Lord Wolseley was the typical example of the velvet glove covering a hand of steel. His outward appearance was that of a dandy, of a man more occupied with the cut of his clothes than with the fate of the world. Judged by his photographs he was precious and self-conscious, outwardly complaisant, inwardly arrogant; but his actions belied his appearance, although he harboured within himself a sort of dual personality. He had a keen inward sense of world-strangeness with a great desire to be in communion with the world; he had the tenderness of a woman, a devotion to and dependency upon his wife that was balanced by his happiness when he was at war; he had the strength of a lion in a frail body; the tenacity and obstinacy of a bull-dog and an indomitable courage; and withal he possessed the qualities of the thinker. He was neither boastful nor honour-seeking, yet he had taken his own measure early in life and without humility; he knew what he was worth to his country and to history, but he could not find it in him to push himself save by his own merit. He had one of the most important offices in the British Government, when he was still a very young man, and he did not attempt to use power or influence to raise himself to any undeserved honours.
The book takes in most of the great historical events of the fifty years that saw Wolseley active in his career, and as a survey of British history, no achievement could be at once more entertaining and more instructive. But what his biographers did not do was to explain some of the contradictions that Wolseley’s personality displayed. They leave the reader with the impression that he had great powers, but also great limitations. The latter may have been a puzzle to those who were intimate with him, but his biographers should have studied and explained them if they could. He may have inherited his “prettiness” from the grandmother “whose face was her only fortune” and his strength not only from the Wolseley side of his family which boasted of many a good officer, but also from his mother who had never been ill in her life and whose death left a gap in Wolseley’s heart that nothing could fill. She was strong, but she was pious too, and she brought up her son in such fervour of the Church that his biographers say he never spent a day without reading the Psalms. He found a second mother in his wife, Louisa Erskine, to whom he was profoundly beholden. “When they were parted the hours were carefully counted until he should hold her hand again.” All these made for manifold contradictions in his nature. Deeply religious, he thirsted for blood and war; adoring his wife, he accepted long periods of separation in the name of service; pre-eminently a man of action, he was capable of deep thought and vision.
Years before the War, he foresaw the power of Germany and he warned against it; he advocated the adoption by his country of some of Germany’s methods which, interpreted with the common sense of his people, would have minimised fear of the growing Teutonic power and enabled them successfully to deal with it. But his voice was not always heard and his perception of the future not often heeded.
The biographers of Lord Wolseley have mixed a good dose of hero-worship in their book; but they have done it with a sure hand, and with so much discrimination and taste that it is never offensive. Sir Frederick Maurice was his companion for several years, his alter ego during the campaign of Africa, and his devoted friend when sickness and trouble came to Lord Wolseley. Thus, Sir Frederick’s information was obtained directly, went through no deforming, exaggerating or reshaping process. Despite the gaps that occur now and then in the mental and moral formation of the hero, the book is invaluable to the student of modern English history. It should prove illuminating to military men and diverting to the general reader. But the story is of a soldier not of a man. There must have been something particularly interesting to say about him as a man; there is about all childless husbands. And the foundations of his admiration for the novels of Rhoda Broughton might have been unearthed and re-pointed.
Some day we shall have a book on the religiosity of great warriors. Lee, Wolseley, Gordon, Cadorna, de Castelnau, will figure in it conspicuously.
Major General Sir Frederick Maurice has given a firm grip to the hands across the sea. His book does not purport to be a life of Lee but an appreciation of his generalship. Regrettably, however, he paints a picture of him as son, husband, parent and citizen, which his kin will perhaps not recognise, and which I believe is not a good likeness.
General Maurice has been studying for more than twenty years the military life of Lee, the campaigns he conducted and the battles he fought. Therefore it can not be said that he has indulged in hasty conclusions or snap judgments. For a soldier of his distinction, a student of military science of his information to say that the name of Robert E. Lee must be added to the roster on which are inscribed the names of those who guessed the secret of the art of war: Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Gustavus, Turenne, Eugène and Frederick is praise indeed. A British soldier who places Lee above Wellington as a commander must be sure of himself and of his facts. Appreciation and estimation of this sort is food that nourishes the Entente Cordiale. It is so much more palatable and assimilable than the “one blood, common language” variety.
After a brief chapter on the Lees of Virginia, the burden of which is that the family had all the virtues save humour and the immortal descendant all save the one that Hermes had to a superlative degree, he takes up at once Lee’s training as a soldier, stressing his experience in the war of 1845. “No matter how sure a man may be of his nerves, he is the better soldier when those nerves have been tested under fire and found reliable and the better leader from the confidence in himself which such experience provides.” Lee’s nerves were tested and found perfect at Chapultepec. He returned from Mexico at the age of 42 with a reputation established. “And it was not confined to his own country. Representatives of the Cuban junta offered him the command of an expedition to overthrow the Spanish control of the island. Instead of accepting, he hastened to inform the Secretary of War of the proposal and his reasons for declining it.”
Commenting on trained and untrained commanders, General Maurice writes, “Courage, physical and moral, common sense, readiness to accept responsibility, the power to grasp quickly the essential of a situation, and to form speedy decisions, these are not gifts which are confined to regular soldiers nor have many regular soldiers possessed all or even most of these gifts. The possession of them will make any man a leader whether in peace or in war.” He quotes with fullest approbation General Forrest’s explanation of his successes: “I get there fustest with the mostest men,” and adds, “We have in those eight words the gist of many volumes of Jomini and Clausewitz.”