimsical that the Continental point of view should have established itself in theory, if not altogether in practice, in a country whose landed gentry had not merely intermarried freely with commerce, but in such innumerable instances were themselves the product of it. Nor is this all. For in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries their progeny and collaterals were of necessity much engaged in trade, and indeed not seldom in occupations that in these presumably democratic days would be rejected offhand by anyone with the least pretension to gentility. The more decorative alternatives to a livelihood, as we should now regard them, either did not exist much before the Georges and the rapid economic developments of the eighteenth century, or were utterly inadequate to the demands of the younger son, when, with smaller properties and larger families, his name was legion.

Scotland and Wales do not come within the scope of these inquiries, for, I trust, obvious reasons. Some Scottish writers, however, have dealt rather frankly with these things and incidentally disclosed to their countrymen the perhaps not always palatable fact that shopkeeping in Edinburgh was once a recognised occupation for persons of family, while as for that quite other Scotland, the Highlands, tavern-keeping (and what taverns!) was quite usual among men of birth.[1] But the complexities of English social life since the Feudal period are infinitely greater. Probably not half the families seated upon the land to-day go back beyond George III. Estimates of certain districts occasionally published give something like this result. Of several counties I can of my own knowledge arrive at something like an approximate conclusion, and it agrees with these others. But counties and districts in this respect differ vastly. The Home Counties, for instance, have virtually broken with their past. They are full of aliens. Landed property of every kind is mainly in the hands of a more or less new element from all parts of Britain and the Empire, which derives most of its income from outside sources. Half a dozen counties are in a social sense little more than glorified suburbs. The landscape may remain in part rural, though thickly sprinkled with exotic marks. Sport and agriculture may be active. Ingenuous novelists and essayists in London or the suburbs may write of these regions as representing normal English rural life and society. The visiting American may imagine he is looking upon a typical English country-side. But all this is, of course, an utter fallacy. The influence of London even in old times covered a considerable radius. Fifty miles in nearly every direction would be no overestimate of its range to-day.

But it has been given me during the last quarter of a century to make a tolerably intimate acquaintance almost parish by parish with a good many other English counties more typical for the purpose in hand, to trace back the fortunes of families and estates, and, not least, to appraise their domestic history as it is written on tomb and tablet in hundreds of parish churches. Genealogies, county histories, family documents are eloquent enough of the various careers followed by men of gentle birth and of the enterprises which brought so many landed families into being and continued to engage the energies of younger sons regardless of lineage. Most of us have heard, from the lips, probably, of old ladies of a past generation, that the Army and Navy, Church and Bar, were the only callings for a gentleman. Anglo-Irish squireens, of Cromwellian or Williamite origin, with the thickest of brogues, still very likely give utterance to what half a century ago was accepted as a sort of good old English tradition. It occurred to no one, apparently, that in old England, say pre-Georgian England, there was no Army to speak of and no Navy (as a career for a gentleman); that the Church meant anything or nothing; while the Bar, aristocratic no doubt, was a little too much so, or at least too expensive, for most younger sons of average country squires. But it is on the chancel walls of parish churches that the Tudor or Jacobean novus homo proclaims most convincingly the current absence of any commercial shamefacedness. To-day the merchant squire who starts the family tomb with the family acres is almost always writ down thereon as a territorial magnate pure and simple. All allusion to the shop is suppressed.

The alderman squire of the seventeenth century, on the other hand, looks down on us from beneath his inherited or acquired armorial bearings quite unabashed in the character of a prosperous mercer or woolstapler. With the ladies, too, who so frequently brought the profits of commerce to improve the fortunes of a distinguished line, the parental haberdasher or clothier who provided their dower is frankly recognised in their own or their husband’s mortuary inscription. And this, I have little doubt, for the simple reason that there was no incentive to the curious make-believe that has since been fostered by a healthy but utterly confused social system. Human nature assuredly has not changed. Quite possibly there was friction on other accounts between the Londoner and his country neighbours. But as the sons and uncles and cousins of the latter were deep in trade, local or otherwise, the candour of the sculptured tomb in the parish church seems merely natural.

