soldiers, at a date when the lash still plied viciously in the British
army. He sat on a court-martial which had to try a private soldier for
habitual drunkenness. As the youngest officer present, he was the first
to be asked what the sentence ought to be. He suggested a light
punishment, one that was not perhaps in harmony with ideas then prevalent
as to the best manner of preserving military discipline. To him flogging
was abhorrent, and entertaining that view, he had fallen into debate with
brother officers. The sentence which he proposed caused a roar of
laughter among some of the members of the court-martial. 'Gentlemen,'
interjected the general at the head of the table, 'mercy is a very
becoming characteristic of youth, and I do not understand this laughter.'
That cut it short.
Daniel O'Connell was at the height of his influence in Ireland, and Sir
George could look back on the military duties which once or twice brought
him into the precincts of the Tribune.
'Agitate, agitate, agitate,' a sympathetic Viceroy had written to
O'Connell, upon the subject of Catholic emancipation, and an official
stir followed. The Marquis of Anglesey, who led the cavalry at Waterloo,
and lost a leg there, had not hesitated to utter his mind about Ireland.
O'Connell unthinkingly read the letter at a meeting, and the Viceroy
found himself in trouble with his Government. That was within Sir
George's memory; but take, as touching O'Connell more intimately, an
election meeting at Limerick, where the regiment was paraded to keep
order.
'With a bitter satire, O'Connell introduced into his speech,' said Sir
George, 'the story of the siege of Limerick. He eloquently told how the
women of Limerick beat back the soldiers of William III. This was his
shrewd method of getting at us soldiers, and he implied that, if
necessary, the women of Limerick could beat back the soldiers of another
English king. All we could do was to stand there, stiff as starch, while
the stings fell from his caustic tongue. O'Connell was a splendid
speaker, and he had a most inviting presence, an attractive personality
altogether. Looking at him, you decided, "That's a capital fellow, a
merry fellow to be with; why, I should like to be a friend of his!"'
The Irish peasant then, and of subsequent black years, was to Sir George
a figure of pathos hard to match in history. When in England, just after
his work as Pro-Consul had closed, he drew that figure, and its seeming
doom, in tender words. Nay, he was feeling for all men so placed that no
ray of hope dawned upon them from the cradle to the grave. The Irish
peasant could not press his children to his breast, with the knowledge of
being able to leave them the very humblest heritage won from his toil.
Fathers and children, they could merely hope to obtain the temporary use
of a spot of land on which to exercise their industry.
And what was the reward of all this labour? Hardly enough could be
retained, from the proceeds, to procure the meanest food, the most ragged
of clothes. Denied all power of legislation, and of considering and
providing for his own necessities, as a citizen, the Irish peasant had
lost the citizen's faculty, had become paralysed. He succumbed, almost
without a struggle, to the fate brought him by famine, bred of evil days.
He died on the mountain glens, along the sea coast, in the fields, in his
cabin, after shutting the door. He died of starvation, though sometimes
food was near, for he had even lost the hunger sense of the wild beast.
It was a keen project with Sir George, in his last years, to re-issue
from London his proposals on the problem of Ireland. He had not lost
belief in the pamphlet, as a channel for spreading ideas. He liked it, as
he liked a well-thumbed book which, being opened at a page, so remained,
instead of shutting with a snap. And of his venture, which never came
off, he meditated, 'Might it not do good? They don't seem, even now, to
understand all these matters--the real human nature of them. You hear
talk of politics when it isn't politics at all, but men and women and
children. Proceed on that principle and difficulties will quickly
disappear.' He sought to brush aside any veil of words, of terms, which
might confuse and darken problems.
His study-story of some Irish estate, granted by Queen Elizabeth to an
English nobleman, showed how language might determine history. He noted
there, a force at work that tended to cloud the mind and influence the
imagination, in considering such affairs. The estate was called 'a
princely property,' and the new holder was the 'aristocratic owner of the
soil.' He had 'extensive lands in England;' perhaps he had 'the most
beautiful demesne' and 'the finest mansion' in that country. If the
Elizabethan landlord, planted in Ireland, drove along the high road, he
was described as the 'noble occupant of the carriage.' Did he spend, on
the improvement of his property, a little of the wealth won by the toil,
privation, and suffering of others, why, he was credited with 'unbounded
liberality.'
