EARLY LIFE
1811-1829
He who would understand this story aright must stretch the wings of his
imagination for a flight across the ocean to the sunny shores beyond. In
these northern latitudes sunshine is regarded as genial and benignant,
but in those regions the sun is spoken of by the natives as cruel and
relentless. It is with fierce rays that he strikes the stately
architecture, the crowded marts, the dusty highways, the arid plains,
the many-coloured costumes, the gorgeous pageantry,--in the midst of
which our action is laid, and which in their combination form the
theatre where the mighty actors of our drama are to play their parts.
But not in such a climate nor amidst such scenes were these actors born
and bred. In the time of youth,--when the physical frame is developed,
and the foundation of the character is laid,--their stamina were
hardened, their faculties nursed, their courage fostered, under the grey
skies and misty atmosphere, in the dales and hills, amidst the green
fields and the smoky cities of Great Britain and Ireland.
The village of Richmond is situated in the North Riding of Yorkshire at
the western base of the hills which flank the Westmoreland plateau, and
near the head-waters of the Swale, an affluent of the Ouse. In the year
1811 it formed the headquarters of the Nineteenth Regiment of Foot, of
which Alexander Lawrence was the Major.
Here John Lawrence was born on March 4th, 1811: being the eighth in a
family of twelve children. His sister Letitia, his elder brothers George
and Henry, his younger brother Richard, will be mentioned in the
following narrative. His brother Henry, indeed, was closely associated
with some of the events to be related hereafter.
The parents were people of British race domiciled for some generations
in Ulster. The mother was a descendant of John Knox the Scotch reformer,
and the daughter of a clergyman in the Church of England, holding a cure
in Donegal. The father had run a military career for full fifteen years
in India and Ceylon, and had been among the leaders of the forlorn hope
in the storming of Seringapatam. He was a fighting man, ardent for
warlike adventure, maimed with wounds, fevered by exposure, yet withal
unlucky in promotion. He was full of affection for his family, and of
generosity towards his friends. Despite the _res angusta domi_ which
often clings to unrewarded veterans, he was happy in his domestic life.
His only sorrow was the indignant sense of the scant gratitude with
which his country had regarded his services. Nevertheless he sent forth
three of his sons for military careers in that same East where he
himself had fought and bled,--of whom two rose to high rank and good
emoluments. But he placed them all in the service of the East India
Company, which he hoped would prove a good master, and that hope was
realised.
As a child, John Lawrence went with his parents from Richmond to
Guernsey, thence to Ostend where the father commanded a Veteran
Battalion during the Waterloo campaign, and thence soon after 1815 to
Clifton near Bristol. During his childhood he suffered severely from an
affection of the eyes, the very ailment which, as we shall see
hereafter, overshadowed his declining years. From Clifton he went to a
day-school at College Green in Bristol, walking daily over the breezy
uplands that then separated the two places, in company with his brother
Henry, his elder by five years. It would seem that according to the
fashion of the schools of this class in those times, he received a
rudimentary education with a harsh discipline. His home, being furnished
with scanty means, must have been destitute of external amenities. But
he enjoyed the care of one who, though forced by circumstances to be
rigid, was a thoroughly good mother, and the tender thoughtfulness of
his sister Letitia which he never forgot. He listened eagerly to his
father’s animated tales of war, as the veteran recounted
“the story of his life
From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That he had passed ...
Wherein he spoke of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth ’scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach.”
Doubtless it was from his father’s conversation in these days of
childhood that he acquired the soldierly predilections which clung to
him throughout his civil career. The receptive years of his boyhood up
to twelve were thus spent in English surroundings, and amidst English
scenery of an attractive character. Despite the whirl and worry of his
after-life, he ever remembered the beautiful Clifton of his day--before
the rocks were pierced for railway-tunnels or the valley spanned by a
suspension-bridge. He loved the forest-clad heights, the limestone
cliffs, the bed of the tidal Avon.
At twelve years of age he went to Foyle College close to Londonderry, to
be under the care of the Reverend James Knox, his mother’s brother. In
this College were his brothers George and Henry, also Robert Montgomery,
who was in future years to become to him the best of colleagues. Here he
stayed during two years of great importance in the forming of his mind
and disposition, as he breathed the air, imbibed the ideas, and gathered
the associations of Ulster. At first, however, his ways were so much
those of England that his companions called him “English John.” The
education which he there received was characteristic of the British
type, for it tended rather to form and strengthen the character than to
enlighten the intellect. The religious training, to which he was
subjected, appears to have been somewhat too severely strict. Yet in
combination with home influences and with natural impulses, it planted
religion ineradicably deep in his heart. The recollection of it,
however, rendered him adverse to formalism of any kind.
