Z\K BEarl ot Car&ioau 247 



which, in Cardigan, was regarded as only the natural 

 pride of a simple-hearted hero in his own exploits. 



That he believed himself to be a hero, and that he also 

 believed his conduct as leader of the famous charge to 

 have been from first to last irreproachable, there can be 

 no doubt whatever. It was a point on which he was 

 extremely sensitive, and, as late as 1863, when Lieutenant- 

 Colonel Somerset Calthorpe, Lord Raglan's nephew 

 and aide-de-camp, published ' Letters from Headquarters,' 

 and therein stated that ' a/Ur the charge unfortunately 

 Lord Cardigan was not present when most required,' 

 Cardigan at once filed a criminal information for libel 

 against the author. He was, however, non-suited, 

 though the Lord Chief-Justice probably expressed the 

 sentiments of the general public, when he said that 

 *any criticism of the man who led the Light Cavalry 

 charge at Balaclava should be a generous and liberal 

 criticism,' 



Throughout all these stormy passages of his life Lord 

 Cardigan had no more staunch partisans and no warmer 

 admirers than the fellow-sportsmen who had hunted with 

 him in the Shires. From his earliest days he had been 

 devoted to the Chase. He figures among the hard riders 

 and first-flight men, Lord Forester, Captain John White, 

 Val Maher, Frank Holyoake, in 'Nimrod's' famous 

 description of a great run with the Quorn under George 

 Osbaldeston's Mastership. To this day the story is told 

 of how he and his cousin, Wilbraham ToUemache, had a 

 friendly wager as to which would be in first at the finish 

 of a run, and how Cardigan rode his tired horse into the 

 Welland to swim after the hounds and was within an ace 

 of being drowned, for he was a poor swimmer, yet 

 managed to gasp out, as ToUemache, who could swim like 



