Mr Russell of The TimesAt ten minutes past eleven, our Light Cavalry Brigade advanced. As they rushed towards the front, the Russians opened on them from theguns in the redoubts on the right with volleys of musketry and rifles. They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun in all the prideand splendour of war. We could scarcely believe the evidence of our senses. Surely that handful of men were not going to charge an armyin position? Alas! It was but too true – their desperate valour knew nobounds, and far indeed it was removed from its better part – discretion. They advanced in two lines, quickening their pace as they closed towards the enemy. A more fearful spectacle was never witnessed than by those who, without the power to aid, beheld their heroic countrymen rushing to the arms of death…

from The Cavalry action at Balaklava, October 25th; published under the byline ‘From Our Special

Correspondent’ The Times, November 14th 18541

I

THE SPECIAL Correspondent whose vivid, stirring and, above all, accurate accounts of the British participation in the Crimean War was a 34-year-old Irishman, William Howard Russell, who had little experience of witnessing and writing about conflictof this nature but whose impact was, quite literally, extraordinary.

1 The Times, Tuesday, November 14th 1854, page 7

This “miserable scribbler”, as he was once dismissed by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, was nonetheless knighted by her. 2 He became a thorn in the side of the British military and political establishment. Russell’s reporting effectively destroyed the reputation of the Britishcommander in the Crimea, Lord Raglan, and played a major role in the collapse of the government of Lord Aberdeen, a coalition of Whigs and Peelites.

Yet he was a hero to many, not least the middle class readers of The Times newspaper of London, all of whom werebedrock supporters of the British Empire. Russell’s reporting and that of Thomas Chenery, a Times colleague based in Constantinople, helped inspire Florence Nightingale bring her nursing skills to the battlefield.

As a man who could make or break the reputation of others, Russell had a fearsome reputation of his own but his company was sought and cherished by many establishment figures – in politics, the army,law and literature; the royal family even. He was afriend of the writers Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. A gregarious bon viveur and the toast of London’s Garrick Club, he had a deserved reputation as a good dinner companion, a teller of engaging anecdotes and, with his better then average baritone voice, he was wont to round off a good evening with a ballad.

2 Cited by Furneaux, Robert; The First War Correspondent: William Howard Russell of ‘The Times’, (London: Cassell, 1945), page 78

His dispatch, as quoted previously, was a short extract from a lengthy and detailed account of the heroic failure that was the charge of the Light Brigade. This galvanised the poet Tennyson to produce a poem of that title:

Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. 'Forward the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!' he said. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.3

Russell’s account of the Light Brigade charge roused the passions of middle England. No journalist of his time achieved anything like the popular standing he enjoyed and after his death in 1907, his life and legacy was commemorated by a memorial bust erected in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. The inscription describes the figure above it, reporter’s notebook at the ready, as “The first and greatest of War Correspondents”. The words “war correspondent” were applied to Russell during his life but he disliked the title. He preferred the more simple statement that he was “Mr Russell of The Times,” a title he regarded as a badge of pride and honour.

The man celebrated in St Paul’s was indeed an exceptional character, a man garlanded with honours3 Opening stanza of The Charge of The Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), 1864

by the time of his death. They included that knighthood from Queen Victoria, a Légion d'honneur from the government of France, the Chevalier of theOrder of Franz Josef of Austria, the Indian War Medal, and an honorary Doctor of Letters from his former university, Trinity College, Dublin (although he never graduated). In 1902, less than five years before his death, he was given further British royal recognition, this time bestowed on him by his friend, the new king, Edward VII, a meretwo days after his coronation following the death of his mother Victoria.

Summoned to Buckingham Palace, Russell was investedas a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. As he stepped forward to position himself in front of thenew monarch, the king gently scolded the celebratedjournalist: “You must not trouble to kneel Billy,” said the king. “Stoop!” 4

So who was this Mr Russell of The Times who has such an impact on his times, and what of his legacy?

William Howard Russell was born in Dublin on March 28th 1820 to John and Mary Russell (nee Kelly). His early years were spent in Kiltalown House, the homeof his maternal grandfather, Captain John, (Jack)

4 Russell wrote several memoirs of his many reporting assignments. Late in life, he began an autobiography which he titled Retrospect. It was never published and only fragments remain. Passages from Retrospect are quoted, however, by Alan Hankinson in his Man of Wars – William Howard Russell of The Times (Heinemann, 1982); and also by JB Atkins in his two volume TheLife of Sir William Howard Russell (John Murray, 1911), the most complete life ofRussell to date. Extracts were also published in early 1891 in several editions of the Anti-Jacobin magazine, edited by Frederick Greenwood. This chapter, quotes liberally from all these sources.

Kelly. The house was an elegant, two storey countryhome dating from 1800. It was built on the slopes of what were known than as the Tallaght Hills. Unusually, it faced east, perhaps to take advantageof the vista of the mountain, rather than the more sunny, southerly aspect. There were formal gardens laid out to the rear of the house along with some outbuildings. The property was approached by eitherof two entrances off the Dublin to Blessington road. Each had its own gate lodge and the driveway sliced through the grounds – several acres but nothing amounting to a vast estate by the measure of the time – to the main door. There was a porticosupported by fat granite pillars, probably hewn from one of the nearby quarries, providing a sheltered reception area for visitors stepping fromcarriages. The nearest neighbours were the constables attached to the police barracks just across the road – useful for crowd control during gatherings of the Tallaght Hunt, of which Jack Kelly was Master.

As described many years later by Russell, Kelly wasa larger than life character. He was tall and wore his long hair, which was powdered, tied behind his head with a black bow. He wore a blue coat with brass buttons, a fawn waistcoat with many pockets, and buckskin breeches (that were not spotless, as Russell recalled when he was 65 years old). He had a set of keys and seals hanging from his pockets and wore a pair of boots with tan tops.

“All my early memories relate to hounds, horses andhunting; there were hounds all over the place,

horses in the fields and men on horseback galloping, blowing of horns, cracking of whips, tallyho-ing, yoicksing and general uproar,” wrote Russell.

He recalled his grandfather being in high spirits on hunting mornings if the weather was fine and singing: “Tally ho, my boys! These are the joys that far exceed the delights of the doxies!” The scenes of exhilarating rural excitement remained with Russell throughout his life. “That voice has been silent for more than half a century but I hearit still as though the singer were in the next room.” 5

Russell was the product of what used to be known inIreland as a “mixed marriage” – his mother was a Roman Catholic, his father a Protestant. Such unions were not uncommon in nineteenth century Ireland and less frowned upon that might be expected when seen through the prism of much of twentieth century, independent Ireland. When financial misfortune shone on John Russell, criticsblamed it on the mixed marriage. The victims of failed speculations, John and Mary went to Liverpool. When an almost parallel misfortune befell Kiltalown House (Russell’s vivid account of “men stalking through the rooms with pencils and note-books” suggests financial ruin and liquidators) the young Russell was packed off aged six or seven to his paternal grandparents who livedin the city. 6

5Atkins, vol I, pages 5 and 6. 6 Atkins, vol I, page 6

Number 40 Upper Baggot Street was not then the citycentre address it is today. Suburban Dublin in the 1820s and 1830s ended barely a few hundred meters from the young Russell’s new home.7 Beyond the junction of modern day Pembroke Road and Northumberland Road lay open countryside – fields, hedgerows and trees; country houses and farms. Russell’s new home (demolished in the late nineteenth century and replaced with today’s red brick shops, with living accommodation above them, fronting directly onto the pavement) had a tiny front garden, just large enough to house the grand steps leading to the first floor entrance door. To the rear and backing onto Eastmoreland Lane, each of the properties had highly stylised gardens, withflower beds laid out in geometric patterns.

