FROM MIDSHIPMAN TO FIELD-MARSHAL.*

Mn. ERSKINE, afterwards Lord Chancellor of England, was fond, according to the authors of the Anti-Jacobin, of remind- ing his audiences of the many vicissitudes of his career. "He bad been a soldier and a sailor and had a son at Winchester School. He had been called by special retainers during the -summer into many different and distant parts of the country —travelling chiefly in post-chaises." And since his day we are -unable to name any one who has been both a soldier and a sailor, and a member of the Bar as well, except Sir Evelyn Wood. Baron Watson fought at Waterloo; Lord Chelmsford smelt powder as a Middy on the Cambrian' frigate ; but we know of no other lawyer who, like Cerberus, was "three gentlemen at once." The author of the book before us served in the Naval Brigade before Sebastopol as A.D.C. to Captain Peel ; be gained the Victoria Cross as a Lieutenant of light cavalry -during the Indian Mutiny ; and he found time some few years later to study law and get " called." He never practised, for just about that period the temple of Janus opened its doors, and to all intents and purposes they have remained open ever -since. But the Bar of England has not been unmindful of its reflected glory, and when Sir Evelyn returned full of honours from Zululand in 1879 he was entertained by that body at a memorable banquet in the hall of the Middle Temple. More- -over, in 1900 be was invited to command the Inns of Court Volunteers, in succession to one of the last of the heroes of Meeanee.

Sir Evelyn Wood's career is remarkable in another way. He has acquired a great reputation as a soldier and filled some -of the highest military offices without having ever commanded -a British army in action, unless the attack on the Inhlobane Mountain and the subsequent engagement of Kambula may .be so reckoned. He has been exceptionally unlucky in this respect, for no man has been more systematically or con- spicuously in the fighting-line. Mr. Gladstone's horror of bloodguiltiness robbed him of the opportunity of reversing Majuba before the retrocession of the Transvaal. In the -Nile Expedition of 1884-85 be was given the command of the line of communications. And in the last Boer War his generous consent to serve under Lord Kitchener was declined by the latter on the ground that while he would be delighted to serve under Sir Evelyn Wood if he were sent out, he felt lie ought not to have him under his command. The key to this delicacy is supplied by the circumstance mentioned in Sir Evelyn's letter to Sir Coleridge Grove, that in 1883, when he was raising the Egyptian Army as its first Sirdar, Kitchener joined him as a Lieutenant of the Royal Engineers.

On the paternal side, Wood came of no fighting stock. His father was a clergyman; an uncle was that sound equity .lawyer who sat on the Woolsack as Lord Hatherley, and his grandfather was the famous Alderman Matthew Wood, who -championed the hapless Queen Caroline through good report and ill. But his mother's brother, Captain Michell, was an -old salt of the French wars, who had received a sword of honour for gallantry in a boat attack, and had been com- mended in despatches for his conduct at the bombardment of Algiers. In July, 1852, he asked for a day's leave to record his vote at Totnes election. The Port Admiral said somewhat .shortly : " I do not like officers asking for leave often. Pray, when did you have leave last P " " Well, Sir, Lord Collingwood .gave me six weeks' leave in 1806."

It was under Michell on H.M.S. Queen,' one hundred and sixteen guns, that Evelyn Wood began his naval service. A piece of gross injustice at Marlborough, as yet unreformed by Cotton, had made school life intolerable; but there was no -coddling in the Navy, and Michell, who had the reputation of being strict and autocratic with relatives, kept his young _nephew's nose to the grindstone. When, however, he was _selecting the Queen's' quota for the Naval Brigade in the Crimea he contrived that Wood, young though he was, should be chosen. "As I could not go myself," he wrote, "I was .determined that our family should be represented." Sir

• From Midshipman to Field-Marshal. By Evelyn Wood, F.M., O.C.B., 13.C.M.G. 2 vols. With 24 Illustrations and Maps. London: Methuen and Co. [25s. net.] Evelyn has told in The Crimea in 1854 and 1904 his experi- ence with the big guns and their commander in the trenches.

He was recommended for the Victoria Cross for his gallantry in saving a powder magazine from an explosion, but he was badly wounded in the unsuccessful assault on the Redan, and on his recovery he found the Naval Brigade dispersed to its ships, and all opportunity for further distinction departed.

There was great talk in England, whither he had been invalided, of a winter land campaign, and thanks to a letter of Lord Raglan's written a day or two before the latter's death, he obtained a commission without purchase in the 13th Light Dragoons, a transfer of allegiance which proved fatal to his claim on the Cross.

That honour, however, was only deferred. In the autumn of 1857 be got out to India with the 17th Lancers, to find that the back of the Mutiny was broken. But in May of the following year Tantia Topi's swoop on Gwalior rekindled the flames of insurrection in Southern India. During Sir Hugh Rose's second campaign Wood volunteered to serve with the

native cavalry, who were suffering from paucity of officers, and in the action at Sindwaha he charged a body of Sepoys in company with his orderly and a single trooper:— "I had started my horse at the same moment, and reached the five men standing at the corner of the group. They came to the motions of 'Ready—Present' in the methodical manner in which our soldiers were trained, and as I lunged at the nearest man the five fired. I ducked my head to the horse's crest, and the bullets passing over me wounded two horses of the half troop, still a hundred yards off. The Wilyati, throwing down his empty gun, drew a long two-banded sword, which he carried on his back, and I noticed while I was fighting with two of the Sepoys who were trying to bayonet me that the leader had to shift his left hand down and hold the blade in order to draw it out of the scabbard. Your body will be food for the dogs !' he cried ; to which I replied Cease talking, come on !' and drawing away from the group, as he ran at me, with sword uplifted over his head, waited for him with the point of my sword low. The Wilyati cutting too soon missed my leg, and overbalancing fell on his. I backed my horse, and got the point of my sword within a couple of inches of his back when two of the Sepoys, running out of the group, thrusted at me with their bayonets, and I was obliged to bring the point of my sword back to keep them off."

