sage-coloured breeches, dark worsted stock-ster School in his ninth year, and fully ings, and gouty shoes coming over the ankles. confirms the worst accounts of the faggingFox was not visible of a morning. He either transacted the business of his office, or main interest of his school-days, however, system which prevailed in his time. The was occupied in it, or reading Greek plays, or French fairy-tales, of which last species of lit-centres in the Princess Charlotte, whose erature I have heard my father say he was particularly fond.

At one o'clock was the children's dinner. We used to assemble in the dining-room; Fox was wheeled in at the same moment for his daily basin of soup. That meal despatched, he was for the rest of the day the exclusive property of us children, and we all adjourned to the garden for our game at trap-ball. All was now noise and merriment. Our host, the youngest amongst us, laughed, chaffed, and chatted the whole time. As he could not walk, he of course had the innings, we the bowling and fagging out; with what glee would he send the ball into the bushes in order to add to his store, and how shamelessly would he wrangle with us whenever we fairly bowled

him out!

It is laid down by Dr. Johnson that "the value of every story depends on its being true. A story is a picture of an individual or of human nature in general: if it be false, it is a picture of nothing." Lord Albemarle's stories have so far the stamp of truth that, when he does not speak as an eye-witness, he almost always vouches his authority. But it may fairly be made a question whether the recollection of a boy of nine years old is a sufficient authority for such a story as the following:

To the rear of the Rutland Arms, Newmarket, is a house called the "Palace." It was the residence of Charles the Second during the races, and was used for the same purpose by George, Prince of Wales, when he was on the turf.

Mr. Tattersall, the founder of the celebrated establishment that goes by his name, had a breeding-farm at Ely, called Red Barns, Here stood his famous horse, "Highflyer." The prince, who was very intimate with Mr. Tattersall, and joint proprietor with him in the Morning Post, was a frequent though an uninvited guest at Red Barns. His Royal Highness used to take his own party with him, and the consumption of port wine on such occasions was something awful.

Mr. Edmund Tattersall told me that his uncle Richard, the grandson and successor of the founder of the firm, when he was a boy of about nine years old, saw a post-chaise and four drive furiously up to the " Palace" door one day, William Windham riding leader and Charles Fox wheel, while the Prince of Wales, too full of Red Barns port to be in riding or even sitting trim, lay utterly helpless at the bottom of the chaise.

acquaintance he made at the house of his grandmother, her governess, in 1808.

It was on a Saturday, a Westminster halfholiday. From this time forth for the next three years many of my Saturdays and Sundays were passed in her company. She had just completed her twelfth year. Her complexion was rather pale. She had blue eyes, and that peculiarly blonde hair which was characteristic rather of her German than of her English descent. Her features were regular, her face, which was oval, had not that fulness which later took off somewhat from her good looks. Her form was slender but of great symmetry; her hands and feet were beautifully shaped. When excited, she stuttered painfully. Hor manners were free from the slightest affectation; they rather erred in the opposite extreme. She was an excellent actress whenever there was anything to call forth her imitative power. One of her fancies was to ape the manners of a man. On these occasions she would double her fists, and assume an attitude of defence that would have done credit to a professed pugilist. What I disliked in her, when in this mood, was her fondness for exercising her hands upon me in their clenched form.

He goes on to say that, unlike her grandmothers, the Duchess of Brunswick and the queen of England, she was generous to excess. She gave him his first watch and his first pony, besides being prodigal of "tips;" and this at a time when she was allowed only ten pounds a month for pocket-money, as she tells him in a kind and sensible letter of warning against extravagance. His description, from hearsay and correspondence, of her general treatment and position, may be read with advantage in connection with Lady Rose Weigall's valuable memoir. But we can only find room for those illustrations of her character which were drawn from direct personal knowledge.

Lady de Clifford had an excellent woman cook, quite a cordon bleu, on whose performances she had been complimented by the prince :

One day, however, at the hour of luncheon, things went ill: the dowager's bell rang vio lently. The mutton-chop was so ill-dressed and so well-peppered as to be uneatable. On inquiry it was discovered that the good old lady's royal charge had acted as cook, and her favourite grandson as scullery-maid.

