The Red Book of Heroes
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[Illustration: "'Go back,' he said."]
THE RED BOOK OF HEROES
BY MRS. LANG
EDITED BY ANDREW LANG
[Illustration]
WITH 8 COLOURED PLATES AND NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
BY A. WALLIS MILLS
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1909
All rights reserved
PREFACE
'Life is not all beer and skittles,' said a reflective sportsman, and
all books are not fairy tales. In an imperfect state of existence, 'the
peety of it is that we cannot have all things as we would like them.'
Undeniably we would like all books to be fairy tales or novels, and at
present most of them are. But there is another side to things, and we
must face it. '"Life is real, life is earnest," as Tennyson tells us,'
said an orator to whom I listened lately, and though Longfellow, not
Tennyson, wrote the famous line quoted by the earnest speaker, yet there
is a good deal of truth in it. The word 'earnest,' like many other good
words, has been overdone. It is common to sneer at 'earnest workers,'
yet where would we be without them, especially in our climate?
In a Polynesian island, where the skies for ever smile, and the blacks
for ever dance, earnestness is superfluous. The bread-fruit tree
delivers its rolls punctually every morning, strawberries or other
fruits, as nice, spring beneath the feet of the dancers; the cavern in
the forest provides a roof and shelter from the sun; the sea supplies a
swimming-bath, and man, in time of peace, has only to enjoy himself, eat
and drink, laugh and love, sing songs and tell fairy tales. His drapery
is woven of fragrant flowers, nobody is poor and anxious about food,
nobody is rich and afraid of losing his money, nobody needs to think of
helping others; he has only to put forth his hand, or draw his bow or
swing his fishing-rod, and help himself. To be sure, in time of war, man
has just got to be earnest, and think out plans for catching and
spearing his enemies, and drill his troops and improve his weapons, in
fact to do some work, or have his throat cut, and be put in the oven and
eaten. Thus it is really hard for the most fortunate people to avoid
being earnest now and then.
The people whose stories are told in this book were very different from
each other in many ways. The child abbess, Mere Angelique, ruling her
convent, and at war with naughty abbesses who hated being earnest, does
not at once remind us of Hannibal. The great Montrose, with his poems
and his scented love-locks, his devotion to his cause, his chivalry, his
death, to which he went gaily clad like a bridegroom to meet his bride,
does not seem a companion for Palissy the Potter, all black and shrunk
and wrinkled, and bowed over his furnaces. It is a long way from gentle
Miss Nightingale, tending wounded dogs when a child, and wounded
soldiers when a woman, to Charles Gordon playing wild tricks at school,
leading a Chinese army, watching alone at Khartoum, in a circle of cruel
foes, for the sight of the British colours, and the sounds of the
bagpipes that never met his eyes and ears.
But these people, and all the others whose stories are told, had this in
common, that they were in earnest, though we may be sure that they did
not go about with talk of earnestness for ever in their mouths. It came
natural to them, they could not help it, they liked it, their hearts
were set on two things: to do their very best, and to keep their honour.
The Constant Prince suffered hunger and cold and long imprisonment all
'to keep the bird in his bosom,' as the old Cavalier said, to be true to
honour. 'I will carry with me honour and fidelity to the grave,' said
Montrose; and he kept his word, though his enemies gave him no grave,
but placed his head and limbs on spikes in various towns of his country.
But now his grave, in St. Giles's Church in Edinburgh, is the most
beautiful and honourable in Scotland, adorned with his stainless
scutcheon, and with those of Napiers and Grahams, his kindred and his
friends.
"The grave of March, the grave of Gwythar,
The grave of Gugann Gleddyvrudd,
A mystery to the world, the grave of Arthur,"
says the old Welsh poem, and unknown as the grave of Arthur is the grave
of Gordon. The desert wind may mingle his dust with the sand, the Nile
may sweep it to the sea, as the Seine bore the ashes of that martyr of
honour, the Maid of France. 'The whole earth is brave men's common
sepulchre,' says the Greek, their tombs may be without mark or monument,
but 'honour comes a pilgrim grey' to the sacred places where men cannot
go in pilgrimage.
