Harold Begbie - The Story of Baden Powell
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Harold Begbie >> The Story of Baden Powell
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9 THE STORY
OF
BADEN-POWELL
'The Wolf that never Sleeps'
BY
HAROLD BEGBIE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_
LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS
1900
"... A name and an example, which are at this hour
inspiring hundreds of the youth of England...."
Southey's _Life of Nelson_.
_First printed May 1900. Reprinted May 1900_
To SMITH MAJOR
HONOURED SIR,
If amid the storm and stress of your academic career you find an
hour's relaxation in perusing the pages of this book, all the travail
that I have suffered in the making of it will be repaid a
thousandfold. Throughout the quiet hours of many nights, when Morpheus
has mercifully muzzled my youngest (a fine child, sir, but a female),
I have bent over my littered desk driving a jibbing pen, comforted and
encouraged simply and solely by the vision of my labour's object and
attainment. I have seen at such moments the brink of a river, warm
with the sun's rays, though sheltered in part by the rustling leaves
of an alder, and thereon, sprawling at great ease, chin in the cups of
the hand, stomach to earth, and toes tapping the sweet-smelling sod,
your illustrious self--deep engrossed in my book. For this alone I
have written. If, then, it was the prospect of thus pleasing you that
sustained me in my task, to whom else can I more fittingly inscribe
the fruits of my labour? Accept then, honoured sir, this work of your
devoted servant, assured that, if the book wins your affection and
leaves an ideal or two in the mind when you come regretfully upon
"Finis," I shall smoke my pipe o' nights with greater pleasure and
contentment than ever I have done since I ventured the task of
sketching my gallant hero's adventurous career.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your most humble and obedient servant,
THE AUTHOR.
WEYBRIDGE, _April 1900._
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
AN INTRODUCTORY FRAGMENT 1
CHAPTER II
THE FAMILY 6
CHAPTER III
HOME LIFE AND HOLIDAYS 16
CHAPTER IV
CARTHUSIAN 37
CHAPTER V
THE DASHING HUSSAR 55
CHAPTER VI
HUNTER 73
CHAPTER VII
SCOUT 90
CHAPTER VIII
THE FLANNEL-SHIRT LIFE 103
CHAPTER IX
ROAD-MAKER AND BUILDER 119
CHAPTER X
PUTTING OUT FIRE 135
CHAPTER XI
IN RAGS AND TATTERS 158
CHAPTER XII
THE REGIMENTAL OFFICER 172
CHAPTER XIII
GOAL-KEEPER 192
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Major-General R.S.S. Baden-Powell _Frontispiece_
Professor Baden Powell 7
Mrs. Baden-Powell 11
B.-P. reflecting on the After-deck of the _Pearl_ 21
Rev. William Haig-Brown, LL.D. 41
The Dashing Hussar (B.-P. at 21) 61
"Beetle" 79
The Family on Board the _Pearl_ 107
"_Viret in AEternum_" 179
Goal-Keeper 201
CHAPTER I
AN INTRODUCTORY FRAGMENT ON NO ACCOUNT TO BE SKIPPED
You will be the first to grant me, honoured sir, that after
earnestness of purpose, that is to say "keenness," there is no quality
of the mind so essential to the even-balance as humour. The
schoolmaster without this humanising virtue never yet won your love
and admiration, and to miss your affection and loyalty is to lose one
of life's chiefest delights. You are as quick to detect the humbug who
hides his mediocrity behind an affectation of dignity as was dear old
Yorick, of whom you will read when you have got to know the sweetness
of Catullus. This Yorick it was who declared that the Frenchman's
epigram describing gravity as "a mysterious carriage of the body to
cover the defects of the mind," deserved "to be wrote in letters of
gold"; and I make no doubt that had there been a greater recognition
of the extreme value and importance of humour in the early ages of the
world, our history books would record fewer blunders on the part of
kings, counsellors, and princes, and the great churches would not have
alienated the sympathy of so many goodly people at the most important
moment in their existence--the beginning of their proselytism.
