by David Rooney
The ship reached Cape Town on 14 April 1852 and, rather to his surprise, Harry received a cordial and enthusiastic welcome. Thousands had gathered at the port and all the ships in the harbour hoisted their colours. He made a very short speech and then went at once to the Castle where Juana greeted him. In the short time since news of Harry’s dismissal had arrived, Juana had the melancholy task of selling most of their possessions and handing over their home to their successor – a dismal experience, well known to Service families the world over. In spite of the violent criticism Harry and Juana had received during the convict crisis, opinion in Cape Town was now almost united in feeling that their treatment by Grey was savage, mean and shabby. In the days after his return, streams of visitors came to pay their respects, but Juana had to deal with these because Harry was confined to bed. He was too ill to attend a public dinner in his honour, although he did issue a statement with restrained and dignified comments:
In the service of this colony I have spent some of the best years of my life, and, excepting those during which I have been Governor, some of the happiest. At such a moment as this, nothing can be remembered by me, and I am equally certain nothing can be remembered by the citizens of Cape Town and the colonists at large, excepting what would serve to keep alive old kindness and good feeling, and to bury all past differences and temporary estrangements in oblivion.
To the tradesmen and mechanics who came to see him off he said, ‘I am myself a working man. Whatever reputation I may have at any time possessed, I gained simply and solely by being a working man who put his heart into his work.’
Then, only three days after his return, he and Juana were taken in a carriage, pulled by loyal citizens, from their home to the port. Harry, looking drawn and pale, did his best to acknowledge the cheers, while Juana sat beside him weeping. As they boarded the Gladiator for their journey back to Portsmouth, his staff thought that he seemed so ill he would not survive the voyage. Juana was overcome and wept bitterly. The ship left at 6.00am on 18 April 1852.
Chapter 10
Final Years
June 1852 to October 1872
When Harry embarked at Cape Town he had been alarmingly sick and exhausted, and Juana had been very close to a breakdown. The six-week-long, uneventful voyage did much to restore them both, but the nature of Harry’s dismissal and the anguish it caused them was never far from their minds. There was no escaping the fact that Harry was coming back under a cloud. In the eyes of the Whigs, he had not made a success of his Governorship. However, before they reached England, Lord Russell’s government had fallen and Earl Grey with it. Harry’s supporters, amongst whom there were still many who had never forgotten the hero of Aliwal, were quick to label Harry as the unfortunate scapegoat who had taken the blame for Grey’s inadequate administration of the Colonies. Harry had had significant problems – the convict question, the Representative Assembly, lack of sufficient seasoned troops, difficulties with the Boers and local levies – that were either simply not understood in Whitehall or ignored. The eighth Frontier War of 1850-1853 was, arguably, the most critical armed emergency in South Africa to the present day. Some will dispute that and cite the Boer War of 1899-1902 but, judged in the context of its time, the threat to the survival of white civilization in 1851 was more serious than any since. Sarcastic letters from Grey, a civilian half Harry’s age, were unhelpful. Some went as far as to say Harry’s treatment had hastened the Government’s collapse. True or not, it probably made him even more popular.
To Harry’s great credit, he made little of this and with characteristic equanimity he and Juana were determined to settle down after many years abroad. Juana had long since severed all ties with Spain, her family had dispersed or had died and she had nothing to go back for. Her life, as it had been since she was fourteen, was with her beloved Enrique. Harry was now sixty-five which, by most standards, even of today, was an age to consider retirement – not him though. The arid desert of retirement, divorced from his beloved soldiery, was something that he just simply could not contemplate. Charlie Beckwith echoed these feelings to him in a letter: ‘We should all die in our boots, with our spurs on, if possible; at any rate, the grand affair is to keep the game alive to the last.’ Harry’s sentiments exactly, no doubt reinforced by Juana, who realized that retirement would be the worst possible option for him. Harry most certainly intended to ‘keep the game alive’.