We see what honour they had of men; the head of Sir Thomas More, the
head of Montrose, were exposed to mockery in public places, the ashes of
Jeanne d'Arc were thrown into the river, Gordon's body lies unknown; but
their honour is eternal in human memory. It was really for honour that
Sir Thomas More suffered; it was not possible for him to live without
the knowledge that his shield was stainless. It was for honour rather
than for religion that the child Angelique Arnauld gave up amusement and
pleasure, and everything that is dear to a girl, young, witty,
beautiful, and gay, and put on the dress of a nun. Later she worked for
the sake of duty and religion, but honour was her first mistress, and
she could not go back from her plighted word.
These people were born to be what they were, to be examples to all of us
that are less nobly born and like a quiet, easy, merry life. We cannot
all be Gordons, Montroses, Angeliques, but if we read about them and
think about them, a touch of their nobility may come to us, and surely
our honour is in our own keeping. We may try never to do a mean thing,
or a doubtful thing, a thing that Gordon would not have been tempted to
do, though we are tempted, more tempted as we grow older and see what
the world does than are the young. I think honour is the dearest and the
most natural of virtues; in their own ways none are more loyal than boys
and girls. Later we may forget that no pleasure, no happiness, not even
the love that seems the strongest force in our natures, is worth having
at the expense of a stain on the white rose of honour. Had she been a
few years older, Angelique might have failed to keep the word which was
extorted from her as a child, but, being young, she kept it the more
easily. What we have to do is to try to be young always in this matter,
to be our natural selves and unspotted from the world. Certainly some
people are a little better, and so far a little happier, because they
have seen the light from Charles Gordon's yet living head, and been half
heart-broken by his end, so glorious to himself, so inglorious to his
fellow countrymen. For his dear sake we may all do a little, sacrifice a
little, to help the Homes for Boys which have been built to his memory,
and to help the poor boys whom he used to help, making himself poor, and
giving his time for them.
We read in the book, 'A Child's Hero,' how the brave Havelock won the
heart of a little child who never saw him. She heard the words 'Havelock
is dead,' and laid her head against the wall and burst into tears. Other
children may feel the same devotion for these splendid people, for
Hannibal, so far away from us, giving his whole heart and whole genius
and his life for his wretched country, for men who would not understand,
who would not aid him:
"Their old art statesmen plied,
And paltered, and evaded, and denied"
till their country was vanquished. Bad as that country was, for
Hannibal's own sake we are all on the side of Hannibal, as we are on the
side of Hector of Troy. 'Well know I this in heart and soul,' said
Hector to his wife, when she would have kept him out of the battle,
'that the day is coming when holy Ilios shall perish, and Priam, and the
people of Priam of the ashen spear, my father with my mother, and my
brothers, many and brave, dying in the dust at the hands of our foemen;
but most I sorrow for thee, my wife, when they lead thee weeping away, a
slave to weave at thy master's loom and bear water from thy master's
well, and the passers-by, as they see thee weeping, shall say, "This was
the wife of Hector, the foremost in fight of the men of Troy, when they
fought for their city." But may I be dead, and the earth be mounded
above me, ere I hear thy cry and the tale of thy captivity.'
So he went back into the battle, and never again saw his wife and child.
It was in the spirit of Hector that Hannibal planned and fought and
toiled, till as an old man he bit on the poison ring, and died, and was
free from the Roman captivity that threatened him.
Honour and courage were the masters of the men and women whose stories
are told in this book, but of them all none dared a risk so horrible as
brave Father Damien in the Isle of Lepers. For his adventure among
dreadful people who must give him their own dreadful disease, a Montrose
or a Havelock might have had little heart, for his task had none of the
excitement and glitter of the soldier's duty in war. But they are all,
these men and women, good to live with, good to know, good to go with,
weary camp followers as we are of the Noble Army of Martyrs, and
unworthy of a single leaf from the laurel crown.
