Two Famous War Correspondents

( Originally Published 1912 )

I USED to see Archibald Forbes at the apartment which, before his second marriage, he occupied it Mandeville Mansions, Mandeville Place. He was very voluble and very naïve; he poured out his experiences and his ideas with a boyish confidence. It was not an irritating egotism by any means; on the contrary, it made one a participant in the exhilaration which the achievements recounted fully justified. A man sometimes glorifies himself in secret and frets his soul out in doing so; Forbes flung his chronicles out triumphantly, and much as you might wonder and admire, he, like Ulysses, wondered and admired more. What if he boasted, he who had done so much to boast about? As we listened to him, interest pinned us to his story, and it was only afterward in review, when we were cool and at a distance, that we could cavil. His egotism was too young and too compelling to make any effort to dissemble or stultify itself, and it acquired the charm of honesty, and simplicity.

"Sit down! Sit down! You'll have a glass of sherry, or port?"

The decanters and glasses were produced, and he helped himself before he launched into his discourse, which so enthralled him that he failed to remember he had not helped the visitor until two hours later he showed him to the door.

He was a splendid fellow to look upon; martial in bearing; spare of flesh, broad at the shoulders; narrow in the hips; round-headed; clean-shaven, save for a crisp moustache, and clear-eyed — a soldier in every feature. Physically he would have been equal to the part of Blackmore's John Ridd. But in the Mandeville Mansion days he was broken in health from exposure and over-exertion, though in one of the rooms he still kept a variety of kits suitable and ready for any sudden call to the field that might come to him.

I asked him what he thought were the essentials of his profession.

"There is only one thing for a new man to do," said he, "or for any man, and that is to go at once to the front and to place himself where the danger is the greatest and the fire is the hottest, and to help the wounded as much as possible. It is wonderful how quickly the way a correspondent has behaved is reported through the army; and if he shows courage he is at once ingratiated with the officers and men; while if he is timid and thinks more of his carcass than his newspaper, he is despised and every obstacle against getting news is put in his way."

Then I asked him as to his feeling, under fire. "I al-ways have a desire to make myself as small as possible, and in order to keep my thoughts off the danger I write my despatches in full on the field, not making mere notes to be revised and elaborated afterward, but thinking out the most appropriate words and putting them together with as much literary finish as I am capable of. In a retreat, especially, when you hear shells coming after you, without seeing them, this desire to dwarf one's self or to hide in any hole, increases."

As to his "narrowest escape" he wrote to me: "All narrow escapes are sudden and abrupt, and have neither frontispiece nor tail-piece. It is a spasm and over with it for the time. On the Shipka Pass I was being shot at without intermission for one whole day, it is true; but when throughout that period could one put one's finger on the actual moment of narrowest escape throughout a day that was all narrowest escape and yet monotonous for want of any relief? I have cited you the most telling instances I can remember, of a close call lasting far longer than a momentary period, and accompanied by full and alert consciousness of every feature of the incident as it developed, until unconsciousness supervened."

His letters like his talk were succinct, and as a specimen I give one in reference to an article I proposed to him on "Lincoln as a Strategist."

Clarence Terrace, Regent's Park, N. W., 22nd March, 1892.

DEAR MR. RIDEING:

Until within a few days ago, ever since my return from America, I have been in bed. I was seriously ailing before I left home; the double voyage quite broke me down, and my recovery has been very slow. I am writing this letter, as I have done the enclosed article, half reclining in an arm-chair, with a blotting pad instead of a rest.

