by John Buchan
“The enemy was constantly working round the rising ground and firing on our right flank, and at one time we were so far separated from the cavalry that we were in a fair way to be cut off. The cavalry gave us no support except the moral support of their presence in the rear of us. The enemy advanced in a long line of skirmishers dressed in white; they generally fired at about 1,200 or 1,000 yards, and never came within 700, as at that distance our fire began to tell, and they would not come on. Later the 84th Regiment and Marine Artillery came into action; then the guns; then a certain space without troops; then the cavalry; then ourselves. This was the largest number of troops we had in action. The Mounted Infantry had certainly a warm time under a nasty fire the whole morning. At about 11 a.m. Parr, who was in command, was shot through the right leg. I was standing close to him; we were both dismounted at the time and with our firing line. Piggott then took command. About an hour later I was hit in the hand. We had run very short of ammunition, and I had just been round the troop of the 60th to see what remained, and was dismounted, talking to Sergeant Riarden on the flank of the Corps, when a shot hit me a little below the wrist, in the fleshy part between the thumb and forefinger. It bled a good deal at first, but Sergeant Riarden tied it up tightly and more or less stopped it, and I went to the rear, where I found the 1st Life Guards, and Hamilton, their doctor, tied me up. I afterwards rode to Ismailia, and went to the Khedive’s Palace there, which has been turned into a hospital.
“Sir Garnet, who was out on the morning the engagement started, is said to have ordered breakfast at 10 o’clock, and I cannot think that at the outside more than a reconnaissance was intended. As it was, we became committed with a very small force against a very large one.”
Melgund was to see no more fighting, but was left to contemplete the badness of the medical arrangements and listen to a hundred contradictory rumours, till on 13th September came the news of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, followed the next day by the surrender of Arabi. On the 15th he was in Cairo hunting up what remained of the Mounted Infantry, and was much disquieted by the quarters he found them in.
“The infernal regions could hardly be worse! Mosquitoes! I never saw such mosquitoes! Stinks in abundance, and poor devils of loose horses which had been left here by the Egyptian Cavalry running about all night screaming! There have been all sorts of excitements: the railway station caught fire full of stored ammunition, and I shall never forget seeing Havelock Allan walk quietly towards the burning buildings to see if there was a possibility of removing the ammunition. There was a crowd of soldiers round the station, all standing back a long way from the flames, and no one apparently capable of taking the lead till he appeared on the scene. He is a very gallant fellow. He joined us during the fight at Magfar, borrowed a rifle from one of the Mounted Infantry and blazed away at the Egyptians, and amused me by shouting out, ‘The Elliots will be proud of you to-day!’ I assumed command of the Corps on 22nd September.
“The Khedive entered Cairo on Monday, 25th September; the troops lined the streets, the Mounted Infantry taking the Bel-el-Soug. On Saturday, the 30th, the ‘march past’ took place. Those who were looking on say it was a fine sight. The following Monday there was a grand function in the evening at the Palace given by the Khedive to all the officers of the force. Magnificent illuminations, native bands of different sorts, rope dancing, and a splendid supper, to which about a thousand must have sat down. Pope congratulated me on being mentioned in General Orders, of which I was quite ignorant.”
In General Orders issued by Sir Garnet Wolseley at Cairo, October 1882, the following appeared: —
“The General Commanding-in-Chief wishes to take this opportunity of thanking Captain Lord Melgund and the officers and men of this Corps for the admirable services they have rendered during the campaign. On more than one occasion Sir Garnet Wolseley has had the pleasure of bringing to notice the gallantry of the Corps and of making special mention of its Commanding Officer, its officers, and its men.”
In the Gazette of 17th November Melgund received the 4th Class of the Medjidie and promotion to the rank of honorary major. By the end of October he was back in England. In reading the careful summary in his journal of the campaign it is impossible not to be impressed with his grasp of the operations and his shrewd judgment of individual achievement. The officers whom he commended were without exception destined to justify his opinion in later and greater wars.
