youth. When she was about fifteen, she was trying to saddle her pony by
herself in the paddock, when she was thrown to the ground, and her spine
was injured in a manner that kept her lying on her back for four years.
Scarcely had she recovered from this injury, when another terrible
calamity nearly overwhelmed her. She had been sent to Torquay for the
benefit of her health, and had been there nearly a year, when her eldest
brother came to visit her, in order to consult her about some trouble of
his own. With two other young men, all good sailors, he took a little
boat, intending to have a sail along the coast. Within a few minutes of
starting, and almost under his sister’s window, the boat went down, and
young Barrett and his companions were drowned. The grief and horror
caused by this terrible event nearly killed her. It was almost a year
before she could be moved by slow stages of twenty miles a day to
London. Those who knew her best at that time believe that she would have
died if she had not been sustained by her love of literary pursuits,
which afforded some relief to her mind from the constant dwelling on the
tragedy of which she accused herself of being the cause. Miss Mitford
says in her _Literary Recollections_: “The house she occupied at Torquay
had been chosen as one of the most sheltered in the place. It stood at
the bottom of the cliffs, almost close to the sea; and she told me
herself that during that whole winter the sound of the waves rang in her
ears like the moans of one dying. Still she clung to literature and
Greek; in all probability she would have died without that wholesome
diversion to her thoughts. Her medical attendant did not always
understand this. To prevent the remonstrance of her friendly physician,
Dr. Barry, she caused a small edition of Plato to be so bound as to
resemble a novel. He did not know, skilful and kind though he were, that
to her such books were not an arduous and painful study, but a
consolation and a delight.” She, however, appeared to be condemned to a
life of perpetual invalidism. She now lived in London with her father,
and was confined to one large darkened room, and saw no one but her own
family, and a few intimate friends, the chief of whom were Miss Mitford,
Mrs. Jameson, and Mr. John Kenyon. The impression she produced on all
who came into contact with her was that she was the most charming and
delightful person they had ever met. Her sweetness, her purity, and the
tender womanliness of her character, made her friends forget her
learning and her genius. Miss Mitford says she often travelled
five-and-forty miles expressly to see her, and returned the same evening
without entering another house. The seclusion in which she lived was
perhaps not unfavourable to literary work. She lay on her couch, not
only, as Miss Mitford says, reading every book worth reading in almost
every language, but “giving herself heart and soul to that poetry of
which she seemed born to be the priestess.” In 1835 she published
_Prometheus and other Poems_, which, in the opinion of the most
competent judges, raised her at once to a high rank among English poets.
In 1843 she wrote _The Cry of the Children_, to which Lord Shaftesbury
owed so much in his efforts to protect factory children from being
ground to death by overwork; and later she wrote the noble “Song for the
Ragged Schools of London,” whose words go straight to every mother’s
heart.
During her long period of illness her chief link with the outside world
was her cousin, Mr. John Kenyon, to whom _Aurora Leigh_ is dedicated. He
knew all who were best worth knowing in the great world of London, and
he occasionally introduced to her one and another of those whom he
believed to be most capable of appreciating her and pleasing her. In
this way, in 1846, he brought Mr. Robert Browning to see Miss Barrett.
In the autumn of that same year the poet and poetess were married. What
his love was for her and hers for him may be gathered in the lovely
poem, “Caterina to Camoens,” and in the forty-three _Sonnets from the
Portuguese_, which Mrs. Browning wrote before her marriage. Almost
directly after her marriage Mrs. Browning was ordered abroad for the
benefit of her health, and the chief part of the remaining fifteen years
of her life was spent in Italy. She identified herself completely with
those who were struggling for the unity and independence of Italy, and
much of her poetry from this time onwards is coloured by her political
convictions. In Florence, in 1849, her only child, Robert Browning the
younger, was born. The deep joy of motherhood suffuses much of the
noblest part of _Aurora Leigh_. One is tempted to believe that the
lovely description of Marian Erle bending over her sleeping child,
The yearling creature, warm and moist with life
To the bottom of his dimples,
could have been written by no one who had not felt a mother’s love. In
any case, it adds to one’s pleasure in reading it to know that the
poetess was drawing her inspiration from her own excessive happiness in
the bliss of motherhood.
