Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/566

 proclamation. Cardigan was quite magnificent. The next time Dr. Russell met him was in a transport going to Varna. The third time he saw him crestfallen and wounded not quite in front after Balaclava. But O'Connell and his head pacificator, Tom Steele, wore great bunches of shamrock in their coats, and a great posse of priests begged the people to disperse quietly. Then commenced the memorable Irish State trials.

"Both the Times—for which I wrote the descriptive portion of the trials—and the Morning Herald had chartered special steamers to carry the news and the results of the Government prosecutions to London," said Dr. Russell. "The great day came. The trial of O'Connell and the traversers lasted long, but at last it was over. It was very late on a Saturday night when the jury retired; the judge waited in court for some time, but went away after an hour's expectancy, and the other newspaper correspondents left to get refreshments. I was sitting outside the court, wondering whether I should go to bed. Suddenly my boy rushed up to me.

Jury just coming in,' he said.

"And they brought in a verdict of guilty. The moment I heard it I flew from the court, jumped on a car—drove to the station, where I had ordered a special train to be in readiness—got to Kingston—hailed the Iron Duke, the steamer chartered by the Times—got up steam in half an hour, and left with the consolation that the steamer of the Morning Herald was lying peacefully in harbour! Arrived at Holyhead—sped away—special to London—tried to sleep, couldn't—tight boots—took them off. Reached Euston, man waiting with cab, struggled to get on boots, only managed the left foot, and when I reached the Times office it was with one boot under my arm.

"As I got out of the cab in Printing House Square, a man in shirt-sleeves—whom I took to be a printer—came up to me.

So glad to see you safe over, sir!' he cried. 'So they've found him guilty?'

Yes—guilty, my friend,' I replied.

"The Morning Herald came out next day with the news of the fact—the bare fact—as well as the Times! The gentlemen in the shirt-sleeves was an emissary from their office!"

In 1846 Dr. Russell married the daughter of Mr. Peter Burrowes, and severed for a short period his connection with the Times, in the same year becoming "Potato Rot Commissioner," as it was termed, to the Morning Chronicle, for which he wrote letters from the famine-stricken districts in the West of Ireland. In 1848 he was special constable on the occasion of Fergus O'Connor's abortive Chartist demonstration at Kennington, and in 1849 he accompanied the Queen's flotilla on a visit to Ireland, and described for the Times the first review at Spithead by the Queen, as well as the first review of the French fleet at Cherbourg by Napoleon, after the coup d'état. He was summened home from Switzerland in the same year to attend the Duke of Wellington's funeral. At this ceremony Dr. Russell saw the later Cardinal Howard, then a cornet, riding at the head of a detachment of the Life Guards.

"I was at his funeral only a week or two ago, at Arundel," he said. "A Roman Catholic bishop spoke to me at the Castle, after the ceremony was over. Did I remember him? No, I did not. He introduced himself as Dr. Butt, Bishop of Southwark, who thirty-six years ago was Catholic chaplain in the Crimea, and presently I met his venerable colleague, Bishop Virtue, who had also been a chaplain in the Army before Sebastopol. I had not seen either of them since. At lunch I sat next Father Bowden, chief of the Brompton Oratory, who had been in the Guards, and who was a fellow member of the Garrick Club."