afternoon I determined to advance my right, largely reinforced from the
centre, which was now completely secure from attack. The movement was
wholly successful, and the result coincided exactly with my prearranged
plans. The enemy abandoned all this upper portion of the right bank
of the Tusco in the utmost confusion; his main body is therefore now
in full retreat, and there is little doubt that over and above the
decisive and probably final character of this success I shall be able
to report in my next the capture of many prisoners, pieces, and stores.
I congratulate His Majesty upon the conspicuous courage displayed in
every rank, and recommend for distinguished service the 1847 names
appended. His Majesty’s Government may take it that this action
virtually ends the war. (Ends.)
II
FROM FIELD-MARSHAL THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS THE LORD DUKE OF RAPELLO TO
THE MINISTER OF WAR OF THE REPUBLIC OF UTOPIA.
(Begins) Upon the morning of Sunday, the 31st, in accordance with the
plan which I had drawn up before leaving the capital, I advanced my
right a little before dawn against the left of the Imperial position,
which was very strongly posted upon the edge of a precipitous cliff,
one flank reposing upon an impassable gulf and the other on a deep and
torrential river. The enemy resisted with the utmost stubbornness, but
was eventually driven from his positions, though these were strongly
entrenched after more than a week’s work with the spade. He abandoned
the whole of his artillery. A great number of prisoners have fallen
into my hands, and the loss of the enemy in killed alone must amount to
many thousands. Particulars will follow later, but I am justified in
saying that the left wing of the enemy is totally destroyed. Meanwhile,
General Mitza, most ably carrying out my instructions, contained the
enemy upon the centre without loss, save for one pom-pom and a Maxim,
which were shattered by a chance shell early in the action. The 145th
also report the loss by burning of a waggon containing their Colours,
eighteen cans of tinned beef, and the Missionaries’ travelling library.
Somewhat later in the day the enemy attempted to retrieve a hopeless
position by advancing his right in great force. I had been informed of
the movement (which was somewhat clumsily executed) in ample time, and
withdrew the petty outposts I had thrown out for observation in his
neighbourhood. There is little doubt that the enemy will now attempt
to withdraw his main force along the line of the Tusco Valley, but a
glance at the map will show that this retreat is closed to him by my
occupation of the line X Y (see annexed sketch map), and he is now
virtually contained.
I congratulate the Government of the Republic upon the signal and
decisive victory our troops have driven home, and I may confidently
assure them that it is tantamount to the successful ending of the
present campaign. Appended is a list of officers recommended for
distinguished service, which I have made as brief as possible, and
which I particularly beg after so glorious a day may not be curtailed
by political intrigues, of which I have already been compelled to
complain. (Ends.)
III
EXTRACT FROM A LEADING ARTICLE IN ONE OF THE MOST REPUTABLE
NEWSPAPERS OF THE CAPITAL OF PATAGONIA UPON MONDAY THE 1ST.
“We have always maintained in these columns that His Imperial Majesty’s
Government was amply justified in undertaking the short, and now
happily successful, campaign in which it was proposed to chastise the
so-called ‘Republic’ of Utopia, whose chronic state of anarchy is a
menace to the peace and prosperity of civilisation. It is a pleasure to
be able to announce this morning what was already a foregone conclusion
in the minds of all educated men. The enemy’s forces--if we may dignify
them by that name--have been overwhelmed at the first contact, and it
is now only a question of whether they will be utterly disorganised
during retreat or will prefer to capitulate while some semblance of
discipline remains to them. We must, however, implore public opinion
to preserve at this juncture the calm, sane courage which is among the
best traditions of our race, and we reiterate the absolute necessity of
abstaining from any wild cat policy of annexation. It should be enough
for us that the ‘Republic’ of Utopia will now exist in name only, and
has ceased for ever to be a menace to its neighbours. A specially
gratifying feature in the news before us is the skill and mastery
displayed by the Prince, whose advanced years (we blush to remember it)
had been the cause of so much secret criticism of his command.”
IV
EXTRACT FROM THE LEADING ARTICLE OF THE MOST POPULAR JOURNAL OF THE
UTOPIAN REPUBLIC, SAME DATE.