Russell’s Protestant grandfather, William, of UpperBaggot Street was a different kettle of fish to Tally-ho! Catholic Jack Kelly of Kiltalown House. Described in contemporary city records as a “publicaccountant”,8 William Russell was something of a puritanical Protestant. Politically, he was opposedto militant Irish nationalism of Theobald Wolfe Tone’s United Irishmen and had fought against the rebels of 1798: “in a charge on some ‘croppies’ he received a kick from a horse from which he never quite recovered,” recalled Russell.9 “There was no fiercer man in politics or religion.” In Kiltalown House by contrast, the young Russell was taught “to7 Ordnance Survey Office maps of Dublin; surveyed by Bordes, Capt; and Tucker, James and Bennett, Lts, Royal Engineers 18378 Dublin Directory 1826; Treble Almanac 18339 Atkins, vol I, page 6

cross myself and to pray to the Virgin” and broughtto Mass regularly.

Despite there bring a steady stream of bishops and archdeacons flowing through the Baggot Street home,where prayers were said every evening, and where hewas given regular grounding in the Scriptures, Russell seems to have emerged from his religiously diverse upbringing as a rounded and balanced youngster with no hint of sectarianism in his make-up. (In later years, however, he was given to distasteful anti-Semitic remarks.) He attended MissSteadman’s Day School for Young Ladies (which, rather confusingly, also catered for boys) and later a school in Hume Street run by a Dr Wall, andanother in the same street run by the Rev Dr E.J. Geoghegan, where he was a pupil from 1832 to 1837.10

“In that house, I spent some of the happiest years of my life, and assuredly it was my own fault that I didn’t turn to good account the teaching of [Dr Geoghegan] one of the kindest of friends and most indulgent of masters,” wrote Russell.11

Nonetheless, Russell got a place in Trinity College, but not before his first foray into journalism. Like many Victorians, Russell was interested in the natural world and was a keen observer of wildlife. An amateur ornithologist by the age of sixteen, he wrote a letter to the Dublin Penny Journal describing “a curious sort of lark on a

10 Murphy, David; Ireland and the Crimean War; Four Courts Press (2002); pages170-17111 Atkins, vol I, page 11

furrow in a field” which (unfortunately for the bird) the young Russell has shot. “I put the corpseon a sheet of paper at home, drew the outlines, setdown the details, and then I wrote a letter to the editor of the Dublin Penny Journal, enclosed the drawing, and delivered the precious manuscript at the office”.12

Undeterred by an aunt’s sniffy dismissal that the bird was probably “Jenny Osborne’s parrot,” Russellwas elated by the modicum of fame his drawing and published letter brought. It aroused the interest of the Royal Dublin Society and AG More’s 1885 List ofIrish Birds. Almost 70 years later, Russell was still credited with having found in Ireland one of the only crested larks then on record. Based solely on his claim, the crested lark (or alauda cristata) was included in the 1908 updated edition of the List of Irish Birds produced by Richard Ussher. The conclusionof the story suggests that Russell had an unsentimental side: when asked by Richard Ussher in1897 what had become of the shot bird, he replied: “Probably we ate him”.

The publishing experience evidently whetted the young man’s appetite – he read the Penny Journal “overand over again”, according to Atkins.

It is clear from scraps of information about Russell in his mid to late teens that he really didnot know what sort of career to pursue. According to one account, when he was about fifteen years of age, he wanted to join the British Legion in 12 Atkins, vol I, pages 12 and 13

response to a recruiting drive by General Sir George De Lacy Evans (an Irishman who would figure prominently in the Crimean War) to fight in the first Carlist war in Spain. 13

However when he left school in 1837, he worked for a time as a tutor in Co Leitrim. “My pupils were docile and affectionate if not very hard-working orbright,” he wrote many years later.14 However, the notion of being a teacher evidently did not appeal and, having sat his entrance examination for Trinity College, he began his studies in 1838. Although accommodation was presumably available at 40 Upper Baggot Street, a mere stone’s throw from Trinity, Russell lived in college rooms (on the third floor of number 17, Botany Bay). Precisely what he studied remains unclear: he was interested in both law and medicine but both seemed far from his thoughts.

“There were glorious doings doing election times, when Trinity College students – who were mostly Orangeman – met the Roman Catholics and engaged them in battle; but, alas! They were tyrannous and strong… [but] Sometimes we had it all our own way, and made the most of it. Away we would go to King William’s statue on College Green, shouting ‘Down with the Pope! Down with the Pope!’ We frequently parted with broken heads. We were often triumphant,though.”15

13 Murray, pages 170 and 17114 Aitkins, vol I, page 1515 Strand Magazine, July-December 1892; quoted by Hankinson, page 13

Whatever the distractions of local sectarian politics, his erstwhile interest in medicine propelled him on one occasion to attend an autopsy for students. Almost certainly held at the Royal College of Surgeons on St Stephen’s Green in Dublin, Russell later wrote: “I was quite overcome”at the sight of a corpse being dissected.16 He remembered also being disgusted at a “leering porter” and a student who sat through the procedurewith “a pewter pot and a plate of bread and cheese before him in the midst of it all, reading aloud from Harrison’s Anatomy.

So much, then for a career in medicine. Law would come later but like so many before and since, journalism intervened, with lifelong consequences.

In January 1841, Russell was in Liverpool to visit his father (his mother had died nine months before)and shared accommodation with a cousin, Robert Russell.17 Robert was working for The Times and laterthat summer, he was sent to Ireland to organise thenewspaper’s coverage of general elections, which, given previous elections, was expected to be marredby much rioting. Catholic emancipation in 1829 and electoral reform in 1832 had extended the franchisewith the result that politics had become more competitive. Robert offered William the chance to be an election reporter for The Times – an

16 Aitkins, vol I, page 1617 Hankinson, page 13; quoting Russell’s diary (January 1867), one of 50Russell diaries in the archive of The Times, London.

“astounding proposal” as William later described the opportunity.18

“You will have a pleasant time of it,” William recalled Robert assuring him. “Letters to the best people – a guinea a day and your hotel expenses. Will you go next week?” As Russell noted in his unpublished memoir, he “did not hesitate a moment”.

Aged twenty one and recently emerged from a fractured, not to say eccentric, upbringing, Russell had no clear notion as to what he might do with the rest of his life. Although he had a grounding in the classics, he managed only mediocreacademic achievement at school and none, apparently, at university. But he was about to stumble into his vocation.

