Henry Lawrence

“ Some soldiers of the 32nd soon came in and placed Sir Henry in a chair. When the surgeon came he saw that human aid was useless. Lucknow and England had lost what could never be replaced. For all who ever came in contact with Sir Henry Lawrence recognized in him a man of unstained honour, a lover of justice, pure, unselfish and noble. His successor, Brigadier Inglis, wrote of him: [Pg 164] “Few men have ever possessed to the same extent the power which he enjoyed of winning the hearts of all those with whom he came in contact.” ”

“ Thanks to his foresight the small garrison held out for four months, although Sir Henry was himself wounded by a shell on July 2, and died two days later. Lawrence was not only a soldier and statesman, but a philanthropist, having been the founder of the Lawrence Military Asylums at Punjab, Rajputana and Madras, to which he devoted his entire income. ”

“ As a child, John Lawrence went with his parents from Richmond to Guernsey, thence to Ostend where the father commanded a Veteran Battalion during the Waterloo campaign, and thence soon after 1815 to Clifton near Bristol. During his childhood he suffered severely from an affection of the eyes, the very ailment which, as we shall see hereafter, overshadowed his declining years. From Clifton he went to a day-school at College Green in Bristol, walking daily over the breezy uplands that then separated the two places, in company with his brother Henry, his elder by five years. ”

“ The true novelist, the analyst of human character, has always been a psychologist in an untechnical sense. Before Henry James was Balzac; before Balzac was Goethe; before Goethe was the author of Hamlet. Mr. Lawrence is too fine an artist to import into his art the dubious lingo of psychoanalysis. I doubt, however, if without that muddled pseudo-science (muddled because the facts are muddled) Mr. Lawrence's later fiction would be just what it is. And the main theme of Sons and Lovers is the relation of Paul to his mother. ”

“ Lawrence to bring you to New York for a week. I suppose it wouldn't do for me to call on you in the light of day; but I might hang round your hotel and see you going in and out. Does he love me as much as ever, Mr. Lawrence? Poor man, tell him to take it easy; I shall never trouble him again. Are you ever lonely in the midst of your grandeur? Do you ever feel that, after all, these people are not of your blood and bone? ”

“ While he held that chair he delivered his Lectures on Man, which on their publication in 1819 roused a storm of bigotry. In his early manhood, Lawrence was an earnest advocate of radical reform; but notwithstanding his early unpopularity, he acquired a lucrative practice. Died London, 5 July, 1867.
Layton (Henry) , educated at Oxford, and studied at Gray’s Inn, being called to the bar. He wrote anonymously observations on Dr. Bentley’s Confutation of Atheism (1693) , and a Search After Souls, and Spiritual Observations in Man (1700) .
Leblais (Alphonse) , French professor of mathematics, b. ”

“ When Lawrence reached New York he became famous for his victory, and received at once promotion. The “Hornet,” given to Captain Biddle, was attached to Decatur’s squadron and blockaded at New London, while Lawrence received command of the “Chesapeake.” Lawrence was then thirty-two years old; he was born in New Jersey in 1781, entered the navy in 1798, and served in the war with Tripoli. He was first lieutenant on the “Constitution,” and passed to the grade of commander in 1810, commanding successively the “Vixen,” the “Wasp,” the “Argus,” and the “Hornet.” ”

“ In after years the East India Company erected a monument to Lawrence in Westminster Abbey, surmounted by his bust by Taylor, and inscribed: 'For Discipline established, Fortresses protected, Settlements extended, French and Indian armies defeated, and Peace restored in the Carnatic.' Monuments exist at Madras and Calcutta. A portrait of Lawrence by Sir Joshua Reynolds is in the India office.
Sir John Malcolm says (Life of Clive, ii. 66) that Lawrence neither was nor pretended to be a statesman, but was an excellent officer. ”

“ At the end of his life Lawrence took a small house at Peckham, near London. After a short illness he died 17 Jan. 1839, in his eighty-sixth year. He was buried at Norwood. There is an engraving of Lawrence at an advanced age by Holl after Wivell. About the age of thirty he married Ann Barton, by whom he had one son and five daughters, only the youngest of whom left children.
Although three editions of Lawrence's 'Treatise on Horses' were published, his name was almost entirely forgotten until the republication of some chapters by Mr. E. B. Nicholson in 'The Rights of an Animal,' 1879. ”

