Memoirs of Travel, Sport and Natural History/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I
EARLY LIFE: ETON AND THE SCOTS GUARDS
I suppose few men in looking back to the events of their life can fail to recall many happy days, and those who have been blessed as I have with good health, good friends, a good wife, and a fair fortune must be singularly unfortunate, unenterprising or unwise if they cannot recall some days whose memories may give pleasure, or be of use to others as well as themselves; but I do not think anyone who is not born as I was with a love of nature can fully realize the amount of pleasure which falls to the lot of a naturalist.
Though I have taken a fair share of interest in agriculture and sport, and in the duties, pleasures and occupations of a country gentleman, it is from nature that I have certainly derived the greatest enjoyment, and to nature I always turn for an unfailing and inexhaustible pleasure which I believe can be afforded by no other pursuit to the same extent.
Whether these reminiscences contain anything which will make them of permanent interest is a question which I must leave to others to decide. I only know that similar ones have given me the greatest pleasure to read, and I have often regretted that so many persons allow their experiences to perish with them, as they often do because they are too diffident or too idle to write them. However little a man knows, he always knows something which may be useful to others if truly and accurately told; and though I have never kept a diary I hope that the accuracy of observation which the study of natural history teaches may keep me from any recollections which are not strictly correct. As, however, an old man's memory is often misleading, and people are apt to put off too long the record of their experiences, I have determined to wait no longer, and hope that these rough notes will be received as a truthful account of events which may have some interest to others.
I was born on May 16th, 1846, the eldest son of John Henry Elwes and his wife Mary, daughter of Admiral Sir Robert Bromley of Stoke Hall, Newark. My earliest recollection is of moving to the Old House at Colesborne, halfway between Cirencester and Cheltenham in the Cotswold Hills, after my grandfather's death in 1851. My grandfather used to live here about half the year and the other half at Congham, Norfolk. As the old house was too small it was pulled down in 1852 and a large new house built close by. In those days building was cheap, and the architect as usual designed a much larger house than was intended or is now wanted, and my father spent a great deal of money in various ways on the estate, as most country gentlemen were inclined to do in those days of agricultural prosperity and low wages. Whilst the new house was being built, my father bought a schooner yacht, the Fairy, in which he made a long cruise to the Mediterranean, taking his eldest children with him; but the only thing I can recollect was the yacht dragging her anchors during a gale in the harbour of Corfu and being driven against the mole, where she was considerably damaged. I have lived ever since in Gloucestershire, though I believe that I have never spent an unbroken year in England since I was seventeen. I inherited the love of travel, sport and natural history. My uncle, the late R. Elwes of Congham, Norfolk, author of "A Sketcher's Journey round the World," was, however, I believe, the only member of my family who has ventured before the public as an author.
In 1854 I was sent to a private school kept by an old-fashioned clergyman in a beautiful country near Tunbridge Wells. Judging from a picture by Eddis, I was at that time "a pretty boy," and was much chaffed on arrival at school about my clothes. But though I have no recollections of my studies there, it was a school where boys were encouraged in running about the country in pursuit of birds' eggs and butterflies, and collecting was to our great pleasure and advantage the fashion.
Our school bounds were very limited and no bird had much chance of making a nest within them without discovery and on the weekly halfholidays we ransacked the surrounding country in search of objects to enrich our collections. The boys of the surrounding villages were called to our aid as well, various dodges being employed by the rival collectors to anticipate the return of some delegate to more distant places than we could reach, so as to have first pick of his plunder. Two of the great objects of our desires were a hawfinch's nest and a Great Northern Diver's egg. The former were much scarcer in England then than they seem to be now; the latter could only be obtained by purchase at a price which was almost prohibitive in those days—ten shillings, I think. There was a certain ornithologist named Dunn who then lived at Stromness in the Orkney Islands, who published a catalogue of birds' eggs, which we studied with as much care and anxiety as any art connoisseur studies a sale list of pictures, to see how many of these northern treasures could possibly be acquired out of an income of a shilling a week.
