Your affectionate godfather,
Malcolm ffraser.
In short you must never forget that you may at times become responsible for the lives and honour of those under your command as well as for your own, and, it may even happen, for that of your King and Country, in some degree, and that you are to act accordingly. All this with more and much better you may read or hear from others; but I flatter myself that you will not think the less of it as coming from me.
It must be admitted that the soldier's ideal in that age for the British army was as high as our own. We are accustomed to think that a hundred years ago drunkenness was hardly accounted a vice. Perhaps it was not in civil life, but in the army, in young Nairne's time, sobriety was the rule. Writing on May 20th, 1807, he says that few in the army resort to drink, as a pleasure, even at Gibraltar, where wine is cheap and plentiful; the allowance in the regiment after dinner is but one-third of a bottle, and only now and then when there are guests is it usual to depart from this allowance. The deadly dullness and idleness of Gibraltar were its chief defects, the young officer thought.
There had been futile talk of peace. On August 13th, 1806, Ker wrote to Murray Bay from Edinburgh: "We expect to hear of Peace between this country and France. The Earl of Lauderdale has been sent to Paris to treat. But what sort of peace can we make with Bona Parte?" What sort indeed? Peace was not to come during Tom Nairne's lifetime. He was getting ready meanwhile for an enlarged career. At Gibraltar he pressed his guardian to purchase him a captaincy. Those were the bad old days when promotion in the army went largely by purchase and Tom had been Lieutenant for little more than a year when, at a cost of £1,000, Ker bought for him the desired rank; he attained to this dignity at the age of nineteen. The purchase strained his resources severely but his family got some comfort out of the thought that he was advancing. There was an excellent library at Gibraltar and he had good opportunities for self-improvement of which he promised to avail himself. But the promise was hardly realized. At any rate Tom gave a very poor account of his own doings for, after he had returned to England, he wrote to his mother (from Chelmsford Barracks on March 19th, 1808) a not very flattering account of himself at Gibraltar:
Only figure to yourself a rock, about two miles and a half in length and scarcely the fifth part of that in breadth, and then most likely you will not be so much astonished at my making the above comparison [of Gibraltar to a prison], from which you may wisely suppose that those unfortunate beings who had the misfortune of being shut up in it led a most inactive and stupid life.... However, to give the Devil his due, I must not omit to observe that it contained a most excellent Library, by which means officers might improve themselves greatly and spend their leisure hours to their credit, provided they were desirous of doing so; particularly as nothing existed in that place to take off their attention from study; and I make no doubt but some young men had the sense to profit by that favourable opportunity. At the same time [I] am extremely sorry to inform you your promising son did not, in any shape whatever, and am much concerned to add that he spent a very idle life whilst there, doing nothing else the live-long day than riding or lounging; which I presume you will think was a complete disgrace to any man of a liberal education, in which I perfectly agree with you.... I sincerely hope and trust that he [your son] will mend as he becomes older and wiser.
Tom confesses himself at this time "a complete idle, good for nothing fellow," but he disarms his mother's reproaches when he adds that he is chiefly occupied in thinking of her and of his large estate in Canada where he longs to be. It had for him a new attraction, since his cousin Alick Ker was just going out to Canada, a Captain on the staff of Sir James Craig, the new Governor, who was related to the Kers. For the time Tom's family was content that he should be at Gibraltar, where he was safe, and where, too, as Ker prudently says, "he lives cheaper than he could in England, has a genteel [how the age loved that word!] society and the use of a large Library." He rode on the sandy beach; sometimes, until the coming of the French troops, the British officers were allowed to ride into Spain.
These diversions all came to an end on August 26th, 1807, when Tom turned his back on Gibraltar for good. Incredible as it may now seem, the voyage to England took nearly a month; he arrived on the 24th of September. The young man had been turning over seriously his future prospects. In a letter to his mother he makes some enquiry about his own probable income from his estate. While protesting that he is himself "a Devilish ugly fellow" he has some thought of getting his mother to choose a "rib" for him and, presumptuous as it may seem, she must be handsome. He was thinking now of a civilian career. At Gibraltar he had found that he was short-sighted, and long sight seemed a necessity to a soldier. But Fraser, to whom he poured out his woe, answered that short-sightedness need not interfere with his efficiency; Colonel Nairne had been short-sighted and yet, withal, a successful officer; the question of sight would matter only if he was in command, in face of the enemy, and, even then, he could get assistance. Fraser advised him to stay in the army until he attained the rank of a field officer, when he might retire on half pay to his estate at Murray Bay, "extensive but not valuable in proportion." In truth Tom, tired of the army, was home-sick. He says to Fraser that he is "feeling an indescribable degree of anxiety to see my dearest mother, sisters, and yourself, not forgetting to include my estate, where I often figure myself, strutting about like unto a mighty Bashaw; which peaceful idea I sincerely hope will be realized, some day or other, if it pleases God to spare me so long; ... my only desire is now that blessed time may be near at hand or even that I could afford to set out to Murray Bay without any further delay. However it is proper to drown that wish, for the present, amongst the noise of arms, as the whole world is up against us, and my assistance, though little enough, God knows, may be of some use. At all events it would be tasting the sweets of this life before I had ever felt the miseries of it." He ends by asking that nothing of which he is possessed may be spared "towards making Alick Ker pass a pleasant time in Canada."
The fear which the old aunt had ingenuously expressed that Tom might prove too good to live was happily belied, for he appears to have been a sufficiently idle young fellow, though, as his watchful guardian wrote, "a good economist"; the same guardian thought this extremely opportune, since "Bona Parte," with all Europe under his heel, was making it lively for the fortunate islands, and forcing them to levy a tax of 10% on incomes. "This tax," writes the indignant banker, "is one of the many blessed fruits of the French Revolution, and of the horrible tyranny and perfidy of their rascally Emperor."
Not long did Tom remain in England. Soon he was off with his regiment to Sicily, at this period garrisoned by British troops, and saved by a strip of inviolate sea from the grasp of the master of Italy. The sojourn in Sicily must have been dull. He was stationed at Syracuse, but his school training had not gone deep enough to interest him in Thucydides's marvellous story of the siege of that place or in the antiquities of Sicily. The chief surviving record of his sojourn in Sicily is an account from his washerwoman, "Mrs. De Lass," dated at Syracuse the 8th of March, 1809. His distaste for the army was now complete. His sister Polly had ended her school days and, by a fortunate circumstance, had gone out to Canada "under the protection of Sir William Johnstone's lady" and to Canada Tom was himself resolved to go. Early in 1810, he was back in Edinburgh, taking a few weeks' holiday with the Kers, resolved to go on half pay at once, if possible, or, failing this, to sell out, and after a delay of fourteen or fifteen months, to go home to Murray Bay. The intervening time he intended to spend in the study of farming; he had almost completed a plan for going into Berwickshire to reside with a farmer and thus equip himself as a land owner. His friends thought him changeable. "The Captain," wrote Ker on the 30th of March, 1810, "is a sweet tempered good young man but he wants steadiness.... I fear that after trying to be a farmer at Murray Bay he may tire and want to return to the army." So serious was Tom about his future bucolic life that he wrote to his sister Christine, as he had written before to his mother, to ask whether she did not think he should look round for a wife; such a companion would be necessary, he thought, if he settled down as a farmer in Canada. We can imagine that the proposition, from a youth of twenty-three, caused some dismay among the occupants of the Manor House at Murray Bay; but Tom was soon professing himself something of a woman hater and he never married.