“ With John Lawrence, fortunately, there was no question of collapse till many years of overwork broke down his [97] physical strength. He grappled with the task like a giant, passing long days in his office or in the saddle, looking into everything for himself, laying up stores of knowledge about land tenure and agriculture, training his judgement to deal with the still more difficult problem of the workings of the Oriental mind. He had no friends or colleagues of his own at hand ”

“ Lawrence had not been decisive with the United States government, other reasons were sufficient. The political motive was as strong as the military. Americans, especially in New England, denied that treasonable intercourse existed with Canada; but intercourse needed not to be technically treasonable in order to have the effects of treason. Sir George Prevost wrote to Lord Bathurst, Aug. 27, 1814,152 when the war had lasted two years,—
“Two thirds of the army in Canada are at this moment eating beef provided by American contractors, drawn principally from the States of Vermont and New York. ”

“ The latter, however, was taken to Pondicherry and paraded through the streets to show the natives that the English were defeated and Lawrence killed. Finding the position taken up by the French close to Trevadi too strong for attack as intended, Lawrence was considering the advisability of carrying the war into other quarters, when, on 20 April, news reached him from Dalton at Trichinopoly of the straits to which he was reduced. Lawrence at once started for Trichinopoly, and entered that place after a most arduous march, during which he lost many men by the heat, on 6 May (N.S.) 1753. ”

“ Throughout a long life and in nearly every one of his numerous publications Lawrence taught the duty of humanity to animals, at times expostulating with cruel drovers and market-men, and always exerting himself to raise the tone of public opinion on the subject. ”

“ It might seem a sufficient achievement to preserve his province to British rule, with rebellion [104] raging all around and making inroads far within its borders. But as soon as he had secured the vital points in his own province (Multān, Peshāwar, Lahore) , John Lawrence devoted himself to a single task, to recover Delhi, directing against it every man and gun, and all the stores that the Punjab could spare. Many of his subordinates, brave men though they were, were alarmed to see the Punjab so denuded and exposed to risks ”

“ Boscawen sent Lawrence to attack Ariancopang, a small French post close to Pondicherry, where he was made prisoner by a French cavalry patrol, was carried into Pondicherry, and there detained during the unsuccessful siege by Boscawen, and until the news of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle led to a cessation of hostilities and the restoration to the English of the city of Madras. In 1749 Lawrence commanded at the capture of Devicota, in Tanjore. Clive served under him as a lieutenant of foot on this occasion, and the friendship then commenced lasted through life. ”

“ He became captain in the regiment in 1742, and major in 1747. In some Irish lists of the period the name of Stringer Lawrence [q. v.] is wrongly inserted in his stead. He accompanied the 45th to Nova Scotia; was appointed a member of council on 19 Oct. 1749, and the year after commanded a small expedition to Chinecto, which built Fort Lawrence at the head of the bay of Fundy. Lawrence's journal of the expedition is in British Museum Addit. MS. 32821, f. 345. Parkman (Montcalm and Wolfe, vol. i.) relates Lawrence's subsequent troubles with the unhappy Acadians in much detail. ”

“ A hundred dollars would stave it off,—a few days at least. Don't refuse me!" These last words were uttered half as an entreaty, half as a threat. "Don't say you haven't got them,—a man that wears such pretty gloves! Come; you look like a good fellow. Look at me! I'm a good fellow, too. I don't need to swear to my being in distress."
Lawrence was touched, disgusted, and irritated. The man's distress was real enough, but there was something horribly disreputable in his manner. Roger declined to entertain his request without learning more about him. ”

“ Men see God in the ripple, but not in miles of still water. Of all the two thousand miles that the St. Lawrence flows, pilgrims go only to Niagara. ”