A. Lang.
CONTENTS
PAGE
The Lady-in-Chief 1
Prisoners and Captives 25
Hannibal 43
The Apostle of the Lepers 95
The Constant Prince 109
The Marquis of Montrose 135
A Child's Hero 169
Conscience or King 222
The Little Abbess 246
Gordon 281
The Crime of Theodosius 334
Palissy the Potter 352
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
COLOURED PLATES
(Engraved and Printed by Andre & Sleigh, Ltd., Bushey.)
'Go back!' he said [See page 350] Frontispiece
to face p.
Fifteen thousand Romans fell that day 74
Father Damien went out and sat in a lonely
place by the sea 106
A great army of Irishmen have swooped down
on the Atholl country 150
The place was swarming with rats 208
She took all her nuns for a solemn walk 258
They saw a man in uniform shining with gold
flying towards them 316
A jar of water in the figure's right hand
emptied itself on his head 364
FULL-PAGE PLATES
to face p.
Roger could hardly believe his eyes 6
She came forth with a golden circlet round
her head 44
Hannibal was determined not to stir until
the elephants were safely over 58
Under the eyes of the army the combat began 68
In vain Guedelha implored him to wait till
the fatal hour was past 114
About thirty or forty of our honestest
women did fall a railing on Mr. William
Annan 140
'You will soon have no caste left yourself' 194
Often ... he had felt that a terrible death
was very near 218
Sir Thomas sat silent 232
'What now, Mother Eve?' he answered 240
'You are mistaking me for somebody else' 248
The archers set a ladder against the wall,
which the lady instantly threw down 274
Gordon found time to attend to an old dying
woman 310
A shot ended his life 330
'Do not delay an instant,' he cried, 'or it
will be too late' 338
'Let him die!' he said 344
The bright-eyed lizards he especially loved 354
ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
PAGE
'Tell me what you want to say, and I will
say it' 17
They sprang on the food like wolves 28
He brushed down the walls without hindrance
from anyone 41
All three were apt pupils 51
The Gauls poured out of their camp shouting
and screaming with delight 56
He found right in front of him a huge
precipice 64
The whole four thousand climbed the ridge 77
'Let me release the Romans from their
anxiety,' he said 93
He found the Prince lying unconscious on
the ground 130
For two days they sought in vain for a road
to take them to Caithness 162
He managed to crawl over the floor 179
The Captain obligingly did as he was asked 183
Suddenly the table began to rock 189
In another moment he would have been trampled
under the feet of the Afghan cavalry 191
Not one of their movements passed unnoticed
by her 201
A tired horseman rode into camp 204
The young Aide-de-camp did not waste time in
arguing 213
Erasmus was astonished to notice More present
Prince Henry with a roll 228
'Go away! you have no business here.' 253
She fell fainting to the ground 266
He told them stories from English history 303
He cleaned his gun while the men stood by and
stared 314
Fancy poor Madame Palissy's feelings 359
THE LADY-IN-CHIEF
Everybody nowadays is so used to seeing in the streets nurses wearing
long floating cloaks of different colours, blue, brown, grey, and the
rest, and to having them with us when we are ill, that it is difficult
to imagine a time when there were no such people. In the stories that
were written even fifty years ago you will soon find out what sort of
women they were who called themselves 'nurses.' Any kind of person seems
to have been thought good enough to look after a sick man; it was not a
matter which needed a special talent or teaching, and no girl would have
dreamed of nursing anybody outside her own home, still less of giving up
her life to looking after the sick. It was merely work, it was thought,
for _old_ women, and so, at the moment when the patient needed most
urgently some one young and strong and active about him, who could lift
him from one side of the bed to the other, or keep awake all night to
give him his medicine or to see that his fire did not go out, he was
left to a fat, sleepy, often drunken old body, who never cared if he
lived or died, so that _she_ was not disturbed.