II

WILLIAM HOWARD Russell’s first dispatch to The Times was published on Tuesday, July 20th 1841, five days after it was sent from Longford, a “dismal little town which was quivering with passion and the noiseof bands, patriots and priests”, as he later described it.19

“I have this moment,” he began, “returned from a visit to the Infirmary and never was I more 18 Retrospect, quoted by Hankinson, page 1419 Retrospect, quoted by Atkins, vol I, page 17

affected than I was by the horrid scenes I witnessed there. With countenances crushed and bruised out of all the lineaments of humanity and bathed in blood are lying a number of poor fellows,some of whom it is to be feared are fast hastening to another world… I regret to say that I have to record an atrocious attack made this day on a harmless young gentleman named King, who, while standing near his own house in the middle of the day not twenty yards from the barracks, and within a hundred yards of an immense force of military andpolice, was attacked by a number of pitiless miscreants, beaten, trampled under foot, and left helpless on the road. He is now, or rather his inanimate body is, lying in the Infirmary, his lifedespaired.”

The dispatch went on to make clear that sectarian hatred, whipped up by a protestant minister, lay behind the rioting. His efforts at more comprehensive reporting by visiting places outlyingthe town were curbed. “It being extremely dangerousto leave the parts of the streets lined with the military, I cannot procure accurate information as to the state of the suburbs; in fact, I have been warned that I am a marked man.”

His cousin Robert Russell was delighted with his protégé. “Your work is capital, a most effective description,” he wrote to him. Russell was thrilledwith his new status. “To hear my name ‘Mr Russell of The Times’ pronounced by an anxious agent as the

coach pulled up at Sutcliffe’s Hotel [in Longford]…this indeed was fame,” he wrote later. 20

But he must surely have been even more over the moon at The Times’ editorial on July 24th which, in anapproving reference to his report from Longford, mentioned his “burning words”. This was followed byinstructions from the Editor that “young Mr Russellmay be sent to Carlow, where a great fight is expected”.

On his first trial as a reporter, young Mr Russell (twenty one) had come to the attention of the almost equally young Mr Delane – John Thaddeus Delane, just appointed Editor of The Times at the extraordinarily young age of twenty three. Delane, son of barrister W.F.A. Delane, an Irishman who wasfinance manager of The Times, proved himself to be one of the newspaper’s greatest editors, if not thegreatest. During an editorship lasting 36 years, Delane and Russell formed a partnership that was deep and enduring, and was both professional and personal.

After the elections, Russell went to London to meetthe elder Delane, who held out the prospect of further work at The Times but without being specific.Russell returned to Dublin anxious and unsure. He consulted his old teacher, Dr Geoghegan, who told him that in wanting to be a reporter, he had “hit upon the very thing for which you are best suited… I could say with perfect truth that I believe you

20 Retrospect, Atkins, vol I, page 17

to possess the very qualities requisite to form a good reporter.”21

Reassured, Russell went back to London and paid hisway initially through a temporary job teaching mathematics at Kensington Grammar School, while he pondered studying for the Bar and soaked up the city’s social life. By the Spring of 1842, the teaching job had dried up but, once again, cousin Robert came to the rescue. Robert was then working as a parliamentary reporter for The Times, as well asstringing (writing part time) for the Mirror of Parliament, doing law reports for a local journal andacting as London correspondent for the Independence Belge. He was earning £1,300 a year, a sum that astounded Russell.

Robert encouraged William to try freelancing, whichhe did with some success. His musings on trout fishing for a sporting review netted him three guineas; a tale involving the police, which Russellhad squirreled away from his time as a tutor in Co Leitrim, was accepted by another outlet; another was returned by “Bentley” with the suggestion that he cut it down and resubmit.22

21 Letter to Russell, signed EJ Geoghegan, dated January 8th 1842 and quoted by Atkins, vol 1, page 2422 Atkins, vol I, page 26. This may refer to Bentley’s Miscellany, a literary magazine published in London between 1836 and 1868 and whose first editor was Charles Dickens. Bentley’s Miscellany published Dickens’ second novel, Oliver Twist, in serial form. As a 16-year-old, Russell read The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Dickens’ first major work, commonly known as The Pickwick Papers. Dickens was a parliamentary reporter for 10 years and, at one stage, launched his own newspaper, the Daily News. He and Russell become firm friends.

John Thaddeus Delane, meanwhile, learnt that Russell was not only available for work but had become proficient in shorthand. He offered him a temporary position with The Times reporting from the press gallery of the House of Commons for the remainder of the 1842 Session but with no pay when the House was not sitting. Russell accepted and by January 1843, he was sufficiently confident to suggest a pay rise – a display of chutzpah well matched by Delane’s gentle rejection which was laced with praise.

“Without at all detracting from the merit you justly claim for your zealous services, we are of opinion that we cannot in justice to your colleagues make a permanent addition to your present salary,” wrote Delane. “In acknowledgement,however, of the zeal and ability you have displayedduring the recess, I have the pleasure to request your acceptance of the enclosed cheque.”23

In 1843, Delane dispatched Russell back to Ireland to report on the activities of Daniel O’Connell, then campaigning for the repeal of the Act of Unionof 1801 (which stripped from Ireland of its separate parliament, from which Roman Catholics andPresbyterians were excluded, and replaced it with representation in Westminster). Russell dutifully followed O’Connell up and down the country, attending meetings, reporting what he saw and heardand, occasionally dining afterwards with O’Connell and his campaigners. While The Times did not support O’Connell’s quest for the repeal of the Act of 23 Delane to Russell, January 20th 1843; Times archive quoted in Atkins.

Union (quite the opposite), and while Russell did not wholly share his politics, O’Connell’s ability to rouse an audience made a great impression on him.

“I have never heard any orator who made so great animpression on me as O’Connell,” he wrote in 1891 ina long account of O’Connell’s monster meetings, often attended up upwards of 100,000 people and held in historically significant locations.24 On October 4th 1843, Russell reported in The Times that O’Connell planned a monster meeting at Clontarf, just north of Dublin city centre where, according to Irish historical lore, the High King Brian Boru defeated the Vikings in a battle that saw the slaughter of some 4,000 Irish and 6,000 Vikings. One of the dead was Boru himself.

O’Connell’s plans were thwarted, however, when the authorities banned the meeting and flooded the areawith troops. O’Connell, a pacifist at heart, ordered his followers to disperse. Nonetheless, some days later, he and his son, John, plus five associates were arrested and charged with sedition.Delane sent Russell to report on the trial, scheduled for January 15th 1844. Russell sat throughit all, along with a flock of reporters from other papers, it being one of the great stories of the day, until a guilty verdict was finally handed downin the early hours of Sunday, February 11th.25

24 Retrospect, quoted by Atkins, vol I, page 37, citing publication also inan edition of The Anti-Jacobin.25 On May 30th 1844, O’Connell was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment and fined £2,000. On September 4th, the verdict was overturned on appealto the House of Lords.

These were days before any form of electronic communication and so Russell rushed from the court and got the train to Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire) where he caught a ferry, the Iron Duke, which took himacross the Irish Sea to Holyhead where he caught the train to Euston in London, ready to deliver hisnews to The Times’ offices at Printing House Squarein Blackfriars. In a breathless account of what happened next, Russell recalled years later being met by a messenger from his newspaper who helped him into a carriage for the dash from Euston to Printing House Square during which he struggled to get his boots on.26

When the carriage arrived at The Times, the messengerleapt out saying: “I’ll tell the editor you’ve come.” He disappeared, Russell noted, “through the door, outside which stood some men in their shirt-sleeves.”