I have a living witness to this mutton-chop scene in the person of my kinsman, Dr. Lord Albemarle was sent to Westmin- Thomas Garnier, dean of Winchester, who

assures me, through my sister, Lady Caroline | seats of learning as one of the athletic Garnier, that I said, "A pretty queen you'll games essential to the training of a genmake!" tleman.

It was the point upon which no difference of opinion existed either between masters and pupils, or between sons and fathers.

Carey (the headmaster), who had been a good fighter in his day, did all in his power to When my foster this pugnacious feeling. friend and co-Busbeian, Mr. James Mure, was captain of the school, the doctor took him to task for the idleness of one Lambert, a junior on the foundation. Mure pleaded that he had not "helped" Lambert into college, but that he believed him to be a good honest fellow, and by no means deficient in abilities. Where did he get that black eye?" asked Carey.

On her proposing to take him to the theatre, he objected that the pleasure would infallibly entail the pain of a sound flogging, as the play and a good supper would make it impossible for him to be in time for the eight o'clock morning school. "Leave that to me," said the princess, and forthwith penned a letter to Dr. Page, taking upon herself the blame for my anticipated non-appearance. The morning after the play I came into school half an hour late, and was "shown up as a matter of course. With a deprecatory "Please, sir," I presented my royal" credentials. The doctor glanced at the seal and the hieroglyphic "Charlotte" on the envelope, and then dropped the letter into the pocket of his gown that his hand might be free to grasp the rod. His next proceeding was to perform that part of his duty which always seemed a pleasure. That done, he read the letter to the whole form, and added how glad he was that he had not opened it sooner, for he would have been under the painful necessity of disobeying her Royal Highness's commands.

"In fighting a 'scy.'"
"Which licked?

"Lambert."

"Well! if he is a good fellow and a good fighter we must not be too hard upon him for his Latin and Greek."

When the lad went home for the holidays, he found his father preaching from the same text as the doctor. In fact, the ex-master of the buckhounds was an en

lightened patron of the prize ring, and one of the noble and illustrious backers of Pearce, the Game Chicken, one while champion of England, whose generosity of disposition was on a par with his pluck.

This was not the only occasion on which the princess made an ineffectual attempt to screen me from the consequences of a neglect of school duties. She had some project which required my co-operation. I pleaded my unfinished exercise for the Monday. It was again, "Leave that to me." I did so, but her In his famous fight with James Belcher, the latinity, in spite of Bishop Fisher's preceptor- one-eyed pugilist, Pearce knocked his antag ship, was found on examination not even toonist on to the ropes, and, according to the come up to my low standard. This second attempt to help me was attended with exactly the same result as the former.

My sister, Lady Mary Whitbread, reminds me of a certain mound in the orchard of Earl's Court. To the top of this mound the princess would entice her and her sisters (who were at that time of the respective ages of seven, six, and four) to climb, in order to roll them down into a bed of nettles below. If the little girls refrained from crying and from complaining to their governess, they were sure to be rewarded for their reticence by a doll. Indeed the princess, never so happy as when making presents, kept their nursery well supplied with dolls. Two of these Lady Mary remembers as going by the names of the Princess Charlotte and the Princess of Wales.

Pugilism towards the beginning of the century ranked only just below the fine arts, and was encouraged at some of our

pugilistic code, might have gained an easy victory, but he forewent his advantage, saying, "I will not hit thee, Jem, lest I knock out thy other eye.”

The excitement caused in 1811 by the forthcoming fight between Crib and Molyneux (an American negro), was not confined to "us Westminsters," and the national exultation at the result fell little short of that raised soon afterwards by the capture of the "Chesapeake" by the "Shannon."

The fight came off in September of this year. The national honour was saved. The Englishman won, although, as the newspapers announced, "his head was terribly out of shape."