So, down the centuries, the effect being that sympathy was involuntarily
drawn to all this rank, wealth, and ease. Similarly, by an unconscious
process of mind, there disappeared from the public eye the gaunt faces,
the bent bodies, of those who gave to rank the means of wealth and ease.
Contemplating the plight, to which the people of Ireland had fallen in
his soldiering days, Sir George Grey exclaimed, 'What intellect and power
were lost to the nation! What must have been the yearnings and agonies
undergone by many noble minds, feeling capable of great things, perhaps
even of rescuing their country from the misery in which it was sunk!'
Remove such people to a new atmosphere in the Colonies, where their
natural attainments could have just scope, and behold a fairy change!
They would yield leaders of citizenship, men capable of shaping nations
and legislatures, the laws of which the Old World would be glad to copy.
Sir George could place the fruit of history, what had come about, in the
remote basket of his hopes.
From it there dated a reminiscence of Sir Hussey Vivian, his Commander-
in-Chief in Dublin. Sir Hussey, who, with his dragoons, covered Moore's
retreat on Corunna, knew Sir George's father in the Spanish Peninsula.
Viewing the troublous Irish times, he had ordered that military officers
should wear their uniform, whether on duty or not. Handsome, genial,
popular with everybody, a born soldier; this was Sir George's
appreciation of the man with whom he had the following adventure:
'Accompanied by a brother officer I was strolling along in Dublin,
neither of us in uniform, notwithstanding Sir Hussey's order. We were
walking arm in arm when, on turning a corner, we espied him and his
staff. What was to be done? We did not relish the notion of being caught
in mufti, and looked round for a door of escape. There was none, except
flight, and we took to our heels.
'The same night we each had a message from Sir Hussey, begging us to call
upon him at eleven o'clock next morning. We knew what that meant. Sir
Hussey had been too quick for our flight. A trifle shamefaced, we duly
presented ourselves at his quarters, and he talked to us for being abroad
in plain clothes.
'Our aspect of penitence won upon Sir Hussey. "If you had not bolted," he
added after the lecture, "I'm not sure that I should have felt it
necessary to summon you before me. But, frankly, I could not stand the
notion that any of my officers should run away from me." There the matter
amiably closed, and it was not till afterwards that I had an idea, which
might have appealed to Sir Hussey's gift of humour.
'I should have advanced to him the plea that, at least, we ran away
alone, not in better company. A twinkle would have shone in his eyes, for
he eloped with the young lady who became his wife. He got her out of her
home at Bath, through a window, and they were happy ever after.' To end a
day happily was a maxim with Sir George, since it meant wisdom for the
morrow.
V SOUTHWARD HO!
Now, the morrow called Sir George Grey, as it calls most, whether they
hear it or no.
In him, boyish meditation had ever been braided by melancholy, a legacy
of the shock with which his father's death burst upon his mother. As he
grew up, this became a deep-seated pity for the suffering, wide and
bitter, among the common people. His mother's care, his step-father's
converse, fostered that feeling, and the service in Ireland, with its
lurid emphasis of the misery he had seen in England, determined him in
quite a definite way. A valley of despair moaned in his ear.
'Can nothing,' he reflected with himself, 'be done for this canker, this
wretchedness? Not much, from the inside, it may be, for the evil has too
firm a grip. But down there, in the far south, is a new world! Surely it
has the secret of sweeter, freer homes; surely in those new countries lie
better possibilities? Yes, there the future has its supreme chance,
there is the field for a happier state of existence! All can be given a
chance, and in the spacious view, it will be planting posts of an
Anglo-Saxon fence which shall prevent the development of the New World
from being interfered with by the Old World.'
It was an abounding moment at which to be taken into partnership for the
carrying forward of the universe. Half the globe, as we are intimate with
it to-day, was then unknown, and North-West Australia was a no-man's
land, saving to the Aborigines. It was believed by geographers that a big
river, artery to an immense area of Australia, must here drain into the
sea. A Government expedition, as head of which Sir George Grey was
selected, should determine this, and familiarise the Aborigines with the
British name and character.
