Henty proved early the excellence of his capabilities, and that he was a
man who would be all that was required for the preservation of men's
lives; but such as he meet with scant encouragement, and at last, as
said above, he made up his mind to try in a fresh direction, and
resigned his commission.
Led no doubt by his leanings, and taught by old experience in connection
with his father's enterprises in coal-mining, he made a fresh start in
life in mining engineering, and was for some time in Wales, where his
knowledge of mining, and natural firmness and aptitude as a leader and
trained controller of bodies of men, made him a valuable agent for the
adventurous companies who are ready to open up new ground. His
operations were so successful that after a time he entered into
engagements which resulted in his proceeding to the Island of Sardinia.
Here there was much untried ground to invite the speculation of the
enterprising and adventurous; for it is a country rich in minerals,
several of them being so-called precious stones, and there seemed
excellent promise of profit. A good deal of speculative research was at
one time on the way, and here, following his work in Wales, Henty spent
some busy years, not, though, without finding the value of his early
athletic education, for the lower orders were not too well disposed to
the young English manager under whom they worked.
Returning to England early in the sixties, he once more turned his
attention to his pen, having proved, while in the Crimea, his ability
for writing quick and observant descriptive copy, specimens of which
were extant in the columns of the _Morning Advertiser_, and of which he
had examples pasted up and preserved. Moreover, when he began to make
application for work, he had the satisfaction of finding that his
articles had already excited notice in the literary world. This helped
him to obtain an engagement, somewhere in 1865, as special correspondent
of the _Standard_, and he carried out his duties so successfully that he
became a standard of the _Standard_, and was sent out in 1866 as one of
the special correspondents of that paper to Italy, to report upon the
proceedings of the Italian armies which had then united in the
operations against the Austrian forces.
Italy was to some extent familiar hunting-ground for Henty, inasmuch as
at the time when he went to undertake the task of reorganising the
hospitals of the Italian Legion he had seen a good deal of the country,
picked up much of the language, and had become acquainted with Garibaldi
and his followers when, as said before, they were engaged in the
encounters which resulted in partially freeing Italy from the Austrian
yoke.
It was now that his early experience of the country and the mastery he
had obtained over the Italian language stood him in good stead, while,
as a matter of course, his experience and general knowledge of the
country made him an ideal chronicler of the movements of the campaign.
Plunged, as it were, right in the midst of the troubles, he seems to
have been here, there, and everywhere, and by some means or another he
was always on the spot whenever anything exciting was on the way. Now
he was at sea, now with the Garibaldians scouting on the flanks of the
Austrian army, now making journeys by Vetturinos across the mountains,
to turn up somewhere along with the forces of the king, and always ready
to bring a critical eye to bear--the eye of a soldier--in comparing the
three forces, the volunteer Garibaldians, the Italian regulars, and the
Austrians. The last mentioned seemed to him to be, in their drill,
unquestionably superior to the Italians, displaying a strong _esprit de
corps_, rigid obedience to their officers, and an amount of German
impassibility far more adapted to make them bear unmoved the hardships
and discouragements of long struggles and reverses than the enthusiasm
of the Italians--an enthusiasm which was manifested in a perfect furore
of delight throughout Italy on the news of the declaration of war,
tidings reaching Henty from every city, of illuminations, of draping
with flags, and other celebrations.
"Even Naples," he says, "which has been far behind the rest of Italy in
her ardour for the cause, began to rejoice at the termination of the
long delay;" but he declares there was no doubt that the reactionary
party had been very hard at work there, with the result that a number of
turbulent spirits had been sent away from among the volunteers, the
excesses which they had committed threatening to bring the Garibaldians
into disrepute.
He now fully proved his ability for the task he had undertaken. Writing
home as soon as he had crossed Switzerland early in June a long series
of most interesting letters, he commenced with his first meeting with
Garibaldi and his followers at Como, and continued throughout the war
until victory crowned the efforts of the united armies of Italy and the
patriots, and ended (as in a culminating outburst of pyrotechnic
display) with the triumphant spectacles at Venice after the Austrians
were finally expelled.