A few weeks after the battle, Grandmamma Albemarle sent me to Astley's Amphitheatre with her footman. As my companion was in livery, we could not be admitted into the boxes. Immediately in the row before me in the pit sat Crib and Molyneux, to both of whom I obtained a formal introduction, not a little proud of being able to boast to my schoolfellows of having made the acquaintance of two such celebrities. The appearance of

the late combatants was curious. The black man had beaten the white one black and blue. The white man, the black one green and yellow. On one occasion when the Lady de Clifford and the princess had driven to Westminster to see him, he was in the fighting-green, the grass quadrangle of the great cloisters, whither they repaired

in search of him

While my good grandmamma was reading quaint monumental inscriptions, her royal charge was grasping the rails of the cloister and eagerly straining her eyes to watch the

of

The skill

the honour of driving the London and
Norwich royal mail. I generally selected
the stage from Barry to Thetford, the last
my journey homewards."
thus acquired by the connivance of the
regular driver was occasionally at the ex-
pense of the passengers; but the art of
"handling the ribbons" was pretty gener-
erally diffused, and now that driving four-
in-hand has lost its practical utility and
business-like air, the new or revived club
bears about the same relation to the orig-
inal one as the Eglintoun tournament to the

motions of the combatants. Her Royal High-gentle passage of arms
in "Ivanhoe.'

"" commemorated

ness was in high luck, for I appeal to my contemporaries whether they ever witnessed a A very remarkable letter, now printed better-fought battle than that between John for the first time, was addressed by the Erskine, afterwards Earl of Mar, and Paddy princess to Lord Albemarle (the father), Brown, afterwards Sir John Benyon de Beau-dated January 17th, 1812, in which, with a voir.

The Etonians, who were always lording it over us Westminsters with their superior gentility, used to boast that they would never condescend to handle the ribbons unless with four sprightly nags at their feet; in other words, they drove stage and we hackney coaches. For my part I was well content with the humbler vehicle. One Sunday evening several of us boys met by agreement at the top of St. James's Street. Each engaged a hackney coach for himself, and having deposited his "Jarvey" inside, we mounted our respective boxes and raced down to Westminster, the north archway into Dean's Yard being the winning-post. Over such roads, and with such sorry cattle, the wonder is that we reached the goal. Luckily for us our course was all down hill.

We have heard of races between sedan chairs at Bath, but never before of races between hackney coaches in London, and it is to be hoped that the institution will not be revived with cabs. When railways were unknown, an excellent school for driving was supplied by the road. "When" (says Lord Albemarle) "I became big enough to manage a team, I had

726

sneer at her tutor, the Bishop of Salisbury, she declares herself an out-and-out Foxite. It is too long to quote. Lady de Clifford had frequent occasion to reprove her pupil's levity of conduct and expression, and the princess used to complain to her playfellow of harsh treatment on the part of her governess; but "after all," she would say in her cooler moments, world than your snuffy old grandmother." "there are many worse persons in the

We have here, on Lady de Clifford's authority, the true version of the disputed scene with Lord Eldon on Sunday, 17th the Castle of Windsor, attended by her January, 1812, when the princess went to

governess.

In the queen's room were assembled her Majesty, Princess Mary, afterwards Duchess of Gloucester, and the prince regent, who had brought with him Lord Chancellor Eldon. This great legal functionary pointed out to the princess the somewhat despotic power which the law gives to the sovereign over the members of the royal family. During the interview the regent loaded his daughter with reproaches. At last turning to the chancellor he asked him what he would do with such a daughter. "If she were mine," was the answer, "I would lock her up.' The princess burst into tears. What," she exclaimed, "would the poor king have said if he could understand that his granddaughter had been likened to the granddaughter of a coalheaver!"

66

Lord Albemarle states that he had always been taught to look to the bar as his profession, but his confirmed habit of breaking bounds and getting into scrapes led to a sudden change of destination. One fine morning, after a fresh breach of discipline, a letter from his father informed him that his school-days had come to an

end.

"Inclosed was one from Dr. Page | question, prince,' said the duke, 'for, although you are now a young man, you may have to command an army. Feed them well, and house them well, and you will make good soldiers.'"*

to him, dissuading him from thinking any more of a learned profession for me, and recommending him to choose one in which physical rather than mental exertion would be requisite."

