We might know very little of the life of the late George Alfred Henty--
writer for and teacher of boys, novelist, and one of the most virile of
our war correspondents--but for one fortunate fact. His busy pen soon
made him popular, and in course of time this popularity was sufficient
to make editors of journals for the young realise that their readers
would gladly learn something of the early life of the man whose vivid
tales of adventure were being read with avidity wherever the English
language had spread. In these days few are content to know a man only
by his work, and even boys like to know something about the personality
and experiences of the writers who have given them keen pleasure. As a
result the inevitable came to pass, and the modern chronicler of
personal details sought out the author. To his interviewers Henty told
fragments of his past life, and these reminiscences were taken down in
short or long hand, and built up into articles, and have remained, to
bring before us vividly what would otherwise never have been known save
perhaps by tradition.
It is strange now to reflect that the big, robust, heavy, manly-looking
Englishman of whom these lines are written, was once a puny, sickly boy
who was looked upon by his relatives as one who could never by any
possibility attain to man's estate; but so it was. Here are his own
words: "I spent my boyhood, to the best of my recollection, in bed."
Descended from an old Sussex family, George Alfred Henty was born at
Trumpington, near Cambridge, on December 8, 1832, and it would appear
that he was a confirmed invalid. This ill-health was the more
unfortunate because it was in the days when doctors were inclined to be
narrow-minded, and parents and guardians in almost every household had
intense belief in the virtues of physic. Most mothers then were given
to doctoring, and at spring-time and fall considered it to be their duty
to administer filthy infusions, decoctions, and very often concoctions,
to unhappy boyhood; and a powder at night, to be followed by a nightmare
of the draught that was to be taken in the morning, is a painful
recollection to some of us.
Happy boys of the present generation! Why, who among them now know the
meaning of words which must almost seem like cabalistic characters?
Jalap, rhubarb, magnesia, salts and senna, gamboge, James's powder--
these were all in constant request, without taking into consideration
the secrets promulgated by the wicked writers of books on domestic
medicine.
It was in those days that George Henty was born. He tells of an early
removal at the age of five to Canterbury, to a fine old house whose
garden ran down to the River Stour. Here for the next five years his
mind became stored with those most wholesome of recollections connected
with boy life. It was the bird, bee, and butterfly time, brightened by
the presence of a grand trout stream, to whose banks he would creep, so
as not to send the spotted beauties darting off in a flash of ruddy gold
to seek some hiding-place from the gigantic shadow that had suddenly
been cast athwart the stream. He tells, too, in many a page of his
later life, how the influences of this good old garden were a solace and
delight to him during many a weary tramp or journey in the saddle far
away; in the course of his journeys through Europe, the wilds of Asia,
and the savage mountains and dense tropic forests and swamps of Africa.
The boy was fortunate, too, in his leanings towards natural history, for
he speaks of a grandfather who was always ready to play the part of
instructor to the young enquiring mind in regard to scientific matters,
and explain the why and the wherefore of such objects as he collected.
When not confined to his bed, Henty attended a Dame school, where the
love of reading was started, and grew and grew so that the sick boy's
lot was softened to the extent that the weariness and suffering of
confinement to his bed became almost pleasant in the forgetfulness
begotten by books. That which was wanting in the way of education was
made up in these long hours by reading. To use his own words, he "read
ravenously"--romance, adventure, everything--perfectly unconscious, of
course, of the fact that he was laying in a mighty store for the future,
preparing himself, in fact, for the great work of his life, the broad
and wide education of the boys of a generation to come.
In those days, though the classics hardly had place (there was little of
Latin or Greek), he was piling up general knowledge such as comes to the
lot of few lads now, in spite of the boasted advance in educational
matters and all the elaborate apparatus and routine. And yet it must
not be supposed that the boy's regular education was neglected. When
ten years old there was an end to his simple country life, for though
far from well he was sent to London to begin life in a private
boarding-school, a life sadly interfered with by sickness and relapses
into ailments more or less severe, among them being that terrible
disease whose sequelae have shattered many lives--rheumatic fever. One
of his ailments seems to have been near akin to that of the late Prince
Leopold, namely, a tendency to profuse bleeding. For this he was
attended by a well-known specialist of the time, whose great remedy for
the boy's complaint was camphine, this being the popular term in those
days for one of the refinements of the so-called rock oils, nowadays
known as petrol or paraffin.