“ Of that school John Lawrence proved the most ardent and the most renowned. Intermitting his work at Delhi, he became land revenue settlement officer in the district of Etawah, and there began, by buying out or getting rid of the talukdars, to realize the ideal which he did much to create throughout the rest of his career—a country “thickly cultivated by a fat contented yeomanry, each man riding his own horse, sitting under his own fig-tree, and enjoying his rude family comforts.” ”

“ Lawrence loses interest in his major characters. He must be on to pastures new.
“Aaron’s Rod” can scarcely be called a “good” novel. It contains many advanced ideas in the field of sociology which we found rather difficult to agree with. However, the world may in time grow up to Mr. Lawrence and until then we should seize the opportunity of reading his descriptions of luxurious interiors, and the Alps. They are remarkably able bits of writing.
Mr. Lawrence is an important novelist now, but it is in his power to do much better things than he has done so far. ”

“ Circumstances and his own lifelong efforts have made him more free of human ties than other men. He can therefore dispose of himself in any market at any given time. Others cannot; they have careers, ambitions, families, wants, hopes, fears, traditions, duties—all binding them to that organized human society in which Lawrence seems to play only an accidental and perfunctory part. It is this extraordinary detachment, this final insulation of himself, which makes him the object of so much curiosity, suspicion, exasperation, admiration, love, hatred, jealousy, legends, lies. ”

“ As the bullet went through his heart, young Pangus sprung some feet in the air, and fell lifeless in the stream below.
"O, the ever wakeful Providence of our Heavenly Father," whispered Mrs. Lawrence.
"The beautiful swell of land, directly in front of us, and clothed with verdure to its summit, is Starkes-hill," said Mr. Lawrence; "that on our right, just back of the village, is Kearsarge mountain."
"And those beyond, piled one upon another, in seemingly endless succession—far—far as the eye can reach," cried Mrs. Lawrence, "are the celebrated white mountains of New-Hampshire. O, how sublime! ”

“ There was only room for their four feet.
“It’s a swindle!” he said. “But there’s a rut where a man has been, so if we go on I guess we shall find the path again.”
The river slid and twined its great volume. On the other bank cattle were feeding on the desolate flats. The cliff rose high above Paul and Clara on their right hand. They stood against the tree in the watery silence.
“Let us try going forward,” he said; and they struggled in the red clay along the groove a man’s nailed boots had made. They were hot and flushed. Their barkled shoes hung heavy on their steps. ”

“ In 1857 he published, anonymously, his first novel, Guy Livingstone, or Thorough. The book achieved a very large sale, and had nine or ten successors of a similar type, the best perhaps being Sword and Gown (1859) . Lawrence may be regarded as the originator in English fiction of the beau sabreur type of hero, great in sport and love and war. He died at Edinburgh on the 23rd of September 1876. ”

“ His greatest natural gift is being able to switch off the current of his personality whenever he wishes to be unnoticed in company. He can look heavy and stupid, even vulgar; and uses this power constantly in self-protection. When he first joined the Royal Air Force he was sent one day to nail down carpets under the direction of an Air-Marshal’s wife. She had known him well, but Lawrence to avoid general embarrassment did not wish to be recognized, and so she did not know him. As a matter of fact he is hardly ever recognized in uniform by people who used to know him. ”

“ She could have risen up and smitten her guests, and turned them furiously out of the house, but she had to sit there and smile. The gambler's fever was upon her, and there was dire necessity for some ready money on the morrow. She rose from the table with a sudden resolution. As she turned, she saw Lawrence looking critically round him.
"You don't play," she said. "What interest is there to you?"
"It is a fine study in human nature," Lawrence replied. "All the evil emotions are here nicely chained up. I like to watch and study for myself. Let me sit down and smoke a cigarette and study." ”

“ Lawrence from the harbor of Quebec. In politics he is a Conservative, but has never taken an active part in public affairs, though frequently pressed by his fellow-citizens to do so. He was, however, for many years a conspicuous member of the Quebec Board of Trade and its Council, and a director of the Quebec Bank. He was also a delegate to the first railroad convention held in Boston in 1851. In his younger days he held a commission as captain in the militia, and served under the late Colonel Boucher, of Maskinonge, P.Q. Throughout all the relations of life, Mr. ”