Many have singled out Mrs. Browning’s _Sonnets from the Portuguese_ as
her chief work. Mrs. Ritchie, in a very interesting article in the
_National Dictionary of Biography_, says of them, “There is a quality in
them which is beyond words: an echo from afar, which belongs to the
highest human expression of feeling.” Many other of the best judges have
said they are among the greatest sonnets in the English language. But
the work for which the world is most deeply in her debt is _Aurora
Leigh_. It probes to the bottom, but with a hand guided by purity and
justice, those social problems which lie at the root of what are known
as women’s questions. Her intense feeling that the honour of manhood can
never be reached while the honour of womanhood is sullied; her no less
profound conviction that people can never be raised to a higher level by
mere material prosperity, make this book one of the most precious in our
language. She herself speaks of it in the dedication as “The most mature
of my works, and the one into which my highest convictions upon Life and
Art have entered.” If she had written nothing else, she would stand out
as one of the epoch-making poets of the present century.
Mr. Browning has published some interesting information as to the manner
in which he and his wife worked. They were very careful not to influence
each other’s compositions unduly. Their styles in writing are entirely
unlike. They abstained from reading each other’s poems while they were
in process of composition. Mrs. Browning always kept a low
writing-table, with inkstand and pen upon it, by her side. Mr. Browning
wrote: “My wife used to write it (_Aurora Leigh_) and lay it down to
hear our child spell, or when a visitor came in it was thrust under the
cushions. At Paris, a year ago last March, she gave me the first six
books to read, I never having seen a line before. She then wrote the
rest and transcribed them in London, where I read them also. I wish, in
one sense, that I had written and she had read it.” No one but a poet
could have expressed so perfectly the great pleasure the reading gave
him. There is an anecdote that when the Brownings left Florence for
London, in 1856, the box containing the MS. of _Aurora Leigh_ was lost
at Marseilles. It also contained the velvet suits and lace collars of
the little boy; and it is said that Mrs. Browning was far more
distressed at losing the latter than the former. However, both were
fortunately recovered, for the box containing them was found by Mrs.
Browning’s brother in one of the dark recesses of the Marseilles Custom
House.
As evidence of her position in the literary world, it may be mentioned
that when Wordsworth died in 1850 the _Athenæum_ strongly urged that
Mrs. Browning ought to be made Poet Laureate.
Her sympathy with Italy was so strong that it is believed that the news
of the death of Cavour, through whom in so large a measure the unity of
Italy was achieved, hastened her own. She was very ill when the news
reached her, and she died in Florence on 30th June 1861. The
municipality of Florence placed a tablet upon her house expressing their
gratitude and admiration for her, and saying that in her womanly heart
she had reconciled the wisdom of the learned with the enthusiasm of the
poet, and with her verses had made a golden ring uniting Italy with
England.
XIII
LADY SALE AND HER FELLOW-HOSTAGES IN AFGHANISTAN
THE first Napoleon is said to have remarked to Madame de Staël that
women had nothing to do with politics; whereupon the lady rejoined that
women ought at least to be sufficiently acquainted with political
subjects to understand the reason why their heads were cut off. When we
read the account of the great sufferings of the English ladies who were
held as prisoners or hostages by Akbar Khan in Afghanistan in 1842, we
are reminded of Madame de Staël’s epigram, and think that they ought at
least to have had the consolation of understanding the political
meddling and muddling, which led to the prolonged pain and danger to
which they were subjected.
Afghanistan is a wild mountainous country beyond the north-west frontier
of the British Empire in India. Its people consist of savage, desperate,
lawless tribes, constantly at war with one another; indeed, they are
hardly ever united unless they are attacked by some foreign foe. They
are particularly jealous of any kind of foreign influence or
interference. Every man among them is bred to arms, even children being
provided with dangerous knives; they are trained to great endurance,
they are splendid horsemen, and are proficient in many kinds of manly
sports and martial exercises; but with these superficially attractive
qualities they possess others of a different stamp, for they are
treacherous, utterly regardless of truth, revengeful, bloodthirsty,
sensual, and avaricious. It will thus be seen that both their good and
their bad qualities render them particularly dangerous as foes. The
character of their country is very much like their own. It is a land of
rocky mountain passes, and a great part of it is savage and sterile. It
is separated from India by narrow rocky defiles, the principal one of
which, the Khyber pass, is twenty-eight miles long, and runs between
lofty, almost perpendicular precipices; the pass itself is so covered
with rocks and boulders that progress along it, even under the most
favourable circumstances, must necessarily be very slow. The rocky
precipices which command the pass are so steep that they cannot be
mounted; but they are perforated by many natural caves, which for
centuries have been the strongholds of bands of robbers. It is easy to
understand that an army endeavouring to go through this pass is at a
terrible disadvantage, and is almost entirely at the mercy of the wild
tribes of warriors and robbers who infest the heights.
