church, as my father told me that he had seen them at this Captain
Hillier’s house; but I was disappointed. He acquired them in this
way:--In the Walcheren expedition he was “appointed by Sir Richard
Strachan to make the last signal on the island, with strict orders to
secure the said signal at the top of the church in a manner it could not
be hauled down by the enemy before the rear guard was embarked.” The
written instructions were in this box:--“Blake, Flushing Roads, December
23rd 1809. As soon as the day breaks you are to show the two balls on
the steeple of Flushing, being the signal for the rear guard to embark
and the flotilla to withdraw, and you are to come off with the army.” He
did not see how he could stop the enemy hauling the signal down as soon
as they reached the church, but he thought he might delay them for some
minutes, if he locked up all the doors, and brought the keys away with
him.
During that war a good many French naval officers were sent to Dartmoor
as prisoners; and the gravestones of some of them may be seen in Moreton
churchyard, looking strangely out of place there with their French
inscriptions. These officers were very popular down here; and I have
been told that nobody, however poor, ever claimed the guinea reward that
was offered for information of their going out of bounds.
In a letter to my father, 9 December 1839, my grandfather says:--“Your
account of the French soldiers would not please a Frenchman.... I
remember, when staying at Exeter, I saw a whole regiment of young
fellows that had been taken prisoners: the eldest did not appear to
exceed twenty-one: they were the most ugly and dirty set of fellows I
ever saw, and very short: you could scarcely pick such a set from all
our regiments.”
My father mentions in his diary, Nantes, 19 August 1847, that he had
been talking to an old gentleman of over eighty, who had known Nantes
since 1789. “In speaking of the horrible revolutionary scenes enacted at
Nantes, he said that the most violent fanatics, who carried out the
Butcheries and Noyades there,
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR’S GRANDFATHER]
were chiefly small tradesmen, and continued to live there unmolested
after the Restoration as if nothing had happened, and some few were
living yet.” Nantes impressed my father very much at that time:--“I have
not seen a finer town. It is really finer than Brussels or Frankfort,
and, as a whole, even finer than Paris.”
In his diary, Paris, 18 October 1839, my father writes:--“The streets
here are worse, much worse, than in London, except just the Rivoli and
one or two others, where there are arcades in front of the houses with
flag stones. Not half or quarter of the other streets are flagged, and
the common pavement is dreadfully uneven, besides not being level. Each
side falling towards the centre makes the walking very disagreeable--and
that centre generally running with mud or water affords the chance of
every carriage that passes giving the foot travellers a splashing from
head to foot. Besides, most of the streets are narrow, and many are
filthy and muddy.
“It really is a disgrace to the Parisians, who boast so much of the
Invalides, to have such a vile public road to it, and infamously
lighted. Amongst the trees and all in the dark I had to grope my way
towards the Seine, nearly up to my ancles in mud. At last I reached the
bridge, and then for a contrast came into the Place de la Concorde,
covered all over with flag pavement, and with brilliant gas lights at
every two or three yards, and often two together. But it is either the
height of splendour or the height of meanness and misery here.”
I saw Paris first in September 1867. It was then in all its glory, with
the wide streets and stately buildings constructed in the previous
fifteen years. The place was thronged with people of all nations, who
had come to see the Exhibition; and there was huge prosperity all round.
The soldiers looked magnificent, especially the Zouaves and the Imperial
Guard--long-service men with medals; and few people imagined that the
Prussians could stand up to them. Yet there were some signs of
insecurity. The official tune was _Partant pour la Syrie_; and, if
anyone even whistled the _Marseillaise_, the police were after him at
once.
I saw Paris next in August and September 1871. And these are some of the
things that I noted in my diary then:--In the Rue de Rivoli some blocks
of houses had been blown up, others burnt, and all more or less damaged.
