Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/251

 or Rhymes on the Road' (1907), of which a third edition appeared in 1911 under the title of 'The Father of the Sea.'



RUSSELL, WILLIAM HOWARD (1820–1907), war-correspondent, was born at Lily Vale, in the parish of Tallaght, county Dublin, on 28 March 1820. His father, John Russell, came of a family which had been long settled in county Limerick, and was agent in Dublin for a Sheffield firm. His mother was Mary, daughter of John Kelly, a grazier, who owned a small property at Lily Vale. Near by the house in which Russell was born some ruins, known as Castle Kelly, suggested a family prosperity, which was already only a legend at the time of Russell's birth. John Russell was a protestant, and Mary Kelly a Roman catholic. In the early years of Russell's life misfortune broke up the business of his father, who migrated to Liverpool, where he tried more than one occupation. Young William Russell was brought up first by his grandfather Kelly, and then in Dublin by his grandfather William Russell. John Russell's wife and younger son, John Howard Russell, both died in Liverpool. William Howard Russell, after starting life as a Roman catholic, was converted to the protestant faith by his grandfather in Dublin. He was educated at Dr. E. J. Geoghegan's school in Hume Street, Dublin (1832-1837), and entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1838. He left Trinity College in 1841 without a degree, yet he acquired a good knowledge of the classics and a real liking for them, which did not desert him through life. His tutor frequently spoke of the possibility of his taking a fellowship.

In 1841 he was invited to help in reporting the Irish general election for 'The Times.' He was ignorant of journalism, except for some slight work on the Dublin 'Evening Mail.' At Longford, being anxious to pick up information from both sides as to some events he had missed, he was led by his mother wit straight to the hospital. There he found all the information he desired, and more. At the end of the elections he went to London to read for the bar, and was for two terms junior mathematical master at Kensington grammar school. J. T. Delane, the editor of 'The Times,' next asked him to report the episodes of the repeal agitation in Ireland in 1843. Russell attended many of the 'monster meetings' and had some amusing encounters with O'Connell, who more than once good-humouredly denounced the 'Times' Server.’ His vivacious work was so much appreciated by Delane that he became attached to 'The Times' regularly as a reporter. He reported O'Connell's trial and the 'rail-way mania,' and was engaged fairly frequently in the Press gallery of the House of Commons. In 1845 he joined the staff of the 'Morning Chronicle.' In the autumn of 1848 he rejoined 'The Times.’ In June 1850 he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple, but he never applied himself seriously enough to the work to succeed, though it was some years before he ceased to take an occasional brief. In 1850 he accompanied the Schleswig-Holstein forces in their campaign against the Danes and was present at the decisive battle of Idstedt.

The great opportunity of his life came in 1854, when the Crimean war broke out. With this war his name will always be connected. He landed at Gallipoli on 5 April 1854, and within a few days predicted the sufferings of the Crimea, as he found the management of the commissariat and medical departments infamous. His letters from here and from Varna were resented by the headquarters' staff, and when the army reached the Crimea he was an outcast, not authorised to draw rations, and knowing that his irregular and indeed unprecedented position might be challenged at any moment and that he might be removed from the theatre of war. He had lost most of his clothes, and by a freak of irony wore a commissariat cap. If he had not had great personal charm, which made friends for him rapidly, he could scarcely have contrived to do his work in the early days of the campaign, when he was dependent for food and shelter on the liberality of chance acquaintances. His letters to 'The Times' from the Crimea were narratives of remarkable ease, never disdaining any subject as too small, yet always relevant and appropriate. In writing of the battle of Balaclava (25 Oct. 1854) he applied to the English infantry the phrase 'the thin red line' which has since passed into the language. But the letters which moved Englishmen to an intensity of indignation, not before or since produced by such a means, were those describing the sufferings of the British army in the winter of 1854–5. It was these which made the public aware of the true condition of the army, which largely inspired the heroic 