On one of my numerous visits to Paris a notorious poisoner—Le-Pommerais—was awaiting execution by the guillotine.

I am not of a cruel disposition, but I confess that certain sights afford me a morbid gratification, the more so as I know that one witness more or less can in no way affect the victim, who, in nine cases out of ten, is dazed, despite the bravado that is sometimes assumed.

I had seen Müller and the pirates hanged in London, and a man “garrotted” at Barcelona; I had seen two soldiers shot at Bregenz on the Lake Constance, and now for the first time in my life I was within measurable distance of the Place de la Grève, where the most hideous drama, accompanied by all the pomp that a dramatic nation can introduce, was to be enacted one morning.  But what morning?  There was the rub, for the French are nothing if not original, and whilst permitting the unhappy victim to drink and smoke and play cards till 2 a.m. ruthlessly rouse him a couple of hours later, and roughly proceed to prepare his toilette.

Terrible as all this sounds, is it not less terrible than the secret executions indulged in by our own merciful laws?  There at least excitement must for the time hold the victim till the supreme moment arrives, whilst here the granite walls, the grim officials, the parson mumbling prayers, divest the function of everything but strict officialism, which to the culprit must indeed be the very bitterness of death.

When the name of Count La Grange was more familiar to English ears than it is in these forty years later days, it was my delightful privilege to know—if not the redoubtable Count himself—a fair and important member of the distinguished sportsman’s family circle.  I had, indeed, seen “Waterloo avenged” at Epsom in the June of 1864, when Gladiateur left the field miles behind; but it was only in the following autumn that I made the personal acquaintance of the goddess who professed a kind of allegiance to the sporting Frenchman, and re-avenged, as it were, the vengeance that had been meted out to my country the previous summer.

An obliging maître d’hôtel had informed me who the lady was, and possessing a reserve of assurance, since happily simmered down into a reserved and retiring disposition, I sent up my name without further ado and craved permission to pay my homage.  It would be absurd and nauseous to repeat the beautiful phrases one poured into the ear of a being who, if alive now—which is doubtful—has probably not a tooth in her head; suffice to say she was a superb écarté player, and initiated me into the rudiments of the game.  It seemed marvellous to me that such a goddess should strive so laboriously to overcome in me the violation of every canon of the game, but in those long-ago days I was fair of hair and of a ruddy countenance, and the coincidence may not have been so extraordinary after all.  Often of an afternoon I visited her hotel in the Bois de Boulogne, and it was only when La Grange was known to be in Paris that my going in and coming out was in the least circumscribed.

As the police have lately been somewhat in evidence over the commission as to whether they are as corrupt as some people consider them, an instance of over-zeal that occurred long ago will, I trust, be laid to heart in future criticisms.

Lord Chief Justice Cockburn and his boon companion, Serjeant Ballantine, once witnessed an act of unnecessary brutality towards a female in the Haymarket.

“Why this unnecessary violence, my man?” inquired the amiable Sir Alexander.

“Mind your own business, or I’ll show you,” was the reply of the zealous constable, and within a trice the female was forgotten and her two champions found themselves in Vine Street.

“Name,” inquired a priggish inspector of the Lord Chief Justice, and on being informed, he added: “No doubt—we’ve heard this kind of thing before.”

“Yours,” he continued, addressing the great serjeant.  “Quite so,” he added, on being told, and nothing but the entry of an official who recognised them prevented the two great legal luminaries from spending a night in the cells.

As every one is aware, neither of these distinguished men were saints, but they respected the ordinary laws of humanity, and did not admit that every poor wretch who had stooped to folly was the legitimate target for kicks and cuffs and lying testimony.

A house in Northumberland Street, since pulled down, was where these worthies matured their plans, and by the irony of fate, in the very next house lived Superintendent Thompson, of Bow Street, who, astute as he was reputed to be, was oblivious of the cauldron that was simmering for months under his very nose.

It was in the suitable month of April—possibly the first—that the old lady (Madame Goncourt) opened the ball by paying out in driblets £13,000.  When the sum rose to £40,000 she became sceptical, and took her first sensible step and consulted a lawyer.

At this point the police came on the scene, and again the genius of Benson appears, for he, grasping the situation, bought up certain Scotland Yard inspectors who, for a consideration—and a large one—undertook to warn the chief culprits how and when danger was to be avoided.

