by John Buchan
Whether or not he was accompanied by these aids to reflection, Melgund had a strenuous and varied summer. “You may or may not be surprised to hear,” he writes to his mother, “that I am on the point of leaving my native country. I shall probably start for Constantinople at the beginning of the week after next, viz., about the 1st May. I am by way of going as correspondent to the Morning Post with the Turkish Army, but by the present understanding I am only making use of the Post in order to give me a position of some sort, and can please myself about writing to them. Besides this there is a chance of my getting something to do which will suit me much better — something for the Intelligence Department. I went to-day to see Colonel Home, the head of the Department. He seems a capital fellow, and he wants me to go to a place on the Black Sea a little north of Varna to find out all I can about the country there and to let him know about it, which he says would be most useful to them, as they are thoroughly acquainted with all the country that lies directly between the Danube and Constantinople, whereas the piece of country they want me to go to they know nothing of. I shall probably do this, but I should think it would be in the shape of a separate expedition, and that after that I should be attached to some staff. Uncle Henry * seems to think I shall go with every advantage, and that I am sure to get on like a house on fire; in fact, I am delighted with it all.”
* Sir Henry Elliot, P.C., K.C.B., Ambassador at Constantinople.
The journal describes the itinerary. On 2nd May he wrote: —
“Arrived in Venice about 8 p.m. this evening. Lovely view of the Alps this morning after leaving Turin: made out Monte Rosa and the Lyskamm distinctly and got a glimpse of the Matterhorn. I love the mountains, and this morning, when I first found myself among them before arriving at Turin, it gave me an indescribable feeling of excitement. I suppose it is the recollection of the adventures I have had amongst them, and when I look back now I look upon them and the guides as old friends. There is no better man than a good Swiss guide, and Peter Bohren and Melchior Anderegg and the Lancriers keep jumping up in my memory.
“I am delighted with the first appearance of Venice; it seems to me enchanting, and makes me wish to live here, and, like all places of the sort, makes one wish for some one else to see it with. However, that is all the twaddle of one’s existence — the realities are the thing after all.”
Melgund was in close touch with the Intelligence Department at the War Office, and was associated with Colonel Lennox, the British Military Attache at Cairo. In Constantinople he was impressed, like other people, by the scandals of the Turkish Government. Thence he went to Adrianople, Rustchuk, and Turtukai, meeting Osman Pasha. He then joined Lennox at Shumla, where he had a chance of studying Turkish military arrangements.
The following are extracts from his letters to his mother: —
“May 28. — Got back here (Shumla) this morning after a most interesting expedition to Rustchuk and Turtukai. We spent the whole of Friday going over the forts there: pretty strong! The bombardment of the town was expected to begin at any moment, and we could see the Russian batteries on the opposite side from the Turkish forts above the town. We spent the evening at Mr. Reid’s (the English Consul) house, where all the consuls were gathered together in a tolerable state of excitement. The extraordinary thing is that the Turks should have allowed the Russians to throw up these batteries under their very noses, occupying, as they do, much the stronger position. But they have done nothing to annoy them, and not a Turk dare show his face, and there were we, the General, the Chief of the Staff, and myself, all hiding behind trees, when really, looking at the positions of the two combatants, it is the Russians who should have been afraid of showing themselves!
“June 20th. — (Varna.) Lennox, Chermside, and I came on here from Rustchuk yesterday. I have seen an immense lot, and come in for all the fighting — but before writing more I send you a copy of a letter which I got this morning from Sir Collingwood Dickson which I think will please you. Perhaps it is lucky that I should have had to report on the very line of road on which the Russians have since landed.
“‘THERAPIA, June 28, 1877.
“‘DEAR LORD MELGUND, — Mr. Layard is so very busy that he has not time to write to you himself, but he has requested me to thank you for your kind contributions to the public service in your reports on the Turkish Cavalry and Horse Artillery at Shumla, and in that lately received upon the road travelled by you between Rustchuk, Sistova, and Nicopoli. Both these reports were perused with much interest by the Ambassador and myself, and the latter I think so highly of that I requested Mr. Layard in sending it to mark that it should be forwarded to the Intelligence Department as an itinerary well worthy their attention.’