“Citizens, awake! All ye that kneel, arise! Ares (the god of battles)
has breathed upon the enemy, and he has been destroyed! The cowardly
mercenaries who handle the gold of Patagonia have broken and fled
before our troops upon the very first occasion when their reputed
valour was put to the test. The glorious and aged Mitza has guaranteed
that the next news will be that of their complete submission. It will
then be for the Government to decide whether our victorious lads should
complete a triumphant march upon the Patagonian capital or whether it
may not be preferable to wring from that corrupt and moribund society
such an indemnity as shall make them for ever impotent to disturb the
frontiers of free men.”
V
EXTRACT FROM THE NOTE OF THE MILITARY EXPERT OF THE AFORESAID WEIGHTY
AND REPUTABLE JOURNAL OF THE CAPITAL OF PATAGONIA: A JOURNALIST.
“It is not easy to reconstruct from the fragmentary telegrams that
have come through from the front the tactical nature of the great
and happily decisive victory upon the Tusco which has just ended
the campaign. So far as one can judge, His Royal Highness the
Commander-in-Chief lay _en biais_, reposing his right upon the river
itself and his left upon the Cañon of the Encantado, his centre
somewhat advanced ‘in gabion,’ his pivot points refused, and his right
in double concave. Upon a theory of Ballistic and Shock, which all
those who have read His Royal Highness’s daring and novel book of
thirty years ago, entitled ‘Cavalry in the Field,’ will remember, our
Corps Artillery and reserve of horse were doubtless some miles in the
rear of the firing line. The enemy, with an amazing ignorance of the
elements of military knowledge, appear to have attacked the _left_ of
this position. It is an error to which we should hardly give credence
were not the telegrams so clear and decisive on this point. The reader
will immediately grasp the obvious result of such a piece of folly. His
Royal Highness promptly refused _en potence_, wheeled his left centre
round upon the Eleventh Brigade as a pivot, and supported this masterly
move by the sudden and unexpected appearance of no less than thirty-six
guns, the converging fire of which at once arrested the ill-fated and
mad scheme of the enemy. The rest is easily told. Our centre retaining
its position, in spite of the burning zeal of the men to take part in
the general advance, the right, which had not yet come into action, was
thrown forward with a sudden, sweeping movement, and behind its screen
of Cavalry debouched upon the open plateau which dominates the left
bank of the Tusco. After that all was over; the next news we shall have
will certainly be the capitulation of our broken foe, unless, indeed,
he prefer to be destroyed piecemeal in a scattered flight.”
VI
EXTRACT FROM THE NOTE OF THE MILITARY EXPERT OF THE POPULAR JOURNAL
OF UTOPIA: FORMERLY A SERGEANT IN THE COMMISSARIAT DEPARTMENT OF THE
ARMY.
“It is not easy to reconstruct from the fragmentary telegrams which
have come through from the front the tactical nature of the great and
happily decisive victory upon the Tusco. Some points are obvious. In
the first place, it was ‘a soldiers’ battle.’ Gallant old Mitz (to whom
all honour is due) drew up the line of battle, but the hard work was
done by Bill Smith and Tom Jones, and the rest in the deadly trenches
above the right bank. It seems probable that all the heaviest work was
done on our right, and therefore against the enemy’s left, unless,
indeed, the private telegram received by a contemporary be accurate,
which would make out the heaviest work to have been on our left
against the enemy’s right. The present writer has an intimate personal
knowledge of the terrain, over every part of which he rode during the
manoeuvres of five years ago. It is sandy in places, interspersed
with damp, clayey bits; much of it is undulating, and no small part
of it rocky. Trees are scattered throughout the expanse of the now
historic battlefield; their trunks afford excellent cover. The River
Tusco, as our readers will have observed, is the dominating feature of
the quadrilateral, which it cuts _en échelon_. The Patagonians boasted
that though our army was acknowledgedly superior to their own, their
commercial position would enable them to weary us out in the field.
Yes, I don’t think!”
VII
EXTRACT FROM A LECTURE DELIVERED BY A PROFESSOR OF MILITARY HISTORY
ONE HUNDRED YEARS LATER, IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LIMA.
“Among the minor factors of this complicated situation was the
permanent quarrel between Patagonia and Utopia, and though it has been
much neglected by historians, and is, indeed, but a detail upon the
flank of the great struggle of the coalition, a few moments must be
given to the abortive operations in the Tusco Valley. They appear to
have been conducted without any grasp of the main rules of strategy,
each party advancing in a more or less complete ignorance of the
position of the other, their communications parallel, their rate of
advance deplorably slow, and neither possessing the information nor the
initiative to strike at his opponent during a three-weeks’ march, at no
point of which was either army so much as fifty miles from the other.