“As I alighted, one of them said in my ear ‘We are glad to hear they have found O’Connell guilty at last.’ I did not reflect; I thought it was one of the office people, and answered, ‘Oh yes! All guilty but on different counts.’ And then, with oneboot under my arm and my coat over it, I entered the office.”

Russell gave his hand written report to Delane who passed it immediately to his printer, requesting a proof copy as soon as possible. He instructed Russell to sit down and tell him the story. As the 26 Atking, vol I, pages 39 to 42

night wore on and proofs appeared for examination by Delane, Russell sank into sleep, waking in his chair at 4.20am. He was taken to a hotel in Fleet Street and slept till noon.

“My waking was not pleasant,” he recalled later. “Afiery note from the manager: ‘You managed very badly. The Morning Herald has got the verdict! This must be inquired into!’

“It turned out that my pleasant interlocutor at theentrance to the office was an emissary of the enemy. By artful and audacious guesses, the hated rival was able to make fair announcement on Monday morning of the result of the great O’Connell trials! It was mortifying, for there was intense rivalry between the Montagues and Capulets of the Press.”

Russell’s faux pas did not, however, lower him in Delane’s estimation, although for a period, his ties to The Times were not as firm as they had been. Employment in mid-nineteenth century England was not what it is today. Many media jobs were on a short term contract basis, employment lasting only as long as the work was there with the result that many journalists held down several positions simultaneously, or at least moved from one to another as demand dictated.

Thus reporters might be assigned to a story and would be gainfully employed only for as long as thestory remained current. Parliamentary reporters, for instance, worked, and were paid, only when

parliament was sitting. Outside of the parliamentary term, they were engaged in other activities. Many, including Russell, chose law and studied for the Bar. (In June 1849, he was called to the Middle Temple but was not destined to be a great success. He handled his debut appearance in court so badly that, when his application failed, he was chased from the building by his client and the client’s family, all baying for his blood!) As Russell pursued his studies, Delane remained in contact, sending him theatre tickets and invitations to social events and occasionally also pushing newspaper work in his direction.

In early 1845, Russell resumed parliamentary reporting and shortly afterwards, Delane called himinto his office. He asked of his legal career and then said: “Now Mr Russell, I am going to put you at the head of our railway committees staff of reporters. You must look after the gentlemen and see they do their work. You are to read the copy [ie the writing] of other reporters and exercise unlimited and merciless power in dealing with it, suppressing all suspicious adjectives and all statements not connected with actual fact.”27

At the time, railway mania – constructing the rapidly expanding network, financing it and tradingin shares of the companies involved – gripped much of English political and business life and corruption was rife as parliament sought to fashionlaws to facilitate the boom. The media – reporters,27 Atkins, vol I, page 50, quoting Retrospect extracts from the Anti-Jacobin,February 14th and 21st 1891

editors and proprietors – was as corrupt as any other section but not Russell. “He was an honest man – an unusual and important quality in such shark-infested corridors,” as Alan Hankinson notes.28 “He was surrounded daily by multitudes of men on the make, most of whom would gladly pay for the favourable presentation of their case in the press.”

One such shark was George Hudson, the son of a Yorkshire farmer, York city councilor and one time Lord Mayor. Hudson became a railway magnate in the 1830s and by the time of the Commons’ parliamentarycommittee work in 1845, he was known simply as the Railway King. At the time, he had very substantial shareholding interests in several railway companiesin the midlands of England when vast and rapid expansion was afoot. He controlled 1,000 miles of railway and began courting Russell.

A mutual acquaintance introduced Russell to Hudson;an invitation to a party followed. “There was an immense party,” Russell recalled, “royal personages, dukes and peers of lower degree, great ladies, statesmen, financiers, and a heavy tedious dinner.” 29

Several dinner invitations followed from Hudson andRussell, displaying a certain innocence, wondered “why I was so favoured”. The answer was not long coming. The Railway King eventually asked Russell why The Times was “so down… on the Cambridge and

28 Hankinson, Man of Wars, p 3129 Retrospect, quoted by Atkins, vol I, page 53

Lincoln in Group X [one of the consortia being examined by parliament].”

“I was told you had a large interest there,” said Hudson. And when Russell rejoined: “If anyone told you I had an interest in Group X, he told you what was untrue”, Hudson said simply: “Dear me, is that so! I am very sorry to hear it, for your sake”.

Although Husdon went on to become an Conservative Member of Parliament (for Sutherland from 1845-59),he was ruined when exposed as a fraudster and briber of MPs.

A further example of Russell’s high ethical standards and adherence to the truth came soon afterwards when Delane dispatched him once more to Ireland, this time to double check the work of another Times writer, the barrister Thomas Campbell Foster. Bestowing on Foster the rather pompous title of “Irish Commissioner”, The Times told him to write about the social conditions he found as partsof the country slid into famine. His reports shocked – few more so than the one describing conditions at Derrynane, the Co Kerry home of the Liberator, Daniel O’Connell.

O’Connell railed against Foster, calling him a “villain father of lies… a malignant hireling of the infamous Times.” But Russell confirmed Foster’s findings. “I went and saw the place, and found thatno partisanship could overpaint the truth. Derrynanebeg was an outrage on civilization. Cabinsreeking with fever exhalations, pigs, poultry,

cattle standing deep in oozy slough, the rafters dripping with smoky slime, children all but naked, woman and men in rags.”30

Russell’s personal life now took a major turn. In 1843 while in Dublin, he met and began courting Mary Burrowes, daughter of an eminent Catholic family. One member, Peter Burrowes, had been a friend of the great Irish parliamentarian and orator at the turn of the nineteenth century, HenryGrattan, and was one of the first Catholics to be appointed a judge after Catholic emancipation in 1829. Mary Burrowes was aged nineteen (four years Russell’s junior) and it took Russell almost three years to convince her family that he would be able to provide for her. Part of the convincing involvedhim severing his connection to The Times and defecting to The Morning Chronicle, which offered him astaff position paying nine guineas a week (pay thatwas reduced by a third within six months when the Chronicle fell on hard times).

He and Mary were married in Howth, Co Dublin, on September 16th 1846. It began as a happy partnership, if not one of equals. Russell socialized in literary and political circles that did not include Mary; and she, apparently, had little interest in his journalistic work. But they loved and doted on each other and had six children together, although two died in infancy. Poor health, which began to take hold of Mary not long

30 Anti-Jacobin, February 14th 1891

after their marriage, cast a long shadow and causedRussell immeasurable sorrow.31

After their wedding, they had a weeks’ honeymoon inMalahide, a seaside village just north of Dublin, and then, filled optimism and the challenge of the future: “To London to begin the battle of life,” ashe noted in his diary.32 But within no time at all, the Chronicle sent him back to Ireland to report on the famine.

What Russell saw during the winter of 1846/47 when he toured parts of Kerry, Clare, Galway and Mayo – a panorama of pain and agony, suffering and death, as he described it – made a deep and lasting impacton him.33

“In all my subsequent career – breakfasting, diningand supping full of horrors in full tide of war – Inever beheld sights so shocking as those which met my eyes in that famine tour of mine in the West.