The day after their arrival at Portsmouth on 1 June, Harry and Juana were formally addressed by the Mayor and Corporation of the town, who expressed their admiration for Harry’s ‘capacity and fitness for command in unparalleled difficulties’. Whether the Corporation was in a position to make such a judgement is neither here nor there; the point was that they were demonstrating their strong disapproval of Grey’s judgement. Harry explained that he had been appointed ‘Governor without a Legislative Council and a Commander-in-Chief without a British Army’. The Portsmouth Times of 5 June 1852 reported that his speech at a subsequent public meeting of the inhabitants showed his magnanimous spirit towards the Government that had, effectively, sacked him. Indeed, this was very much his attitude thereafter. Despite the temptation to make much of his own case and criticize the now fallen Government, he displayed a generous and good-natured approach to politicians, particularly Grey, who, he felt, were only doing their duty. Later he wrote:
All England upon my arrival again received me with open arms. I was requested to stand as a member for Cambridge, for Westminster, for Edinburgh, for Glasgow. I declined to interfere with politics or to embarrass Her Majesty’s Government, which I say my position enabled me to do, had not my desire been ever to serve it faithfully and fearlessly.
After arrival in London, he was determined to follow this line to the extent of accepting an invitation to dine with Grey. The latter was particularly grateful for this generosity of spirit and wrote:
On a question of this kind we were not at liberty to consult our private feelings. This was fully understood by Sir Harry Smith himself, of whose most handsome and honourable conduct I cannot too strongly express my sense. He has shown no resentment against us for what we did, but has fairly given us credit for having been guided only by considerations of public duty. I feel individually very deeply indebted to him for the kindness with which he has acted towards me since his return.
Whatever criticisms were rightly levelled at Harry, lack of gentlemanly behaviour and good manners were not among them.
However, the invitation he really did appreciate was the one to a banquet from his beloved Duke to dine at Apsley House on 18 June to celebrate the Battle of Waterloo. This turned out to be the last ever held. Together with the Duke were Prince Albert, the Duke of Cambridge and thirty or forty generals who had distinguished themselves during the Napoleonic Wars. To his immense pleasure, the assembled company enthusiastically drank Harry’s health, and recollections and reminiscences flowed amongst the old soldiers.
Juana and Harry settled comfortably near Havant in Hampshire and eagerly awaited notification of Harry’s next appointment, which Harry was sure was imminent. In the meantime, he was invited over to Guernsey where his old friend, Sir John Bell, as Lieutenant Governor, persuaded Harry to address the local Guernsey militia. Harry was a great supporter of what we would now call the Territorial Army, having started his career in their ranks. He warmed to a favourite theme of the need, and ability, of locally recruited levies to defend their homeland. In a rousing speech he said:
In the mountains of the Tyrol, under Hofer, the militia peasantry of the country repelled the attacks of the well-trained battalions of Napoleon. In Algeria for nearly thirty years have the peasantry defended their country, which even now is not conquered, although 450,000 French soldiers have been sent there. In the Caucasian Mountains the peasantry have resisted for thirty years the efforts of 800,000 Russian soldiers to subjugate them, and the Russians have made to this hour no progress. In South Africa I have experienced what the determined efforts of an armed peas
antry can do, for after having beaten the Kaffirs in one place, they immediately appeared in another. I state this to you to show what a brave and loyal people as you are, are capable of doing.
While they might not have relished being addressed as ‘peasantry’, they certainly would have been impressed at having this wartime hero in their midst.
To Harry’s great distress, he learned, when dining with the well-known Napier brothers, Charles and William, that the Duke of Wellington had died on 14 September. Harry had lost not only his mentor and idol, but also a genuine friend and active supporter. Wellington was buried at St Paul’s Cathedral with a State Funeral attended by a million and a half people. Harry rode in the procession as a standard bearer, his final tribute to an adored leader.
