Nature had given George Henty plenty of latitude, but now he was
compelled to accept her warnings that he must take no more liberties
with his health. He was so broken down by hard work and the rough
experiences through which he had passed that he had become quite an
invalid, with the stern task plainly before him of doing everything
possible to restore his health.
As the old epitaph says, "Affliction sore long time he bore"; but
physicians were not in vain, for Henty was a man of strong common sense,
who knew well the value of self-denial. His ailments, too, were not of
his own seeking, for no man knew better than he the value of moderation
and attention to hygiene.
He followed out what he knew was due to a man who wished to lead a
healthy life, and he supplemented his medical men's advice by devoting
himself more than ever to his favourite pursuit of yachting. He spent
almost every hour he could spare on board his little craft, keeping her
within easy reach of town and taking a few hours here, a day there, and
when work did not enchain him, making his little vacation a week, with
the result that he was rapidly restored to health. It is doubtless due
to the health-giving, strength-producing breezes that blow around the
British shore that he retained the vigour of a carefully-preserved
manhood to the very last, so that when his summons came it found him
upon his yacht.
If a candid recorder of George Henty's career is bound to set down all
and criticise adversely, he might reasonably say that this man's one
great excess was his indulgence in ink. This fault, however, was not a
very black one, for, so to speak, he softened it by using ink of a
pleasant violet hue! But, to be matter-of-fact, writing when at home
and at rest in his study seems to have been a perfect stimulant, and,
combined as it was with his open-air pursuit, a complete recreation, and
in no sense a work of toil.
Many men are great readers. Henty, in one acceptation of the term, was
a great writer, who, with the assistance for a score of years of his
swift-penned amanuensis, Mr Griffith, sat down daily, not to write, but
to call upon his wonderful imagination. This he supplemented by what he
had seen, and when necessary by the study of history, and literally
passed hours of what to him must have been intense enjoyment. Picture
after picture of the past at these times floated before his brain as he
set his young characters to work performing the manly tasks his brain
suggested, otherwise there would never have been the reality, the
variety, and above all the long series of entertaining and instructive
works which have so largely aided the schoolmaster in Great Britain in
the education of our youth.
During the period of Henty's convalescence he was never idle, though the
year 1876 marks the completion of his long career as a war
correspondent. Others took up his old duties abroad, but his pen and
his knowledge were still of so much value to the journal with which he
was connected, that it became his duty, as already indicated, to receive
all the telegraphic messages sent in by the _Standard's_ correspondents
in time of war. He carefully read and studied the crabbed and condensed
messages that had come over the wire, as well as the communications of
Reuter and other agencies from different parts of the world, and rewrote
them in the vulgar tongue so that they might be comprehensible to the
British public. This placed him, as it were, still at the head of war
correspondence, so that when war broke out he was, so to speak, always
at the front. Even though his post was his editorial chair in his
journal's office, the wires kept him in touch with everything that was
taking place at all points of the compass.
Fate ruled in this restless age that his work should be pretty constant,
and the exigencies of this form of historical chronicle kept him tied
very tightly to his journalistic duties, the late arrival or expected
arrival of fresh telegraphic news forcing him to stay till almost the
time of the great newspaper's going to press in the extremely early
hours of the day; and this lasted right down through the troublous times
and agitation in England during the Boer War.