Tracks of a Rolling Stone | Page 5

than Lord Anglesey used to come to Holkham
every year, a great favourite of my father's; this was Lord Lynedoch.
My earliest recollections of him owe their vividness to three accidents -
in the logical sense of the term: his silky milk-white locks, his Spanish
servant who wore earrings - and whom, by the way, I used to confound
with Courvoisier, often there at the same time with his master Lord
William Russell, for the murder of whom he was hanged, as all the
world knows - and his fox terrier Nettle, which, as a special favour, I

was allowed to feed with Abernethy biscuits.
He was at Longford, my present home, on a visit to my father in 1835,
when, one evening after dinner, the two old gentlemen - no one else
being present but myself - sitting in armchairs over the fire, finishing
their bottle of port, Lord Lynedoch told the wonderful story of his
adventures during the siege of Mantua by the French, in 1796. For
brevity's sake, it were better perhaps to give the outline in the words of
Alison. 'It was high time the Imperialists should advance to the relief of
this fortress, which was now reduced to the last extremity from want of
provisions. At a council of war held in the end of December, it was
decided that it was indispensable that instant intelligence should be sent
to Alvinzi of their desperate situation. An English officer, attached to
the garrison, volunteered to perform the perilous mission, which he
executed with equal courage and success. He set out, disguised as a
peasant, from Mantua on December 29, at nightfall in the midst of a
deep fall of snow, eluded the vigilance of the French patrols, and, after
surmounting a thousand hardships and dangers, arrived at the
headquarters of Alvinzi, at Bassano, on January 4, the day after the
conferences at Vicenza were broken up.
'Great destinies awaited this enterprising officer. He was Colonel
Graham, afterwards victor at Barrosa, and the first British general who
planted the English standard on the soil of France.'
This bare skeleton of the event was endued 'with sense and soul' by the
narrator. The 'hardships and dangers' thrilled one's young nerves. Their
two salient features were ice perils, and the no less imminent one of
being captured and shot as a spy. The crossing of the rivers stands out
prominently in my recollection. All the bridges were of course guarded,
and he had two at least within the enemy's lines to get over - those of
the Mincio and of the Adige. Probably the lagunes surrounding the
invested fortress would be his worst difficulty. The Adige he described
as beset with a two-fold risk - the avoidance of the bridges, which
courted suspicion, and the thin ice and only partially frozen river,
which had to be traversed in the dark. The vigour, the zest with which
the wiry veteran 'shoulder'd his crutch and show'd how fields were won'
was not a thing to be forgotten.
Lord Lynedoch lived to a great age, and it was from his house at
Cardington, in Bedfordshire, that my brother Leicester married his first

wife, Miss Whitbread, in 1843. That was the last time I saw him.
Perhaps the following is not out of place here, although it is connected
with more serious thoughts:
Though neither my father nor my mother were more pious than their
neighbours, we children were brought up religiously. From infancy we
were taught to repeat night and morning the Lord's Prayer, and invoke
blessings on our parents. It was instilled into us by constant repetition
that God did not love naughty children - our naughtiness being for the
most part the original sin of disobedience, rooted in the love of
forbidden fruit in all its forms of allurement. Moses himself could not
have believed more faithfully in the direct and immediate intervention
of an avenging God. The pain in one's stomach incident to unripe
gooseberries, no less than the consequent black dose, or the personal
chastisement of a responsible and apprehensive nurse, were but the just
visitations of an offended Deity.
Whether my religious proclivities were more pronounced than those of
other children I cannot say, but certainly, as a child, I was in the habit
of appealing to Omnipotence to gratify every ardent desire.
There were peacocks in the pleasure grounds at Holkham, and I had an
aesthetic love for their gorgeous plumes. As I hunted under and
amongst the shrubs, I secretly prayed that my search might be rewarded.
Nor had I a doubt, when successful, that my prayer had been granted by
a beneficent Providence.
Let no one smile at this infantine credulity, for is it not the basis of that
religious trust which helps so many of