Wolfe was made welcome in England wherever he went. In spite of his
youth his name was well known to the chief men in the Army, and he was
already a hero among the friends of his family. By nature he was fond of
the society of ladies, and of course he fell in love. He had had a few
flirtations before, like most other soldiers; but this time the case
was serious. The difference was the same as between a sham fight and
a battle. His choice fell on Elizabeth Lawson, a maid of honour to the
Princess of Wales. The oftener he saw her the more he fell in love with
her. But the course of true love did not, as we shall presently see, run
any more smoothly for him than it has for many another famous man.
In 1749, when Wolfe was only twenty-two, he was promoted major of the
20th Regiment of Foot. He joined it in Scotland, where he was to serve
for the next few years. At first he was not very happy in Glasgow. He
did not like the people, as they were very different from the friends
with whom he had grown up. Yet his loneliness only added to his zeal
for study. He had left school when still very young, and he now found
himself ignorant of much that he wished to know. As a man of the world
he had found plenty of gaps in his general knowledge. Writing to his
friend Captain Rickson, he says: 'When a man leaves his studies
at fifteen, he will never be justly called a man of letters. I am
endeavouring to repair the damages of my education, and have a person
to teach me Latin and mathematics.' From his experience in his own
profession, also, he had learned a good deal. In a letter to his father
he points out what excellent chances soldiers have to see the vivid
side of many things: 'That variety incident to a military life gives our
profession some advantages over those of a more even nature. We have all
our passions and affections aroused and exercised, many of which must
have wanted their proper employment had not suitable occasions obliged
us to exert them. Few men know their own courage till danger proves
them, or how far the love of honour or dread of shame are superior to
the love of life. This is a knowledge to be best acquired in an army;
our actions are there in presence of the world, to be fully censured or
approved.'
Great commanders are always keen to learn everything really worth while.
It is only the little men who find it a bore. Of course, there are
plenty of little men in a regiment, as there are everywhere else in the
world; and some of the officers were afraid Wolfe would insist on their
doing as he did. But he never preached. He only set the example, and
those who had the sense could follow it. One of his captains wrote home:
'Our acting colonel here is a paragon. He neither drinks, curses, nor
gambles. So we make him our pattern.' After a year with him the officers
found him a 'jolly good fellow' as well as a pattern; and when he became
their lieutenant-colonel at twenty-three they gave him a dinner that
showed he was a prime favourite among them. He was certainly quite
as popular with the men. Indeed, he soon became known by a name which
speaks for itself--'the soldier's' friend.'
By and by Wolfe's regiment marched into the Highlands, where he had
fought against Prince Charlie in the '45. But he kept in touch with what
was going on in the world outside. He wrote to Rickson at Halifax, to
find out for him all he could about the French and British colonies in
America. In the same letter, written in 1751, he said he should like to
see some Highland soldiers raised for the king's army and sent out there
to fight. Eight years later he was to have a Highland regiment among
his own army at Quebec. Other themes filled the letters to his mother.
Perhaps he was thinking of Miss Lawson when he wrote: 'I have a certain
turn of mind that favours matrimony prodigiously. I love children. Two
or three manly sons are a present to the world, and the father
that offers them sees with satisfaction that he is to live in his
successors.' He was thinking more gravely of a still higher thing when
he wrote on his twenty-fifth birthday, January 2, 1752, to reassure his
mother about the strength of his religion.
Later on in the year, having secured leave of absence, he wrote to his
mother in the best of spirits. He asked her to look after all the
little things he wished to have done. 'Mr Pattison sends a pointer to
Blackheath; if you will order him to be tied up in your stable, it will
oblige me much. If you hear of a servant who can dress a wig it will be
a favour done me to engage him. I have another favour to beg of you and
you'll think it an odd one: 'tis to order some currant jelly to be made
in a crock for my use. It is the custom in Scotland to eat it in the
morning with bread.' Then he proposed to have a shooting-lodge in the
Highlands, long before any other Englishman seems to have thought of
what is now so common. 'You know what a whimsical sort of person I
am. Nothing pleases me now but hunting, shooting, and fishing. I have
distant notions of taking a very little house, remote upon the edge of
the forest, merely for sport.'