Consultations in Northumberland Street were now deemed risky, so the venue was changed to the “Rainbow Tavern” (now known as the “Argyll”), a pot-house abutting on Oxford Street, and there the original conspirators and their solicitor, augmented by Inspectors Druscovitch, Meiklejohn, and Palmer, arranged for telegrams and other details to defeat the ends of justice.

The commonplace sequel will suggest itself to most people.  Benson, the two Carrs, Bates, and Froggatt were sent to penal servitude for fifteen and ten years respectively.  Later on Benson “peached” on his police allies, who in November were tried, Druscovitch and Meiklejohn receiving two years each, and Palmer being acquitted.

After his fifteen years, Benson was currently supposed to have burst out as the director of numerous shops in the metropolis, where electric appliances for the instant cure of gout and inhalers warranted to contain “compressed Italian air” and to make everybody a Patti or a Mario were to be had for a guinea; whilst a further guinea entitled the purchaser to a consultation with the specialist.

This, however, did not last long, and Benson ended his career shortly after by throwing himself over the balustrade of an American gaol.

Surely never was a commonplace affair dignified with such a high-sounding title!  ’Twas the novelty that did it.

Where one voracious old woman existed in the seventies, the twentieth century could produce a dozen, and where two policemen were caught accepting blackmail, a battalion exists to-day, only their tactics have marched with the times, and instead of receiving their levies in pot-houses, they secrete themselves in cupboards and receive “hush money” from alien brothel-keepers.  At the same time, they affect the sorry appearance associated with badly cut frock-coats and brimless tall hats.  The boots, however, beat them.

Very few of the dramatis personæ appear to be left.

Druscovitch for some years was employed as a Strand hotel detective.  Meiklejohn may occasionally be seen, unkempt and down-at-heel, in the vicinity of mediocre saloon bars (glasses only), and Madame Goncourt has long since explained to the Recording Angel that though she was the first, she certainly won’t be the last, who has missed the certainties that go begging on the Turf.

It was in 1868 that London heard that a divine being was amongst them, coming no one knew whence, and whose age no one could guess, gifted with the power of arresting Time, restoring youth and beauty, and ready—for a consideration—to impart these blessings to all who sought her aid.

It was in the narrowest part of Bond Street that the goddess pitched her tent, and to say that the traffic was impeded would convey but a poor idea of the congestion that retarded locomotion in that worst-built of thoroughfares.  Old men desirous of enamelling their bald old pates, ponderous females with scratch wigs and asthma, and girls, pretty and ugly, with defects capable of improvement, hustled and tussled to pay the fee of the wonderful enchantress who guaranteed to restore youth to old age and make one and all “beautiful for ever.”

Madame Rachel was a bony and forbidding looking female, with the voice of a Deal boatman and the physique of a grenadier.  The robes she affected when receiving her clients, and the crystals and gimcracks that clattered at her girdle, might well inspire awe, as, emerging from behind massive curtains, she approached her victim with some phrase suggestive of “knowing all about it,” which, indeed, was part of the system when time and opportunity permitted, or the status of the client justified it.

Rachel rarely smiled; when she laughed—which was rarer still—it was the laugh of a rhinoceros.  Assisting her was a beautiful girl, of the beauté du diable type, with the suspicion of a cast in one of her heavy-lashed eyes, which made her more bewitching than ever.

And then “Alma,” coached to perfection, turned her bewitching eyes as if peering into eternity, and began a string of twaddle that ought not to have deceived a Bluecoat boy.

Everybody consulted Madame Rachel.  If a youth got a black eye at young Reed’s sparring rooms (at the “Rising Sun” in Whitehall) it was in Bond Street he was made presentable for any fashionable function in the evening, and in every conceivable walk of life one met evidence of the universal sway of enamel; whilst nightly at the Opera, Rachel and her daughter occupied a box on the grand tier and surveyed the battalions of old men and old women, youths and maidens, who had passed through their hands.

But despite Alma’s charms, she had a narrow squeak of being implicated with her mother in the prosecution that followed later on—instead, however, she was taken in hand by Lady Cardigan, and made a success in Grand Opera.  But her troubles were not yet over, and aspirants to her heart and hand (enamelled and otherwise) were in considerable evidence nightly at the Opera house in Paris.

It was at the hands of one of these she met her fate.  Carried away by jealousy or scorn, he shot her from the stalls, though, happily, not fatally.  After this she disappeared, but not before displaying a magnanimity that was refreshing in the reputed daughter of the flint-hearted Rachel, for she refused to prosecute her assailant, who escaped with a nominal imprisonment.

Alma in all her glory had her own ideas, and appeared invariably and literally in “semi-nude.”