“On 26th June Lennox woke me up by telling me that the game had begun. I went out to the ridge of hills facing the Danube close to the Turkish batteries and stayed there till the firing was nearly over. The Russian practice was very good, shells pitching constantly on top of batteries and on the edge of infantry trenches.
“That evening I shall never forget. We went out to a cliff close to the town: the town itself is in a valley between a clock tower and the Fortress. All the Russian batteries were firing. I watched the flash from the Russian guns and took the time. While all this was going on there was the most magnificent sunset you ever saw! Try and imagine a dark stormy evening with a brilliant red sky, distant lightning, and the smoke from the guns rolling over the valley. It was a wonderful sight, and then, suddenly, a Russian signal blazed up, and another, and another; probably they had something to do with the crossing that took place early next morning.
“On the 27th we left Nicopoli for Sistova, and, on getting near, found that the Russians had crossed about 1 a.m. and were still crossing. Six battalions of Turks were entirely defeated this side. I could not, owing to the lie of the ground, see the exact spot where the Russians were crossing, but I saw their troops on this side, and the Turks in retreat. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and the roads were crowded with people flying from the enemy — Turkish troops straggling for miles.
“The next day Lennox sent Chermside and me to Rustchuk to try to get some letters which were supposed to be lying at the Consulate. Rustchuk was terribly knocked about, and the Kanak, which had been turned into a hospital, was almost entirely burned out. How on earth they got any one out alive I can’t make out. As it was, they got all their sick away, none being killed, though I believe seventeen were wounded, and the two men on duty at the door were killed.
“When Chermside and I arrived at the Consulate we naturally found it locked up, Mr. Reid (the Consul) having left when that part of the town became impossible to stay in: we went all round the house but failed to find any way into it. At last, by the help of a Turkish officer, I got over the garden wall and in at a back window into Mr. Reid’s study, and from there into the room where the letters were supposed to be. At first I found nothing but a few old newspapers, and was going to give it up as a bad job when I happened to look into a cupboard full of all sorts of rubbish, and there, to my delight, I found all the letters. One of them, addressed to Lennox, was open, and Mr. Reid had written on the back of it “Torn open by a Russian shell.” I believe the letters had rather a narrow squeak of being demolished. I got back again over the garden wall with my spoil, and we returned to Rustchuk. . . . I have just come back from an evening visit to Mrs. Nejib Pasha. She has nearly smoked and drunk me under the table. Before dinner she dosed me with vermouth, she sitting cross-legged on her divan, and after dinner primed me with bitters. . . .
“July 11th. — I arrived at Osmanbazar on the 13th. The town, being chiefly Bulgarian, was nearly deserted by the Turkish inhabitants, who had fled for fear of the Bulgarians, while the Bulgarians themselves were very much frightened of the few Turks who remained in the town, as they were armed to the teeth. Said Pasha was there, though he was to leave at once for Shumla. He appeared very nervous about the state of affairs, and much incensed at reports of atrocities by Bul
garians.
“I am afraid I shall not come home a great Turk! Unless Suliman’s lately arrived force wins a great battle in front of Adrianople there is nothing on earth to prevent the Russians going to Constantinople, and it seems to me only natural that a victorious army, such as they are, will expect to enter the capital. I doubt the Czar, should he wish to do so, having the power to stop such an entrance, and still more doubt the wish or the power he may have, if once there, of ordering the army out again. We are too late to stop it now.”
