Looking Back

by Sir Seymour John Fortescue

One way and another I spent a very pleasant winter, and a good deal of it was passed at a very amusing little club that was established for a short time at 87, St. James’s Street, where whist was played for moderate points, and where, moreover, I met a number of very pleasant people. 87, St. James’s Street was then a very curious house and stood on the site of the new post-office buildings. Mr. Tom Wallace, the well-known wine merchant, occupied the basement. He was a conspicuous figure in London, especially in St. James’s Street, for he was in the habit of sitting in a chair on the pavement in front of his business premises, smoking his cigar there, and exchanging courtesies with his large circle of friends, who were almost sure to pass that particular corner at some time in the morning or early afternoon.

On the ground floor there was a Starting Price Betting Office, one of the very first of its kind to be inaugurated in London, and on the first floor was the Whist Club before alluded to. I was accused of assisting the members of that institution to sit up till unconscionable hours, for when it got very late (or rather very early in the morning) the most reasonable thing for me to do, seemed to consist in sitting up until the first train could convey me to Greenwich in time for a mathematical lecture, and, naturally, I was not anxious to sit up alone, and play patience!

It was there that I first made the acquaintance of a lifelong friend of mine, Mr. Cecil Clay. He was one of the sons of the well-known Major Clay, who was for many years Radical Member for Hull, and was counted as the greatest living authority of his day on the science of whist. His son Cecil was a worthy successor to him; not only a fine player, he was, as he still is, a delightful man both as a companion and one of the wittiest of raconteurs. In those days he lived in a charming little house in Park Street, where I have certainly been to the most amusing Sunday luncheon parties that I can remember. Hostess and host were both the perfection of courtesy and kindness, and all the cleverest and most agreeable people in the dramatic profession were to be met there. I will mention only two of the habitués—who, alas! have both passed away, but were then young and bubbling over with wit and gaiety—Herbert Tree and Charles Brookfield. They were both constant guests, and those of my contemporaries who were fortunate enough to have met them in their irresponsible youth, will remember what a pleasure it was to be with them, and to take a part in all the clever chaff that used to pass between them. But, somehow, this amusing life in London did not amalgamate very well with high mathematics, and it became more and more evident to me that a change would be welcome.

In February 1885 it became necessary to send a large force to Souakim. For this large force adequate sea-transport was needed, and to my great good fortune, a staunch friend of mine, Captain John Fellowes (subsequently Admiral Sir John Fellowes) was selected as head of it. The Admiralty could not possibly have chosen a better man. He was full of resource, full of the wisdom of the serpent, was a glutton for work himself, and had the knack of extracting the last ounce of work out of his subordinates. I lost no time in going to him, and he at once applied to the Admiralty asking that I should be appointed as one of the transport officers to serve under him. My relative, Lord Alcester, was back at the Admiralty as First Sea Lord, and once more I had to interview him in his stronghold. This time he really was annoyed. He pointed out that in one year I had been something like six different kinds of Lieutenants, that the Admiralty had had enough of me, and I really believe (kindest of men though he was) that his principal reason for acceding to my request, and Captain Fellowes’ application, was the vague chance that, in the Red Sea, a severe sunstroke might settle me and my business for ever.

Having obtained my point, I was in the seventh heaven of delight, and before carrying out the first order I received from the Admiralty, which was to go over to Kingstown, I went to pay a farewell visit to my friends at 87, St. James’s Street. Tom Wallace, previously alluded to, assured me that he had made a close study of Egyptian warfare (I suppose from the strategic corner of St. James’s Street and Pall Mall!), and that it was absolutely essential that any officer called on to serve in that trying climate should be suitably equipped in the way of wine. So the kind man fitted me out then and there with six dozen of excellent champagne and three dozen of remarkably sound port, on the understanding that if I came back I might pay for it at my leisure, and, if anything untoward happened, it obviously would not matter to me and very little to him. Another kind friend insisted on my standing in with him in a bet he had taken on a horse which was expected to win the Grand National, so I started for Ireland feeling that anyhow my campaigning kit would compare favourably with that of any one else, consolidated as it was by nine dozen of wine and a bet on the great Steeplechase.

Another farewell visit that I paid was to the Transport Department of the Admiralty, where I tried to glean some information about my duties. All I could get out of them was that, for the time being, I was appointed transport officer of the Lydian Monarch, a vessel that had been hired to convey a regiment of Lancers to Souakim or elsewhere, that I was to embark these troops at Kingstown, but when I tried to find out what authority was vested in me when on board a hired transport, nothing could I discover. In fact it was conveyed to me in a general way that my duties and responsibilities would solvitur ambulando, and with these vague directions I was obliged to be content.

