Note 83 — Chapter XXIX

Henry Havelock, writing to his old Captain, then Major-General Smith, Oct. 3, 1840, refers perhaps to the events of this day. [Was it April 2, 1820? See Cope, p. 220.] “I feel that it is time I ought to be trying to ascend the ladder, if ever, for as the Battle of Glasgow Green was fought in 1820, I fear I must now be not very far from forty-six.” It is perhaps not the least of Harry Smith’s services to his country that he incited his subaltern, Henry Havelock, to make a serious study of the science of his profession. Havelock writes to him Sept. 5, 1840, as his “master,” and writes of him on Oct. 2, 1847 (after his appointment to the Governorship of the Cape): “When I was a boy, he was one of the few people that ever took the trouble to teach me anything; and while all the rest around me would have persuaded me that English soldiering consisted in blackening and whitening belts with patent varnish and pipe-clay, and getting every kind of mercenary manœuvre, he pointed my mind to the nobler part of our glorious profession. As a public man I shall ever acknowledge his merits. He is an excellent soldier—one of the few now extant among us who have set themselves to comprehend the higher portions of the art. He has a natural talent for war, and it has been improved by the constant reflection of years, and much experience. There is no species of business which Harry Smith’s mental tact will not enable him to grasp.”—Marshman’s Memoirs of Sir H. Havelock (1867), pp. 66, 165.