left behind me, at Number Eleven, my _second beaver hat_. It is in
the hatbox in the white cupboard on the landing outside the nursery
door. Do not send anything else with it, as you were imprudent enough
to do last time I asked you to despatch luggage; the Customs are
very particular, and it is important for me just now, amid all these
political troubles, not to have what the French call ‘histoires.’ I
have really nothing to tell you more as to the condition of affairs,
nor anything to add to the brief remarks in my last letter. Were I not
connected by business ties with the Continent nothing should tempt
me to this kind of journey again. The train service is ridiculously
slow, and there is a feeling of distress and ill-ease wherever one
goes. It is truly amazing to me that any people, however stunted by
centuries of oppression, should tolerate the form of government which
has been recently set up by brute force in this unhappy country!
Meanwhile, though everyone discusses politics, nothing is _done_, and
the practical things of life are wholly neglected. The streets still
remain the narrow, ill-lit thoroughfares which would be a disgrace to
a small English provincial town, and the Army, so far as any civilian
can judge, is worthless. The men slouch about with their hands in
their pockets; the Cavalry sit their horses very badly; and even the
escort of the ‘Emperor’ would look supremely ridiculous in any other
surroundings. I have little doubt that if horse racing were more
thoroughly developed the Equine Race would improve. As it is, the
horses here are deplorable. I hope to persuade M. Behrens, who is one
of the few sensible and clear-sighted men I have met during this visit,
to accept our proposals, and I will write you further on the matter.
“Your affectionate husband,
“JO. BILSTED.
“P.S.--I somewhat regret that you have accepted the invitation to the
Children’s Party. However, I never interfere with you in these matters.
I must, however, positively forbid your taking little Charles, who,
though he is eldest, suffers, I fear, from a weak heart, inherited from
your dear mother. I hope to return this day fortnight.”
“HÔTEL DE FERRAS, _July 15, 1870_.
“My dear Julia,--It was a matter of great regret to me that you should
have been compelled to leave Paris a few days before myself; but I
shall follow to-morrow, and hope to be at Number Eleven by Thursday at
the latest. You will then have learned the terrible truth that war has
been finally declared. Nothing could have more deeply _im_pressed and
_op_pressed me at the same time. The overwhelming military power which
in better hands and under a proper guidance might have been turned to
such noble uses is to be hurled against the insecure combination of
German States which have recently been struggling, perfectly rightly
in my opinion, to become One Great Nation; for I make no doubt that
the lesser States will throw in their lot with Prussia: a menace to
one is a menace to all. I write from the bottom of my heart (my dear
Julia), when I say that I am convinced that after the first triumphs
of this Man of Blood our own Government will speak with no uncertain
voice, and will defend the new German people against the aggressor. It
was sufficiently intolerable that his Italian policy should have been
framed before our eyes, without intervention, and that the unity of
that ancient land should be deferred through his insolence. I have not
borne to visit Rome since the hateful presence of a foreign garrison
was established there. I will even go so far (perhaps against your own
better judgment) as to raise the matter in Parliament, but I greatly
fear that the House will not be sitting when the most drastic action
is needed. However, I repeat what I have said; I am confident in the
ultimate Righteousness of our intervention. I am therefore confident
that we shall not allow the further expansion of this Military Policy.
“As I write the garish, over-lit façades of this luxurious Babylon, its
broad, straight streets, with their monotonous vulgar splendour, and
the swarms of the military all round, fill me with foreboding. It would
be a terrible thing if this very negation of True Civilisation and
Religion were to triumph, and I am certain that unless we speak boldly
we ourselves shall be the next victim. But we _shall_ speak boldly....
My faith is firm.
“Your affectionate husband,
“JO. BILSTED.
“P.S.--I am glad that Charles has got through his examination
successfully. I hope he clearly understands that I have no intention of
letting him be returned for Pensbury until a year has elapsed.”
“HÔTEL DE FERRAS, _April 1, 1886_.
“My dear Charles,--It was a filial thought in you to send a letter
which would reach me upon my sixtieth birthday, and believe me that,
speaking as your father, I am not insensible to it.
