The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford

I had entered to ride my horse Nightwalker in the steeple-chase at Totnes, which is the most difficult course in England, up hill and down dale, and along a narrow path beside and across the river. Just before the race, I was warned that a plan had been formed for the jockeys to ride me out at a post on the river at the bottom of the hill. Had I been ridden out, I could never have recovered the ground. I kept a vigilant look-out accordingly. Riding along the tow-path, a jockey began to hustle me. I told him to pull back, warning him that unless he kept clear I would have him in the river. He returned no answer, but continued to hustle me: whereupon I pulled my horse on to him, cannoned into him, and over he went, horse and all, into the water. Falling on a rock, he broke his thigh. I won the race. Then I went to look after the injured jockey. Nightwalker was one of the best horses I ever owned. I sold him to Lord Zetland, who told me that "the horse was one of the best he had ever had, and no price would buy him."

In 1882, while I was in command of the Condor, a gymkhana was arranged which had the unfortunate and wholly unforeseen result of bringing me into serious disfavour with an agitated husband. We rode upon side-saddles, dressed in ladies' attire: habits, chignons, and tall hats complete. I had a capital pony, and had won the race, my chignon and hat blowing off on the way, when up comes an indignant gentleman, to accuse me of insulting his wife. I had, he said, dressed up to imitate the lady, on purpose to bring ridicule upon her.

Naturally, I assured him that he was mistaken, and that nothing would have induced me to commit so discourteous an action. But my gentlemen waxed hotter than before, and violently demanded an apology. He declined to accept my assurance; his language was highly irritating; and I became angry in my turn.

"You don't appear to understand the situation," I told him. "How dare you come to me and tell me that I looked like your wife? Either you apologise to me at once for that most improper suggestion, or…"

He saw reason. He apologised. The biter was bit.

While I was commanding the Condor in 1882, a famous Italian long-distance runner came to Malta, and issued a challenge, of which the conditions were that he would run on foot any mounted man over a twenty-mile course, himself to go any pace he chose, but the horse to trot, canter, or gallop, not to stop or to walk. I accepted the challenge, and went into hard training.

I trained on ponies, confiding the pony which I was to ride in the race to a midshipman of light weight, and reduced my weight to 10 st. 8 lb. The greater proportion of the Maltese, whose dislike of the English was still strong in those days, were in favour of the Italian. They assembled in vast crowds on the Marsa upon the day of the race. We ran and rode round and round the great open space – afterwards the parade-ground – and although my adversary tried every trick of his trade, such as suddenly stopping, or lying down, I succeeded in winning the race.

I had a famous horse called Sudden Death, which I bought from Lord Norris; and the first time I drove him tandem in the lead was on Portsmouth Hard, where he cut across the first cab on the cab rank, whereupon all the cabs backed out on the top of one another with kickings, cursings and squealings. I sold Sudden Death for £15, a case of infamous sherry, and a life insurance ticket.

The greatest devil of a horse I ever owned I called The Fiend. He would carry me brilliantly for a day or two, and then, for no earthly reason, he would turn it up in a run, kick, back, rear and bite at my foot; and if he could not get me off, he would rub my leg against a wall or rush at a gate. Once, after carrying me beautifully in two runs on one day, he flew into one of his tantrums. We were crossing the bridge over the Clodagh River at Curraghmore, and he actually jumped upon the parapet of the bridge, balanced himself upon it for a moment, and then (thank God!) jumped into the road again.

We had a pad groom in the Curraghmore stables, Paddy Quin, called The Whisperer, because he could control any dangerous horse by whispering to him. I told Quin to sell The Fiend without bringing my name into the transaction. He sold the horse accordingly; and when the business was completed, he told me that he had represented to the purchaser that The Fiend "belonged to a lone widdy living by the say-side."

I believe that I am the only man who has ever ridden a pig down Park Lane. As I was returning home from a dance in the calm of a summer morning, accompanied by a friend, a herd of swine came by, and among them a huge animal trotted pre-eminent. I wagered £5 that I would ride that great pig into Piccadilly; dashed into the herd, took a flying leap upon the pig's back, and galloped all down Park Lane, pursued with shouts by the swineherd. As I turned into Piccadilly, the swineherd caught me a clout on the head, knocking me off my steed. But not before I won my wager.