Years after she was recognised by a former adorer at the Concordia Music Hall in Constantinople, but all the beauté du diable had vanished; the cast still remained, but failed to ravish—Nature had worked through the enamel with which her skin had been saturated, and Alma pure and simple remained—a living example of how “Time turns the old days to derision.”

Madame Rachel’s experiences were of a more prosy description, and, prosecuted a few years later by a Mrs. Pearce—said to have been a daughter of Mario’s—whose jewels she had annexed in addition to a considerable sum, she was relegated to five years’ penal servitude.

But the most amusing incident has yet to be told, although it seems incredible that even so foolish a woman should court publicity by joining in the prosecution.  The report of the trial in any old paper of the period will convince the most sceptical of the absence of exaggeration in this ungarnished recital.

Mrs. Borrodale was a frivolous old lady of some forty years, whose wealth, vanity, and frequent visits to Bond Street marked her out as a desirable client to the astute Rachel.

“You’ve won the heart of a great lord,” was her greeting one day, “who desires to see you in your natural beauty.”

His lordship, it may be added, eventually died a bachelor.  The very title is extinct, and the enamelled old Venus never assumed a coronet.  After this, the old sinner was known as “Peeping Tom,” and the foal by a thoroughbred stallion of repute, Peeping Tom (which, however, never attained any position on the Turf), was christened Ranelagh.

Incredible as it may appear, this silly old woman capped her indiscretion by joining in the prosecution instituted by the stockbroker’s wife, and so published to a gaping world what might have better been left to the imagination.

Rachel has, it is currently reported, two sons at the present moment practising as solicitors under high-sounding names, who not long ago wriggled out of a nasty case by the skin of their teeth, whilst their less acute Christian colleagues suffered the penalty attendant on blackmailing.

The death of the Duke of Cambridge recalled many instances of the kindly nature of the old warrior.  Abused and ridiculed by the ignorant and unwashed for actions—more or less imaginary—that he was supposed to have been guilty of in the Crimea, it is established on the testimony of eye-witnesses that no man showed more personal bravery at Inkerman than the late illustrious Duke.  Oblivious to danger, and literally wandering in and out amongst the dense masses of Russians, he seemed to bear a charmed life, and if on any occasion he selected an umbrella—which is by no means admitted—what greater proof of absolute indifference to danger?  As well might one accuse Fred Burnaby of cowardice for confronting the Dervishes in the Soudan with a simple blackthorn.  But royalty has its penalties as well as its advantages, and if the grandson of George III. was subject to intense excitement verging on delirium under exceptionally trying circumstances, let us be fair, gentlemen, and give the bluff old warrior his dues.

In the zenith of his career, so unable was his Highness to refuse almost any personal request, that it was found necessary to chain a bulldog of the most pronounced Peninsular type on the very threshold of the Commander-in-Chief’s office.

These functions were divested of all formality; an extension of leave, a request to go to the depôt, an application to join the service companies, was invariably more successful if preferred personally, and “Well, sir, what is it?” with a kindly shake of the hand saved many a heart-burning and protracted filtration through a dozen departments, usually ending in a snub.

Seated in the room was his aide-de-camp—the solitary specimen in uniform.  Colonel Fraser, V.C., had commanded for years the celebrated “Cherry-bobs” (11th Hussars), and if a little unsociable whilst in actual command, the mannerism had entirely disappeared in the courteous mouthpiece of the Duke.

Gazing one afternoon on the placid features of the “Royal George” before the new War Office, the occasion on which he once visited a station not 100 miles from London and told the colonel and officers generally that he didn’t believe a word they said, and stamped and fumed and swore and threatened, came vividly to my mind.  There had been a fracas in the canteen during the officers’ mess hour, which eventually developed into a riot, and then was quelled.  No one in the mess-house appears to have heard it, and it was only next morning that the matter, after investigation, was reported to the Horse Guards.  The “Royal George,” who was distinctly apoplectic, ran many such chances of combustion in his younger days, for the old warrior was by no means mealy-mouthed and was not above playing to the gallery, as represented by the Press, and although he could never aspire to rank with General Pennefather, he could, when circumstances demanded, swear like any trooper.

What a beautiful regiment it was in the old sixties.  And one felt it was a national crime to send such troops to India.  But all that, alas! is long since changed; the Pimlico Clothing Works, economy, and paternal letters to The Times have done the rest; and the abolition of purchase, the breech-loader, and the new type of British officer have completed the inauguration of the “slops” period, and abolished once and for ever well-dressed regiments and esprit de corps.