31 The pair were apart for long periods during Russell’s many foreign assignments. However, their letters reveal strong bonds of love and affection. Mary appears not to have had a robust constitution and for three quarters of their 21 years of marriage, she was in poor physical and mental health. She fell seriously ill after the birth of their fifthchild in November 1857. She was ill again after the birth of the sixth child, a son, in October 1860. She died in January 1867, Russell noting in his diary just before her passing: “She is going my poor fiend and wife – my only true friend who loved me as no one else did or can or will.” Russell found happiness once more, however, and in February 1884 after a whirlwind romance, he married Countess Antoinette Mathilde Pia Alexandra Malvessi, an Italian noblewoman he met in Scotland. Titi, as he called her, was with Russell to the end of his life.32 Hankinson, page 34.33 Russell recalled his impressions in a detailed memoir published on February 7th 1891 in the Anti-Jacobin and quoted by both Atkins (extensively) and Hankinson.

They were beyond not merely description, but imagination. The effects of famine may be witnessedin isolated cases by travellers in distant lands, but here at our door was a whole race, men, women and children, perishing around Christian chapels and churches, railways and steamers, and all the time generous England was ready to pour out her treasure to save these people. I was indignant at what I saw, but I could not say with whom the blamelay. The children digging up roots; the miserable crones and the scarecrow old men in the fields; theghastly adults in the relief works – all were heartrending. One strange and fearful consequence was seen in the famished children: their faces, limbs and bodies became covered with fine long hair; their arms and legs dwindled, and their bellies became enormously swollen. They were bestial to behold. Hunger changed their physical nature as it monopolised all they had of human thought: ‘Give us something to eat!’ I do not if myletters, public or private, were agreeable reading;I think not.

“One day we got off our car to ease the horse up a steep hill, and we had nearly reached the top when I perceived a shapeless object on the road. There were two bare feet visible, and at first I thought it was some drunkard who had fallen asleep. It was the last sleep of a girl of sixteen or seventeen years of age. She was lying on her face stone dead with staring eyes and blood coming from her mouth. She had, as it turned out, been sent by her mother from a cottage near at hand, to buy a sack of meal at the Government store; as she was toiling up the

hill her legs gave way and the poor starveling stumbled with the weight on her back, fell and died.”

Shortly after Russell returned to London from Ireland, he resigned from the Morning Chronicle. He had not been happy with the newspaper and although his doctor told him to rest after a fainting spell,the paper demanded that he carry on working, Russell took the opportunity to leave. For the restof the year, and much of 1848, he did little, although his personal life saw a major event – the birth of his and Mary’s first child, a girl whom they named Alice. Professionally, Russell was as lost as he frequently appeared to be outside journalism: he dallied once more with the law, attending several trials, including an appeal to the Law Lords. At one stage, he enrolled as a special (ie part-time) constable when the authorities were increasing numbers in the expectation of civil disorder during Chartist demonstrations at Westminster.

But in the autumn of 1848, Delane, now seven years as editor of The Times, was able to offer him a full-time position. Over the following five years, Russell had several assignments – he reported from the trials in Ireland of the leaders of the failed rebellion of 1848 – led by the Young Ireland movement – including William Smith O’Brien; he reported once again from parliament and pursued hisspectacularly unsuccessful career as a barrister. He also got his first taste of reporting major conflict when in July 1850, he was dispatched to

the war between Denmark and Prussia over Schleswig-Holstein, two Duchies incorporating much of modern-day southern Jutland where age-old tensions betweenGermans and Danes had erupted in 1848.

In November 1852, Russell’s status was enhanced further when Delane summoned him to London (he was on an Alpine walking holiday) to report the funeralof the Duke of Wellington. Few men were as revered in Victorian England as Wellington. An Irishman by birth (he grew up on Merrion Street in Dublin and in Co Meath before being sent to Eton College), he was prime minister of Great Britain twice (1828-1830, during which time he oversaw the passage of Catholic emancipation, and again briefly in 1834). But he was famous more than anything else for his defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. In 1827, he was appointed Commander in Chief of the British Army, a title he held until his death in September 1852. His State funeral, designed by Prince Albert, took two months to organize and was eventually witnessed by an astonishing one and a half million people who thronged the streets of London.

Russell led The Times’ reporting – some 16,000 words of descriptive writing – of an occasion the paper deemed “national in the truest and largest sense ofthe word”.34

“On no occasion in modern times has such a concourse of people been gathered together, and never probably has the sublimity which is expressed34 The Times, November 19th 1852

by the presence of the masses been so transcendently displayed,” reported Russell.

To be assigned the task of reporting Wellington’s funeral, Russell must surely have been Delane’s most trusted reporter. By mid-way through the century, Russell had clearly established his credentials as a reliable and versatile reporter. He was employed by the best newspaper in England, possibly Europe. He was accurate, truthful, fearless and a good observer. He had the ability totranslate into clear prose what he saw with his owneyes and was told by others. He was under compliment to no one. Life might well have carried on as heretofore, resulting in a solid and distinguished output from those staples of journalism – politics, crime, grand occasions… and the unexpected.

At the age of thirty four, William Howard Russell was sent on a mission that would define the rest ofhis life and earn him a place in the history of journalism.

III

ONE EVENING in February 1854, Russell was sitting at his desk in Printing House Square when he was told the editor wanted to see him. Delane told Russell that “a very agreeable excursion” had been arranged for him to accompany a contingent of

British army Guards to the Mediterranean island of Malta, a significant British naval base in the nineteenth century. Russell made a limp effort to resist, rather pathetically saying that he feared aspell abroad would damage his prospects at the Bar!But Delane was not for turning. “There is not the least chance of that,” he said, “you will be back at Easter, depend on it, and you will have a pleasant trip.”35

On the eve of his departure, Russell’s friends hosted a meal in his honour. The attendees give a good indication of the standing he had achieved among London’s writers and journalists. Among them were his long-standing friends, the writers CharlesDickens and William Makepeace Thackery. Others included Douglas Jerrold the dramatist; Albert Smith, the writer, humourist and a dramatist; and Mark Lemon, the founding editor of Punch, the satirical magazine.

Delane’s “back at Easter” promise was hopelessly wide of the mark. In the event, Russell would be gone for twenty two months. But his work in the Crimea would make him one of the most celebrated men in England. The practice of journalism – of warreporting, more precisely – would never be quite the same again.

The Crimean War was fought between, essentially butnot exclusively, Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire (lands ruled by current day Turkey) on one

35 Atkins, vol I, page 124; also Russell, WH; The Great War With Russia, Routledge, 1895

side, and Russia on the other. In summary, Russia saw an opportunity for territorial expansion at theexpense of a weakening Ottoman Empire. What startedthe war – a somewhat confected dispute between TsarNicholas I of Russia and Napoleon III of France over access to Christian shrines in Ottoman-occupied Jerusalem – had nothing at all to do with its prosecution. Russia invaded in July 1853 and occupied two Turkish protectorates, the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia on the western shores of the Black Sea. Britain and Franceresponded by dispatching their fleets to the Dardanelles, while Turkey declared war on Russia.

