ARCHIBALD FORBES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1023, 28 October 1882, Page 2

ARCHIBALD FORBES.

Tlr- following is a very interesting sketch of the life of Mr Archibald Forbes, the famous war correspondent, written by Miss Kate Forbes

“ Archibald Forbes once a private soldier ! Then his origin must Lave been very humble, and his education selfacquired V Not so fast, good reader. There are those who have poverty thrust upon them, and others who thrust poverty upon themselves. lam afraid Archibald Forbes belonged to the latter class. His father, Louis Forbes, was a Presbyterian doctor of divinity ; his mother belonged to the old family of Leslie. Living in the North of Scotland, Forbes studied first at school, then with a tutor, and finally at the Aberdeen University. He excelled in classics, but had such an aversion to mathematics, that when the semdns ucademieus recently proposed to confer upon him the degree of L.LD., an irate professor exclaimed, “ I can nevor consent to such a mockery. As a student Mr Forbes was ‘ ploughed,’ in mathematics. I shall never consent that a man should receive an honorary degree from this University who has tailed to pass his examination,” Fortunately for

Forbes, success on the battle field does

not depend upon the appendix of LL.D. During Forbes’s second collegiate year, his father dropped dead in the pulpit. There being nine children and little fortune, Archibald left Aberdeen for Edinburgh, with designs first upon law, and secondly upon the church. While endeavoring to decide upon a career, he •pent all his money, and fell in love with a young lady, with whom ne arranged to elope in a gig on a certain Sunday when the obdurate father was to be at Church. Alas, ‘ The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men gang oft agley.’ The obdur* e father waylaid our hero, remonstrated with practical determination, and turned the love-lorn youth into a ditch, whence he arose a sadder and a wetter man.

Attaining his majority in 1859, Forbes became possessed of £SOO, and determined to join a cousin in Canada, who owned a large tract of land near lake Huron. On reaching Quebec he lingered in tho quaint old city, held by the beaming eyes of the landlord’s daughtei. At the end of three months the wild Scotchman had exhausted his resources, confessed his poverty to the landlord’s daughter, and abandoned the idea of joining his cousin. With eight shillings in his pocket, he shipped for home as a sailor, and steered twelve hours a day for weeks, when the vessel became waterlogged. No timber-ship can sink, otherwise Forbes would have gone to the bottom. There was no cooking for a week, life being maintained on biscuit! and salt meat. After several sailors bad been washed overboard, the crew took to the boat, which was picked up by the cotcon slip Moses Taylor, from New Orleans. Finding that the crew were sadly diseased, Forbes, who had studied medicine cn amateur , got out the medicine chest, killed one patient, and cured the rest. Of course his susceptible heart fell a prey to the captain’s daughter, upon whom when bidding her farewell in Liverpool after three months’ taste of 'salt water, he squandered his last shilling in grapes.

What was to be done 1 Never without resource, Forbes sold a fine field glass, with the proceeds of which he went to London, where he enlisted in the Royal Dragoons. Despite his tendency to £ larks’ he made rapid headway. In addition to his appointment as school-teacher to the company, Forbes was made acting - quartermaster-sergeant, without the rank of sergeant, as be happened to be the only man of his company who could solve the following stupendous problem in mental arithmetic :—‘ If one man is allowed the thirty-seventh part of an ounce of pepper per day, what is the amount to be drawn for two hundred men per week V Having accomplished this, Forbes was let off from punishment drills, and became an object of admiration to his companions. Already articles by him had been aecepted for Household Words and the Cornhill Magazine. Shortly after, he competed for a prize essay of fifteen guineas, to be written by a working man, £ On the advantages the Mother Country derives from her colonies.’ He was then stationed at Weedon, where libraries were conspicuously absent ; and as he knew nothing about the colonies how could he obtain data 1 Discovering an old encyclopaedia, he collected his material from it, wrote the essay, and secured the prize.

Owing to his literary earnings, Forbes had more money than his fellows, and consequently got into frequent trouble. His colonel —now General Wardlaw —was a strict disciplinarian, and meted out punishment unflinchingly. But towards the end of his military career, which lasted five years, Forbes bore a very good character, —a happy change, which would probably vbae led to promotion had not his health given way and caused him to be invalided. After enduring ignorant army hospital treatment for eighteen months, he went to London, got well in six months, and was then sent to Aidershot, to show the military surgeons how easy had been his cure.

