A Guardsman in the Crimea: The Life and Letters of William Scarlett

By Martin Sheppard

The Brigade of Guards was the elite force of the British Army in the Crimea. William Scarlett, a captain in the Scots Fusilier Guard and one of the most active junior officers in the regiment, fought throughout the entire campaign. After the Allied landing at Kalamita Bay, Scarlett rallied his regiment at a critical moment during the battle of the Alma, supported by his company sergeant, who was awarded the VC.

William Scarlett’s life may well have been saved after the battle of Balaklava by becoming an aide de camp to his uncle, General James Scarlett, the commander of the Heavy Brigade. This meant that he did not fight at Inkerman, which took a heavy toll on the officers of the Guards Brigade. Returning to the trenches early in 1855, William Scarlett was involved in all the phases of the siege of Sebastopol until its fall in September 1855.

The survival of 139 previously unpublished letters record Scarlett’s deeds and thoughts. Written to nineteen different correspondents, and deliberately intended by him to form a personal account of his rôle in the war, his letters provide a forceful commentary on the successes and failures of the British army in the East. His life before and after the war is well recorded. Becoming the third Lord Abinger in 1861, Scarlett was the second English peer to marry an American. He built a castle in Scotland, where Queen Victoria stayed in 1873, and two of his daughters became notable suffragettes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Mar 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9781399069809

Book preview

A Guardsman in the Crimea

Frances Scarlett, ‘A Squadron of the British Footguards’, 1851. Scots Fusilier Guards officers preparing for war.

A Guardsman in the Crimea

The Life and Letters of William Scarlett

Martin Sheppard

First published in Great Britain in 2023 by

Pen & Sword Military

An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Limited

Yorkshire – Philadelphia

Copyright © Martin Sheppard 2023

ISBN 978 1 39906 978 6

ePub ISBN 978 1 39906 980 9

Mobi ISBN 978 1 39906 980 9

The right of Martin Sheppard to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Contents

Illustrations

People and Places

Introduction

1War

2Varna

3The Alma

4Balaklava and Inkerman

5Winter

6In the Trenches

7Tragedy

8The Fall of Sebastopol

9Peace

10Aftermath

Notes

Bibliography

Illustrations

Between pages 78 and 79

1  Robert Scarlett, second Lord Abinger

2  Sarah Scarlett, Lady Abinger

3  Peter Campbell Scarlett

4  Frances Scarlett

5  William Scarlett in uniform

6  William Scarlett in civilian dress

7  William and Helen Scarlett

8  Mary Campbell

9  General Scarlett and his aides de camp

10  Hugh Drummond

11  John Dugdale Astley

12  Lord Raglan with the Allied Commanders

13  George, Duke of Cambridge

14  Sir James Yorke Scarlett

15  George Moffatt

16  Balaklava Harbour by Roger Fenton, 1855

17  The Guards camp at Balaklava by Roger Fenton, 1855

18  Sebastopol Docks

19  William Scarlett and American officers, May 1863

20  Inverlochy Castle with Ben Nevis behind it

21  William Scarlett, Lord Abinger, driving at Killichonate

22  Scarlett family group at Inverlochy

23  Helen, Lady Scarlett, and James, fourth Lord Abinger

24  Evelina Haverfield

Between pages 174 and 175

25  Abinger Hall, Surrey

26  The Scots Fusilier Guards at Buckingham Palace

27  Robert Scarlett, second Lord Abinger

28  General Sir James Yorke Scarlett

29  The landing at Kalamita Bay

30  The Scots Fusilier Guards at the Alma

31  The advance of the Highlanders at the Alma

32  General Scarlett and his Staff

33  The Charge of the Heavy Brigade

34  Balaklava Harbour, 1855

35  The Storm of 14 November 1854

36  Winter

37  Graves at Balaklava

38  The arrival of parcels per Arabia

39  British artillery overlooking Sebastopol

40  Helen, Lady Abinger

Text Illustrations

Illustration Acknowledgements

The majority of illustrations in this book are taken from collections held by various members of the Scarlett family and are reproduced by permission. The photographs by Roger Fenton, plates 16 and 17, come from the Library of Congress, as does plate 18. The illustrations by William Simpson, plates 32–37 and 39, appeared originally in George Brackenbury and William Simpson, The Campaign in the Crimea: an Historical Sketch (1855). The portrait of Sir James Yorke Scarlett, plate 28, is in Towneley Hall Museum, Burnley. The images of the landing at Kalamita Bay and the battle of the Alma, plates 29–31, are reproduced by permission of the National Army Museum.

