The department which invalided George Henty and sent him home to recoup
did not lose sight of the man who had earned such a good name in the
Crimea, and as soon as he was reported convalescent it began to look
about for a position in which his services would prove valuable.
Here was a man who, in connection with his duties in the Purveying
Department during the late war, had more or less distinguished himself
by the acumen he had displayed and the reports he had sent in concerning
the state of the temporary hospitals and the treatment of the sick and
wounded. There is not much favour shown over such work as his. The
fact was patent that in Henty the authorities had a man of keen
observation who grasped at once what was wanted in time of war in
connection with the movements of an army, one whose mission it was not
to direct movements and utilise the forces who were, so to speak, being
used in warfare, but who knew how to make himself a valuable aid to
supplement doctor and surgeon, and to carry on their work of saving
life--in short, the right man in the right place.
So he was selected and sent out to Italy charged with the task of
organising the hospitals of the Italian Legion. The very wording of
such an appointment as this is enough to take an ordinary person's
breath away. It might have been supposed that the department would have
selected as organiser some mature professional man and M.D., with the
greatest experience in such matters, ripened in the work and well known
as a great authority; but to their credit they grasped the fact that
Henty's experience was proved and real. Book-lore and the passing of
examinations were as nothing in comparison with what this young man of
twenty-seven had learned in roughly extemporised hospital, tent, and hut
amidst the inclemency of a foreign clime, in the face of the horrible
scourge of an Eastern epidemic, where the wounded died off like flies,
not from the wounds, which under healthy environment would rapidly have
healed, but from that deadly enemy, pyaemia, or hospital gangrene. It
was this which proved so fatal after the otherwise healing touch of the
skilful surgeon's knife--for these were the days prior to the
discoveries made by Lister, which completely revolutionised the surgical
art.
While in Italy in 1859 in connection with the hospital work, Henty
stored his mind with the results of his observations. They were
stirring times. War was on the way; Sardinia's army, fresh from
fleshing its sword in the Crimea, was eager for the fight that was
partially to free Italy, and the name of Garibaldi was on every lip, for
he and his Red Shirts were burning to attack the hated Austrian. While
finding an opportunity to be present at some of the engagements, Henty
was busy preparing himself for writing history, and his brain was
actively acquiring the language and habits of the people in a way that
was an unconscious preparation for a future visit to the country in
connection with the duties of a war correspondent.
It was during this visit to Italy in 1859, and while performing his
duties of inspector and organiser of the Italian hospitals, that Henty
made his first acquaintance with Garibaldi and his enthusiastic army so
bent upon freeing Italy from the yoke of Austria. In a number of most
interesting letters, picturesque and full of the observation and
training that he was gathering for the construction of the series of
adventurous stories now standing to his name, he details his meetings
with the Red Shirts. Bright, high-spirited boys they were in many
cases, ever with the cry of liberty upon their lips, and only too ready
to welcome and to fraternise with the daring, manly young fellow who
thought as little as they of the personal risks which had to be faced,
and who was subsequently to chronicle this portion of their history and
the warlike deeds of their chief.
After his return from the organising expedition with the Italian Legion,
Henty was placed in charge of the Commissariat Departments at Belfast
and Portsmouth, and now held the rank of captain. A plodding life this
for a military man with all the making in him of a strong, thoughtful
soldier, one who would have become the strongest link in the vertebrae
of a regiment, so to speak, the one nearest the brain.
Fate, however did not guide him in that direction, but, as we know now,
led him towards becoming the critic of armies instead of an actor in
their ranks.
Judging from Henty's nature and the steadiness and constancy of his life
in the pursuit of the career which he chose, it could not have been
lightly that he came to the decision that from the way in which he had
entered the army there did not seem to be any future for him worthy of
his attention, for the British army has always been marked by the way in
which birth and money have been the stepping-stones to promotion. Of
course there have been exceptions, but the British soldier has never
been famed for carrying a field-marshal's baton in his knapsack, and it
is only of comparatively late years that the famous old anomaly of
promotion by purchase has died out.
Certainly Henty entered the army as a university man and a gentleman,
but he must have begun to feel, taught by experience, that he had gone
in by the wrong door, the one which led in an administrative direction
and not to the executive with a future of command.
During Henty's stay in Ireland he had a very unpleasant experience with
a rough in Dublin, or rather, to be accurate, a rough in Dublin had a
very unpleasant experience with Henty. Somehow or other, while out
walking with his young wife, for he was now married, a brutal fellow
offered some insult to Mrs Henty, in the purest ignorance of the kind
of man whose anger he had roused. One says roused, for in ordinary life
Henty was one of the calmest and quietest of men; but he had plenty of
chivalry in his composition, and moreover, as has been shown, he had had
the education and training of an athlete, leavened with the instructions
of the North-country trainer who taught him the jiu-jitsu of his day as
practised by a Newcastle man. What followed was very brief, for there
was a quick, short struggle, and the Dublin Pat--a city blackguard, and
no carrier of a stick--was sent flying over Henty's head, _hors de
combat_, much surprised at the strength and skill of such a man as he
had possibly never encountered before in his life.