BADEN-POWELL—THE MANNER OF MAN HE IS
THE BOY AND HIS PEOPLE
If it seems something of an impertinence to write about the life of a man who is still alive and apparently determined to be so for many years of energy and activity, it appears to be almost in the nature of a sacrilege to draw aside the veil which ought to shroud the privacy of his family life. Most English folk, whether they show it or not, are deeply in love with the sentiment expressed in Browning's lines,—
"A peep through my window if some should prefer,
But, please you, no foot over threshold of mine"—
but in the case of the Baden-Powell family many feet have already crossed the threshold, and many hands have drawn aside the curtain. It is not often that the lifting of the veil which usually hides English family life from the world's gaze reveals as charming and instructive a picture as is found in the contemplation of the people to whom the hero of Mafeking belongs. We all know that it is not necessary to spring from a great family in order to be a great man; we all know, too, that many a great family has produced a great fool. But when a great family does produce a great man the result is greater than could be obtained in any other way. Baden-Powell comes of a family-stock great in many ways, and were there reason or time for it, nothing could be more delightful or instructive than to endeavour to trace the connection between the main features and characteristics of his life and the hereditary influences which must needs have acted upon him. His ancestors have done so many fine things that one feels something like amazement to find their present day representative still adding lustre to the family name. According to the ordinary laws all the strength and virtue should have been exhausted in the stock ere now, but just as Baden-Powell himself is in certain ways a mysterious contradiction to things in general, laughing where other men would weep, and rising to great heights where most men would turn back to the valley in despair, so his family, after many generations of great activity, contradict the usual laws by increasing in strength and giving evidence of that growth and development which, as Dr. Newman told us in a remarkable sentence, is the only evidence of life.
Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell was born at 6, Stanhope Street, London, on the 22nd February, 1857. He was the seventh son of the late Rev. Baden-Powell, sometime Savilian Professor in the University of Oxford, and of Henrietta Grace, daughter of Admiral W.H. Smyth, K.S.F. Of his father the future defender of Mafeking can have known little; Professor Baden-Powell died when his seventh son was only three years old. He was a man of great talents, widely known as a profound student in the physical sciences and as an exponent of broad and tolerant theology, a frequent contributor of learned papers to the transactions of the Royal Society, and a whole-hearted lover of nature and of the sights and sounds of country life. One would like to know more of him, and of such intercourse as existed between him and his children. They, however, were separated from him at an early age and were left to the sole guidance and friendship of their mother. It is rarely that children have a mother so well equipped for the performance of a difficult task—Mrs. Baden-Powell is in all respects a great woman and eminently fitted to be the mother of a hero. She, like her husband, came of a stock eminent for its qualities. Her father, Admiral W.H. Smyth, was a well-known seaman of his day, and his children have all achieved eminence in one way or another. One of his sons, Warington, became Mineral Inspector to the Crown; another, Fiazzi, Astronomer Royal for Scotland; a third, General Sir Henry Smyth, after a distinguished military career, was Governor and Commander-in-Chief at Malta from 1890 to 1893. Of his two daughters, the younger, Georgina Rosetta, was married in 1858 to Sir W.H. Flower, the eminent scientist; the elder, Henrietta Grace, had previously married Professor Baden-Powell.