These farcical three weeks ended in a sort of skirmish difficult to
describe, and apparently confined to the extreme left of the Patagonian
forces. The Utopians here effected some sort of confused advance,
which was soon checked. At the other end of the line they retired
before a partial movement of the enemy, effected without any apparent
object, and certainly achieving no definite result. The total losses
in killed and wounded were less than seven per cent of those engaged.
The next day negotiations were entered into between the two generals;
their weary discussion occupied a whole week, during which hostilities
were suspended. The upshot of the whole thing was the retirement of
the Patagonian Army under guarantees, and in consideration of the
acceptation of the old frontier by the Utopian Government. Politically
the campaign is beneath notice, as both territories were absorbed six
months after in the recasting of the map after the Treaty of Lima, and
the policing of them handed over to the now all-conquering Northern
Power. Even as military history the operations deserve little more
than passing notice, save, perhaps, as an example of the gross yet
ever recurrent folly of placing numerically large commands in the
hands of aged men. Mitza, upon the occasion of this fiasco, was over
seventy-five years of age and long in his dotage, while the Prince
of the Blood who had been chosen to lead (nominally, at least) the
Patagonian Army was, apart from his increasing years, a notorious
drunkard, and what is perhaps worse from a military point of view,
daily subject to long and complete lapses of memory.”
A Descendant of William Shakespeare
It was during the early months of 1909 that I first became acquainted
with a descendant of William Shakespeare the great dramatist, who
happened at that moment to be in London.
This gentleman (for he was of the male sex) was one of our American
visitors, and was stopping at the Carlton Hotel. His name, as he
assured me, Charlemagne K. Hopper. He resided, when he was at home, in
the rapidly rising township of Bismarckville, Mo., where he added to a
considerable private income the profits of an extensive corn business,
dealing in wheat both white and red, and of both spring and autumn
varieties, maize or Indian corn, oats, rye, buckwheat of every variety,
seed corn, and bearded barley; indeed, no kind of cereal was unfamiliar
to this merchant. His quick eye for the market and the geniality of his
character had (he convinced me) made him friends in every circle. He
has the entrée to the most exclusive coteries of Albany and Buffalo,
and he had that season been received by the patrons of literature in
Park Lane, Clarges Street, and Belgrave Square.
Mr. Hopper’s descent from the Bard of Avon has been established but
quite recently: these lines are perhaps the first to lay it before the
public, and the discovery is an excellent example of the way in which
two apparently insignificant pieces of evidence may, in combination,
suggest an historical discovery of capital importance.
It is, of course, common knowledge that Lady Barnard of Abington was
a lineal descendant of William Shakespeare. She died (without issue,
as was until recently supposed) at the end of the seventeenth century.
But two almost simultaneous finds made in the early part of the present
year have tended to modify the old-established conviction that this
lady was the last descendant of the poet.
The first of these finds was made by Mr. Vesey, of the British Museum,
well known for his monograph on _The Family of Barnard of Abington_. It
consisted in a small diary or notebook belonging to the Lady Barnard in
question, in which, among other entries, was the record of the payment
of twenty guineas made to a “Mrs. M.” just before Christmas of the
year 1678. Mr. Vesey published this document in pamphlet form at the
beginning of March, 1908.
In the April number of _Cambridgeshire Notes and Queries_ Major Pepper,
of Bellevue Villa, Teversham (not far from the Gog Magog Hills),
published, as a matter of curiosity, a letter which he had purchased
in a sale of MSS., but only so published on the chance that it might
have an interest for those who follow the history of the county. It
was a letter from one Joan Mandrell, the governess of Anne Hall,
praying her correspondent to send “twenty guineas for the payment of
rent.” The interest of this document to the students of local history
lay in the fact that this Anne Hall was the ancestress of the Pooke
family. Joan Mandrell’s letter was addressed upon the back of the
sheet, though the name of the addressee was no longer decipherable,
but the letters “...bington Hall” were, and are, clearly legible, as
also the date. The letter further contains a minute description of
Anne Hall’s return to London from a foreign school and of the writer’s
devotion to the addressee, whom she treats throughout as mother of the
young woman committed to her care. This Anne Hall later married Henry
Pooke, whose son Charles made his fortune in politics under Walpole’s
administration, founding the family and estate of Understoke, which is
so familiar to every Cambridgeshire man.