Later, Henty gave permanency to his ephemeral contributions to the
journal upon which he was engaged; but in these early days he was a
comparatively unknown man, with nothing to commend him to the notice of
an enterprising publisher, and the makings of a most interesting
descriptive work sparkled for a few hours in the pages of the big
contemporary newspaper and then died out, with the ashes only left,
hidden, save to searchers in the files preserved at the newspaper office
and in the British Museum. For Henty, wanting time and opportunity,
never reproduced these letters in their entirety, though they remained
in the journalistic print and _in petto_, ready for use, as in a kind of
brain mine when, as time rolled on, his adventures in story-land began
to achieve success and excite demand. Then they doubtless supplied
pabulum for such tales as _Jack Archer_, _The Cat of Bubastes_, and _The
Lion of Saint Mark_, stories quite remarkable for the truth of their
local colour. The last named so influenced a young American lad on a
visit to England, that he prevailed upon his father to take him to see
Henty, while afterwards, on being taken to Venice, he wrote a clever,
naive letter, which is quoted elsewhere, to the author of his choice,
telling him of his delight in coming to Europe and seeing for himself
the Venice of to-day, where he recognised the very places that Henty had
so truthfully described.
It is a pity that these letters were not reprinted in book form; but
long before an opportunity could have served, the brave struggles of the
Italians to free themselves from the Austrian yoke, and the fame of
Garibaldi, had grown stale as popular subjects for the general reader,
and the question with the publisher, "would a book upon this subject
sell?" being only answerable in the negative, nothing was done. In
fact, in those days, save in one instance, there was no demand for the
reprinting of a journalist's contributions to a daily paper. This
particular instance seemed to stand out at once as the prerogative of
one man alone, he who has only just gone to his well-earned and honoured
rest, and whose contributions to the _Times_, _My Diary in India_, that
vivid narrative of the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, became a
classic.
It was like old times to Henty, after crossing Switzerland, to find
himself at Como awaiting the arrival of Garibaldi, who was reported to
be on his way. A portion of the Garibaldian army was already there, and
in a short time, to his great satisfaction, Henty found that their chief
was hourly expected to take command of the volunteers.
His information proved to be true, and in the midst of tremendous
enthusiasm he found the volunteers drawn up in double line reaching
through the town, flags waving, the people shouting, and everyone
working himself into a fever of heat.
As the chief approached, the people seemed to have gone out of their
minds. Caps were thrown up recklessly, at the risk of never being
recovered, and the people literally roared as the general, looking in
good health, though older and greyer than when Henty last saw him in
1859, rode along the ranks of the seven thousand or so of volunteers
that he was about to review and passed on, waving his hand in reply to
the cheering, as if thoroughly appreciating the greeting, much as he did
during his reception in London.
The town seemed afterwards to be swarming with his soldiers. It
appeared as if two out of every three persons in the streets upon close
examination proved to be Garibaldians--close examination was necessary,
for it needed research to make sure that they were volunteers,
consequent upon the fact that in many cases anything in the shape of
uniforms was wanting.
As a rule their uniform, he points out, should have been the familiar
red shirt, belt, and dark-grey trousers with red stripe, surmounted by
red caps, with green bands and straight peaks. In one of his early
letters at this stage Henty describes the incongruous nature of the
men's dress. Perhaps one-fourth would have the caps; another fourth
would look like the ancient Phrygians or the French fishermen. Perhaps
one-third would have the red shirts; possibly nearly half, the
regulation trousers; and where uniform was wanting they made up their
dress with articles of their usual wear--wide-awakes, hats, caps of
every shape, jackets, coats black and coloured. Some were dressed like
gentlemen, some like members of the extreme lower order, altogether
looking such an unsatisfactory motley group as that which old Sir John
Falstaff declared he would not march with through Coventry.
