The Story of Baden-Powell | Page 4

Frank Baden-Powell, who took Honours at
Balliol, and is a barrister of the Inner Temple, as well as a noted painter,
and Baden F.S. Baden-Powell, Major in the Scots Guards, whose
war-kites at Modder River enabled Marconi's staff to establish wireless
telegraphy across a hundred miles of South Africa. Among this family
of young lions there was one little girl, Agnes, as keen about natural
history as the rest, to whom her brothers were as earnestly and as
passionately devoted as ever was Don Quixote to his Dulcinea.
And now to little Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell in
knickerbockers and Holland jerkin.
CHAPTER III
HOME LIFE AND HOLIDAYS
Baden-Powell is now called either "B.-P." or "Bathing Towel." To his
family he has always been Ste. This name, a contraction of Stephenson,
was found for him by his big brothers in the days when home-made
soldiers and birds'-nesting were life's main business.
Ste, who we must record was born at 6 Stanhope Street, London, on the
22nd February 1857, and had the engineer Robert Stephenson for one
of his godfathers, was educated at home until he was eleven years of
age. His parents had a great dread of overtaxing young brains, and
lessons were never made irksome to any of their children. Ste learned
to straddle a pony very soon after he had mastered the difficult business

of walking, and with long hours spent in the open in the lively
companionship of his brothers he grew up in vigorous and healthy
boyhood. He had an enquiring mind, and never seemed to look upon
lessons as a "fag." He was always "wanting to know," and there was
almost as much eagerness on the little chap's part to be able to decline
mensa and conjugate amo as he evinced in competing with his brothers
in their sports and games. Such was his gentle, placid nature that the
tutor who looked after his work loved to talk with people about his
charge, never tiring in reciting little instances of the boy's delicacy of
feeling and his intense eagerness to learn. Mark well, Smith minor, that
this is no little Paul Dombey of whom you are reading. B.-P., so far as I
can discover, never heard in the tumbling of foam-crested waves on the
level sands of the sea-shore any mysterious message to his individual
soul from the spirit world. He was full of fun, full of the joy of life, and
as "keen as mustard" on adventures of any kind. His fun, however, was
of the innocent order. He was not like Cruel Frederick in Struwwelpeter,
who (the little beast!) delighted in tearing the wings from flies and
hurling brickbats at starving cats. Baden-Powell would have kicked
Master Frederick rather severely if he had caught him at any such mean
business. No, his fun took quite another form. He was fond of what you
call "playing the fool," singing comic songs, learning to play tunes on
every odd musical instrument he could find, and delighting his brothers
by "taking off" people of their acquaintance. B.-P., you must know, is a
first-rate actor, and in his boyhood it was one of his chief delights to
write plays for himself and his brothers to act. Some of these plays
were moderately clever, but all of them contained a screamingly funny
part for the low comedian of the company--our friend Ste himself.
Another of his amusements at this time was sketching. He got into the
habit of holding his pencil or paint-brush in the left hand, and his
watchful mother was troubled in her mind as to the wisdom of allowing
a possible Botticelli to play pranks with his art. One day Ruskin called
when this doubt was in her mind, and to him the question was
propounded. Without a moment's reflection he counselled the mother to
let the boy draw in whatsoever manner he listed, and together they went
to find the young artist at his work. In the play-room they discovered
one brother reading hard at astronomy, and Ste with a penny box of

water-colours painting for dear life--with his left hand.
"Now I'll show you how to paint a picture," said Ruskin, and with a
piece of paper on the top of his hat and B.-P.'s penny box of paints at
his side he set to work, taking a little china vase for a model. Both the
vase and the picture are now in the drawing-room of Mrs.
Baden-Powell's London house. The result of Ruskin's advice was that
B.-P. continued to draw with his left hand, and now in making sketches
he finds no difficulty in drawing with his left hand and shading in at the
same time with his right.
There is an incident of his childhood which I must not forget to record.
At a