Whilst on this delicate subject memory suggests many presumptuous reminiscences.

When Prince Alfred was a supernumerary Lieutenant of the Racoon, what an ideal brick he was!  Scraping on a fiddle, myself at the piano, and Arthur Hood (lately become Viscount Bridport) with a brass instrument of deafening intensity, what harmonious discord has not shaken the rafters of the old Casemates at Gibraltar; and when the Prince seated himself at the piano and sang “In ancient days there lived a squire,” one forgets the retiring potentate that eventually ruled over Gotha.

It was on one of these occasions that during a lull in the festivities a steady tramp outside was wafted to our musical ears, and going out to discover the cause, I was horrified to see an elderly gentleman, ablaze with decorations, in evening attire, who, with numerous apologies, was conducted into the room.

In those days life on a P. and O. was a mass of enjoyment: youngsters joining their regiments, old officers—naval and military—returning from leave, the ship’s officers, all joined nightly in harmless jokes, and as lights were put out and the steward’s room closed, each roysterer ascended to the upper deck and songs and what-not ensued.  No one entered into the revelry more than Count Gleichen, as, with a tumbler of contraband grog, he quaffed and laughed as only a British sailor can.

Years later, when the Duke of Edinburgh commanded the Galatea, he still remembered his musical colleague, and a pretty snake ring with a turquoise in the head that he presented to me was lost in an accident that nearly cost me my life.

Boating has never been my forte, and in endeavouring on one occasion to enter a boat, it drifted with the impact, and, with one leg on the jetty and another in the boat, I soused into six feet of the muddiest “old Mole” water.  Eventually I was hooked out, more “mud than alive,” but the ring was gone, and still reposes in the turgid waters of the Mediterranean.

Amongst the ship’s officers was Lord Charles Beresford, at the time the most inveterate Fourth Lieutenant of practical jokers.  After a function at which the Duke and the ship’s company were on one occasion present, the local Inspector-General of Police, who had deemed his presence necessary, was staggered next morning by shouts of laughter as he peacefully slumbered in his bungalow.

When the King was doing his goose-step at the Curragh, it was my high reflexed privilege to be doing mine in the next lines.

It was during this season that a march for the whole division was ordered to Maryborough, twenty-two miles distant.

The Prince, who was attached to the Grenadiers, accompanied us to and fro, and even after the fatiguing march might later on have been seen in the streets of Maryborough, accompanied by “his governor,” General Bruce, as if nothing unusual had occurred.  It was lamentable the effect it had on those splendid types of humanity, the 1st Grenadiers, and their superb “Queen’s Company,” every man six feet and upwards.  But the misfortune can hardly be laid to their charge; suddenly transferred from their sweet pastures in London, what wonder that the good things they had revelled in should seek an outlet on the dusty plains of Kildare!  And so it came to pass that every ditch contained a guardsman, and long before the twenty-two miles had been covered every ambulance in the division was filled by the warriors.

The Vansittart family in those long-ago days were represented by some interesting scions.

“The Croc,” in many ways perhaps the most unique, was a remnant of a past generation who adapted surroundings to modern requirements, and was the terror of gouty old members who dined before four when “table money” came into force, consumed a loaf in a sixpenny bowl of soup, and drank their beer for nothing.

No greater exhibition of nerve and seamanship can well be conceived; had the manoeuvre resulted in accident no explanation would have satisfied “my lords,” for a nasty sea was running and sea room was advisable, however commendable the motive.  It was an action worthy of association with Sir Harry Keppel sailing out of Portsmouth Harbour in sheer devilry with every stitch of canvas set, and showed Admiral Vansittart as in every way worthy of being bracketed with that grand old bluejacket of the past.

The man who commanded the Galatea and afterwards the Sultan, was a very different person to the lieutenant of the Racoon, and genial and adventurous as he once was, the captain soon developed into a morose and unpopular commander.

The Duke, it was said, was one of the best commanders of an ironclad; he had the technique at his fingers’ ends, and knew every bolt and screw from the keel to the upper deck; some toadies even asserted he was superior to Hornby or Vansittart, and was a typical British tar in the truest acceptation of the term.  His sympathies, as I have heard him assert, however, were German to the backbone, and his eyes would fill with tears when singing some guttural sonnet of the Vaterland.  His marriage brought things to a head, and the curtain was rung down on Lardy Wilson and all other workers of iniquity after the garden party at Clarence House in honour of his wedding.