This erudite reflection is to prepare you for the introduction of my
hero, Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell. I introduce him to you as
a hero--and as a humourist. To me he appears the ideal English
schoolboy, and the ideal British officer; but if I had blurted this
out at the beginning of my story you might perhaps have flung the book
into an ink-stained corner, thinking you were in for a dull lecture.
It is the misfortune of goodness to be generally treated with
superstitious awe, as though it were a visitant from heaven, instead
of being part and parcel of our own composition. So I begin by
assuring you that if ever there was a light-hearted, jovial creature
it is my hero, and by promising you that he shall not bore you with
moral disquisitions, nor shock your natural and untainted mind with
impossible precepts.
He is a hero in the best sense of the word, living cleanly, despising
viciousness equally with effeminacy, and striving after the
development of his talents, just as a wise painter labours at the
perfecting of his picture. Permit me here to quote the words of a
sagacious Florentine gentleman named Guicciardini: "Men," says he,
"are all by nature more inclined to do good than ill; nor is there
anybody who, where he is not by some strong consideration pulled the
other way, would not more willingly do good than ill."
Goodness, then, is a part of our being; therefore when you are
behaving yourself like a true man, do not flatter yourself that you
are doing any superhuman feat. And do not, as some do, have a sort of
stupid contempt for people who respect truth, honesty, and purity,
people who work hard at school, never insult their masters, and try to
get on in the world without soiling their fingers and draggling their
skirts in the mire. But see you cultivate humour as you go along.
Without that there is danger in the other.
It is useful to reflect that no man without the moral idea ever
wrought our country lasting service or won himself a place in the
hearts of mankind. On the other hand, most of the men whose names are
associated in your mind with courage and heroism are those who keenly
appreciated the value of Conduct, and strove valiantly to keep
themselves above the demoralising and vulgarising influences of the
world.
Baden-Powell, then, is a hero, but no prodigy. He is a hero, and
human. A ripple of laughter runs through his life, the fresh wind
blows about him as he comes smiling before our eyes; and if he be too
full of fun and good spirits to play the part of King Arthur in your
imagination, be sure that no knight of old was ever more chivalrous
towards women, more tender to children, and more resolved upon walking
cleanly through our difficult world.
Ask those who know him best what manner of man he is, and the
immediate answer, made with merry eyes and a deep chuckle, is this:
"He's the funniest beggar on earth." And then when you have listened
to many stories of B.-P.'s pranks, your informant will grow suddenly
serious and tell you what a "straight" fellow he is, what a loyal
friend, what an enthusiastic soldier. But it is ever his fun first.
One word more. Against such a work as this it is sometimes urged that
there is a certain indelicacy in revealing the virtues of a living man
to whomsoever has a shilling in his pocket to purchase a book. My
answer to such a charge may be given in a few lines. In writing about
Baden-Powell your humble servant has hardly considered the feelings of
Baden-Powell at all. B.-P. has outlived a goodly number of absurd
newspaper biographies, and he will survive this. Of you, and you
alone, most honoured sir, has the present historian thought, and so
long as you are pleased, it matters little to him if the
hypersensitive lift up lean hands, turn pale eyes to Heaven, and
squeak "Indecent!" till they are hoarse. And now, with as little
moralising as possible, and no more cautions, let us get along with
our story.
CHAPTER II
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.
CHAPTER III
HOME LIFE AND HOLIDAYS
Baden-Powell is now called either "B.-P." or "Bathing Towel." To his
family he has always been Ste. This name, a contraction of Stephenson,
was found for him by his big brothers in the days when home-made
soldiers and birds'-nesting were life's main business.
Ste, who we must record was born at 6 Stanhope Street, London, on the
22nd February 1857, and had the engineer Robert Stephenson for one of
his godfathers, was educated at home until he was eleven years of age.
