The illustrations in Millais’s Breath from the Veldt filled us with delight, and to this day I know of no etching that affects me as does the frontispiece by the author’s father. It is called the “Last Trek.” An old hunter is lying dead beside his ox-wagon; near him squat two of his Kafir boys, and in the distance graze herds of zebra and hartebeeste and giraffe.
Of the mighty hunters that still survived at that time, father admired most Mr. F. C. Selous. His books he knew almost by heart. Whenever Selous came to the United States he would stay with us, and father would sit up till far into the night talking of wild life in the open. Selous, at sixty-five, enlisted in the late war as a private; he rose to be captain, and was decorated with the D. S. O. for gallantry, before he fell, fighting the Germans in East Africa. No one could have devised a more fitting end for the gallant old fellow than to die at the head of his men, in a victorious battle on those plains he had roamed so often and loved so well, fighting against the worst and most dangerous beast of his generation.
In 1887 father founded a hunting club called the “Boone and Crockett” after two of the most mighty hunters of America. No one was entitled to membership who had not brought down in fair chase three species of American big game. The membership was limited to a hundred and I well remember my father’s pride when my brother and I qualified and were eventually elected members. The club interests itself particularly in the conservation of wild life, and the establishment of game refuges. Mr. Selous and other English hunters were among the associate members.
In the summer of 1908 my father told me that when his term in the White House ended the following spring, he planned to make a trip to Africa, and that if I wished to do so I could accompany him. There was no need to ask whether I wanted to go. At school when we were writing compositions, mine almost invariably took the form of some imaginary journey across the “Dark Continent.” Still, father had ever made it a practice to talk to us as if we were contemporaries. He would never order or even tell us to follow a certain line; instead, he discussed it with us, and let us draw our own conclusions. In that way we felt that while we had his unreserved backing, we were yet acting on our own initiative, and were ourselves responsible for the results. If a boy is forced to do a thing he often makes but a half-hearted attempt to succeed, and lays his failure to the charge of the person who forced him, although he might well have come through with flying colors had he felt that he was acting on his own responsibility. In his discussions with us, father could of course shape our opinions in what he thought the proper mould.
In like manner, when it came to taking me to Africa father wanted me to go, but he also wanted me to thoroughly understand the pro’s and con’s. He explained to me that it was a holiday that he was allowing himself at fifty, after a very busy life—that if I went I would have to make up my mind that my holiday was coming at the beginning of my life, and be prepared to work doubly hard to justify both him and myself for having taken it. He said that the great danger lay in my being unsettled, but he felt that taken rightly the experience could be made a valuable asset instead of a liability. After we had once finished the discussion and settled that I was to go, father never referred to it again. He then set about preparing for the expedition. Mr. Edward North Buxton was another African hunter whom he greatly admired, and it was to him and to Selous that he chiefly turned for aid in making his plans. It was often said of father that he was hasty and inclined to go off at half-cock. There was never any one who was less so. He would gather his information and make his preparations with painstaking care, and then when the moment came to act he was thoroughly equipped and prepared to do so with that lightning speed that his enemies characterized as rash hot-headedness.
Father always claimed that it was by discounting and guarding against all possible causes of failure that he won his successes. His last great battle, that for preparedness for the part that “America the Unready” would have to play in the World War, was true to his life creed. For everything he laid his plans in advance, foreseeing as far as was humanly possible each contingency to be encountered.
For the African expedition he made ready in every way. I was at the time at Harvard, and almost every letter brought some reference to preparations. One day it would be: “The Winchester rifles came out for trial and all of them were sighted wrong. I sent them back with rather an acid letter.” Then again: “You and I will be so rusty when we reach Sir Alfred Pease’s ranch that our first efforts at shooting are certain to be very bad. In March we will practise at Oyster Bay with the 30-30 until we get what I would call the ‘rifle sense’ back again, and this will make it easier for us when, after a month’s sea trip, we take up the business of hunting.”
A group of thirty or forty of the most famous zoologists and sportsmen presented my father with a heavy, double-barrelled gun. “At last I have tried the double-barrelled Holland Elephant rifle. It is a perfect beauty and it shoots very accurately, but of course the recoil is tremendous, and I fired very few shots. I shall get you to fire it two or three times at a target after we reach Africa, just so that you shall be thoroughly familiar with it, if, or when, you use it after big game. There is no question that except under extraordinary circumstances it would be the best weapon for elephant, rhino, and buffalo. I think the 405 Winchester will be as good for everything else.”
“About all my African things are ready now, or will be in a few days. I suppose yours are in good trim also