“I wish you could come and see your mother and me if only for a few
hours, but I know that your Parliamentary duties are heavier than ever;
indeed, life in the House of Commons is not what it used to be! In my
time it was often called ‘the best club in Europe.’ Alas, no one can
say that now! Meanwhile your mother and I are very happy pottering
about our old haunts in Paris; but you have no idea, my dear Charles,
how changed it all is! You can, of course, remember the Second Empire
as a child, but to your mother and me, who were so intimate with
Paris during its most brilliant period, there is something tragic
in the sight of this great capital since the awful chastisement of
fifteen years ago. We ought not, of course, to judge foreign nations
too harshly, but after no inconsiderable experience of Parliamentary
life I cannot but have the most gloomy forebodings as to the future of
this nation. There seems no settled policy of any kind. Yesterday I
attended a debate in the Chamber, but the various speakers articulated
so rapidly that I was not able to follow them with any precision. It is
surely an error to pour out torrents of words in this fashion, and I
cannot believe there is any mature thought behind it at all. I regret
to say that the practice of duelling, though denounced by all the best
thought in the country, is still rife, and nowhere do occasions for its
exercise arise more frequently than in the undisciplined political
life of this capital. One must not, however, look only on the dark
side; there are certainly some very fine new buildings springing up,
especially in the American quarter towards the Arc de Triomphe. Of
course your mother and I keep to the old Hôtel de Ferras. We are at an
age now when one does not easily change one’s habits, but it seems to
me positively dingy compared with some of these new great palaces. It
is a comfort, however, to deal with people who know what an English
banknote is, and who will take an English cheque, and who can address
one properly on the outside of an envelope. It amused your dear mother
to see how quickly they seized the new honour which her Majesty has so
graciously conferred upon me.
“Your affectionate father,
“JO. BILSTED.”
“HÔTEL DE FERRAS, _October 19, 1906_.
“My dear Charles,--I cannot tell you how warmly I agree with your last
letter upon the state of Europe. I am an old man, I have seen many men
and things, and I have been particularly familiar with foreign policy
ever since I first entered the House of Commons, now nearly fifty years
ago, but rarely have I known a moment more critical than the present.
My one comfort lies in the fact that in spite of the divisions of
Party, the heart of the nation is still sound, and the leaven of common
sense in the electors will save us yet. I feel a shade of regret
sometimes to think that the division no longer retains its old name;
I should like to feel that, father and son, we had held it for three
generations, but though the name has changed, the spirit of the place
is the same.... I beg you to mark my words; I may say without boasting
that I have rarely been wrong in my judgment of foreign affairs. When
one sees things here one sometimes trembles for the future.
“This Hotel is not at all what it was. It is ill-kept and damp, and I
shall not return to it.
“Expect me in London before the end of the week.
“PENSHURST.”
[Lord Penshurst died shortly after his return to London. He was
succeeded by his son Charles, second Baron, but the Division is still
represented by a member of the family in the person of Mr. George
Bilstead, his second son, the husband of Mrs. Bilstead, and author of
_The Coming Struggle in the Balkans_.]
The Duel
In the year 1895 of blessed memory there was living in the town of
Paris at the expense of his parents a young English gentleman of the
name of Bilbury; at least, if that were not his name his name was so
nearly that that it doesn’t matter. He spoke French very well, and had
for his age (which was twenty-four) a very good working acquaintance
with French customs. He was popular among the students with whom he
associated, and it was his especial desire not to seem too much of a
foreigner on the various occasions when French life contrasts somewhat
with that of this island. It was something of a little mania of his,
for though he was patriotic to a degree when English history or English
habits were challenged, yet it made him intolerably nervous to feel
exceptional or eccentric in the town where he lived. It was upon this
account that he fought a duel.
There happened to be resident in the town of Paris at the same time
another gentleman, whose name was Newman; he also was young, he
also was English, but whereas Mr. Bilbury was by genius a painter,
Mr. Newman was by vocation an engineer. And while Mr. Bilbury would
spend hours in the studio of a master whom (in common with the other
students) he despised, Mr. Newman was continually occupied in playing
billiards with his fellow students of engineering in the University.