In July he left the Highlands, which were then, in some ways, as wild as
Labrador is now. About this time there was a map made by a Frenchman in
Paris which gave all the chief places in the Lowlands quite rightly,
but left the north of Scotland blank, with the words 'Unknown land here,
inhabited by the "Iglandaires"!' When his leave began Wolfe went first
to Dublin--'dear, dirty Dublin,' as it used to be called--where his
uncle, Major Walter Wolfe, was living. He wrote to his father: 'The
streets are crowded with people of a large size and well limbed, and
the women very handsome. They have clearer skins, and fairer complexions
than the women in England or Scotland, and are exceeding straight and
well made'; which shows that he had the proper soldier's eye for every
pretty girl. Then he went to London and visited his parents in their new
house at the corner of Greenwich Park, which stands to-day very much the
same as it was then. But, wishing to travel, he succeeded, after a great
deal of trouble, in getting leave to go to Paris. Lord Bury was a friend
of his, and Lord Bury's father, the Earl of Albemarle, was the British
ambassador there. So he had a good chance of seeing the best of
everything. Perhaps it would be almost as true to say that he had as
good a chance of seeing the worst of everything. For there were a great
many corrupt and corrupting men and women at the French court. There was
also much misery in France, and both the corruption and the misery were
soon to trouble New France, as Canada was then called, even more than
they troubled Old France at home.
Wolfe wished to travel about freely, to see the French armies at work,
and then to go on to Prussia to see how Frederick the Great managed his
perfectly disciplined army. This would have been an excellent thing
to do. But it was then a very new thing for an officer to ask leave to
study foreign armies. Moreover, the chief men in the British Army
did not like the idea of letting such a good colonel go away from his
regiment for a year, even though he was going with the object of making
himself a still better officer. Perhaps, too, his friends were just a
little afraid that he might join the Prussians or the Austrians; for
it was not, in those days, a very strange thing to join the army of
a friendly foreign country. Whatever the reason, the long leave was
refused and he went no farther than Paris.
Louis XV was then at the height of his apparent greatness; and France
was a great country, as it is still. But king and government were both
corrupt. Wolfe saw this well enough and remembered it when the next
war broke out. There was a brilliant society in 'the capital of
civilization,' as the people of Paris proudly called their city; and
there was a great deal to see. Nor was all of it bad. He wrote home two
days after his arrival.
The packet [ferry] did not sail that night, but we
embarked at half-an-hour after six in the morning and
got into Calais at ten. I never suffered so much in
so short a time at sea. The people [in Paris] seem to
be very sprightly. The buildings are very magnificent,
far surpassing any we have in London. Mr Selwin has
recommended a French master to me, and in a few days
I begin to ride in the Academy, but must dance and
fence in my own lodgings. Lord Albemarle [the British
ambassador] is come from Fontainebleau. I have very
good reason to be pleased with the reception I met
with. The best amusement for strangers in Paris is
the Opera, and the next is the playhouse. The theatre
is a school to acquire the French language, for which
reason I frequent it more than the other.
In Paris he met young Philip Stanhope, the boy to whom the Earl of
Chesterfield wrote his celebrated letters; 'but,' says Wolfe, 'I fancy
he is infinitely inferior to his father.' Keeping fit, as we call it
nowadays, seems to have been Wolfe's first object. He took the same care
of himself as the Japanese officers did in the Russo-Japanese War;
and for the same reason, that he might be the better able to serve his
country well the next time she needed him. Writing to his mother he
says:
I am up every morning at or before seven and fully
employed till twelve. Then I dress and visit, and dine
at two. At five most people go to the public
entertainments, which keep you till nine; and at eleven
I am always in bed. This way of living is directly
opposite to the practice of the place. But no
constitution could go through all. Four or five days
in the week I am up six hours before any other fine
gentleman in Paris. I ride, fence, dance, and have a
master to teach me French. I succeed much better in
fencing and riding than in the art of dancing, for
they suit my genius better; and I improve a little in
French. I have no great acquaintance with the French
women, nor am likely to have. It is almost impossible
to introduce one's self among them without losing a
great deal of money, which you know I can't afford;
besides, these entertainments begin at the time I go
to bed, and I have not health enough to sit up all
night and work all day. The people here use umbrellas
to defend them from the sun, and something of the same
kind to secure them from the rain and snow. I wonder
a practice so useful is not introduced into England.
While in Paris Wolfe was asked if he would care to be military tutor to
the Duke of Richmond, or, if not, whether he knew of any good officer
whom he could recommend. On this he named Guy Carleton, who became the
young duke's tutor. Three men afterwards well known in Canada were thus
brought together long before any of them became celebrated. The Duke
of Richmond went into Wolfe's regiment. The next duke became a
governor-general of Canada, as Guy Carleton had been before him. And
Wolfe--well, he was Wolfe!
