This interview is presented here as a period piece, which gives insights into attitudes now outdated and sometimes outright repugnant — such as the sense that it is quite acceptable, even laudatory, to show off battle trophies like helmets, and looted treasures like the "old Egyptian lattice of great antiquity" which Villiers uses as a screen. The Arthurian reference is also telling, and very much of its time (Villiers is associated with Sir Bedivere, one of the most gallant knights of Arthurian legend) as is the glorification of General Gordon and the jingoistic praise of "Tommy Atkins" (the brave English foot-soldier). Although Villiers' courage is not in question, and his sketches were invaluable, there is more than enough here to justify Pat Hodgson's characterisation of him as a "terrible poseur" who "did much to perpetuate his own legend" (24).
In this connection, Villliers' portrait is worth noting. The war-artist is shown as a hero, his service medals proudly on display, although it would have been taken when Villiers was lecturing in North America. This is the only one in the collection by Canadian-born celebrity photographer Napoleon Sarony (1821-1896). Sarony himself was famous, for example, for his portraits of Oscar Wilde.
The last line of the interview, quoted from "For he's a jolly good fellow," completes the sense of hero-worship here. It may just as well apply to the interviewer's attitude to Villiers as to a shared admiration of the English "Tommy." — Jacqueline Banerjee
REDERIC VILLIERS at home! I catch myself smiling as I write the words "at home," for I can fancy my readers saying, "And where on earth would Villiers not be at home?" For essentially he is one of those whom one pictures to oneself as being equally at home and at his ease on the prairie or in the palace, with the peasant or the prince, with the bullets whistUng past him on the field of battle, or in the smoking-room of the Savage Club, of which he is so popular a member. In fact, by sea or by land, in peace or in war, with young and old, and high and low, and rich and poor, Frederic Villiers is always at home, always the same genial, winning man. He is one of those of whom it can be said — and you cannot pay a higher tribute to a man's character than this — that he wins the good word of everyone.
"From photo by Sarony, New York."
To a more remarkable extent than with almost any other man that I have ever known, this is the case. Only last year, when in America, I was entertained by the officers at West Point, the great military academy, and much of the exceeding warmth of my welcome was due to the fact that I was a fellow-countryman of Frederic Villiers. "We were all charmed with him," Colonel Wilson, the commandant, told me, "when he came to lecture here a year or two ago." Which to me was a delightful thing to hear, for, I deeply [132/135] regret to put it on record, Englishmen abroad are not always as desirable as they might be. But everyone loves Villiers. And the tales they tell of him — to which, however, he never by any chance alludes himself, — of his bravery on the field of battle, of his thoughtfulness for his comrades, of his tenderness to the wounded and the dying, these tales are endless, but they win for him the love of all who know him. And his knowledge of his craft is perhaps unrivalled: on more than one occasion Villiers has proved himself an able and an experienced soldier. Few realise the tremendous risks and dangers that are run by a resolute and a dauntless "special correspondent" upon the field of battle. But Mr. Villiers, with a charmed life, and with no particle of fear, has perhaps encountered more of real danger, and faced apparently inevitable death more frequently than almost any living man to-day.
Let me present him to my readers. He is almost exactly like the striking portrait of him that appeared two or three years ago in the Grosvenor Gallery. A tallish, well set-up, soldierly, and resolute-looking man, with the tales of travel and adventure written strong upon a clean-cut, handsome face. Nor are his surroundings, amidst which he sits chatting easily and pleasantly, and always with energy and interest, less remarkable than himself: memories of innumerable campaigns, the gifts of generals of world-wide fame, the loot from far-off Eastern palaces, some of them curiously reminiscent of the "Arabian Nights." Helmets picked up on the field of battle, the long-barrelled, picturesque rifle of the Afghan, the deadly dagger of the Abyssinian, the camel-saddle upon which he rode right through the Soudan campaign — all these are here in rich profusion. A part of the wall of the palace at Mandalay in which King Theebaw lived, a most beautiful and artistic piece of work; pieces of tapestry that spanned one of the rooms in the same palace, representing a hunting scene in one of the teak [135/136] forests of Burmah, testify to the wonderful culture of those whom we, in our ignorance, are apt to regard as savages pure and simple. A piece of Musharabeyah work, an old Egyptian lattice of great antiquity, separates the studio proper from the little room which Mr. Villiers uses as his office. The very kind of lattice from which the mother of Sisera looked so anxiously for the coming of her son — the very kind of window from which Jezebel was thrown by order of the cruel Jehu. Everything is in harmony with the man himself — romantic, picturesque, and with a story attached to the whole. All these things Mr. Villiers told me as we sat at luncheon — a luncheon in which the old-fashioned green and pink-coloured glasses from mediæval Nuremberg were as curiously suggestive of other times and manners as were the trophies collected by him in his eventful and varied life.
