More Tales of the West Riding (18 page)

One night perhaps he was about to set out for Italy on one of his many secret visits. The Stantons were alarmed at the thought of his doing the dangerous journey alone. Q suddenly offered to take him. What could look more innocent to police than a rich English textile manufacturer with an English attendant valet escorting an elderly grandparent to Rome? Q almost choked with eagerness; all his warmth of heart, his love for his fellow-men, his longing to do something noble for them, perhaps (we do not know this) his fatigue with textiles and Hudley, the huge prosaic mill at home and his ten-year-old and quietly happy but unimpassioned childless marriage, swelled to his throat. His eyes gleamed. Obviously he was as honest and trustworthy as the day. The Stantons took Mazzini, Q and Booth to a London dock, and by night, the tide being suitable, embarked them. The scene itself was thrilling: the dark river flowing and lapping, lights on the banks gleaming, great hulks of ships silently passing; what an adventure! Q hastily wrote a tender note to his wife, protesting business in Paris; the Stantons put it in the post and promised to allay her fears. Q would not be long away, they thought. The ship was bound for Genoa, not for France; dangerous, no doubt; but still …

But unfortunately the expedition to Rome was not a success—Mazzini's expeditions were never a success. He had the feeling, the tongue, the words, to rouse; but his temperament was as unsuited to commanding troops as his black velvet waistcoat and frock coat to military action. Q extracted him from one or two awkward situations, then decanted him on a small freight ship sailing for London. The Captain declined to take Q, but would embark Booth if he signed on as a seaman. Booth however declined to leave his master. Q paid the captain substantially, and gave him a note to present to Stanton's brewery in London. What to do now? A hand
some passenger ship was leaving for Marseilles in a day or two, but Q could not bring himself to take it. He was enjoying this new, colourful, noisy, exciting world too much. Without quite knowing why or how, he found himself understanding and not blaming Mazzini's failure, but longing for a fiercer champion. This chap Kossuth, now, fighting the Austrians in Hungary? All of a sudden he was marching and riding across northern Italy, then embarking from the eastern coast at Ancona, crossing the Adriatic (where the Austrians, not a seagoing nation, had no ships) landing at Trieste, marching north-east towards Pesth.

If Genoa had been exciting, this new country was in a frenzy. Portraits of Kossuth, talk of Kossuth, everywhere. In some villages young men leaving home to join him for Hungary, while wives and mothers left at home arranged to send despatches to him without a moment's delay. In other villages old fellows, still wearing the Austrian uniform they had worn proudly in the Austrian army, refused food and shelter to men they thought of as abominable rebels. We do not know, of course, how Q and Booth reached Kossuth, and it is beyond my powers to invent their route and its adventures. But we must remember that Q had money and was a good horseman, while Booth was an experienced groom. They knew no Hungarian, which was awkward, but then also they knew no German, which in the unsettled state of the country was perhaps a good thing. Kossuth relying hopefully on Palmerston continued to expect that England would support Hungary, although no official envoys were sent; Austria, with official English envoys at her court, could not believe the old alliance was broken. Thus to be English was fairly safe from both sides. Many nationalities were already represented in Kossuth's forces, so two Englishmen were not noticeable.

I imagine Q and Booth, after hair-raising adventures, arriving at the massive doors of some baronial Hungarian
establishment, dismounting from admirable if mud-splashed horses, and asking with English calm for Kossuth. They are ushered by guards into the great man's presence. He looks at them enquiringly.

“We are English,” says Q with native calm, “come here to fight at your side.”

“Why not?” says Kossuth who had studied English in an Austrian prison, courteously: “You are very welcome.”

The truth is, I think, that the two men took a fancy to each other. Physically they were rather alike; both being tall, solid and blue-eyed, with broad high foreheads, strong features, thick wavy hair and pleasant smiles. Both were men of absolute integrity; Kossuth, surrounded as he was by generals, who disagreed with him, crossed his plans, failed their rendez-vous and eventually by surrendering betrayed him, may have recognised this trait and welcomed it in Q.

