Dr. Basham, physician to the Westminster Hospital, was another of us. I
lost sight of him between the years 1824 and 1860, when I met him in the
laboratory, and knew him again at a glance.
Sir Henry Cole, whom I had not seen for five and thirty years, another
boy, came across me at one of Lady Ripon’s receptions; I recognized him
too, though he was disguised in the broad red ribbon and star of the Bath.
These two men reached notoriety, each in his calling, Basham as a
physician, Cole as an official in the office of Records. But they and
their like were of the vanishing class, their names are disappearing;
they filled only a little space in their own generation, which they
accompany to oblivion.
My school days are a memory that I have never refreshed by visiting
those ancient halls and cloisters; once only since I left them have I
passed through from Newgate Street to Little Britain. I found all there
was doubly dead. It was dead in its own past, and dead in mine. I saw a
moral blank in which love was absent, absent as it had ever been between
the pupil and his masters. During my holidays at Seaford, I experienced
thirty days at a time of love and kindness; the recollection of this drew
me to it again. I was seldom at Brighton without going over there with my
brother and his wife, or with his children and mine, to look once more
at the house on the Crouch, and to walk over that beautiful south down
that ascends from the beach and the sea to Cuckmere.
When we no longer knew one living creature there, we still found pleasure
in asking the oldest inhabitants if they remembered Captain and Mrs.
Wallinger.
When I quitted school and gave up the mediæval costume, I was put into
fine clothes, and spent a fortnight at Woolwich, taken about from sight
to sight by my uncle, dining often at the artillery mess, taking a spare
bed at the quarters of Colonel Wylde, and waited on by his man, when I
learned, and have since often found, that a soldier makes the best valet
in the world. Whatever familiarity you may show him, he never becomes
familiar with you; he is always respectful. No one knew this better
than my famed cousin, Charles Gordon. He, when at home, would talk to
the soldier-footman of certain members of his mother’s family, who were
expected as guests, and, calling them good-naturedly by opprobrious
names, would ask if they were in the house; but the servant, however hard
driven by the persistency of his young master, would to the last pretend
not to understand to whom he made allusion.
I did not like that visit to Woolwich: my uncle was very severe, though
only at the moment, on the faults of young people, though a kinder heart
could not well be. The evenings were formal; we sat round a table, every
one in some manner occupied. Unused to fine furniture I kicked the leg
of the table. The uncle showed anger on his expressive face, while he
asked, “Can’t you reconnoitre?” I was given an elegant copy of “Gil Bias”
to read; unused to such editions, unused to reading in the presence of
fine people, I damped my finger at my lips. “Give me the book,” shouted
the good uncle; “I’ll show you how to turn over the leaves!” In this he
performed the feat as any other gentleman would do, and handed the book
back.
This and similar incidents so troubled me that I contemplated taking
flight; but my patience under trial prevailed, and I bided the time for a
visit to Seaford, which soon came about.
This was in 1824, when Charles Gordon was not yet a denizen of our world.
Colonel Wylde, my host at the barracks when the family house on the
common was full, played a part which relieved him from the humdrum of
military life. He spoke Spanish fluently, and, at a time when such a man
was much wanted by the Government, he was employed on a mission to Spain;
and afterwards, when Prince Albert became one of our royal family, he
was appointed as his equerry, and became a great favourite at court. He
was my uncle’s closest friend; but on the command of a brigade falling
vacant, Wylde, then general, was given the appointment, though one below
my uncle in seniority, on whom by custom it should have devolved, and
this one incident cooled the warm friendship of a long life.
Owing to his urbanity, his knowledge of life, and his pleasant face,
Wylde became a great favourite with the royal family, the queen, the
princes and princesses, all of whom loaded him with presents. Prince
Albert pressed on him a baronetcy, which, from a mistake in the bestowal
of his early affections, he could not accept. It was an arbitrary act of
the Duke of Cambridge to break through the rules of the service and give
him a brigade which was due to another, to a friend; perhaps he should
have refused, but doubtless the pressure on all sides was heavy, not to
mention that Wylde had a family which would have been large if divided
between two.
What made this brigade business more aggravating was, that the duke had
contracted an intimacy with my uncle and his family, and was really his
friend.