The Londoner, too, may have been of that wealthy city connection who lived gorgeously, and, as we know, not merely entertained the higher nobility and men of wit and fashion, but were often welcomed guests at the tables of the great. Such a man’s outlook on life and knowledge of the world must have been in inverse ratio to that of most country squires of that day. He probably spoke the Court English, the sound and quality of which one would give much to hear, whereas the other’s speech is shrouded in no such mystery, for it was unquestionably in most cases the dialect of his county, more or less modified. But provincial towns as well as London produced citizen squires. Some, no doubt, had an inherited right to armorial bearings, having regard to the number of cadets of landed families who went into trade. But if not they assumed arms, often indeed while still burghers, and heraldic experts tell us that this procedure was regarded as a perfectly legitimate one, so long as they did not annex some already in use; nor was any suggestion of misplaced vanity thereby involved.

That there were diverse kinds of country squires in those times goes without saying. A lord, too, was then a lord indeed! We have ample evidence that there are certain conspicuous but untitled families, both of Tudor and Norman origin, of wider culture, a Court connection, and in closer touch with the outside world. We may never know how these diverse elements regarded one another. Probably there is not much to know. Rural Society had not yet acquired a big S in the modern sense. The forms and ritual which gave the ladies of a later day opportunities for snubbing one another were not yet. They were all much occupied in domestic cares, and furthermore there were no roads as we understand the word. When they migrated to their town houses or lodgings in Exeter, Shrewsbury, or Worcester for a short winter season, as was the custom of many, the burgesses, as such, could hardly have been excluded from their company, for so many of them were relations. It is curious to note, too, how during Marlborough’s wars a professional army began to introduce a new social element, though a very small one, into provincial centres. In this connection The Recruiting Officer is distinctly illuminating. For Farquhar writes from his own experience as an officer quartered in Shrewsbury, to whose inhabitants, or rather ‘To all friends round the Wrekin,’ he dedicates the play.

For it was not merely the English democracy that so hated the notion of a standing army, but the country squires were among its stoutest opponents, since, as officers of the militia, it reduced them at once to an inferior military position. The young officer of Queen Anne’s time appears in the provinces as a gentleman from whom the superior airs and graces of a man of the world, familiar even with Continental usages, are to be looked for, and no doubt resented by the country bucks. Brawls on this account with civilians were fairly frequent. The hospitable squire himself seems to accept with equanimity a slightly patronising attitude from his military guest. For the virtue of his daughters he lives in a constant state of alarm while the terrible captains, lieutenants, and ensigns, with their fine uniforms and insinuating worldly ways, are in the neighbourhood. It must be admitted that the ladies themselves give some cause for this anxiety.

But to return to our muttons. Several of the older families of Wiltshire spring from the cloth manufacture which flourished so early in that great wool-producing country. Others arose from like sources and died out after a few generations of squiredom, leaving no memory but that emblazoned upon the walls of their parish church, and maybe some gem of a small Tudor or Jacobean manor-house now occupied by a big sheep-farmer of more sumptuous life and habit than the builder. Wilts, Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, and Salop, in whole or part, I may say at once, are more particularly in my mind in these pages, for the excellent reason that I know them more intimately than any of those other portions of England which could be taken as typical for the purpose in hand. But I feel tolerably confident that what can be said of Worcester or Wilts will apply to Yorkshire or Norfolk. The extremities of the country, on the other hand, may be not inaptly illustrated by the ancient tag, or one may fairly say ‘brag,’ of the always rather money-worshipping and comfort-loving Englishman:

‘A squire of Wales, a Knight of Cales,

And a laird of the North Countree:

A yeoman of Kent, with his yearly rent,

Could buy them out all three.’

Here again is the whimsical lament of a Cromwellian sequestrator on the Welsh border:

‘Radnorsheer, poor Radnorsheer!

