There he had three Communicants in 1861; on Easter Sunday, 1862, the number was 136, and later it averaged 200.
His church was filled at every Voluntary service. The Royal Engineer officers helped him nobly, and gradually, before 1893, when he assisted to consecrate St. George’s Church, South Camp, a higher sense of religious duty had spread throughout Aldershot, for as Chaplain-General he had weeded out the negligent, and encouraged the earnest workers in his Department.
CHAPTER XLVI
1891–2–3—TRAINING OF TROOPS ON PRIVATE LANDS
Death of Lady Wood—Manœuvres in Hampshire—Public Schools’ Camps at Aldershot—Improvement in War Training—Ian Hamilton—Lord Roberts—Sealed patterns, Army Stores.
On the 11th May I lost my wife, with whom I had enjoyed uninterrupted happiness since our marriage, and who for twenty-four years, next to God, had given me all her life. The most loving and tender of women, endowed with the highest principles of morality, her companionship raised the standard of thought of even an ordinary man, increasing his respect for womankind, while her infinite compassion rendered her a hopeful and encouraging beacon to the weakest of her sex. She was to me not only an affectionate wife, but also adviser and confidential secretary. My greatest abiding regret is that devotion to the Army gave me so little time with her, and with our children; in seven successive years, employment on Foreign Service allowed me only 14½ months at home.
I had no suspicion of her being ill until one afternoon walking in the grounds of Government House she told me she felt an unpleasant fluttering in her heart; but we had suspected so little her dangerous state, that I had allowed her to walk up a steep hill in the previous June, when I particularly asked Lady Pender, whose face I was watching, to go up in the carriage.
In the month of November Lady Wood complained of eczema, and was in bed for a week; but she made so little of her ailments that I went almost daily to London to sit on a Drill Committee, engaged in revising a new book, and when I was not in London I spent the day in office with Sir Mansfield Clarke and Colonel Hildyard, on the same duty. Ten days later my wife was sufficiently recovered to go about and look at houses, as it became necessary for us to turn out of Government House, which required repairs.
Early in the year Her Majesty the Empress Eugénie, whose kindness to us had been unceasing, since the journey in 1880 to Zululand, took Lady Wood and my eldest daughter to St. Remo for a change of air, I remaining ignorant of her precarious state of health until I received a note, written by the direction of the Empress, calling me to the Riviera.
The doctor at St. Remo told me frankly he thought very badly of Lady Wood’s state, and advised me to take her back to England. I telegraphed for Surgeon-Major Finlay, who knew my wife’s constitution, and he kindly hurried to St. Remo, meeting us, however, only at Paris, as we had left the Riviera before he arrived. The journey was exceptionally painful to me; I had not ventured to tell my young daughter what I feared, and the doctor had warned me that if my wife died in the carriage, which was possible, I should conceal the fact until we reached Paris to avoid removal from the train. After a week’s rest in Paris we got back to Aldershot. Ten days before Lady Wood died I offered to telegraph for our eldest son, who was with his Battalion, Devon Regiment, in Egypt. She replied, “Certainly not, I will not be so selfish; let him come home later, and escape the hot weather.”