BOOKS.
HODSON OF HODSON'S HORSE.*
A-1[mm the great men of the Mutiny—and surely never a crisis produced a more heroic band—two stand out pre- eminent in the shortness and brilliance of their careers and the mystery of their personalities. Nicholson and Hodson have each left a reputation different in kind from any other of their contemporaries. Other soldiers survived the struggle and won fame in other wars; these two arose in the Mutiny like meteors and passed out of sight before the world could judge them fully. Both were men of the highest talents, courage, and enterprise, and both had in their characters and careers something of the inscrutable and the romantic. Hodson him- self was the lesser figure, but the more mysterious. His fame has been clouded with scandal, for while few men have been more loved by their friends, none ever took less pains to agree with his adversaries. His qualities were so entirely his own, so little in the beaten track of soldiering, that men at first wondered at rather than admired him. Had he lived he might have been one of the great leaders of history, and so forced the world to accept him as he was. But his career lasted only twelve years ; he gained no V.C., no honour but a brevet-Majority; and died, young and poor, outside Lucknow, from a chance rifle-bullet. So he remains to us only as the beau sabreur and leader of light horse, the Rupert of the Mutiny.
Born in 1821, the son of a country clergyman, he was educated under Arnold at Rugby, and afterwards at Cambridge. He went out with a cadetship to India in 1845, and was appointed to a native regiment, the 2nd Bengal Grenadiers. He had no very high opinion of the Sepoy at that time, and complains of the trouble of soldier- ing with men who could not be trusted to follow their leader. He went through the first Sikh War, where he had many marvellous escapes, and then exchanged to another Sepoy regiment, the 16th Grenadiers. Soon after, to his great delight, he was posted to the famous 1st Bengal Fusiliers. Meanwhile the Guides were being raised, under Lumsden's command, and Hodson, having won his spurs as a bold and resourceful officer, was appointed to them. For a short time he was a political at Lahore, and then came the second Sikh War, in which he and his regiment played a prominent part. He disapproved thoroughly of Lord Gough's conduct of the campaign, and in his letters constantly sighs for "one hour of Sir Charles Napier." But his own work left him small room for criticism, for he had to make the most arduous hot-foot journeys across the country in the capacity of political and intelligence officer. "I have had enough of riding," he writes—" 100 miles on the 31st, and eleven hours steady in the saddle on the 1st." When peace came he was for a little an Assistant Commis- sioner in the Punjab, and then in 1852 he succeeded Lumsden in the command of the Guides. After that comes a break in the history. He had been growing unpopular with some of his colleagues; he had arrested and imprisoned on good grounds a border ruffian called Khadir Khan, which was complained of as high-handed and illegal, and John Lawrence, judging by hearsay, had lost confidence in him. He was accused of maladministration of funds, and removed from the command of the regiment. "An Indian Govern- ment," says Macaulay, "has only to let it be understood that it wishes a particular man to be rained, and in twenty-four hours it will be furnished with decisive evidence." Something of the sort happened in Hodson's case. Major Rennell Taylor was instructed to report on the matter, and when he had sifted the mendacious native evidence and examined the accounts he acquitted Hodson fully of every charge. But the report was not given the same publicity as the accusations.
r; A 14°414* of light Horse: Life of Hodson of Hodeon's Holm By Captain onel J. Trotter. London : W. Blackwood and Boa& [65-]
Hodson remained under the official ban, and resumed his old place of subaltern in the Bengal Fusiliers. With a patient courage remarkable in one of his fiery temper, he set himself to wait for better times and a chance to vindicate his honour, Nor had he long to wait.