Never a park and never a deer,

Never a squire of £500 a year

But Richard Fowler of Abbey cwm-hir.’

The figure here mentioned would represent a fairly well-endowed squire of that period in a normal county.

To illustrate the intimate association of trade and land in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by a stray example or two may seem beside the mark. But here at any rate, culled almost at random from one of my notebooks, is John Groves, the first of his name to be squire of Mickleton in Gloucestershire. He was a Yorkshireman who had made money by trade in London. He died in 1616 in his 103rd year, just after his portrait had been taken, a work of art which makes him look extremely wide awake! His son remained as a haberdasher in London and married a squire’s daughter. Their son became squire of Mickleton as well as a prominent Bencher of the Temple, and incidentally the father of nineteen children, the eldest of whom married a grocer, obviously with the family blessing; the second daughter, a judge’s son; while the eldest son succeeded to Mickleton. The pedigree of the Sandys family, founded by a North-country lad who became an archbishop, for long one of the most prominent in Worcestershire and afterwards ennobled, reveals a grocer and a haberdasher at the very zenith of its fame. Bishop Percy, of ballad renown, was a recognised cadet of the great Northumbrian House. His father was a grocer in Worcester, and the beautiful half-timbered house he occupied in Bridgnorth still stands.

And what, again, of these swarms of younger sons and their careers? In Elizabeth’s time the land produced less than a third of the grain per acre that it does to-day, when, some urban critics of British agriculture may be surprised to hear, our figures lead the world. There could have been no princely portion for the younger sons from an estate of, say, 2000 acres. What did they do? There was no Army or Navy, nor often, for the poor man, any Bar. The Church, for a clever youth, held great opportunities, but in the seventeenth century could hardly have commended itself as the snug and gentlemanly provision it became later. Nor am I forgetting that many squires’ sons became a sort of upper servants in the households of great nobles. But the custom died out, I think, during the Tudor period. Nor again must the small expeditionary forces from time to time dispatched by the Crown or led by adventurers to the Continent be overlooked. But the supply of commissions must have been limited, and in any case the job was but a temporary one. Unlike the Scotch and Irish, each stimulated by quite different but equally cogent reasons, the Englishman does not figure much as a soldier of fortune in foreign armies, while of the Colonies a word or so later. But in the meantime we may well ask ourselves, why this search after showy and romantic careers for the younger son of olden days? He had plenty of ordinary prosaic openings at home, and took them as a matter of course. It is quite certain that his sisters and his cousins and his aunts did not hold up their hands at the notion of trade, for half of them were allied, or prospectively allied, to it. It was deemed a fortunate thing if, through kinship or interest, an apprenticeship offered in the house of a big tradesman in London. Not a few, indeed, of the famous London apprentices we hear so much about were country gentlemen’s sons. More found occupations in their own district, in such lines, for instance, as the great Severn trade, with its boat-loads of caps and crockery, butter and cheese, iron and Virginia tobacco, passing back and forth between Bridgnorth, Bewdley, Worcester, Gloucester, and Bristol, and the squire himself very often took a share in such ventures. Others became millers, maltsters, tanners, glovers, or even shopkeepers in the country towns. Some rented farms, which meant a very different existence for them and their wives from that which would be entailed by a similar proceeding in the same class of life to-day. Most of my own generation, I fancy, grew up with a hazy notion that Cromwell was a plebeian because he was a country brewer or the like. There are, perhaps, plenty of well-informed adults even now who do not realise that he was not merely of a landed family but of a wealthy and powerful one which had sumptuously entertained King James at Hinchingbrooke, though originally sprung from plain Glamorgan squires. For the son of a younger son, Cromwell, alias Williams, seems to have been exceptionally well endowed. Attorneys and surgeons too occur fairly often in family records, or as marrying squires’ daughters, and parsons of course are well in evidence. Simple arithmetic precludes the possibility of more than one eldest son in the matrimonial market for each family of girls. Some of their marriages would, I feel sure, surprise those who vaguely imagine that things in this particular were not merely as now, or as yesterday if you like, but ‘more so.’