I must put myself on your sense of the fitness of things, and beg of you to give me the elbow room of a second article. It is a tough subject to treat properly. It would be easy enough to cull from the rebellion records, specimens of Lincoln's strategic reasonings and recommendations to his generals in the field. But those disconnected pieces would have no intelligibility to the masses. Typical pieces of an illustrative character must be selected and their significance elucidated by an explanation of the situation which at the time surrounded them, and of the alternatives resulting from disregard of them. In the article now sent I have taken four important strategic deliverances by Lincoln, all of which, had they been fulfilled, would have produced great results. You will readily recognize that the postulate of Lincoln having been a strategist, does not in the slightest degree lean on the accomplishment or the reverse of his strategic conceptions. His strategy was not, it is true, theoretic; it was eminently practical indeed; but he in his position could not enforce its performance. Moltke through the telegraph wire could do this from his desk in the general staff in Berlin, because he was virtually the head of the army in his position as the chief of staff, and the leaders in the field, away down among the Bohemian Mountains had to obey him. But Lincoln was a civilian and his titular position as commander-in-chief did not warrant him in issuing the professional soldier's commands for specific action. All he could do was to write to them letters of strategical advice.

I have about halved the field of his strategical manifestations in the accompanying article. There is no strategy in his letters to McClellan in the Peninsula, and a second article would deal with his strategic letters to McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, Meade, and Rosecranz subsequent to Antietam and finishing on Grant's accession to the full command. No word of strategy did Lincoln ever write to Grant or to any of the men who fought under Grant. Specimens of the letters of this period, from autumn 186e to early spring 1864, could easily be dealt with in articles of equal length with the one I send you. You will readily understand that I am not asking for per-mission to write a second article because I am greedy for the honourarium. But I have the writer's legitimate pride in making a good and creditably finished job of a subject which I sincerely believe will be found of great interest by American readers, and which also may add to my reputation, and certainly to my acceptation among my American friends, who will like that a foreign writer should have so familiarized himself with the history of their great war, and has found a new laurel wherewith to deck the memory of the great President.

I have written of McClellan as I honestly think of him. Certainly not so strongly, by a great deal, as have Nicolay and Hay. Nevertheless I am in your hands, and if you think that I have been too strong, you will find that I have marked within pencil brackets a passage extending from last line of page twenty to the tenth line of page twenty-one, which you can excise if you think proper.

Assuming that you will accede to my anxious request for a second article, it ought certainly to follow immediately on the first. I write more slowly than I used to do, and the consultation of many references in an arm-chair is very tedious. Therefore I ought to be at work on No. 2 as soon as may be. If you agree that it is to be done I will ask you at early convenience to squander a dollar on the following cable:

"Machs, London.

Forbes. Yes."

That will reach me and start me.

Very sincerely yours, ARCH'D FORBES.

Another letter refers to the importance of organization it a war correspondent's campaign.

Clarence Terrace, Regent's Park, N. W., January 4, 1894.

DEAR MR. RIDDING:

As Millet can tell you, the mere writing of war letters and war telegrams is by no means the "be-all-and-end-all" of the war correspondent's work. That is indeed a mere item. It is obvious that a man does not do much good, however well and copiously he writes, if he has no means of getting his written or wired matter onto his editor's desk. The accomplishment of this, by dint of a priori organization, by sedulous arrangement, by constant watch-fulness, and by frequent, severe, and prolonged personal exertion — that is the real material and effective triumph of the war correspondent. And it is of that species of mechanism, that careful planning, that assiduous fore-thought, that I propose to make the theme of the article which I shall have pleasure in sending to you. You will find that the subject will not want for adventure and interest. I consider that in the Russo-Turkish war I went far to make something like a real science of the prompt forwarding of war correspondence.

Yours very truly,

ARCH'D FORBES.

All this had been impressed on him since his earliest experiences as a correspondent in the Franco-German war, when, utterly unprepared, he was commissioned by the Morning Advertiser. That was both a pathetic and an inspiring story. Folly and extravagance, he admitted, had ingloriously ended his university career, and after that he had taken the queen's shilling and enlisted in the royal Dragoons, from which he had been discharged when he started, with inadequate capital, the London Scotsman, writing the whole of it, news, editorials, and fiction, and taking on his own shoulders also the business of publishing it without earning from it more than bread and butter.

