• LORD WANTAGE.*

"LORD WANTAGE i8 a great loss," wrote Miss Florence Nightingale, "but he had been a great gain. And what he has gained for us can never be lost. It is my experience that such men exist only in' England. A man who had everything (to use the common phrase), but who worked as hard, and to the last, as the poorest able man—and all for others—for the common good." It is perfectly true that the class of whom the late Lord Wantage was so remarkable a type are not to be found outside the British Islands. Elsewhere, ambition, the love of gain or power or glory, may force great nobles and multi-millionaires into politics, into diplomacy, into the career of arms. But the full acceptance of the feudal motto Noblesse oblige, the belief that rank and riches bring duties as well as enjoyment in their train, the consecration of wealth and leisure to the public service, are a heritage which we share with no competitor.'

Robert James Lindsay, born in the year of the great Reform Bill, was the youngest child of a cadet of the illustrious Scotch house of that name, his grandfather being a younger brother of the Earl of Balcarres. His father, General James Lindsay, had served with distinction in the Grenadier Guards in the Peninsula and the Low Countries, winding up with a, severe Wound at the disastrous assault of . Bergen op Zoom. By his marriage with the daughter of Sir Coutte Trotter he had four children; the present Sir Coutts Lindsay, founder of the Grosvenor Gallery ; the now Dowager Lady Crawford, who married her cousin, the twenty-fifth Earl; the late Mrs. Holford, mother of the Countess Grey; and the boy who in after years became Lord Wantaie.

After an unhappy experience at a private school; the master of which "was about the only man Lindsay ever thoroughly hated," and joyous days as a Wet Bob at Eton in the house of "Judy" • Dint Waal*, V.C., S.C.B. • a Mostoir. By his Wile, With 8 PortraiEh London: Smith, Elder, and Oo: [1014 84. RAJ • Dtirnford, Liiadsay• wale intended for -Haileybury, Where in the days, before the dawn Of the Competition Wallah the young Indian Civil servants received their training. But his destiny was fixed 'elsewhere. Among the many admirers of his beautiful Sider "May "' was an A.D.C. to Prince Albert, who laid it her feet a commission in the Scots Fusilier Guards. • The heart of the fair lady remained untouched, but "Bob" Lindsay found himself in most unexpected possession of his heart's desire. When • he first put on the Queen's uniform in 1850 the nations seemed to be settling down for the millennium; but the horizon was soon overcast, and in the grey dawn of one February morning in 1854 Lindsay and his regiment marched past their Sovereign on the way

to the East.

As senior subaltern it was Lindsay's lot to carry the Queen's colours at the battle of the Alma. The Guards Brigade formed the reserve "at the winning of the terrible hillside."

The Light Division were immediately in front of them; and when Torrens's brigade fell back in confusion from the redoubt, it rested with the reserve to win the battle. Owing to - imperfect alignment, the Fusilier Guards emerged from the river-bed in advance of the battalions on their right and left,- and met the full storm of the Russian fire. While they were straightening out for the attack, the Welsh Fusiliers, who had lost their Colonel and both their Majors, fell back in con- fusion through their ranks. The order to the latter regiment, "Fusiliers, retire!" was caught up by mistaki3 by an officer of the Fusilier Guards, and for a moment disaster seemed imminent. But through the uproar and confusion the voices of the young colour-bearers, Lindsay and Thistlethwayte, rang out clear and loud. "Fusilier Guards," they cried, advance! Follow the colours ! " Three of the sergeants fell dead, the flagstaff was cut by a bullet, and for a moment Lindsay disappeared beneath the colours ; but he raised them again, and waved them over his head. The Grenadiers and Coldstream reinforced, the brigade swept up the hill and through the redoubt, and the field was won.

The next morning Lindsay was thanked on parade by the Duke of Cambridge, and "his example and energy" at this critical moment made him one of the first recipients of the Victoria Cross. Nor was this the only "act of valour" credited to him in the London Gazette. On the morning of Inkerman his company was just coming off picket when the burst of musketry told them that a serious attack was in progress. Lindsay at once put

his men to the double, and never stopped till they were in the middle of the fray. The fact that they had dis- carded their overcoats and were the only Guards Company that fought in red made them conspicuous. alike to

friend and foe, and at one most trying moment he led a handful of the Fusiliers into the mass of the charging Russians, driving them back and running one of them through tbetody himself.

