“You see I have, after all, inserted a little preface. I thought it necessary to explain the object of the book, lest it might seem superfluous where it coincides with orthodox teaching, and offensively daring where it diverges from it. Your cousin’s doubt about my Christianity lasting till she reached the end of Intuitive Morals, made me resolve to forestall in this case any such danger of seeming to fight without showing my colours. You see I have now nailed them mast-high. But though I have done this, I cannot say that it has been in any way to make converts to my own creed that I have written this book. I wanted to show those who are already Theists, actually or approximately, that Theism is something far more than they seem commonly to understand. I wanted, too, to show to those who have had their historical faith shaken, but who still cling to it from the belief that without it no real religion is possible, that they may find all which their hearts can need in a faith purely intuitive. Perhaps I ought rather to say that these objects have been before me in working at my book. I suppose in reality the impulse to such an undertaking comes more simply. We think we have found some truths, and we long to develop and communicate them. We do not sit down and say ‘Such and such sort of people want such and such a book. I will try and write it.’”
The plan of this book is simple. After discussing in the first chapter the Canon of Religious Duty, which I define to be “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and soul and strength,”—I discuss, in the next chapter, Religious Offences against that Law,—Blasphemy, Hypocrisy, Perjury, &c. The third chapter deals with Religious Faults (failures of duty) such as Thanklessness, Irreverence, Worldliness, &c. The fourth, which constitutes the main bulk of the book, consists of what are practically six Sermons on Thanksgiving, Adoration, Prayer, Repentance, Faith, and Self-Consecration.
The book has been very much liked by some readers, especially the chapter on Thanksgiving, which I reprinted later in a tiny volume. It is strange in these days of pessimism to read it again. I am glad I wrote it when my heart was unchilled, my sight undimmed, by the frozen fog which has been hanging over us for the last two decades. An incident connected with this chapter touched me deeply. My father in his last illness permitted it to be read to him. Having never before listened to anything I had written, and having, even then, no idea who wrote the book, he expressed pleasure and sympathy with it, especially with a passage in which I speak of the hope of being, in the future life, “young again in all that makes childhood beautiful and holy.” It was a pledge to me of how near our hearts truly were, under apparently the world-wide differences.
My father was now sinking slowly beneath the weight of years and of frequent returns of the malarial fever of India,—in those days called “Ague,”—which he had caught half a century before in the Mahratta wars. I have said something already of his powerful character, his upright, honourable, fearless nature; his strong sense of Duty. Of the lower sort of faults and vices he was absolutely incapable. No one who knew him could imagine him as saying a false or prevaricating word; of driving a hard bargain; of eating or drinking beyond the strictest rules of temperance; least of all, of faithlessness in thought or deed to his wife or her memory. His mistakes and errors, such as they were, arose solely from a fiery temper and a despotic will, nourished rather than checked by his ideas concerning the rights of parents, and husbands, masters and employers; and from his narrow religious creed. Such as he was, every one honoured, some feared, and many loved him.
Before I pass on to detail more of the incidents of my own life, I shall here narrate all that I can recall of his descriptions of the most important occurrence in his career—the battle of Assaye.
In Mr. George Hooper’s delightful Life of Wellington (English Men of Action Series) there is a spirited account of that battle, whereby British supremacy in India was practically secured. Mr. Hooper speaks enthusiastically of the behaviour, in that memorable fight, of the 19th Light Dragoons, and of its “splendid charge,” which, with the “irresistible sweep” of the 78th, proved the “decisive stroke” of the great day. He describes this charge thus:—
... “The piquets, or leading troops on the right were by mistake led off towards Assaye, uncovering the second line, and falling themselves into a deadly converging fire. The Seventy-Fourth followed the piquets into the cannonade, and a great gap was thus made in the array. The enemy’s horse rode up to charge, and so serious was the peril on the right that the Nineteenth Light Dragoons and a native cavalry regiment were obliged to charge at once. Eager for the fray, they galloped up, cheering as they went, and cheered by the wounded; and, riding home, even to the batteries, saved the remnants of the piquets and of the Seventy-Fourth.” (P. 76.)
My father, then a cornet in the regiment, carried the regimental flag of the Nineteenth through that charge, and for the rest of the day; the non-commissioned officer whose duty it was to bear it having been struck dead at the first onset, and my father saving the flag from falling into the hands of the Mahrattas.
The Nineteenth Light Dragoons of that epoch wore a grey uniform, and heavy steel helmets with large red plumes, which caused the Mahrattas to nickname them “The Red Headed Rascals.” On their shoulders were simple epaulettes made of chains of some common white metal, one of which I retrieved from a heap of rubbish fifty years after Assaye, and still wear as a bracelet. The men could scarcely have deserved the name of Light if many of them weighed, as did my father at 18, no less than 18 stone, inclusive of his saddle and accoutrements! The fashion of long hair, tied in “pig tails,” still prevailed; and my father often laughingly boasted that the mass of his fair hair, duly tied with black ribbon, had descended far enough to reach his saddle and to form an efficient protection from sabre cuts on his back and shoulders. Mr. Hooper estimates the total number of the British army at Assaye at 5,000; my father used to speak of it as about 4,500; while the cavalry alone, of the enemy were some 30,000. The infantry were seemingly innumerable, and altogether covered the plain. There was also a considerable force of artillery on Scindias’ side, and, commanding them, was a French officer whose name my father repeatedly mentioned, but which I have unfortunately forgotten.[[12]] The handful of English troops had done a full day’s march under an Indian sun before the battle began. When the Nineteenth received orders to charge they had been sitting long on their horses in a position which left them exposed to the ricochet of the shot of the enemy, and the strain on the discipline of the men, as one after another was picked off, had been enormous; not to prevent them from retreating—they had no such idea,—but to stop them from charging without orders. At last the word of command to charge came from Wellesley, and the whole regiment responded with a roar! Then came the fire of death and men and officers fell all around, as it seemed almost every second man. Among the rest, as I have said, the colour-sergeant was struck down, and my father, as was his duty, seized the flag from the poor fellow’s hands as he fell and carried it, waving in front of the regiment up to the guns of the enemy.
In one or other of the repeated charges which the Nineteenth continued to make even after their commanding officer, Colonel Maxwell, had been killed, my father found himself in hand to hand conflict with the French General who was in command of the Mahratta artillery. He wore an ordinary uniform and my father, having struck him with his sabre at the back of his neck, expected to see terrible results from the blow of a hand notorious all his life for its extraordinary strength. But fortunately the General had prudently included a coat of armour under his uniform; and the blow only resulted in a considerable dent in the blade of my father’s sabre; a dent which (in Biblical language) “may be seen unto this day,” where the weapon hangs in the study at Newbridge.