There was no difficulty in providing the two Englishmen with the rough clothes now worn by the rest of the army; big clumsy boots, long rusty spurs, wide white trousers and coarse linen shirt hanging out over them, long white cloak of coarse wool and round felt hat banded by the Hungarian colours, red blue and green. There were plenty about, and swords and pistols, lying with dead Hungarian bodies on the innumerable battlefields. Not that the frequent conflicts were exactly battles; merely skirmishes across the wide Hungarian plains, each force trying to manoeuvre the other into a disadvantage. I do not believe, of course, that Q was ever a “general”, rendering great service to the cause of independent Hungary as Bakonyi believes; I think he was probably some sort of aide to Kossuth, or allotted as a member of a group of “honvëds” as the word went, the equivalent of the German
Landstürm,
or as we might say, territorials, galloping hither and thither on his fine horse.

That he galloped enough we may judge from the written memoirs of another similar honvëd, who speaks of being
often in the saddle for twelve hours a day. At night they bivouacked on the open plain, sleeping close together round a huge fire if they could find trees for the blaze. Half their horses were unsaddled, so that some lay down, others slept on their feet; but the other half always remained in saddle and bridle, with guards attending them, so that on the slightest hint of surprise the troop could be on horseback, ready to attack within three minutes. The honvëds could not shave, or even often wash; their clothes, like themselves, grew tattered and dirty. There were nights when they fell in with gipsies and musicians; then they sang and danced with all their ferociously gay national abandon, and would have continued this lively enjoyment till morning if their officers had not commanded them in the strictest terms to sleep awhile so as to be fresh for battle next day.

Could we suppose that the lieutenant and sergeant in command of this group were Pulaski and Czernowski, whom we met later in Hudley? I think we could. We see mild, conventional Q and the devoted Booth sitting on the icy ground, watching with an immense glee, a joyous feeling of escape and release, the tumultuous dance of these handsome people, their white teeth sparkling, their long black hair blowing, their fine lean limbs tossing rhythmically in tune with the wild music.

The high point of Kossuth's campaign was his capture of Vienna. Hardly a capture, perhaps; he just walked in and occupied it, nobody making much objection. With other officers Q was billeted upon a friendly Count; and this Count had not only a handsome and dignified wife from one of those provinces in Italy held by Austria, according to Mazzini against the people's will, but also a beautiful sister, the Countess Hélène. This young Hélène was really very beautiful; very young, with glorious dark eyes and masses of curling dark hair, a delicious sweetness, a tendency to regard a fair Englishman as a romantic hero, very delightful to a
married manufacturer of thirty-eight. She really seemed to love him. Q was sorely tempted, and perhaps Booth urged him on. But Q was an honourable man and a faithful husband, and he and Hélène parted in anguished tears, with no harm done.

Why Kossuth retreated from Vienna with scarcely a shot fired when part of the Austrian regular army walked in on him we cannot really tell. Enough that he withdrew from the Austrian capital, Q of course with him, and Q resumed the wild and scampering life he had been living before Vienna. By this time, we judge, he had become a reasonably good shot, and quite got over his nervousness with a sword. Q and Booth would be a tough pair to meet on a dark night, and were not too gentle about scragging an enemy sentry if it seemed necessary. By this time Q was an officer, I expect, and no doubt with his English thoroughness a conscientious one, and thus one moonlight night when the distant mountains were covered in snow, after a hard fight during the afternoon he was inspecting the chain of sentry posts set around the group, in company with the devoted Booth. (I wish I knew the appearance of this man: I see him as short, sturdy, pug-faced, dark in complexion with a bit of a scowl, a dimple and thick eyebrows, but of course I do not know; he may have had a florid face and winning smile for all I know. But I don't think so.) All the men at the sentry posts were awake and watchful and Q was returning cheerfully to the bivouac fire when at the foot of a tree in the moonlight he perceived a human body. They advanced and turned the body roughly on to its back. It was a woman dressed in a man's uniform; the long hair which fell over her shoulders betrayed (in those days) her sex. Q stooped and turned up her face. It was Hélène.