His proficiency as a musician was another fable, and though he “graciously condescended” to be first violin at the Albert Hall Orchestral Society (founded by himself), uncharitable people are known to have asserted that the royal bow was soaped.  But a point on which no two opinions can exist was the questionable taste he displayed on one occasion when entering Simon’s Bay.  Every commander, as is well known, is bound to salute the commodore’s flag after taking up moorings; but the Prince had run up the Royal Standard—and so the commodore had to salute first.  Etiquette demanded that this should be done—after, and not before—and the “reports” that followed ended as might be expected, and the good old sailor was shelved, and a scandal hushed up that some attributed to von-Kümmel and others to less potent causes.

It was the most beautiful woman of the day in the long-ago fifties—the Empress of the French—that introduced the diabolical “appanage” known as the crinoline to conceal her “interesting condition,” and the peg-top heels that followed as a consequence, to give height to the unpleasant beam the crinoline involved on the wearer, were answerable for more accidents, faux pas, and unpleasantries than any combination of female adornments before or since.

On another occasion, returning from Cremorne at 2 a.m., when every cab had been taken, my attention was attracted by a handsome young cavalier tenderly supporting a fair sinner, who was leaning trustfully on his shoulder.  It appears he had found her motionless and in tears on an area grating, her heel through her hoop, and the heel itself wedged as in a vice.  Nothing but prompt action could save the situation, and the last I saw of the interesting couple was progressing by easy stages and heading towards Oakley Square.

The same young cavalier might have been recognised not long since as a grim old warrior, munching a sandwich in the vestibule of Stafford House after the levée in honour of the Mutiny heroes!

And the charming lad who was responsible for the introduction of the diabolical appendage.  We all remember the shock that literally smote every heart when the news of the Prince Imperial’s untimely death reached England.

A youth divested of every suspicion of affectation, possessing to an inordinate degree that fascination of manner rarely to be found except amongst the old nobility of France, discarding every comfort to fight in the ranks of an alien army, to be assegaied by a handful of Zulus!  Was ever such irony of fate for the great-nephew of Bonaparte, who, had he lived, would assuredly by his charm have eventually won back his throne.

One voice only struck a discordant note, the overrated Quaker Solon of Rochdale.  “Perish India,” he once said in his wisdom.  “He went out to kill the Zulus, and the Zulus killed him” was this time his funeral oration.

It was as the guest of this historical personage that I one day found myself at Chesham House, eating the most delightful lunch, drinking the rarest Crimean wines, and marvelling at the courteous, retiring-mannered man who plied me with the most delicate attentions.

His English, as may be supposed, was faultless, and so it was that my admiration was turned to astonishment when a personage to whom I assumed there could be nothing new under the sun asked me if I would do for him the great favour of piloting him amongst the sights of London.

The muster roll contained the Russian Ambassador, Count Adelberg, Count Beust, Count Mongela, Baron Spaum, Prince Hohenlohe, Colonel (Charlie) Norton, Sir Edward Cunynghame (Ned), the Duke of Hamilton, and my humble self.

The programme had been settled prior to all this with the assistance of an ex-detective, who made a princely addition to his slender pension by piloting exploration parties to latitudes where much depended on diplomacy.

Our first visit was to Turnham’s, a pot-house in Newman Street, where extensive arrangements had been made for some badger drawing under the personal auspices of Bill George.  In later years this canine authority developed into a trusted dog-provider to the nobility, and resided in the vicinity of Kensal Green; at the time of which I write his transactions in dog-flesh were of a more miscellaneous character, and, as he once told me with pride, a letter addressed “Bill George, Dog Stealer, London,” would reach him without delay.

Our next move was to Jimmy Shaw’s, but whether it was to Windmill Street or to a new house he took when his old place was demolished (next to the stage door of the Lyric Theatre) I cannot recollect.

Here rats in sackfuls were awaiting us, amongst others a rough-haired mongrel terrier, which not long previously had performed the astounding feat of killing 1,000 rats in an incredibly short space of time.

For, although not absolutely prohibited, the shadow of Exeter Hall was already spreading over the land, and the police—already tainted—were not to be trusted, even when a live ambassador was present.

Tom King—ex-champion—had also consented, for a consideration, to again put on the gloves, and brought with him a burly opponent; the slogging that ensued was really splendid, and Count Schouvaloff was literally in ecstasies.

Our next move was to Endell Street, and here greater precautions were necessary, for cock-fighting was the unpardonable sin, and the pains and penalties terrible.  So we split into twos and threes, and going by different ways eventually found ourselves in the cock-pit below ground.