In July Melgund, whose health was suffering from the effects of the climate, was compelled to return home. With his Turkish journey closed the stage of his life when he was content to seize the interest of the flying hour, whether it came in the shape of sport or adventure. He had long been far from contentment, and Mr. Southwell, from his country rectory, made it his business to fan the dissatisfaction and urged a political career. “I do not see,” he wrote in September 1877, “why you should hold, so to speak, an amphibious position. You say you cannot go in for politics, but can find work if the war continues. Now if you were a younger son I could understand your embracing war, but being the elder, and likely to be a permanent fixture, surely you must want work that does not depend on an ‘if.’ You have industry and pluck. Industry may not make you an orator, but it can make you a very tolerable speaker, and pluck will give you cheek in time. Life is short, and you will fritter it away, and will have nothing to do as you grow older but eat and sleep and be weary of life.” The writer returned to the charge a month later, and besought his friend to “set his head for Parliament.” “I hope to hear from henceforth that you are a changed man; that hunting, steeplechasing, and horses generally are regarded by you as instruments of recreation after severe work; in short, that you have woken from sleep and have put away childish things.”
But the matter was more complex than the honest hunting parson realized. “You have a noble soul,” he told Melgund, “one of the noblest, but a short-sighted, material-interest mind.” In this last phrase Mr. Southwell’s acumen failed him. It was precisely because he cared so little for worldly wisdom that Melgund’s problem was hard. A man more worldly-wise would have used the advantages given him by his birth, connections, and wide popularity to build up one of those undistinguished parliamentary careers which are possible even for the dullest, and which lead so many mediocrities to high office. Being singularly honest with himself, he believed that he had no real talent for political life, and if he could not make a true success, he would not be content with a sham one. In life, as in sport, he insisted upon the first-rate. He believed — with justice — that he had a gift for soldiering, but he had dropped out of the running, and it was hard for one who was now half an amateur to make his way back to a professional career. The kind of work, such as imperial administration, which was to draw out all his qualities and combine the interests of both politics and the Army, was still only dimly realized. Honestly and rightly he sought at this stage the sphere in which he believed he could best be used — the business of war. By the close of 1977 his mind was set upon this path, and the “childish things” of Mr. Southwell’s letter had been relegated to their proper place. But the decade of strenuous idleness had not been wasted. He had behind him a youth active and honourable, which is the best foundation for the structure of maturer years. In body he was hard-trained and untiring; his mind was fresh and vigorous, if still not fully developed; no cynicism or satiety weakened his ardour for life. He had made in his sporting career those close and enduring friendships which belong to no other human pursuit in the same degree.* From sport, too, he brought standards of a strict faithfulness and a scrupulous truth, and in mixing with men of all classes and types he had acquired a broad and genial humanity.
* We need not accept the explanation of this fact given by Harriet Lady Ashburnham to Lord Houghton: “If I were to begin life again,” she said, “I should go on the Turf merely to get friends. They seem to me the only people who really hold together. I do not know why. It may be that each man knows something that would hang the other, but the effect is delightful and most peculiar.”
CHAPTER 3. APPRENTICESHIP
The close of the ‘seventies was for Britain an era of little wars. There was trouble brewing in South Africa, but the main anxiety lay on the north-west frontier of India, since the check to Russia at Constantinople had turned her thoughts to Central Asian expansion, and the uneasy politics of Afghanistan had begun to reflect her ambitions. The Second Afghan War began in November 1878, when Shere Ali, having received a Russian envoy at Kabul, had declined to receive a British. Sir Donald Stewart marched from Baluchistan through the Bolan Pass and occupied Kandahar, another force went through the Khyber to Jalalabad, and Sir Frederick Roberts moved from the Kurrum valley through the high passes, defeated the Amir at Peiwar Kotal, and occupied the Shutargardan Pass, which gave direct access to Kabul. Shere Ali fled northwards and presently died, and for six months it seemed hard to know how to bring the campaign to an end. A successor to Shere Ali must be found with whom Britain could treat, for it was idle to push British armies farther into a difficult and dangerous country with no strategic objective at the end of the advance.
While the war was thus stagnant on the frontier, Melgund set off from England to take his chance of seeing something of the campaign. He had no official position, or promise of one, but he had many friends at the front, and he trusted to the luck which had never deserted him on his expeditions. He arrived in Bombay in January 1879, and went on to Calcutta, to stay with the Lyttons at Government House. There he saw and admired the portrait of his great-grandfather, the first Earl of Minto, in the Council Room.