The sharp agony of this blow struck Q to the heart. Lifting the girl in his arms, he conveyed her to the fire and strove to revive her. But she was dead, with a bullet through
her heart. Some of his men recognised her; they all grieved for her. They thawed by a fire the ground near a tree, and spent much of the night digging a deep grave—a precaution against wolves—with their swords and hand-bills. They then wrapped the poor young beauty in the cleanest blanket they could find, buried her, fired a salute of pistols above her grave—rather dangerous, this, with the enemy so close—and placed upon it a cross made out of twigs from which they peeled the bark. Did Q cut off a lock of her gloriously curling hair and put it in his pocket-book? I think so.

I cannot but feel that from this moment Q's view of the adventure upon which he was engaged, changed radically. Hitherto it had been a glorious joke; now it was a heartbreaking tragedy. He might even have been sickened by the slaughter which battles invariably produce. It might also be, on the contrary, that a hatred welled up in his heart for the men who had killed his love. He was a man of honour, in any case; he had come here to fight for the freedom of Hungary and he intended to fight for the freedom of Hungary. He was devoted to the noble Kossuth.

How Kossuth then lost his war, is a matter so complex it is hardly to be deciphered. The Hungarians of the plains quarrelled with the Magyars of the hills and both quarrelled with the Poles; the generals quarrelled with each other and with Kossuth and showed an invincible tendency to march in the wrong direction. The aristocrats did not support Kossuth; the older villagers remained nostalgically Austrian; the Russian Imperial Army came in. In a word, there were some three battles; one general surrendered; the affair was over, and all that remained for Kossuth and his men was to get out of Austria, to reach safety over the border in Turkey.

It was a long gloomy march. We can easily imagine the sad poetry, the melancholy reflections, that filled the men's souls as they prepared to leave their native land. Home was behind, exile in front; the superb views of forest-clad hills,
backed by distant blue Carpathian mountains, the winding silver rivers did not soothe their hearts; the difficulties of the route—sometimes marshy, sometimes pebbly, sometimes smooth steep slippery rock—the harshness of the wind and rain, the scarcity of provisions, by their irritation almost relieved the deeper feelings. For Q, the prospect of finding himself in Turkey, a place regarded in the West Riding as so distant as to be almost fictional, almost non-existent, certainly totally barbaric, must have made him blench; however he kept his English calm, we may be sure, gulped down the native porridge without complaint, shared his scraps of bacon with his comrades, at one time even had the honour of proffering a piece of cheese to Kossuth himself; and marched.

A deep relief when at last the column came to the border and could see safety ahead was followed by the sorrow of departure. To step out of one's homeland into foreign parts, into a place where one is an alien, does not belong, leaving behind all those near and dear, is extremely and deeply painful. Kossuth very wisely gave the men a serious and noble address, not minimising the anguish of parting but holding out the hope, even if distant, of return and stressing the need for good behaviour. They crossed a river, traversed a mile or two of plain, and came to a large army of Turkish troops, who were encamped in rows of neatly lined green tents outside a town. Here a ceremony was performed, always very painful to soldiers; they had to give up their arms. Men and horses were then counted and listed, which gave a painful impression of servitude; they were allotted space for bivouacs, and after a night of rain next morning marched off surrounded by Turkish regulars.

In this, however, reality proved better than their fears; the Turks in their red fez, blue jacket and white trousers proved to be jovial, cheerful masters. Though the arrangements for food were somewhat irregular and slapdash, food
was definitely provided. A grief which befell many soldiers was the confiscating of their horses. Many of the men had previously served in Austrian Imperial regiments, and their horses bore the imperial stamp; all these were sent back by the Turks to the Austrian government, which claimed them as their property. Only those horses privately bought could be retained by their owners. Q and Booth no doubt retained theirs, as did Kossuth and some of his generals. Soon Kossuth's army was camped in tents and sheds, with the higher officers accommodated in stone houses. There they remained for some months.

The tedium of such an imprisonment is almost unbearable to active men. There is nothing whatever to do, except take two roll-calls a day, groom one's horse and try to rid oneself of vermin. Kossuth held small meetings every day, at which camp matters were discussed, but there was little to be said about the affairs of their country, in which the Imperial government had now completely resumed power.