“We saw him, I am now thankful to say, when in town for a few days the middle of last month.
“I presume, from the intense agony he has endured, that he has succumbed to an attack of angina pectoris.
“What a friend we have lost! so true, so constant, so generous, so kind, and then to think of dear Lady Smith! I shudder to think of what her state will be when she comes to realize it.
“My wife is quite upset by it, and so am I.
“Always, my dear Payne,
“Yours very truly,
“Lawrence Shadwell.”
On the 12th October, at 1, Eaton Place West, which had been his home for the last six months, the end came. Sir Harry had reached the age of 73 on the 28th June preceding.
A year before, in sending his nephew George Moore Smith a subscription towards the restoration of St. Mary’s, Whittlesey, he had written, “I enclose a cheque for our subscription to the repairs of the Dear Old Church, which I do most willingly, and should do more willingly if our bones could repose with our fathers.” But though the church where his father and mother lay was closed for interments, he could still be taken to Whittlesey, and there in a corner of the new cemetery he was laid to rest on the 19th. All business in the little town was suspended for the day, and some thousands of the inhabitants of the town and district lined the route of the procession. The Rifle Corps of Ely, Wisbeach, March, Ramsey, and Whittlesey were represented at their own request, and with arms reversed preceded the hearse from the station to St. Mary’s Church, and thence to the cemetery. The coffin was borne by eight old soldiers who had all served under Sir Harry, and had all won medals; the pall-bearers were six Whittlesey gentlemen, most of them his schoolfellows. Among the mourners were his surviving “Waterloo brother,” Major Thomas Smith, his nephew Lieut.-Colonel Hugh Smith, Colonel Garvock, his Military Secretary at the Cape, and Colonel Shadwell, whose letter has been printed above. Three volleys were fired over the grave by the volunteers of Whittlesey, March, and Wisbeach.
A sum of £700 was subscribed to found a memorial to Sir Harry Smith’s memory, and was spent on the restoration of that part of St. Mary’s Church, Whittlesey—the chapel at the end of the south aisle—in which, when it was used as a schoolroom, he had received his early education.[238] It is now known as “Sir Harry’s Chapel.” On the south wall was erected a monument of white marble surmounted by a bust of Sir Harry, executed by Mr. G. G. Adams, A.R.A.[239] It bears the inscription:—
“This monument was erected and this chapel restored in 1862 by public subscription to the memory of Lieutenant-General Sir Harry G. W. Smith, Baronet of Aliwal, Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Colonel of the 1st Battalion, Rifle Brigade. He entered the 95th Regiment in 1805, served in South America, Spain, Portugal, France, North America, the Netherlands, India, and at the Cape of Good Hope, of which he was Governor and Commander-in-Chief from 1847 to 1852, and on the Home Staff to 1859, when he completed a most gallant and eventful career of fifty-four years’ constant employment. He was born at Whittlesey, 28th June, 1788,[240] and died in London 12th October, 1860. Within these walls he received his earliest education, and in the cemetery of his native place his tomb bears ample record of the high estimation in which his military talents were held by his friend and chief, the great Duke of Wellington.
“Coruna, Busaco, Fuentes d’Onoro, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria, Pyrenees, Nivelle, Nive, Orthez, Toulouse, Waterloo, Maharajpore, Ferozeshuhur, Aliwal, Sobraon, South Africa.[241]