During the winter of 1882-83 Melgund kept horses at Aston Clinton, the Cyril Flowers’ house, and hunted regularly with the Bicester, the Grafton, and Mr. Selby Lowndes. He saw Lord Wolseley often and corresponded with Sir Frederick Roberts in India, but his strenuous interest in public affairs was a little abated. For a new factor had entered his life. Seven years before, in the library at Minto, his mother had introduced him to the youngest daughter of General Charles Grey,* who had been private secretary both to the Prince Consort and to Queen Victoria. The two families had been friends and political allies for generations; some wit once called the Elliots “the Scots Greys,” for in the days of political patronage the loaves and the fishes that were left by the one were snapped up by the other. Presently Mary Grey makes her appearance in Melgund’s journal as a neighbour at dinner and a partner at tails. He had a host of women friends, for his chivalry and high spirits were extraordinarily attractive, but his mind seemed to be set on other things than marriage, and his men friends regarded him as the eternal adventurer who shakes his bridle reins and rides away. Something of the sort he believed himself, and was accustomed to scoff at domesticity and lay heavy odds in favour of consistent bachelordom. But that spring sealed his fate. Melgund and Mary Grey met during Whitsuntide at Panshanger, the Cowpers’ place in Hertfordshire, a paradise of green lawns and blue-bell woods, and a week later the engagement was announced. Melgund was fortunate in many things, but his marriage was the crowning felicity of his life. He won a wife’who was to be a comrade and helpmate as perfect as ever fell to the lot of man.
* Second son of the second Earl Gray, who, as Prime Minister, introduced the Reform Bill of 1832.
The marriage took place on the 28th July at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, and the honeymoon was spent at Lady Sarah Spencer’s house at Berkhamstead, and at Minto. The bride’s toother, in a letter to Queen Victoria has described it: —
“Mary was deeply touched by your Majesty’s telegram, received just as we were starting for church. She really looked her best in white satin trimmed with dear Lady Minto’s lace and veil. The service was beautifully performed by Canon Farrar. Six little bridesmaids — the eldest was seven — Sybil M’Donnell (Louisa’s little girl), Albert’s Victoria, Beatrix Herbert’s child, Lady Clarendon’s, Lady Zetland’s, and Lady Grosvenor’s pretty little girls; Albert’s little Charlie, Victoria’s boy, and Louisa’s Dunluce, as pages. A large assemblage of mutual friends attended. Your Majesty’s beautiful shawl and Princess Beatrice’s brooch were much prized. . . . On occasions of this kind the loss of their dear father’s blessing must be deeply felt, but I know he would have fully approved of their union. They have been attracted to one another for years. He is a thorough soldier, devoted to his profession, and full of merit.”*
* This letter was found amongst Queen Victoria’s papers and sent to Lady Minto in 1916 by the desire of King George V.
Of the many letters of congratulation which Melgund received, one may be quoted from Lord Wolseley which was characteristic of their friendship: —
“I am very glad to hear you are about to marry, for I think as an eldest son you ought to do so. I can therefore congratulate you with all my heart, and wish you every joy and blessing this world can afford. You may be quite certain that, if ever I again command troops in the field, I shall be very glad to have you with me. I wish you could take into the field with you five or six hundred mounted riflemen from the Volunteer Forces. In the event of war, you would be just the man to raise such a corps, and with your position and the prestige of your having been in the
Army and wounded when in command of Mounted Infantry, I am sure you would be able to pick and choose from all the corps in the Volunteer service and the Yeomanry — the term of service to be for the war and two months, if necessary, after the declaration of peace. I wish you would think of this and work out the details, especially as to the course to be pursued to establish the corps. This is a ridiculous letter to write to a man just about to be married, but you began the subject of fighting first, as children say when they are quarrelling. Again I wish you every happiness, and wish it you with all my heart.”