Henty recorded to one of his interviewers that he was so thoroughly
dosed with this peculiar medicine that the specialist warned the nurse
in these words: "I don't say that if you put a light to the boy he will
catch fire, but I advise you not to risk it." This was accompanied with
further counsel that the future chronicler of boys' adventures should
not be allowed to handle sharp instruments, lest a cut or puncture
should result in his bleeding to death.
Much reading in these early days had so influenced the boy that he had
already become a story-teller, and, as is often the case with first
attempts at writing, pleased with the jingle and flow of words, he had
dropped into poetry. Now a young poet, as soon as he has satisfied
himself with his lines and has carefully copied them in his best
penmanship, burns to see himself in print. He then imagines, or is
flattered into the belief, that numbers of people are as anxious as he
to see his work become public; and it appears to have been so here, for
owing to the well-meant kindness of a friend, certain of his early verse
was printed, and it would appear to have been extremely sentimental and
remarkably mild.
It was soon after this, when Henty was fourteen, that he went to
Westminster School. Liddell was head-master then, and the boy became a
half-boarder, and in a very little while, in his boyish and very natural
vanity, he let his tongue run a little too fast. He had written verse,
and consequently esteemed himself something of a poet, so it was not
long before he mentioned the fact of his having his work in print. He
quickly began to wish he had held his tongue. He had not counted upon
the mischievous delight a pack of schoolboys would take in their special
poet. If he had written Latin verses it would have been a different
thing; but a love-tale with threatened difficulties to a lady was too
much for them, and a long and continuous "roasting" ensued. Chaff flew,
indirect and covert allusions were made, and then came bullying. Henty
says: "It seemed as if the whole school bore a personal animosity
towards poets, and as if they looked upon my publishing the unlucky book
as a bit of `side' unworthy of a Westminster scholar."
This particular poem was unfortunately lost, and the same fate befell
another attempt written later, for the school banter did not crush out
the rhyming faculties. The later work was written upon a more serious
occasion, and, devoted to his future wife, it was cared for and
preserved for long years as a valued treasure; indeed, only about ten
years before his death, Henty was taking it up to town and accidentally
left it in the railway carriage. Attempts to recover it proved vain,
and though he offered a large sum of money as a reward, he never heard
of it again.
As the lad's education progressed at Westminster it was not long before
he began to realise that the curriculum was not complete, and that no
boy's studies were perfect without a thorough knowledge of the noble
science of self-defence. Indeed, he had not been long at the great
school before he came in contact with one of the regular school bullies,
who began to tyrannise until young Henty awoke to the fact that he
possessed a high spirit and an absence of that weak pusillanimity which
makes men slaves. He was no mute inglorious Milton, though he aimed at
being a poet.
The boy was father to the man he became, and he bore little before he
turned in defiance and challenged his tyrant. The natural result was
that he was thrashed out of hand and sent smarting with pain and
mortification to where he could ponder over his defeat. But he was not
of the mettle to sit down painfully under humiliation, and, to use his
own words, "I soon changed all that."
It was something to learn, something to study; how to acquire the power,
the science, which makes a comparatively weak man the equal of one far
stronger, and, judging the boy by what he was as a man, it was from no
desire to become bully in his turn that he took lessons in boxing, but
from a genuine ambition to hold his own in the matter of self-defence
and to be able to protect those who looked to him for help. It was with
this desire that, later, when he left Westminster for Cambridge, at a
time when the so-called noble art was at its highest tide, and when
professors of the science had quite a standing at the universities, he
continued its study, and one of the first professors to whom he applied
for lessons (out of college) was the once celebrated Nat Langham, who,
by the way, was the only man who ever vanquished Tom Sayers. Not
contented with this, but being then in the full burst of his growing
youth and strength--a sort of young athlete thirsting for power like a
boyish Hercules--he took to wrestling, perfectly unconscious then of the
good stead in which it might stand him in the future. In this sport he
chose as his instructor a Newcastle man, one Jamieson, famed in his way
as being champion of the Cumberland style as opposed to the Cornish. It
must be borne in mind that all this was prior to the days of the Great
Exhibition, when pugilism was considered no disgrace, and before young
men had begun to foster athleticism in other forms.
