It is difficult to realise, while reading these letters, that they were written slowly and with difficulty, but Sir Frederick was never quick with his pen. Many hours of well-earned and much-needed rest must have been sacrificed to enable him to communicate so fully v^dth those he loved at home.
Up to the last he was most careful and punctilious in attending to bic correspondence, and in 1910, when past his eighty-ninth birthday, he apologises to Lady Wantage for " neglecting " her, and not writing sooner, saying, ** I keep plodding on quietly, peaceably, and happily, though I feel laziness growing upon me with advancing years, which will account for my present neglect."
One very characteristic trait must be noticed — the way in which home thoughts and considerations were inextricably woven amongst the more pressing calls of the moment. There is ever some recollection of a friend or relation, some word to the absent, even a
X INTRODUCTION
playful message to a child, at times when most people would be wholly absorbed in their own immediate surroundings and necessities. He was one of those who always have time to think of others.
Of the two sons, Frederick most resembled his father both in appearance and character, and their handwritings bear a remarkable similarity, being in both cases small, neat, and rather stiff. The elder son's handwriting was much larger and bolder, and he wrote freely, while his letters rarely needed any corrections. They were expressed in short sentences of short words. I remember his once saying, " Never use words of two syllables if one will say what you want." Excellent advice, not easy to follow.
All the three were fine-looking, handsome men, highly cultivated, and refined in taste; and one quality they all possessed in common — the humility of really great minds.
Good oil portraits exist of Sir Benjamin by Bird, and of Sir William by George Richmond, but nothing really adequate of Sir Frederick, only sketches and photographs.
In the Chapel at the Wellington Barracks his name is fitly inscribed on the south of the chancel, by the side of the three-light window, whose intersecting columns are dedicated to his memory.
In the Appendix, for it has no real place in these memoirs, I have included an amusing account of two of Sir Benjamin Stephenson's sisters, WTitten by his youngest surviving daughter, Charlotte Augusta. They were such curious types of a past age that the description of them, if a little unkind (for the writer had a caustic pen), is well worth preserving, and the old ladies are alluded to in the letters. Another item of the Appendix,
INTRODUCTION xi written by the same hand, is the story of Mrs. George Coxe. Some people may say that it has no place at all, even there, as neither she nor her husband was a Stephenson; but George Coxe, Sir Frederick's greatuncle on the mother's side, is also referred to in the letters, and the story is so romantically interesting that it ought to be handed down to future generations.
It only remains for me to express my gratitude to those who have helped me in my labour of love.
Very sincerely do I thank my own family for criticism, encouragement, and information; Lady Wantage and Lady Jane Lindsay for writing something expressly for the memoir of Sir Frederick Stephenson, and the former for permission to quote from her Life of Lord Wantage, and for giving me access to letters from Sir Frederick; Colonel Romilly for lending me letters and his own notes, and for giving me valuable hints; and above all. Lord Grenfell, whose introduction to the Egyptian letters has raised this little book on to a plane it could never have reached unaided.
H. A. P.
October 1914.
These letters were already in Mr. Murray's hands for consideration before war was declared on the 4th of August, and it seems imperative that a few words should be added upon a subject in which Sir Frederick Stephenson would have been so deeply interested. He would have been glad to reconstruct his views formed long ago of the friends and foes of Crimean days of whom he said some hard things. Half a century has passed since then and brought many changes. Though the rank and file of the French army were probably as brave and xii INTRODUCTION