I spent the summer vacation of 1864 visiting the battlefields of Frederick the Great and Napoleon. I had advertised, in the spring of the year, in leading German papers asking to be received into a German family for six weeks, stating that I was a student of the Staff College. I selected one of the more expensive offers, and went to Dresden. On my arrival, I received a letter from Monsieur Delissert, who was my tutor at Sunbury in 1861. He had become proprietor of a school at Ouchy, in Switzerland, the pupils being nearly all Germans, and invited me to join him on a holiday walking tour. My acceptance of the offer precluded the possibility of my staying at Dresden, and my prospective host courteously offered me the assistance of his son, a young man who spoke no English, for a short walking tour, which I carried out in the Saxon Switzerland. At Heidelberg in 1862, and at Dresden in 1864, I paid or was asked to pay only half the sum I expended for my sons a quarter of a century later, but it is right to state they were better accommodated and boarded.
The day after the young man left me to return to Dresden I was going down the Elbe, and when near the Bastei[96] my attention was attracted by a noise in the fore part of the steamer. Strolling forward, I found an Indian dressed in the Irregular Cavalry uniform, a long dark green coat, red puggaree, cummerbund, and knee-boots. He had the look of the “Derby Dog” in his face, and the excitement of the Germans was sufficient to startle anyone, for they were shouting at him at the top of their voices single English words. Going up behind him, I said gently in Hindustani, “Can I be of any assistance to you?” Jumping round, he replied, “All praise to the Almighty, I once more hear a civilised tongue.”
His story, which I translated sentence by sentence to the Germans standing around, was peculiar. After leaving our Service, he had lived in Jerusalem for twenty years as a Muhammadan missionary, with what success he did not say, and was travelling to England as a mendicant. He had papers on him from Consuls and other persons in authority, and a letter signed by the Governor of Agram, Croatia. The interest that the Germans took in the strangely dressed man now increased, and they collected £8, 14s. in gulden, which they asked me to give him. One gentleman was so impressed by the story that he asked me to bid him welcome to his house in Berlin, if he passed that way on going to England. When I conveyed this polite offer, the mendicant said with some indignation, “God is our provider; we should take no thought for the morrow.” While thinking how to render pleasantly the somewhat curt reply, the German proverb came into my head, which I used, softening the Indian’s remark into a polite expression of gratitude, and ending with the explanation, “He holds, ‘Jeder Tag hat seine Sorge.’” I found that the numberless questions which the excited Germans launched at me was tiring, and taking up my small handbag I endeavoured to get ashore unperceived when the steamer stopped under the Bastei; but the Indian was too quick, and catching me on the gangboard by the skirt of my frock coat, with the apposite Eastern expression, “I clutch the hem of your garment,” followed me up to the hotel where I intended to remain. I explained the situation to the manager, adding that the man had £8, 14s. in silver, but that I would be answerable for his bed and board that night, and then I left him.
A quarter of an hour later, while I was having tea, the waiter ran to me, saying, “Your black friend has taken off most of his clothes on the river bank: will you please speak to him?” Going outside, I saw the Indian kneeling on a prayer-carpet on the sand, divested of all his clothing except a loin-cloth. I said, “What are you doing? Put your clothes on; you must not kneel here naked.” He looked reproachfully at me, and said, “Kneel down too; it is the hour of evening prayer;” and then it dawned on me that he thought I was a Mussulman. After dinner, I paid my bill and the missionary’s, and walked away at daybreak, fearing I might be saddled with his company for an indefinite period.
Two days later, I went from Dresden to see the battlefield of Bautzen, and having noticed there was apparently a station 8 or 9 miles from the town close to the scene of action, I asked for a ticket to the place, Forstchen. The booking clerk said, repeating the name two or three times, “Do you really want to go there?” And on my replying in the affirmative, he went out on to the platform, and said to the guard, “This gentleman wants to go to Forstchen;” and the guard looked me over as if I were demented. Before the train started, he repeated the question, “You really want to go to Forstchen?” And at the next station before arriving at my destination, he came to the carriage door and said, “Give me your ticket; there is no one there to take it.” The station consisted of a long platform, and when the train passed on I felt as if I were on a desert island. Walking southward towards the battlefield, I came on a group of children, who screaming fled. One of them was lame, and him I caught, and with chocolates and coppers soon made him sufficiently at home to talk; and the other children, who had stopped to see what became of their companion, now came back. I sent one of them to call his father, who was at work; and the man, about five-and-forty years of age, proved to be an excellent guide. He had lived with his father, who was present at the battle as a spectator, and had practically worked on the battlefield all his life, and told me the name of every natural feature.
