Zulu Hart (47 page)

My darling George,

By the time you receive this I’ll have left for Kimberley. Please accept the diamond as a small token of my gratitude for your help in saving me from Sir Jocelyn and paying my passage to South Africa. I am for ever in your debt. If you require any assistance in the future, you need only write to the above address. 1
wish
you luck with your career, and every happiness with
Miss
Colenso.

Your loving friend,

Lucy.

London, 29 March 1879

‘Get on there!’ shouted the driver as the cab jolted forward, rocking George in his seat. It was a beautiful spring day, crisp and clear, and Piccadilly was so thronged with pedestrians, horses and wheeled traffic that George began to worry he would be late for his appointment. As he stared out of the window in frustration, his mind wandered back to the last time he had crossed London in a cab: then he had been on his way to see his father’s lawyer and hear the terms of his outrageous legacy; now he had an interview with one of the most important men in the land, HRH the Duke of Cambridge, commander-in-chief of the British Army and first cousin to Queen Victoria.

Since reaching London by train from Southampton two days earlier, George had written two letters: one to his mother, informing her that he was alive and well, and enclosing a money order for £500, half the balance from the sale of Lucy’s diamond; and the second to Major General Sir Arthur Horsford, the military secretary at the Horse Guards, offering to give a blow-by- blow account of events leading up to and during the battles of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift, signed by a member of Chelmsford’s staff who had fought in both. The response from General Horsford was short and to the point:

The Horse Guards

 
Pall Mall

28 March 1879

My dear Acting Second Lieutenant Hart,

I thank you for your interesting letter of the 27th instant. I have been instructed by HRH the Commander-in-Chief to inform you that he will receive you at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.

1 am, etc
.,

Maj. Gen. Sir A. Horsford

George was taken aback by the speedy reply. Ever since word of the defeat at Isandlwana had reached Britain in early February, and more particularly since the publication of Lord Chelmsford’s unconvincing official dispatch a month later, both press and politicians had become increasingly critical of the civil and military authorities in South Africa. ‘When any general suffers such a defeat as was suffered by General Lord Chelmsford at Isandlwana,’ declared one Liberal MP, ‘there is a
prima facie
case of incompetency against him.’

And yet all this time, in their official statements at least, the queen, the government and the Horse Guards had been strongly supportive of Sir Bartle Frere and Lord Chelmsford. Only two days earlier, the very day George’s ship had docked at Southampton, the government had comfortably defeated a motion of no confidence in Frere in the House of Commons by sixty votes. It was looking increasingly likely that Chelmsford, too, would survive the demands for his sacking.

The
cab turned down St James’s Street and, finally free
of Piccadilly, began to pick up speed. At the bottom of the street it turned left into Pall Mall and, soon after, pulled up outside Schomberg House, a handsome four-storey, red-brick mansion on the south side of the road that, for the previous eighteen years, had been home to the War Office. In 1871, as part of his unwelcome subordination to Secretary of State for War, the Duke of Cambridge had been forced to move his office from the old Horse Guards building in Whitehall to the War Office in Pall Mall, yet he had continued to head his letters ‘The Horse Guards’, much to the government’s irritation. He had even insisted upon a separate entrance to the building, and it was through this side door that George was ushered.

The ante-room was crowded with officers from every branch of the army, in a variety of different coloured uniforms, all waiting for a personal interview with the commander-in- chief that might gain them a promotion or a plum posting. As George squeezed on to a long wooden bench, he overheard one major bemoaning the fact that he had already been there for two hours. But George, who was by far the most junior officer present, had barely sat down when he was called for his appointment. He followed the frock-coated clerk through long corridors, and up countless flights of stairs, before arriving at a nondescript door marked ‘Commander-in-Chief’. The clerk knocked, opened the door and announced, ‘Acting Second Lieutenant Hart to see you, Your Royal Highness.’

‘Show him in.’

George entered a large, handsomely furnished room, its walls adorned with oils of famous battles, including the Alma and Inkerman. At the far end of the room, behind a magnificent walnut, leather-topped oval desk, and with his back to a large bay window that looked out over Carlton Gardens and St James’s Park beyond, sat the Duke of Cambridge. Almost sixty, his bald head and white whiskers in stark contrast to his red field marshal’s tunic, the duke remained oddly expressionless as George strode up to the desk and saluted. He responded with the briefest nod, his blue eyes scanning

George’s smart civilian rig and the white sling supporting his injured arm, and then bade him sit.

‘I trust your wound is healing tolerably, Second Lieutenant Hart?’ enquired the duke.

‘It is, Your Royal Highness, thank you.’

‘Good.’ After a pause, the duke continued, ‘I was intrigued by your letter. But before we talk about the campaign itself, I would like to hear more about your unorthodox military career. I see from your records that you passed first out of Sandhurst and then served just five months as a cornet in the First King’s Dragoon Guards before resigning your commission. And yet barely twelve months later you resurface in South Africa as a trooper with the Natal Carbineers, whoever they may be, before receiving a temporary commission on Lord Chelmsford’s staff at the outset of the war against the Zulus. You’re clearly an officer of great promise, so why did you resign your regular commission?’

George had not been expecting this line of questioning and, unsure whether Harris was a friend of the duke’s, felt he had to tread carefully. ‘I’m ashamed to admit it, Your Royal Highness, but I have no private income and found it difficult to live on my pay.’

The duke nodded, his jowly face showing little trace of his youthful good looks. ‘A not uncommon problem in a smart cavalry regiment, it’s true. But why resign? Why not exchange to a less fashionable regiment, even the infantry?’