* * * * *
The woman who was to change all this was born in Florence in the year
1820 and called after that city. Her father, Mr. Nightingale, seems to
have been fond of giving his family place-names, for Florence's sister,
about a year older than herself, had the old title of Naples tacked on
to 'Frances,' and in after life was always spoken of as 'Parthy' or
'Parthenope.' By and by a young cousin of these little girls would be
named 'Athena,' after the town Athens, and then the fashion grew, and I
have heard of twins called 'Inkerman' and 'Balaclava,' and of an
'Elsinora,' while we all know several 'Almas,' and may even have met a
lady who bears the name of the highest mountain in the world--of course
you can all guess what _that_ is?
* * * * *
Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale did not stay very long in Italy after
Florence's birth. They grew tired of living abroad, and wanted to get
back to their old home among the hills and streams of Derbyshire. Here,
at Lea hall, Florence's father could pass whole days happily with his
books and the beautiful things he had collected in his travels; but he
looked well after the people in the village, and insisted that the
children should be sent to a little school, where they learned how to
read and write and count for twopence a week. If the poor villagers were
ill or unhappy, his wife used to visit them, and help them with advice
as well as with money, and we may be quite sure that her little
daughters often went with her on her rounds.
So the early years of Florence's childhood passed away amidst the
flowery fields and bare hills that overlooked the beautiful river
Derwent. The village, built of stone like so many in the North Country,
lay far below, and on Sundays the two little girls, dressed in their
best tippets and bonnets, used to walk with their father and mother
across the meadows to the tiny church at Dethick. Here nearly two
hundred and fifty years ago one Anthony Babington knelt in prayer,
though his thoughts often wandered to the beautiful Scottish queen, shut
up by order of Elizabeth in Wingfield manor, only a few miles away. Of
course Parthy and Florence knew all about him, and their greatest treat
was a visit to his house, where they could see in the kitchen a
trap-door leading to a large secret chamber, in which a conspirator
might live for weeks without being found out. A great deal of the house
had been pulled down or allowed to fall into decay, but the bailiff, who
lived in the rest, was always glad to see them, and would take them to
all kinds of delightful places, and up little dark narrow winding
stairs, at the end of which you pushed up another trap-door and found
yourself in your bedroom. What a fascinating way of getting there, and
how very, very silly people are now to have wide staircases and straight
passages and stupid doors, which you _know_ will open, instead of never
being sure if the trap-door had not stuck, or some enemy had not placed
a heavy piece of furniture upon it!
* * * * *
But much as the Nightingales, big and little, loved Lea hall, it was
very bare and cold in winter, and Florence's father determined to build
a new house in a more sheltered place. Lea Hurst, as it was called, was
only a mile from the hall, and, like it, overlooked the Derwent; but
here the hills were wooded and kept out the bitter winds which had
howled and wailed through the old house. Mr. Nightingale was very
careful that all should be done exactly as he wished, therefore it took
some time to finish, and _then_ the family could not move in till the
paint and plaster were dry, so that Florence was between five and six
when at last they took possession.
No doubt the two little girls had much to say about the laying out of
the terraced gardens, and insisted on having some beds of their own, to
plant with their favourite flowers. They were greatly pleased, too, at
discovering a very old chapel in the middle of the new house, and very
likely they told each other many stories of what went on there. Then
there was a summer-house, where they could have tea, and if you went
through the woods in May, and could make up your mind to pass the
sheets of blue hyacinths without stopping to pick them till you were too
tired to go further, you came out upon a splendid avenue, with a view of
the hills for miles round. This was the walk which Florence loved best.
* * * * *
It seems, however, that Mr. Nightingale could not have thought Lea Hurst
as pleasant as he expected it to be, for a few months later he bought a
place called Embley, near the beautiful abbey of Romsey, in Hampshire.
