The rumour came like a thunderbolt, and in every Army club the whispered communication ran: “Valentine Baker is arrested, by Gad!”
No man at this time had such a universal personality—the colonel of the crackest of all crack regiments; the admittedly best cavalry leader of the day; the patron of the drama, and in intimate touch with the Prince of Wales’s Theatre, then under the management of Marie Wilton, since developed into a pillar of Holy Church—the thing seemed incredible, and curiosity ran high to gaze upon the houri that had been so fatally misread by this experienced veteran.
The crowds that surrounded the Court House made access impossible; to hope for admission was the aspiration of a lunatic, when “Come this way, my lord”—as my companion was recognised—reached our ears, and we found ourselves under an open window, ten feet from the ground, at the back of the court.
“I’ll stand next the wall,” continued our guide, “and you get on my shoulders,” and then an acrobatic performance took place that would have insured an engagement at any music-hall.
The sequel is matter of history.
Years after—in ’94—I met him in Cairo, an altered, broken man, in daily expectation of being appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Army. But Nemesis had not done with him yet—prudery, hypocrisy, blue-stockingism were still rampant, and a telegram from London vetoed the intended appointment.
The official explanation was that a “cashiered man” could not command full-pay British officers with which the Egyptian Army swarmed, whilst the universal opinion was that a brave man was being hounded to his death under the cloak of that charity that flourished in its prime during the days of the Inquisition.
Next year he died in Egypt—broken in health and broken in heart—and those that knew his brilliant attainments, and the heights they would assuredly have led to, agreed that—like Napoleon—he should have died years before at the head of his men.
The Strand Theatre also was a highly popular resort, run exclusively by the Swanborough family and their numerous sisters, cousins, and aunts.
To “The Old Lady,” rightly or wrongly, was attributed every malaprop that ingenious wits invented, and in later years, when the Doré Gallery and the Criterion Restaurant simultaneously came into existence, she was reputed to have expressed intense admiration of the Doré masterpiece, “Christ leaving the Criterium.”