From Dresden I went to Munich, Prague, and thence into Switzerland to see my friend Delissert. I joined his party, and have never had so good accommodation at such moderate terms. One of the elder boys generally walked ahead, and made a bargain. In order to ascend the Righi, we started from an unfrequented village—indeed, we were never on beaten tracks. Every room I slept in was scrupulously clean, and the cheapness may be understood from my bill at one place, which for a supper, with two meat courses and second course, half a bottle of wine, bed, with a roll and coffee next morning, was five francs. I acquired some colloquial proficiency in German, and then returned to Camberley.
The instruction at the College was unsatisfactory in many respects; for example, the French teacher’s one idea of imparting knowledge of his language was to read the letters of the great Emperor to his brothers and subordinate Generals, and thus the words, “Napoleon à Joseph, Mon frère,” had the effect of clearing the study of all who could get out without being rude to this courteous Professor. The Fortification and Drawing Instructors knew their subjects, but were not good teachers. I had the advantage of sitting under two distinguished lecturers: Colonel, afterwards Sir Edward Hamley, whose Operations of War is a Military text-book, and who so bravely led his Division at Tel-el-Kebir; and the other, Colonel Charles Chesney, celebrated for his Waterloo Lectures, which were republished in all Continental capitals, who was one of a clever family, his brother being the author of The Battle of Dorking. Colonel Hamley expected his pupils to accept his deductions as well as his facts, and did not encourage original research.
After his lecture on the battle of Blenheim, there being no books which treated of the battle in the then meagre Staff College library, I obtained in London Cox’s Life of Marlborough, which I offered to the two men whose society I most enjoyed. They were about my own age, but took College life more seriously than I did. One gratefully accepted the loan of the volumes, but the other answered gaily, “No, I shall serve up Hamley, Hamley, nothing but Hamley; that always gets me full marks.” When Colonel Hamley was succeeded by Colonel Chesney on the conclusion of the first lecture, I went to my friend, who was a wonderful précis writer, and said, “After this lecture, you will have to think for yourself.” Charles Chesney’s ideas of teaching were diametrically opposed to those of his predecessor. He mentioned the salient points in the standard authorities who had written on the campaign or battle, and then said, “And now, gentlemen, no doubt you will be good enough to read all these authors and give me the advantage of your studies.” The result showed my forecast was correct, for my friend, the précis writer, who had hitherto got one or two marks out of a hundred more than anyone else, now came down to our level.
At the end of 1864, many of my instructors having foretold I should fail in the Final Examination, I settled down to work harder, and to enjoy less hunting. The confinement, however, immediately affected my nervous system, and the aurist under whose care I had placed myself when I returned from India, wrote to the Commandant, unknown to me, deprecating my undertaking any additional work. Colonel William Napier, a son of one of the three distinguished Peninsular Napiers, had married the daughter of Sir Charles Napier, the conqueror of Scinde; he had been kind to me during my terms, and was a man of unusually broad generous mind, for within three months of my joining, when acting as President of a ball committee, I struck out the names of many of his friends whom he had asked as public guests to the ball. Sending for me to his office, he demanded an explanation, and I told him that none of the people whose names I had omitted had ever invited anyone from the College into their houses except himself, when he observed, “Please send out the invitations in my name:” and it was done.
I had ridden successfully one of his horses which he found uncontrollable, entirely from his habit of catching hold of the horse’s mouth when approaching a fence. The horse was naturally a slow, nervous fencer, but in the Commandant’s hands became so excitable that I have seen him run backwards when checked on approaching a fence. I rode the horse for a month, and then handing him back to the Commandant, he enjoyed two days’ hunting, the horse jumping perfectly; but the third day out he resumed his habit of rushing, with the result that the rider got a broken leg. Later the horse came into my possession, and carried me or one of my sisters for many years.