CHAPTER 4. CANADA: 1883-85
SHORTLY before Melgund’s marriage Lord Lansdowne was appointed Governor-General of Canada, and Melgund, an old schoolfellow and friend, was offered the post of military secretary. The offer was at once accepted, for it was a chance of service, and service overseas, and under conditions where he could be accompanied by his young wife. In his journal in September 1883 Melgund wrote: “I am at a loss how to recommence this journal, and am sadly interrupted by Mary. The world has altogether changed for me, and my humble establishment, ‘Pepper’ (his dog) and Harrington (his valet), has been transformed. I am very happy, and with Mary now lying on the sofa before me am vainly attempting to sum up this journal to the present date.” The revolution was complete, for the change from bachelordom was to be attended by the transference of his energies from sport and occasional soldiering to the grooves of official duties. The appointment was both military and civil: it was gazetted through the Colonial Office, accepted by the War Office, and published in the Army List, so that, as he told his brother Hugh, he went out as “recognized military secretary cocked hat and whole bag of tricks.” The honeymoon ended in a wild bustle of preparation, and at the end of September 1883 the Melgunds sailed for Canada. Family history was repeating itself. In 1837 Lady Melgund’s father, then Colonel Charles Grey, commanding the 71st Regiment, embarked at Cork with his bride in a sailing vessel bound for Montreal, and after a fair weather voyage reached his destination in fourteen days, making a quicker passage than his brother-in-law, Lord Durham, the newly appointed Governor-General, who was a passenger in one of the first steamships to cross the Atlantic.
The change to new scenes came at a fortunate time for Melgund, for not only did it give his active mind an occupation, but it removed him from the unwelcome proximity of home politics. The Gladstone administration was becoming to him, as to many others of his type, a dark obsession. His letters to his mother in the year before her death are clouded with forebodings and solemn with execration. “The Turf is purest gold compared with politics, and the extraordinary thing is that gentlemen with heads on their shoulders should become so utterly warped.” Sometimes he made merry over it: “I write a line in the greatest haste, but I feel that you should instantly be made aware of the frantic excitement in political circles occasioned by yesterday’s news in the press — that there is strong reason to suspect that Gladstone and Dizzy were changed at nurse, and that Dizzy is Gladstone and Gladstone Dizzy.” But usually he was too depressed to joke.
Before he sailed he stayed at Howick with old Lord Grey. “He is a capital old fellow, and it is refreshing to find some one calling himself a Liberal who is not afraid to own that England has great imperial interests abroad which she is bound to look after if she wants to keep up her position. We literally shrieked over Gladstone.” And from Canada — regarding from a distance the confusion in Ireland and Egypt — he wrote to Hugh: “I would not have thought any one could have disgraced his country as Gladstone has done. I wouldn’t be seen frequenting such an unpatriotic, disreputable coffee-house as the House of Commons for a fortune. I suppose when one gets out of England one is more prone to remember that one is an Englishman.”
To such a mood Canada was a welcome sedative. It was more; it was an essential stage in his political education. Hitherto his political views had been of the light-horseman type, acquired often second-hand from the company into which he found himself thrown, not based, as were his views on military questions, on personal thought and study. At the back of them were sound instincts, a generous humanity, and a certain largeness of vision, but they had not been adjusted to the needs of common life. He was to see at closer quarters the business of government and to learn to make allowance for fallible politicians. For years the glory of the British Empire and the infinite possibilities of its future had fired his imagination^ but he had feared that democracy and imperialism might be incompatible. He was now, in a strenuous young democracy, to come to some understanding of the root problems of the Empire, and to learn that upon the vigour and freedom of the parts depended the organic strength and unity of the whole. Above all he was to realize that the problems of statecraft were not to be solved by summary methods, but only by a slow and patient adjustment.