In the maritime counties, particularly the western ones, the sea no doubt attracted many a younger son. The Newfoundland fisheries, long before our North American Colonies were founded and for over a century afterwards, were of enormous importance to Devonshire, for this was a Mediterranean as well as a home trade. It is said that a third of the eligible manhood of the county disappeared thence in April to return in November, while squires with loose cash became part owners in ships, and their sons frequently sailed in them. The constant wars in Ireland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with their chances of loot and land, must also have attracted a good many young gentlemen. But of the hundred and odd English purchasers of estates in the six Plantation counties of Ulster the outlay was too large for the ordinary younger son, so far as one can judge from the list of planters, the particulars concerning them and the prices paid, as given in the Government survey of the day.[2]

The American Colonies and the West Indies, particularly the former, figure as the favourite dumping-ground of the seventeenth-century younger son with the historian, when skimming briefly over these social trifles. The Americans themselves too, with a natural and venial yearning for decorative ancestors, work the younger-son tradition for all it is worth, and paint him when they get him as a much more important person than he really was. The New Englanders may be excepted, for they are a precise people and have worked out their genealogies carefully to the original Pilgrim father (using that term in a general sense) with more regard for him as a sturdy pioneer than as a possible armiger. He was generally, in fact, of respectable middle-class family. The theocratic atmosphere of New England was not calculated to attract the offspring of squires or the like. The southern colonies are, of course, their traditional goal. Captain John Smith, virtual founder of Virginia, took out seventy such with gent marked against each of their ill-fated names on his invaluable chronicle. They died to a man, poor fellows, and the only gleam in their brief and melancholy story is when the indomitable captain led out batches of them to fell trees and they swore so roundly at their blistering hands that a bucket of water down the neck was decreed for every oath, after which ‘all was merriment and good humour.’ The next ‘Supply,’ including more of them, also died off. But a great many younger sons undoubtedly went to Virginia when the colony settled down to prosperity, and a great many of other sorts too. After the Civil Wars, ex-Royalists of all ranks and grades flocked there, most of the more important to return, naturally, at the Restoration. In conning the lists of these early settlers and then taking stock of those who ultimately came out on top as men of property and in a sense founders of families, it is interesting to speculate from their names, difficult enough with English ones, what various sources they came from. In the hard struggle of early colonial life the common men had probably rather the best of the younger son. An early governor of Virginia writes home with a touch of irritation, ‘Everybody here wants to be a gentleman,’ and the colony was assuredly run till the Revolutionary war in the interests of those who either were so by birth or became so through prosperity. With a few notable exceptions, most of the older and leading colonial families bear names of undistinguished sound to an English ear.

English tastes do not run much to genealogy, at any rate in any logical or accurate form. Hence no doubt the hardy superstitions and make-believes that flourish among us. What exacts most respect and consequently most desire is assured position, including the money to maintain it. That of a squire qua squire still receives ungrudging recognition, allowing, of course, for political asperities. The rustic on the estate may sniff a little at a brand-new one, but outside story-books he does not care two straws whether he is the third or the tenth of his line. The Southerners, and indeed Americans generally, have developed of late an astounding passion for ancestry. There is more patter, and upon the flimsiest grounds, about ‘blue blood,’ ‘high breeding,’ ‘patrician bearing,’ ‘cavalier stock,’ and suchlike stuff, in some modern American novels, good and bad, about modern American life, than in a whole year’s output of fiction in Old England. But outside the State Historical Societies a delightful naïveté is the prevailing note; and this is not strange, perhaps, with an extremely sentimental people, who, as regards the Southern States, have, unlike the West Indies, been absolutely out of touch with English social life and its subtleties since immigration there virtually ceased, about 1700 A.D.[3]