'It's odd,' Sir George said, 'to reflect that in the latitudes, for which
we were bound, human beings were everywhere eating one another. There was
a patch of settled civilisation at the Cape, a lighthouse beaming into
those seas, and that was about all, The full glow had to arrive from the
north, seeing that south of a line, drawn from the Cape to Australia and
New Zealand, there was only the Antarctic wilderness.
'You had ice in such parts as the savage could not inhabit; bleakness
eternal, with no promise of help in raising him to a higher life. Mostly,
in the history of mankind, civilisation has grown in upon a country from
several quarters. The contrary should be noted in respect to the lands,
which, as we left Plymouth, seemed to us so attractive, so full of
promise for generations yet unborn. We were to test that promise, and
Darwin's "Beagle," having brought him home from a voyage, was to bear us
on another.'
Sir George already knew Darwin enough to be a frequent caller on him in
London. They discussed evolution, and a host of subjects in which Darwin
manifested an interest. Sir George's vignette of him was that he was one
of the most amiable men it were possible to conceive. He was closely
occupied with his own work, but that did not prevent him from being an
informed observer of other things.
'Of the advantages of association with master intellects,' Sir George
would say, 'I sought to make the best use. The three men who exercised
most influence on me were Archbishop Whately, Sir James Stephen, and
Thomas Carlyle, names which I revere. They denote characters who adorned
the nation, and as for Carlyle, I can only describe him as a profoundly
great figure. When I think of him, I immediately fly to Babbage, the
inventor of the famous calculating machine. And I'm afraid I smile.'
The link lay in certain experiences which befell Carlyle and Babbage in
the streets of London. The coincidence was notable, and, farther, Sir
George thought it strange that each great man should have made him
confidant. But he had delighted in receiving the confidences, proofs of
their friendship, and with a mixture of gravity and amusement he had
consoled the martyrs.
'Being,' he entered upon the tale, 'once introduced to Carlyle's company,
I think by Sir Richard Owen, it was my delight, during any spell in
London, to visit him at Chelsea. Perhaps, as the matter has been long
under review, I may remark that, to an outsider, no want of harmony was
apparent, in the relations between Carlyle and his wife. You were not
conscious of any element of that description; assuredly I was not, and I
prefer to cling to that impression. Carlyle would sit at the right side
of the fire, through an evening, I on his left, and we would talk on all
manner of topics. I should most accurately describe our talk by saying
that we philosophised. Or, we might read a little; he was a loving
reader.
'Carlyle believed, with truth, that I had been influenced by his
teachings, and if only for that reason he may have been rather fond of
me. We lift our hats, to ourselves, as reflected in somebody else. I had
a regard for him as a man, I gladly looked up to him, though that did not
block out differences of opinion; and altogether we got on admirably.
During one of those fireside talks, he detailed to me an incident, which
quite hurt his feelings.
'He had a horse then, and was in the habit of riding out for exercise,
almost every afternoon. He was never very artistic in his manner of
dressing, and for horseback he had a long and singular fur coat, which
enfolded his legs. Between Chelsea and Maida Vale, some boys were
attracted by this quaint figure astride a horse. Not knowing in the
least, who it was, they shouted at Carlyle; he spoke something to them in
reproof and passed on.
'But next day, at the same place, there were the boys again, and not
content with mocking Carlyle, they threw pebbles at him. He did not
sustain any injury, but he mentioned the matter to me with a sore heart,
as indicative of the condition of the youth of the country, for want of
the better educational opportunities, of which he was so earnest an
advocate.
'As to Babbage, also a very gifted mind, he had Saturday evenings at
home, and a person invited to one, was welcome ever after. His warfare
against street musicians is history, and what I have to tell is one
campaign of it. A German band was in the habit of annexing a position
before his house, and treating him to its music. He might be deeply
immersed in his work, when up would come this band, a trying disturbance
to him. To be quit of the musicians he gave them money, with the
inevitable thanks that they returned, seeking to be paid again, in order
to depart once more.
'Babbage got tired of that sort of thing, refused to fee the Germans any
longer, and ordered them to go and play somewhere else. They refused, and
he, worn out by their music, left his study to seek a policeman and have
them moved on. Like Carlyle, he dressed quaintly, and, moreover, at the
moment, he was bare-headed. Not seeing a policeman, from his door-step,
he walked into the street to search for one.
