The Story of Baden-Powell / 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps'

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of Baden-Powell, by Harold Begbie

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Title: The Story of Baden-Powell

'The Wolf That Never Sleeps'

Author: Harold Begbie

Release Date: December 13, 2005 [EBook #17300]

Language: English

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THE STORY

OF

BADEN-POWELL

'The Wolf that never Sleeps'

BY

HAROLD BEGBIE

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

Vestigia nulla retrorsum

LONDON

GRANT RICHARDS

1900

"... A name and an example, which are at this hour

inspiring hundreds of the youth of England...."

Southey's Life of Nelson.

First printed May 1900. Reprinted May 1900

Major-General R.S.S. Baden-Powell.ToList

To SMITH MAJOR

Honoured Sir,

If amid the storm and stress of your academic career you find an hour's relaxation in perusing the pages of this book, all the travail that I have suffered in the making of it will be repaid a thousandfold. Throughout the quiet hours of many nights, when Morpheus has mercifully muzzled my youngest (a fine child, sir, but a female), I have bent over my littered desk driving a jibbing pen, comforted and encouraged simply and solely by the vision of my labour's object and attainment. I have seen at such moments the brink of a river, warm with the sun's rays, though sheltered in part by the rustling leaves of an alder, and thereon, sprawling at great ease, chin in the cups of the hand, stomach to earth, and toes tapping the sweet-smelling sod, your illustrious self—deep engrossed in my book. For this alone I have written. If, then, it was the prospect of thus pleasing you that sustained me in my task, to whom else can I more fittingly inscribe the fruits of my labour? Accept then, honoured sir, this work of your devoted servant, assured that, if the book wins your affection and leaves an ideal or two in the mind when you come regretfully upon "Finis," I shall smoke my pipe o' nights with greater pleasure and contentment than ever I have done since I ventured the task of sketching my gallant hero's adventurous career.

I have the honour to be, sir,

Your most humble and obedient servant,

THE AUTHOR.

Weybridge, April 1900.

CONTENTS

  Page CHAPTER I.   An Introductory Fragment 1 CHAPTER II   The Family 6 CHAPTER III   Home Life and Holidays 16 CHAPTER IV   Carthusian 37 CHAPTER V   The Dashing Hussar 55 CHAPTER VI   Hunter 73 CHAPTER VII   Scout 90 CHAPTER VIII   The Flannel-Shirt Life 103 CHAPTER IX   Road-Maker and Builder 119 CHAPTER X   Putting Out Fire 135 CHAPTER XI   In Rags and Tatters 158 CHAPTER XII   The Regimental Officer 172 CHAPTER XIII   Goal-Keeper 192

ILLUSTRATIONS

  Page Major-General R.S.S. Baden-Powell Frontispiece Professor Baden Powell 7 Mrs. Baden-Powell 11 B.-P. reflecting on the After-deck of the Pearl 21 Rev. William Haig-Brown, LL.D. 41 The Dashing Hussar (B.-P. at 21) 61 "Beetle" 79 The Family on Board the Pearl 107 "Viret in Æternum" 179 Goal-Keeper 201

CHAPTER IToC

AN INTRODUCTORY FRAGMENT ON NO ACCOUNT TO BE SKIPPED

You will be the first to grant me, honoured sir, that after earnestness of purpose, that is to say "keenness," there is no quality of the mind so essential to the even-balance as humour. The schoolmaster without this humanising virtue never yet won your love and admiration, and to miss your affection and loyalty is to lose one of life's chiefest delights. You are as quick to detect the humbug who hides his mediocrity behind an affectation of dignity as was dear old Yorick, of whom you will read when you have got to know the sweetness of Catullus. This Yorick it was who declared that the Frenchman's epigram describing gravity as "a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind," deserved "to be wrote in letters of gold"; and I make no doubt that had there been a greater recognition of the extreme value and importance of humour in the early ages of the world, our history books would record fewer blunders on the part of kings, counsellors, and princes, and the great churches would not have alienated the sympathy of so many goodly people at the most important moment in their existence—the beginning of their proselytism.