As we sat at our meal, and I gazed with interest at the travel-worn face of my host, across which a golden ray of sunlight fell, sharply throwing him out against the gloom of the dark recesses of the studio behind him, I recalled the innumerable places in which, and the varied people with whom, at different stages of my own varied career, I had sat talking. Luncheons with great soldiers, with celebrated authors, with the hundred-and-one humanities who go to the formation of this vast and kaleidoscopic body politic. Evenings with the presidents of great republics, hasty meals with a few blacks and whites in a far-off tropical forest, pic-nics down the romantic Potomac; — all these memories flashed across my mind, and I remarked on the romance of it all to my host.
"Ah," he replied, with a smile, "it is just my experience. I have lunched with princes and beggars in my time, with the general as well as with the private. The most amusing meal I ever had was with a number of Servian gipsies, rather Hungarian, outside Belgrade; the most dreadful cut-throats you ever saw in your life. They had a king and queen, and [136/137] a system of Court life that was most amusing, and they were the best and kindest hosts I ever had in my life."
"What an interesting life you must have had, Mr. Villiers; I wish you would tell me something about it."
"Certainly I will," replied the artist, as he filled his pipe and threw himself down upon a divan which he had brought from Egypt in 1882, and which was draped with pieces of silk, most beautifully worked by Servian ladies who had lost their husbands in the war which so devastated their unfortunate country. "To begin with, I was always very fond of adventure, and I was especially inspired to a life of action by the story of 'Anastatius the Greek,' in which the life history of Omar Pasha is most graphically told. Then, again, the letters of Archibald Forbes [1838-1900, an established war-correspondent] on the war of 1870 made me resolve I would see a little adventure if possible. My first trip abroad with any spice of adventure in it was shortly after the Commune at Paris, when a painter friend of mine had a commission to do a panorama of the war that was to go round the world. He asked me to go to Paris to make sketches and pick up what material I could to help him. I had to leave by the mail of the same evening without my passport, so my friend procured one, with the name of Chevalier, and I hurried off. I got into several predicaments, as I was too slow in answering to my assumed name, and once I was very nearly arrested as a spy — a very ticklish thing in those days. But I got through all right, and returned to England, having seen the destruction of the Rue Rivoli, etc. But even this little taste of adventure inspired me with the ambition to go for the next campaign. It was not for five years later that this was realised. In 1876 I joined the Servians against the Turks."
"Now, Mr. Villiers, I want you to tell me how you make your sketches on the field of battle. I want to place you vividly before my readers."
"You must imagine me," he replied, "clad in a pair of [137/138] Dean's top-boots, a light Scotch tweed suit, knickerbockers, 'Wolseley' jacket with capacious pockets for my sketch-book, a water-bottle slung across my shoulders, a revolver buckled on to my belt, and a cap very much after the pattern which is known as the 'Stanley' cap; but which Archibald Forbes and I used long before Stanley went out on his African adventures. I shall never forget my first experience clad in this costume. It was my baptism of fire at a place called Sinitza, on the border of Bosnia. The Servians, with whose army I was marching, were about to invade Turkish territory by attacking that town. I marched with the troops on foot, and I heard the crack of the musketry in our immediate front; but this didn't appeal to me more than a field day at Wimbledon would have done. At first, one never thinks of the danger when one hears only the noise of fire-arms. Presently, on my left, a battery of Servian artillery, in position, opened fire. So I walked up, and watched their shells bursting in some scrub in our immediate front, and presently a curious rushing noise came through the air, and then there was a terrific explosion behind me. There was a pine forest just behind ; when this explosion took place the top of one of the pines was blown into atoms, and a noise very much like that of a huge tuning-fork, from the vibration of one of the trees that had been struck, made me wonder for a moment what had happened. Very soon the Servian battery limbered up, and began to quickly retire down the road through the forest up which we had marched in the early morning. I was looking at this, to me, extraordinary movement on the part of the Servians, when a number of Servian infantry, who had been lying under cover of the scrub in front of our battery, rushed past me. As this mass of men crowded a little on entering the road down which the artillery were now disappearing, one of the enemy's shells, instead of striking the pine trees, burst in their very midst. Then, for the first time, the horrors of war burst on [138/139] me: before the noise of the explosion had passed away, at least half-a-dozen poor fellows were writhing in their last agony, torn to pieces by the segments of the shell. It was then, to steady my own nerves, I pulled out my sketch-book, and made the first of a series of sketches for war pictures with which I have illustrated wars and battles in every part of the known world."
"It must have been a stirring experience," I remarked. "Now, who is the most interesting soldier of all those whom you have known, Mr. Villiers?"