In April 1815, being then under sixteen, he was gazetted to an ensigncy in the 14th Foot, and was immediately ordered to join the third battalion of his regiment in Flanders. When he joined it, fourteen of the officers and three hundred of the men were under twenty years of age. "These last consisted principally of Buckinghamshire lads, fresh from the plough, whose rustic appearance procured for them the appellation of the 'Peasants." The duke always declared that his Waterloo army was the worst he ever commanded, and that if it had been composed of his old Peninsular troops, the battle would have been decided in three hours. An old General Mackenzie, who inspected the battalion at Brussels, no sooner set eyes on them than he called out, "Well, I never saw such a set of boys, both officers and men." Yet this set of boys gave speedy and ample proof of the cool, tenacious, enduring courage which has been correctly designated as the distinctive quality of the race.*

At a more advanced period of his narrative, Lord Albemarle relates that during the Peninsular War, Lord Wellington was asked, at his own dinner-table, on whom, in his opinion, in the event of anything happening to him, the command should devolve. After some hesitation he named Beresford. There was a general expression of surprise. "I see," he said, "what you mean, by your looks. If it were a question of handling troops, some of you fellows might do as well, perhaps better than he; but what we now want is some one to feed our troops; and I know of no one fitter for the purpose than Beresford." A confirmatory anecdote is told by Mr. Mark Boyd: "On one occasion he (a foreign prince) took the opportunity of asking his Grace what was the best method of making good soldiers. A very proper

"Mais pour ce qui regarde la guerre, l'histoire du passé nous rassure quant aux chances de l'avenir. I n'y a certainement pas de nation qui puisse se vanter d'être plus brave que la nation française, mais je crois que nos hommes ont quelques dix minutes de ténacité plus que les vôtres; et lorsque le courage est égal des deux côtés, c'est la ténacité qui décide du sort du combat." (Lord Palmerston to Count Persigny in 1860. "Life," by the Hon. E. Ashley, vol. ii. p. 194.) This is one instance, amongst many, of the boldness and clearness of view which form the distinctive merit

of Lord Palmerston's letters; and Mr. Ashley has acted most judiciously in allowing them to speak for themselves.

Now it is incidentally shown in this publication that, during the whole of the campaign of 1815, including the march to Paris, the duke either neglected his own maxim or was very badly served by his commissariat; for the British army was neither fed well nor housed well. Indeed, during the twenty-four hours preceding the decisive battle many of his troops were neither fed nor housed at all.

of the 17th, the regiment filed past a large Prior to taking up our position for the night tubful of gin. Every officer and man was, in turn, presented with a little tin pot full. No fermented liquor that has since passed my lips could vie with that delicious schnapps. As soon as each man was served, the precious contents that remained in the tub were tilted over on to the ground.

We soon after halted and piled arms on the brow of a hill.

...

that had so persecuted us on our march re-
For about an hour before sunset, the rain
lieved us for a time from its unwelcome pres-
ence, but as night closed in, it came down
again with increased violence, and accompanied
by thunder and lightning. For a time I abode,
as I best could, the pitiless pelting of the
storm; at last my exhausted frame disabled
Wearied
me to bid defiance to the elements.
with two days of incessant marching, I threw
myself on the slope of the hill on which I had
been standing. It was like lying in a mount-
two in the morning, when I was awoke by my
ain torrent; I nevertheless slept soundly till
soldier-servant, Bill Moles.

In a neighbouring cottage, to which he repaired to warm himself, he found three officers drying their clothes by a fire of

broken chairs and tables. One of them was Sir John Colborne, afterwards Lord Seaton.

He had known my brother, Bury, in the Peninsula. Towards morning his servant brought him his breakfast, of which he asked me to partake, but the portion was so infinitesimally small that, hungry as I was, I could not bring myself to take advantage of an offer that could only have been made in courtesy.

A singularly apposite anecdote expresses what must be the feelings of the bravest on the eve of a battle.

If I were asked what were my sensations in the dreary interval between daylight and the firing of the first cannon-shot, on this event

Social Gleanings. By Mark Boyd. London, 1875.

66

ful morning, I should say that all I can now remember on the subject is, that my mind was constantly recurring to the account my father had given me of his interview with Henry Pearce, otherwise the Game Chicken, just before his great battle with Mendoza for the championship of England. Well, Pearce," asked my father, "how do you feel?" Why, my lord," was the answer, "I wish it was fit (fought)." Without presuming to imply any resemblance to the Game Chicken, I had thus much in common with that great man-I wished the fight was fit.