Foyle College as an educational institution has doubtless been much
developed since his time. But the building and its precincts may now be
seen almost exactly as they were when he was there. From the upper
windows is the same prospect which he had of the Foyle estuary, and from
the field where he played football is beheld a view of the historic
city. As he used to stay there with his uncle during the holidays, he
must have often walked round the terrace on the top of the well-kept
walls, that still enclose the old citadel-town wherein the faith and
freedom of the Protestants were sheltered during the storm of war in
1688-9. Here he found the historic memories preserved with wonderful
tenacity. So he must have gazed at the Ship-Quay, the Water-gate as it
once was, whither the relieving ships from England, after fighting their
way up the Foyle, brought victuals for the long-suffering and famished
garrison. He must have passed beneath the venerable bastions where the
defenders repeatedly beat back the French soldiers of King James. He
attended on Sundays divine service in the Cathedral which stood close to
the fighting-ground during the defence, and where the bones of eminent
defenders were interred. This, then, was just the place to be for him a
_nutrix leonum_, and the meet nurse for a heroic child; as indeed it is
the Saragossa of the British Isles. In after life his talk would oft
revert to the Foyle as to him the queen of rivers. Forty years later,
when at the summit of his greatness, he spoke publicly to his admirers
in the Punjab about the memories of Londonderry, as nerving Britons in
other lands to stubborn resistance.
At fifteen years of age he returned to England and went to a school kept
at Wraxall Hall, near Bath, an Elizabethan structure with picturesque
courtyards and orchards. It was comparatively near to his paternal home
at Clifton, and in it were renewed those rural associations of English
life which he had gathered in childhood. Shortly afterwards he was
offered a civil appointment in the East India Company’s service by a
good friend, Mr. Hudlestone, who had already given appointments in the
Company’s military service to three of the elder brothers, one of whom
was Henry. But he was minded to decline the civil appointment, then
considered of all appointments the most desirable, and to ask for a
military appointment instead. He would not regard the advice of his
father, nor of his brother Henry, who had just returned from India on
sick leave after hard service in the wars. The influence of his sister
Letitia alone persuaded him to accept the civil appointment.
Consequently at the age of seventeen he went to the East India Company’s
College at Haileybury near Hertford, and remained there for the
appointed term of two years. There he heard lectures in political
economy from Malthus, and in law from Empson, afterwards editor of the
_Edinburgh Review_. The discipline was not specially strict, nor was the
intellectual training severe; but as the Company maintained a highly
qualified and distinguished staff of professors, he had educational
opportunities of which he availed himself in a moderate or average
degree only. He was a fairly good student, but was not regarded by his
compeers as remarkable for learning or for prowess in games. His frame
was tall and well knit but gaunt. His manner was reserved in public,
sometimes tending to taciturnity, but vivacious and pleasant in private.
As he had been thought to be English when in Ireland, so now when in
England he was deemed to be somewhat Irish in his ways. In his case, as
in many eminent cases, the temper and disposition were being fixed and
settled, while the mental faculties were being slowly developed. The
basis of his great character was being founded in silence. But his
fondness for the rural side of English life must have been gratified to
the full at College. He had not cultivated any architectural taste, and
if he had, it would have been offended by the plainness even ugliness of
the collegiate architecture; but his nature rejoiced in the surroundings
of the College, the extensive woods reaching to the very gates, the
outburst of vernal foliage, the singing birds in their leafy haunts, the
open heath, the Rye House meadows, the waters of the Lea. He would roam
with long strides in the meads and woodlands. Though not gifted with any
æsthetic insight into the beauties of Nature, yet he would inwardly
commune with her, and he had an observant eye for her salient features.
Such things helped to establish a mind like his, and to temper it like
pure steel for the battle of life.
He used to spend a part of his vacation in each year at the house of a
friend at Chelsea, before returning to his home at Clifton. Having
passed through College he spent four months in England, in order to have
the companionship of Henry on the voyage out to India. He sailed in
September 1829, being nineteen years old, in a vessel bound for Calcutta
by the route round the Cape of Good Hope.
At a later stage in his life, some analysis will be given to show how
far he partook of the several elements in our composite national
character, English, Scotch and Irish. It may suffice here to state that
for all these years his nurture, bringing up, and education generally,
had been English, with the important exception of the two years which he
spent at Londonderry. Whatever Scotch or Irish proclivities he may have
possessed, and they will be considered hereafter, no son of England, of
his age, ever left her shores more imbued than he with her ideas, more
loyal to her principles, more cognisant of her strength or weakness, of
her safety or danger, of her virtues or failings.