ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET.* IN the admirably written life of
her father which is now before us, Mrs. Fred Egerton has made every one who did not
know the late Sir Geoffrey Hornby the richer by a real acqui- sition. The portraits given of the Admiral in this volume—
one of them a miniature painted at Naples when the subject was a midshipman there, the others photographs taken at different ages—discover a face unusually strong, clear, and individuaL With such a " speaking " effect do the moral
features of the Admiral form themselves in the mind and imprint themselves there as we turn over the pages of his biography. If he entered and crossed a crowded room we
feel that we should know him ; should divine, before he had spoken, the look on his face and almost even the tone of his voice.
Admiral Hornby was born at Winwick on February 20th, 1825,—a Sunday child. Nursery traditions, as Lord Rose- bery, conveying a platitude in a less flattened phrase, has reminded us, are tiresome, but Geoffrey Hornby was himself from the time he could speak. He is in- troduced to us first as "a sturdy red-headed little boy, very angry because he had been contradicted by his nurse, and vociferating as loudly as he could, I must! I will ! I shall ! ' " He was bent on being a sailor, and on March 8th, 1837, he was entered on board H.M.S. Princess Charlotte' as a first-class volunteer. "In after-life he was wont to say that he and her Majesty entered the public service in the same year." It is characteristic of our time that only once did this representative English sailor "see a shot fired in anger." This was in 1840, during the trouble between the Sultan and Ibrahim Pasha. The Turkish Fleet of thirty-two sail had been handed over to Mehemet Ali by some mysterious combination of traitors. The European Concert, of which we hear so much at present, interfered, and eventually Ibrahim was defeated near Beyrout on October 10th, and later at the taking of St. Jean d'Acre. Hornby, as we say, was never to smell the smoke of battle any more, but his last, like his first, service afloat was "in a fleet which was acting as the ally of the Sultan." In 1842 Hornby went to the Winchester,' which was Admiral Percy's flagship, for the Cape. He had an interesting but not distinguished term of service there, and returned home in 1847. An entry in his father's diary says : —" Left London 8 a.m. to get home in time for breakfast. Found my dear Geoff., whom I had not seen for five years, grown into a very fine young man. James arrived from Oxford in order to see his brother, so we were a large and grateful family party." Geoffrey's character in those days is thus described, and the description holds good of him, probably, at all times of his career :—
"Another of his great attractions was the keen interest he took in everything that came in his way, whether dancing or cricket, sport or science, politics or service matters, so that all about him were stirred to enthusiasm by his keenness. Below all this was a very warm, tender heart, and a wonderful gentleness to any- thing weak and suffering ; hence, probably, his great love for and sympathy with animals. If ever be was disposed to be harsh and intolerant, it was towards those whom he would have 'called fools '—who either did not make enough of the abilities with • Admiral of the Fleet Sir Geoffrey Phipps Rornby: a Biography. By Mn. Fred I {tenon. Edinburgh and London: William Black wood and &M.
which they had been endowed, or were not conscious of their own shortcomings. If such a one were caught tripping, he was certainly not let down easily."
In 1852 Hornby was made a Captain along with his friend Hyde Parker, and in 1853 his disappointment at not being in the Black Sea was tempered to him : be was married on April 27th to Miss Coles. Of his marriage Hornby writes in his diary : "I do believe that I was directed to it, as I had prayed that I might be to the right thing. May God bless her ! and make us a good and useful pair, helpmates to one another, and his true servants." One pauses to marvel whether young men nowadays are merely endowed with a different set of catchwords, or whether our fathers were not really a more settled, serious race than their sons, with another depth of soil !