'Babbage's dispute with the band soon collected a small crowd, eager to
witness the fun. It is impossible for me, to say if those forming it,
knew the mathematician or not. That would depend on the elements of the
gathering, whether local or casual, and who can determine the point in a
city like London? A crowd gathers and disperses here, as the wind plays
with a volume of dust on a March day. But, anyhow, the onlookers favoured
the band against Babbage, and they let their views be understood, by
pelting him with mud. Still, he held to his purpose, routed out a
policeman, and had the band driven off. That time, at all events, he was
able to resume his calculations without molestation.'
It was a far cry, from these home-keeping transactions, to that outermost
fringe of British dominion for which Sir George Grey found himself
sailing:
What time with hand and heart aglow
The sower goeth forth to sow.
The cabin Darwin had occupied on the clumsy "Beagle," was his home from
Plymouth to the Cape. Instead of sleeping in a bunk he swung a hammock,
which he regarded as the better sea-going bed. Though no yacht in heels,
the "Beagle" had her own qualities for rough weather, and she behaved
loyally towards her passengers. All the water supply had to be carried in
casks, with the effect, under a blazing sun, that it soon grew bad. The
ship called at South America, where Sir George had his first revelation
of nature, as she blooms in the gorgeous tropics. The colour, richness,
luxuriance, dazzled him; the more so that he had not read any description
of the tropics, which adequately conveyed the sentiments they inspired.
He walked on shore of an evening, and the feelings engendered in him by
the scene were wild, of a truth indescribable. He turned from the
luxuriant foliage, to the stars aflame above, and he followed the
fireflies as they danced. The woods were vocal with the hum of insect
life, and balm loaded the breezes as they blew softly. These things at
first oppressed his senses as so novel, so strange, that his mind almost
hovered between the realms of fact and fancy.
'And you ask me of the sea,' he chatted; 'to which I answer that it has
always made an impression on me, best described as a mixture of awe and
gladness. I was very conscious, during that long voyage by sail, of the
presence and majesty of the Maker. I felt, standing on the deck of the
"Beagle," as if I were surrounded by some awful but beneficent power. The
grandeur of the sea must make a reflective man religious, as its
weirdness might breed superstition in the youthful, or the credulous.'
What wonder, he reasoned as he sailed, that a sailor should be
superstitious? He was separated in boyhood from his home, before he had
forgotten the ghost stories of childhood. While the simple heart still
loved to dwell upon the marvellous, he was placed amid all the marvels of
the sea. In the dark, out of the howl of wind and din of waves, he would
hear strange shrieks piercing the air. By him would float huge forms, dim
and mysterious, from which fancy was prone to build strange phantoms.
Ships might come and ships might go; the sea must ever hold sway over the
sailor man, a mistress to be loved and feared.
'Sailors,' he added, 'are not a religious class, so called, but I believe
they are sincerely religious in their own manner. Poor Jack has faith
that he is being guarded by some supreme power suited to the protection
of the sailor. He does not seek to analyse that power; he simply believes
that it will attend him in the hour of peril. And that is how all
nature's giant works affect you, when once you are clear of the help of
man. You have a perfect reliance upon the unseen, and there follows a
calm, sweet solace, which you cannot express. No doubts enter, when you
are confronted with the great spirit, which seems to preside over virgin
nature.
'But my emotions on the "Beagle" were as a flood. Here I was sailing to a
quarter of the world which the Creator, in His goodness, had provided for
the support and happiness of men. Yet they did not know actually what it
was like; the inheritance was still unexplored. And that land of
North-West Australia was to be all my own, to designate as I wished. My
feeling might be compared to that of a child waiting for a new toy. It
gave rise to an ardent expectation.
'Behind was the despair of thousands, without the necessaries of life or
the prospect of them; a nightmare of darkness that haunted me. But in
front, as I trusted, lay hands which should afford mankind another start.
Why, the busy brains of England were already unconsciously preparing
every device and implement, that could be useful to the rise of the New
World. We make ready in the dark for the light.'