More than one student noted the coincidence between these two
publications appearing but a fortnight apart; and at the end of May
a paper was already prepared to be read to the Genealogical Society
showing that the lineage of the poet had been continued in the Pookes.
So far the matter was of merely antiquarian interest, for Charles
Pooke’s great grandson, General Sir Arthur Pooke, had died in 1823 at
Understoke without issue. It was, however, of some importance to all
those who care for the literary history of their country to know that
the blood of the poet could be traced so far.
Just before the paper was read a further discovery came in to add a
much greater and more living interest to the matter.
Mr. Cohen, a charming and cultivated genealogist, whose business is
mainly with America and the Colonies, had been for some months actively
engaged for Mr. Hopper in tracing the arms of his, Mr. Hopper’s,
maternal grandfather--a Mr. Pooke. When Mr. Cohen became acquainted
with the facts mentioned above he cabled to Mr. Hopper, who sent
by return of post copies of certain family documents which clearly
proved that this Mr. Pooke was identical with a younger brother of Sir
Arthur. This younger brother was an erratic and headstrong lad who had
enlisted in early youth under Cornwallis, and had been killed, as it
was believed, at Yorktown. He was as a fact wounded and made prisoner;
he was not killed. He was released at the Peace of 1783, preferred
remaining in the New World to facing his creditors in the Old, married
the daughter of Peter Kymers, of Orange, N.J., and soon afterwards
went West. In 1840 his only daughter Cassiopea, who was then keeping a
small store in Cincinnati, married the Rev. Mr. Aesop Hopper, a local
minister of the Hicksite persuasion. Charlemagne K. Hopper is the only
issue of that marriage.
The genealogy stands thus:
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
[+]1616 | (the Immortal Bard)
|
Susannah=+=Dr. John Hall
|
Elizabeth Lady Barnard (of Abington)
|
Anne Hall=+=Henry Pooke
([+]1703) |
|
Charles Pooke (First Bart.)
[+]1772 |
|
+---------------------+-------------------+
| | |
William Gen. Sir Arthur Pooke Henry Pooke=+=Maria Kymers
(died in infancy) o.s.p. 1823 [+]1830 |
|
Rev. Aesop Hopper=+=Cassiopea Pooke
[+]1883 | [+]1902
|
CHARLEMAGNE K. HOPPER
This family tree is now so well established that a full publication
of the lineage, with a commentary upon the whole romantic story, is
about to appear in one of the reviews from the pen of “Thersites,” a
pseudonym which, as many of our readers are aware, barely hides the
identity of one of our best-known experts upon Foreign Affairs.[1]
Mr. Hopper did not remain in London beyond the close of the season.
He had proposed to leave for Biskra a week or so after I made his
acquaintance, but the change in the weather decided him to go no
farther south than Palermo, whence he will return by Naples, Rome,
Assisi, Genoa, and Boulogne, visiting on the way the quaint old city
of Strasbourg. He will reach England again some time in the month of
April, 1910, and on his return he proposes to devote some part of
his considerable fortune to the erection of a suitable monument at
Stratford-on-Avon in memory of his great ancestor. This generous gift
will be accompanied by certain conditions, but there is little doubt
that the town will accept the same, and that a fine fountain surrounded
with symbolical figures of Justice, Prudence, and Mercy, and adorned
with medallions of Queens Elizabeth and Victoria, George Washington and
President Roosevelt, will soon adorn the quiet little Warwickshire town.
Mr. Hopper also proposes to found a Shakespeare Scholarship at
Sidney-Sussex College in Cambridge, and another at Wadham College in
Oxford, each of the value of £300 a year, on the model of the Rhodes
Scholarships, such scholarships to be granted not merely for book work
but for business capacity and physical development. He has also planned
a Chair for the propagation of Shakespearean knowledge in Glasgow, and
he will endow a Reader in Shakespeare to the University of Aberdeen.