I was once prettily sold by a sportsman named Doddy Johnson. We were of a party at Maidenhead, and we laid £5 on the winner of a swimming race across the Thames, both to swim in our frock coats and tall hats.

My antagonist and I were to start from a line on the lawn at Skindle's, and the first to get ashore on the opposite bank was to be the winner. I raced down the lawn and plunged in. About half-way across the river, I looked back, and there was Doddy standing on the bank. He had his jest; presumably it was worth a fiver.

One year, three out of four horses in my coach being hunters, I was obliged to start with the leaders, for if I started in the proper way with the wheelers, the off wheeler invariably jumped into her collar and kicked. Being taken to task in the Park one day by a famous four-in-hand driver, who told me I did not know how to start a team, I said to him that as he was an authority on the subject, I should be very grateful if he would be so good as to start my coach for me, and thus to show me how it ought to be done; adding that if the coach were damaged or the horses were injured, he must hold himself responsible.

Gladly accepting these conditions, my friend mounted to the box and settled himself with great nicety and pulled off the leaders. Then he touched the off wheeler with his whip. The next moment she had kicked in the boot, and the leaders started kicking, and both fell – a regular tie-up. The mare capped her hocks and was laid up at a vet's for a week.

I was driving a coach up from Sandown Races along a crowded road, when a most unfortunate accident suddenly exposed me to the fury of the populace. Swinging the whip out in order to catch it up properly, the thong caught under a lady's chignon, and the whip was nearly pulled out of my hand. Chignon and hat came away together and remained dangling. The poor lady must have been sadly hurt. Instantly, of course, I tried to pull up in order to apologise, when the mob rushed to the very unjust conclusion that I had insulted the lady on purpose; there was a deal of shouting, and stones began to fly; the horses were hit and bolted, so that I never had the opportunity of making my apology. The Duke of Portland, Lord Londonderry and Lord Inniskillen were on the coach. We used each of us to horse one coach in stages for the race meetings near London.

Upon another occasion, when I was driving the Prince of Wales on my coach to a meet of the Four-in-Hand Club at the Magazine, Hyde Park, a man who was quite unknown to me shouted,

"'Ullo, Chawley, 'ow are yer? I see you've got 'Wiles' up alongside yer."

"Some of your friends seem very familiar," said the Prince, who took the remark with perfect good-humour.

I once laid a wager that I would drive round Rotten row, an exercise forbidden by the regulations. A party assembled to watch the event; and while they were looking out for me, a man driving the Park water-cart came by and turned the water on them. Then the company, looking closer at the driver, perceived that I had won my bet.

The first racehorse owned by the Prince of Wales was a horse named Stonehenge, which I bought for him. We were partners in the horse. Stonehenge had won one or two races, when I went away on leave for a few days. On my return I found that my groom, against orders, had been galloping him, and that one of his legs had filled. Having heard that my uncle, Lord Waterford, once trained a horse which filled his leg, by swimming him in the sea after a boat tried the experiment with Stonehenge. The admiral's coxswain, two hands, and myself swam Stonehenge every day about Plymouth Harbour. The horse got fit to run for his life, and I rode him in a hurdle race at Plymouth. He was winning easily, but, alas! he broke down at the last hurdle, and was just beaten.

In 1883-4, the Duke of Portland and myself, as partners, bought Rosy Morn, as a yearling. He won several races as a two-year-old, and we fancied him for the Derby. He was a better colt as a two-year-old than Lord Hastings' Melton, which won the Derby. Both horses were trained in the same stable, at Matt Dawson's, Heath House, Newmarket.

Matt Dawson declared that we had got a Derby horse. I was getting the boats through the Bab-el-Kebir in the Egyptian war, when I heard that Rosy Morn had gone a roarer; and I thought it a bad omen for the expedition.

Lord Marcus and I organised a donkey race to enliven a South Coast race-meeting. We hired two donkeys apiece, and each bestrode two steeds, standing on their backs, and rode them over the wooden groynes that descend the beach at regular intervals.

