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THE STORY
OF
BADEN-POWELL
'The Wolf that never Sleeps'
BY
HAROLD BEGBIE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_
LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS
1900
"... A name and an example, which are at this hour
inspiring hundreds of the youth of England...."
Southey's _Life of Nelson_.
_First printed May 1900. Reprinted May 1900_
To SMITH MAJOR
HONOURED SIR,
If amid the storm and stress of your academic career you find an
hour's relaxation in perusing the pages of this book, all the travail
that I have suffered in the making of it will be repaid a
thousandfold. Throughout the quiet hours of many nights, when Morpheus
has mercifully muzzled my youngest (a fine child, sir, but a female),
I have bent over my littered desk driving a jibbing pen, comforted and
encouraged simply and solely by the vision of my labour's object and
attainment. I have seen at such moments the brink of a river, warm
with the sun's rays, though sheltered in part by the rustling leaves
of an alder, and thereon, sprawling at great ease, chin in the cups of
the hand, stomach to earth, and toes tapping the sweet-smelling sod,
your illustrious self--deep engrossed in my book. For this alone I
have written. If, then, it was the prospect of thus pleasing you that
sustained me in my task, to whom else can I more fittingly inscribe
the fruits of my labour? Accept then, honoured sir, this work of your
devoted servant, assured that, if the book wins your affection and
leaves an ideal or two in the mind when you come regretfully upon
"Finis," I shall smoke my pipe o' nights with greater pleasure and
contentment than ever I have done since I ventured the task of
sketching my gallant hero's adventurous career.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your most humble and obedient servant,
THE AUTHOR.
WEYBRIDGE, _April 1900._
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
AN INTRODUCTORY FRAGMENT 1
CHAPTER II
THE FAMILY 6
CHAPTER III
HOME LIFE AND HOLIDAYS 16
CHAPTER IV
CARTHUSIAN 37
CHAPTER V
THE DASHING HUSSAR 55
CHAPTER VI
HUNTER 73
CHAPTER VII
SCOUT 90
CHAPTER VIII
THE FLANNEL-SHIRT LIFE 103
CHAPTER IX
ROAD-MAKER AND BUILDER 119
CHAPTER X
PUTTING OUT FIRE 135
CHAPTER XI
IN RAGS AND TATTERS 158
CHAPTER XII
THE REGIMENTAL OFFICER 172
CHAPTER XIII
GOAL-KEEPER 192
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Major-General R.S.S. Baden-Powell _Frontispiece_
Professor Baden Powell 7
Mrs. Baden-Powell 11
B.-P. reflecting on the After-deck of the _Pearl_ 21
Rev. William Haig-Brown, LL.D. 41
The Dashing Hussar (B.-P. at 21) 61
"Beetle" 79
The Family on Board the _Pearl_ 107
"_Viret in Æternum_" 179
Goal-Keeper 201
CHAPTER I
AN INTRODUCTORY FRAGMENT ON NO ACCOUNT TO BE SKIPPED
You will be the first to grant me, honoured sir, that after
earnestness of purpose, that is to say "keenness," there is no quality
of the mind so essential to the even-balance as humour. The
schoolmaster without this humanising virtue never yet won your love
and admiration, and to miss your affection and loyalty is to lose one
of life's chiefest delights. You are as quick to detect the humbug who
hides his mediocrity behind an affectation of dignity as was dear old
Yorick, of whom you will read when you have got to know the sweetness
of Catullus. This Yorick it was who declared that the Frenchman's
epigram describing gravity as "a mysterious carriage of the body to
cover the defects of the mind," deserved "to be wrote in letters of
gold"; and I make no doubt that had there been a greater recognition
of the extreme value and importance of humour in the early ages of the
world, our history books would record fewer blunders on the part of
kings, counsellors, and princes, and the great churches would not have
alienated the sympathy of so many goodly people at the most important
moment in their existence--the beginning of their proselytism.
This erudite reflection is to prepare you for the introduction of my
hero, Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell. I introduce him to you as
a hero--and as a humourist. To me he appears the ideal English
schoolboy, and the ideal British officer; but if I had blurted this
out at the beginning of my story you might perhaps have flung the book
into an ink-stained corner, thinking you were in for a dull lecture.
It is the misfortune of goodness to be generally treated with
superstitious awe, as though it were a visitant from heaven, instead
of being part and parcel of our own composition. So I begin by
assuring you that if ever there was a light-hearted, jovial creature
it is my hero, and by promising you that he shall not bore you with
moral disquisitions, nor shock your natural and untainted mind with
impossible precepts.
He is a hero in the best sense of the word, living cleanly, despising
viciousness equally with effeminacy, and striving after the
development of his talents, just as a wise painter labours at the
perfecting of his picture. Permit me here to quote the words of a
sagacious Florentine gentleman named Guicciardini: "Men," says he,
"are all by nature more inclined to do good than ill; nor is there
anybody who, where he is not by some strong consideration pulled the
other way, would not more willingly do good than ill."
Goodness, then, is a part of our being; therefore when you are
behaving yourself like a true man, do not flatter yourself that you
are doing any superhuman feat. And do not, as some do, have a sort of
stupid contempt for people who respect truth, honesty, and purity,
people who work hard at school, never insult their masters, and try to
get on in the world without soiling their fingers and draggling their
skirts in the mire. But see you cultivate humour as you go along.
Without that there is danger in the other.
It is useful to reflect that no man without the moral idea ever
wrought our country lasting service or won himself a place in the
hearts of mankind. On the other hand, most of the men whose names are
associated in your mind with courage and heroism are those who keenly
appreciated the value of Conduct, and strove valiantly to keep
themselves above the demoralising and vulgarising influences of the
world.
Baden-Powell, then, is a hero, but no prodigy. He is a hero, and
human. A ripple of laughter runs through his life, the fresh wind
blows about him as he comes smiling before our eyes; and if he be too
full of fun and good spirits to play the part of King Arthur in your
imagination, be sure that no knight of old was ever more chivalrous
towards women, more tender to children, and more resolved upon walking
cleanly through our difficult world.
Ask those who know him best what manner of man he is, and the
immediate answer, made with merry eyes and a deep chuckle, is this:
"He's the funniest beggar on earth." And then when you have listened
to many stories of B.-P.'s pranks, your informant will grow suddenly
serious and tell you what a "straight" fellow he is, what a loyal
friend, what an enthusiastic soldier. But it is ever his fun first.
One word more. Against such a work as this it is sometimes urged that
there is a certain indelicacy in revealing the virtues of a living man
to whomsoever has a shilling in his pocket to purchase a book. My
answer to such a charge may be given in a few lines. In writing about
Baden-Powell your humble servant has hardly considered the feelings of
Baden-Powell at all. B.-P. has outlived a goodly number of absurd
newspaper biographies, and he will survive this. Of you, and you
alone, most honoured sir, has the present historian thought, and so
long as you are pleased, it matters little to him if the
hypersensitive lift up lean hands, turn pale eyes to Heaven, and
squeak "Indecent!" till they are hoarse. And now, with as little
moralising as possible, and no more cautions, let us get along with
our story.