In November, Russia attacked the Turkish fleet at anchor in Sinope, on the southern shore of the Black Sea, killing over 4,000 Turkish sailors.

Alarm in Britain and France grew rapidly. Paris andLondon feared that a war between Russia and Turkey would end in a defeat for the Ottomans, resulting in Russian control of the Dardanelles and, more broadly, the entire eastern Mediterranean. Neither would allow this to happen and in January 1854, theFrench and British fleets were ordered through the Bosporus and into the Black Sea. The following month, Lord Raglan was appointed commander of a British expeditionary force. He was aged sixty six and had not seen military combat since the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 in which he lost an arm. Recruiting was stepped up in earnest in Britain andIreland. Before the end of the month, Britain issued an ultimatum to Russia to quit the Danubian principalities, a demand that was ignored. On March

27th 1854, France declared war on Russia; Britain followed the next day.

The war had an enormous impact in Ireland. Irishmenfrom every background joined the British Army in substantial numbers throughout the nineteenth century. In the 1830s and 1840s, it is estimated that between 37 and 42 per cent of soldiers in the British Army were Irish – that is, between almost 41,000 and 43,000 men.36 According to another estimate, in the run up to the war as well as during combat, there was a surge in the numbers joining so that by the end of the war, almost 60,000 Irishmen had seen service in the Crimea.37

There were several Irish among the middle-rank and senior officers. Among the most important were Lieutenant General Sir George De Lacy Evans (whose recruiting efforts for an earlier conflict had tempted a 15-year-old Russell) from Moig in Co Limerick, commander of the Second Division; and Brig-Gen John Lysaght Pennefather from Tipperary, commander of the 1st Brigade in De Lacy Evans’ Second Division. Unlike many of their fellow seniorofficers, both emerged from the war with their reputations intact. Indeed, the Irish in general acquitted themselves with distinction during the conflict. Twenty eight were awarded the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest honour for bravery in the British Army, an award initiated during the Crimean

36 Murphy, David; Ireland and the Crimean War; Four Courts Press; 2002; quoting various sources; pages 17-2537 Murphy, JJW; An Irish Sister of Mercy in the Crimean War; Irish Sword, Winter 1962;quoted by Murphy, David; page 22

War.38 Among the twenty eight, privates and corporals dominated. The very first VC was awarded to Charles Davis Lucas from Co Armagh. As a Master’s Mate on board the HMS Helca on June 21st 1854, Lucas threw a live shell off the deck, thereby preventing it exploding and killing him andmany colleagues.39

An early indication of Russell’s later difficultieswith the military authorities came when he tried tosail to Malta with a detachment of Guards leaving from Southampton in late February 1854. Delane had been assured by the military that a berth would be made available to Russell but when he turned up to board the transport ship Ripon, no one in charge of the fleet was willing to give him space. Prior to Russell, most war reporting, such as there was, wasoften done by officers reporting principally for their superiors and whose dispatches found their way also to newspapers. The idea of a full-time journalist embedded with the army, being part of it, as it were, but not subject to military discipline, and providing an independent account and assessments of events as they unfolded was novel to all concerned. If it was new and exciting for the media, it was new and un-nerving for the military.

38 Atkins, vol I, pages 214-251, mentions that Russell in one report for The Times suggested the Queen might institute “an order of merit or valour” and that it might bear her name. When the Victoria Cross was instituted in 1856, he did not claim credit, however39 Lucas’ action took place on June 21st 1854; his VC citation was published in the London Gazette on February 24th 1857. He rose to the rank of Rear-Admiral in the Royal Navy and died in August 1914. The full listof Irish VCs from the Crimean War is recorded in David Murphy’s volume.

Unable to obtain passage on the Ripon, Russell made his own way across Europe to Malta. His first dispatch to The Times as ‘Our Special Correspondent’ was based on conversations with soldiers, sailors and officers, after his arrival in Malta, about their voyage from England. It was published on March 15th 1854. War had not yet been declared and so this and other early reports by Russell were mainly what in today’s terminology would be called colour pieces – descriptive writing peppered with harmless tittle-tattle. But for all that, Russell did not pull his punches either.

His first dispatch referred to a degree of chaos and lack of organisation among the military. He reported claims that when some regiments disembarked in Malta they found inadequate billeting, for both troops and horses, and a shortage of food. “If the complaints to which I have alluded are well-founded, serious blame rests in some quarter or another,” he wrote. As Russell observed the consequences of poor planning and organization, his alarm grew at the possible consequences in the aftermath of full-blown conflict. He recalled that in the 1828-29 war between Russia and Turkey, some 80,000 men died notin battle but from “plague, pestilence and famine.”

“… let not those who have the interests of the armyat heart… grudge no expense, and spare no precaution to avoid, as far as human skill can do it, a repetition of such horrors. Let us have plenty of doctors. Let us have an overwhelming armyof medical men to combat disease. Let us have a

staff, full and strong, of young and active and experienced men. Do not suffer our soldiers to be killed by antiquated imbecility,” he wrote from Malta.

By April, the main British force had moved to a more forward position in the Dardanelles and again,Russell was not impressed by what he evidently regarded as poor military planning. A report written on April 5th and published on April 24th (such was the length of time it took reports to reach London), questioned establishing a base at Gallipoli, far removed from the Russian front line.French forces, having landed earlier, had already taken the best positions. “Would it not be better,”asked Russell in his report, “to march at once to the aid of the Turks on the Danube, if we seriouslyintend to strike a blow for them?”

A report written on April 10th further described poor planning. “While our sick men have not a mattress to lie down upon, and are literally without blankets, the French are well provided for.We have no medical comforts – none were forwarded from Malta – and so, when a poor fellow was sinkingthe other day, the doctor had to go to the General’s and get a bottle of wine for him.” Russell’s observation irked the Government in England and a question was asked in the House of Lords by the Duke of Newcastle who sought to deflect criticism. Back in Gallipoli, Russell was ostracised by the military. This was a recurring theme throughout his period in the Crimea. At Scutari near Constantinople, Russell’s tent was

taken down in his absence and dumped some 400 yardsoutside the British camp; the same treatment was meted out to him at camp at the Bulgarian Black Seaport of Varna.

On April 13th, he reported on the “multitude of complaints” from “every side” and he pointed the finger of blame towards London. “I am satisfied,” he wrote, “that the officers here are not to blame.The persons really culpable are those who sent themout without a proper staff, and without the smallest foresight or consideration.”

Russell was conscious of his wider responsibility not to spread alarm at home or give succor to the enemy through his published reports. In private letters to John Thaddeus Delane, however, he was more openly critical of the military, as evidenced by one written in early April. It concerned, in part, Russell’s own situation, for example his poorfacilities. Also the conduct of General Sir GeorgeBrown, Commander of the Light Division, a man with little apparent military competence but an upper crust obsession with appearance.