He was fortunate in serving under a chief, like Lord Lansdowne, of notable tact and judgment. He was fortunate, too, in going to Canada at a most interesting stage in her history. Five years before all British possessions in North America, except Newfoundland, had been constituted into one Dominion. In 1878 Sir John Macdonald had entered upon that long tenure of power which endured till his death in 1891, and the “national” policy of the Conservatives, based upon the creation of a high tariff wall against the United States and a bold development of Canada behind its shelter, had the assent of the great mass of the people. The province of Quebec held the balance between the two parties, and in it the new Governor-General’s French connections gave him a unique popularity. Meanwhile the Canadian Pacific Railway was slowly moving to completion through occasional scandals and constant difficulties. The final arrangement with the Dominion Government had been made in 1881, but the undertaking was still on the razor edge of fortune’ and the year after Melgund’s arrival saw its most acute financial crisis. It was an era of vigorous national life and far-reaching national ambitions, and it was a time, too, when some of the greatest men of modern Canadian history were at the height of their powers. Sir John Macdonald, in especial, was the type of statesman whom Melgund could study with sympathy and profit. He was an incomparable manager of men, and contrived by his dominating personality and his keen eye for the essential in every problem to drive as difficult a team of jealous factions as ever Minister had in charge. He had, too, that largeness of outlook which is fitted to inspire a young man at the threshold of his career. He had been the main architect of Canadian union; he had fostered the nationalism of his country, realizing that without national pride on the part of the units the Empire would be a feeble thing; it was his vision and faith, more than the money of the capitalists, that carried the Canadian Pacific Railway to brilliant success; and he never wavered from the first days of his political life in insisting on the truth that the prosperity of Canada depended upon its close and permanent connection with Britain. As Lord Rosebery said in unveiling his monument in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral, “he grasped the central idea that the British Empire was the greatest secular agency for good now known to mankind; he determined to die under it, and strove that Canada should live under it.”
The Melgunds arrived in Canada a week before the Lansdownes, and were welcomed by Lord Lorne, the retiring Governor-General, and Princess Louise. They took up then* quarters at Government House, Ottawa, till Rideau Cottage was made ready for them, and in December were settled in their own home. They were received with extraordinary kindness by the people of Canada, for to their personal charm they added ancestral credentials. Lady Melgund’s family had many claims on Canada’s gratitude, and among a people where Scottish blood predominated a Border Elliot bore an honoured name. It was an ideal way in which to begin married life, for the honeymoon atmosphere was not marred by the weight of a too onerous household, and the young people were free to move about and see the world. They visited many parts of Eastern Canada, and in the summer of 1884 a trip to the United States took them to Albany, Newport, New York, and Boston. There was endless sport, too — skating in winter, at which both becam
e experts, and fishing in those noble Canadian rivers, which had not yet become the preserves of millionaires. On the Cascapedia, which flows into the Bay of Chaleur, three blissful weeks were spent, for Melgund, like his chief, was a devoted fisherman. The modest angler of to-day will read with envy the casual jottings which record their baskets. In five consecutive June days, when there was supposed to be no great run of fish, Lord Lansdowne had twenty-six salmon to his own rod, averaging over 25 lbs., including one of 43 lbs.
The day-to-day duties of a military secretary are prosaic enough, but Melgund speedily found tasks more important than the ordering of the Governor-General’s household and the oversight of his stables. Affairs in Egypt were marching to calamity. In January 1884 General Gordon had proceeded to Khartum at the request of the British Government to carry out the evacuation. By March it was clear that there could be no peaceful withdrawal of the Egyptian garrisons in the Sudan, and by May Khartum was cut off from the world. It was not till August that the British Government decided to send a relief expedition under the command of Lord Wolseley. One of Wolseley’s first steps was to cable through the Colonial Secretary to Lord Lansdowne to inquire if Canada could provided 300 voyageurs (whose value he had learned in the old Red River campaign) to act as steersmen in the Nile boats. He also asked if Melgund could be permitted to go to Egypt in command of the party. The Governor-General was willing, but Melgund, after much searching of heart, felt himself bound to decline; his wife was soon to be confined, and he dared not leave her. There was no time to be lost, so Sir John Macdonald agreed to the request of the British Government, and Melgund set off tor Ottawa to recruit the force, while Lord Lansdowne remained at Quebec. It was not an easy task to enlist so many picked men in a few weeks. The Militia Department had to be tactfully handled, and Mr. Caronf the Minister of Militia, co-operated loyally. The voyageur class of the Red River days had virtually disappeared, and the men who had served with that expedition, and whom Wolseley specially asked for, were now for the most part sedentary folk and growing old. Melgund had recourse to the lumbermen, who in the winter were quartered in shanties, felling timber in the woods, but in the spring were engaged in rafting logs down the rivers and in working their “scows” upstream with provisions. Wolseley stipulated that Indians should be included, particularly the Iroquois of Caughnawaga. The War Office required that the party, which was presently increased to 500, should arrive in European waters by 1st October.