His parents had a great dread of overtaxing young brains, and lessons
were never made irksome to any of their children. Ste learned to
straddle a pony very soon after he had mastered the difficult business
of walking, and with long hours spent in the open in the lively
companionship of his brothers he grew up in vigorous and healthy
boyhood. He had an enquiring mind, and never seemed to look upon
lessons as a "fag." He was always "wanting to know," and there was
almost as much eagerness on the little chap's part to be able to
decline _mensa_ and conjugate _amo_ as he evinced in competing with
his brothers in their sports and games. Such was his gentle, placid
nature that the tutor who looked after his work loved to talk with
people about his charge, never tiring in reciting little instances of
the boy's delicacy of feeling and his intense eagerness to learn. Mark
well, Smith minor, that this is no little Paul Dombey of whom you are
reading. B.-P., so far as I can discover, never heard in the tumbling
of foam-crested waves on the level sands of the sea-shore any
mysterious message to his individual soul from the spirit world. He
was full of fun, full of the joy of life, and as "keen as mustard" on
adventures of any kind. His fun, however, was of the innocent order.
He was not like Cruel Frederick in _Struwwelpeter_, who (the little
beast!) delighted in tearing the wings from flies and hurling
brickbats at starving cats. Baden-Powell would have kicked Master
Frederick rather severely if he had caught him at any such mean
business. No, his fun took quite another form. He was fond of what you
call "playing the fool," singing comic songs, learning to play tunes
on every odd musical instrument he could find, and delighting his
brothers by "taking off" people of their acquaintance. B.-P., you must
know, is a first-rate actor, and in his boyhood it was one of his
chief delights to write plays for himself and his brothers to act.
Some of these plays were moderately clever, but all of them contained
a screamingly funny part for the low comedian of the company--our
friend Ste himself.
Another of his amusements at this time was sketching. He got into the
habit of holding his pencil or paint-brush in the left hand, and his
watchful mother was troubled in her mind as to the wisdom of allowing
a possible Botticelli to play pranks with his art. One day Ruskin
called when this doubt was in her mind, and to him the question was
propounded. Without a moment's reflection he counselled the mother to
let the boy draw in whatsoever manner he listed, and together they
went to find the young artist at his work. In the play-room they
discovered one brother reading hard at astronomy, and Ste with a
penny box of water-colours painting for dear life--with his left hand.
"Now I'll show you how to paint a picture," said Ruskin, and with a
piece of paper on the top of his hat and B.-P.'s penny box of paints
at his side he set to work, taking a little china vase for a model.
Both the vase and the picture are now in the drawing-room of Mrs.
Baden-Powell's London house. The result of Ruskin's advice was that
B.-P. continued to draw with his left hand, and now in making sketches
he finds no difficulty in drawing with his left hand and shading in at
the same time with his right.
There is an incident of his childhood which I must not forget to
record. At a dinner-party at the Baden-Powells', when Ste was not yet
three years old, the guests being all learned and distinguished men,
such as Buckle and Whewell, Thackeray was handing Mrs. Baden-Powell
into dinner when he noticed that one of the little children was
following behind. This was the future scout of the British Army, and
the young gentleman, according to his wont, was just scrambling into a
chair when Thackeray, fumbling in his pocket, produced a new
shilling, and said in his caressing voice, "There, little one, you
shall have this shilling if you are good and run away." Ste quietly
looked up at his mother, and not until she told him that he might go
up to the nursery did he shift his ground. But he carried that
shilling with him, and now it is one of his most treasured
possessions.
While he was doing lessons at home Baden-Powell gave evidence of his
bent. He was fond of geography, and few things pleased him more than
the order to draw a map. His maps, by the way, were always drawn with
his left hand, and were astonishingly neat and accurate. Then in his
spare hours, with scissors and paper, he would cut out striking
resemblances of the most noted animals in the Zoo, and
these--elephants and tigers, monkeys and bears--were "hung" by his
admiring brothers with due honour on a large looking-glass in the
schoolroom, there to amuse the juvenile friends of the family. He had
the knack, too, of closely imitating the various sounds made by
animals and birds, and one of his infant jokes was to steal behind a
person's chair and suddenly break forth "with conspuent doodle-doo."