The eggs were sent by post packed in chip boxes, which sometimes arrived considerably broken, and great was the ingenuity displayed in mending up the broken eggs so that they would present a decent appearance when bedded in cotton wool. I added largely to my purchases by money paid for catching rats, at the rate of twopence each, and can remember as well as if it was yesterday some of the favourite runs and holes which were specially good places for setting my traps. The best was in a corner of the stable yard where, imitating the device of the beaver trappers in North America, I set my trap below the surface of a pool of liquid manure through which the rats had to pass to get out of the granary.
This reminds me of an egg sale which took place in London about the year 1866, in which four genuine Great Auks' eggs, which had been discovered in some old collections, were offered. The value of a Great Auk's egg was then about £25, and I wrote to my father asking him to let me have the money to buy it. As he refused I never got a Great Auk's egg, but I know for a fact that one of those very eggs was sold thirty or forty years later at ten times the price. Some years later, however, I was fortunate enough to become the possessor of one of the last pairs of Great Bustard's eggs, taken on or near my grandfather's property at Congham, which were given me by the Rev. J. Pitt of Rendcombe, a celebrated character in his time, and a very fine old sportsman who had the run of my father's shooting and gave me my first lessons in that pursuit. He was slow but pretty sure with his gun, and whenever he brought down a particularly neat shot cried out "Capital! Wonderful! All right!"
There was another dear old sportsman named Bubb, a neighbour of ours, who always came to shoot Chatcombe Wood, then celebrated for woodcocks (I shot my last woodcock here in December, 1921). He dressed in a very long and heavy velveteen coat with two immense hare-pockets in the skirts, and sheepskin leggings reaching halfway up his thighs such as were worn in those days by all woodmen and country labourers. He never would change his old Joe Manton muzzle-loader, and was very slow in loading, but he was a great favourite with us boys because he filled his pockets with a particular apple, still known in the Vale of Gloucester as "Ashmeads Kernel," which he distributed to the party after we had partaken of the beer, bread and cheese, and onions, which then formed the staple of a shooting lunch.
To return to school, I can only say that it has the credit, which I think no other small private school can boast, of producing two boys at the same time who attained the distinction of F.R.S. in after life—namely, Lord Walsingham and myself. Another boy who I can remember there was the late Sir William ffolkes of Hillington, Norfolk, where I used to stay when I visited my uncle, Robert Elwes of Congham; Sir William ffolkes afterwards married one of his daughters. Hillington Hall, which was his property, was a charming old place built of a peculiar local red stone in small thin pieces called Carstone. When staying here in after life, I remember that a place called Docking, though separate from the rest of the estate and without any keeper, produced a greater number of partridges on 600 acres than any other farm I have ever seen or heard of. Sir William adopted a plan, which I think might be followed with advantage elsewhere, of giving the tenant one shilling apiece for partridges, to be divided among the men regularly employed on the farm, and as in the year I speak of no less than 900 were killed, it made every one of them as anxious to preserve the birds as a regular keeper.
Before a boy was considered a past graduate of this school by the others he had to perform certain feats of tree climbing, which consisted in crossing from one tree to another without descending to the ground; and the skill which was thus developed in climbing would no doubt have made us excellent midshipmen, and was very useful to me afterwards in my ornithological expeditions. Catapults were then the only means by which we brought down live birds, and I remember the delight with which I first carried a walking-stick gun, probably the most dangerous form of gun that a boy could be given, for it had no trigger guard and a very uncertain half-cock; so, after nearly blowing a friend's head off while walking along a path, I gave it up.
On leaving this school in 1858 I went to Eton, and as my future tutor, the late Rev. Mr. Durnford, commonly called "Judy," had no room in his house, I spent the first half at a dame's called Stevens, which old Etonians will remember at the corner of Fellows' Yard on the left as you go into the playing fields.
It is extraordinary how such small, ill-arranged and ill-adapted houses could in those days have been made to accommodate anything like the number of boys they did in separate bedrooms. The only thing I remember at Stevens' was a boy who was at that time in sixth form, high up in the boats, and in various ways a "great swell" in the eyes of all fourth-form boys and newcomers. We looked on him as a sort of god, not perhaps so great as the headmaster, or so much to be feared as "Stiggins," who was then the bugbear of all small idle boys and other delinquents, but still as a being of quite a different station to our own. Some years afterwards when I was a subaltern in the Guards and probably thought as much of myself as the "great swel" did at Eton, I went into some office on business and found the same man quill-driving at a desk. Though I hope he has made his fortune, I could not help pitying him at the time and thinking how are the mighty fallen.
