Note 260:1 — Chapter VI

An Irish baronet, grandson of Sir James Caldwell who was created a baronet in 1683, and distinguished himself in the service of William III. during the Irish revolutionary wars. The person commemorated in so flattering a manner by Hume, rose to considerable rank in the service of the empress, and was enabled to introduce to that service a brother, who obtained in it far more distinction, and who, in connexion with the relationship mentioned above, was called Hume Caldwell. He seems to have been strongly endowed with the mercurial disposition of his countrymen. On his first introduction to the service, he "took expensive lodgings, kept a chariot, a running footman, and a hussar, and was admitted into the highest circles;" the natural result of which was, that, on preparing to join his regiment, when he paid his debts, he found that he had just two gold ducats left; whereupon, as his biographer pathetically narrates, "the companion of princes, the friend of Count Conigsegg, the possessor of a splendid hotel and a gilt chariot, who had kept a hussar and an opera girl, figured at court, and had an audience of the empress, and was possessed of a letter of credit for £1000, set out from Vienna alone, on foot, in a mean habit, and with an empty pocket, for that army in which he was to rise by his merit to a distinguished command." His subsequent history is a little romance. Mr. Hume Caldwell, being lost sight of by the great world, is searched for hither and thither, and at length an Irish private soldier being questioned about the matter, turns out to be Caldwell himself, who is immediately restored to his proper station.—Ryan's Worthies of Ireland.