Then it was that James Grant, another Scot who edited the Advertiser, despatched him without credentials and with only twenty pounds in his pocket to see what he could of the war. He chose the German camp, and by a lucky chance received the "great headquarters pass," which gave him as many privileges as were allowed. He could not afford horses, mounts and remounts, which nearly all the other correspondents had. He covered the ground afoot with a knapsack on his back; ate gypsy-fashion under the lee of hedges and slept anywhere. He had no money to send couriers back to the bases with his despatches, or even for telegrams and no influence at headquarters through which his letters could be hastened to their destinations.

"I have often thought since," he said, "had all the appliances been then at my command, such as in later campaigns, I originated, elaborated, and strained many a time to their utmost tension, how I might have made the world ring in those early, eager, feverish days of the first act of the Franco-German tragedy!"

Does that sound like braggadocia? It is a characteristic utterance, but it is not vainglorious. He did "make the world ring" by his exploits whenever his hands were untied.

Through no fault of his the despatches he sent by mail were belated or lost en route to London, and a letter from Grant recalling him was on its way to him, but not received, when he was approached by the head of the staff of the Times, William Howard Russell, with a proposal that he should transfer his services to that paper.

"It was with a pang that I was forced to tell him that not even for such promotion could I desert the colours under which I had taken service, futile in the way of making a name for myself as I had come to realize that service to be "

Grant's letter of dismissal reached him, and he struggled back to London penniless, weary and disheartened. Meanwhile, however, he had in his pockets unreported news of great importance, which on his arrival he offered to the Advertiser, feeling that he was in honour bound to do so. Grant coldly and curtly refused it. Then he carried it to the Times, and sent a card by the door-keeper to the editor, writing on it, "Left German front before Paris three days ago, possessed of exclusive information as to dispositions for beleaguerment." He was not even invited into the editor's office, and the only reply was a message by the door-keeper that if he chose to submit an article "in the usual way," it would be considered.

Humiliated and disappointed again, he took it to the Daily News, and after a gruff reception by the acting editor, was asked to expand it into three columns to be paid for at the rate of five guineas a column an enormous sum to him in those days of poverty.

"I wrote like a whirlwind then, and I found that the faster I wrote the better I wrote," he said. "The picture grew on the canvas. I had that glow and sense of power which comes to a man when he knows that he is doing good work. The space allowed to me would not hold half my picture. I took it incomplete to the editor three columns written in three hours, and begged him to give me more space."

The acting editor glanced at it and said, "Very good. We'll take as much of this kind of stuff as you can write. " "At five guineas a column?"

"Yes."

Forbes filled his pipe, and was happy.

Then the editor himself who had been absent on a holiday came back, and Forbes told him of the offer his associate had made. It was John Robinson (not then knighted) to whom I have referred in my reminiscences of James Payn. Robinson was of those who armour themselves against impositions on their own kindness by an affectation of severity. To Forbes's amazement he said, "I think not," and seemed to repudiate the arrangement for further contributions.

Forbes could not keep his temper and, having expressed his opinion of the Daily News with the utmost frankness, strode out of the door and downstairs. He heard a call, " Come back! Come back!" but flung over his shoulder a retort of three words, which had Robin-son heeded, it would, as he laughingly declared after-ward, have relieved that gentlemen of the necessity of ordering coal for the rest of his days.

Robinson followed him and caught him before he had turned the corner of Bouverie Street. "Come back, man, and don't be a fool. I don't want articles written in Fleet Street. I want you in the field — to start for Metz to-night."

And in the evening of that day Forbes, with unlimited funds at his disposal, left Charing Cross as the accredited correspondent of the News, to win for that paper and himself a preëminence due to its liberality and that rare combination in him which united valour, physical en-durance, military knowledge, and military prescience with an extraordinary power of fluent and graphic literary expression.

