To one like him, more accustomed to the political platform and the style of address there required than to the ecclesiastical forms of the Church, it was natural he should sometimes forget the ceremonial style peculiar to the General Assembly. On one occasion he rose to second a motion, and inadvertently addressed the venerable Assembly not as 'Fathers and Brethren,' but as 'Gentlemen,' which immediately caused a titter to pass over the House. He at once became conscious of his mistake, and turning to the chair, said, 'Moderator, I am no theologian, nor am I an ecclesiastic; I am a soldier; I second the motion.' The brevity and pointed nature of this short speech drew out an appreciative cheer, and the motion was carried nem. con.
Though loving and serving his own Church faithfully and well, General Wauchope was no sectarian. He had seen too much of the world not to take a wide view of the brotherhood of Christianity. As the different regiments of one army serving a common cause, he viewed the various sections of the Church of Christ—whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, whether Established Church or Nonconformist, whether Episcopal or Presbyterian—as all members one with another of the great army of which the Lord Jesus Christ is the one Captain and Head. He could, and often did, extend a helping hand to one and all as he had opportunity. 'Wherever I am wanted, I shall be there, straight,' was his prompt and witty reply once to a 'heckler' at one of his political meetings, when asked how it was possible for him to serve both in Parliament and in the army. The same answer might have been given as to church and philanthropic demands made upon his sympathy. 'Wherever he was wanted' to advance any good object, he was ready to be 'there, straight.'
The spontaneous references made after his death from nearly every pulpit in Midlothian, and in various churches in England and Scotland—too numerous to quote—and the more formal deliverance of the General Assembly in May 1900, all bear testimony to the nation's grief over the loss of one who could ill be spared. These expressions may be found fittingly summarised in the words of one who knew the General well, and who was accustomed to experience his influence in his own parish of Liberton. The Rev. George Dodds, of the Free Church there, in concluding a memorial service in his church, and taking as his text 2 Samuel i. 25—'How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, slain in thine high places,' spoke as follows:—'Nothing which has hitherto occurred,' he said, 'and perhaps no casualty which can yet happen, could to any greater extent quicken our imagination to realise the horrors of war, and the desperate work these brave men face who fight our battles. The people of this parish will always remember the battle of Magersfontein as that which deprived them of one of whom they were more than proud. General Wauchope was a man whom every one loved, and it was little wonder. Anything else was impossible. A man so real, with no vestige of the actor about him; so free from narrowness both in church and political creed; so generous as a patron, so philanthropic as a gentleman among his people; so honourable as a public man, so brotherly as a neighbour—when shall we look upon his like again? ... Liberton parish knows what the army and the empire have lost, but our loss is one of those sacred things with which no outsider can intermeddle.... Much which I could tell of him makes me know with undying conviction that Andrew Gilbert Wauchope of Niddrie was one of the finest Christian gentlemen one could find in a lifetime.'
'Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,
Sleep the sleep that knows no breaking;
Dream of battlefields no more,
Days of danger, nights of waking.
No rude sound shall reach thine ear;
Armour's clang, or war-steed champing;
Trump nor pibroch summon here,
Mustering clan or squadron tramping.'
INDEX
Abu-Hammed, [147].
Albert, Prince, [32].