And while Mr. Bilbury was spending quite twelve hours a day in finding
out how to make a picture look like a thing if you stood a long way
off from it (which is the end and object of his school in Paris), Mr.
Newman had already acquired the art of making a billiard ball come
right back again towards the cue after it had struck its neighbour. Mr.
Bilbury had learned how to sing in chorus with the other students songs
relating in no way to pictorial excellence; Mr. Newman had learned to
sing those songs peculiar to students of engineering, but relating in
no way to applied physics. In a word, these two young gentlemen had
never met.
But one day Mr. Bilbury, going arm-in-arm with three friends towards
the river, met upon the pavement of the Rue Bonaparte Mr. Newman in
much the same posture, but accompanied by a rather larger bodyguard. It
would have been astonishing to anyone little acquainted with the temper
of students in the University, and indeed it _was_ astonishing both to
Mr. Newman and to Mr. Bilbury, though they had now for some months been
acquainted with the inhabitants of that strange corner of the universe,
to see how this trifling incident provoked an altercation which in its
turn degenerated into a vulgar quarrel. Each party refused to give way
to the other, and the members of each began comparing the members of
the other to animals of every kind such as the pig, the cow, and even
certain denizens of the deep. In the midst of the hubbub Mr. Bilbury,
not to be outdone in the racy vigour of youth, shouted at Mr. Newman
(who for all he knew might have been a Russian revolutionary or a man
from St. Cyr) an epithet which he had come across in the contemporary
literature of the capital, and which he imagined to be of common
exchange among the merry souls of the University. To his surprise--nay,
to his alarm--a dead silence followed the use of this very humble and
ordinary word. Mr. Newman, to whom it was addressed, was not indeed
ignorant of its meaning (for it meant nothing in particular and was
offensive), but was astonished at the gravity of those round him when
the little epithet had been uttered. With a sense of surprise now far
exceeding that of Mr. Bilbury he saw his companions draw themselves
up stiffly, take off their eccentric felt hats with large sweeping
gestures, and march him off as stiff as pokers, leaving the Bilbury
group solemn with the solemnity of men who have a duty to perform.
That duty was very quickly accomplished. The eldest and most
responsible of the three friends told Bilbury very gently but very
firmly that there could be no issue but one to the scene which had just
passed.
“I am not blaming you, my dear John,” he said kindly (Mr. Bilbury’s
name was John), “but you know there can be only one issue.”
Meanwhile Mr. Newman’s friends, after maintaining their strict and
haughty parade almost the whole length of the Rue Bonaparte, broke
silence together, and said: “It is shameful, and you will not tolerate
it!” To which Mr. Newman replied by an assurance that he would in no
way fall beneath the dignity of the situation.
More than this neither Mr. Bilbury nor Mr. Newman knew, but they both
went to bed that night much later than either intended, and each felt
in himself a something of what Ruth felt when she stood among the alien
corn, or words to that effect.
And next morning each of them woke with the knowledge that he had some
terrible business on hand with some ass of a foreigner who had got
excited, or, to be more accurate, had suddenly stopped being excited
for wholly incomprehensible reasons at a particular moment in a lively
conversation. Both Mr. Newman and Mr. Bilbury were, I say, in this mood
when there entered to Mr. Newman in his room in the Rue des Ecoles
(which he could ill afford) two of his friends of the night before, who
said to him very simply and rapidly that it would be better for them
to act as his seconds as the others had chosen them as most fitted. To
this Mr. Newman murmured his adhesion, and was about to ask anxiously
whether he would soon see them again, when, with a solemnity quite out
of keeping with their usual good-fellowship, they bowed in a ritual
manner and disappeared.
Meanwhile a similar scene was taking place in the little fourth-floor
room which Mr. Bilbury occupied, and Mr. Bilbury, somewhat better
acquainted with the customs of the University, dismissed his two
friends with a little speech and awaited developments.