It was a strange reaction in the youth who had passed the greater part
of his early life upon a sickbed, and it seemed as if the brave nature
within him was exerting itself to throw off his natural weakness.
That thrashing he received in his early days at Westminster seemed to
have roused him, spurred him on to gain strength, and he was encouraged
too by the stirring times in which he found himself. Boating and
cricket were all-important at Westminster. The studies were hard, but
the masters, wisely enough, encouraged all sports; for the Westminster
boys, as our chronicles have shown us, learned there to hold their own
the wide world round. One need not here point to the long roll of
famous names. These pages are devoted to one alone.
Henty takes a very modest view of his own prowess, and says of his life
at Westminster: "Boating or cricket--you had your choice; but once made,
you had to be perfect in one or the other. Fellows rowed then and
played cricket then. They had to."
The Thames was their course. There was no Saint Thomas's Hospital then,
and the boat-houses were on the banks. The river was pretty handy to
the great school, and at the sight of the Westminster crews the boatmen
used to come across to fetch the boys. These were the days before the
Thames Embankment, when the river sprawled, so to speak, at low water
over long acres of deep mud, swarming with blood-worms, and though the
river tides ran swirling to and fro the current was greatly quickened.
Later the number of steamers increased and cut up the Westminster
rowing, so that it went all to pieces. It was so greatly affected that
the Old Westminsters' Club tried to move the sport to Putney; but it
never regained its old standing. Westminster, however, though known
best as a boating school, was a great cricketing one as well. At one
time five Westminster men played in the All England Eleven; but Henty
was not a cricketer. As a young athlete, he selected rowing. Both
sports could not be managed; the standard was too high.
Henty describes himself in his growing days and at Cambridge as a sort
of walking skeleton; but he was big-boned, and the life he led as
manhood approached made him fill out and grow fast into the big,
muscular, burly man that he was to the end of his life. In fact, he has
said that in later days, when he went down to the Caius College Annual
Dinners, while he knew most of the men of his own standing, not one
recognised him. And this can easily be grasped when it is understood
that in his college days at nineteen he weighed nine and a half stone,
while as a man in vigorous health he was as much as seventeen.
He does not forget to credit his school with the education his Alma
Mater afforded him. He says: "She did give me a good drilling in Latin.
Perhaps not elegant classical Latin, but good, everyday, useful,
colloquial stuff." In his time the masters were great upon the old
dramatic author whom so many of our modern dramatists have tapped right
through Elizabethan, Restoration, and more modern times, down to the
present. In Henty's early days, just as is annually the custom now, one
or other of Terence's comedies was chosen for a performance by the
Queen's Scholars, while every other boy as a matter of course had to get
up one play as the lesson of the year as well, and doubtless, as has
been the case with many a schoolboy in turn, would fall a-wondering how
it was that the great Latin poet possessed an Irish name.
Latin verses and Latin colloquial phrases were hard enough to pile up,
while parents and guardians, ready enough to complain, found fault at so
much time being devoted to the dead languages to the exclusion of those
which are spoken now. Hear, ye grumblers, what George Henty says
thereon to an interviewer:--
"When I went out to the Crimea, and later, to Italy, I found that
everyday Latin invaluable. It was the key to modern Italian, and a very
good key too. But more than that, it meant that wherever I could come
across a priest I had a friend and an interpreter. Without my
recollections of Terence I don't know where I should have been when I
first tackled life as a war correspondent."
He speaks of Westminster as giving him his first introduction to
boating, not merely rowing, but boating with the use of the sail. There
was a man on the Surrey side in those days, named Roberts, from whom the
boys used to hire their four-oared and eight-oared cutters, wager boats,
and the occasional randan for three, two oars and sculls. This man had
a small half-decked boat which Henty first learned to handle. In it he
learned also the stern necessity of always being on the alert after
hoisting sail--a necessity which doubtless gave rise to the good old
proverbial warning, "Look out for squalls." Yet, in spite of everyone
knowing and often using this warning phrase, it is too often neglected
by careless boating people, who will not realise what a duty it is never
to make fast the sheet.