“The management is infamous,” Russell told Delane, “and the contrast offered by our proceedings to theconduct of the French most painful. Could you believe it – the sick have not a bed to lie upon? They are landed and thrown into a rickety house without a chair or table in it… While these things go on, Sir George Brown only seems anxious about them men being clean-shaved, their necks well stiffened, and waist belts tight. He insists on

officers and men being in full fig; no loose coats,jackets etc. His wonderful pack kills the men, as the weight is so disposed as to hang from, instead of resting on, the shoulders.”40

On a subsequent occasion while at Varna, Russell witnessed further military incompetence and sought guidance from Delane. “There is no beef for the menfor the last three days,” he wrote in another private letter, “only mutton which doctors say willbring on dysentery. Just imagine this: the sappers and miners sent out to Bajuk to survey do so in full dress, as their undress clothes were not readywhen they left. Am I to tell these things or to hold my tongue?”

This moment is key to understanding what made Russell a great reporter. As Atkins puts it: “A plain choice was now open to Russell: on the one hand lay complaisance – a casuistical indulgence towards errors which he might have told himself areinseparable from all campaigns – and with it the comparative comfort of being tolerated by the military authorities; on the other hand lay the ways of truth and conscience and a painful enmity with powerful officers who might be able to make his life a hell upon earth. There is not a sign, ora shadow of a sign, that Russell hesitated.”41

Indeed it was already clear from Russell’s published reports that he was not willing to turn ablind eye to incompetence, despite accusations from

40 Russell to Delane, April 8th 185441 Atkins, vol I, page 139

senior officers that his information was of use to the enemy. Perhaps his question to Delane – “Am I to tell these things or to hold my tongue?” – was rhetorical: he already knew the answer in his own mind and was close enough to his editor to know hisalso. If he was seeking reassurance, he got it. In an editorial published on May 29th 1854, and writtenin response to direct Establishment criticisms of Russell and The Times, Delane was robust in defence of his Special Correspondent and laid down a markerwhich is as valid to reporters and media today as it was when written over a century and a half ago.

“If a regiment cannot move for want of horses or ammunition; if the sappers and miners find themselves without tools; if some other needful preparation has been omitted, we may be sure that Government will have a much better chance of hearing it through ‘Our Own Correspondent’ than through its own dispatches, if, indeed, the information comes at all before it is too late. We can easily understand why a certain class of officers should like no tale told but their own; and why Government should wish a veil to be thrown over its possible neglects; but the people of England will look for safety in publicity rather than in concealment.”

This, then, was The Times at its declamatory best. Delane was at the height of his powers as editor and had in his armoury the finest reporter of his generation. Throughout the war, he printed Russell’s lengthy dispatches in full, often severalcombined together in a single edition of the paper.

He also had Times reporters back in England follow up issues thrown up by the Russell’s dispatches. Hedeployed his editorial writers to act in support oftheir colleague and write leaders questioning thosein authority for the incompetence revealed. Delane also had direct access to the Cabinet through personal contacts and he used these privately to brief ministers as to the seriousness of events unfolding in the Crimea.

It was not long before Russell’s early reports warning of the need for doctors and adequate medical facilities were shown to be prophetic. By mid-September 1854, Russell was in the Crimean peninsula, having landed with British forces at Eupatoria, some forty miles north of Sabastopol. The allied military strategy was simple. Their forces would march south, crossing the river Alma and continue on south the Sabastopol, home of the Russian fleet. There, they would lay siege, eventually defeating the enemy and expelling him any positions that would threaten the Bosporus.

On September 14th in The Times, Russell reported on yet another chaotic British landing during which henoted that the Commander of the Fleet, Admiral Dundas, “remained aloof and took no share in the proceedings of the day” while a small group of Cossacks harried the invading forces. His report ofSeptember 16th revealed more serious incompetence.

“A most extraordinary occurrence, which deserved severe censure, took place yesterday,” he wrote. “Signal was made from the Emperor for all ships to

send their sick on board the Kangaroo. In the course of the day the last named ship was surrounded by hundreds of boats laden with sick men, and the vessel was speedily crowded to suffocation… Many deaths occurred on board – many miserable scenes took place, but there is, alas! nouse in describing them. It is clear, however, that neither afloat nor on shore is the medical staff nearly sufficient. I myself saw men dying on the beach, on the line of march, in bivouac, without any medical assistance; and this within hail of a fleet of 500 sail, and within sight of head quarters! We want more surgeons, both in the fleet and in the army. Often – too often – medical aid cannot be had at all; and it frequently comes too late.”

Russell has been credited often with inspiring the nurse Florence Nightingale to go to the Crimea. While the facts about poor hospital care for the sick and wounded, and inadequate medical resources generally, were indeed reported by Russell and contributed significantly to the formation of public opinion generally, it was his Times colleague, Thomas Chenery’s, graphic descriptions of the appalling hospital conditions at Scutari, near Consantinople, in October 1854 that created the outcry. This led directly to Nightingale being sent to the Crimea. In October 1854, The Times reported that large numbers of men were dying from cholera – of the over 20,000 British casualties in the war, fewer than 3,000 died in battle; most of the rest succumbed to disease – and Nightingale, whose earlier offer to work as a volunteer was

rejected, was allowed lead a team of 38 nurses to Scutari. Through the simple expedient of imposing high standards of hygiene, Nightingale and her colleagues were able to cut death rates dramatically at Scutari and subsequently after the battle of Inkerman in November 1854. Dubbed the Lady with the Lamp from a phrase in a Times report describing how she walked through the wards at night, with a candle lamp to light her way, inspecting and comforting the sick and wounded, Nightingale became a heroine for the troops, a potent and emotional symbol of love and charity to the sick, injured and dying. The principles of goodhospital care which she detailed in her landmark book, Notes on Nursing – what it is and what it is not, published in 1859, laid the foundations of modern nursing.)

After arriving at Eupatoria, the allied forces – 25,000 British troops, 25,000 French, and around 8,000 Turks – disembarked onto a beach cluttered with local bathers. Soldiers, sailors, horses, artillery and all sorts of material sufficient to equip and supply a substantial army was brought ashore in barges amid chaotic but professionally executed scenes.42

42 Russell, William Howard, Complete History of the Russian War, from its commencement to its close; John G Wells, New York, 1859; reproduced and edited by Fleming, Angela Michelli, and Hamilton, John Maxwell; in theirThe Crimean War as seen by those who reported it; Louisiana State University Press, 2009. Russell’s Complete History is an anthology of his Times reports, reproduced in book form, virtually unedited from the newspaper.Quotes here describing the landings and the subsequent Battle of Alma come, unless otherwise stated, from the Complete History, as republished byFleming and Hamilton.

