My Days of Adventure: The Fall of France, 1870-71Vizetelly, Ernest Alfred
History
My Days of Adventure: The Fall of France, 1870-71
Vizetelly, Ernest Alfred
Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871 -- Personal narratives
Now, in the earlier years, when Frank Vizetelly returned from Italy or
America, he was often at my father's house at Kensington, and I heard
him talk of Napoleon III, MacMahon, Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel, Cialdini,
Robert Lee, Longstreet, Stonewall Jackson, and Captain Semmes.
Between-times I saw all the engravings prepared after his sketches, and I
regarded him and them with a kind of childish reverence. I can picture him
still, a hale, bluff, tall, and burly-looking man, with short dark hair,
blue eyes and a big ruddy moustache. He was far away the best known member
of our family in my younger days, when anonymity in journalism was an
almost universal rule. In the same way, however, as everybody had heard of
Howard Russell, the war correspondent of the _Times_, so most people had
heard of Frank Vizetelly, the war-artist of the _Illustrated_. He was,
by-the-by, in the service of the _Graphic_ when he was killed.
I well remember being alternately amused and disgusted by a French
theatrical delineation of an English war correspondent, given in a
spectacular military piece which I witnessed a short time after my first
arrival in Paris. It was called "The Siege of Pekin," and had been
concocted by Mocquard, the Emperor Napoleon's secretary. All the "comic
business" in the affair was supplied by a so-called war correspondent of
the _Times_, who strutted about in a tropical helmet embellished with a
green Derby veil, and was provided with a portable desk and a huge
umbrella. This red-nosed and red-whiskered individual was for ever talking
of having to do this and that for "the first paper of the first country in
the world," and, in order to obtain a better view of an engagement, he
deliberately planted himself between the French and Chinese combatants. I
should doubtless have derived more amusement from his tomfoolery had I not
already known that English war correspondents did not behave in any such
idiotic manner, and I came away from the performance with strong feelings
of resentment respecting so outrageous a caricature of a profession
counting among its members the uncle whom I so much admired.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account