About 1838-39 there was more than usual of internal fighting between the
savage tribes of Afghanistan. Some tribes wished for Dost Mahomed as
their king, or Ameer, and others wished for Shaj Soojah. It was
considered by those who directed the policy of the British Government in
India, a favourable time for us to interfere. It appears to have been
thought that we should make the ruler of Afghanistan our friend, if he
felt that he owed his throne to our espousal of his cause. It was,
however, forgotten that, however much the Afghans quarrelled among
themselves, they would forget all past enmities and unite against a
foreigner who tried to intervene between them; and they would hate and
despise any ruler who owed his nominal sovereignty to the help of
foreign soldiers. Therefore, although the English succeeded, in the
first instance, in driving away Dost Mahomed and making Shaj Soojah
king, they soon found that this first success was the beginning of their
difficulties. Sir George Lawrence has told the story in his interesting
book called _Forty-three Years of my Life in India_, and another
narrative of the same events may be found in _Lady Sale’s Journal_. An
Afghan horseman, with whom Sir George (then Major) Lawrence conversed,
expressed the feelings of his countrymen and the difficulties of our
position in a few words. “What could induce you,” he said, “to squander
crores of rupees[2] in coming to a poor rocky country like ours, without
wood or water, and all in order to force upon us a kumbukbt (unlucky
person) as a king, who, the moment you turn your backs, will be upset by
Dost Mahomed, our _own_ king?”
However, for a time the English army in Afghanistan did not realise the
difficult and dangerous position in which they were placed. Dost Mahomed
fled; and not long after he surrendered himself to the English, and was
sent, with his wives and children, as a prisoner of war to India.
Everybody now thought all trouble and danger were over, and the married
officers and men of the English garrison sent for their wives and
children to join them at Cabul. Shaj Soojah was established there and
received the congratulations of the English. Lawrence, however, observed
that the Ameer’s own subjects did not join in these congratulations, and
moreover Shaj Soojah himself began to show signs of getting tired of his
English friends. No special danger was, however, anticipated; the
English envoy, Sir W. MacNaghten, was about to leave Cabul, having been
appointed to the Governorship of Bombay. Had he left, he would have
taken Lawrence with him as his secretary. When the preparations for his
departure were nearly complete, the clouds that had long been gathering
at last burst in storm. The Ghilzye tribe rose in rebellion because they
had been deprived of an annual subsidy of £3000, nominally paid them by
Shaj Soojah, but really supplied by the British. This insurrection had
the effect of a match applied to a train of gunpowder. The whole of
Afghanistan was presently in arms; the safest and most easily defended
routes for the return to India were cut off. The insurrection spread to
Cabul itself; the houses of the English residents were attacked and
burned, the Treasury was sacked, and several officers and men were
murdered in the streets. An attempt to send help to the English from
Jellalabad was unsuccessful; the Afghans were victorious, and held the
small British force entirely in their power.
Sir George Lawrence and Lady Sale complain bitterly of the incapacity of
those who were highest in command of the English military operations;
they urged that the right thing to have done would have been to take the
whole British force into the Bala Hissar, the citadel of Cabul, and hold
it against all comers till reinforcements arrived. The time of year was
mid-winter, and winter in Afghanistan is intensely severe. To have held
the fort would have entailed far less difficulty and danger than to
attempt to retreat by the fearful Khyber pass, the heights of which were
held by bands of savage mountaineers. This rash and fatal course was,
however, attempted, with the result, now well known, that of the whole
army, with the exception of those who were held by the Afghans as
prisoners or hostages, only one man, and he severely wounded, reached
Jellalabad alive. Those who have seen Lady Butler’s picture, “The Last
of an Army,” will be able to realise something of what the disaster of
the Khyber pass was. Akbar Khan, a son of Dost Mahomed and the leading
spirit of the Afghan chiefs, had said that he would destroy the army
with the exception of one man who should be left to tell the tale, and
he kept his word.