To Kingstown I accordingly went in the night boat, and I must say that Ireland, which I was visiting for the first time, fully kept up its reputation for “divarsion,” for anything like the comicality of the scenes which I witnessed, when engaged next day in the embarkation of that distinguished Cavalry regiment, would need the pen of a Charles Lever to do them justice. On arriving on board the Lydian Monarch the first thing in the morning, I received a telegram from headquarters at Dublin, to the effect that a dismounted party would arrive from the barracks at 8 a.m. to make any further preparations which they might find necessary for the embarkation, and that the regiment would arrive about 11 a.m. About 9 a.m. the dismounted party arrived under the command of a very young subaltern. One of the first pieces of information of which I was in need, was whether the regiment was bringing lances or not. I had been told in London that they probably would not, but it was necessary to know, for they are very dangerous tools on board a ship if not properly stowed. I well knew their propensities for getting in the way and putting people’s eyes out from my personal acquaintance with that ancient weapon, the boarding pike, which was still part of our equipment on a man-of-war. When neither the youthful subaltern in charge of the party, nor any of the men under his command, could provide me with this very elementary piece of information, I began to fear the worst, and rather expected that the embarkation would be attended with some few difficulties. About three-quarters of an hour after the appointed time the regiment arrived, and if I, and the sailors of the Lydian Monarch rocked with laughing at seeing so many drunken men, it was nothing to the rocking that the Lancers were doing in their saddles before they had been successfully dismounted. Being convinced that nothing in the way of work was to be expected from the men of the regiment, I succeeded in borrowing a working party of bluejackets from the guardship to help tie up the horses, which is always rather a ticklish business. We got on famously with our work for some time, but, unfortunately, there was so much whisky about that the bluejackets were, very soon, all more or less drunk too. By this time the day was closing in, we were anxious to sail before dark, and the situation was not particularly promising. The Military Authorities in Dublin had meanwhile been told how things were not progressing, and presently the Commander-in-Chief in Dublin and his Staff arrived on the scene. Fortunately the horses were at last all on board (poor brutes! some of them had been standing with their saddles off in the snow for hours, for, in addition to our other difficulties, there was some inches of snow on the ground), and the next thing was to discover where the men of the regiment were. It was rumoured that a good many of them had left the immediate vicinity of the ship, and had wandered off, still being thirsty, to the numerous public-houses in the neighbourhood. Mercifully, a trumpeter, who was fairly sober, could be produced, and presently a swaying line of dismounted Lancers formed itself on the quay opposite the ship. There were a good many absentees, but the Commander-in-Chief decided to send the ship to sea, so away we went, and, in justice to a very fine regiment, I may mention that eventually the so-called absentees were all found on board the ship. One of them, I remember, did not turn up for three days, he having been buried during the whole of that time under a heap of kit bags, and when rescued was very much more dead than alive from a combination of suffocation and sea-sickness.

Unfortunately, there was a considerable clamour raised about what was described as a disgraceful scene, and the usual lurid descriptions were published of what really was a very trifling affair. The Commanding Officer had, perhaps, been a little over good-natured in letting his men out of barracks the night before they embarked, and very naturally the men had celebrated the occasion in the usual way. The rest was due to Irish hospitality, and to the sentiment that existed in those days in an Irish mob (a sentiment which, alas! owing to politicians of all kinds, exists no longer)—the love of the Irish for a soldier, especially if he happened to be an Irish cavalryman.

By way of making the story of the embarkation more sensational still, some enterprising Dublin journalist calmly took upon himself to sink the Lydian Monarch with all hands a few hours afterwards in the Irish Channel, and, as it did happen to blow very heavily at the time, a good deal of pain and anxiety was caused to those who had relatives and friends on board her. However, this lie was contradicted pretty soon, and we had the pleasure, on arriving at Souakim, of hearing that the delinquent had been imprisoned for circulating a mischievous story for which there was no foundation. We, out there, thought that hanging was much too good for him; but on reflection it was probably only a sense of dramatic fitness that impelled him to start the rumour, and, moreover, people have no right to believe any sort of rumour when a war is on, not more than one in a hundred being ever well founded.

We had hardly got fairly started on our journey before we picked up a real gale in the Channel, and I very soon discovered what fine material there was in the regiment. The ship was rolling very heavily, and nearly all the officers and men were prostrated with sea-sickness, and, moreover, had not yet found their sea-legs. As far as the crew was concerned, like all merchant ships, she only carried just enough men to do the necessary duties connected with the ship, and had certainly none to spare to look after the cargo, so it fell to the lot of two or three of the officers of the regiment, and perhaps half-a-dozen non-commissioned officers, who had managed to overcome their sea-sickness, and myself (because I had nothing else to do), to look after the horses. A great many had been cast in their stalls, owing to the very amateur fashion in which they had been tied up, and it was no light job to get the poor struggling animals on to their legs again and secure them properly with the ship rolling heavily. It was an all-night business; those few soldiers worked like heroes, and I, though I knew little about horses, could make myself useful, for a sailor does know how to tie a knot. It was therefore to the credit of all concerned that we never lost a horse at the time, though later on a few succumbed to violent pneumonia, brought on, I suppose, by the sudden change from severe cold to the appalling heat of the horse deck.