Tom Faultless was the last of the old type of British bulldog sportsman.  Over seventy years old, he had in his youth assisted at bull-baiting, dog-fights, cock-fighting, and every sport that once gave unalloyed delight to high and low.

To his able hands the conduct of this particular department was entrusted; nor were we long in realising that the supply was more than enough to meet the most extravagant demands, as, banging the door to, we were assailed by the defiant crows of a dozen gladiators, and this not far from midnight, when the denizens of that virtuous quarter were courting gentle sleep, and sounds carried like steam whistles.

It was close upon 2 a.m. before we again resumed our pilgrimage, and with the aid of half a dozen four-wheelers wended our way towards the Mint.

Five o’clock was striking as we drove past Covent Garden, and having suggested that excellent eggs and bacon were to be obtained at Hart’s Coffee House, all alighted and all ate as only diplomatists and night birds can.

As we drove still further West the strings of market carts wafted the odours of country life and green things into our debauched nostrils, and we slunk away to our respective homes more or less delighted with our adventures.

Whilst on the subject of Russian diplomatists a deafening experience I had a few years later may not be without interest.

It was on the Grand Duke Alexis’s flagship that I had the honour of finding myself one of some sixty guests.  In addition to the Russian battleship there were men-of-war of England, France, and Sweden in the harbour, and the Grand Duke was presiding at the table.

Needless to describe the excellent cookery—for Russian cookery is very difficult to beat—nor the choice Crimean wines, many of which are unobtainable except at the Imperial table, but when the dinner was over the row literally began.

First the Grand Duke proposed the Czar’s health, smashing the glass so that no less worthy toast should again defile it, and 101 guns began a salute on the deck immediately over our heads.

And when the adjournment to the main deck for coffee and cigarettes took place, it is no exaggeration to assert that we waded ankle deep through broken glass.

The impetus given to that industry must have been enormous!

We must pass back to the fifties to introduce a personage who figures conspicuously in the sixties and seventies, both in comedy and tragedy, and then shuffled off this mortal coil and has long since been forgotten.

It was in ’56 when England had annexed Oude, that the ex-Queen and a considerable retinue arrived in London to “protest”—a process that must have enlightened, if it did not benefit, them in the ways of Imperial Policy.

Half-a-dozen houses in Marylebone Road were secured as a temporary palace, and it was thither, as a lad, that I accompanied my father, who had once held high office in the Punjaub.

The exact spot was where the Baker Street station now stands, and as one is nothing unless one is accurate, conceive entering the present dismal premises and finding in the “reception room” two or three beds, in one of which was the Queen; about the floor various courtiers were littered, whilst the atmosphere was so sour that one felt thankful the old woman’s reign had been cut short, and that henceforth sanitary arrangements, a tub, and other adjuncts of Christianity would prevail in Oude after the family had realised that “No mistakes were rectified after leaving the counter,” and that “Don’t you wish you may get it?” embodied our beneficent policy in the abstract.

Dhuleep Singh, another reputed Punjaubee, had also at this time been brought to England, and, although then pursuing the ordinary course of a schoolboy under General Oliphant, it was only later, as a Norfolk landlord, a masher, a burlesque conspirator, and the owner of the finest emeralds in the world, that he came into prominence.

It is in these latter roles that we purpose to interest our readers.

During the minority of this most fortunate Asiatic the savings out of his annuity of £40,000 a year had amounted to a colossal sum, and so Dhuleep Singh first comes into prominence, on attaining his majority, as a Norfolk squire and the owner of Elvedon Hall.

An excellent shot, it was some few years later that he made the sportsmanlike wager with Lord Sefton to slaughter a thousand head of game within a day.  Rabbits were included in the bet, and impossible as such a feat may appear, the tameness of the pheasants in the over-stocked home preserves made it quite feasible.  For some reason, however, it never came off.

At this period the Maharajah was in high favour at Court; his children, after his marriage with the unpretentious little lady he wooed and won at Singapore, were permitted to play with British Royal sprigs, and the Heir-apparent invariably had a week’s shooting with his dusky neighbour and a suitably selected party in the autumn.

The Maharajah’s behaviour meanwhile was all that was desirable.  At Court functions he was resplendent in emeralds and diamonds, and the slab, six inches by four, on his swordbelt was said to be the finest emerald in the world.

The jewellers to whom was deputed the task of cutting, setting, and otherwise improving the barbaric gems of the youthful prince are said to trace their present Bond Street position to this fortunate selection.