In January 1853, Harry was at last appointed to command Western District and to be Lieutenant Governor of Plymouth. With great enthusiasm, Juana and he set up house in Devonport and dispensed hospitality with characteristic generosity. The year 1854 saw the full gloomy impact of the Crimean War and troops were constantly being drafted from his Command and embarked through Plymouth, so he saw much of them. The frustration of not being on active service must have irked him, but he spent much time visiting and encouraging his units. Raw troops, anxious about their first taste of active service, would have been much impressed and heartened by this highly experienced veteran. Harry was still able to ride his beloved horse, Aliwal (see plate section, photo 15) and on an inspection they would charge the line of infantry he was reviewing, but pull up abruptly just short of the front rank in a flurry of hooves. This alarming trick must have initially surprised the soldiery, but the word soon got round that this odd little general behaved in this way. They were prepared for it and stood fast. Both Juana and Harry were immensely popular in local society where, from time to time, Harry would wear his Rifle green uniform, cutting a slightly quixotic figure with his small and spare build.
Characteristically, in the Rifle Brigade way, Harry never forgot an old soldier. There was a comradeship between officers and men in the 95th that was not widespread in the rest of the Army at the time. Johnny Kincaid, probably Harry’s oldest friend, called the 1st Battalion the ‘band of brothers’. Charlie Beckwith wrote to George Simmons, another survivor of the wars forty years before: ‘Our friends it is true are fast descending into the tomb and we shall soon follow; but we shall lay down by the side of brothers who loved us during our lives. [They] and a long list down to the rank and file were all united in one common bond of common danger and suffering. God bless them all!’ Here is Harry writing to an old soldier, Sergeant Himbury:
Government House, Devonport, May 20th, 1853.
OLD COMRADE HIMBURY,
I well recollect you. Upon the receipt of your letter of the 16th inst., I recommend your memorial to ‘The Lords and other Commissioners of Chelsea Hospital’ to have your pension increased to two shillings a day. There are few men now remaining in the British Army who have seen so much service and been in so many actions as yourself; and the fact alone, of your having been wounded when one of the Forlorn Hope at the important storm of San Sebastian, where we, the Light, Third, and Fourth Divisions sent our gallant volunteers, is enough. The Lords Commissioners are very kind to such gallant old soldiers as yourself, and, if they can increase your pension, I am sure they will. Let this certificate accompany your memorial, and let me hear that another, though not a forlorn, hope has succeeded. My wife well remembers your picking her up when her horse fell upon her, and again thanks you.
Your old friend and comrade,
H.G. SMITH, Major-General,
Colonel 2nd Battn. Rifle Brigade.
What Harry and his fellow officers understood was that men fight well when they are among their friends. Nebulous thoughts of fighting for the Country or their Division were too distant for many. What mattered to them was supporting the men about them and not letting them down. Their Platoon, Company and Regiment was what really mattered.
Harry, however, still champed at the bit and saw no reason why he should not be given a command in the Crimea. After all, he suggested, he was the same age as Raglan and there were others like Cathcart, who had relieved him in South Africa, who were not much younger. (Cathcart was subsequently killed at Inkerman.) Anyway, it was not to be and, of course, he had now also lost Wellington, his main supporter. This did not stop him, however, from writing to the new Commander-in-Chief, Lord Hardinge, whom he had well respected in the Punjab, to push cases of officers whom he had recommended for promotion for service in South Africa but had somehow missed out. By doing so, of course, he sought to keep his own name not far away from the Military Secretary’s in-tray. To his pleasure, at least, Harry now became a substantive Lieutenant General (he had only held local rank in the Cape) and on 29 September 1854 was appointed Commander Northern and Midland Military District. Not the Crimea perhaps but, nevertheless, an important Home command. So Juana and he left Devonport for Manchester where they were to live until 1857. One of his first and most enjoyable duties was to arrange a reception for Queen Victoria in Hull on her journey south from Scotland. He was one of her most devoted servants, like many of his generation and there was nothing he would not do for her. On another occasion, he was honoured to represent the British Army at the funeral of Marshal St Arnaud, who had died in the Crimea, at Les Invalides in Paris. Harry had an audience with the Emperor who told him,
You will see the Queen, and I pray you to assure Her Majesty how sensible I, the French Army and Nation are of the mark of respect paid to us by sending to attend the melancholy funeral of Marshal St. Arnaud, an officer of your rank and reputation with a Deputation of British Officers. The amicable relationship which existed between the Marshal and Lord Raglan renders his loss still more to be deplored.