People and Places

Abinger Hall, Abinger, Surrey, home of Robert, third Lord Abinger, and Sarah, Lady Abinger

Balaklava, port in Crimea, main base of the British Army; battle of 25 October 1854

Burton, see Hallyburton Campbell

Campbell:

Cecilia Campbell (1835–1927), third daughter of John and Mary Campbell

Dudley Campbell (1833–1900), youngest son of John and Mary Campbell

Edina Campbell (1837–1916), youngest daughter of John and Mary Campbell

Frederick Campbell (1824–1893), eldest son of John and Mary Campbell

Hallyburton (Hally, Burton) Campbell (1829–1918), second son of John and Mary Campbell

Sir John Campbell, first Lord Campbell (1779–1861), husband of Mary Campbell, Lady Stratheden; father of Cecilia, Dudley, Edina, Frederick, Hallyburton, Louise and Mary Campbell

Louise Campbell (Louy, Lou) (1823–1916), eldest daughter of John and Mary Campbell; married William Spranger White in 1850

Mary, Lady Stratheden (1796–1860), elder daughter of James, first Lord Abinger, wife of John Campbell, mother of Cecilia, Dudley, Edina, Frederick, Hallyburton, Louise and Mary Campbell

Mary (Molly, Poll, Polly) Campbell (1827–1916), second daughter of John and Mary, Lady Stratheden

Canrobert, François Certain de (1809–1895), Commander-in-Chief of the French army in the East from 26 September 1854 to June 1855

Cheney, Mr, friend of William Scarlett, George Moffatt and Georg Schwarz

Colonel, the, see James Yorke Scarlett

Charlotte, Aunt, see Charlotte Scarlett

Conolly, Major James (1818–1885), Brigade Major of the Heavy Brigade

Devna, Bulgaria, lake near Varna

Drummond family, John and Georgina Drummond of Fulham, and their children Frederick, Georgina, Henrietta, Hester and Hugh

Drummond, Hugh (1830–1855), Scots Fusilier Guards, William Scarlett’s best friend

Dudley, see Dudley Campbell

Elliot, Alexander, Aide de Camp to James Yorke Scarlett

Eupatoria, town in the Crimea, near site of Allied landing in September 1854

Fanny, see Frances Scarlett

Fanny, Aunt, see Frances Diana Smith

Felix, Uncle, see Felix Smith

Graham Toler, Henrietta, see Henrietta Scarlett

Hally, see Hallyburton Campbell

Inkerman, site of battle of 5 November 1854

Inverlochy, Argyll, estate and house, at Torlundy, belonging to Scarletts

Jane, see Jane Gifford; Jane West

Jim, Uncle, see James Yorke Scarlett

Kertch, town and strait commanding entrance to the Sea of Azov; captured by the Allies in May 1855

Magruder, Helen (1837–1915), married William Scarlett in 1863

Mary, see Mary Campbell

Matilda, see Matilda Smith

Maude, see Matilda Smith

Moffatt, George, MP (1806–1878), friend of William Scarlett, Mr Cheney and Georg Schwartz

Molly, see Mary Campbell

New Street, Spring Gardens, Westminster, earlier home of the Campbell, Scarlett and West families

Omar Pasha (1806–1871), Commander-in-Chief of the Turkish Army

Pélissier, Aimable-Jean-Jacques (1794–1864), Commander-in-Chief of the French Army in the East, June 1855 to July 1856

Poll, Polly, see Mary Campbell

Raglan, Fitzroy Somerset (1788–1855), first Lord Raglan, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in the East

Saint-Arnaud, Jacques Leroy de (1798–1854), Commander-in-Chief of the French army in the East to 26 September 1854

Scarlett:

Charlotte Scarlett (1806–1888), wife of James Yorke Scarlett, second son of James, first Lord Abinger

Elizabeth Scarlett, Lady Abinger (‘the Dowager’) (1802–1886), second wife and widow of James, first Lord Abinger (1769–1844)

Frances Mary Scarlett (Fanny) (1828–1920), younger daughter of Robert and Sarah Scarlett