Reminiscences of Eton from more able pens than mine have been so numerous that I must pass rapidly over the four years which I spent there. I cannot, however, omit some mention of the very curious system of education prevailing at the time, which, however theoretically wrong, has certainly produced extraordinary results, if success in after life be taken as a criterion of successful education. In the first place the masters, though nearly all gentlemen and, I suppose, all more or less scholars, were in some cases so lamentably deficient in the art of teaching and managing boys that they were clearly unfit for their work. I remember one most amiable gentleman who had absolutely no power whatever of keeping order, and whose division in consequence were so noisy and disorderly that, when sitting with three or four other classes in "upper school," other masters used to send messages to him requesting him to keep such a degree of silence that they could hear their own classes. I recollect another to whom I was up for two halves who would regularly allow you to read the lesson which you were supposed to have learnt by heart from the book on his own desk, and when he saw you reading only moved it a little more on one side. In consequence I seldom or never learnt a "saying lesson" the whole time I was up to him, and very seldom got punished for not knowing it.
Then the punishments were ridiculous. Fifty lines of Virgil written out was a minor punishment, which might be increased up to five hundred, and when, as often happened, the number of lines accumulated to a point which became impossible without sacrificing all one's playtime, they were wiped out by a complaint to the headmaster, usually ending in a "swishing." This time-honoured punishment at that time was no disgrace and a plucky boy often preferred it to the lines. Only in cases where it was inflicted for conduct which in school estimation was blackguard was there any particular odium about being swished, though in such cases two birches were used and as many as twelve cuts were given. There was a notorious young scamp, though a Duke's eldest son, at Eton then, who was complained of and swished for deliberately shooting with a catapult into the face of an old gentleman who happened to be passing along "the wall." He is reported to have taken a large pin with him which he stuck into the legs of the Collegers who at that time performed the office of "holding down" with such effect that they let go of him. Dr. Goodford, however, who liked the culprit no more than we did, threatened to have him tied down, and gave him such a swishing as was unheard of. Swishing, like fighting, has now almost died out at Eton, but whether an efficient substitute has been discovered for those two very ordinary events to schoolboys I very much doubt. When I asked my boy thirty years later why they never fought now and how a boy would act to another who insulted him or his relations, he replied that public opinion would set down a fellow who did such things as "a cad," and public opinion among boys is a more powerful influence than upon grown-up people. So I suppose that fighting, like duelling, must be looked upon as a thing of the past, and whether, as the Germans and Americans think, both are necessary to keep up the determination and courage for which those nations are, like ourselves, distinguished, is a question which the future alone can determine. As long, however, as such dangerous games as polo and such rough ones as football are generally popular among young men and lads, I do not think we need fear the decadence of the British race.
To return to our studies, Classics were really the only things which a boy had any real encouragement to study. In order to pass the Army examinations which had recently been established an Army class was started and six or seven mathematical masters were engaged, but these, or some of them, being of a different social position to the regular masters and having no houses, had little or no influence either with masters or boys, and it was a question not then settled in the minds of the boys whether they had the same right to set punishments and complain to the headmaster (usually equivalent to swishing) as the classical masters.
I remember one of these mathematical masters, who, though no doubt a very good teacher, was from his manners and appearance looked on by his pupils as "a cad" and in consequence got on badly with them. To show the insolence of which some boys are capable I may say that when he set a punishment of Virgil to write out, the boy fixed two or three pens in one holder and covered a sheet of paper with hieroglyphics which, though purporting to be Latin verses, no one could read. When the "poena" was shown up the mathematical master asked what all this scrawl was supposed to be, as he could not read anything on the paper. The boy replied: "Oh, I suppose you do not know Latin," and proceeded to quote Virgil from memory. However, he did not get off, and eventually mathematics came to be looked on as a regular part of our work.