The curse of race-meetings is the crowd of dubious characters which infests them. Lord Marcus, travelling by rail to Newmarket, defeated three of such persons single-handed.

A trio of three-card-trick men tried to bully him into venturing on the game; whereupon he set about them. Two he knocked out, and the third piped down. They left that carriage of carnage at the next station, protesting amid blood and tears that it was occupied by the most furious devil allowed on earth. He was maligned: there never was a kinder-hearted man.

Lord Marcus, who is singularly ready with his tongue, upon being asked whether he thought False Tooth a good name for a horse, said:

"The best, because you can't stop him."

The same relative committed a worse crime at the Club, where a very deaf member appealed to him to be told what another member was saying to him.

"He's wishing you a Happy New 'Ear – and God knows you want one!" shouted Markie.

One of the most unexpected events in which I ever took part occurred at Scarborough, where I was staying for the races with Mr. Robert Vyner. In the same hotel were staying two well-known members of the racing world, Mr. Dudley Milner and Mr. Johnny Shafto. Vyner and I happened to enter the large and long room, used for assemblies; when we perceived Dudley Milner and Johnny Shafto standing at the other end, and observed that they were arguing together, somewhat heatedly, in broad Yorkshire. They were disputing, as racing men do at such times, about weights in an impending handicap.

There was nothing at all in the great room, so far as I remember, except a sideboard and a dish filled with pats of butter which stood on the sideboard. I picked up a pat of butter on the end of the ash-plant I was carrying, and told Vyner that if he would come outside, I would throw the pat of butter to a surprising distance.

"Why go outside?" said he. "Why not take a shot at those two fellows who are arguing so busily over there?"

"And so I will," said I.

The pat of butter described a beautiful yellow parabola at high speed and lighted upon the eye of one of the disputants. The impact doubled him up, and he thought that the other man had hit him. Drawing his right fist back very slowly and carefully, he struck his friend full on the point of the nose. The next moment they were both rolling on the floor, fighting like cats. My companion and I were laughing so much that we couldn't separate them; and they finally had to go to bed for a week to recover themselves of their wounds.

Butter produces various effects, according to its application. I was one of the guests among a large party at a luncheon, given by an old gentleman who had a fancy for breeding pugs, which were then the fashionable breed of dog. On the table opposite to me was a glass bowl containing a quantity of pats of butter; and as each of the many pugs in the room came to me, I gave him a pat of butter on the end of a fork. He gently snuggled it down. After about ten minutes first one pug and then another began to be audibly unwell. The old gentleman was so terrified at these alarming symptoms, that he incontinently dispatched a carriage at speed to fetch the nearest vet That expert, after a careful diagnosis, reported that "someone must have been feeding the pugs on butter."

My brother Marcus, travelling by rail with some friends, Mr. Dudley Milner being of the party, Markie very kindly relieved the tedium of the journey. Dudley Milner had fallen asleep. Marcus took the ticket from Milner's pocket. He then woke up Milner, telling him that the tickets were about to be collected. Milner, after feverishly searching for his ticket, was forced to the conclusion that he had lost it, and, finding that he had very little money, begged that someone would lend him the requisite sum. One and all, with profuse apologies, declared themselves to be almost penniless; and Milner was nearing despair, when my brother sympathetically suggested that, as the train approached the station Milner should hide under the seat, and all would be well. Thereupon Milner, assisted by several pairs of feet, struggled under the seat, and his friends screened him with their legs.

The collector appeared, and Marcus gave him all the tickets.

"Here's six tickets for five gentlemen," said the collector.

"Quite correct," said Marcus. "The other gentleman is under the seat. He prefers travelling like that."

An old friend of mine, Lord Suffield, has recently published his memoirs. He was an indomitable rider, with a beautiful seat, and one of the hardest men to hounds in his day. I well remember riding home with him across country after the hunt with His Majesty's Buckhounds, when, taking a turn to the right, while I took a turn to the left, he suddenly disappeared altogether from view. As suddenly he appeared again on his horse's neck. He speedily got back into the saddle and went away as if nothing had happened, looking neither to the right nor left. I turned to find out the cause of his disappearance, and found that he had come across a deep V-shaped ditch, at the bottom of which was a very high post and rails. How any man or horse could have got over it, it is impossible to say. When I spoke to him about his exploit in the evening, he treated it as a matter of course, and only said it was "a rather nasty place."

