CHAPTER XL
1882—CHATHAM AND ALEXANDRIA
Hospital Nurses—War Office denying my existence between December and February declines to issue even Half-Pay—Offered the Governorship of the Isle of Man—Cardinal Manning—Alexandria—A shell denudes a soldier of his trousers—Smith-Dorrien—Mr. Gladstone in Downing Street—Return to Egypt.
I was very happy at Chatham, being on good terms with all the officers, including the Medical officers, the senior of whom would not agree with me, however, as to the desirability of having female nurses to attend the soldiers, a reform which has happily since been carried into effect. He was one day arguing with me that Female nurses were entirely out of place in a Military Hospital, so I told him of a scene I had witnessed in the general Hospital under his charge only forty-eight hours earlier. I was passing through a ward after the Medical officers had left for lunch, and saw a soldier evidently on the confines of the next world refusing some food which an orderly taken out of the regiment was endeavouring to force on him. The man was too weak to speak, but the look of disgust on his face was so strong that I went up to the bed, and asked the orderly, “Why do you give him that black stuff from the inside of the chicken, when you have got half the breast, which he is more likely to fancy?” The soldier said somewhat indignantly, “I was told to give him chicken, and I don’t see it matters where he begins.” Having told my story, I said, “Now, doctor, let us go to the Hospital, and see how he is.” On arriving there we found the patient had died the previous evening.
I was engaged in a lengthy correspondence from March onward, with the Financial Authorities of the War Office. For the nine months I was Acting Governor and High Commissioner in South-East Africa I was paid at the rate of £5000 per annum, and although the Colonial Attorney-General advised me I was entitled to Half-Pay on my journey home, that is at the rate of £2500 a year,—the amount drawn from Colonial funds,—I drew nothing, for the Colonial Treasurer told me that as I had never been officially appointed, and was only Acting Governor, I should have troublesome correspondence with the Colony, and the Colonial Office later, if I drew it.
When I resumed the Command at Chatham I asked for my half-pay as a Major-General, from the 22nd December 1881 to the 13th February 1882; but the War Office alleged that as I was in receipt of a Civil salary I was not entitled to any ordinary pay, or to any allowance, on the termination of my Staff appointment. Weeks of correspondence ensued; I tried pleasant words, and then sarcasm, writing I would furnish a certificate from a clergyman that I was alive from the 22nd December to the 13th February, which would entitle me to half-pay in any case, but in vain. I then appealed to Lord Kimberley, and pointed out that as he had expressed satisfaction with my services, I hoped he would point out to the Treasury that I should not be treated as if I had been dead for two months.
His Lordship replied it was impossible for him to do anything except ask the War Office to accord me the most liberal treatment, which he did; nevertheless, there was no result until Mr. Childers helped me on my appealing personally to him. This I was too shy to do, until shortly before Sir Garnet Wolseley’s victory at Tel-el-Kebir, in the following September, when an opportunity occurred.[235]
I had many reasons to be grateful to Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, who invested me shortly after my arrival with the Grand Cross of St Michael and St George, and I went during the following week to stay at Sandhurst, where the Staff College students arranged a Drag hunt over my favourite line, beginning with the two flights of rails in East Hampstead Park. Captain George Gough,[236] 10th Hussars, mounted me on his best horse, which had won the Point to Point race in 1881, and would have probably repeated its victory in 1882, but that the horse Gough rode fell at the rails, and my friend broke a collar bone, so could not get into a saddle.
In the following week I had a kind letter[237] from Sir Vernon Harcourt, offering me the post of Governor of the Isle of Man. I was driving with Her Imperial Majesty the Empress Eugénie, when calling at my club for letters I received the offer, and with her permission read the letter. I had great difficulty in explaining to Her Majesty where the Isle of Man was situated, until I told her in my voluble, but badly pronounced French, it was the Island where the cats had no tails, when she at once understood.
The next few months at Chatham gave me opportunities of seeing many men in whom I was interested, Cardinal Manning coming twice to stay at Government House. He received a very large number of soldiers of the Royal Irish into the Temperance League, and was out on the “Lines,” from immediately after dinner till 2 a.m., watching Siege operations.
Major Duncan, who later on commanded the Artillery of the Egyptian Army, and was subsequently Member of Parliament for Finsbury, was mounting heavy guns to open fire at daylight, and the glacis, which was honeycombed from the result of previous excavations, being treacherous, one gun slipped into a deep hole. As the scheme supposed him to be close to the enemy, the work of extricating it, which took five hours, had to be carried on in absolute silence. In spite of the fact that His Eminence’s dinner, although he sat out as usual our succession of courses, consisted of some weak tea and two slices of bread and butter, he showed the most unflagging interest in the work, and did not return to Government House until I coaxed him back under the plea that I myself was tired.