The rest of the passage is too long to quote ; but the Field-

Marshal was always a "tall man of his hands." A similar exploit in the Sirong Jungles brought him the coveted

decoration "For Valour." Nor was he less keen after tiger and big game, and above all, after the fox. When home from Sebastopol in 1855, he got into trouble at his first meet through the bolting of a powerful horse which his wounded arm prevented him from controlling :—

"When I rejoined, the Master was on foot, with the Hunt servants examining casualties, and he reproved me in strong language. Major Arthur Tremayne riding up, pointed to my arm, saying the boy has been severely wounded in the Crimea.' Mr. Farquharson dropped the limp hound he was examining, and coming forward uncovered, with a deep bow, said, 'As many times, Sir, as ever you like.' "

Wood quitted India—as it proved, for ever—in 1861, having commanded in succession Beatson's Horse and the Central India Horse. With a brevet majority from the 17th Lancers, he now obtained by purchase a captaincy in the 73rd Foot ; but the ensuing years were spent mainly in the Staff College at Camberley and on Staff duty at Aldershot and elsewhere. In October, 1871, he became Acting-Major in the 90th Foot ; and was sent in company with some dozen other officers to place the tattered colours of the regiment in Perth Cathedral. During the preliminary visit he had been piqued as to the identity of a distinguished-looking old man, " apparently of no importance," and had learnt that he was "only an old Peninsular soldier " who had fought at Albuera. At the sub.. sequent luncheon in the Council Chamber Major Wood was called upon to return thanks. His response was to give in Napier's words the story of the six thousand unconquerable British infantry whose remnant "stood triumphant on the fatal hill," and " to call on Lieutenant —, of the Fusiliers, to answer for the Army" :—

" He was at the end of the Council Chamber, having taken, literally and metaphorically, a back seat, and rising slowly and with difficulty, for he was more than eighty years of age, he doddered over to the table, and leaning heavily upon it, said simply, 'Let me greit.' "

He had lived in the city of Perth since 1814, and no one had ever asked him anything about the Peninsula; no one had ever spoken to him about the battle of Albuera!

These years brought Evelyn Wood in contact with the

soldier whose star was then most conspicuously in the ascendant. For a capable officer to make the acquaintance of Sir Garnet Wolseley in those days was the surest avenue to success, or, at any rate, to a trial in those fields where glory was to be won;

it was like attracting Bonaparte's attention at Lodi or at

Arcola. In September, 1873, Wood sailed with his new-found patron as a special-service officer for Cape Coast Castle. Here he was entrusted with the raising of a black regiment, and he took a distinguished part in the advance on Koomassie, receiving a wound at the battle of Amoaful.

At the beginning of 1878 fortune sent the 90th to South Africa with Wood as senior Major, and he took a prominent part in the confused and not very glorious fighting of the Gaika Rebellion, being given an independent column of Imperial and Colonial troops. The closing months of the year found Natal and Cetewayo drifting into war, and both in command of native levies at the Inhlobane Mountain ; and as a subordinate on the stricken field of Ulundi Wood covered himself with glory. " You and Buller," wrote Sir Garnet, " have been the bright spots in this miserable war." The following winter Sir Evelyn, as he had now become, was on a visit to Hughenden, and Lord Beaconsfield put him through a searching criticism as to Sir Bartle Frere's procedure with the Zulu nation :-

"' Will you please tell me,' he asked, whether, in your opinion, the war could have been postponed for six months ?" No, sir.' For three months ?" I think possibly.' For one month ? ' Certainly." Well, even a fortnight would have made all the difference to me, for at that time we were negotiating at San Stefano, and the fact of our having to send out more troops

stiffened the Russian terms You are young,' he went on to say. Some day you may be abroad, and let me urge you to carry out not only the letter of the Cabinet's orders. but also the spirit of its instructions.' Two years later, after Majuba, I had to ponder often on this admonition."

"After Majuba" was the great disappointment of Wood's life. He was harassed by ambiguous telegrams from home; he was convinced that the Nek could be taken, that such a victory would have been a gain to all, English, Dutch, Kaffirs, and to humanity generally, "and that it would have been cheaply purchased, even had you lost your generals and a large number of troops." After the lessons of the second Boer War, it is not unpardonable to doubt whether victory was quite so certain, "humanly speaking," as Sir Evelyn premised.

His later services in Egypt and the Soudan are too well known

to require enumeration. Nor have we space to follow him in

the various high commands which he has filled. The present book is an epitome of fifty years of the British Army, of the transformation from the Alma to Paardeberg, of the growth

of the " new model " officer. The dramatis personae begin with the contemporaries of Charles O'Malley, and end with the keen young special-service Captains of to-day. Much pleasant anecdote and stirring adventure, much generous appreciation of the living and the dead, much that is valuable both for the soldier and the historian, is embodied in this unadorned but vivacious narrative.