In losing an obstreperous soldier lingland gained a new species of correspondence. Forbes’s first contributions to journalism were published in 1865, in the Evening Star. He became a casual writer on the Morning Advertiser, and once received eighteenpence for a paragraph accepted by the Daily Hews. On this promising income be married ; but be ' is now a widower with two charming young daughters who cheer his house when he was in it, but complain that they do not see enough of their father, as in seven years he had only been in Louden twice altogether. After publishing an article in the Cornhili on “ Army reform,” and another in St'Paul's entitled 11 Soldiers’ Wives,” both of which wore well received, Forbes started a paper called the London Scotsman, intended, like every other paper, to fill an aching void. It provided Scotchmen with condensed news from their country ; but the editor did not amass a fortune, and he thought of adding to his slender income by writing occasional dramatic and musical criticisms for the Morning Advertiser. Unfortunately for Art, Forbes was nottlie only example of the right man in the wrong place. When sent to pronounce upon the merits of a performer on the pianoforte, the ex-soldier regarded the artist from a gymnastic point of view and praised him as an acrobat I

On the breaking out of the FrancoGerman war, Forbes was engaged in wiitiug a novel for Ins paper, while cherishing the idea that nature had designed him for a war correspondent ; and he communicated this ’dea to James Grant, editor of the Morning Advertiser, who soon after said to him : “I’ve concluded to offer you a position of war correspondent. Take whichever side you prefer.”

Haring studied German tactics, acquired a slight knowledge of the German language, and feeling sure (from the unprepared condition of the French army) that the German eagle would win, the ex soldier editor went direct to Saarbrilck and witnessed the “baptism by fire,” on August 2, 1870. It is remarkable that he should have beheld the defeat at Sedan, seen Louis Napoleon dead at Chisclluirst, and been amongst those who looked upon the slaughtered Prince Imperial in Africa. At Saarbtick, Forbes helped to save the life ©f Major Battye, who belonged to the celebrated Indian Guides and was afterwards killed in Afghanistan. Following the Germans as a spectator, Major Battye lost his temper on seeing a soldier killed beside him. Seizing the dead mao s needle gun he opened upon the French, and promptly received a chassepot bullet in the ribs. Forbes picked up the impetuous major, carried him to a place of safety, and temporarily repaired him by incasing him in brown paper, plastered over with paste. Present at the battles of Courcelles, Yionville, and Gravelotte, Forbes advanced with the Germans to Paris. He and a young Dutch correspondent, DeLiefde, were so far forward as to be ignorant of the flank movement to the right which ended intlie battle of Sedan, and they held on their way alone through Chalons until aetually warned by the French in the street to be careful or ?they would fall into the bands of the Germans, who had been seen in the neighborhood. Recovering touch of the Germans, Forbes was under fire the entire day, and the next day witnessed Napoleon’s surrender to Bismarck. He and his companion were tho only civilians who witnessed this historic event.

On the night of the day Napoleon left for Wilhelmshohe, Forbes and De Liefde, being unable to find quarters else where, asked for lodgings in the Chateau Bellevue, which had been the ex-Emperor's temporary residence. The request was granted, but without food. While Forbes was writing his despatch on tho table on which the capitulation had been signed, De Liefde sat gnawing a hambone taken from their own stores. Failing by this means to appease a ravenous appetite, he threw the bone in disgust upon the table, and upset Forbes’s ink. On returning to the chateau three months later, Forbes was gravely shown the stain of his own ink as a souvenir of the capitulation : the French commander had upset the bottle, in his i age at Moltke’s exorbitant demand 1 It was then that De Liefde and Forbes tossed for the right to sleep in the ex-Emperor’s bed. The ever-lucky Forbes won. On a little table by the head, with leaf turned down, was the book which Napoleon had read before going to sleep,—Bulwer’s ‘ Last of the Barons !' Forbes was the first non-combatant to ride round Paris before the city was entirely invested ; and while waiting at Meaux for the progress of the environment, he received orders to return home. The Morning Advertiser no longer required his services, for the quaint reason that this journal abeady had a corres pondent inside a city that was about to be besieged ! Forbes reached London in three days, sole possessor of valuable information concerning the siege ; and he determined, if possible, to sell his knowledge. As The Times turned a deaf ear to his application, Forbes stood in Fleet Street, and tossed £ odd man out ’ to which of the three papers—Daily News, Standard, and Telegraph—he should go with his copy. The Daily News won the toss. He found favor at last, and was told to write three columns. On returning to the office to state that the subject was not yet exhausted, the editor replied, £ Write on, then, until it is. We’ll take as much as you like of this kind of copv.’

Forbes wrote six columns, and arranged for another article to appear the following day ; but when lie presented his second manuscript, Mr J. It. Robinson, the manager, said, ‘ I don’t think we want it.’

The tone greatly irritated the already jaundiced Forbes, who politely requested the manager ‘ to go to the devil,’ aim then proceeded to go elsewhere himself. Chasing the. correspondent up the street, Mr Robinson finally overtook him, and calmed him by the magic announcement, ‘ I want you to go to Metz to-night for

us.’ It was four o’cook in the afternoon ; Forbes left three hours later. This was his first engagement upon a journal with which he has connected ever since.

(To he continued.)