Of the garden front of the Tuileries only the outer walls were left: the
New Louvre had been a little damaged, and was being re-roofed: the fire
had not reached the Louvre itself. At the Palais Royal, the palace
itself had been burnt, but not the shops underneath. Neither the Bourse
nor the Opera House was hurt. There was nothing left of the Hôtel de
Ville except the outer walls and the chimneys with the statues on them;
and these stood out well against the sky. Most of the neighbouring
houses had been burnt. There were several shot holes through the
Bastille Column. The remains of the Vendôme Column had already been
removed, but the base was still there, a good deal broken on the side on
which the pillar fell--and the man with the telescope was there as
before. The arcade in the Rue de Castiglione was covered with bullet
holes. In the Place de la Concorde the statue of Lille had been knocked
to pieces by a shell, also one of the fountains--the further from the
river--but the Luxor obelisk was safe. Out by the Auteuil Gate every
house had been more or less damaged by shells, and a good many had been
pulled down for fear of their collapsing. The stone fortifications were
not much damaged, but the earthworks above them were covered with
shell-holes. For 300 yards outside the fortifications the trees in the
Bois de Boulogne had been cut down, but very few of the others had been
damaged.
Paris has never recovered from that blow, and its slovenliness under the
Republic contrasts badly with its smartness in the Second Empire. The
damage was made good, but there has been little progress since; and
meanwhile Vienna has become the finest town in Europe. Berlin has grown
enormously; and the pleasant old town is lost amidst the dreariness of
its extensions. It was after the events of 1870 that building started
there, and started at Rome also in much the same style. But a style that
does not matter in Berlin, is quite exasperating in such a place as
Rome.
During the siege of Paris there was Aurora Borealis on the nights of 24
and 25 October 1870. I have never seen anything else so brilliant in the
sky--the Krakatoa sunsets were nothing to it. A friend of mine was in
Paris at the time, and his diary says:--“The colour was blood mixed with
water.” People in London--myself among them--fancied that Paris was in
flames, and that this was the reflexion in the sky. But, when the
Communists did what the Germans did not do, there was no glare visible
so far away.
Going from Calais to Paris on 15 August 1871, I noted in my diary that
“the Prussians were still in possession of the station at Amiens”; and,
returning on 11 September, “in passing St Denis, saw the Prussians
packing their guns and ammunition on railway trucks, and preparing to
evacuate the place.” The expresses were still made up with English
carriages, as much of the French stock had been burnt.
Passing through Boulogne on 8 September 1873, I noted that “there were
great rejoicings going on there on account of the payment of the
Indemnity.” The final instalment had been paid on the 5th, and the army
of occupation had begun its final move that morning, the 8th. It
evacuated Verdun on the 13th, and crossed the frontier on the 16th. It
had evacuated Nancy after the payment of the previous instalment on the
5th of August. And at Augsburg I noted in my diary, 12 August
1873:--“Drove to the Rath-haus, a fine old gabled building, internally
in a state of great confusion, resulting from a banquet the night before
to the Bavarians, who had just returned from the occupation of the
French territory.”
From my diary, Nuremberg, 2 September 1874:--“The fourth anniversary of
Sedan. The town in a state of utter excitement: every house with one or
two banners (Bavarian or German), each several stories long, hung out
from the upper windows, and wreaths of evergreens from all the rest; all
the inhabitants either drinking beer or walking up and down the town
without any particular object; bands of music marching about in a
similar way. At ten I went to service at S. Sebald’s, which, large as
it is, was crammed: quite three thousand people, I should think. Some
chorales sounded very well when sung by so many: they were afterwards
repeated by a band on the top of the tower, apparently for the crowd
outside to sing to, but the crowd did not seem much taken with the idea,
and merely listened to the band. Walked about looking at the decorations
for a long time. The place could not have looked prettier, as the flags
hid the houses, which are plain, and one could only see the roofs, the
most picturesque part. Left Nuremberg at two, and got to Frankfort at
eight: a very hot journey. All the stations were much decorated, and
fireworks were going on at Frankfort. Drove through the Zeil to the
Taunus station, and went by rail to Biebrich on the Rhine, arriving at
half past eleven.”
I well remember that journey. I was going in the morning with my father,
mother, brother and sister; but at the station we found that a bundle of
umbrellas had been left at the hotel, and I was deputed to secure it and
follow by a later train. And the guards and passengers were all very
inquisitive as to how it came about that an English boy of sixteen
should be travelling across Germany, all by himself, with no other
luggage than a bundle of umbrellas.
From my diary, Freiburg, 2 September 1875:--“Great firing of cannon
early in the morning to celebrate Sedan: the town pretty generally
decorated with flags, but the inhabitants not so enthusiastic as the
Nurembergers on the last anniversary.... Left Freiburg at half past
twelve, and reached Strassburg at half past three.... The inhabitants
either do not rejoice very greatly at Sedan, or do so very quietly.”