The horrors of the Crimean winter are graphically described in Lindsay's letters home. The sufferings of he patient, enduring British soldier, due to absolutely preventable causes, were 'never forgotten, and the echo is to be found in his speeches and his Red Cross work., On the arrival at Balaclava of his father's old friend, General Simpson, he was appointed to the Staff ; but a vacancy in the post of Adjutant' to his old battalion brought hint bear to the trenches a month before the fall of Sebastopol :—

"Ho returned from the Crimea," says Lady Wantag,e, "with the well-deserved reputation of a hero, but he also came back as simple and as modest as the day he left home, although Widened and deepened in character by his training in the greatest of all schools. Those .two years spent face- to face . with the sternest realities of life and death left a deep and lasting impress on him. lEfe seldom spoke of these things, for his nature. was one of reserve and restraint, but they set their mark on him, and taught him to view the facts of life in their true proportion, to estimate character, and to pitch his own standard high?'.

If social adulation could- have spoiled Lindsay, he must have succumbed 'daring the years after the Guards came home. His beauty of face and distinguished bearing made him a conspicuous figure in any assemblage; and Mrs. Cameron, the first, and perhaps the greatest, of athateur photographers, -declared that he was nearer than any one she knew to her

ideal of King Arthur. Royal favour wee added to his military, laurels. In the spring of .1858 he was selected with ,tekl'Valletort and Major Teesdale of Kars for the poet• of

Equerry in the. newly formed-household of 'the young Prince of Wales. .." If the humbled mother in the kingdom had picked me out to be with her eon- I should have been flattered,"- he wrote to Mrs. Lindsay; "How much more when the offer comes from the Queen." -

The equerryship was not of long duration. In the winter of 1861-52 Lindsay had spent his leave with his parents in Italy, and haethere made the acquaintance of Lord and Lady Overdone and their only surviving child, a daughter.. The acquaintance had been renewed a year or two later -in the camp at Chobbam Ridges, where the young Guardsman wel- comed to his bell-tent his friends of Rome and Naples. Then came the war, and the return ofthe gallant soldier with the Victoria Cross upon his breast. In July, 1858, Lord Lindsay was able to write to Robert Lindsay's mother : "I do indeed congratulate you on Robin's acceptance by Harriet Loyd."

Lord Overstone, born Mr. Jones Loyd, was one of the most remarkable', as be was one of the wealthiest, men of his time. Inheriting a fine fortune, he had that peculiar genius for business which causes money to breed money. "Thank God," said his old father, "there is no rubbish in Sam's mind." The greatest authority of his day on banking and currency, it was to his advice that Peel's Bank Charter Act was mainly due, and he was no less shrewd and discriminating in bringing together his collection of works of art than in regulating his invest- ments. "A nervous organisation so sensitive as occasionally to produce a timidity of action at variance with the of his opinions" made him shrink, writes his daughter, from the strife of public life and the responsibilities of office. But he was one of those men in whom the faculty of judgment had been developed almost to excess, and he was often called into confidential counsel by Cabinet Ministers on matters of general policy as well as on his own special subjects.

Lindsay's young bride was in every sense of the word an ideal helpmate tea man of his lofty aspirations and active mind and body. For many years the close and constant companion of her father, she now shared eagerly in all her husband's pursuits and work, his pleasures and amusements, from bunting and travel to estate management and politics. She lives to carry on the high tradition, and to fill, IC those spheres which lie within a woman's power, the void created by the death of Lord Wantage. In this modestly written but most interesting hook she has raised a worthy monument to her husband's memory, leaving in its pages the vision of a gracious and sympathetic spirit who still finds the truest happiness to consist in making the best and wisest use of the high opportunities that life has given her.

Within a few months of their marriage Lieutenant-Colonel Loyd Lindsay, as he now became, left the Army, the profes- sion of his choice, in which he had already obtained high distinction and shown great promise. He had innate military aptitude, he was a born leader of men, and united a thorough knowledge of all practical details of soldiering with enlightened views on organisation and on the conditions under which the Army could be made at once a more flexible and a more attractive Service. Needless to say that he flung himself from the first into the Volunteer movement. He was one of that band of distinguished men who guided its early footsteps, and who won for it the tardy recognition and respect of a sceptical War Office. The Volunteer officers of those days had an almost unlimited belief in the capacity of their men, and it is related that Lord Ranelagh, as be watched the cautious steps by which the Versailles troops wormed their way into Paris, declared impatiently that he would undertake to rush the Communist barricades with the London Volunteers.