Helen Scarlett, née Magruder, Lady Abinger (1837–1915), wife of William Scarlett

Henrietta Graham Toler, née Scarlett (Took, Tooky) (1825–1895), sister of Frances and William Scarlett

James Yorke Scarlett (Uncle Jim, ‘the Colonel’, ‘the Brigadier’, ‘the General’) (1799–1871)

Peter Campbell Scarlett (1804–1881), uncle of Frances and William Scarlett; father of Florence and Leopold Scarlett

Robert Scarlett, second Lord Abinger (1794–1861), husband of Sarah Scarlett; father of Henrietta, Frances Scarlett and William Scarlett

Sarah Scarlett, Lady Abinger (1803–1878), wife of Robert Scarlett; mother of Henrietta, Frances Mary Scarlett, James and William Scarlett

William Scarlett, third Lord Abinger (1826–1892), elder brother of Frances Scarlett

Schwarz, Georg, Austrian diplomat, friend of William Scarlett, Mr Cheney and George Moffatt

Scutari, on eastern side of the Bosphorus from Constantinople, camp site and later hospital

Sebastopol, Crimea, besieged 1854–55

Silistria, city on the Danube, besieged by the Russians in 1854

Smith:

Felix Smith (1800–1879), brother of Sarah Scarlett; uncle of Frances and William Scarlett

Frances Diana Smith, Aunt Fanny (1781–1866), aunt of Sarah Scarlett

Matilda (Maude) Smith, daughter of Felix Smith

Sarah Smith, see Sarah Scarlett

Stratheden House, Knightsbridge, London house of the Campbell family

Sumner family, including Georgina (Georgy) Sumner, of Hatchlands House, Surrey, neighbours of Scarletts in Surrey

Tchernaya, river flowing into the head of Sebastopol Harbour; battle of 16 August 1855

Took, Tooky, see Henrietta Graham Toler

Torlundy, see Inverlochy

Varna, Bulgaria, port on the west coast of the Black Sea

Wathen, Lady Elizabeth, a neighbour of the Scarletts in Surrey

West, Georgina (Georgy), Henry, Jane, Richard (Dick), friends and neighbours of the Campbell and Scarlett families in New Street

Willy, see William Scarlett

Introduction

The outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 followed a long period of rising tension between Britain and Russia over the future of the Ottoman Empire. Britain and its ally France were not willing to allow Russia to dominate Turkey and certainly not to let Russia capture Constantinople. Turkey itself declared war on Russia in October 1853 after the Russians advanced into the Turkish principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, west of the Black Sea. Then, on 30 November 1853, the Russian fleet destroyed the Turkish fleet at Sinope, a one-sided contest seen as a massacre and causing outrage in Britain. Having gained control of the Black Sea, the Russians now threatened a landing on the Bosphorus as well as an advance through the Balkans towards Constantinople.

In response, Britain and France first sent warships to the Dardanelles and later the Black Sea and then put together an expeditionary force. While trying to reach a diplomatic solution brokered by Austria, many of the Allied troops sailed east before Britain and France’s official declarations of war on Russia at the end of March 1854. The British force, scraped together from an understrength and overstretched volunteer army, numbered twenty-seven thousand, including two brigades of cavalry.

William Scarlett, a junior officer in the Scots Fusilier Guards, was part of the British force sent to the East. He had been born in 1826 into an affectionate and stable family combining wealth and intelligence. His grandfather, Sir James Scarlett, ennobled in 1835 as the first Lord Abinger, was an outstandingly successful barrister and significant politician. William himself was brought up by his parents, Robert and Sarah Scarlett, in New Street, Westminster, and Abinger Hall near Dorking.

When he was fourteen, in 1840, William Scarlett accompanied his father to Scotland, keeping a journal of a trip which led to the purchase of a 75,000 acre estate in Lochaber, the beginning of William’s lifelong passion for Scotland.¹ Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, Scarlett’s decision to become a professional soldier was inspired by his uncle, James Yorke Scarlett, the colonel of the 5th Dragoon Guards, later to become famous as the leader of the Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaklava.² In 1846 William Scarlett purchased a commission in his uncle’s regiment but almost at once exchanged into the Scots Fusilier Guards.