Though a certain amount of history and geography was taught it was nearly all ancient, and in consequence we grew up with as little knowledge of both these important branches of knowledge as an Eton boy whom I met some years ago, who was then in the sixth form, and is now a rising member of the House of Commons. When asked whether a native of India who was distinguishing himself—at football, I think—was a Sikh or not, he knew no more what a Sikh was than a megalosaurus. The weekly map was the only part of my studies in which I remember to have ever had the slightest interest, and my strongest competitor in that art was Mr. Freshfield, afterwards President of the Royal Geographical Society,
I became a "wet bob" and spent many happy days on the river in various kinds of boats. Unless you were rich enough to afford a "lock-up boat," which meant a private boat kept by one of the three boat-builders whose rafts lined the shore above Windsor Bridge, you had to take your chance of a "chance boat," usually in those days a skiff without outriggers. To get this entailed hard running up town directly after chapel or school was over, and one of the great objects among boys not in the boats was to see how far one could get up the river in the course of the two and a quarter or two and a half hours before "absence," which was a calling over of the names of boys in the school yard at 6 p.m. in the summer. It was easy enough to go up to "Surly," a public-house above Boveney lock, three miles from Eton. In an outrigger it was possible to get to "Monkey Island," another public two miles further upstream, and there were athletes who talked of going to Maidenhead and back, nearly fourteen miles, but I only remember one—a little thin boy named Hall, who squeezed himself into the narrowest and lightest sculling boat ever built, said to be only eight inches wide—who actually accomplished the feat.
We used also to take long walks into the country in "after four" and succeeded sometimes, by running as long as we could and sometimes getting a lift when we were too blown to run any longer, in going as far as Virginia Water and back, about fourteen miles, in the limited time at our disposal.
My cousin Tom Hamond and I used to go bird-nesting a good deal in Ditton Park, among other places, though it was strictly preserved and enclosed with high palings. I remember once when he was up a tree after an owl's nest and I was keeping guard, the keeper came along; and though I tried to look as if I was innocently picking flowers, his red head peeping out of a hole in the tree betrayed us. The keepers round Eton, however, were not very difficult with Eton boys, who, they knew, would sometimes have relations with them in after life and who were more troublesome than actually harmful, and I never recollect having a regular row with any of them during our depredations. There was another owls nest in a hollow elm tree in the playing fields into which a cricket ball was accidentally hit, and was recovered with four eggs afterwards by someone who succeeded in climbing to it.
My tutor, Durnford, was a nice old man in his house and very kind to his pupils, whom he fed most liberally and well. He never complained of me, but I do not think he could have had much judgment as to the possibly latent talent of any boy who hated Latin verses and Greek grammar; for when I was sixteen he wrote to my father and said that as I was doing no good at Eton I had better go away in time to be crammed for the Army.
In those days stamp collecting was a new fad only taken up by schoolboys. We had at home an old Swiss governess whose father was either postmaster-general or a high official in the Swiss general post office, and she used to get us parcels of stamps taken off letters in the Swiss dead letter office. Among these were many of the old Swiss Cantonal stamps which were already superseded by the National stamps, and these were very rare. A sort of Stamp Exchange was formed among the boys who collected, and we used to meet on certain days at each other's rooms to "swop stamps." In time I got to have one of the best collections in the school, and when I left I sold my collection for £5 10s. 0d. to a friend in order to pay my debts. But the promised money never came, and when three or four years afterwards I went to Cambridge where he was then an undergraduate and met him, he still put me off with promises, which have never been fulfilled. I was told many years after that his collection was the finest in England, and that some of the most valuable rarities in it were the old Swiss Cantonal stamps from my collection.
In those days there was a man named Knox, usually known as "Cad Knox," who sold "sock" on the wall, and had a small bird-stuffer's shop in an alley east of the High Street at Eton. From him I took lessons in bird-skinning, at which I afterwards became fairly adept. Starlings were the favourite birds for practice, as they have a tough skin and feathers which are not easily soiled. He would not let us use any plaster of Paris or arsenical soap until the body of the bird was separated from the skin, and as fast as this was done his hungry children seized the body and put it in the frying-pan for their dinner. There was another bird-stuffer named George Hall who had a little shop in Brocas Lane, son of the well-known old waterman Jack Hall, whose engraved portrait is known to many old Etonians of the twenties and thirties of last century.
At that time there was no school library, and as I was very fond of reading I used to go on wet afternoons to Fryalton and Drake's shop halfway up High Street, where boys were kindly allowed by the proprietor to sit down in the back shop and read any book they found on the shelves. I began to take in Morris's British Birds, which was then coming out in parts, but as I got to know a little more about birds than most boys of my age I became dissatisfied with it and gave it up.