Admiral Hornby's public career was long, was crowded with events, and withal it was equable ; so that it is impos- sible to follow it in due order from beginning to end. Where. ever he went his letters furnish an interesting commentary on what he saw and felt, and he interests us as certainly when he is merely cruising off Greenock in the Edgar,' as when he meets Victor Emmanuel and the Mikado, makes the first trial of the Devastation,' that pioneer among its kind. or Witnesses the first and abortive movements of Garibaldi in 1862. But, at the moment, it would be affectation not to give all the space at our disposal to Russia and Turkey, and the circumstances in 1878, quorum pars magna fait Geoffrey Hornby. News had reached Athens, where the Mediterranean Fleet under Hornby then was, on June 24th, that the Russians had crossed the Danube, and the Fleet was ordered to Besika, close to the entrance of the Dardanelles. Hornby himself made a flying visit to Constantinople, interesting for the talk which he had there with Prince Reuss, the German Am- bassador. Reuss said, in effect, "Why don't you go to Constantinople to protect the town ? If you are only civil to the Russians—' withoutsaying you doubt the Emperor's word '—you will arrest the Russian march. Russia will be glad enough to go back without touching Constantinople." Events proved the worth of this advice ; but, as Mrs. Egerton asks, was Reuss especially generous and pacific, or did he hope by his advice to embroil Russia and England ? His words were at least justified in the letter. Russia meanwhile advanced, and by October her disciplined and organised army had been too much for the Turks, who, as Monkhtar Pasha said, were "without cavalry, artillery, money, muni- tions, or provisions," while his "officers did not know one day where the provisions for the next were to be found ; " Erzeroum and Kars were taken, and "the Russian grip tightened on Plevna." On February 12th, 1878, the Fleet was ordered to enter the Sea of Marmora, and this was done, with- out any of the interference which, it will be remembered, was apprehended from the Turkish forts. The ships were moved about, being first at Touzla Bay, and later at Ismid, while English diplomacy, as usual, did nothing. At length Sir Geoffrey received "a very satisfactory telegram giving Commerell the authority for which I had asked,—viz., To take any steps he might think necessary, pecuniary or other- wise, in case of an attack by the Russians, to preserve the line at Gallipoli.' This means that if it should be necessary, he may take the Turkish troops at Bulair into the bay—pashas, army, and all—and land some of his own men and his officers to assist them in the defence." The Indian troops came presently to Malta, and Hornby quietly encouraged the Turks to do all they could to "improve their own position without forcing the hand of the English Government by taking any initiative against the Russians." The Grand-Duke had gone home, and Todleben had succeeded him. Of the latter Sir Geoffrey writes to his wife on May 20th, 1878:—" I should like very much to meet Todleben. There is no doubt he is a capital soldier, and, I fancy, less dishonest than most Russians. One thing is certain, he has done what we least wished. He has moved all his camps and stores away from the coast, where we could have reached them, and has deposited them all inland, and very near the springs by which Constan- tinople is supplied with water. The old Duke LWellington] said he always thought Soult the best General he met, because Soult always made the dispositions which were most dis- agreeable to him. Todleben has done the same by us." Hornby found the Turkish officers—the highest officers- " frightfully supine." Osman, whose name has a real as well as a Jingo heroism attached to it, "had never visited the lines;" Tefik, the man who had planned the defence of Plevna, was "put upon a Clothing Committee;" Mehemet Ali, the Commander-in-Chief of the force before Constan- tinople, was withdrawn just when he knew the ground. The gods, in brief, had endued with madness those whom they meant to destroy. On the other hand, the rank-and- file were incomparably good soldiers. "They are sure to fight bravely, as they have always done, and they will receive great help from the few Englishmen who are among them, and from some of their own officers ; but from the pashas, their own proper leaders, they will get nothing. It's a thousand pities we don't take the country thoroughly in hand, muzzle the useless but oppressive pashas and give this brave and honest people the blessing of a good govern- ment, as we do in India." Colonel John Evans, of the 9th Lancers, the heroic " Bashi " of the Mutiny, whose record we shall not be surprised if our new Commander-in- Chief contrives, however tardily, to acknowledge, could supply many instances of how the Turkish rank-and-file would have received such a suggestion. But Hornby's own business in the East recalls us. It may be briefly stated ; he anchored his tour ironclads at Prinkipa or Princes Island, and the Russians stopped three miles from Constantinople. The conduct which produced this result may not be qualified off-hand ; but on one side of it a letter of Lord Charles Beresford's is a more eloquent tribute than the K.C.B. which the Admiral was awarded, or even than Mr. W. H. Smith's benevolent remarks in the House of Commons. "How wonderfully complete your organisation must have been, as if even a midshipman had lost his temper, he might have run the country into war." This was the simple truth, no more and no less; the value of such a service need not be extolled. Lord Charles touched on but one side of Sir Geoffrey Hornby's performance, where our abstract must part company with him, having in its way done enough if it sends its readers to survey the whole of this admirable record.
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