Before lunch the thing was arranged, and Mr. Newman, who was waiting in
a rather hopeless way for his friends’ return, was informed at about
twelve o’clock that all was settled; it was to be at the end of the
week, up in Meudon, in a field which belonged to one of his friends’
uncles. “We are less likely to be disturbed there,” said the friend,
“and we can carry the affair to a satisfactory finish.” Then he added:
“It has a high wall all round it.”
“But,” said the other second, interrupting him, “since we have chosen
pistols that will not be much good, for the report will be heard.”
“No,” said the first second in a nonchalant manner, “my uncle keeps
a shooting gallery and the neighbours will think it a very ordinary
sound. You had,” he explained courteously to Mr. Newman, “the choice of
weapons as the insulted party, and we chose pistols of course.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Newman, who was not going to give himself away
upon details of this kind.
“The other man’s seconds,” went on Mr. Newman’s friend genially,
“wanted swords, but we told them that you couldn’t fence; besides
which, with amateurs nothing ever happens with swords. And then,” he
continued, musing, “if the other man is really good you’re done for,
whereas with pistols there is always a chance.”
To Mr. Bilbury, equally waiting for the luncheon hour in some
gloominess of soul, the same tale was told, _mutatis mutandis_, as they
say in what is left of the classical school of the University. His
adversary had chosen pistols. “And you know,” said one of his seconds
to Bilbury sympathetically, “he had the right of choice; technically
he was the insulted party. Besides which, pistols are always better if
people don’t know each other.”
The other second agreed, and was firmly of the opinion that swords were
only for intimate friends or politicians. They also mentioned the field
at Meudon, but with this difference that it became in their mouths the
ancient feudal property of one of their set, and they were careful to
point out that the neighbours were all Royalists, devotedly attached to
the family, and the safest and most silent witnesses in the world.
For the remaining days Mr. Bilbury and Mr. Newman were conducted by
their separate groups of friends, the first to a shooting gallery near
Vincennes, the second to a shooting gallery near St. Denis. Their
experiments were thus conducted many miles apart: and it was just as
well. It was remarkable what an affluence of students came as the
days proceeded to see the exercise in martial sport of Mr. Newman. At
first from fifty to sixty of the students with one or two of the pure
mathematicians and three or four chemists comprised the audience, but
before the week was over one might say that nearly all the Applied
Physics and Positive Sciences of the University were crowding round
Vincennes and urging Mr. Newman to accurate and yet more accurate
efforts at the target. At St. Denis the number of artists increased in
a similar proportion, and to these, before the week was ended, were
added great crowds of poets, rhetoricians, and even mere symbolists,
who wore purple ties and wigs. These also urged Mr. Bilbury to add to
his proficiency; and sometimes that principal himself would shudder
to see a long-haired and apparently inept person with a greenish face
pick up a pistol with dreadful carelessness and put out the flame of a
candle at a prodigious distance with unerring aim.
When the great day arrived two processions of such magnitude as gave
proof of the latent wealth of the Republic crawled up the hill to
Meudon. The occasion was far too solemn for a trot, and two men at
least of those present thought several times uncomfortably about
funerals. I must add in connection with funerals that a large coffin
was placed upon trestles in a very conspicuous part of the field, into
which each party entered by opposite wooden gates which, with the high
square wall all round, quite shut out the surrounding neighbourhood.
The two groups of friends (each over a hundred in number), all dressed
in black and most of them in top-hats, retired to opposite corners of
the field, nor was there any sign of levity in either body in spite
of their youth; the four seconds, who were in frock-coats and full
of an unnatural importance, deposited upon the ground between them a
very valuable leather case which, when it was opened, discovered two
perfectly new pistols of a length of barrel inordinate even for the use
of Arabs, let alone for civilised men. These two were loaded in private
and handed to either combatant, and Mr. Bilbury and Mr. Newman, having
been directed each to hold the pistol pointed to the ground, were set
apart by either wall while the seconds proceeded to pace the terrain.