It was only when his Highness assumed evening dress that visions of Mooltan, Chilianwallah, and Goojerat faded from one’s brain, and a podgy little Hindoo seemed to stand before one, divested of that physique and martial bearing one associates with either warriors or Sikhs, and only requiring, as it were, a chutnee-pot peeping out of his pocket to complete the illusion.

During the sixties and seventies Dhuleep Singh was in evidence everywhere.  An excellent whist player amongst such admitted champions as Goldingham, Dupplin, “Cavendish” (on whist), and others, he was to be found every afternoon at the Marlborough, or East India, or Whist Club backing his opinion, and damning his partner if he ignored his “call for trumps;” whilst every evening found him at the Alhambra graciously accepting the homage of the houris in the green-room, and distributing 9-carat gimcracks with Oriental lavishness.

Often have I seen him of an evening pacing to and fro outside the “Shirt Shop” (as the Whist Club was affectionately called) maturing those foolish plans that deprived him of his income for a while and led him into straits that it is painful to realise.  Occasionally, indeed, he would rave at the injustice of the beggarly income the Government of India accorded him, and then it was he conceived the brilliant idea of coquetting with Russia for the simultaneous rising of the Punjaub and a Russian invasion of India.

Not that one Sikh would have stirred at his call, and his proclamation fizzed and went out like any squib at a Brock benefit.  Added to this, Russia rucked on him and his Highness fell into disgrace.

But still his vanity led him on, and he essayed to start for India, and shipped as Pat Casey, though why Pat, and what part of Ireland Casey hailed from will ever remain an unfathomable mystery.

The hero, however, never got beyond Aden, where he was politely invited to retrace his steps.  The “last phase” was as brief as it was lamentable.  Settling in Paris he again married.  Then poverty necessitated the sale of his jewels, sickness overtook him, and, broken in body and mind, he asked and received pardon for his many foolish acts.

What became of the second wife I never heard, what became of the Alhambra lass and the dusky tadpoles that drove about the King’s Road at Brighton history does not tell, for “Love is a queer thing, it comes and it goes,” and all that remains to the present generation is the nebulous tale of a misguided man who kicked down wealth, position, and a happy old age in the reckless pursuit of a silly ambition.

FIFTY YEARS AFTER.

I cannot permit this opportunity to pass without reminding every reader of the momentous issues that were for ever set at rest by the incredible heroism of our army during the Mutiny in September fifty years ago, and without encroaching on the beautiful story by W. H. Fitchett, within the reach of everybody for 4½d., one may legitimately ask why many incidents that then occurred have never been explained.

What is the true version of the “Stone Bridge” being left open at Lucknow?

Why is it invariably confused with the “Iron Bridge?”

What was the true reason of the Cawnpore reverse?

No history yet written has ever explained these points, which, however justifiable at the time, may surely, after fifty years, have light thrown upon them, and if Lord Roberts would give his version, many—including the old brigade—would have their curiosity set at rest.

Every patriot will forgive a digression on the day (December 6th) these lines are being written, for it is a landmark in the annals of the Army as recording the last occasion (fifty years ago) that British infantry advanced in line in old Peninsular formation—in slow time—halting periodically and dressing on their coverers as we see on a Hyde Park parade, under a terrific fire of shot and shrapnel, and then, breaking into the old-fashioned charge, the irresistible cheer, and cold steel as a climax.

For on that decisive day the Gwalior contingent, 80,000 strong, splendidly drilled, the flower of the Sepoy Army, was shattered by Colin Campbell and his handful of 3,400 men, and the neck of the great Mutiny was broken.

No man living to-day who heard that crumpling sound and that avenging cheer can ever—will ever—forget it, and it behoves you, my masters, to remember, when you see the red and white-striped ribbon on the mendicant selling matches, or his more fortunate comrade patrolling outside a shop door, that in the words of Colin Campbell: “Every man of them that day was worth his weight in gold to England.”

And here one is reminded of a German prejudice of the Dowager Queen Adelaide (whom we all prayed for in our youth), who at levées and Court functions insisted on kilted officers appearing in “trews”—the absence of the “breeks” being too shockingly shocking.

At Gibraltar as late as ’65 was a sentry posted on a promontory that originally commanded a view of the Straits—but which a high wall had subsequently obliterated—whose orders were “To keep a sharp look out and immediately to report if the Spanish fleet was in sight.”