The only master I was ever "up to" of whom I preserve a kindly recollection was the Reverend Mr. Stone, a very pleasant man who certainly understood me better than any of the others, some of whom were no doubt very able men according to their knowledge, but seemed to fail to realise that all boys could not be taught the same thing in the same way.
When I left Eton I was sent to the care of the then British Chaplain at Brussels, the Reverend Mr. E. Jenkins, in whose house, in the Rue des Champs Elysées, I passed a year or so in learning French, which I have found of great service on many occasions since; but for some reason my recollections of that period are extremely faint, as they are of the other boys there with me. One thing I do remember is the glorious flute-like note of the Golden Oriole in the garden, and the magnificent tall clean stems of the beech trees in the Foret de Soignies. After a year at Brussels I went to a regular crammer to be prepared for the Army examination. He lived at Surbiton, and was no doubt a very good crammer, but from other points of view anything but a desirable man. Some of the other lads there were rather a rowdy lot, and one of them succeeded in making me drunk on port, which so heartily sickened me of this wine, or indeed of any liquor, that I have never since—not even on a guest night in a Highland regiment, or at the Beefsteak Club at Cambridge, or at a students' beer supper in Dresden—had a drop more than was good for me.
After passing my examination I had to wait some months before getting my commission, and my father thought it would be a good thing for me to learn German, though I would much rather have gone bird collecting in Scotland. But it was decided that I should go to Dresden, where I spent three or four months lodging with a German lady, who provided a room and breakfast, and where I did pretty much as I liked in company with other young Englishmen and Americans. It was a very long and cold winter, the Elbe being frozen over, and skating in the Grosser Garten was the principal amusement. It was the year after the Polish insurrection and there were many Polish ladies and refugees in the town whose company we found much more agreeable than that of the Germans, and as my knowledge of French made me quite at home with them I learnt much less German that I might otherwise have done.
In those days Germany was a very cheap country. One heard the best possible music in the stalls at the opera for a thaler; one had the best possible dinner in the Victoria Hotel for two marks, and Liebfraumilch such as I have never tasted since for a thaler a bottle. The English Minister, Mr. Murray, rented a large tract of shooting in the country, and used to ask me to shoot regularly, and here I met an old Colonel von Heygendorf who commanded the Saxon Life Guards, a great horseman and a great sportsman, who took a fancy to me and used to drive me out in his sledge to shoot. He was a most reckless driver, and when the snow was deep used to break in young horses from his regiment by harnessing three or four of them to a sledge and driving at full gallop through the villages.
It was the custom at these shooting parties to have a sweepstake of a thaler each which went to the man who shot most foxes. The Colonel was very knowing about the likeliest post for foxes to come to, and would ask the Englishmen who did not shoot foxes to exchange posts if they drew a lucky post. Hares, roe and foxes were the principal game in the woods, which were driven by large numbers of beaters directed in military order by the bugle. In the open plains there were a good many partridges and the plan adopted to get within shot of them was what the Germans called a "Kesseljagd." This is managed by forming a circle of guns with two or three beaters between each, who surround a large circle of open fields a mile or more in diameter. When the circle is completed, the advance is blown by the Jagdmeister and everyone walks towards the centre of the surrounded area. The hares and partridges at first usually run or fly inwards, but as the circle diminishes and the guns get nearer to each other they begin to fly or run back, and the birds afford excellent rocketing shots overhead. I was lucky enough on one occasion to bring down a partridge which, flying fast down wind, dropped almost on the head of the Colonel who was a long way from me. This lucky shot reminded him of me when I visited the old man twenty-five years later at Dresden with my wife and daughter, who, he insisted, should accompany him to see Buffalo Bill's show, which was then going on. He tried to enlist me as an officer in his regiment, saying that I should never learn half as much in the English Army. But my father very wisely refused, and three years later the Saxon Life Guards, when covering the retreat of the Austrian Army at the battle of Sadowa, were very severely handled and lost a great number of their strength.