With regard to our national indifference to exact genealogy and the modern American craze for glittering forebears, I will hazard the relation of an incident which struck me at the time as a most entertaining and significant illustration of both. Now some dozen years ago the ancient town of Shrewsbury celebrated the battle of 1403 by a series of festivities. These included a banquet given to a hundred or more notabilities of the town, and county and other guests, of whom the writer was one. Another was a genial person who had come all the way from South Carolina (or Georgia) in the character of a lineal descendant of the great Norman, Roger de Montgomery, who eight hundred years before had built Shrewsbury Castle. There are probably thousands of lineal descendants of the mighty Roger, just as there are thousands of legitimate descendants now living of even greater men than he, to wit the Plantagenet and other kings of England.[4] But our ingenuous friend from the States had not gone to work this way at all. His name merely happened to be Montgomery, and to many South Carolinians that would be quite enough, though it may well seem incredible to an Englishman, rather hazy though he may possibly be about such things, that the twentieth-century bearer of an ordinary place-name like Kent, Chester, or Durham should on that account assume descent from the twelfth-century Norman who held one or other of those counties as his fief![5]

Our American visitor, however, a quiet and modest person, was taken at his own valuation, which I am positive was quite sincere. Perhaps the company took it vaguely for granted that he had traced his descent through orthodox sources. But I do not think this picturesque appeal interested them enough to provoke criticism of any kind even in a county where long pedigrees and old families are unusually numerous. Even the association of the modern surname with the mediæval barony did not seem to strike anyone or to arouse suspicion, probably because they were Englishmen and cared (in detail) for none of these things, though many descendants of other Marcher barons bearing famous local names were present. The stranger, however, had come all the way from South Carolina, as he piously, almost pathetically believed, to represent the American branch of the early Norman rulers of Montgomery and builders of Shrewsbury Castle. It was enough that he was a guest, and above all an American, and presumably an entertaining orator. So of course he was put on the toast list, where, unhappily, he belied his nationality. But the humour of the situation seemed quite lost upon the company. A hundred faces looked serious, and subsequently bored. But then they could not know, as I had cause to know, the daring of an unsophisticated American when on the war-path for an ancestor. A distinguished writer on mediæval history sitting next to me was shaking with suppressed mirth, and probably a clerical antiquary or two were enjoying themselves, but on the whole I feel sure the joke was missed.

The multiplicity and individualism of English surnames form a strange contrast to the tautology of Wales, the Scottish Highlands, and some parts of Southern Scotland, where, with rare exceptions, a name alone means nothing. Great numbers of English names carry of themselves distinction, though the possession of them may sometimes be accidental; or again, when among the early American colonists you find such names as Baskerville, Fettiplace, or Champernowne, if you know your England at all, you know for a certainty who they are and whence they came. But the bulk of English surnames have no particular social significance one way or the other, though many at once proclaim their county, particularly in the lower ranks of life, which have shifted less. Upon the whole our names are perhaps not very sonorous or inspiring. Some are hideously ugly, while many seem of themselves to preclude the possibility of gentle blood, though this is never a safe assumption. Constantly in remote country churches one finds the place of honour among the dead occupied for two or three centuries by a name that seems curiously ill-assorted with broad acres and coat armour. Sometimes it may be a long extinct one whose place knows it no more; or again, one of those still surviving families that have flourished in respectable obscurity, but in local regard, for centuries without ever catching the public ear, or perhaps even the ear of the next county but one!

Now Prodgers was once upon a time the supreme conception of a comical vulgarian with Mr. Punch. But the only Prodgers I ever heard of in real life was that ancient family of Wernddu and Gwernvale in Monmouthshire, now extinct or territorially so. Their traditional quarrel with their cousins the Powells of Perther on the score of family precedence led to a well-known humorous incident, which illustrates in entertaining fashion the passion of Welshmen for these things as opposed to the comparative apathy of their Saxon neighbours. The once contemned cockney pseudonym of Punch is of course a corrupted Welsh name (Ap-Rodger), and curiously rare: one of the very few, in fact, that of itself would suggest gentle blood. Rodgers were evidently scarce when the Welsh in the sixteenth century found the inconvenience of pedigree nomenclature and adopted the Christian name of their father (usually) as a permanent surname, rejecting the picturesque suggestion, as it is said, of Henry VIII. that the names of their estates or farms should be adopted; the consequence being that both have to be used to-day in most Welsh counties, on every occasion, from sheer necessity.

