1894
In a letter written a little later, however, he confesses that it was not the attractions of the Durbar that took him so far out of his command at such a busy time of the year, but the expectation of seeing some one again whom he had recently met as she passed through Bombay. For the guests a Durbar week is a holiday; the General was a free man—he had only to look on and enjoy himself. There were many official functions where every one was gloriously apparelled, but he looked as splendid as any in that brilliant company; and there were many social festivities which afforded opportunity for daily intercourse. It was during the picturesque pageants of the Lahore Week that I came under the spell of the General's charm. To know him was to love him, as many another has since said to me. During that week we learnt to know one another, and at the end of it he wrote a frank manly letter to my father, Lord Davey, begging him to sanction the idea of our marriage. I regret that the kindly reply to his honest exposition of the whole matter has not been preserved; its purport being in accordance with our hopes, the engagement was made known, and I had the gratification of hearing my General's praises on all sides.
In some letters of December 1894 he intentionally writes about himself, and supplies us with the incentives which inspired him.
"I am always thinking of how I can get on, not for the sake of the money it brings, but for soldiering itself."
And again:
Soldiering first
"I hope you will not mind my love of soldiering and work; it has such a fascination for me, I am inclined to put it first always. But my love for you will stand out first, and your love for me will enable me to carry out my work at personal inconvenience to ourselves, won't it? You see I am cunningly trying to get you to overlook my endeavours to think of soldiering as the first thing, but, dear, you will always be in my heart all the time."
Perhaps it was by contrast with the slackness natural to the soft climate of Bombay that Gatacre's indomitable spirit attracted so much attention. Colonel James Arnott writes:
"Working, as I did, in the Civil Department, I had no official association with your husband, and it was only when he commanded the Bombay District that I got to know him at all well. I was much impressed by his keen interest in his profession, his strong esprit de corps, his enthusiasm for work, and the activity and strength which enabled him to carry it on in a way to stimulate others. I have a clear recollection of his active figure and his first-rate horsemanship, riding, as he often used to do, bare-backed, an indication of character and of those qualities so necessary in a soldier.
"General Gatacre took his share in everything of public interest in Bombay, but I shall only refer to the very successful Assault-at-Arms which he organised—the first and best thing of the kind that I saw in my long residence in Bombay."[[1]]