Here at Westminster and in the little half-decked boat commenced the
healthy passion of Henty's life, and he acquired something of the skill
which enabled him through manhood to go to sea and feel no fear even in
rough weather, strengthened as he was by the calm confidence that
accompanied, in the broad sense of the term, "knowing the ropes."
The days of a public-schoolboy came to an end, and with their conclusion
arrived the feeling that he was a man. But after all it was the
schoolboy feeling of manhood, though it was very manly in one thing, for
it brought with it the knowledge that he had spent too much time in
play, and with it too the feeling that he must make up for the past.
Hence it was that he went in for what he termed a burst of hard reading
as soon as he reached Cambridge and entered at Caius College. In the
full realisation of his failings he proved that he was still a boy, for
he set to and began reading night and day for about three weeks, so as
to acquire as much as should have taken him about six months' work. As
a result nature said nay, and gave him a severe lesson in the shape of
an illness which knocked him over, so that he had to go down for a
year's rest, as it was termed, but it was in reality a good spell of
health-giving instructive work which greatly influenced his future
career. In fact, he now began to pick up the information which he so
largely utilised afterwards in his books. Here was his first study for
_Facing Death_, one of his most widely read boys' stories--boys', though
it was as much read by men. For he went down into Wales, where his
father possessed a coal-mine and iron works, and at the latter he
acquired such knowledge and insight into engineering as to enable him at
a critical time in his career as a war correspondent to call himself an
engineer. Reporting himself as an English engineer desirous of studying
the practical effect of great gun fire, he had no difficulty in getting
permission to accompany the Italian Fleet in what was virtually the
first battle between iron-clad men-of-war.
Henty's subsequent military training, together with his physique and
stern decision of manner, made him naturally an excellent leader of men.
In ordinary civilised life he was one who, at a gathering, would be
pretty well sure to be selected as chairman, for upon occasion he could
abandon his quiet soft-spoken manner, fill out his chest, and, if
slightly roused by opposition, speak out with a decision and a firmness
that would lay antagonism low; while, if it happened to be in a lower
stratum of not to say savage but uncivilised life, his training had made
him a picked disciplinarian, one who had his own particular way of
maintaining order and gaining the affections as well as the obedience of
those whom he had to command.
This was simple enough in the army with disciplined men, but there were
occasions when his services were selected to guide and govern the
undisciplined and those of the roughest and most obstreperous nature.
Upon one occasion fate placed him, the cultivated scholar and
Westminster boy, as foreman, or as it was termed amongst the men,
"ganger", over a strong body of men engaged upon the construction of
some small military railway. His men were a very lively party,
extremely insubordinate at first, and ready if matters did not go
exactly as they pleased--if the work seemed too rough, or the supply of
available strong drink too handy--to throw down their tools, or reply
with insolence to their foreman, whose calm, quiet ways and speech
seemed to invite resistance. It was in ignorance that the fellow who
offended did this thing, and he did not offend a second time, for Henty
was leader with plenary powers, and he had but one way of dealing with a
rough. It was to order him at once to the place which he used as his
business office, and with quiet firmness and decision, and in the
presence of his following, to pay the man off there and then, to the
great delight of the rest of the gang, who knew what was to follow. The
offender was paid in full and told to be off from the line. He, of
course, retaliated with an outburst of flowery language, noting the
while the gathering together of his mates. Henty meantime was quietly
taking off his coat and rolling up his sleeves preparatory to showing
the unbelieving ruffian how a muscular athletic English gentleman, a
late pupil of a great professor of boxing, could scientifically handle
his fists and give the scoundrel, to the intense delight of the
lookers-on, a thoroughly solid and manly thrashing. This invariably
ended in the offender crying, "Hold! Enough!" and accepting his
punishment without bearing malice; and in almost every case the gang was
not only not weakened by the loss of a man, but it maintained a more
willing worker than it had possessed before.
As may be readily supposed, the gentleman ganger lost no prestige
amongst his men by such an exhibition of his prowess, for he knew most
accurately with whom he had to deal, that is to say, so many big
stalwart men of thews and muscle, such as our contractors have utilised
for linking land to land with road and bridge, men of untiring energy
and endurance, but with the mental capacity of stupid children. These
formed Henty's gang, and to his credit be it recorded that his treatment
proved as efficacious as it was firm, the punishment being given calmly
and in cold blood, to the astonishment of the man who received it.