In the British Army the three regiments of Guards, the Grenadier, Coldstream and Scots Fusilier Guards, were the military and social elite, with proud records and high morale. The social pre-eminence of the Guards regiments was clear. Commissions in the Guards cost more, and sold at a greater premium, than those of the regiments of foot and indeed most of the cavalry. The expense of entry and the social cachet meant that all the officers were from wealthy families. Although a number of Guards officers were younger sons of peers, others were heirs to titles or already had courtesy titles. William Scarlett himself became the third Lord Abinger in 1861. Officers in the Guards held a dual rank, with their rank in the army being two steps above their rank in the regiment, giving them seniority. The Guards, whose barracks were in London, also seldom left the capital in peacetime. For them there was no danger of being sent to India or Ireland, or to garrison far-flung parts of the Empire.³

With most of the everyday activities of their regiments left in the hands of the non-commissioned officers, Guards officers had ample leisure to enjoy the social life of London and sporting interests outside it, as can be glimpsed in the diaries of William Scarlett’s sister, Frances. On 15 July 1851, she wrote:

Mary came down by an early train, and in the afternoon there alighted at Gomshall the Drummonds and a whole covey of captains.⁴ We sent poor Lou off by the same train which brought down the military.⁵ The squadron consisted of Colonel Ridley, coarse, overfed but very good natured, and I shall fancy a gentleman au fond.⁶ He was the butt and delight of all the young men, who bullied him in every kind of way and called him ‘dear old Riddles’. Mr Wenham Coke, nicknamed Whinny, a shy retiring fellow, but I liked him.⁷ There was something to get at in him. He had travelled to South America and would talk very pleasantly of his travels. Lord Bury and Mr Lindsay were both gentlemanlike, agreeable youths, but I did not happen to say much to either of them.⁸ The classical Bulwer I like better than ever; he is so much superior to all the common herd.⁹ He made himself much more generally agreeable this time than he was the last, and made an impression on us all. Captain Muir likewise is a favourite of mine.¹⁰ I fraternised more with him than with any of the other captains. The Hippopotamus and Hughy, with our domestic captain, made up the number to nine, so we were altogether a large party, and a very merry one.¹¹ Hester Drummond and I are great friends.¹² She likes me, which predisposes me strongly in her favour. The flight all dispersed, or rather all took wing, together on Thursday, by the 8 o’clock train, protesting they had amused themselves very much.

There can be no doubt, however, about the pride of the officers, including William Scarlett, in their regiments.

The Crimean War disturbed this privileged life. The Guards officers exchanged the pleasures of London and of Society for the excitement but also the dangers and discomfort of war. William Scarlett himself was involved in all the main events of the war in the East. Before war was declared he had reached Malta. He then proceeded to Constantinople at the end of April 1854. After two months at Scutari, he was at Varna, hoping for a chance to fight the Russians but exposed to cholera and the other diseases that afflicted both the British and French armies.

Scarlett sailed with the invasion fleet to the Crimea, sending home letters from the Kangaroo on the days before the landing at Kalamita Bay on 14 September 1854. Six days later, the Scots Fusilier Guards, with Scarlett in the midst of them, played a central role in the Allied victory at the battle of the Alma, crossing the river and advancing uphill in a hail of bullets. When his regiment was forced to fall back, Scarlett helped rally his men at the critical moment in the battle.

For the next year William Scarlett was part of the Allied force besieging Sebastopol. Becoming aide de camp to his uncle, General Scarlett, the commander of the Heavy Brigade, shortly after the battle of Balaklava in late October, meant that he was not involved at the battle of Inkerman in early November, where many of his fellow officers in the Scots Fusilier Guards were killed or wounded. He witnessed, however, at close hand the sufferings of the men and horses of the Heavy Brigade over the winter of 1854–55. In the spring and summer of 1855, he shared a series of false hopes as one attack after another on Sebastopol failed. After being close at hand during the battle of the Tchernaya, he was there when Sebastopol finally fell on 9 September 1855, remaining outside the city until the end of the year.

William Scarlett was unusual amongst the officers of the Scots Fusilier Guards, and indeed of the army as a whole, in that he served without leave, injury or major illness throughout almost all the war.¹³ His sole leave was for three months in the New Year of 1856, when no military operations of significance took place. While back in England, he refused an offer by Colonel Moncrieff to transfer to the second battalion of the Scots Fusilier Guards, which would have allowed him to avoid going back to the Crimea.¹⁴ He returned to the Crimea in March 1856 and stayed there until June, shortly before the final withdrawal of the Allies.