Harry was now sixty-seven and, sadly, his friends were dying about him. His third ‘Waterloo’ brother, Charles, died on Christmas Eve 1854, followed shortly by Sir James Kempt, aged ninety. Sir Andrew Barnard’s death came soon afterwards. Charlie Beckwith, a man of unusually mystical attitude who had devoted himself to an impoverished community in Piedmont, Italy, wrote to Harry:
What a good old fellow Sir James was! I did not feel Sir Andrew’s loss so much, as they told me that his intellect had failed. I had a good letter the other day from Lord Seaton. All these men I regard as the patriarchs of all that is solid in England. These men and their fellows, the men of Alma, Balaklava, Inkerman, of the Birkenhead, and the Arctic Regions, I hold to be the foundation-stones of England. In them is incarnate the sense of duty and obedience as a fixed habit, not a sentiment or conviction, as the people say, but a true witness of the Omnipotent who wills it thus … Adieu. Love to Juana. We must expect to be rather rickety at the best, but we may toddle on. It is highly desirable that we may all go together as nearly as may be … take care of your old bones, remember me kindly to any old fellow that may write to you, and believe me,
Your affectionate friend,
CHARLES BECKWITH
Juana was still the effervescent and outgoing character she had ever been. She wrote approvingly of Harry’s adherence to the new regulation ordering officers to leave their upper lip unshaven: ‘His marvellous moustaches are growing very nicely, and I do think they become his dear old face’ (see plate section, photo 22).
On 29 June, the Queen visited the Art Treasures exhibition in Manchester, which had been opened by Prince Albert. As District Commander, Harry was responsible for military and security arrangements and, in procession, properly rode at the right rear wheel of the Queen’s carriage, a position of importance in Palace protocol. When the Queen was about to knight the Mayor, she turned to Harry and, asking for his sword, told the Mayor, ‘It has been in four general actions.’
On receiving it back, Harry pressed the hilt to his lips in salute to his monarch. Clearly impressed, the Queen said, ‘Do you value it very much, Sir Harry?’ Overcome, he presented it to her at once. Indeed he did value it – he had worn it since 1835 a
nd it had been shot out of his hand at the Battle of Maharajpore. (Hanging beneath Harry’s memorial in St Mary’s Church, Whittlesey (see plate section, photo 20) is a sword, handed down through friends of Harry’s in the town (see plate section, photo 18). The hilt/basket of the sword is actually damaged (see plate section, photo 19). Could this be the one he had shot out of his hand at the Battle of Marajpore and which he subsequently presented to Queen Victoria? Highly speculative and very unlikely, since, in a letter to the Lambert family from the Keeper of the King’s Armoury, dated 5 July 1918, that sword, at the time of writing, was still in possession of the Royal Family.)
The summer of 1857 brought further gloom in the shape of the Indian Mutiny. This added to the worry and anxiety of people like Harry who had known the country and its soldiers so well. He had loved his Sepoys in the 1st Infantry Division who had fought so successfully in the Sikh Wars, and now this – he must have been in despair. That inveterate letter writer, Charlie Beckwith, continued to keep in touch with Harry, whom he admired as someone who he thought really knew what was going on in the world, whereas he confessed to relying on his own theories and the newspapers which he called ‘two fallacious guides’. However, he never forgot to send his fondest love to Juana.
In May, Harry was back at the forefront of international affairs again. This time he was part of the delegation to Lisbon to invest Don Pedro V with the Order of the Garter on the occasion of his marriage to Princess Stephanie of Hohenzollern. Both Harry and Juana attended a Dinner and State Ball at Buckingham Palace to meet the Princess on her way to Portugal. In Lisbon, the King invested Harry with the Grand Cross of the Order of St Bento d’Aviz, which now hangs with Harry’s other Orders and Decorations in possession of his great-great-nephew (see plate section, photo 25). What thoughts must have gone through Harry’s mind when he recalled his convalescence there, forty-eight years before, when he was recovering from the wounds he received on the Coa. Sadly, on his return, he was told his other great friend, George Simmons, who had also convalesced with him, had died.