George sensed the duke knew he was lying, and decided to come clean. ‘If truth be told, Your Royal Highness, I didn’t get the chance. Money
was
a factor, but it was more to do with a clash of personalities. My former commanding officer took against me from the start and constantly found fault with me for imaginary offences; and when that didn’t succeed in driving me from the regiment, he accused me of cheating at gambling and … um … another serious impropriety.’

‘Which was?’

‘Trying to force myself upon one of his lady houseguests.’

‘And were you guilty of these charges?’

‘Absolutely not.
It was a set-up and I fell for it. Colonel Harris, my CO, gave me the option of resigning or being reported to the Horse Guards for behaviour unbecoming. I resigned.’

‘And why, pray,’ said the duke, frowning, ‘would Harris go to such unscrupulous lengths to see the back of you?’

‘He’d heard rumours about my background and didn’t think I was worthy of his regiment.’

‘What rumours?’

‘That I was illegitimate.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Yes, he made constant disparaging references to my dark complexion.’ For a brief moment George thought of going the whole hog and mentioning the attempted rape of Lucy and the death of the private detective. But something made him stop; he had said enough.

The duke, meanwhile, had closed his eyes and was squeezing the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger as if lost in painful thought. At last he spoke. ‘You have made a serious charge against a superior officer which, if untrue, would disqualify you from ever again holding your queen’s commission. But I’m minded to believe you, and the reason is this: barely a day goes by without an officer of the King’s Dragoon Guards - my old corps, I might add - sending in a complaint against Harris. I would happily have removed him from his command before now if it had been possible to prove just one of these charges of unwarranted victimization. But it has not, and I suspect your own charge would be equally difficult to validate before a court martial. In any case, Harris and his regiment are on their way to South Africa as part of the reinforcement that Chelmsford has requested, and the government has seen fit to authorize. So there the matter must lie for now. But I can assure you of one thing: Harris will receive no further preferment while I remain at the head of the army.’

George breathed a sigh of relief, delighted that the duke had believed him and, more importantly, that Harris’s career was as good as over, even if he was at last getting his wish to see some action. It only remained for him to convince the duke that Lord Chelmsford and his staff, and not Colonel Durnford, were chiefly responsible for the disaster at Isandlwana. And that, he suspected, would not be so easy if he did not mention - as he could not for fear of retaliation - Fynn and Crealock’s plan to destroy Matshana.

‘Now we’ve cleared that matter up,’ said the duke, looking up from scribbling a quick
aide-memoire,
‘I’d like to hear your account of the recent disaster. Was it, in your opinion, avoidable? And if so, what mistakes were made and by whom? The evidence given to the court of inquiry points the finger of blame squarely at Colonel Durnford. I gather from your letter you don’t agree?’

‘No, sir.
The disaster was certainly avoidable, and the chief culprits were Lord Chelmsford and his senior advisors, Henry Fynn and Colonel Crealock.’

‘Go on.’

And so George did as he was bidden, recounting the events of the eleven-day campaign in such detail that he spoke nonstop, bar the odd query from the duke, for more than an hour. Durnford was not absolved of all blame for the defeat - his decision to leave the camp and pursue the ‘retreating’ Zulus was, George admitted, ‘a rash and ultimately fatal error of judgement’ — but his harshest criticism was reserved for Lord Chelmsford and his advisors. ‘From the word go,’ George concluded, ‘they belittled the fighting capacity of the Zulus, failed properly to reconnoitre the ground ahead of the

Central Column or to fortify the camp at
Isandlwana,
ignored intelligence that indicated the main
impi
was in the vicinity, and then, as if all that was not enough,
Lord
Chelmsford divided his forces not once but twice, thus leaving his base camp and all his supplies to be captured by an overwhelming force of Zulus. When all was over, Colonel Crealock tried to shift the blame on to Colonel Durnford by falsely stating the latter had been ordered to take command of the camp at Isandlwana, when no such order was ever sent. They knew I knew the truth, and so tried to buy my silence by offering to recommend me for a Victoria Cross for my actions on the twenty-second. I, of course, refused to cooperate.’

The duke sat there shaking his head, as if unconvinced by what George had told him. His face was immobile, his expression fixed. George feared the worst.

After a considerable pause the duke spoke. ‘Your actions in coming here and speaking so plainly must have taken a lot of courage. And I don’t mean physical courage, but moral. Nothing could have been easier than for you to hold your tongue and return home a hero, the recipient of a Victoria Cross. But you chose instead to tell, as you saw it, the truth. I won’t ask your reasons. I only know that you must have appreciated the risk you were running: a junior officer informing on his superiors. I doubt you even thought, in your heart of hearts, that your tale would be believed. But I do believe it, and I’ll tell you why. When I first read the Reuters telegram giving news of the defeat, on the eleventh of February, I naturally assumed that Chelmsford had failed to take adequate defensive precautions. Yet I was prepared to withhold judgement until I had read his official dispatch. Her Majesty the Queen, on the other hand, was easily convinced that Durnford and not Chelmsford was to blame, and had the War Secretary send a note to the latter expressing her entire confidence in him. The other members of Cabinet were furious, of course, because it seemed as if my cousin had pre-empted any government move to recall Chelmsford before the true cause of the disaster was known.’

The duke paused before continuing. ‘In any event, when the dispatch did finally arrive on the first of this month, I found it neither good nor
clear,
and the whole thing inexplicable. Even the queen thought the dispatch was a poor one and did not give the reasons for what had occurred. So I instructed General Ellice, the adjutant-general, to write and ask Chelmsford to explain certain points he had omitted or left in doubt, such as the steps that were taken on the twentieth and twenty- first of January to reconnoitre the country on his flank, and why he failed to put the camp at Isandlwana into a state of defence prior to his departure on the twenty-second of January.