One day he was presented to King Louis, from whom, seven years later; he
was to wrest Quebec. 'They were all very gracious as far as courtesies,
bows, and smiles go, for the Bourbons seldom speak to anybody.' Then he
was presented to the clever Marquise de Pompadour, whom he found having
her hair done up in the way which is still known by her name to every
woman in the world. It was the regular custom of that time for great
ladies to receive their friends while the barbers were at work on their
hair. 'She is extremely handsome and, by her conversation with
the ambassador, I judge she must have a great deal of wit and
understanding.' But it was her court intrigues and her shameless waste
of money that helped to ruin France and Canada.
In the midst of all these gaieties Wolfe never forgot the mother whom
he thought 'a match for all the beauties.' He sent her 'two black laced
hoods and a _vestale_ for the neck, such as the Queen of France wears.'
Nor did he forget the much humbler people who looked upon him as 'the
soldier's friend.' He tells his mother that his letters from Scotland
have just arrived, and that 'the women of the regiment take it into
their heads to write to me sometimes.' Here is one of their letters,
marked on the outside, 'The Petition of Anne White':
Collonnell,--Being a True Noble-hearted Pittyful
gentleman and Officer your Worship will excuse these
few Lines concerning ye husband of ye undersigned,
Sergt. White, who not from his own fault is not behaving
as Hee should towards me and his family, although good
and faithfull till the middle of November last.
We may be sure 'Sergt. White' had to behave 'as Hee should' when Wolfe
returned!
In April, to his intense disgust, Wolfe was again in Glasgow.
We are all sick, officers and soldiers. In two days
we lost the skin off our faces with the sun, and the
third were shivering in great coats. My cousin Goldsmith
has sent me the finest young pointer that ever was
seen; he eclipses Workie, and outdoes all. He sent me
a fishing-rod and wheel at the same time, of his own
workmanship. This, with a salmon-rod from my uncle
Wat, your flies, and my own guns, put me in a condition
to undertake the Highland sport. We have plays, we
have concerts, we have balls, with dinners and suppers
of the most execrable food upon earth, and wine that
approaches to poison. The men of Glasgow drink till
they are excessively drunk. The ladies are cold to
everything but a bagpipe--I wrong them--there is not
one that does not melt away at the sound of money.'
By the end of this year, however, he had left Scotland for good. He did
not like the country as he saw it. But the times were greatly against
his doing so. Glasgow was not at all a pleasant place in those narrowly
provincial days for any one who had seen much of the world. The
Highlands were as bad. They were full of angry Jacobites, who could
never forgive the redcoats for defeating Prince Charlie. Yet Wolfe was
not against the Scots as a whole; and we must never forget that he was
the first to recommend the raising of those Highland regiments which
have fought so nobly in every British war since the mighty one in which
he fell.
During the next year and part of the year following, 1754-55, Wolfe was
at Exeter, where the entertainments seem to have been more to his taste
than those at Glasgow. A lady who knew him well at this time wrote:
'He was generally ambitious to gain a tall, graceful woman to be his
partner, as well as a good dancer. He seemed emulous to display every
kind of virtue and gallantry that would render him amiable.'
In 1755 the Seven Years' Peace was coming to an end in Europe. The
shadow of the Seven Years' War was already falling darkly across the
prospect in America. Though Wolfe did not leave for the front till 1757,
he was constantly receiving orders to be ready, first for one place and
then for another. So early as February 18, 1755, he wrote to his mother
what he then thought might be a farewell letter. It is full of the great
war; but personal affairs of the deeper kind were by no means forgotten.
'The success of our fleet in the beginning of the war is of the utmost
importance.' 'It will be sufficient comfort to you both to reflect that
the Power which has hitherto preserved me may, if it be His pleasure,
continue to do so. If not, it is but a few days more or less, and
those who perish in their duty and the service of their country die
honourably.'
The end of this letter is in a lighter vein. But it is no less
characteristic: it is all about his dogs. 'You are to have Flurry
instead of Romp. The two puppies I must desire you to keep a little
longer. I can't part with either of them, but must find good and secure
quarters for them as well as for my friend Caesar, who has great merit
and much good humour. I have given Sancho to Lord Howe, so that I am
reduced to two spaniels and one pointer.' It is strange that in the
many books about dogs which mention the great men who have been fond
of them--and most great men are fond of dogs--not one says a word about
Wolfe. Yet 'my friend Caesar, who has great merit and much good humour,'
deserves to be remembered with his kind master just as much, in his way,
as that other Caesar, the friend of Edward VII, who followed his master
to the grave among the kings and princes of a mourning world.