And, again, when he was a little older, living at Rosenheim, I.W.,
there was surely the future defender of Mafeking in the little chap in
brown Holland on the sands of Bonchurch digging scientific trenches
with wooden spade, and demonstrating to his governess the
impregnability of his sand fortress. With his sister and brother,
little Ste was once out with this governess on a country ramble near
Tunbridge Wells, when the governess discovered that she had walked
farther than she intended and was in strange country. Ste was elated.
But enquiry elicited the information that the party was not lost, and
that they could return home by a shorter route; then was Baden-Powell
miserable and cast down. He protested that he wanted the party to get
lost so that he could find the way home for them.
[Illustration: B.-P. reflecting on the After-deck of the _Pearl_]
A favourite holiday haunt was Tunbridge Wells, where Ste's grandfather
owned a spacious and a fair demesne. Here, with miles of wood for
exploration, brothers and sister were in their element. They would
climb into the highest chestnut trees in the woods, taking up hampers
and hay for the construction of nests, and at that exalted altitude
play all manner of wild and romantic games. And yet they would also
take up books into those cool branches and do lessons! Of Ste at this
period his governess remarks, "It gave him great pleasure to enter a
new rule in arithmetic"--an illuminative sentence, in which one sees
the governess as well as the child.
It was here in Tunbridge Wells that Ste, with little Baden, now
Guardsman and inventor of war-kites, spent laborious days in
constructing a really serviceable dam in the river, digging there a
deep hole in order to make themselves a luxurious bathing-place. From
early infancy they had been taught to do for themselves. Master B.-P.
could dress and undress himself before he was three years old, and at
three he could speak tolerably well in German as well as English. The
children were encouraged to get knowledge as some other children are
encouraged to get bumptiousness; their parents delighted, and showed
the children their delight, whenever a child did something sensible
and clever; there was no unintelligent admiration of precocity.
The boys dug their own gardens, and from five years of age each child
kept a most careful book of his expenditure by double entry. Their
pennies went chiefly in books and presents, and omnibuses for long
excursions out of London. There was no prohibition as to sweets, but
never a penny of these earnest young double-entry bookkeepers found
its way to the tuck-shop. However, a joke among the brothers was the
following constant entry in the book of one of them: "Orange, L0:0:1."
But no chaff was strong enough to correct that healthy appetite, and
"Orange, L0:0:1" went on through the happy years.
At eleven years of age, Ste was packed off to a small private school,
and here he distinguished himself in the same manner, though of course
on a smaller scale, as Mr. Gladstone did at Eton. His moral courage,
coupled with his athletic prowess, made him the darling of the little
school, and the headmaster sorrowfully told his mother when the boy's
two years' schooling were over that he would thankfully keep him there
without fee of any kind, because by force of character the plucky
little fellow had raised the entire moral tone of the school.
And now we come to what I regard as the most important part of our
hero's life. In the last chapter I said we should have to say
something about B.-P.'s big brother, the sailor, Warington, named
after his grandmother, who was a Warington of Waddon Park. The very
name Warington, even though it be spelled with a single 'r,' has an
inspiring sound, and while Thackeray lives will ever be linked with
all that is true and straightforward in the human heart. Imagine the
reverence felt for Warington by the young brothers when he came home
from a sea voyage! Not only were there the broad square shoulders, the
deep chest, and the bronzed face to compel admiration; but a masterful
and commanding manner withal, a stern eye and a rousing voice--and the
overwhelming and crushing fact that he was a British Naval officer!
Warington had been born ten years before Ste, and it is a mighty good
thing for B.-P. (and he would be the first to admit it) that this was
the case. For I believe that the resourcefulness of Baden-Powell is
the result of the early training which he received at the hands of
Warington; without that training he would have grown up a delightful
and an amusing fellow, but, I suspect, as so many delightful and
amusing people are, ineffective. And that is just what B.-P. is not.
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