In May, 1865, I joined the Scots Guards as an Ensign and Lieutenant at Shorncliffe Camp. Colonel Hepburn, our Commanding Officer, was a fine old soldier of the type of those days, and Captain Wynne Finch was our Adjutant. Several of the officers and sergeants had served in the Crimea, and the ways of the Army were still very old-fashioned. Muzzle-loading Enfield rifles were still used; wine at mess was much more freely drunk than it is today; and anything like military study was practically unknown. Out of my brother officers a few still survive. Amongst them Paul Methuen, later Field-Marshal Lord Methuen, was by far the keenest, if not the only keen student of his profession among the subalterns. There was a very strong racing element in the battalion, among whom "Curly" Knox, "Lummy" Harford and Charlie Kerr were conspicuous. I had never any taste for this pursuit, but if I had I think the conversation and associates of the racing men of those days would have put me off; for though they were not so bad as an outsider might have supposed, it seemed very difficult, if not impossible, for a young man to have much to do with it without losing his money; and I have never regretted my refusal to take part in a sport which only very straight, very clever or very wealthy men can afford.
The old soldiers in the ranks were very fine soldiers, though not always the best of characters. In all matters of duty the Guards set a standard to the whole Army, because the non-commissioned officers were splendid, and, though our privileges as regards leave were much greater than those allowed in line legiments, yet the duty was done on all occasions as the Guards then and now always have done their duty.
I remember on one occasion, when the Fenians were giving much trouble, the battalion was ordered down at very short notice to Chester to suppress an attempt which had been planned to seize the arms in Chester Castle and start a rebellion. Many of the officers were on leave in distant parts of England, Scotland and Ireland, but the only one who was not with his men when we left Euston Square was one officer who happened to be in Italy, and he rejoined on the next day at Chester.
As an illustration of the way in which regimental duty was run in those days almost entirely by the Adjutant and the sergeant-major, I may say that when the battalion detrained at Chester, very tired and sleepy from having come off guard the night before we started, the Adjutant would not allow the company officers to see their own companies billeted, but insisted on doing it himself, with the result that my company, the "left flank company," stood at ease more than half asleep in the station yard for six or eight hours before getting into their billets.
The Fenians had cleared out before we got there, and after three or four days, during which time the men, though in some cases too much treated by their hosts, behaved admirably, we returned to London. This was the only occasion during the five years I was in the service on which we had anything to do beyond mounting guard, occasional field days and marches out, and a fortnight's musketry practice at Aldershot. Autumn manœuvres were then unheard of; no one was expected to know anything of military history, strategy or tactics; and internal economy of the companies was left to the sergeants and the Adjutant, as the company commanders, who then held the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the Army, were on leave during the greater part of the year from August to April, when the so-called drill season began.
Flogging in the army had not yet been abolished, but I only remember one case during my service in which this punishment was inflicted for stealing from a comrade. The man was a notorious blackguard who ought to have been discharged by the Colonel before he was drummed out as part of his sentence. He did not seem to care a rap for the flogging, or at least pretended not to care. The discipline was very good as many of our men, though probably ne'er-do-wells at home, came from the Borders of Scotland and a few from the Highlands.
I remember once when sitting in the orderly room, my own colour-sergeant, a fine old soldier from Skye, brought up two or three recruits from the Hebrides, who had been put under his tuition because they could not speak or understand English. The Colonel asked him what the men were brought up for. He replied: "I canna make soldiers of them, Colonel, and the best thing ye can do with them is to discharge them."
"How is this, Sergeant Macdonald?" said the Colonel. "I thought the men from your islands were always considered the best of soldiers."
"That was true enough in old times, Colonel, but it is no true now," said he.
"And how do you account for it, Sergeant?"
"It is like this, Colonel. The good men in Skye are nearly all gone to America now. In the old days when they had not enough to eat they just had to take it from those that had or starve, but now they are crying to the Government for food in bad times, and they're no wanting to fight."
I was told by the same man that he went out to the Crimea in December, 1854, with a draft of three officers and one hundred men to the regiment, and though they arrived too late to take part in any of the battles, there were only one officer, one sergeant and one man of that detachment present with the battalion when they returned from the Crimea in 1856. Those who have read the accounts of the misery and starvation of our army in the trenches in the spring of 1855 will understand what became of these raw recruits, and contrast it with the losses from similar causes in the last war.
[Photo Southwell
FIG. 1.—CAPTAIN H.J. ELWES, SCOTS GUARDS, 1869.