CHAPTER XVII
WITH THE PRINCE IN INDIA
In September, 1875, I was appointed A.D.C. to the Prince of Wales (our late King) to accompany his Royal Highness upon his visit to India. The complete list of the suite was as follows: The Duke of Sutherland, K.G.; Sir Bartle Frere; Lord Suffield, Head of the Prince's Household; Major-General Lord Alfred Paget, Clerk-Marshal to H.M. the Queen; Lord Aylesford; Major-General Probyn, V.C., Equerry to the Prince, in charge of the transport and sporting arrangements; Colonel Arthur Ellis, Grenadier Guards, Equerry to the Prince; Mr. Francis Knollys (afterwards Lord Knollys), the Prince's private secretary; Surgeon-General Fayrer, Physician to the Prince; Captain H. Carr Glyn, Royal Navy, A.D.C. to H.M. the Queen commanding H.M.S. Serapis; Colonel Owen Williams; Lieutenant Lord Charles Beresford, Royal Navy, A.D.C. to the Prince; Lord Carington, A.D.C. to the Prince; the Rev. Canon Duckworth, Chaplain; Lieutenant (afterwards Colonel) Augustus FitzGeorge, Rifle Brigade extra A.D.C. to the Prince; Commander Durrant, Royal Navy, commanding royal yacht Osborne; Dr. W. H. Russell, hon. private secretary to the Prince, chronicler of the voyage; Mr. Albert Grey (afterwards Lord Grey), private secretary to Sir Bartle Frere; Mr. Sydney Hall, artist.
The Indian officers, who joined the suite at Bombay, and whose energy and ability were beyond all praise, were Major-General Sam Browne, V.C., in charge of transport; Major Williams, in charge of horses and grooms; Major Bradford, head of the police and responsible for the safety of the person of the Prince; Major Sartorius, V.C., in charge of tents and servants; and Major Henderson, linguist.
The first announcement of the intention of the Prince to visit the Indian Empire was made by Lord Salisbury to the Council of India on 16th March, 1875. The matter was subsequently discussed at length both in Parliament and in the Press. The condition of affairs in India, where the mass of the ruling princes and chieftains had still to realise that the rule of the Honourable East India Company had given place to a greater governance, rendered the visit of the future Sovereign of paramount importance; and the Prince's sagacity was seldom more admirably exemplified than in his determination to visit India as the Heir-Apparent of the Crown. That the scheme was entirely and supremely successful in achieving the object for which it was designed, was due to the Prince's zeal, ability, tact and indomitable vigour. He gave his whole mind to the enterprise; thought of everything in advance; and set aside his personal comfort and convenience from first to last. Only one regret was present in the minds of all: the regret for the unavoidable absence of the Princess.
The whole history of the episode has been so excellently well told by the late Dr. William Howard Russell, the famous war correspondent, who was a member of the suite, in his The Prince of Wales's Tour (London, 1877; Sampson Low) that any detailed account of it on my part would be superfluous.
The Prince left England on 11th October, 1875, and embarked in H.M.S. Serapis at Brindisi on the 16th. In the Suez Canal we heard of the purchase of Suez Canal shares by the British Government. The Serapis arrived at Bombay on 8th November.
Thenceforward the Prince's tour was an unresting progress of Durbars, receptions, dinners, visits, processions, ceremonies, speeches, addresses, fireworks, entertainments, investitures, reviews, varied only by intervals of sport. From Bombay, the Prince went to Goa, and thence to Ceylon, visiting Colombo, Kandy, where he viewed the sacred tooth of Gotama Buddha, and Ruanwalla, where there was an elephant hunt. Then he went to Tuticorin, Madura, Trichinopoly, Madras, Calcutta, Bankipoor, Benares, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Delhi, Lahore, Cashmir, Umritsar, Agra, Gwalior, and Jeypoor. From Jeypoor he went into camp in the Terai and enjoyed excellent sport. Then, in Nepal, under the auspices of Sir Jung Bahadur, there was the great elephant hunt. From Nepal the Prince went to Allahabad, then to Bombay, whence he sailed on 11th March, 1876, having been in India seventeen weeks exactly. "The Prince," wrote Dr. Russell on that date, "has travelled nearly 7600 miles by land and 2300 by sea, knows more Chiefs than all the Viceroys and Governors together, and seen more of the country in the time than any other living man."
On the outward voyage his Royal Highness visited the King of Greece. When the King and Queen were leaving the Serapis after dining on board, we showed them compliment and honour by setting them alight. The blue lights burning at the main-yard being exactly above the boat in which their Majesties were going ashore, dropped flakes of fire upon them. The Prince also visited the Khedive. On the return voyage, the Prince met at Suez Lord Lytton, who was on his way to India to succeed Lord Northbrook as Viceroy; was again entertained by the Khedive; visited Malta; called at Gibraltar; and visited the King of Spain and the King of Portugal. The Serapis was accompanied by the royal yacht Osborne, Commander Durrant, and H.M.S. Raleigh, Captain Tryon. The Prince landed in England on 11th May, 1876.
It is worth noting that Lord Lytton went out in the Orontes, one of the Imperial Service troopships, as they were called. The troopship service was then at times conducted by the Royal Navy, a practice since discontinued. The Orontes was commanded by Captain E. H. Seymour (afterwards Admiral of the Fleet the Right Hon. Sir Edward Seymour, G.C.B., O.M., G.C.V.O., LL.D.) In his very interesting book, My Naval Career and Travels, Sir Edward Seymour writes: "At Suez, by arrangement, we met H.R.H. the Prince of Wales (our late King) on his way home in the Serapis. At Aden Lord Lytton landed in state, it being the first point reached of his new dominions." The point illustrates the working in detail of the great scheme of Imperial organisation which was conceived by the master-mind of Disraeli, and which he continued to carry into execution so long as he was in power.
Upon landing at Bombay, I rode up to Government House with my brother, Lord William, precisely as I had ridden up with another brother, Lord Marcus, exactly six years previously, on the same day of the year. Lord William was then extra A.D.C. to the Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, having been appointed to that post as a subaltern in the 9th Lancers. He was subsequently appointed A.D.C. to Lord Lytton, in which capacity he attended the Viceroy at the Durbar at which Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. He was afterwards military secretary to three successive viceroys, Lords Ripon, Dufferin and Lansdowne; altogether he served on the personal staff of five viceroys. From 1877 to 1879, while nominally in attendance upon the Viceroy, Lord William fought in the Jowaki expedition of 1877-78, the Afghan war, during which he was present at the capture of Ali Musjid, and the Zulu war of 1879. "In the latter," wrote a military correspondent of The Times (31st December, 1900), "he served as a staff officer during the reconnaissance across the White Umvolusi River and at the battle of Ulundi. It was in Zululand, in July, 1879, that Beresford won the V.C. for halting, when closely pursued by the enemy, to take a wounded non-commissioned officer on his horse. When the soldier at first declined to risk the officer's life by giving the latter's horse a double burden, Beresford is understood to have hotly declared that unless the man immediately got up on the saddle he would himself dismount and 'punch his head.'"