Here they all moved every autumn as soon as the trees at Lea Hurst grew
bare; and when the young leaves were showing like a green mist, they
began the long drive back again, sometimes stopping in London on the
way, to see some pictures and hear some music, and have some talk with
many interesting people whom Mr. Nightingale knew. And when they got
home at last, how delightful it was to ride round to the old friends in
the farms and cottages, and listen to tales of all that had happened
during the little girls' absence, and in their turn to tell of the
wonderful sights they had witnessed, and the adventures that had
befallen them! Best of all were the visits to the families of puppies
and kittens which had been born during their absence, for Florence
especially loved animals, and was often sent for by the neighbours to
cure them when they were ill. The older and uglier they were, the
sorrier Florence was for them, and she would often steal out with sugar
or apples or carrots in her pocket for some elderly beast which was
ending its days quietly in the fields, stopping in the woods on the way
to play with a squirrel or a baby rabbit. The game was perhaps a little
one-sided, but what did that matter? As the poet Cowper says,
Wild, timid hares were drawn from woods
To share her home caresses,
And looked up to her human eyes
With sylvan tendernesses.
Beasts and birds were Florence's dear friends, but dearest of all were
her ponies.
While she was at Embley, the vicar, who was very fond of her, used often
to take her out riding when he went on his rounds to see his people.
Florence enjoyed this very much; she knew them all well, and never
forgot the names of the children or their birthdays. Her mother would
often give her something nice to carry to the sick ones, and when the
flowers came out, Florence used to gather some for her special
favourites, out of her own garden.
* * * * *
One day when she and the vicar were cantering across the downs, they saw
an old shepherd, who was a great friend of both of them, attempting to
drive his flock without the help of his collie, Cap, who was nowhere to
be seen.
'What has become of Cap?' they asked, and the shepherd told them that
some cruel boys had broken the dog's leg with a stone, and he was in
such pain that his master thought it would be more merciful to put an
end to him.
Florence was hot with indignation. 'Perhaps _I_ can help him,' she said.
'At any rate, he will like me to sit with him; he must feel so lonely.
Where is he?'
'In my hut out there,' answered the shepherd; 'but I'm afraid it's
little good you or anyone else can do him.'
But Florence did not hear, for she was galloping as fast as she could to
the place where Cap was lying.
'Poor old fellow, poor old Cap,' whispered she, kneeling down and
stroking his head, and Cap looked up to thank her.
'Let me examine his leg,' said the vicar, who had entered behind her;
'he does not hold it as if it were broken. No, I am sure it is not,' he
added after a close inspection. 'Cheer up, we will soon have him well
again.'
Florence's eyes brightened.
'What can I do?' she asked eagerly.
'Oh, make him a compress. That will take down the swelling,' replied the
vicar, who was a little of a doctor himself.
'A compress?' repeated Florence, wrinkling her forehead. 'But I never
heard of one. I don't know how.'
'Light a fire and boil some water, and then wring out some cloths in it,
and put them on Cap's paw. Here is a boy who will make a fire for you,'
he added, beckoning to a lad who was passing outside.
While the fire was kindling, Florence looked about to find the cloths.
But the shepherd did not seem to have any, and her own little
handkerchief would not do any good. Still, cloths she must have, and
those who knew Miss Nightingale in after years would tell you that when
she _wanted_ things she _got_ them.
'Ah, there is Roger's smock,' she exclaimed with delight. 'Oh, _do_ tear
it up for me; mamma will be sure to give me another for him.' So the
vicar tore the strong linen into strips, and Florence wrung them out in
the boiling water, as he had told her.
'Now, Cap, be a good dog; you know I only want to help you,' she cried,
and Cap seemed as if he _did_ know; for though a little tremble ran
through his body as the hot cloth touched him, he never tried to bite,
nor even groaned with the pain, as many children would have done. By and
by the lump was certainly smaller, and the look of pain in Cap's eyes
began to disappear.
Suddenly she glanced up at the vicar, who had been all this time
watching her.
'I can't leave Cap till he is _quite_ better,' she said. 'Can you get
that boy to go to Embley and tell them where I am? Then they won't be
frightened.' So the boy was sent, and Florence sat on till the setting
sun shot long golden darts into the hut.
Then she heard the shepherd fumbling with the latch, as if he could not
see to open it; and perhaps he couldn't, for in his hand he held the
rope which was to put an end to all Cap's sorrows. But Cap did not know
the meaning of the rope and only saw his old master. He gave a little
bark of greeting and struggled on to his three sound legs, wagging his
tail in welcome.