I was in Rome on 20 September 1876, which was the sixth anniversary of
the taking of the city, and again on the same day in 1897. There was a
parade of Garibaldians each time, and in 1876 it ended in some rioting.
The citizens had done better with the Pope than they were doing with the
King just then, and they had no kindly feelings for the people who had
brought about the change.
Garibaldi had picked his men, and they looked firm and grim, giving one
the notion that they would stick at nothing to attain their ends. As a
rule, they did not look much like Italians; and in 1897 they made rather
a display of their contempt for the little conscripts of the Italian
infantry.
I saw Garibaldi several times in London; but the surroundings did not
suit him, and he looked more slovenly than heroic with his dingy cloak
and unkempt hair. He had a great ovation, when he made almost a
triumphal entry into London on 11 April 1864. But he was in an open
carriage, and the crowd was so very friendly and so anxious to shake
hands with him, that at last they pulled the rumble off the carriage,
together with the solemn footmen who were seated there. That happened in
Pall Mall, and I did not actually see it.
I chanced to see another sort of entry into London on 24 March 1889. I
was walking along the top of Trafalgar Square, and noticed an open
carriage coming up from Charing Cross, followed by a shouting rabble.
When it came abreast of me, I saw Rochefort and Boulanger sitting in it
side by side, Rochefort with the air of a showman, and poor Boulanger
holding a ridiculous bouquet and bowing to this mob. I think he wished
himself back in his command, taking the salute.
Abdul-Aziz, the Sultan of Turkey, came to England in 1867, and was
present at a review at Wimbledon on 20 July. He was riding along the
ground with the Prince of Wales and the Staff, when suddenly a mass of
well-dressed men broke through the barriers, and made a rush towards
him. And then two squadrons of the Life Guards came down at a gallop,
knocked over the leaders of the rush, and closed up round the Sultan. I
was on the Grand Stand, and saw the whole thing admirably. The
explanation was that the Sultan’s saddle-cloth was studded with
diamonds, and the “swell-mob” thought that it could grab them. But it
looked more like an attempt at assassination; and he must have taken it
for that, judging by the way he managed his horse. However, he had
nearly nine years more of absolute power before he was deposed and bled
to death.
At one time or another I have seen a good many people of renown; but I
have never seen anything more magnificent than the Emperor Frederick,
when Crown Prince, seated on his horse and wearing the white dress of
the Cuirassiers. He was grander even than the statue of Bartolomeo
Colleoni.
I saw the Mahmal at Cairo on 11 February 1882. There was a vast crowd,
and the Mahmal was received with a salute of sixteen guns, and the
Khedive with a salute of twenty-one; but neither made so great a show as
Arabi. On 2 February he had made himself Minister of War, and there was
a notion that he would choose this occasion for making himself Khedive;
but nothing happened then. I had passed through Tell el-Kebir on 4
February, and should have looked at it more closely, had I foreseen what
would be happening there on 13 September. I sailed from Alexandria on 11
March, and never imagined then that there would be a massacre there on
11 June, and a bombardment on 11 July.
On the morning of the procession I saw the Mahmal saddled on its camel:
after which the camel went out to meet the Mecca Caravan, and then
marched into the city with the pilgrims, as though it had come all the
way from Mecca. As a matter of fact, the Mahmal is nothing but a pair of
panniers with a canopy above, such as women ride in when they make the
pilgrimage, only more ornate. There is nothing whatever inside it. The
story is that queen Sheger ad-Durr made the pilgrimage in very splendid
panniers about the year 1250; and such panniers have been sent each year
since then, though nobody has ever ridden in them. The procession was
too straggling to be impressive as a whole, but some things in it were
striking--particularly the Sheikh of the Camel. That holy man kept
wagging his head from side to side, as if he wished to shake it off; and
he was said to go on wagging it all the way from Cairo to Mecca and
back.
I went to Siena to see the Palio in August 1898. It has not been
vulgarized like the Carnivale, as it comes at a season when few people
go to Italy.--In my opinion, people generally choose the wrong time of
year for going there. To see Italy in all its glory, one must be there
at the Vintage.