At Cape Town, the halfway house to Australia, Sir George chartered a
schooner for detailed exploring work. In it, a trifle on the water, he
completed a voyage which never lost its charm to him, notwithstanding the
rude hardships. He wished to make all kind of inquiries into natural
history, and when the weather fell calm he would go off in a boat and
shoot sea birds. Not the airy albatross, perhaps, for in it he realised
the melody of motion, and it was not rare to naturalists. To shoot, from
a boat, needed practice.
'You were,' he laid down the conditions, 'at issue with a heavy roll of
the sea, even in glorious weather. Fortunately, I had always been an
expert shot, and I quickly suited myself to the motion. You found your
chances when the skiff sank into the trough of the waves, and a bird flew
screaming over their tops; or, again, when you rose on the surge and had
a wider target.' Thus at sea, and subsequently on land, he bagged many a
fresh fact of natural history, and sent it home to enrich the British
Museum. His word on that point was crisp. 'You had only to walk or row a
little, and you secured a new living thing. The cry of the outlook was
something discovered. The child waiting for the toy, of whom I spoke, was
not half so happily situate as we. It was all surprises.'
His heart fell somewhat when he espied the land at Hanover Bay--the
Promised Land, but naked and unkindly. What a contrast to the bouquet of
Brazil! Still, why should there not be acres rich and worthy, behind
those dull grey rocks? The idea of an incorrigible country was not to be
entertained, for overcrowded England stood, with her hand for ear-
trumpet, and the question on her tongue, 'What is the message?' Adventure
followed adventure in the effort to secure it.
'Somehow,' quoth Sir George, 'we didn't seem to mind the risks, and I
imagine that is the experience of everybody who has encountered any. A
man is zealous upon some task, it quite occupies him, and the dangers are
just details. Afterwards, his friends make him out to be a bit of a hero,
and he has leisure to fancy so himself, which is all entirely harmless.
Now, I had to swim across an arm of the sea, where a violent tide ran,
and where alligators and sharks had their haunts. The latter, I believed
from observations made when we bathed off the schooner, could smell a
human body in the water from a long distance. But the plain necessity was
that, for the succour of certain members of the expedition, I must swim
the lagoon.'
A nearer hazard furnished Sir George with a knowledge, which a call from
his friend Sir Charles Lyell, the geologist, enabled him to use in fun.
Lyell walked in on him, in London, with a spear-head and the curiosity,
'How old do you judge that would be?' The weapon was of stone, uncouth,
barbarous. 'A thousand years, eh?' Lyell pursued. Sir George let him go
on for a while, then broke in, 'If that's a thousand years old, I
likewise am a thousand years old, because one has been taken out of me.'
'What do you mean?' was Lyell's ejaculation. 'Oh,' said Sir George, 'a
head almost similar was on the spear which an Australian native drove
into my thigh.'
Whereupon laughter, and tale of the fight.
VI MAN AND NATURE ABORIGINAL
There never had been such a drama in that forest of North-West Australia.
The noise of the white man's war fell upon the primeval silence, breaking
it.
This battle dwelt acutely with Sir George Grey as the single occasion,
amid all his adventures, on which he had been the instrument of taking
human life. He carried his own wounds to the grave, but only sorrowed for
the bullet he sped, though sheer necessity drove it. The sacred light
might burn in a savage, ignorant of its nobler gleams, yet it was the
gift of the Creator. Moreover, Sir George's whole dealing, towards native
races, was guided by a pole-star principle. The duty civilisation owed
them, he affirmed, was the larger in proportion to their state of
darkness. He held this to be the simple rule for the Christian.
The natives of the Australian North-West were a fine race physically,
and, he judged, had an ingrain of Malay blood. 'To see one for the first
time,' said Sir George, 'produced a great effect upon you. These people
were hardly known then.' They coloured themselves in fearsome style, red
being the favourite daub. No matter, the strangers from over sea would
have greeted them gladly, being anxious to cultivate friendship. The wild
men responded not; but hovered in the distance of the bush, or peered
curiously from some covering of the rocks.
'I did everything I could,' Sir George remarked in that relation, 'to get
acquainted with them, but at this period they would have nothing to do
with me. Their fires might still be smoking, as we beat up a camping
place, but they had left, suspicious of us. When travelling, I frequently
had grave cause to be anxious lest we should be attacked, especially at
night. Therefore, I made my men sleep a little apart from each other, in
order that, if assailed, we might at least have some warning.'