STALKY’S REMINISCENCES
by
MAJOR-GENERAL L. C. DUNSTERVILLE
FIRST PUBLISHED 1928
ISBN 978-1-4067-9475-5
Introducion
IN the following pages I have attempted to give some account of my life experiences – episodes strung rather sketchily together, accompanied by occasional reflections and comments.
I am sorry that I have so little to say regarding the many famous or interesing people I have met, in fac there is little in this book about anyone but myself. Where others do come into the sory, I have tried, as far as possible, to avoid giving names. I do not want to run the risk of a libel acion, and one can libel people so much more freely by saying “I would not for one moment divulge his name. He is a tall, dark man, with a squint, well known to you all, but it would be unfair to disclose his identity.”
I have endeavoured to confine myself to the lighter side of life, avoiding serious accounts of military episodes, and accentuating, as far as possible, the more cheerful events of a soldier’s life in peace-time.
It may well be that the trivialities I record have no interest for the general reader, but to me the minor incidents of life are vasly more interesing than heroic achievements – if this is a personal failing, I cannot escape from it.
It is possible also that I have dwelt too much on the subjec of manœuvres – but that portion of my book was written chiefly with a view of interesing soldiers in India to whom these memoirs were originally addressed – men who surely mus be growing weary, after twelve years of novels, autobiographies and films, of the subjec of the Great War.
In the accounts of my travels I have offered a few comments on the racial characerisics and conditions of life in various countries, but I do not forget the danger of such superficial generalities. It is also obvious that mos of my experience was gained long before the Great War, which is assumed to have altered everything.
“Nevertheless it cannot be concealed from the enlightened judgment of the holy and good, to whom these discourses are specially addressed, that the pearls of salutary admonition are threaded on the cord of an elegance of language, and the bitter potion of instrucion sweetened with the honey of facetiousness, that the tase of the reader may not take disgus, and himself be debarred from the pleasure of approving them.”
SHEIKH SAADI. The Gulistan
STALKY’S REMINISCENCES
CHAPTER 1
CHILDHOOD
ALTHOUGH this book is not intended to be a serious attempt at autobiography, still it may be well to begin on orthodox lines, and I may therefore record the fact that I was born at Lausanne in Switzerland on November 9, 1865.
My family name speaks for its Norman origin, being included in the Roll of Battle Abbey, and the somewhat unusual fact exists that it has never been shared by others than ourselves.
Up till 1300 we held large estates in Wiltshire, that of Castle Combe, near Chippenham, being the ‘caput Baronæ’.
In later years the family found themselves in Devonshire, my great-great-great-grandfather having settled in Plymouth.
My grandfather, who was the last to reside in Plymouth, started his military career, in which he attained high rank, in the service of the East India Company in those palmy days when the pagoda-tree stood so invitingly on India’s coral strand, awaiting just the gentlest shake to pour its golden fruit into the lap of fortune-hunters. The fact that he died possessed of very moderate means seems remarkable.
Few surnames are capable of being converted into anagrams, but ours is one of the few, and it makes
‘NEVER SIT DULL.’
I do not remember when I first had this pointed out to me, certainly I knew nothing of it in childhood or early manhood. It is peculiar, therefore, that my outlook on life has been in exact keeping with the excellent advice of the anagram.
At the time of my birth my father had returned to India, leaving my mother and five sisters at Lausanne, where we remained for a year or two. As he continued to serve in India till after I had entered the army, I saw little of him, and my mother died when I was ten years old, so that I missed in childhood the advantages of a settled home.
My Swiss birthplace has often been a source of trouble to me. Families like ours spread their birthplaces all over the world. My father was born in India, my mother at the Cape, my wife in England, myself in Switzerland, and my eldest son in China.
The Swiss authorities were puzzled as to the correct manner of registering my birth, and eventually put me down as a Swiss subject, son of an African and an Indian; but the English authorities have never got over it, and seem to be in a perpetual state of perplexity.
In filling up certain forms for one of the Government Offices three years ago on behalf of my eldest son, I had to make the usual statements relating to age, parentage, etc. The fact that I was a Major-General in the Indian Army and that my father and grandfather had also attained the same rank in that service did not at all convince them that I was quite the genuine article – English for 857 years.
They wanted to know if I had been ‘naturalized’! I had some difficulty in convincing them that it was quite all right and that I spoke English with no foreign accent.
I did not remain long in the land of my birth, as the family migrated from Switzerland to Jersey when I was about two years old, and from there we moved, a few years later, to the Isle of Wight.
I remember little of my early years and few of my childish recollections and small adventures are worth recording; but I have one very happy memory in connection with rum-and-eggs that my mind likes to dwell on. I absorbed this delicious drink for quite a long time – it was a special diet for an invalid sister who hated it, and I, on the contrary, liked it very much.
Fate has been good to me in this way. In schoolboy days I had an anæmic friend whose parents paid extra for him to have a small bottle of stout at night. Of course he didn’t like it, and of course I did, so I helped him out of his difficulty. This pleasant state of affairs lasted for several terms. He got thinner and thinner, while I got fatter and fatter – in fact, I might attribute my later robust health chiefly to the consumption of this nourishing beverage.
Another unfading memory is that of the luscious smell of a frowsty hotel. That must have been when we left Jersey, when I was about seven, and we stayed at an hotel in Southampton. A warm smell of bacon, coffee, and cigar-smoke. I frequently encounter this well-known mingled perfume nowadays, and I would naturally hate it, but childhood’s memories make it sweeter to me than the fragrance of flowers in spring.
It is well that I should not dwell too much on the years of my early childhood, as I have no doubt in my own mind that I was an exceptionally unpleasant infant. Like most men, I have had bad periods in my life, and I believe that my first seven years were probably the worst.
I did not bother to think why I thought and behaved as I did, but looking back on it now I dare say it was partly the longing for assertion of a very small male, surrounded at all times by seven females, all of whom were, in greater or less degree, in a position of authority towards this helpless little creature.
My mother being to a great extent an invalid, my early training was chiefly in the hands of my five sisters, and whatever I am to-day must be regarded as the result of their methods. I express my gratitude to them. I needed a strong hand, and I got five pair of strong hands. Bless them.
But they went wrong on one point. That was not their fault, they were not old enough to know. Fifteen years ago after a scene of trouble with one of my sons aged six, it occurred to me to explain to him that there are, and must be, two