OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
"Who won the battle of Tel-el-Kebir?" "I, said Cock Hamley, I won Tel-el-Kebir with my Highland Brigade." Mr. Innes Shand's life of General Sir E. B. Hamley (Blackwood) is obviously published with chief intent of placing in permanent form Hamley's claim in respect of this engagement. It is not a new story. It was published to the world soon after the event in the pages of a monthly magazine. The article, a model of terse, lucid, yet picturesque writing, is reproduced in these volumes. Whether accurate in detailed assertion and induction, or coloured by strong feeling, it is a melancholy story. Either Hamley was deliberately ignored in the Commander-in-Chief's despatches after Tel-el-Kebir, or he was under a remarkable hallucination. The affair is all the more curious since Sir Garnet Wolseley, as soon as he was appointed to the Egyptian command, sought out Hamley and offered him the command of one of the divisions of the expeditionary force. The secret of the estrangement which soon developed between the two soldiers is, my Baronite suspects, to be found in the characteristic fact that the very day the ship conveying Sir Garnet Wolseley arrived at Alexandria, Hamley went on board and proposed to show his chief how the enemy should be attacked. "He did not seem to wish to pursue the subject," Hamley writes in his diary, "and I soon after took leave." Other incidents, which Hamley hotly resented, culminated in the despatch to the War Office reporting the fight at Tel-el-Kebir, and ignoring the Highland Brigade, which, in the view of its commander, had borne the brunt of the battle. Some day Lord Wolseley may give his version of the affair. Meantime it gloomily stands forth in this record of a strenuous but, on the whole, a disappointed life. It is pleasant to learn that Hamley gratefully recognised in one of Mr. Punch's Cartoons a powerful incentive to the course of public feeling which postponed his being shelved under the operation of the scheme of compulsory retirement by reason of age. The most charming passages in the book are the correspondence with the late Mr. Blackwood, who opened to General Hamley the avenue to literary fame.
One of my Baronites of Irish extraction writes thusly:—"A Tale of the Thames is the title of the Summer Number of The Graphic. It is written by J. Ashby-Sterry, and illustrated by William Hatherell. The course of the story—or, rather, the watercourse of the story—covers a good deal of ground, embracing as it does, on both sides, most places of interest between the Source in Trewsbury Mead, Gloucestershire, and Hampton Court." Quoth the Baron, "I am all anxiety to see this tale of the Thames uncoil itself."
The Baron welcomes a comparatively "handy" volume ("handy" relative term, depending on size of hand) of reference, entitled, Men and Women of the Time, new edition, brought out by Messrs. George Routledge, edited by Mr. Plarr of Oxford; and the plat that is set before the public and the Baron appears to be a thoroughly satisfying one. "The first name for which I naturally looked," quoth the Baron, "was that of Routledge himself, but searching from Rossi, through Roumania, to Rowbotham, nowhere did I light upon the name of Routledge. Master Millais is here, also Miller, likewise Mills; but I do not see the name of the author of the 'Arry Papers, the inventor of 'Arry in these columns, of immortal fame. "Name him!" In every other respect the compilers and publishers are to be congratulated, and do hereby stand congratulated, on their work by the ever-appreciative
Baron de B.-W.
THE TWO GRACES.
["There was something pathetic in seeing old W. G. and young W. G. at the wicket together. It is not often we see father and son together at the wicket in first-class cricket."—The Star on the M. C. C. v. Kent match at Lords.]