Of the other close friends and companions of Sir Harry Smith, Charles Beckwith died in July, 1862, among the Piedmontese whom he had served so truly; Sir John Bell in 1876, having lived to the age of ninety-four.[243] Sir Harry’s sister, Mrs. Sargant (of whom it has been humorously said that she was “the only person in the world of whom he was afraid”), died in 1869; his youngest sister, Miss Anna Maria Smith, in 1875; his brother, Colonel Thomas Smith, C.B.—the last survivor of the family of eleven—in 1877. Colonel Smith’s widow still lives at the age of ninety-three, fresh in body and mind, though it is ninety-three years since her husband sailed to the Peninsula under Sir John Moore.[244]
Few words are necessary in bringing this book to a close. If it has been a long one, the Editor can only plead that Harry Smith put more into his seventy odd years than would make the lives of half a dozen other men.
The autobiography shows us the strong family affections of his boyhood, his abiding reverence for his father, who had made him a man and a bold horseman, his love of brave soldiers like Colborne and Barnard and Pakenham, his supreme worship of his great master and example, Wellington. Such were the influences under which he was trained for the service of his Sovereign and of his country. In the hour of responsibility it was seen that he possessed in rare harmony qualities on which that training had not been thrown away—“an ardent spirit, which inflamed a whole army with kindred ardour, combined with a power of self-control which kept the mind clear and calm in the most difficult emergencies—the union of fiery passion with temperate reason.”[245] A born leader, he never lost the confidence of the officers and men who were under his command—he had it as clearly amid the anxieties and disappointments of the Kafir War of 1851-2 as after his marvellous campaign of Aliwal. His soldiers literally loved him, both for his bonhomie and for his lifelong zeal for their welfare.[246]
Sir Harry Smith was above all things a great soldier. In his civil administration of the Cape, undertaken at a time of enormous difficulty, his success was less brilliant than elsewhere, but even here he justified Havelock’s opinion of him: “There is no species of business which Harry Smith’s mental tact will not enable him to grasp.” History will approve of the firm stand he made against mob-rule in the time of the Anti-convict agitation, and, seeing events in true perspective, will forget little errors of judgment (magnified at the moment by party-feeling) when set side by side with his zeal for the good of the Colony and his far-sighted perception of England’s true policy in South Africa.
Such practical mistakes as Harry Smith made, both within the Colony and in his dealings with Kafir chiefs, were due to a generous, chivalrous disposition, which was ready to put the best construction on other people’s conduct and to attribute to them a goodness of heart resembling his own. With an open foe, in warfare, he was caution itself, but he was too little of a Macchiavelli to read treachery in the smile of a seeming friend. A generous open nature was similarly responsible for such flaws in his character as his hastiness and warmth of language under provocation,[247] as his extravagance in money matters (strangely contrasting with the severity in many respects of his own life), and a little vanity in regard to his own achievements, a vanity perhaps not more real than other men’s, but occasionally less carefully concealed. If he sometimes seemed to his subordinates an exacting master, we may remember that during his whole career as a soldier he had never spared himself.
If any one were disposed to take an unfavourable view of this or that trait in Harry Smith’s character, I hope the picture given of him in these pages would be a sufficient corrective. Praised by Wellington for his generalship as hardly any man else was praised, acknowledged by Havelock as the man who had made him a soldier, he had through life the warm respect and love of a score or two of brave and worthy men, such as D’Urban, and John Bell, and Kempt, and Barnard, and Kincaid, and George Simmons, and Charles Beckwith. They recognized his rare military genius: they respected him because, in his own words, he had always been “a working man who put his heart into his work:” they loved him for what Lord Raglan called “the chivalrous and gallant spirit” which had been his guide in his military career; because he was fearless of danger, indomitable in energy, overflowing in kindness, magnanimous and placable towards those who seemed his foes, loving his friends, even to his old age, with the ardour of a boy. Little wonder that one of the noblest and largest-hearted of women also pardoned his faults and adored him as only few men have been adored.
Historians may perhaps find some matter of instruction in the autobiography now presented to them. But is it too much to hope that it may have a still happier fortune, and that young Englishmen and Englishwomen yet unborn may be kindled to a noble emulation by the brave and glowing hearts of Harry and Juana Smith?