Before this fatal retreat was decided upon, attempts at negotiation with
the Afghans were made; Akbar, in particular, had repeatedly demanded
that, as a pledge of good faith, the wives and children of the English
officers and men should be delivered over to him as hostages. While the
English were still in Cabul, this suggestion was naturally rejected with
horror. Some officers declared they would rather shoot their wives with
their own hands than put them in the power of Akbar. Akbar had shown
himself desperately cruel and treacherous. He twice invited the English
envoy, Sir W. MacNaghten, outside the encampment to consult with him and
other chiefs as to the terms of capitulation. On the first occasion the
envoy and his escort returned in safety, but the terms of the treaty
agreed upon were, on the part of the Afghans, entirely set at naught.
When the second conference was about to take place, the English were
treacherously attacked and overpowered, and our envoy was murdered by
Akbar with his own hands. It was not very likely therefore that the
repeated demand of this man to have the English women and children
placed in his control would be listened to, and it was not, in fact,
conceded until it became evident that to continue to accompany the
ill-fated army in its retreat meant certain death.
The retreat from Cabul began on the 6th January 1842; the thermometer
was ten degrees below zero—far colder than the coldest weather of an
ordinary English winter. The night was spent in the open; part of the
march had been through snow and slush, which wetted those on foot up to
their knees. Lady Sale, who was riding, says her habit was like a sheet
of ice. Many died of cold and exhaustion on the first night. The poor
Sepoys, accustomed to the warmth of an Indian sun, were unable to handle
their muskets, and when attacked by the murderous bands of Afghans that
continually pursued the army, were cut down as helplessly as sheep. The
sufferings of the women and children were terrible. One poor woman had
lately been confined. She, as well as the others, was exposed to all the
horrors of the Afghan winter, and to the chances of dying by the Afghan
knife or bullet. Lady Sale, with her daughter Mrs. Sturt, showed a fine
example of courage and endurance. Lawrence said she and all the ladies
bore up so nobly and heroically against hunger, cold, and fatigue, as to
call forth the admiration even of the Afghans themselves. It seems to
have been known or rumoured that Akbar would make a special effort to
get hold of the women, for Lady Sale and her daughter were advised to
disguise themselves as much as possible, and to ride with the men, which
they did, riding with Captain Hay’s troopers. On the second day of the
retreat they were heavily fired upon, Lady Sale was wounded, her
daughter’s horse was shot under her, and her son-in-law, Captain Sturt,
was mortally injured. Let any one who likes to dwell on “the pomp and
circumstance of glorious war” look on the reverse side of the picture.
Captain Sturt had received a severe wound in the abdomen, from which it
was from the first certain he could not recover. He was in great agony;
it was impossible to move him without increasing his sufferings, equally
impossible that he should not be moved. He was placed in a kind of rough
litter, the jolting of which was a terrible aggravation of his pain. At
night he lay on a bank in the snow, suffering from intolerable thirst;
the water for which he craved could only be supplied, a few spoonfuls at
a time, because his wife and mother had no means of getting a larger
quantity. Those who have known what it is, even in the midst of every
home comfort, to stand by the death-bed of those they love, can best
imagine what it was to Lady Sale and her daughter to see the anguish and
death of their son and husband under such circumstances as these. The
horrors of the retreat became worse and worse. All the baggage was lost,
and the whole road was covered with men, women, and children lying down
in the snow to die.
Again Akbar renewed his demand for the women and children, and this time
he urged it on grounds of humanity. It now appeared certain that the
only chance of saving their lives was to accept Akbar’s proposals. Nine
ladies, twenty gentlemen, and fourteen children were accordingly made
over to him as prisoners or hostages. It is true that he assured them
that they were to consider themselves his honoured guests, and that on
the whole he behaved well to them, but their sufferings while in his
charge were very considerable. They believed themselves to be in
constant danger of death, or else that they would be sold as slaves and
sent to Bokhara. All their arms and means of defence were taken from
them, and they were but too well acquainted with the treacherous and
cruel nature of the man whose prisoners they were.
