The Story of Baden-Powell | Page 5

dinner-party at the Baden-Powells', when Ste was not yet three
years old, the guests being all learned and distinguished men, such as
Buckle and Whewell, Thackeray was handing Mrs. Baden-Powell into
dinner when he noticed that one of the little children was following
behind. This was the future scout of the British Army, and the young
gentleman, according to his wont, was just scrambling into a chair
when Thackeray, fumbling in his pocket, produced a new shilling, and
said in his caressing voice, "There, little one, you shall have this
shilling if you are good and run away." Ste quietly looked up at his
mother, and not until she told him that he might go up to the nursery
did he shift his ground. But he carried that shilling with him, and now it
is one of his most treasured possessions.
While he was doing lessons at home Baden-Powell gave evidence of
his bent. He was fond of geography, and few things pleased him more
than the order to draw a map. His maps, by the way, were always
drawn with his left hand, and were astonishingly neat and accurate.
Then in his spare hours, with scissors and paper, he would cut out
striking resemblances of the most noted animals in the Zoo, and
these--elephants and tigers, monkeys and bears--were "hung" by his
admiring brothers with due honour on a large looking-glass in the
schoolroom, there to amuse the juvenile friends of the family. He had
the knack, too, of closely imitating the various sounds made by animals
and birds, and one of his infant jokes was to steal behind a person's
chair and suddenly break forth "with conspuent doodle-doo." And,

again, when he was a little older, living at Rosenheim, I.W., there was
surely the future defender of Mafeking in the little chap in brown
Holland on the sands of Bonchurch digging scientific trenches with
wooden spade, and demonstrating to his governess the impregnability
of his sand fortress. With his sister and brother, little Ste was once out
with this governess on a country ramble near Tunbridge Wells, when
the governess discovered that she had walked farther than she intended
and was in strange country. Ste was elated. But enquiry elicited the
information that the party was not lost, and that they could return home
by a shorter route; then was Baden-Powell miserable and cast down. He
protested that he wanted the party to get lost so that he could find the
way home for them.
[Illustration: B.-P. reflecting on the After-deck of the Pearl]
A favourite holiday haunt was Tunbridge Wells, where Ste's
grandfather owned a spacious and a fair demesne. Here, with miles of
wood for exploration, brothers and sister were in their element. They
would climb into the highest chestnut trees in the woods, taking up
hampers and hay for the construction of nests, and at that exalted
altitude play all manner of wild and romantic games. And yet they
would also take up books into those cool branches and do lessons! Of
Ste at this period his governess remarks, "It gave him great pleasure to
enter a new rule in arithmetic"--an illuminative sentence, in which one
sees the governess as well as the child.
It was here in Tunbridge Wells that Ste, with little Baden, now
Guardsman and inventor of war-kites, spent laborious days in
constructing a really serviceable dam in the river, digging there a deep
hole in order to make themselves a luxurious bathing-place. From early
infancy they had been taught to do for themselves. Master B.-P. could
dress and undress himself before he was three years old, and at three he
could speak tolerably well in German as well as English. The children
were encouraged to get knowledge as some other children are
encouraged to get bumptiousness; their parents delighted, and showed
the children their delight, whenever a child did something sensible and
clever; there was no unintelligent admiration of precocity.

The boys dug their own gardens, and from five years of age each child
kept a most careful book of his expenditure by double entry. Their
pennies went chiefly in books and presents, and omnibuses for long
excursions out of London. There was no prohibition as to sweets, but
never a penny of these earnest young double-entry bookkeepers found
its way to the tuck-shop. However, a joke among the brothers was the
following constant entry in the book of one of them: "Orange, £0:0:1."
But no chaff was strong enough to correct that healthy appetite, and
"Orange, £0:0:1" went on through the happy years.
At eleven years of age, Ste was packed off to a small private school,
and here he distinguished himself in the same manner, though of course
on a smaller scale, as Mr. Gladstone did at Eton. His moral courage,