When we were in India together, in the suite of the Prince of Wales, he always preferred riding to going on an elephant. He was a great yachtsman in his day, and knew as much about handling yachts as any seaman I have ever met. He was a very good shot, and one of the greatest friends I have ever had.

CHAPTER LIV

SPORTING MEMORIES (Continued)

II. SHOOTING

There are few kinds of beasts which I have not shot; and among those few are lions and giraffes.

When I was at Vancouver as a midshipman, I went out after deer upon a pouring wet day. I fired at a deer; the gun, a muzzle-loader, missed fire; I set the stock on the ground in order to ram home the charge; and the gun went off. The bullet cut the button off the top of my cap: a narrow escape.

I shall never forget the excitement of three of us midshipmen of the Clio, when, being out after tree grouse in the bush, we put up a big spotted deer. It was close to us, and we killed it; we cut it up, and tramped the miles back to the ship, laden with the haunches, shoulders and head. Arriving on board with our clothes soaked with blood, we were hailed as splendid sportsmen, and for days thereafter the gun-room feasted upon venison.

When the Clio was off Juan Fernandez in February, 1865, we sent a party of seamen across to the island to beat up the wild goats towards the shore. The cliffs are steep-to, and along the face of them winds a narrow path worn by the goats themselves. The pathway itself is inclined at a steep angle. I took the cutter and hung off and on, waiting for the goats. Presently they came down, about thirty of them, in single file, slipping a good deal, but recovering their footing with marvellous agility. We fired at the line and knocked over three. They fell on the rocks below. There was so much seaway that we were unable to get the boat in. I therefore took a line and swam to shore, collected the goats, toggled their legs together, secured them with the line, and they were pulled off to the boat. But when I tried to swim off, the sea was so rough that the breakers beat me back. I was hurled against the rocks; all the wind was knocked out of me, and I was much bruised and cut. A bluejacket swam off with a line, and although he did not toggle my legs, he and I were hauled off to the boats, like the goats. We brought all three goats safely on board. One of them was a billy-goat, the other two nanny-goats, in which there was no sign of any bullet, so that they must have been carried down with the billy-goat.

While I was serving in the Sutlej as sub-lieutenant, the chief engineer, James Roffey, who was a splendid shot, and myself, went upon hunting expeditions in Vancouver. We took two horses and a couple of dogs. At night we slept on waterproof sheets under a lean-to shelter made of branches. We shot many partridge – as these birds are called. Having treed them, we shot the lower birds first, and so on to the top. The report of the guns did not disturb them, but if a bird fell from the upper branches, the rest would take flight. I have shot these birds in the same way, during recent visits to Canada.

During the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to India in 1870, I accompanied his Royal Highness upon the great elephant hunt in Ceylon. For months beforehand the wild elephants had been gradually driven towards the kraal by an army of native beaters. The kraal is constructed of huge trunks of trees, lashed together and buttressed, making a strong stockade. In plan, covering about eight acres, it is shaped like a square bottle, the neck representing a narrow entrance, from which the stockade on either side runs at a wide angle, like jaws. The elephants are driven down the narrowing jaws and through the entrance, which is closed behind them with a gate made of logs. Once inside the kraal, the wild animals are tackled by the tame elephants ridden by mahouts, and are secured with hide ropes to the trees of the stockade, which is formed of stout timber for the purpose.

Upon the occasion of the Duke's visit, I was in the arena, mounted upon a tame elephant amid a wild heaving mob of animals. One huge beast defeated the tame elephants, throwing the whole lot into confusion. He suddenly charged, knocking over the tame elephant next to me, the mahout breaking his leg in the fall. Things were looking very ugly, when someone – against orders – fired and killed the rebel elephant, the bullet entering his temple.

