HARRY SMITH PARTS FROM HIS WIFE BEFORE STARTING FOR THE WAR IN AMERICA.
My happiness of indolence and repose was doomed to be of short
duration, for on the 28th of August I was in the Battle of Bladensburg,
and at the capture of the American capital, Washington, some thousands
of miles distant. Colborne, my ever dear, considerate friend, then in
command of his gallant Corps, the 52nd, sent for me, and said, “You
have been so unlucky, after all your gallant and important service,
in not getting your Majority, you must not be idle. There is a force,
a considerable one, going to America. You must go. To-morrow we will
ride to Toulouse to headquarters; send a horse on to-night—it is only
thirty-four miles—we will go there and breakfast, and ride back to
dinner.” I said, very gratefully, “Thank you, sir; I will be ready.
This is a kind act of yours;” but as I knew I must leave behind my
young, fond and devoted wife, my heart was ready to burst, and all my
visions for our mutual happiness were banished in search of the bubble
reputation. I shall never forget her frenzied grief when, with a sort
of despair, I imparted the inevitable separation that we were doomed
to suffer, after all our escapes, fatigue, and privation; but a sense
of duty surmounted all these domestic feelings, and daylight saw me
and dear Colborne full gallop thirty-four miles to breakfast. We were
back again at Castel Sarrasin by four in the afternoon, after a little
canter of sixty-eight miles, not regarded as any act of prowess, but
just a ride. In those days there were men.
On our arrival in Toulouse, we found my name rather high up—the third,
I think—on the list of Majors of Brigade in the A.G.’s office desirous
to serve in America. We asked kind old Darling who had put my name
down. He said, “Colonel Elley,” afterwards Sir John. He had known my
family in early life, and was ever paternally kind to me. He had asked
my ever dear friend, General Sir Edward Pakenham, to do so, which he
readily did. Colborne then said, “My old friend Ross, who commanded
the 20th Regiment while I was Captain of the Light Company, is going.
I will go and ask him to take you as his Major of Brigade.” Ross knew
me on the retreat to Coruña, and the affair, in a military point of
view, was satisfactorily settled. But oh! the heaviness of my heart
when I had to impart the separation now decided on to my affectionate
young wife of seventeen years old! She bore it, as she did everything,
when the energies of her powerful mind were called forth, exclaiming,
“It is for your advantage, and neither of us must repine. All your
friends have been so kind in arranging the prospect before you so
satisfactorily.” At the word “friends” she burst into a flood of tears,
which relieved her, exclaiming, “You have friends everywhere. I must be
expatriated, separated from relations, go among strangers, while I lose
the only thing on earth my life hangs on and clings to!”
Preparation was speedily made for our journey down the Garonne, which
we performed in a small boat, accompanied by our kind friend Digby. My
wife was to accompany me to Bordeaux, there to embark for England with
my brother Tom, who had recently suffered excessively in the extraction
of the ball he had received in his knee five years previously at the
Coa. The great difficulty I had was to get my regimental pay (nine
months being due to me), and I only did so through the kindness of our
acting-paymaster, Captain Stewart, and every officer readily saying,
“Oh, give us so much less the first issue, and let Smith have what
would otherwise come to us.” Such an act, I say, testifies to the
mutual friendship and liberality we acquired amidst scenes of glory,
hardship, and privation.
Before I left my old Brigade, the 52nd Regiment, the 95th Regiment
(Rifle Brigade now), the 1st and 3rd Caçadores,[50] with whom I had
been so many eventful years associated—and I may say, most happily—all
gave me a parting dinner, including the good fellows, the Portuguese,
whom I never had any chance of seeing again. Our farewell dinner
partook of every feeling of excitement. The private soldiers, too,
were most affectionate, and I separated from all as from my home. The
Portuguese are a brave, kind-hearted people, and most susceptible of
kindness. We had also ten men a Company in our British Regiments,
Spaniards, many of them the most daring of sharpshooters in our corps,
who nobly regained the distinction attached to the name of the Spanish
infantry in Charles V.’s time. I never saw better, more orderly,
perfectly sober soldiers in my life, and as vedettes the old German
Hussar did not exceed them. The 52nd Regiment I was as much attached to
as my own corps, with every reason.
My old 1st Battalion embarked at Dover just before Talavera, 1050 rank
and file. During the war only 100 men joined us. We were now reduced to
about 500. There was scarcely a man who had not been wounded. There was
scarcely one whose knowledge of his duty as an outpost soldier was not
brought to a state of perfection, and when they were told they must not
drink, a drunken man was a rare occurrence indeed, as rare as a sober
one when we dare give a little latitude. My old Brigade was equal to
turn the tide of victory (as it did at Orthez) any day.
It was early in May when we left Castel Sarrasin, where we had been
happy (oh, most happy!) for a month—an _age_ in the erratic life
we had been leading. We were quartered in the house of a Madame La
Rivière, an excellent and motherly woman, a widow with a large family
and only one son spared to her—the rest had perished as soldiers.
Never was there a more happy and cheerful family, and never did mother
endeavour to soothe the acute feelings of a daughter more than did this
good lady those of my poor wife. We often afterwards heard of her in
Paris in 1815.