But in spite of this there seemed to be the material for a dashing army
amongst these men. They promised to make the finest of recruits, though
certainly the observant eyes of Henty told him that many of them were
far too young to stand the fatigue that they would be called upon to
suffer during the war, a number of them being mere boys, not looking
above fifteen. But Garibaldi was said to be partial to youngsters, and
he liked the activity of the boys, who, he declared, fought as well as
men.
On the whole, according to Henty's showing, Garibaldi's volunteer troops
were very much the same as flocked to our best volunteer regiments in
London during the early days. In short, the enthusiasm of the
Garibaldians was contagious, and Henty wrote of them with a running pen;
but his enthusiasm was leavened with the common sense and coolness of
the well-drilled organising young soldier, who made no scruple while
admiring the Garibaldians' pluck, self-denial, and determination to oust
the hated Austrian, to point out their shortcomings as an army and their
inability to prove themselves much more than a guerrilla band.
They were an army of irregulars, of course, but with a strong adhesion
based upon enthusiastic patriotism. With such an army as this it may be
supposed that the followers of their camp sent order and discipline to
the winds, and the war correspondent had to thank once more that portion
of his athletic education that had made him what he was. To use his own
words, out there in Italy he "thanked his stars" that his youthful
experience had made him a pretty good man with his hands. He found
himself in his avocations amongst a scum of Italian roughs ready to play
the European Ishmaelite, with their hands against every man--hands that
in any encounter grasped the knife-like stiletto, ready, the moment
there was any resistance to their marauding, to stab mercilessly Italian
patriot or believer in the Austrian yoke, friend or foe, or merely an
English spectator if he stood in their way. But to their cost in
different encounters these gentry learned that the young correspondent
was no common man, for Henty, in recording his experience with the
pugnacious Garibaldian camp-followers, says calmly and in the most naive
manner, and moreover so simply that there is not even a suggestion of
boastfulness or brag: "I learned from experiment that if necessary I
could deal with about four of them at once; and they were the sort of
gentry who would make no bones about getting one down and stabbing one
if they got the chance." It was no Falstaff who spoke these words, for
they were the utterances of a perfectly sincere, modest Englishman,
albeit rather proud, after such a childhood, of his robust physique and
of the way in which he could use his fists or prove how skilfully he
could deal with an attacking foe and hurl him headlong, much in the same
sort of way as a North-country wrestler might dispose of some malicious
monkey or any wasp-like enemy of pitiful physique--comparatively
helpless unless he could use his sting.
Henty took all such matters as these quite as a matter of course. He
felt, as he wrote, that a war correspondent to do his duty must accept
all kinds of risks in his search for interesting material to form the
basis of his letters to his journal. But incidentally we learn about
semi-starvation, the scarcity of shelter, the rumours of the old dire
enemy, cholera, whose name was so strongly associated with past
adventures in the Crimea, risks from shell and shot, and ugly dangers
too from those who should have been friends.
For there is one word--spy--that always stands out as a terror, and it
was during this campaign that in his eagerness to obtain information he
approached so closely to the lines that he was arrested as such by one
of the sentries and passed on from pillar to post among the ignorant
soldiery.
In this case he had started with a friend for an investigating drive in
the neighbourhood of Peschiera, at a time when encounters had been
taking place between the Italian army and the Austrians. Upon reaching
a spot where a good view of the frowning earth-works with their tiers of
cannon could be obtained, they left the carriage, and climbed a hill or
two, when they were attracted by the sound of firing, and hurrying on
they came to a spot where some of the peasants were watching what was
going on across a river. Upon reaching the little group they found out
that it was not a skirmish, but that the Austrians were engaged in a
sort of review on the ground where there had been a battle a few days
before.
Henty felt that he was in luck, for he found that the peasants had been
witnesses of the battle from that very position and were eager to point
out what had taken place, the men giving a vivid description of the
horrors they had witnessed and the slaughter that had taken place.