"Skobeleff [Mikhail Dmitriyevich Skobelev (1843-1882) was a Russian general celebrated for his exploits in the war between Turkey and Russia], emphatically ! I knew him well; no one knew him better. We were great chums. He was a regular figure of romance. He embodied all the qualities of those heroes I had worshipped ever since I was a boy. Marlborough, Clive, Napoleon, Wellington — all those 'chappies' — he was an embodiment of the lot. The last time I ever saw him will always live in my memory. It was when the Russian army was facing Constantinople. It was a splendid instance of the survival of the fittest. Thirty thousand grim warriors, who had come through that terrible campaign under Skobeleff, were ready at a moment's notice to occupy the city of the Sultans. It was a grey afternoon, the great general stood outside his tent, bare-headed, shaven head, like a Mussulman; flowing yellow beard, blown by the breeze; deeply tanned features, and grey overcoat, he looked a remarkable picture against the gloomy background. Further on was his escort, just lighting up their camp fires. I had arrived from Constantinople to bid farewell to the General,, as I was ordered to Malta to meet the Indian contingent.
"Skobeleff said, 'Not good-bye, Villiers, but au revoir. We shall meet again, but how? Will it be when we Russians face the British,' — for Skobeleff fully believed, as did most people in '78, that a campaign was impending between England and Russia — 'or will you throw in your fortunes with us and come with me ? It would be a new experience to you.'[139/140]
"'But,' I said, 'General, how would it be if you were beaten? for you know we English are never defeated."
"He laughed and said, 'Well, anyhow, you shall be well looked after; no harm shall come to you in my care.'
"I replied, 'General, I'll think it over.'
"We shook hands, and with his good wishes ringing in my ears I departed. I never saw that splendid figure of romance again. We have only equalled him once in this century, and that was when Gordon died at Khartoum."
"It will interest my readers, I am sure, Mr. Villiers, if you tell me something about the work of clergymen and ministers on the field of battle."
"One man always stands out clear in my mind," replied he, "out of the many excellent workers I have met — that is the Rev. Arthur Male [1851-1902], a Wesleyan minister, whom I met first of all in Afghanistan. He was always at the front whenever he could get a chance, ministering to the spiritual comfort of the fallen soldier. He, like the surgeons of the British army, not only risked his life in actual battle, but in the more dangerous duty of the cholera camp, or the numerous infectious diseases of the Base Hospital. He was always to the fore, and better testimony it would be impossible to bring. I would like also to mention that of the Knights of the Red Cross I have met, one of the most distinguished was Surgeon Mackellar, now chief surgeon to the Metropolitan Police. He was a devoted hero, always aiding the sick and suffering. Armand Leslie, who lost his life in Baker's retreat in the Soudan, was another splendid fellow. He was one of the surgeons attached to the Red Cross Brigade in many campaigns."
We drifted into general conversation, and Mr. Villiers, like Sir Bedivere, sat for long, "revolving many memories," out of which memories I select one or two.
"I can never forget the defeat of the Russians at Plevna," said he, " called in the graphic language of Archibald Forbes [140/141] 'July Plevna': 'there were so many Plevna incidents that at last we named them by the months. On this special occasion the Russians advanced with thirty thousand men, and retired leaving twelve thousand dead and dying on the field. That was an awful scene to witness. Tamai was to me a memorable day, when the British army just got off with the skin of its teeth, after the smash-up of General Davis's square. I was in that square, sketching hard all the time, and so I know something about it. But I think that, on the whole, the most memorable scene of all those I have witnessed was when, after the bloody fight at Abu Klea, the night march which followed, the subsequent fighting in the zereba at Gubat, and when a square of twelve hundred men, the survival of the fittest of the two thousand who crossed the desert under General Stewart, forced its weary way through mimosa bush and a desert, surrounded by twenty thousand of the enemy, fought its way to the Nile to try and save that universally beloved Christian soldier, General Charles George Gordon. I was also in that square, making the sketches which so soon after appeared in the paper I was representing."
"One more question, and I have done. Who are the best soldiers of all those you have seen?"
"Well," replied Mr. Villiers, "I wish to imply this, that the foreign armies I have been with have always had fine soldiers, with the exception of the Servians, and I don't think they have much of the soldier in them. But after my Soudan experiences, and not till then, though I have been in many campaigns with the British, did I think so, I have come to the conclusion that not in the wide, wide world is there a soldier to compare with 'Tommy Atkins'; I love him, God bless him!"
And so say all of us.
Bibliography
Blathwayt, Raymond. Interviews. London: A.W. Hall, 1893. Internet Archive, from a copy once held by Highgate Library in N. London. Web. 10 April 2025.
Hodgson, Pat. The War Illustrators. New York: Macmillan, 1977. See especially pp. 24-25.
Created 10 April 2025