The Mutiny gave his peculiar genius its proper field. He raised and led the body of light horse with which his name • will always be linked. The stories of his energy, his high spirits, and his courage in the terrible weeks while Delhi was besieged are scarcely to be paralleled. He loved fighting for its own sake, and a battle made him mad with a boyish fervour, while all the while the cool brain never ceased to work. General Thomason once saw him confronted by a Sepoy with a shield and tulwar. "I shall never forget Hod- son's face as he met this man. It was smiles all over. He went round and round the man, who in the centre of the circle was dancing more Indic°, doing his best to cut Hodson's
reins. This went on for a short time, when a neat point from Hodson put an end to the performance." But he was never
the casual bravo; for his caution and wariness were as remarkable as his dash. Daring with him was not an unthinking instinct, but the conclusion of a carefully thought- out scheme. He never received the Victoria Cross ; why, it is difficult to understand, for he had earned it fifty times over Among the besiegers at Delhi there were many noted names,—
Nicholson, Jacob, Chamberlain, "Little Roberts " ; and it is remarkable that to all Hodson seemed the master-mind, the real leader of men, with perhaps something uncanny in his nature. It is in the admiration of the expert and fellow- workman, and not the slanders of the official, that we look for the real character of the man. He infected not only his own Horse but all native loyalists with his spirit. On one occasion, we are told, a body of rebel horsemen rushed a camp, and called on a troop of native horse artillery to join their side. Their only answer was to request Major Olpherts's gunners to fire through them into the enemy. Then came the evacuation of Delhi, the surrender of the King, and the slaying of the Princes. This last incident has been made the chief charge against Hodson's character, but the justification, as given by Captain Trotter and approved of by men like Lord Roberts and Sir Hugh Gough, seems to us sufficient. He was ordered by
Wilson to go in search of the Princes, but not to bring them back to " bother " him; he found them and sent them off to the city under guard; on the way back he found that the guard were besieged by a large mob, and that the only way of quelling the mob and preventing the prisoners' escape was by instant execution ; so he seized a carbine and shot them one after another. It was the act of a fierce man who held life cheap and was not embarrassed by notions of the dignity of an officer, but it was emphatically not a deed which could be called brutal, unjustified, or dishonourable. His own end was not far off. He was rushing in his usual fashion ahead of his soldiers to drive some rebels out of a palace on the march to Lucknow when the fatal bullet struck him. He died a few hours afterwards, his last words being : "I trust I have done my duty." And we are told that Sir Colin Campbell burst into tears over the loss of "one of the finest officers in the Army." His enemies spread the story that he had been killed while in the act of looting, but Lord Roberts has disproved this slander. The sale of his whole effects brought less than £170.
It is a sad history which Captain Trotter has to tell, but a deeply interesting one. Hodson belonged to that small class of men, which includes most leaders, who are as bitterly bated as they are extravagantly admired. He was high-handed, free- spoken, intolerant of incompetence and all forms of slackness, and with little reverence for those set in authority unless they could justify their honours by their ability. He was essentially the man for his work, for he had that magnetism and romance which is so essential to the creator and leader of armies. He inspired the wildest affection in his men. Old wounded and convalescent Guides would hang about his compound like faithful dogs simply because "they liked to look at the Sahib?' As the old Sikh said in Sir Mortimer Durand's poem :— "I followed him when the great town fell; he was cruel and cold, they said :
The men were sobbing around me the day that I saw him dead."
We need not enter into the accusations of false accounts and maladministered funds. The whole pitiful story has been threshed out before, and to our mind there is but one answer. Major Taylor's report acquitted him fully on the first charge, and the looting stories were scarcely taken seriously even by his enemies. For the rest, the friendship of men like Henry Lawrence, the Coughs, and the Napiers is a sufficient reply to the more serious allegations against his character. He had the virtues of a very strong man, and the defects of his qualities. In the heat of war he sometimes lost that finer feeling which he possessed at other times, but he never ceased to be an honourable and upright gentleman. .He had little tolerance for incompetence, but we may set against this his personal modesty and the patience with which he endured neglect and reproof. In appearance, like many daring leaders, he was refined and even feminine-looking, though he had a strong physique and was capable of extraordinary endurance. Coleridge has said somewhere that every great adventurer has something of the woman in him, and this was true of Hodson, both in appearance and in the curious warmth of affection he displayed towards his family and his friends, his almost finicking taste, his sensitiveness to moods of scene and weather, and the charm of his manner. He was in a high degree , the Platonic " dremonic " man, who inspires others with a kind of spiritual warmth, to whom fear is unknown because it is
swallowed in the intense eagerness with which he facer; his problem. It is, indeed, almost ridiculous to talk of com:age in connection with him, for to him danger was merely =Incidental phenomenon, too trivial to be thought of for a moment when work was to be done. He did not seek danger from bravado, but from sheer ignorance of its meaning.- "Whenever I sees Captain. Hodson go out," said an old Fusliier, , "I always prays for him, for he is sure to be in danger." We are glad that Captain Trotter has given us in this compact form the life-story of a very remarkable man. The workmanship is good and careful, his defence of Hodson is convincing without being laboured, and he writes, as a soldier 'should, with a glow of admiration for great deeds. The book is not a character study—few studies would be more difficult—but a plain narrative, and the reader is given the essential facts, and left to elaborate the detail for himself, It is, we think, the wiser method, for to dogmatise on a character so intricate and mysterious as Hodson's would have been more curious than helpful.
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