Mr. Newman remembered the cricket pitches of his dear home which
perhaps he would never see again; Mr. Bilbury could think of nothing
but a tune which ran in his head and caused him grave discomfort.
When the ceremony of the pacing was over the two unfortunate gentlemen
were put facing each other, but twisted, with the right side of the one
turning to the corresponding side of the other, so as to afford the
smallest target for the deadly missiles; and then one of the seconds
who held the handkerchief retired to some little distance to give the
signal.
It was at this juncture, as Mr. Newman and Mr. Bilbury stood with their
pistols elevated towards heaven, and waiting for the handkerchief
to drop, each concentrated with a violent concentration upon the
emotions of the moment, that a prodigious noise of hammering and
shouting was heard at one of the doors of the enclosure, and that three
gentlemen--the one wearing a large three-coloured sash, the like of
which neither Mr. Bilbury nor Mr. Newman had ever seen--entered, and
ordered the whole party to desist in the name of the law. So summoned,
the audience with the utmost precipitation climbed over the wall,
forced itself through the gates, and in every manner at its disposal
vanished. And the gentleman with the tri-coloured sash, sitting down
in the calmest manner upon one of the trestles and turning the coffin
over by way of making a table, declared himself a public officer, and
took notes of all that had occurred. It was interesting to see the
businesslike way in which the seconds gave evidence, and the courtesy
with which the two principals were treated as distinguished foreigners
by the gentleman with the three-coloured sash. He was young, like all
the rest, amazingly young for a public official of such importance, but
collected and evidently most efficient. When he had done taking his
notes he stood up in a half-military fashion, ranged Mr. Newman and
Mr. Bilbury before him, and very rapidly read out a series of legal
sentences, at the conclusion of which was a fine of one hundred francs
apiece, and no more said about the matter. Mr. Bilbury and Mr. Newman
were astonished that attempted homicide should cost so little in this
singular country. They were still more astonished to discover that
etiquette demanded a genial reconciliation of the two combatants under
such circumstances, and they were positively amazed to find after that
reconciliation that they were compatriots.
It was their seconds who insisted upon standing the dinner that
evening. The whole incident was very happily over save for one passing
qualm which Mr. Bilbury felt (and Mr. Newman also) when he saw the
gentleman, whom he had last met as the tri-coloured official of the
Republic, passing through the restaurant singing at the top of his
voice and waving his hand genially to the group as he went out upon the
boulevard.
But they remembered that in democracies the office is distinguished
from the man. Luckily for democracies.
On a Battle, or “Journalism,” or “Points of View”
“_The art of historical writing is rendered the less facile in
expression from I know not what personal differences which the most
honest will admit into their record of events, and the most observant
wilt permit to colour the picture proceeding from their pens._”
(Extract from the Judicious Essay of a Gentleman in Holy Orders,
author of _A History of Religious Differences_.)
I
FROM HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF TO THE MINISTER OF WAR
OF HIS BROTHER THE EMPEROR OF PATAGONIA.
(Begins)
I have the honour to report: Upon the morning of Sunday, the 31st,
the enemy attacked the left of my position in great force, a little
before dawn. I withdrew the XIth, XIIIth, and IInd Brigades, which were
here somewhat advanced, covering their retirement with detachments
from the First, the Thirty-seventh, and the Forty-second of the Line.
The retirement was executed in good order and with small loss, the
total extent of which I cannot yet determine, but of which by far the
greater part consists of men but slightly wounded. Several pieces which
had been irretrievably damaged were destroyed and abandoned. Upon
reaching a position I had determined in my general plan before leaving
the capital (see annexed sketch map A) the forces entrenched, defending
a line which the enemy did not care to attack. I have reinforced the
Brigade with two groups drawn from the Corps Artillery, and have
despatched all aids, medicaments, etc., required.
A simultaneous attack delivered upon the centre of my position was
repulsed, the enemy flying in the utmost disorder, and leaving behind
them two pieces of artillery and a colour, which last I have sent under
the care of Major the Duke of Tierra del Fuego to be deposited among
the glorious trophies that adorn the Military Temple.