Hervey 11 - On His Majesty's Service (2 page)

His Majesty deeply laments the occurrence of these hostilities, and will omit no effort of friendly interposition to restore peace.

The determination of the Powers, parties to the Treaty of the 6th July, to effect the objects of that Treaty, remains unchanged …’

¹
The ‘Sublime Porte’ is a figure of speech for the Sultan’s court and government of the Ottoman Empire, or for the empire itself. It derived from the practice of receiving diplomats at the
porte
(gate) of the headquarters of the Grand Vizier (prime minister) at the Topkapi Palace in Constantinople/Istanbul. Later ‘Porte’ came to refer to the foreign ministry.

From the Princess Lieven, wife of the Russian ambassador to the Court of St James’s, to her brother, General Alexander Benckendorff.

3rd/15th July 1828

Dear Alexander
,

…
While I was writing to you, the despatch from Karassou of June 12/24 announcing the surrender of Hirsova and Kustendji arrived. Bravo! Bravo too for having managed to make mention of Wellington’s regiment in the account. There was never a cleverer bit of irony than this; all Europe will be laughing at his expense. He will be the only person to take the matter seriously; that is to say, he will be quite flattered at seeing his name associated with glory as far away as the Black Sea
.

I was unable to finish yesterday. There will be arriving with you shortly an English officer, Lord Bingham, who will pass for being an officer in Lord Heytesbury’s suite. He is a weak little man, a trifle stupid, to whom this favour has been accorded because he is pro-Turk – it was refused to Cradock because he is pro-Greek. The truth is that Lord Bingham will be anything you wish, and will probably become enthusiastic about the Russian army. He will be a peer some day. His departure was quite kept secret by Wellington’s orders, who had the idea that mothers here had designs upon his happiness or his fortune
…

PART ONE

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I

HOME THOUGHTS

Tuesday 13 January, 1829

Hervey had rarely seen water come with such force. It was that of the falls in Canada, near Fort York (if an infinitesimal fraction of the volume), which a decade past he had observed for himself in their icy midwinter trickle. And the enveloping steam was like the mist that had shrouded him in safety on the heights of Esi-Klebeni as the warriors who had assassinated the Zulu king pursued him with like intent.

‘Remarkable,’ he said, shaking his head.

His friend Edward Fairbrother took the cheroot from his mouth and frowned at its dampened glow. ‘I confess I am astonished that you wonder at such a thing after all you have seen,’ he replied, blowing the end of the remaining three inches of best Indian leaf. ‘We have come here twice by steamship, have we not? And I fancy the Romans bathed with scarcely less luxury hereabout in centuries past.’

Fairbrother’s practised insouciance almost invariably amused. Indeed Hervey thought of his friend increasingly in terms of indispensability – not as jester but (since it was he that had spoken of the ancients) more as the crouching cautioner in the triumphant procession:
Respica te, hominem te memento
– ‘Look behind thee, and remember thou art but a man.’

Not that Hervey saw himself as the man honoured in triumph, for although he had saved what remained of his troop in the desperate fighting at the kraal, he had not been able to save the Zulu king’s favourite, Pampata (his ward in their flight thither); but he returned now to London with commendations for resource and bravery, and in the prospect of command at last of his regiment. This latter, whatever his regrets – above all the slaughter of men under his authority – was ample cause for satisfaction. But first, before any
triumphus
, or anything remotely resembling it – before, indeed, reading any of the letters, official and otherwise, that awaited him – he was determined to bathe.

‘And by this ’andle ’ere, sir, the water is regulated,’ said the valet, first slowing and then stopping altogether the surge. ‘And then you can ’ave it as ’ot or as cold as you will by this other ’andle ’ere, sir, which regulates the cold water in like manner.’

‘Admirable, admirable,’ replied Hervey. ‘Thank you, Wilkes.’

‘The steward says as the valets must draw the baths, like afore, but I reckons it won’t be so long as members’ll be able to do it for ’emselves,’ opined Wilkes, surveying his remarkably effortless work with satisfaction. In the United Service Club’s old premises it would have taken him the better part of half an hour to fetch water for a bathtub a quarter the size. And almost as long to empty it again. But now, as he pointed out, by merely lifting the brass cylinder which acted as a stop to the drain as well as ingeniously permitting the outflow of water if the level in the bath rose beyond a safe level, or perhaps a level necessary for adequate ablutions (for the heating of water was not without considerable cost; best Tyne coal was now thirty-three shillings and sixpence per double chaldron), the contents of the bathtub were conveyed effortlessly by leaden pipes to the cesspit beneath the building, and thence – he knew not quite how – to the Thames.

‘Well then,’ began Hervey, certain he was now tolerably well trained in the United Service’s most recent advance in its members’ comforts, ‘perhaps you will permit me to draw my own, and attend on Captain Fairbrother, who may take his.’

‘Very good, Colonel ’Ervey,’ replied Wilkes, with an approving nod: he was confident enough that if there were any mishap, the hero of the Cape frontier would be able to subdue the steward’s ire. ‘Is your groom to stay, too, sir?’