66

"Depend upon it," says General Mercer, "he who pretends to give a general account of a great battle from his own observation deceives you; believe him not. He can see no further (that is, if he was personally engaged in it) than the length of his nose." In what he says of the battle, Lord Albemarle strictly confines himself to what he individually felt and saw. After remaining some hours in a ravine, his regiment was brought forward to assist in filling up a gap in the line.

We halted and formed square in the middle of the plain. As we were performing this movement, a bugler of the 51st, who had been out with skirmishers, and had mistaken our square for his own, exclaimed, "Here I am again, safe enough." The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when a round shot took off his head and spattered the whole battalion with his brains, the colours and the ensigns in charge of them coming in for an extra share. One of them, Charles Fraser, a fine gentleman in speech and manner, raised a laugh by drawling out, "How extremely disgusting!" second shot carried off six of the men's bayonets, a third broke the breast-bone of a lance sergeant (Robinson), whose piteous cries were anything but encouraging to his youthful comrades. The soldier's belief that "every bullet has its billet," was strengthened by another shot striking Ensign Cooper, the shortest man in the regiment, and in the very centre of the

square.

A

They were moved forward to a position where a partial protection was afforded by the nature of the ground. As he was rising, a bullet struck a man immediately in front, who, falling backwards, knocked him down again. With some difficulty I crawled from under him. The man appeared to have died without a struggle. In my effort to rejoin my regiment I trod upon his body. The act, although invol untary, causeď me a disagreeable sensation whenever it recurred to my mind.”

If we are to believe M. Thiers, there was hardly a battalion of the British army that was not culbuté (his pet word) three or four times; and the wonder is how enough of them were left upon their legs to make the final advance when the Prussians came up.*

Lord Albemarle con

firms what has long since been a recog

nized fact out of France - that not a sin

gle square was broken; and that the cuirassiers (Napoleon said at St. Helena, for want of a leader like Murat) could never be brought to charge home. Lord Albemarle describes them as passing and repassing between his square and the next, which they had made a show of assailing.

As soon as they were clear of our battalion, two faces of the attacked square opened fire. At the same instant the British gunners on our right, who, at the approach of the cuirassiers had thrown themselves at the feet of our frontrank men, returned to their guns and poured in a murderous fire of grape into the flying enemy. For some seconds the smoke of the cross-fire was so dense that not a single object in front of us was discernible. When it cleared away, the Imperial horsemen were seen flying in disorder. The matted hill was strewn with dead and dying, horses galloping away without riders, and dismounted cuirassiers running out of the fire as fast as their heavy armour would allow them.†

This is the last incident that I remember of that eventful Sunday.

These casualties were the affair of a second. We were now ordered to lie down. Our square, hardly large enough to hold us when standing upright, was too small for us in a recumbent position. Our men lay packed together like herrings in a barrel. Not finding a vacant spot, I seated myself on a drum. Behind me was the colonel's charger, which, with his head pressed against mine, was mumbling my epaulette, while I patted his cheek. Suddenly my drum capsized and I was thrown prostrate, with the feeling of a blow on the right cheek. I put my hand to my head, think-squares were broken at Quatre Bras. ing half my face was shot away, but the skin was not even abraded. A piece of shell had struck the horse on the nose exactly between my hand and my head, and killed him instantly, The blow I received was from the embossed crown on the horse's bit.

"Ces braves cavaliers (the cuirassiers), malgré la grêle de balles qui pleuvaient sur eux, tombèrent à bride abattue sur les carrés de la division Alten, et en renverserent plusieurs qu'ils se mirent à sabrer avec fureur." (Thiers, vol. xxii. p. 223.) “L'infortunée division Alten, déjà si maltraitée, est culbutée cette fois, et le 69e anglais est haché en entier. . . Plusieurs carrés sont rompus," p. 227. "Elle (la brigade Kellermann) ouvre de nouvelles brèches dans la seconde ligne de l'infanterie britannique, renverse plusieurs He had already stated that three carrés," etc., p. 229.

† General Mercer, whose troop of horse artillery was

posted close to Lord Albemarle's regiment, says that the French cavalry were decimated and in confusion from the effects of grape and case shot before they reached the squares in his immediate vicinity; one of which (Brunswickers) he thinks would not have resisted a decided charge. (Journal of the Waterloo Campaign," vol. i. p. 314.)