The most noticeable feature of Lady Sale’s journal is its buoyant
courage and cheerfulness. The forty-three persons of whom the hostages
consisted were reinforced by the birth of three infants, one of which
was Mrs. Sturt’s, and consequently was Lady Sale’s grandchild. They were
eight and a half months in captivity. Their accommodation very often
consisted of no more than two small rooms among the whole party. Lady
Sale speaks of being lodged twenty-one in a room fourteen feet by ten
feet; another time thirty-four persons had to share a room only fifteen
feet by twelve feet; sixteen persons, of both sexes and all ages, shared
one small room for a long time. Lady Sale and her daughter—indeed, most
of the captives—had lost everything but the clothes they stood in. Yet,
in the midst of all the discomfort and danger to which the party was
exposed, there is seldom a word of complaint in Lady Sale’s journal
which she wrote at the time, and more often than not their hardships are
turned into matter of laughter and merriment. The retreat from Cabul was
begun, it will be remembered, on 6th January; on the 9th the ladies and
children, with twenty gentlemen, among whom was Major Lawrence, were
made over to Akbar Khan; not until 18th January were they established in
permanent quarters in the fort of Buddeeabad. The journal for 19th
January begins: “We luxuriated in dressing, although we had no clothes
but those on our backs; but we enjoyed washing our faces very much,
having had but one opportunity of doing so since we left Cabul. It was
rather a painful process, as the cold and glare of the sun on the snow
had three times peeled my face, from which the skin came off in strips.”
Major Lawrence describes the rooms assigned to the ladies as “miserable
sheds full of fleas and bugs.” But even these and worse trials to the
temper were good-humouredly encountered. “It was above ten days,” Lady
Sale wrote, “after our departure from Cabul before I had an opportunity
to change my clothes, or even to take them off and put them on again and
wash myself; and fortunate were those who did not possess much live
stock. It was not till our arrival here (near Cabul, almost at the end
of their captivity) that we completely got rid of _lice_, which we
denominated infantry; the fleas, for which Afghanistan is famed, we
called light cavalry.” The food served out to the prisoners was the
reverse of appetising: greasy skin and bones, boiled in the same pot
with rice, and all served together, was a usual dish. Lady Sale
describes a kind of bread made of unpollarded flour mixed with water,
and dried by being set up on edge near a fire. “Eating these cakes of
dough,” she says, “is a capital recipe for heartburn.” The bad cooking
they remedied by obtaining leave to cook for themselves.
One of the chief alleviations of their lot consisted—so far, at least,
as the ladies were concerned—in needlework; they were supplied with
calico, chintz, and other materials, and were most thankful, not only
for the clothes which they were thus enabled to make, but also for the
occupation the work afforded. The ladies also cheerfully bore their part
in other kinds of work, and became laundresses, cooks, and housemaids,
and, in one instance, carpenters and masons for the nonce. The choice of
rooms being very limited, one was allotted to Lady Sale and her
companions which had no windows, and consequently no means of getting
air and light, except what came through the door. “We soon _set to_,”
writes Lady Sale, “and by dint of hard working with sticks and stones,
in which I bore my part, assisted by Mr. Melville, until both of us got
blistered hands, we knocked two small windows out of the wall, and thus
obtained ‘darkness visible.’” Lady Sale had permission to correspond
with her husband, General Sir Robert Sale, who was conducting vigorous
measures against the enemy at Jellalabad. Lady Sale was very proud of
her husband, and mentions with evident delight the nickname of “Fighting
Bob,” which his soldiers had given him. Any recognition of his deserts
gave her keen satisfaction. She refers to the presentation of a sword to
him as “the only thing that has given me pleasure,” although at that
time her praises were upon everybody’s lips. She was so thoroughly a
soldier’s wife that she understood military tactics: before she left
Cabul she speaks of taking up a post of observation on the roof of the
house, “as usual,” in order to watch the military movements that were
going forward. She says she understood the plan of attack as well as she
understood the hemming of a handkerchief; therefore she diligently wrote
an account of everything of importance to her husband. These letters
were so important for the military and political news they contained
that they were often forwarded to the Commander-in-chief, to Lord
Auckland, the Governor-general, and to the Court of Directors of the
East India Company.