THE FAMILY
Baden-Powell had certain advantages in birth. We will not violently
uproot the family tree, nor will we go trudging over the broad acres
of early progenitors. I refer to the fact that his father was a
clergyman. To be a parson's son is the natural beginning of an
adventurous career; and, if we owe no greater debt to the Church of
our fathers, there is always this argument in favour of the
Establishment, that most of the men who have done something for our
Empire have first opened eyes on this planet in some sleepy old
rectory where roses bloom and rooks are blown about the sky.
[Illustration: Professor Baden Powell.
From a Painting by Hartmann.]
Mr. Baden-Powell, the father of our hero, was a man of great powers.
He was a renowned professor at Oxford, celebrated for his attainments
in theology and in physical science. But the peace-loving man of
letters died ere his boys had grown to youth, and, alas, the memory of
him is blurred and indistinct in their minds. They remember a quiet,
soft-voiced, tender-hearted man who was tall and of goodly frame, yet
had the scholar's air, about whose knees they would cluster and hear
enchanting tales, the plots of which have long since got tangled in
the red tape of life. He had, what all fathers should surely have, a
great love of natural history, and on his country walks would beguile
his boys with talk of animals, birds, and flowers, implanting in their
minds a love of the open and a study of field geology which has since
stood them in excellent stead. I like to picture this learned
professor, who was attacked by the narrow-minded Hebraists of his day
for showing, as one obituary notice remarked, that the progress of
modern scientific discovery, although necessitating modifications in
many of the still prevailing ideas with which the Christian religion
became encrusted in the times of ignorance and superstition, is in no
way incompatible with a sincere and practical acceptance of its great
and fundamental truths,--I like, I say, to picture this Oxford
professor on one of his walks bending over pebbles, birds' eggs, and
plants, with a troop of bright-eyed boys at his side. One begins to
think of the scent of the hedgerow, the shimmering gossamer on the
sweet meadows, the song of the invisible lark, the goodly savour of
the rich earth, and then to the mind's eye, in the midst of it all,
there springs the picture of the genial parson, tall and spare,
surrounded by his olive-branches, and perhaps with our hero, as one of
the late shoots, riding triumphant on his shoulder. It was his habit,
too, when composing profound papers to read before the Royal Society,
to let his children amuse themselves in his book-lined study, and who
cannot see the beaming face turned often from the written sheets to
look lovingly on his happy children? But, as I say, the memory of this
lovable man is blurred for his children, and the clearest of their
early memories are associated with their mother, into whose hands
their training came while our hero was still in frocks.
[Illustration: Mrs. Baden-Powell.
From a Painting by Hartmann.]
Mrs. Baden-Powell's maiden name was Henrietta Grace Smyth. Her father
was a sturdy seaman, Admiral W.H. Smyth, K.S.F., and fortunately for
her children she was trained in a school where neither Murdstone
rigour nor sentimental coddling was regarded as an essential. She was
the kind of mother that rears brave men and true. For discipline she
relied solely on her children's sense of honour, and for the
maintenance of her influence on their character she was content to
trust to a never-wavering interest in all their sports, occupations,
and hobbies. Her children were encouraged to bear pain manfully, but
they were not taught to crush their finer feelings. A simple form of
religion was inculcated, while the boys' natural love for humour was
encouraged and developed. In a word, the children were allowed to grow
up naturally, and the influence brought to bear upon them by this wise
mother was as quiet and as imperceptible as Nature intended it to be.
Dean Stanley, Ruskin, Jowett, Tyndall, and Browning were among those
who were wont to come and ply Mrs. Baden-Powell with questions as to
how she managed to keep in such excellent control half-a-dozen boys
filled to the brim with animal spirits. The truth is, the boys were
unconscious of any controlling influence in their lives, and how could
they have anything but a huge respect for a mother whose knowledge of
science and natural history enabled her to tell them things which
they did not know? In those days mothers were not content to commit
the formation of their children's minds to nursemaids and governesses.
The eldest boy became a Chief Judge in India, and lived to write what
the _Times_ described as "three monumental volumes on the Land Systems
of British India." The second boy, Warington, of whom we shall have
more to say in the next chapter, went into the Navy, but left that
gallant Service to practise at the Bar, and now is as breezy a Q.C. as
ever brought the smack of salt-water into the Admiralty Court. The
third son, Sir George Baden-Powell, sometime member of Parliament for
Liverpool, had already entered upon a distinguished career when, to
the regret of all who had marked his untiring devotion to Imperial
affairs, his early death robbed the country of a loyal son. The other
brothers of our hero are Frank Baden-Powell, who took Honours at
Balliol, and is a barrister of the Inner Temple, as well as a noted
painter, and Baden F.S. Baden-Powell, Major in the Scots Guards, whose
war-kites at Modder River enabled Marconi's staff to establish
wireless telegraphy across a hundred miles of South Africa. Among
this family of young lions there was one little girl, Agnes, as keen
about natural history as the rest, to whom her brothers were as
earnestly and as passionately devoted as ever was Don Quixote to his
Dulcinea.
And now to little Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell in
knickerbockers and Holland jerkin.