Our voyage down the Garonne in our little skiff was delightful. We
anchored every night. In youth everything is novel and exciting, and
our voyage was such a change after marching! The beauties of the
scenery, and the drooping foliage on the banks of the river, added
to our enjoyment. We landed each night at some town or village, and
ever found a comfortable inn which could give us a dinner. After such
privations as ours, the delight of being able to order dinner at an inn
is not to be believed. On reaching Bordeaux, the most beautiful city I
was ever in, I found I had only three or four days to prepare to reach
the fleet and the troops embarked in the Gironde (a continuation of
the Garonne), and that I was to embark on board his Majesty’s ship the
_Royal Oak_, 74, Rear-Admiral Malcolm, for the troops under General
Ross were destined for a peculiar and separate service in America. I
did, of course, all I could to draw the attention of my poor wife from
the approaching separation. There was a theatre, various spectacles,
sights, etc., but all endeavour was vain to relieve the mind one
instant from the awful thought of that one word “separation.” Digby
was most kind to her. He had an excellent private servant, who was to
embark with her for London. My brother Tom was to her all a brother
could be, and in the transport she was to proceed in were several old
and dear Rifle friends going to England from wounds. I wished her to
go to London for some time before going down to my father’s, for the
benefit of masters to learn English, etc.—for not a word could she
speak but her own language, French, and Portuguese,—and to every wish
she readily assented.
Time rolls rapidly on to the goal of grief, and the afternoon arrived
when I must ride twenty miles on my road for embarcation. Many a year
has now gone by, still the recollection of that afternoon is as fresh
in my memory as it was painful at the moment—oh, how painful! To see
that being whose devotedness in the field of three years’ eventful war,
in a life of such hardship at the tender age of fourteen, had been
the subject of wonder to the whole community, in a state bordering on
despair, possessing, as she did, the strong and enthusiastic feelings
of her country-women—who love with a force cooler latitudes cannot
boast of—_this_ was to me an awful trial, and although she had every
prospect of care and kindness, to be _separated_ conveyed to the
sensitive mind of youth (for I was only twenty-four[51]) every anguish
and horror that is to be imagined. I left her insensible and in a
faint. God only knows the number of staggering and appalling dangers I
had faced; but, thank the Almighty, I never was unmanned until now, and
I leaped on my horse by that impulse which guides the soldier to do his
duty.
I had a long ride before me on the noble mare destined to embark with
me. On my way I reached a village where I received the attention of
a kind old lady, who from her age had been exempt from having any
troops quartered on her; but, the village being full of Rifle Brigade,
Artillery, and Light Division fellows, the poor old lady was saddled
with me. The Artillery readily took charge of my horse. The kind old
grandmamma showed me into a neat little bedroom and left me. I threw
myself on the bed as one _alone_ in all the wide world, a feeling
never before experienced, when my eye caught some prints on the wall.
What should they be but pictures in representation of the _Sorrows of
Werther_, and, strange though it be, they had the contrary effect upon
me to that which at the first glance I anticipated. They roused me from
my sort of lethargy of grief and inspired a hope which never after
abandoned me. The good lady had a nice little supper of _côtelettes de
mouton_, and the most beautiful strawberries I ever saw, and she opened
a bottle of excellent wine. To gratify her I swallowed by force all I
could, for her kindness was maternal.
We soon parted for ever, for I was on horseback before daylight, _en
route_ to Pauillac, a village on the Garonne, where we were to embark.
On my ride, just at grey daylight, I saw something walking in the air.
“It is like a man,” I said, “certainly, only that men do not walk in
the air.” It advanced towards me with apparently rapid strides, and in
the excited state of mind I was in, I really believed I was deluded,
and ought not to believe _what I saw_. Suspense was intolerable, and I
galloped up to it. As I neared my aeronaut, I found it a man walking
on stilts about twenty-five feet high. In the imperfect light and the
distance, of course the stilts were invisible. The phenomenon was
accounted for, and my momentary credulity in I did not know what called
to mind stories I had heard recounted, evidently the results of heated
imaginations. This walking on stilts is very general in the deep sands
of this country.
On reaching Pauillac, I found my trusty old groom West waiting for
me. He led me to a comfortable billet, where my portmanteau, all my
worldly property, and my second horse, which was to embark with me,
were reported “All right, sir.” Old West did not ask after “Mrs.,” but
he looked at me a thousand inquiries, to which I shook my head. I found
a note for me at our military post-office from dear little Digby, as
consolatory as I could expect.
I was detained two days at Pauillac, in the house of another widow,
an elderly lady (all women in France of moderate or certain age were
widows at this period). One morning I heard a most extraordinary shout
of joyful exclamation, so much so I ran into the room adjoining the one
I was sitting in. The poor old woman says, “Oh, come in and witness
my happiness!” She was locked in the arms of a big, stout-looking,
well-whiskered Frenchman. “Here is my son, oh! my long-lost son, who
has been a [prisoner] in England from the beginning of the war.” The
poor fellow was a _sous-officier_ in a man-of-war, and, having been
taken early in the war off Boulogne, for years he had been in those
accursed monsters of inhuman invention, “the hulks,” a prisoner. He
made no complaint. He said England had no other place to keep their
prisoners, that they were well fed when fed by the English, but when,
by an arrangement with France at her own request, that Government fed
them, they were half starved. The widow gave a great dinner-party at
two o’clock, to which I was of course invited. The poor old lady said,
“Now let us drink some of this wine: it was made the year my poor son
was taken prisoner. I vowed it should never be opened until he was
restored to me, and this day I have broached the cask.” The wine was
excellent. If all the wine-growers had sons taken prisoners, and kept
it thus until their release, the world would be well supplied with good
wine in place of bad. Poor family! it was delightful to witness their
happiness, while I could but meditate on the contrast between it and my
wretchedness. But I lived in hope.