The Governor at the time was Sir Richard Airey, the most courteous of the old English school of gentlemen, but probably the worst Quartermaster-General that ever permitted boots and blankets to accumulate at Balaclava and brave men to freeze and starve at the front.  It was an inspiration of his to utilise the stores with which Gibraltar is permanently provisioned by a periodical issue of salt pork rations that had accumulated since the Crimean War.  Needless to add, much was mouldy, and many the complaints, and on one occasion when a vehement report reached him, he replied: “Leave it here, it shall be seen to.”  Not long after invitations were issued for a dinner at the Convent, to which the “Board” on the rotten pork were invited.

The banquet was the finest a French cook could produce, and one dish with “Sauce Robert” especially appreciated.

“That, gentlemen, is your rotten pork, and shows you how some men are never satisfied,” was his Excellency’s appropriate (!) comment.  But there is not a cordon bleu in every regimental cook-house.

I will now relate as a fitting end to these long reminiscences what I witnessed forty years ago in the island of Mauritius, when death was having a fine harvest by the ravages of a plague, and how a hurricane—terrific in even that so-called focus of hurricanes, and compared with which the storms we occasionally encounter in Merrie England are but gentle zephyrs—obliterated all the germs of infection.

It was in ’67 that a terrible epidemic—new to science—burst without warning on the beautiful island of Mauritius.  Its very symptoms were unfamiliar to the faculty, and so, for a better name, it was called jungle fever.  Fever and ague were its chief characteristics, followed by absolute prostration, and death with alarming rapidity.

Like its dread ally cholera, its first appearance was irresistible; then the attack became less formidable, and as the atmosphere became saturated with its poisonous germs, every living thing suffered from exhaustion, and man and beast literally dragged one leg after another, and almost prayed for release.

The scourge, it was supposed, had been introduced by the 100,000 Madras coolies who worked on the sugar plantations under conditions as nearly approaching slavery as our beneficent Government would admit.

Not an officer who was sufficiently well but had to read the burial service almost daily over Protestant and Catholic comrades, and not a drum was heard whilst the scant ceremony was being repeated and repeated in its terrible monotony.

To make matters worse quinine, which ordinarily costs a few pence, was selling at auction at £30 per ounce.  Then the supply ran out, and so valuable did the drug become that the dose a dying man’s stomach could not retain was carefully bottled up for the next urgent case.

Soon the very wood for coffins ran short, and the carpenters who made the ghastly necessaries were themselves dead or dying, so long trenches were improvised in which the dead were laid in rows.

Every house bewailed a departed relative, for there was no pitying angel to sprinkle the door-posts in that remote isle of the sea, and the sound of wailing went up from Indian compound and European cantonment alike as, smiting their breasts, the cry ascended to Brahmah and the God of the Christians to stay the hand of the destroying angel.

Truly the grasshopper had become a burden and desire failed, when a change as sudden as the arrival of the terrible scourge ensued, and a hurricane, unprecedented in its violence, swept over the island for days.

But even this awful drama has associations that lend themselves to comedy.  A representative of a Deep Sea Cable Company, who was conspicuous for his flowing mane and superabundant hair, emerged from his illness as smooth as a billiard ball, and the local snuff-coloured wig he donned to hide his nakedness was as bewildering as it was irresistible.

The coolies, too, desirous of apprising their friends in Madras of their safety, and thinking it a favourable opportunity to defraud the Revenue, would slip unstamped letters into the post, oblivious of the columns of names that appeared weekly in the local paper as not having been forwarded in consequence of insufficient postage.  And then the Creoles—a snuff-and-butter combination of English, French, and Indian—desirous of airing their European pretensions, would hail one with: “Ah, the plague—we are now far from IT,” or, anxious to be polite, would add: “I have heard your name with great advantage.”

Be that as it may, “The voice that breathed o’er Eden”—with whisky variations—does not lend itself to concentration of thought or deed, save of an irreverent kind, so I will conclude by describing my companions whom we’ve frequently met in our various rambles.

Of these, one was a country-looking squire with grey hair and cropped beard, who, on closer inspection, was recognisable as the wiry bruiser who had thrashed the “Kangaroo” thirty years previously at the Alhambra; the other was Bobby Shafto, still erect and soldier-like, but divested of the curly locks that had won their way into everybody’s favour a decade previously.

For Bobby had only just left the Service, after holding a series of personal staff appointments through the influence of powerful friends of the days of his youth.

But both these good fellows have since passed away, and I—only I—remain—like a modern Elijah—to commune within myself of the various incidents with which we were associated in the long-ago sixties.