Strictly speaking, the Palio is the banner which forms the prize in a
race of ten horses, representing ten of the seventeen wards into which
the city is divided; seven of the wards being selected by rotation and
three by lot. There are trial races on the 14th and 15th, and the race
itself is on the 16th. It is run in honour of God and of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, by statute of 17 June 1310; and the horses go to church
before the race, and are blessed and sprinkled with holy water after
certain prayers on their behalf.
The whole history of such festivals is given in _Palio and Ponte_ by
William Heywood, 1904. On looking into this, I found references to the
Palio of 1898, and on plate 22 I found the top of my straw hat in the
foreground of the picture. The hat is unmistakeable--built specially for
me at Christys’ with wider brim and lower crown than was usual at that
period.
Siena is still a mediæval city; and the race is run inside the city in a
semicircular space enclosed by fine old buildings. But the race itself
is not as interesting as the procession that precedes it. The city and
its seventeen wards are represented by about 180 men, all in costumes of
the Fifteenth Century, and the chief in splendid armour: the horses go
with the members of the wards for which they run: the Palio is carried
on a wagon in the middle; and the procession ends with the standard of
the city on the mast of the Carroccio, the great wagon round which the
struggle centred at that Battle of the Standard fought at Montaperto on
4 September 1260. I have seen as brilliant a sight with the
bull-fighters entering the Plaza de Toros in procession--Madrid, 9
September 1877--but this was more impressive with its stately movement
round that venerable place, the deep notes of the ancient drums and
trumpets, and the great bell--the Campanone--roaring in its tower.
From my diary, Antwerp, 20 August 1872:--“Saw the Procession of the
Giant from a house in the Rue de Chaperon. This procession takes place
every third year on the last day of the Kermis: it commemorates the
killing of a giant who held a castle on the banks of the Scheldt. First
came an immense figure of a dolphin.... Then a basket-work figure of
the Giantess, about twenty-five feet high: seated and holding in one
hand a spear and in the other a shield with the city arms. Then the
Giant, another figure of the same sort: in armour and carrying a club
and sword.”
The procession was performed out of due season on 19 September 1843 for
the benefit of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; and they went
afterwards to the studio of Gustaf Wappers, and commissioned him to
paint a picture of it. The picture is in the King’s collection, and is
engraved in Hall’s _Royal Gallery of Art_. It depicts three ladies at an
open window, looking down on the procession as it passes through the
Place de Meir, the Giant in the middle distance, and the Cathedral spire
in the background. I have the preliminary sketch in oils; and this gives
a second window, showing the palace in the Place de Meir, and the royal
party on the balcony.
The three ladies in the picture were the painter’s wife and her sisters.
They were the daughters of John Knight, a brother of my mother’s mother,
and thus were cousins of mine. John Knight was paymaster of a battalion
of the King’s German Legion from 1814 to 1816. He was with his battalion
at the battle of Waterloo, and after the campaign he married the
beautiful (and wealthy) daughter of the banker through whom he drew the
pay at Brussels. The marriage brought him into contact with large
financial interests on the Continent, and he settled at Antwerp as a
banker; and there he made the acquaintance of Wappers. I remember
Wappers very well. In his later years he lived in Paris, and I used to
go to his house there. He had been a success as a painter, had been made
a Baron, and so on; and was altogether very well contented with the
world. He died in 1874.
Amongst other things by Wappers, I have a portrait in pencil of my
great-aunt Mary Knight, signed and dated 1843, and a portrait in oils of
Charley (a King Charles spaniel) signed and dated 1849 with inscription
to “oncle Chᵗ Knight,” that is, his wife’s uncle, my great-uncle
Christopher Knight, the owner of the dog.
The dog’s portrait hangs here next its master’s, a big three-quarter
length in naval uniform with medal and clasps and the K.H. This portrait
of him came to my mother after his decease, and was hung in the
dining-room of our house in London. There happened to be a dinner-party
soon after it arrived, and some of the guests were rather finding fault
with it both as a work of art and as a likeness of the man, when
unexpectedly a little voice proclaimed:--“I painted it.” It was the
voice of Frederick Havill, a painter who had met with some success, but
was a long way from achieving greatness. They had all forgotten who the
painter was; and on finding they were face to face with him they
discovered many merits in his work.
