Every year we had a grand review of the whole Army of the contingencies. One year the Duke of Kent was the Review-Marshal. The last year of occupation, viz. the third, we had an immense sham-fight, which ended on the heights of Fimare, where the Army passed in review [23 Oct.] the Emperor of Russia, King of Prussia, the Grand Duke Constantine, the Grand Duke Michael, etc. In the course of the day the Duke, riding with their Majesties, saw Juana. He called her up and presented her to the Emperor of Russia, “Voilà, Sire, ma petite guerrière espagnole qui a fait la guerre avec son mari comme la héroine de Saragosse.” The Emperor shook her hands, and asked her to ride for some time with him as she spoke French fluently, when he put a variety of questions to her about the war in Spain, all of which she could answer as intelligently as most officers. At night she danced with the Grand Duke Michael, an excellent waltzer. When the Emperor’s courtiers observed the attention paid by the Emperor to my wife, they sought out the husband. I was in my Rifle uniform. One fellow said, “Are you aware to whom Madame has had the honour to be presented?” “To be sure,” I said, saucily, “and by whom—the greatest man in the world.”
That night, riding into Valenciennes on the pavé, both sides of the road being covered with troops marching to their cantonments, it was very cold, and I was clapping my hands on my shoulders, à l’anglaise, when my wife says, “You have lost your Star of the Bath.” I had felt something catch in the lace of my sleeve, so I turned back. A column of Russian Cuirassiers were marching over the ground I had traversed, and the sides of the road being excessively dusty, I said to myself, “What nonsense! I can never find it,” and was in the act of turning back to my wife, when a flat-footed dickey dragoon horse, having set his hollow foot upon it, tossed it under my horse’s nose out of the dust upon the pavé. It is a most ridiculous occurrence to record, but my astonishment at the time was excessive. The star was bruised by the horse’s foot, in which shape I wore it twenty-nine years.
The period of occupation was now reduced to three years, and the Army was prepared to withdraw—to our mortification, for we should have been delighted with two years more. It was now, on winding up my private accounts which had been miserably neglected, I discovered my money was far exceeded by my debts. I therefore, as one of my auxiliaries, put up to raffle, for 250 napoleons, a celebrated thoroughbred horse, the Young Lochinvar, by Grouse, out of Dab Chick, Vandyke’s dam. This horse I had bought for a large sum in my native town, just before the Battle of Waterloo, from a gentleman who had bought him at Newmarket for an immense price and whose circumstances compelled him to become a bankrupt. My father was aware of his pending situation, and just on the eve of it bought Lochinvar. I had ridden him hunting three years; he was the only horse in the Army that was never planted in the deep fields of France. As a horse he was as celebrated as His Grace was as a General, 16 hands high and equal to 14 stone, It went to my heart to part with him. My wife said, “Oh, I will have a ticket.” “Oh, nonsense, it is only throwing five napoleons away.” However, she had her own way, as wives always have (especially Spanish wives), and, by another piece of my continued good luck, her ticket won the horse, and I had Lochinvar in my stable, while the 245 napoleons readily found claimants. It was a piece of fortune I was very grateful for. I loved the horse, and he carried me in that stiff county of Kent afterwards, as he had ever done elsewhere.
From the day on which I presented my billet to my landlord in Cambray, I was much struck with his manly bearing and open conduct. He was a man of a large family, a Monsieur Watin, and his brother, also with a family, resided with him. He showed me all his house and his stables (he had built a kitchen and servants’ rooms for any one who should be quartered on him). He said, “In this life, happiness is not to be attained, but it must not be impeded. I am aware of the way French officers behave in quarters. I hear you English are less exigeant. This part of the house I reserve for myself and my brother, the rest I give to you.” And I certainly had the best, for he only reserved to himself one sitting-room. I said, “I have more than enough.” “No, no,” he said, “when you give a soirée you shall have this too.” I was three years in his house, and I never had a word with either him or any member of his family. On the contrary, nothing could be more amicable. In the course of the second year my father came and paid me a visit for near three months. Never was man more happy and delighted. He was fond of field sports and of flowers. The Bishop of Cambray had a magnificent garden, and many an hour did my father spend there. When he arrived, of course I begged him to tell us what he liked best at table. “Oh, anything,” he says, “only take care your French cook does not make the pastry with oil, which I know they do, but with butter.” I had an excellent cook, and I told him to be careful about his pastry, which was, of course, made with oil. Every day my father praised the pastry. After some weeks I let him into the secret. “Ah,” says he, “such through life is prejudice.” He was far from disliking French wines. The day he left us—“Well it is very true that you and the poor man of the house live very friendly, but you have the whole nearly. I shall go home now and pay my taxes with delight. Even were they double, readily would I pay rather than have such a fellow as you and your establishment quartered on me!” Poor dear father! I had been your pet son. Everything I practised that was manly, you taught me, and to my equestrian powers and activity, which first brought me into notice, did I owe my rapid rise in the service.
JOHN SMITH.
(Sir Harry Smith’s father.)
From a picture painted by J. P. Hunter, Somersham, Hunts, May, 1837.
[Opposite p. 314.