Having obtained sufficient from one of the speakers to form an
interesting letter, he and his friend returned to their carriage and
told the driver to go back. Henty had picked up a good deal of Italian,
but not sufficient to make himself thoroughly understood by the driver,
and, as is often the case, a foreigner of the lower orders failed to
grasp that which a cultivated person would comprehend at once. The
consequence was that the man drove on instead of returning, and his
fares did not find out the mistake till they caught sight of a couple of
pickets belonging to the Guides, the finest body of cavalry in the
Italian service. Seeing that they were on the wrong track, Henty
stopped the driver, questioned him, and then, fully understanding the
mistake, told him to drive back at once. But the pickets had seen them,
and came cantering up. Explanations were made, but the Guides were not
satisfied. They had noticed the coming of the carriage, and had become
aware of what to them was a very suspicious act. The occupants were
strangers, and had been making use of a telescope, which from their
point of view was a spyglass--that is to say, an instrument that was
used by a spy--while they might have come from the Austrian side before
ascending the hill. This was exceedingly condemnatory in the eyes of a
couple of fairly intelligent men, but they treated them politely enough
when they explained matters and produced their passports.
A very unpleasant _contretemps_, however, began to develop when the
pickets said the passports might be quite correct, but they did not feel
justified in releasing the two foreign strangers, who might be, as they
said, Englishmen, but who were in all probability Austrians. So they
must be taken to their officer, who was about a mile farther on.
It was a case of only two to two, and Henty's blood began to grow hot at
the opposition. He was on the point of showing his resentment, but
wiser counsels prevailed; after all, it was two well-mounted and
well-armed soldiers of the flower of the Italian cavalry against a
couple of civilians, and, feeling that this was one of the occasions
when discretion is the better part of valour, especially as a seat in a
carriage was a post of disadvantage when opposed to a swordsman in a
saddle, he swallowed his wrath and told the driver to go in the
direction indicated by his captors. For the first time in his life he
realised what it was to be a prisoner with a mounted guard.
The officer, who proved to be a sergeant, received them with Italian
politeness, listened to their explanations, and at the end pointed out
that the movements of the carriage, which might have come from an
entirely different direction from that which they asserted, and the use
of the telescope, looked so suspicious in the face of the nearness of
the enemy, that he must make them accompany him to his captain about a
couple of miles away.
Matters were beginning to grow dramatic, and the feeling of uneasiness
increased, for as a war correspondent no one could have realised more
readily than Henty that he was undoubtedly looked upon as a spy, and one
whom the sergeant felt he must in no wise suffer to escape, for he and
his companion were now being escorted by a guard of four of the Guides.
There was nothing for it, however, but to put a good face upon the
matter and keep perfectly cool, though, to say the least of it, affairs
were growing very unpleasant. It was an accident the consequences of
which might be very ugly indeed, and this appealed very strongly to his
active imagination. When he set off from the offices of the _Standard_
upon his letter-writing mission, no thought of ever being arrested and
possibly sentenced as a spy had ever entered into his calculations.
Henty gives the merest skeleton of his adventure, but as a man who was
in the habit of writing adventures and who possessed the active
imaginative brain previously alluded to, it stands to reason that in the
circumstances he must have thought out what he would have set down if he
had been writing an account of the treatment likely to be meted out to
an enemy's spy, especially to a hated Austrian, by the hot-blooded
patriotic Italians.
Some distance farther on in the warlike district, Henty and his
companion were escorted to a small village occupied by about a hundred
of the Guides and about twice as many Bersaglieri. Here they were in
the presence of superior officers, before whom they were brought, and to
whom they again explained and produced their passports, and in addition
Henty brought out a letter of recommendation to the officers of the
Italian army, with which he had been furnished before starting on his
journey by the kindness of the Italian ambassador in London.