Mr. Hopper is himself no mean _littérateur_, though a characteristic
modesty has hitherto restrained him from publishing his verse, whether
rhyme, blank, or in sonnet form. It is possible that now he is
acquainted with his great descent his reluctance may be overcome and
he may think better of this decision. I may add that Mr. Hopper places
no credence in the Baconian theory, and hopes by diligent search among
his family papers to prove the authenticity of at least the five major
tragedies and _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_.
Mr. Hopper is a total abstainer; he neither smokes nor chews; his
religious views, always broad and tolerant, incline him strongly
towards the New Theology, and, in common with many other men of
exceptional intelligence, he has been profoundly affected by the
popular translation of Dr. Haeckel’s _Riddle of the Universe_.
Though delighting in social intercourse, Mr. Hopper has the true
gentleman’s instinct against being lionised, and in particular stands
in dread of the Duchess of Dundee. He has therefore begged me to
insist as little as possible on his identity in anything I thought it
my duty to record in print upon so interesting a matter, and I have so
far acceded to his request as to have refrained from publishing these
lines until he had left our shores; but I make little doubt that on his
return in the spring this missing link between the two branches of the
Anglo-Saxon kin cannot but receive the public recognition he deserves.
On the Approach to Western England
How difficult it is to say what one really feels about the landscapes
and the countrysides and the subtle souls of Europe! I think that all
men who are of European blood feel those countrysides and the soul of
them very strongly; but I think that they feel as I feel now, as I
write, a difficulty of expression. There is something in it like the
difficulty of approaching a personality. One may admire, or reverence,
or even love, but the personality is different from one’s own; it has
a chastity of its own that must be respected, it has its boundaries
and its honour, and one always fears that one will transgress such
boundaries if one so much as speaks of the new thing one has come upon
and desired to describe.
With distant travel it is not so. One comes far over seas to a quite
strange land and one treats it brutally. One’s appreciation is a sort
of conquest; and you will note that those who speak of the Colonies,
or of America, or of Africa, or of Asia speak of them with a hard
intolerance as of something quite alien, or with a conventional set of
phrases, as of something not worth the real expression of emotion. Now
it is not so with our ancient provinces of Europe.
A man coming out of the Cis-Alpine Gaul into old Italy across the
Apennines feels something; indeed he feels it! What it is he feels very
few men have written down; none has said it fully. You get out of one
thing into something other when you climb up out of the Valley of the
Parma and cross the High Apennines and look southward into the happy
Garfagnana, and hear the noise of the little Serchio beginning in its
meads. In the same way no one has described (to my knowledge at least)
that shock of desolation and yet of mystery which comes upon a man when
he crosses the River Couesnon and passes from Normandy into Brittany.
Normandy is rich, Brittany is poor. Normandy loves ritual, Brittany
religion. Normandy can make things, Brittany prayers. Normandy lives
by Brittany in the matter of the soul, Brittany not by Normandy in the
matter of the body. What Norman ever gave a Breton anything? You cross
that river and everything changes. The men and women have dreamier
eyes, the little children play more wonderfully, everybody is poor.
Or, again, the passage from the hard industry of the Lancashire Plain
suddenly on to the moors, where the farming men and women are so quiet
and silent and self-respectful and seem so careful rather to preserve
what they own than to add to it. Or, again, the startling passage
over Carter Fell from the Englishmen of Rede-Dale to the Scotchmen of
Jedburgh; or the sharp passage from the violent, active, sceptical,
cruel, courageous, well-fed, ironical Burgundians into the gentle
Germans of the Vosges: here is a boundary which is not marked in any
political way, and yet how marked it is!
Now in England we have many such approaches and surprises. I will not
speak of that good change which comes upon a man as he travels south
from Victoria Station and hears, almost at the same time that he first
smells earth, the South Country tongue; nor will I speak of that other
change which perhaps some of my readers know very well, the change from
the active and grasping Cockney into the quiet tenacity of East Anglia.
It is not my province--but if I am not wrong one strikes it within half
an hour in the fast expresses--these people push with quants, they sail
in wherries, they inhabit flat tidal banks, they are at peace. Nor will
I here speak of the Marches and how, between a village and a village,
one changes from the common English parish with the Squire’s house and
the church and the cottages and all, into the hard slate roofs and the
inner flame of Wales. Rather I would speak of something the boundary
of which has never yet been laid down, but which people call (I think)
“The West Country.”
* * * * *