Loyd Lindsay assumed. the command of the Berkshire Regiment, which he retained until he became Brigadier- General of the Home Counties Brigade in 1888, and during part of the time he was also Colonel of the Royal Artillery Company. His position as a territorial magnate and his prestige as a Crimean veteran gave him an influence which is not so often found nowadays, and ensured him the pick of the county families for the commissioned ranks ; he and his officers formed as it .were a family party united in a common work." And he was never happier than in the annual camps, whether in conjunction with the Regulars at Aldershot, or in the shady parks and on the open. downs of his own Berkshire. He was one of the first to realise and press upon the authorities the value, of mounted .infantry, and the Loyd Lindsay Prize -at-Bialey'still at tests to his interest in the

National Rifle Association, of which he was one of the early Presidents. In 1891 he was made Chairman of the Coin.

mittee appointed to inquire into the terms and conditions of service in the Army, and the Report was largely drafted by his own hands. His persistent advocacy of increased pay,

including the "clear shilling," of elasticity in the terms of service, and of the strengthening of the Reserve was a constant stimulus in the process of Army reform.

But the cause with which he was most prominently identified in the public eye was that of the Red Cross Society, which practically owed its existence to a letter of his in the Times during the first days of the Franco-Prussian War, and which expended more than half-a-million sterling in voluntary contributions during the thirty-one years of his chairmanship. The creation of its machinery in August and September, 1870, was largely due to the clear head and energy of Loyd Lindsay and his wife ; he supervised the work on the battlefields of Eastern and Northern France, and penetrated to the German headquarters at Versailles and into beleaguered Paris itself. He never abated his interest in the Society, and in 1899, with the hand of death visibly upon him, be all but started for South Africa to direct its operations.

As the owner of a great estate in Berkshire, Loyd Lindsay was chosen to represent that county in Parliament in 1865, and he retained his seat against all comers till his elevation to the Peerage. Without any pretension to the tricks of the orator, he was a clear, forcible speaker, with a natural eloquence when strongly moved. He only spoke on subjects where he was well at home, and he won the respect of the House in consequence. During the Eastern crisis he was able to utilise to good effect the knowledge he had acquired at first hand by a recent journey through Servia and Bulgaria on behalf of the Red Cross Society. He had early attracted the attention of Mr. Disraeli, who in 1877 appointed him Financial Secretary to the Treasury. His personal charm, his high birth, his exceptional position in society, were all calculated to appeal to the great Tory chief, who admitted the Loyd Lindsays to a close personal intimacy. Lord Lyndhurst used to say that the most interesting day in his long life was that spent at Mount Vernon with General Washington. Lindsay bad a similar experience in the day and night which he spent alone with his leader at Hughendeu in the autumn of 1880.

The death of Lord Overstone in 1883 placed the Lindsays in the possession of a princely fortune. But ever since their marriage the estate of Lock inge, in Berkshire, had been settled on them, and here they had indeed made the wilderness to blossom as the rose. The creation of a stately country house full of artistic treasures was the least of their achievements. The love of the land was in Lindsay's blood; he was one of the greatest farmers of his day, a mighty breeder of Shire horses and pedigree cattle, ever ready to adopt the latest improvements in agricultural implements or in methods of cultivation. He understood the full significance of the agricultural depression; he reefed topsails before the storm and weathered it where weaker men went down.

It is impossible even to glance at the innumerable activities of those busy years, or at the society which he and his wife gathered round them in London and at Lockinge,— a society in which the only unwelcome guest was the idler and the trifler. One little-suspected side of Lindsay's character is described in the chapter which tells how he kept the Electric Supply Corporation on its legs by pouring out his own money like water rather than see the shareholders deprived of their property. In 1881 he was made a K.C.B.; in 1885 he was created Lord Wantage. He died in June, 1901, having "fought for nearly four years a gallant battle for the mastery of will over bodily weakness." So ended a most full, a most happy, a most useful life. If more of our great territorial magnates had the will and the power to follow in the steps of Lord Wantage, there would be small misgiving for the future of England.