This old Captain Knight was on the Impregnable at the bombardment of
Algiers, 27 August 1816, and next day he did a conscientious drawing of
the ship, showing all the shot-holes in the hull and the damage to the
rigging. I have it here, with two other water-colours that he did then.
One of them shows the ships taking up their positions for the
bombardment, the Queen Charlotte carrying Lord Exmouth’s flag as Admiral
of the Blue: which flag, now nearly black, may still be seen in Christow
church, about five miles from here. The other shows the bombardment in
progress--clouds of smoke with the Impregnable and the Rear Admiral’s
flag just showing through.
As works of art these water-colours are of little merit, but probably
would please such critics as James on Turner’s Battle of Trafalgar,
_Naval History_, vol. 3, p. 473, ed. 1902:--“The telegraphic message is
going up, which was hoisted at about 11.40, the mizentopmast is falling,
which went about 1.0, a strong light is reflected upon the Victory’s bow
and sides from the burning Achille, which ship did not catch fire until
4.30 ... and the Redoutable is sinking under the bows of the Victory,
although she did not sink until the night of the 22nd, and then under
the stern of the Swiftsure.” He was on the Minotaur at the bombardment
of Copenhagen, 5 September 1807, but made no drawings then.
Instead of drawing what they saw--which might be interesting now--people
used to occupy themselves with copies; and I have inherited many
portfolios of these uninteresting things. But there are copies after
Prout by my mother’s sister, Emma King; and, on comparing one of these
with its original, I found wonderfully little difference. Many of
Prout’s best water-colours went into the collection of the late Martin
Swindells of Bollington; and he lent them to my aunt to copy, while she
was staying at a house near there. It must have been between 1850 and
1858, but I do not know exactly when. There are a dozen of them framed
and hung here.
I once did a water-colour that I thought worth framing; but friends said
such unkind things about it, that I took it down and put it in a drawer.
It was meant for the apse of a cathedral--no cathedral in particular,
though I suspect I had Toledo in my mind. Looking at it thirty years
afterwards, I fancied that it was not such a failure after
all--unquestionably, some parts of it were excellent: so I took it out
again, and hung it up. And then the friends explained to me:--“The
picture’s just as bad as ever, only your eyesight has got worse.” I took
it down once more.
* * * * *
In a letter of Edward Knight, my great-grandfather--I have seen the
letter, but have not got it here--he speaks of meeting the Prince Regent
at a dinner at Brighton, “and H.R.H. was pleased to say that Eliza was
an uncommon pretty girl.” Eliza was my grandmother; and she must have
been uncommonly pretty, if she was really like a miniature of her by
William Wood that I have here. I have drawings by Stroehling of her
brother Joseph Knight and of her husband H. T. King--my maternal
grandfather--and Joseph had fine features then, though in old age (when
I remember him) his nose suggested port. I have been told that he was
one of the three best-looking men in London in his time, and that Byron
was one of the other two, but I cannot remember who the third was. I
have also been told that there were letters to him from Byron, and they
fell into the hands of one of my great-aunts; and she destroyed them as
“things that no right-minded person would desire to read.”
In my library there are many volumes that belonged to these great-aunts;
and they are just the books that all “right-minded” persons would desire
to read. There are three editions of Pascal’s _Pensées_ and none of his
_Provinciales_; and there are five Tassos to one Dante, and that one has
nothing but the _Paradiso_.
The last of these great-uncles and great-aunts lived on till 1886. I
remember several of them in my earliest years, especially at Cheltenham;
and, when I first read _Cranford_ some years after that, I felt that I
had met the characters before. Cheltenham was perhaps more opulent, but
the people were the same. They were full of genuine kindness, but
incredibly slow and ceremonious, always giving precedence to the wife of
my great-uncle Joseph, because she was the daughter of a Peer. I can
hardly imagine people of that type except in shaded drawing-rooms with
china bowls of rose-leaves; yet some of them had figured in less
tranquil scenes.
As a lieutenant in the 15th Light Dragoons--now 15th Hussars--my
great-uncle Edward Knight was in command of Sir John Moore’s escort at
Corunna. He was close by, when Moore was hit, and he helped to bury him,
17 January 1809; and in after years he inveighed against the celebrated
poem on the Burial. It was not like that, and “had no damned poetry in
it.”