One would fain gain some introspection into the nature, character,
and tendencies of this young soldier, who in his twenty-first
year was already a veteran of war after more than five years of
pretty constant active service. It would be pleasant to have
opportunities for regarding him as something other than a mere
military lay-figure,--to attain to some conversance with his habits,
his tastes, his attitude towards his comrades, his relations with
his family, the character of such study and reading as he could find
time for, and so forth. But the means for doing this are altogether
lacking. Lord Clyde was a very modest man, and it was with reluctance
that he allowed his papers to be used for the purposes of a memoir.
He, however, left it by his will to the discretion of his trustees
to dispose of his papers, with the characteristic injunction: "If a
short memoir should appear to them to be absolutely necessary and
indispensable (which I should regret and hope may be avoided), then
it should be limited as much as possible to the modest recital of
the services of an old soldier." The trustees, seventeen years after
Lord Clyde's death, judged wisely in sanctioning the compilation of
a memoir, the material available for which was confided to the late
General Shadwell who had been long and intimately associated with
Lord Clyde both at home and on campaign. General Shadwell's biography
of his chief is a most careful and accurate work; but probably
because of a lack of such material as, for instance, familiar
correspondence affords, it somewhat fails to furnish an adequate
presentment of Colin Campbell as he was during the long years
before he emerged from comparative obscurity, and became gradually
a marked and characteristic figure familiar to and cherished by his
fellow-countrymen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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