Though anxious to hurry on to the front, Melgund was delayed some days in Calcutta making the necessary preparations. “I am still here,” he writes, “and have been enjoying myself very much. This is a very fine town, and Government House is quite magnificent. Altogether I am enchanted with what I have seen — everything beautiful, luxurious, and warm: every one is more than civil to me, and Bill Beresford, who is away steeplechasing somewhere, has left word that I am to ride his horses, and am also to have two which are already at Kohat. Last Sunday I went to Barrackpore with Colonel Baker, one of the Viceroy’s military advisers, and a firstrate fellow. It is about twelve miles up the river from here, and is a country place of the Viceroy’s. I think it is the prettiest place I ever saw anywhere. It is a large house in the middle of what might be a beautiful English park, with magnificent trees. The Staff have bungalows of their own which are dotted about in the park, and one breakfasts and lunches under an enormous banyan tree which is a small wood in itself.”
Then he started for the Punjab to join General Roberts’s column, seeing as much as he could of the sights on the way. The romance of the frontier caught his imagination as soon as he began to talk to frontier officers, and he was struck with a type of public servant very different from that which he had met at home. He sketched it for the benefit of Lady Minto, whom he suspected of being whiggishly inclined: —
“I assure you the stories one might tell of these frontier wars are without end, and the Englishmen we have on the frontier are a race to be very proud of. I believe there are dozens of men who have scarcely been heard of in England, but who have shown out here that they were first-rate leaders, first-rate soldiers, and excellent all round, and who have died like heroes one after another in these frontier fights. The churchyard here* and the church itself are both worth going to see as a history of frontier life. I counted in the church the names of about fifty officers who have died or been killed about here since the force was started, some thirty years ago. By the Frontier Force I mean the force which is separate from the rest of the army, and directly under the command of the Punjab Government. . . . Then, again, commissioners of districts must of necessity be rulers, and on the frontier at any rate the stronger they are the better. The goody-goody benevolent people could be of no use here except to get their own throats cut:
the men who do rule are not of the English politician style, pasty-faced wretches who do nothing but talk; in fact, not at all the type of the young M.P. of the present day, but a hard-riding, steeplechasing, sporting lot of fellows. They are the sort of men that I hope we shall always have lots of, but they are not the type that a well-informed village meeting at home would choose to occupy the important positions they do.”
* Kohat.
He went to Kohat, Peshawar, and Jalalabad, and formed the worst impressions of the playful homicidal habits of the border tribes. He was for a time with Sir Sam Browne’s force, where he met Sir Louis Cavagnari, but he hankered after Roberts’s column, which he believed was destined to advance to Kabul. This column he succeeded in joining in March. The staff comprised many congenial companions — Pretyman, Neville Chamberlain, George Villiers, Brabazon, and Padre Adams. The future still hung in the balance. He saw that the new scientific frontier, if it came into being, would have to be seriously held, and he doubted the ability of the British Government — for which at this time he professed small respect — to carry out such a policy.
“I do not think the people in England at all realize the state of this frontier, or the extreme danger of an insecure frontier line, that is, of one whose chief strength depends upon the goodwill of the Amir, or of the frontier tribes. Of course, have as many friends as you can, but be perfectly independent of them, and feel that the strength of your frontier does not rest on their goodwill alone. Neither do I think people understand the great danger of giving up an inch of ground. All retreat is looked upon as weakness by those frontier tribes, and directly you retire you will have them all about your ears. The only thing they respect is power: kindness I don’t believe they care tuppence for. Unless you had been here you could not imagine the state of the country. One thinks very little of a few shots at night. I have seen a good deal myself. The other day I rode with one of the political officers almost fifteen miles down the road to Banu, most of which runs through the Waziri country, which does not belong to us. We found that fourteen camels had been looted out of a convoy of two hundred, and that only one had been recovered. We went through a very wild country, some of it simply a collection of conical hills. We met a native escort with a camel caravan armed to the teeth and carrying shields, the first I have seen carried. The people in this valley are very friendly, but I think the best definition of a friendly native is a man who only shoots you at night, whereas a hostile one shoots in the daytime as well.”