Throughout this period he wrote regularly to his family and friends. His first letter to his father was from Gibraltar on 10 March 1854 and his last was to his sister Frances from Sebastopol on 9 June 1856. No fewer than 139 of his letters survive, some as originals and some as copies. His letters serve as a commentary on all the main events and phases of the war from the viewpoint of a well-connected, professionally dedicated and opinionated junior officer.

After the Crimean War, William Scarlett continued to serve in his regiment.¹⁵ He spent four years in Canada, when the second battalion of the Scots Fusiliers was stationed at Montreal. A strong supporter of the South in the American Civil War, in 1863 he married Helen Magruder, the niece of the Confederate general John Bankhead Magruder, becoming one of the first English peers to marry an American, albeit one without great wealth. On his return to Britain, his principal interest became the building of Inverlochy Castle, near Fort William, as the centre of his large Highland estate. He retired from the army in 1882 with the honorary rank of lieutenant general and died in 1892.

It is clear that William Scarlett intended his letters to survive, at least for his own benefit. As he wrote to his father in 1855, ‘Will you please give this letter to Mother, and all my letters, to keep, as I wish to look at them when I get home. A journal is too much trouble to keep; and Mother is very methodical with her papers.’¹⁶ William’s letters were eagerly awaited by his family and circle of friends. While the largest number of the known 139 letters were to his immediate family (thirty-eight to his mother; thirty-three to his sister, Frances; and twenty-five to his father), forty-three were written to seventeen other recipients who showed them or copied them to his family. Twelve of these, to George Moffatt MP, were intended to inform political opinion at home.

Although the originals of only thirty-three of the letters survive, handed down through the family, William Scarlett’s sister Frances (1828–1920) copied 120 of the original letters into two surviving notebooks in the early part of 1856, while William Scarlett was in England and on leave for the only time during the war.¹⁷ Eighteen of the surviving originals, mostly from the final months of the war in 1856, were written after William returned to the Crimea and are not in Frances’s transcript. Eleven surviving originals, however, were included in it, allowing her transcription to be checked against these.¹⁸ This shows that her transcript was highly accurate, though often omitting short passages and personal greetings with little reference to the war.

What happened to the majority of the originals after the war is unclear. Frances Scarlett’s two-volume transcription, however, passed down after the death of her mother to William Scarlett himself and then to his youngest daughter, Evelina Haverfield, a remarkable woman and leading campaigner for women’s votes.¹⁹ Evelina’s son, Brook Haverfield, who went out to farm in British Columbia before the First World War, in turn inherited Frances Scarlett’s transcription. Brook’s daughter Kathleen married Boyce Gaddes, a Professor of Music at the University of British Columbia, who in retirement became a dedicated historian of all the branches of his own and his wife’s family. He published a biography of Evelina Haverfield, Evelina: Outward Bound from Inverlochy in 1995.

Five years earlier, in 1990, Boyce Gaddes had made a typed transcription of the earlier transcription by Frances Scarlett. A copy of this, in the National Army Museum in London, was my first introduction to the letters. Boyce indeed had plans to publish the letters as On Active Service in the Crimea: Letters of the Honorable William Frederick Scarlett, Captain the Scots Fusilier Guards. His transcription includes a brief introduction and a small number of footnotes. I have a strong fellow feeling for Boyce and owe him a considerable debt of gratitude. I am very sorry never to have met him and this book is dedicated to his memory. On Boyce’s death the two-volume transcription by Frances Scarlett passed down to his daughter, Mary Berg.

All the surviving original letters, with two exceptions, descended, with the Inverlochy estate, to the successors of William Scarlett as Lord Abinger.²⁰ They are currently owned by James Scarlett, eighth Lord Abinger, but held by his cousin, Sarah Scarlett, in Auchtermuchty in Scotland, where I photographed them on a visit in October 2018. I myself own Letter 96. One other letter, not otherwise surviving or transcribed, was published in Hugh Drummond, Letters from the Crimea (1855).²¹

Of the 139 known letters, one was written from Gibraltar, two from Malta, one from Gallipoli, four from Scutari, ten from Varna, four on board ship before the landing in the Crimea, and eight in September and October 1854. Fifteen were written during November and December 1854; twenty-eight in the first four months of 1855; thirty-three between May and August 1855; seventeen from the fall of Sebastopol in September to the end of the year; and sixteen in the first half of 1856. There are 140 letters in this edition, as I have included the letter from William Scarlett’s Austrian friend, Georg Schwarz, to which he replied.²²

William Scarlett’s handwriting is clear and easy to decipher. His style is straightforward and direct. A few words, including names, are unclear in either the surviving originals or in Frances Scarlett’s manuscript transcript. There are occasional inconsistencies in spelling. Although the punctuation and spelling are nearly the same as in the originals, I have adjusted or corrected both occasionally in the interests of clarity and consistency.