Here there was another example of the refined Italian politeness, and
Henty must have felt a strange resentment against this extreme civility,
so suggestive of the treatment that was being meted out to a man who was
being adjudged before an ultimate condemnation, for the officers
declared that the explanations were no doubt perfectly correct, but that
in the circumstances it was their duty to forward the two prisoners to
their general. The general was about half a dozen miles away, while, as
unfortunately one of their men had been wounded, they must ask the
strangers to put their carriage at the service of the poor fellow, who
was suffering terribly from the jolting of the bullock-cart in which he
lay with five other wounded men, lesser sufferers.
Accordingly Henty and his friend had to take their places on the
bullock-cart with five wounded Austrian prisoners, and the procession
started. A circumstance that was extremely ominous was that they were
preceded by another cart in which was another prisoner. This man was a
spy about whom there was not the slightest doubt, for he had been caught
in the reprehensible act, and his fate would most probably be to have an
extremely short shrift and be shot in the morning. These were facts
that impressed themselves very painfully upon the imagination of the
young war correspondent, who must have felt that going before the
general in such extremely bad company was almost enough to seal his
fate, and he felt the more bitter from the simple and natural fact that
it would be most likely impossible for him to send a final letter to the
_Standard_ to record that his unfortunate engagement was at an end.
The decision having been made as well as the change, matters looked
worse and worse, for the procession was now guarded by a line of about
thirty cavalry. In front and rear marched a company of the Italian
foot, while the officers proceeded cautiously, as the road on their side
ran close to the Mincio, across which the Austrians might at any moment
make a sortie.
Then the proceedings grew still more dramatic and depressing, for
several military camps were passed, out of which the men came running to
look at the prisoners, and on hearing from the escort that one of the
party was a spy, they began to make remarks that were the reverse of
pleasant. All the same the young captain in command of the Guides was
particularly civil to Henty, and did all he could to make his position
as little unpleasant as possible, chatting freely about the last
engagement and the part his squadron had taken in the fight. But he was
much taken up in looking after his troops, and his English prisoners had
plenty of time for meditation as to their future prospects, and the
outlook was not reassuring.
At last head-quarters were reached, and after a short detention the
prisoners were taken before the General, Henty preserving all the time
the calm, firm appearance that he had maintained from the first; and in
all probability it was his quiet confidence that saved his life.
The General examined the passports and the Italian ambassador's letter
of recommendation, and at length in the most polite way set them at
liberty, but in a manner that suggested that Henty must grasp the fact
that in a state of war, if he went too close to the scene of action,
such incidents were bound to occur.
Their carriage was brought round, and in better spirits they started
back. At the first town they reached they found the place was full of
troops. Hungry and hopeful of a pleasant meal, they tried, but in vain,
at the different hostelries to get something to eat, though finally, as
a favour, they obtained a piece of bread, the last in the house, and
some wine. They again started, but when they reached another town their
tired horses gave in, and they had to get out and walk.
It was now nearly eleven o'clock at night, and one may imagine the weary
tramp they had before they reached the Garibaldian pickets. There they
were again stopped and were told that without the password they could
not enter the town, but must spend the night in their carriage.
More arguments, more explanations, but all proved in vain, and there was
a wretched prospect of the rest of the night being passed in misery; but
Fate seemed at last to have ceased to persecute them, for by good
fortune the officer of the night approached making his rounds, and after
some parley allowed them to accompany him back to the town. Here,
however, more trouble awaited them, for on reaching their hotel at
midnight, utterly famished, and calling for supper, it was to find that
the Garibaldians had consumed everything. All they could obtain was a
cup of coffee, without milk, and they retired to rest, Henty with the
feeling upon him that he had had a very narrow escape from being either
shot or hanged.
A culminating disaster, by the way, connected with the miserable march
to the presence of the general, who was to decide whether or not the war
correspondent and his companion were to be treated as spies, was the
disappearance of the valuable telescope with which Henty had come
provided for making observations in connection with the various
engagements between the Italian and the Austrian forces. It was in the
carriage when it had to be given up for the use of the wounded, and, as
the owner very mildly puts it, "someone took a fancy" to his glass, and
he never saw it again, though he met with plenty of occasions when he
had bitter cause to regret its loss.