Hervey explained that he was not, that Private Johnson would not return until the day after tomorrow, and that he would be glad of Wilkes’s services in the meantime. Then he returned to his room to slough off his travelling clothes.

The United Service’s new quarters in Pall Mall (on which site until a year ago had stood Carlton House, ‘Nero’s Palace’ as it had irreverently been known, the residence of the former Prince Regent) were greatly to his liking. And there was the added advantage that not far hence was the Horse Guards, the headquarters of His Majesty’s Land Forces – so perfectly convenient for him to present himself later in proper fettle. He did not know Lieutenant-Colonel the Honourable Valentine Youell, whose signature was on the summons to attend the commander-in-chief (with its unspoken promises of reward and further duty), but he supposed him to be no less capable than his old friend Lord John Howard, in whose temporary absence (he had remained at the Cape, whither he had lately travelled in the hope of seeing action at last) Youell acted.

Of course he would be capable; it was unthinkable that Lord Hill would have any other on his staff; but undoubtedly he would be less inclined to intelligence a mere officer of light dragoons as faithfully as had Howard. Hervey had always counted himself fortunate in having rendered valuable service to Lord Hill (and, for that matter, to the Duke of Wellington) in the field, for it was by no means every officer who could enter the Horse Guards on terms of familiarity; but to have such a friend as Howard at court had always been a double fortune indeed.

When he was out of his travelling clothes he put on a dressing robe, gathered up the towels and other appurtenances of his toilet, and then returned to the baths like a Roman at his ease. ‘Thank you, Wilkes,’ he said as he handed him the robe and stepped into the joyously hot water – carefully, so as not to disturb any of the elements by which so perfect a bath was drawn. ‘Captain Fairbrother is equally comfortably served?’

‘’E is, sir. ’E asked as for me to bring ’im a glass of port as well. Shall I bring one for you too, sir?’

‘No, Wilkes – no port, thank you. I’m merely inclined to close my eyes a while and contemplate the luxury of the club’s new arrangements.’

Wilkes bowed gravely: who indeed could begrudge a little luxury to the man who had battled with savage warriors in that most heathen of lands (he had read of Hervey’s exploits in the
Morning Post
when the newspapers were taken from the smoking room at the end of the week)? He would tell the other valets that they must not disturb the colonel: let him take his bath at leisure; the other gentlemen would have to wait.

As the door closed, Hervey let his shoulders sink below the water. That he could do so without bending his knees was remarkable. ‘Capital,’ he said, smiling and shaking his head. In India, where everything was worked on a voluptuary scale, the bathtubs were not one half the size. His head, even, was below the top, so that the outlook was solely a white-painted ceiling, which now served as a sort of canvas on which to picture the events past that gave him pleasure, and in the future that promised likewise – a vivid fresco, a tableau of people and places that few men were given to know.

Yet almost at once the pleasurable recollections were displaced by darker ones. He had lain in his cot aboard the steamer many a time, or dozed in a deck chair, yet not once had such thoughts come – or else so fleetingly that they were gone before they made any true impression. Perhaps he had banished them, but was now ready to let them come? For come he had always known they must. Once, as they cruised off the Ashanti coast, he had woken from a dream of the whitening bones of the dragoons he had left behind. And yet the bones had not rebuked him, nor even in truth disturbed him – only puzzled him, for he had left many bones to whiten in distant places in the service of the King, and never before had they appeared before him, in his sleep or otherwise. Afterwards he had pondered on it, asking again what more he might have done to save them, but the dereliction that had led to the ambush at the royal kraal had not been his. Everyone knew it – and he knew it himself, of which not even scrupulosity, had he been inclined to suffer it, could have dissuaded him.

It was not bones that paraded before him now, however, but the faces of the living – though momentarily, as if to remind of what he had turned over in his mind during the leisure of his passage home. Serjeant-Major Armstrong, his NCO-friend of many years, new-widowed, father of five (was it?) – what now might his prospects be? Armstrong might find a wife, if he could overcome his grief for the sake of the children – as he, Hervey, had done – but that would take many months, perhaps more. Were Armstrong an officer he might elect to go onto half pay until his arrangements could be regularized, but an enlisted man had no such option. Had he, Hervey, been taking the lieutenant-colonelcy at once instead of, first, the mission to the Russians (he wondered if he really wished for this mission, now), he could have approved indefinite leave, having Armstrong’s duties performed by a serjeant with temporary rank … Perhaps he might prevail on Lord Holderness, the commanding officer whom soon he would succeed, to do likewise?

But these things were ever perilous. It ought, after all, to be considered no singular thing for an NCO to conduct himself in the manner that Armstrong had in that desperate fight with the Xhosa; as Lord Hill was wont to say, it was the duty of the officers to show their men how to die, and that of the NCOs how to fight. He must trust therefore to Lord Holderness’s good sense and consideration – which he had after all shown in ample measure during his command – or, at least, to a certain disinterest, for within the year Holderness would be major-general, and the regiment’s regulation therefore no longer his concern.