On a visit to British Columbia in October 2019, I met four of Brook Haverfield’s grandchildren: Brook Gaddes, David Gaddes, Mary Berg, the children of Boyce and Kathleen Gaddes, and Sandy Wilson, the daughter of Brook Haverfield’s other daughter, Joyce. Sandy drove me to see the places connected with Brook Haverfield and the earlier life of the family. They, and David’s wife Gwen, were all most hospitable and allowed me to photograph the rich family archives they have inherited. Mary Berg later most generously sent me the original two-volume transcription of William Scarlett’s letters by Frances Scarlett.

I have shared the stages of my pursuit of William Scarlett’s life and letters with my cousins Jamie Abinger and Sarah Scarlett. I am grateful to them for permission to publish the original letters they have inherited. I have very much enjoyed exchanging information about the Scarlett family, and especially about Evelina Haverfield, with Wendy Moore, who has written a joint biography of Evelina and her friend, Vera Holme. Entitled Jack and Eve: Two Women in Love and War, it will be published in 2024.

In Varna, which I visited with my wife Lucy in 2022, Professor Ivan Roussev and Kolyo Hubenov generously showed us some of the traces left by the Allied stay there in 1854. Ivan also identified the locations of a number of the British camp sites near Varna. Kolyo, the Curator of the Varna Museum of National Revival, showed us his museum and items in it to do with the British and French armies.

I have greatly profited from my membership of the admirable Crimean War Research Society. This has provided a forum for anyone interested in the Crimean War over forty years. In particular, I wish to thank Glenn Fisher, Mike Hinton and Tony Margrave. Tony’s superb biographical outline of the officers who served in the British Army in the East has allowed me to identify most of those who appear in William Scarlett’s letters.

I am grateful to my wife Lucy for her interest in and tolerance of my work on the Scarlett family and the Crimean War. Our eldest grandson, Alexander Morrison, has encouraged me by his interest in many historical matters, including the Charge of the Heavy Brigade.

At Pen & Sword, I wish to thank Phil Sidnell, for his continued support and encouragement; and Matt Jones and Mat Blurton for easing the book towards publication and for making it both elegant and attractive.

Chapter 1

War

Amonth before Britain declared war on Russia, the Guards regiments left England. The Scarlett family prepared for William’s departure with family excursions and a farewell dinner. ¹ His sister’s diary gives a vivid account of his departure. ²

Since I wrote last, war has been declared with Russia; at least we are sending an army to Turkey, which is equivalent to a declaration of war. The Grenadiers are already gone, the Fusiliers sail on the 28th and Willy with them. We must hope and trust and pray that all will be well, but the chances of war are fearful to think upon. What if he should die and we should never look upon his face again? God avert so terrible a calamity. Where there is war, there must be bloodshed, but we all hope that our own loved ones may be saved, though we know that many must fall.

We do not yet see the extent of this curse which has fallen upon us. The parting will only be the commencement of sorrows and anxieties. I cannot bear to think of the cruel partings and heart breakings that must ensue in this most disastrous time. Honour and glory and stars and fame are all very well, but after all they are only the dazzle by which we try to screen the cruel sight of wholesale death, ruin of every kind, losses which can never be repaired, tears which can never be dried.

* * *

On Monday the twenty-seventh we had a farewell dinner at Aunt Fanny’s; the Wests and young Sims besides ourselves.³ He gave me his last commissions, some bills to pay and directions to take care of his things. He said he trusted to me, in case he did not come home again, to burn all his journals and letters without reading them; and pointed out certain bills that were to be paid in the event of anything happening to him. How painfully these directions realized the danger he was about to face.