Trade could never have entered very seriously into the life of the armiger in most Welsh counties before the eighteenth century, for the sufficient reason that there was none. What the Welsh younger son did must remain a mystery, for Welsh social life between the Reformation, which darkened rather than illuminated the Principality, and the Hanoverian period, is itself rather obscure. There is no reason to suppose that the predilection for pedigrees which distinguishes the Welsh would have included any prejudice against trade had the opportunity arisen. But the genealogical instinct of the Cambrian is not altogether due, I think, to pride of race. A venial vanity, no doubt, has a fair share in it, but genealogy of itself has a strong detached interest for Welshmen. You will find men among all classes with an entirely impersonal interest in the ancestry of their neighbours. ‘I should like to show you a little collection of pedigrees I have at home’ is an offer I have had frequently made to me in Wales, and I can assure the reader that a Welsh MS. pedigree is a tolerably formidable document. I myself knew well a working man in Cardiganshire who spent his leisure hours in walking about collecting such material purely for his own amusement. Imagine a Wiltshire ploughman thus occupied!

Welsh social history is a thing apart. You do not expect to run up against a mercer or a goldsmith in a Welsh family tree which soars away through generations of virtual fixtures on the soil, and through a dim and pastoral past, till it finds its inevitable source in one or other of the five royal or fifteen noble tribes of Wales. And there you are! Rather disconcerting, however, is the small scale on which the dignity of a Welsh armiger must often have supported itself, not so very long ago. In the small grey stone houses still surviving in fair numbers, one seems to have arrived at a life so primitive as to require some readjustment of social values; men farming their own land, and not too much of it nor yet too fertile, beyond a doubt. I fear that, despite the pedigree, our London haberdasher’s well-dowered daughter would have turned up her nose at an average Welsh squire in Elizabeth’s golden days. The Welsh were never great sea-goers, though a few, like Morgan, rose to fame as buccaneers. The superfluous sons must have taken to farming in some fashion, and though never much given to colonising there was an agricultural movement into Pennsylvania early in the eighteenth century. This probably included a good many of the Welsh gentry, for a contemporary English traveller, describing the characteristics of the various groups of settlers, alludes to the Welsh as ‘greatly devoted to hunting and dogs.’[6]

Again, under the healthy, happy-go-lucky English social system, which must always, as now, have bewildered the foreigner, the intrusion of a genealogically unqualified female and her strain of blood into a family is quite overlooked. Marriage with respectable and often no doubt quite presentable women of neither birth nor fortune occurs constantly in pedigrees, as one would expect. But when only a female remains to continue the line and her husband takes her name this attitude is conveniently reversed and the paternal blood ignored. When that wonderful lady, Miss Kynnersley, of Loxley, in Staffordshire, married the most excellent Baron de Bode, her family strongly objected for the good old English reason that the baron was a foreigner. But when the bride arrived in Germany the tables were turned, the baron’s relations withholding any recognition of her till a satisfactory account of the lady’s pedigree was furnished by the Heralds’ College. The Kynnersleys were fortunately of the élite of our gentry, and all was satisfactory. But when a further demand for eight successive generations of armigers on the female side was made, any country squire’s daughter in England may well have felt some anxiety. However, the many who have read her delightful letters will remember that this clever, capable, and pushful English baroness secured the friendship and intimacy of much bigger people all over Europe than the mother and sisters of a German baron, though she had this too. But her brother the squire never forgave her.

A. G. Bradley.