ENGLISHMAN AT GETTYSBURG

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 898, 19 October 1956, Page 12

ENGLISHMAN AT GETTYSBURG

THE FREMANTLE DIARY: An Eye-witness | Account of the American Civil War; André _ Deutsch, through Oswald-Sealy (N.Z.), 21/-. HE best review of this book is the . simple statement that it is the diary | of an English Guards officer who, having /secured three months’ leave in 1863, _sailed for Mexico, crossed Texas by |} mule, buggy, coach and foot, attached ) himself to a Confederate army he found in Mississippi, and spent the last two | days of his leave sitting up a tree watching the Battle of Gettysburg. The dullest ‘man, if he had eyes and ears, would have found that an exciting experience; and Colonel Fremantle was not dull. He was young (for a colonel), simple (in that raw world), and being a perfect English gentleman was also a continuing English joke. The soldiers laughed at his shooting suit, at his Texan hat, his travelling trunks; and his

collapsible Turkish lantern. But he had an observant eye, good temper, and a gift for saying clearly what he saw. He was also a trained soldier, able to appreciate tactical situations, and because the Confederates were desperately anxious to stand well with Britain, he had access to generals when he wanted more inférmation than came to him through his eyes. Before Gettysburg, for example, he had discussions with Longstreet, with whom he was quartered; during the first day’s fighting he had progress reports from Hill; and when he was watching from his tree, Lee was sitting on a stump below. With all these advantages he did not arrive at a sound estimate of the final issue of the war, which he could not see the Confederates were losing. The last entry in the diary, a postscript added on the way home across the Atlantic, closes on this note: The more I think of all I have seen in the Confederate States of the devotion of the whole population, the more I feel inclined to say with General Polk, "How can you subdue such a nation as this!’’ Even supposing that their extermination were a feasible plan, as some Northernérs have suggested, I never can believe that in the nineteenth century the civilised world will be condemned to witness the destruction of such a gallant race. But, of course, no one will read Fremantle today for his military or political opinions. The value of his diarygreater now than when he wrote it, since the world he saw in 1863 will never be seen again-lies in its vivid personal (continued on next page)

portraits and its descriptions of domestic, hotel, and camp life 90 years ago. I can’t agree with the publishers that Freniantle’s is the best description of Gettysburg now available; but it has the great merit that it is the description of a man who kept writing down what he saw as it was happening. I think Fremantle’s best touches are the sidelights he throws on the civil population; the rancour and rudeness. of the women to soldiers not on their side; the primitive living and travelling conditions in Texas; the double beds for’ men in nearly all wayside taverns; the attitude of the slaves; the fighting Christian ministers. Stonewall Jackson’s chief of staff was a Presbyterian -professor of theology. Lee’s’ artillery chief was a doctor of divinity. Polk, who commanded an Army Corps, was the Bishop of Louisiana. Al] these officers and many others-including the chaplain who was a surgeon and the surgeon who was a chaplain--Fremantle describes with great vividness, as he does most of the men and women who interested him as he went along. But his worship he re-

serves for Lee.

O.

D.