From Midshipman to Field Marshal

by Evelyn Wood

I had a small pack of drag hounds, the farmers living round Rivenhall, where my mother lived, allowing me to take the Drag anywhere I liked, out of love of my father’s memory. One farmer in reply to my request to cross his fields, sent me a message, “Tell Muster Evelyn if there be any one field where he can do most damage, I hope he will go there.” Some of the younger ones assisted me by taking on the drag occasionally, so I hunted under favourable conditions, “Vagabond” and “Fractious” carrying me, or my sister, fifteen times in twenty-three successive days. I generally rode “Vagabond” with the Drag the day before I hunted him with the Stag Hounds, and saved him all I could by putting the horse in the train whenever it was possible; but as the kennels were five-and-twenty miles off, I could seldom get a short day. One day I rode him 19 miles to the meet, had a good run of two hours, and then 29 miles home, after taking the deer north of Bishop’s Stortford, and without putting him off his feed.

I had a groom, excellent when he was sober; he came into my service in December 1865, and up to the end of 1866, when I was at Aldershot, had not given way to his besetting vice; but there the attractions of the canteens were too great, and he became troublesome. He should have arrived at my mother’s house with the horses some hours before I did on the 14th of February 1868, but did not appear till nightfall. When I went to the stable just before dinner, I found that the horses had apparently been fed and watered, but the man was drunk. Seeing his condition, I endeavoured to avoid him, especially as my mother’s coachman was also under the influence of liquor although not intoxicated; but the groom approached me rapidly, and as I thought with the intention of hitting me over the head with a lantern, so, knocking him down, I held him by the throat while I called the coachman to bring a halter and lash his legs. The groom had a keen sense of humour, and after the trembling coachman had tied his feet he pulled one out, observing, “Oh, you’re a blessed fool, to tie up a man!” and in drunken tones he apostrophised me and all my family, finishing up with the expression, “And you’re about the best of a d——d bad lot.” I was nervous of leaving the man over the stable for fear he might set fire to it, so putting him into a dog-cart my brother and I drove over to the Petty Sessions House at Witham, where we saw the Inspector of Police, who declined to take charge of him because he was not “drunk and incapable in the street.” I asked, “If you saw him drunk and incapable in the street would you then take charge of him for the night?” “Yes, certainly, but not while he is in your carriage.” I cast off the undergirth, and having tilted up the shafts, shot the groom into the roadway, calling to the Inspector, “Now you can properly take him up.” He reappeared next day, contrite, and remained with me two or three years, until he became so troublesome I was obliged to part with him. He was engaged by the Adjutant-General of the Army, without any references to me, and eventually having challenged him to fight, was knocked down, and dismissed.

My eldest child, born at Brighton in the summer, was for some time delicate, the nurse and I watching her at night by turns for two months. I had never been really well since I left the Staff College, and this night-watching rendered me altogether incapable of work. I was endeavouring to carry out my official duties while spending two or three hours every evening at Brighton; this necessitated my spending the night in a luggage train between Brighton, Redhill, and Aldershot, with the result that at the end of August I broke down, and was obliged to go away for a change of air. Towards the middle of the next month I fainted five times one afternoon from the intensity of the pain in the nerves of the stomach. All through 1868 I was suffering from it, and it was not until a year later that Doctor Porter, attached to the 97th Regiment, in the North Camp, cured me. When he had done so, he asked to see me alone, and said, “Now I have cured you of neuralgia, but I fear I have made you an opium-eater for life.” I laughed, saying, “I think not.” “But you must feel a craving for it, don’t you?” “Only when the pain is on.” “But haven’t you got to like it?” “No; I have never got rid of the feeling that it is exactly like soapsuds.” I remained ill so long, however, that I had to face the contingency of being obliged to leave the Service, and having some taste for Military law elected to qualify for the Bar. During my service at Aldershot I had made an epitome of every important decision given by Judges Advocate-General relative to Courts Martial in the United Kingdom, and some years later Colonel Colley[101] asked permission of the War Office to have my notes printed, for the guidance of his class at the Staff College. The application was refused, with the quaint answer: “Permission cannot be given on account of the many conflicting decisions.” It is only right I should add the office being then Political, the holders changed with the Government.

The Heads of the Army inculcate uniformity of punishment, but they do not always succeed. In the spring of the year, Frank Markham, Sir Alfred Horsford’s Aide-de-Camp, Cricket Club Secretary, asked me for a fatigue party to roll the officers’ ground in anticipation of the match. I said, “No, you can have a working party.” “Oh, but I have got no funds.” “Then go over to the —— and get some defaulters to roll your ground.” “I have been there already, and the Adjutant says if I go after Monday I can have as many as I want; but that is too late, for we play on Monday, and so I cannot wait.” “What does he mean by saying he has got no defaulters now?” “I asked him that, and he explained that the Colonel being away there were no defaulters, but he is coming back on Monday, and then there will be as many as I can want.”

There came to Aldershot in the early summer a battalion distinguished for the best Barrack-room discipline in the Army. At that time it was commanded by a courteous gentleman, typical of the old school. A delightful host in his Mess, on matters of duty he was accurate to the verge of pedantry. Captain ——, a pillar of the Regiment, being not only a good Company commander, but having business attributes which enabled him to manage successfully all the Regimental institutions, was courting his cousin, whom he afterwards married. He had obtained leave from noon to go to London on “urgent private affairs,” which were to meet the young lady in the Botanical Gardens, and just as he was starting for the one o’clock train at Farnborough,[102] an orderly came to him, saying, “The Colonel wants you in the orderly-room, sir.”