If the day of the great elephant hunt in India, arranged in honour of the Prince of Wales, was the hardest run of my life, hanging on to the back of a swift pad elephant which went through the jungle for fourteen hours like a runaway locomotive, the hardest day I ever had on foot was in Ceylon, during the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to that superb country, in 1870. I have found Irishmen in most places under the sun; and I found one in Ceylon. His name was Varian, and he was a famous hunter of elephants. Rogue elephants were his favourite game; he stalked them on foot; walked up to his quarry and shot it. He was I think, eventually killed by a rogue elephant. His gun, which had belonged to Sir Samuel Baker, was a curiosity among hand-cannon. This formidable engine was so heavy that it was as much as a powerful man could do to heave it up to his shoulder. The recoil – but I will relate what kind of recoil it exercised. The gun was a single-bore muzzle-loader, having two grooves cut within the barrel, into which was fitted a spherical belted bullet.

We started at three o'clock in the morning, taking with us two native bearers to carry the guns. The bearers were little men, fragile to all appearance as pipe-stems, and save for a loin-cloth, naked as they were born. For seven hours we travelled ere we found fresh spoor, following the elephant trails, paths which the huge animals had cloven through the dense jungle. The heat was intense, the walking an extraordinary exertion; for at every few yards the soft ground was trodden by the elephants into pools of water three or four feet deep, through which we must plunge.

It was blazing noon when we struck fresh tracks; and Varian halted to load the heavy rifle. I contemplated the operation with amazement. He poured the powder into his hand, and tilted three or four handfuls down the muzzle. Then he wrapped a piece of waste round the projectile, and hammered the ramrod home with a hammer. It occurred to me that if ever a gun ought to burst in this world, that gun ought to burst.

We tracked the elephant out of the jungle; and there he was in the open maidan, placidly pulling up great tufts of grass with his trunk, and swishing himself with them.

"We must bend down," says Varian in a whisper, "and he may take us for pigs."

He held me by the arm; and bending down, we advanced directly upon the elephant, Varian's bearer loaded to the earth with the great gun.

"If he puts his ears forward and drops his trunk – fire! For he'll either charge or run away," whispered Varian.

And with the graceful courtesy of his race, he handed me the miniature cannon.

We were within twelve yards or so of the huge beast when his ears jutted forward, and with his trunk he flicked the ground, producing a hollow sound. I braced a leg backwards, and with a strong effort, hove the gun to my shoulder, aimed at the wrinkles just above the trunk, and fired. The elephant and I toppled over at the same moment. I thought my shoulder was broken to pieces; but as I staggered to my feet, I saw the elephant lying over on its side, its legs feebly waving. Varian ran up to it and fired several more shots into its head, and it lay motionless.

In 1874, I was appointed to the Bellerophon, temporarily. She had sunk a steamer which had crossed her bows, and her senior officers had been ordered home to attend the inquiry into the matter. When I joined her, my old mess-mate in the Marlborough, Swinton C. Holland (now admiral), was in sole command; although he was only second lieutenant of the ship; a curious illustration of the incidents of naval life.

Another example of the anomalies of those days was my own position: I was on full pay and on active service, and I was also a member of Parliament. The dual capacity was not in itself conducive to discipline, because it gave naval officers on full pay the opportunity of criticising, as members of Parliament, their superior officers. I do not think it was abused; in my own case, I think the solitary advantage I took was to obtain a pump, which was a sanitary necessity, for the Thunderer, when I was her commander: a threat of publicity moving the Admiralty to action which previous applications had failed to produce. In the old days, the Sea Lords used to serve in the dual capacity of members of the Board of Admiralty and of Parliament.

As no one had any precise idea where the Bellerophon was, I took passage to Halifax and stayed in the receiving hulk Pyramus, fifth-rate, stationed at Halifax, in the hope that the Bellerophon would come north. In the meantime, I went for a shooting expedition with a trapper. We went up into the forests of Nova Scotia, camping out, and living upon what we could secure with our guns. We shot bear and deer and prairie chicken. In the depth of the forest I found an Irishman dwelling in a clearing with his wife and family. He was a bitter Orangeman, who (so he told me) had been expatriated for shooting at a priest.

"I had a gun," said he, "but it was a rotten gun. I drew a bead on the priest, and, God forgive me, the gun missed fire!"