Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/450

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ILLUSTRATED INTERVIEWS.
453

in the China war. He frankly says this is the secret of his success. Lord Wolseley accounts for his rapid promotion by the experience he gained during those eight years of preliminary training. At the time he was made a captain—within three years of joining—he was the youngest in the army; he was promoted to be a Major as soon as the allotted six years had passed, and nine months afterwards was Lieut.-Colonel—a record of rapid rising neither to be beaten nor equalled.


Lord Wolseley and the Hon. Miss Wolseley.
From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.

"We all have chances," said Lord Wolseley, "but a large proportion of men don't know it. The opportunities are waiting for them to grasp, and they won't put out their hands to take them. I had my chances, and had the knowledge to grasp them. Then I was fortunate enough to win approval. There is only one way for a young man to get on in the army. He must try and get killed in every way he possibly can! He must be absolutely indifferent to life. If he does not succeed in getting killed he is bound to get on—that is, always assuming he has intelligence and the instincts of a soldier."

Lord Wolseley comes from a family of soldiers, and is the son of the late Major G. J. Wolseley, and was born at Golden Bridge House—curiously enough, within a stone's throw of his present abode—on June 4, 1833. A portrait of his mother, here reproduced, stands on a table in his study. He was called Garnet, after Bishop Garnet, his father's great-uncle. He has practically little in the way of ancestry to hang his successful career on. The successful man—be he a soldier or what you will—lifts himself in life, and does not depend on the support of ancestral pillars. So says Lord Wolseley. He passed his early days in Dublin, occasionally coming over to England on holiday visits to Sir Richard Wolseley. He entered the army in 1850 as an ensign. The campaign in Burmah was his first war.

"The first man I ever saw killed was during a skirmish in Burmah," Lord Wolseley said, "and Lord Alcester—then