He was obliged to leave us early; perhaps it was as well, for we all kept up the semblance of cheerfulness during dinner which could not have lasted a whole evening. A few hurried embraces and last words and he went forth, perhaps never to return. ‘When hands are linked that dread to part, and heart is met by throbbing heart … Oh death were mercy to the pain of them that bid farewell.’⁴

We all remarked how more than usually handsome he looked this evening, with his delicate complexion and eyes brilliant with excitement. He had on his undress uniform which is always so becoming. How gallant he looked. What can be more touching than the soldier going forth to serve his country, ready to sacrifice what we all hold most precious – his life?

But we were to see him again, for we had resolved to go down to Portsmouth to see the embarkation of the Scots Fusiliers.

* * *

Before they left London the Scots Fusilier Guards paraded in front of Buckingham Palace. According to the London Evening Standard:

This morning, it being generally known this splendid corps d’armée would leave Wellington Barracks, en route by the South Western Railway to embark on board the Simoom for Malta, a vast concourse of persons, to the extent of from ten to fifteen thousand persons, assembled in St James’s Park and the line of march, at a very early hour.⁵ As early as six o’clock the muster roll was called, and every man found at his post on parade, numbering upwards of eight hundred men, the actual number of the battalion proceeding to the war being 880 men, rank and file.

Colonel Dixon having inspected the several companies, the order was given to form in open columns to march, it being the express command of Her Majesty that the battalion, the elite of the army, should pass in full marching order before Buckingham Palace, that she might, with her Royal Consort and family in common with the people, congratulate them on their departure.⁶ Precisely at seven o’clock the gates were opened and the order given to march; as soon as the troops appeared they were received with one universal burst of cheering and enthusiasm, which rang through the line with a soul-thrilling effect. The crowd was so great that it was with the greatest possible difficulty the men could move.

On the battalion arriving at Buckingham Palace, and entering the south gate, her Majesty, his Royal Highness Prince Albert, his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, the Princess Royal, and Princess Helena appeared on the balcony in front of the Palace.⁷ When the whole of the men had marched into the enclosure, they formed in line and presented arms, the band playing ‘God Save the Queen’, Prince Albert and the Royal Princes being uncovered, her Majesty frequently bowing to the cheering of the vast crowds assembled. The order to recover arms was then given, and the entire battalion simultaneously took off their bearskin caps, and gave three hearty cheers. Her Majesty seemed much struck with the novelty of such enthusiasm on the part of so splendid a body of men about to proceed to the seat of war, and frequently expressed her acknowledgement.

The battalion then marched through the Mall, past St James’s Palace, through Pall Mall, Cockspur Street, Charing Cross, the Strand, Waterloo Bridge, to the Waterloo Road Station of the South Western Railway; and throughout the entire route thousands upon thousands vociferously cheered the men, who appeared to be in the highest possible spirits, and not the least sign of irregularity was perceptible amongst their ranks. At the station the scene was distressing on the part of the married women in parting from their husbands and, notwithstanding the exertions of the police, the crowd could not be kept from interfering with the progress of the men.

* * *

Frances Scarlett’s diary continues with an account of the embarkation of the regiment at Portsmouth.⁸

The expedition was quite a voyage of discovery. We set out by the seven o’clock train from London and reached Portsmouth at eleven, we consisting of the parents, Polly and self.⁹ The soldiers came down an hour later and we had ample time to find our way to the docks and get on board the Simoom. An amiable ‘mid’ showed us all over the ship, with all its arrangements, which appeared to us very wretched, though considered by the knowing ones a very model of transport luxury. We were permitted to remain on board the Simoom; so, to our great satisfaction, instead of having to struggle with a crowd to catch a glimpse of the coat tails of some vagrant Fusiliers, to which advantage we had modestly bounded our hopes, we found ourselves lounging on the poop, quietly awaiting the arrival of the troops.

About one they arrived. The embarkation was not an imposing sight, as the men came straggling on in companies of fifteen across a plank, sucking oranges; but still we were greatly interested in seeing these brave men, so familiar to us on the parade ground and on all show occasions, now preparing to act, to fight, to die perhaps. Willy had hardly time to speak to us at first, being busy with his [men],¹⁰ and making arrangements about his luggage and cabin. We saw a good many people we knew. I fraternized chiefly with Fred Drummond, who is of that kindly nature that wins and deserves confidence.¹¹ He is like Hughie, with far more gentleness. Wilkie too was there, in despair at being left behind.¹²

We got seats under the poop, on deck, and sat watching the proceedings, half bewildered in the general excitement. Willy