He was too opinionated and too outspoken not to make some enemies, but none could impugn his loyalty to his employers, his veracity, his executive abilities, or that phenomenal steadiness of nerve which enabled him, while ankle-deep in blood and enveloped in smoke and splashing fire, to describe a battle as imperturbably and as smoothly as though it had been a garden party. Sometimes when the battle was done and the combatants recovering, he, fatigued as the rest, but oblivious of himself, was in the saddle dashing toward the nearest outlet, telegraphic, or postal, for his despatches. Little wonder that while still in middle life he broke down, a sacrifice to his own exacting and dauntless sense of duty.

How unlike him, except in courage, was "Billy Russell," or as he was more properly known to the public in his later days, Sir William Howard Russell, the friend of half or more than half of all the monarchs, diplomats, and warriors of the world !

Russell was an elegant little man, who in his later days seemed to me like a modern Major Pendennis, so faultlessly fashionable was he, so socially circumspect, so assured of his footing in high places, and, without hauteur, so conscious of his class. Something of a beau and something of a dandy, he had the appearance and manner of an old-fashioned courtier: the easy grace and blandness, the complaisance and the ductility of a more formal and grandiose age than this. An Irishman, given a chance, usually has the makings of a courtier in him, and beyond his natural qualifications of that sort Russell had the most engaging traits of his nationality outside of politics.

One could not have asked for a livelier companion. He had met everybody and been everywhere, serving the Times in nearly every campaign from Lucknow, at the time of the siege, till Egypt in 1883 — the Danish war with Schleswig-Holstein, the Indian mutiny, the American Civil war and the Franco-German war.

His exploits were not as daring or as spectacular as those of Forbes, but his personality and reputation, together with the prestige of the Times, procured such opportunities and privileges for him as no other correspondent ever had. Although he was bitterly criticized afterward, the United States received him as something more than an ambassador: the statesmen at Washington and the commanders afloat and ashore made a sort of bosom friend of him and admitted him to their inmost secrets. I believe that of his varied experiences those of the Civil war interested him most, and when I was at the Garrick Club or his apartment in Victoria Street with him, other subjects were postponed to make room for his recollections of those stormy days.

He was actually present at meetings of President Lincoln and his cabinet, and was besought as to the attitude of England and international law when Lord Lyons, then the British minister to the United States, was not consulted.

And when he passed from the North to the South, Jefferson Davis and his adherents received him with no less friendliness and no less confidence. They were sure that England would be on their side, and they talked to him as if, instead of the representative of a newspaper, he had been England personified. His position became trying and even perilous to his honour, from the extent of the information given to him by both sides as to de-fences and plans, and it took all his presence of mind and sagacity to avoid under eager and constant questioning the betrayal of one camp to the other, which the slightest indiscretion would have led to.

Then came the route of the Northern forces at Bull Run, the ignominious features of which defeat he described so fully and so unsparingly in his letters that he barely escaped from mob violence. The government revoked his privileges, and, his occupation gone, he was obliged to return discredited to England. For many years afterward the name of "Bull Run Russell," used as a synonym of renegade and miscreant, was mentioned in the North only with derision and execration, but before his death, revisiting America, he found among other changes that history had adjusted its perspective of events and that time with softened judgment had included him in its amnesty.

He always had a high and warm regard for Irwin McDowell, the much maligned general commanding the Federal army at Bull Run, and after the close of the war he met him by chance in Vienna.

"Strange, we should meet to-day, Russell."

Why?"

"The anniversary of Bull Run. Had I won that battle I would have been one of the most popular men in the United States and you another. It's very much the other way with us now."

Russell told him that he still had a photograph of him at home. "And I suppose," said McDowell, "your friends ask who on earth is McDowell?"

Russell always had relays of friends at the Garrick and was often there. In his early days he had been the intimate of Thackeray, Dickens, Trollope, Reade, and Shirley Brooks. Thackeray provided him with letters to all his friends in America, including the fascinating "Sam" Ward, the wit and epicure of New York, whose name sprinkles the pages of the memoirs of his contemporaries, native and foreign, and survives in the various delicious and incomparable drinks and dishes he invented which are placed before every visitor to that hospitable city.