Captain —— got back into uniform, and, putting on his sword, for in the “Wait-a-Bits”[103] officers attending orderly-room always wore swords, knocked at the door, and entered. The Commanding officer was writing, and nodding pleasantly, said, “Yes, wait a bit, please,” and proceeded to finish what was apparently a carefully worded official document; at all events, it so seemed to the Captain, who stood fidgeting with his watch and calculating whether he could catch his train. At last, his patience being exhausted, he said, “I beg your pardon, sir, but you wished to see me. May I know for what purpose, as I want to catch a train?” “I wish, Captain ——,” replied the Colonel, “to impress on you the necessity of being accurate in any documents you send in to this office for my approval.” “I am not aware,” the Captain said, “that I have sent any in, sir, for I have had no prisoners for some time.” The Colonel then handed to him two passes, which the Captain scanned carefully, without finding out what was wrong. It was indeed difficult to make a mistake, as everything except the dates and the signature was printed. After close perusal, he handed them back, saying, “I am sorry, sir, but I cannot see anything wrong.” The Chief replied slowly, “You have applied for leave for two privates in your Company to be absent from the 25 to the 27 of July, and if you look, you will see, in each case, there is a ‘th’ and two dots wanting.” This was too much for the Captain’s temper, and he said with much heat, “Have you sent for me, sir, and caused me to lose my train, and thus fail to keep a most important engagement in London, to tell me to put a ‘th’ and two dots?” “Yes, Captain ——, I have. And I hope when you have the honour of commanding this Regiment, like me you will appreciate and teach the advantages of accuracy. Good-morning.” During the operations then practised in and about the Long Valley he was a trial to excited Aides-de-Camp, who galloping up would exclaim, “The General wants you to advance immediately and attack.” To which the Colonel would reply, “Kindly say that again—I am rather deaf.” And after still more excited repetition would say calmly, “Let us wait a bit, and see exactly what is required.” This peculiarity had no doubt become known, and was partly the result of an explosion of anger, and subsequent regret, on the part of the Commander-in-Chief, who one day with his Staff was sitting on Eelmoor Hill South, practising eleven battalions in a new formation imported from Germany, as many movements have been since that time. The idea was to advance in a line of columns, and by filling up the interval from the Rear of each column to lull the enemy into the belief that there was only a line advancing towards him. Five times in succession the battalions advanced and retired, each column being formed of double companies—that is, two companies in the front line. The Chief now said, “I am going to try the same thing, but forming the battalions in double columns of subdivisions.”[104] When the Chief gave the order to half a dozen Gallopers, he said, “Advance in a double column of companies, filling up the intervals from the Rear companies.” Five of us took the order as we knew the Chief intended, but not as he said, for we had all heard he intended to change the formation; but the sixth Galloper gave the “Wait-a-Bit” battalion the literal order, and thus, after the Colonel had begun the formation, looking to his right and left he saw that the others were forming double columns of subdivisions, and he proceeded to conform. This involved delay, and the Chief galloping down shouted at him with an oath, “You are the slowest man, Colonel, in the British Army.” He had been wounded in the Crimea, and did not therefore carry a sword. Sitting erect on his horse, with his eyes straight to the front, he threw up his maimed hand and saluted, and the Chief rode back, vexed with himself and all the world, at having lost his temper. Before we got to Eelmoor Hill again, I told the officer who had taken the message that he ought to explain what had happened; but as he absolutely declined, I told the Chief, who turning his horse cantered back to the battalion, and made in a loud voice a generous apology. I do not know that I admired the Colonel particularly for his self-restraint in the first instance, but he gave me a lasting lesson on hearing the apology, for his face did not relax in the slightest degree nor did his eyes move. When the Chief had ceased speaking, up again went the maimed hand with a grave, punctilious salute—a grand example to his battalion of young soldiers. When the troops were going home, the apology was repeated; and then the Colonel, holding out his hand, said pleasantly, “Pray, sir, say no more about it; I am fully satisfied.”

A few months later a Cavalry Colonel was called during a manœuvre a “d——d fool,” for which at the Conference a full apology was made. The Colonel, a most lovable character, although a high-class gentleman in essentials, habitually used words as did our soldiers in Flanders two hundred years ago. He was an excellent Cavalry leader, although not by any means a finished horseman, and had a habit of heaving his body up and down in the saddle when excited. When the Chief had finished his apology, the Colonel blurted out, “I do not mind, sir, being called a ‘d——d fool,’ but I do mind being called a ‘d——d fool’ before all these ‘d——d fools’ of your Staff.”[105]

Bad language was then used constantly on every parade, until Sir Hope Grant assumed command two years later. He resolutely setting his face against the practice, did much to stamp it out.

In the sixties our Generals delighted in practising complicated movements in lines of columns, especially one which was the terror of many Commanding officers, and which consisted in turning one or more battalions about, and then having moved to a flank, in fours, to wheel the column while in fours. The result was often ludicrous; indeed, I have seen five Captains standing in the leading company of a battalion, which had been ordered suddenly to “Halt,” “Front.” A line of thirteen battalions changing front forwards and backwards, on a named company, of a named battalion, was often practised three times a week, when I went to Aldershot in 1866, and the Lieutenant-General nearly always placed the Base points for the new alignment, to the mathematical accuracy of which both time and energy were devoted, and which induced much bad language.

Those at Aldershot now, who may see this book, will be interested to read that I met Captain Tufnell of the 34th coming in one evening in October with eleven and a half couple of snipe, shot between the Queen’s Hotel and the bathing pond on Cove Common.