Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/564

 think you can do better than put on it: Soyez tranquille!

From the drawing-room, the carpet of which was a wedding present from the suite of the Prince of Wales on Dr. Russell's marriage to Countess Malvezzi in 1884, we went into the study, the writing table in which was a personal present from the Prince of Wales on the same occasion. Boxes, full to their lids with diaries and papers, are scattered about; the portraits on the walls are mostly family ones, though here and there hang a few outside the immediate family circle. Dickens and Thackeray are not forgotten; and the head of a little dog is here, under which Landseer has written "Brutus." It was his own dog.

"The most faithful friend I ever had," the great artist said, as he put the picture in Dr. Russell's hands one day.

Over the mantel-board is a picture of the Serapis, the vessel in which Dr. Russell accompanied the Prince to India, and photos of the Prince's parties in India and Turkey. A huge paper-weight and an inkstand are not without a history. The inkstand is formed from a piece of a shell which is embedded in a stone from the Palais de St. Cloud. It was fired by the French from Valérien at their own palace the day it was burned, just as General, then Colonel, Fraser arrived from Versailles. The paper-weight is also a very formidable bit of a shell which was fired from Vanvres at the staff of the Crown Prince on the 19th September, when they obtained their first view of Paris from the heights of Châtillon after the battle of that day. A very few inches nearer, and the probability is that Dr. Russell would not have been sitting in his chair in the cosy study at Victoria Street.

William Howard Russell was born at Lilyvale, Co. Dublin, on March 28th, 1821. He really belongs to a Limerick family, and to this day there is just the faintest and happiest tinge of the dear old brogue on the tip of his tongue. He exemplifies in a way the "distractions" of the "distressful country" in politics and religion, for he had a great-grand-uncle hanged on Wexford Bridge in 1798, as a rebel during the war; whilst his grandfather was engaged on the side of Government, and was a valiant member of a Yeomanry Corps. He went to the Rev. Dr. Wall's, who used to flog severely, and to the Rev. Dr. Geoghegan's, a dear old fellow, who was not so birchingly inclined, both in the same street; but whatever he knows is due to Dr. Geoghegan's school, where he was a "day boy" for six or seven years. Amongst his schoolfellows were General Waddy (Alma, Inkerman, etc.), R. V. Boyle—who defended Arrah in the Mutiny—General Sir Henry de Bathe, Colonel Willans, and Dion Boucicault, who was then called Boursiquot.

"Boucicault was a very cantankerous boy," said Dr. Russell, "though unquestionably plucky. I remember he fought a big fellow named Barton—who, by-the-bye, became a famous advocate in India, and died not long ago a J.P. in Essex—with one arm tied behind his back, and took a licking gallantly. He was always considered a clever fellow; but, oh! how he used to romance! St. Stephen's Green was the great battle-field of the schools—Wall's, Huddart's, Geoghegan's, etc. in those days. Black eyes were as plentiful as blackberries, and I had my share. I was always very fond of soldiering,