Russell was fortunate at this time to have a visit from Delane. The editor and his reporter met on a beach at Eupatoria on September 15th 1854 and Delanewas able to see for himself the chaotic reality that Russell had been reporting. Delane attempted to meet Lord Raglan, commander of the British forces but was as unsuccessful as his Special Correspondent: Raglan’s distaste for the fourth estate knew few bounds. Delane sailed back to England seemingly in chipper mood, describing Russell in a letter as “fat and flourishing.” Russell, on the other hand, was gloomy, complaining: “Truth to tell, there was not much to make me happy.”43

He was with a great moving army but was not part ofit, nor a beneficiary of its supplies. He had no tent and was evidently unwelcome in camp. But in the days that followed, he did manage to buy himself a horse for £20 – “a fiddle-headed, ewe-necked beast with great bone and not much else,” ashe described the unfortunate animal somewhat unkindly.44 By this time also, he had acquired the garb that was to be the hallmark of his appearance in the Crimea: a Commissariat officer’s cap with a broad gold band, a rifleman’s half length patrol jacket, cord breeches, butcher boots, and huge spurs – his clothes from England lost (or stolen) somewhere en route. Thus attired, Russell cut a wonderful figure in the May 21st 1855 portrait photograph of him taken by Roger Fenton.45

43 Russell, WH; The Great War with Russia, page 2544 Atkins, vol I, page 153

Fifteen days after the landing at Eupatoria, some 30,000 of the troops began their march south towards the Russian lines. Three rows of marching men – English, French and Turkish – stretched for seven or eight miles, according to Russell. “The effect of these grand masses of soldiery, descending the ridges of the hills rank by rank, with the sun playing over forests of glittering steel, can never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. Onward the torrent of war swept; waveafter wave, huge stately billows of armed men, while the rumble of artillery and tramp of cavalry accompanied their progress. At last, the smoke of burning villages and farm houses announced that theenemy in front were aware of our march.”

The scorched earth tactics of the Cossacks, retreating to make their stand on the south bank ofthe Alma, presaged the savagery to come. The battle, the first major engagement of the war, was fought on September 20th 1854. But how was Russell 45 Fenton went to the Crimea in February 1855, under the patronage of both the Royal Family (whose portraits he was shooting at the time) and the British government (for whom he had been taking pictures of the British Museum. He was proposed by Thomas Agnew and Sons, who saw a commercial opportunity because of the interest aroused by Russell’s reports and needed government sanction to proceed. Fenton bought a former wine merchant's van and converted it to a mobile, horse-drawn darkroom. For reasons that are unclear, Fenton concentrated on photographic officers and men mainly in camp, rather than actual fighting or the corpse-strewn aftermath of battle. Despite this, his pictures from the Crimea constitute a remarkable record. Over 600 of Fenton's prints are preserved at the Photographic Museum in Bradford, England, the most comprehensive archive of his work.

to observe events? Initially, he sought to tag along with a large cavalcade led by Lord Raglan. But he had Russell shooed away. Next, Russell got in with troops being led by his countryman, Sir De Lacy Evans. “It’s a very fine day,” exclaimed Evanswhen he saw Russell. “And then, he waved his hand as if to brush me away.”46

Perhaps not surprisingly, Russell was struck by what seems to have been an otherwise uncharacteristic spasm of self doubt. “I never was in a more unpleasant position. Everyone else on thefield had some raison d’etre. I had none,” he recalled later. “They [the soldiers] were on recognised business. It could scarcely be a recognised or legitimate business for any man to ride in front ofthe Army in order that he might be able to write anaccount of a battle for a newspaper. I was a very fly in amber.”47

But he soon secured a safe position from which to observe the battle. He did so courtesy of Brig Pennefather from Tipperary who, on hearing his purpose, wondered what he knew of battles and warfare and such like.

“Well, General,” Russell said, recalling the incident later, “it is quite true I have very little acquaintance with the business but I suspectthere are a great many here with no greater knowledge of it than myself.”

46 Atkins, vol I, page 15747 Atkins, vol I, page 156

“He laughed. ‘Bedad, you’re right! You’re an Irishman, I’ll be bound! And what’s your name sir?’“I told him.“‘Are you from Limerick?’“No sir, but my family are.“‘Well, good-bye. Go to the rear, I tell you now! There will be wigs on the green to-day my boy! So keep away from the front if you don’t with to have your noted cut short’.”48

The Russian forces, led by Prince Menchikoff, had taken up positions on the ridge of high ground on the southern back of the Alma. The British, French and Turks were on the lower, northern bank of the river – a position of relative strategic disadvantage. The opposing forces, having taken up their positions, began battle in earnest around midday. Russell described in detail the massing of the armies, their relative strengths and the initial artillery assaults by the French and Turks,provoking replies from the Russians. Typical of hisstyle of reporting, Russell sought to give his reader a sense of being there – pieces of information not central to events but which fleshedout the scene.

“It was a lovely day,” he noted as he reported how troops were ordered to readiness at 6.30am, “the heats of the sun was tempered by a sea-breeze. The fleet was visible at a distance of four miles, covering the ocean as it was seen between the

48 Russell, WH; The Great War with Russia; pages 31-32

hills, and the steamers on the right as close to the shore as possible.”49

Russell described the fierce battle that followed.

“The Russians opened a furious fire on the whole ofthe English line, but the French had not yet made progress enough to justify them in advancing. The round shot whizzed in every direction, dashing up the dirt and sand in the faces of the staff of LordRaglan, who were also shelled severely and attracted much of the enemy’s fire… Lord Raglan at last gave the order or the whole line to advance. Up rose these serried masses, and passing through afateful shower of round, case, shot and shell, theydashed into the Alma, and ‘floundered’ through the waters, which were literally torn into foam by the deadly hail. At the other side of the river, were anumber of vineyards, which were occupied by Russianriflemen. Three of the staff here were shot down; but led by Lord Raglan, in person, cheering on the men, they advanced.

“And now came the turning point of the battle. LordRaglan dashed over the bridge, followed by his staff. From the road over it, under the Russian guns, he saw the state of the action. The British line, which he had ordered to advance, was struggling through the river and up the heights in masses, firm indeed, but mowed down by the

49 The Battle of Alma; The Times, October 10th 1854; this and other extracts from WHR’s reports of the battle and its aftermath are cited inFleming and Hamilton, page 48-54

murderous fire of the batteries, and by grape, round shot, shell, canister, case shot, musketry, from some of the guns of the central battery, and from an immense and compact mass of Russian infantry.

“Then commenced one of the most bloody and determined struggles in the annals of war…”

The report described how Raglan, De Lacy Evans and Pennefather urged their men up the bloody hill, under a hail of Russian fire. Despite the chaos of the battlefield, the line of troops “was almost as regular as though they were in Hyde Park”, Russell noted.

“Suddenly a tornado of round and grape rushed through from the terrible battery, and a roar of musketry from behind thinned their front ranks by dozens. It was evident that they were just able to contend against the Russians, favoured as they wereby a great position.

“At this very time an immense mass of Russian infantry were seen moving down toward the battery. They halted. It was the crisis of the day. Sharp, angular, and solid, they looked as if they were cutout of solid rock. It was beyond all doubt, that ifour infantry, harassed and thinned as they were, got into the battery, they would have to encounter

Grape: bits and pieces of metal packed into a canvas bag and fired by canon instead of shells, with the aim of shredding the enemy with shrapnel.

again a formidable fire, which they were but ill-calculated to bear.

“Lord Raglan saw the difficulties of the situation.He asked if it would be possible to get a couple ofguns to bear on these masses. The reply was ‘Yes’ and an artillery officer brought up to guns to fireon the Russians. The first shot missed, but the next, and the next, and the next cut through the ranks so cleanly, and so keenly, that a clear line could be seen for a moment through the square. After a few rounds the columns of the square becamebroken, wavered to and fro, broke, and fled over the brow of the hill, leaving behind them six or seven distinct lines of dead, lying as close as possible to each other, marking the passage of the fatal messengers. This relieved the infantry of a deadly incubus, and they continued their magnificent and fearful progress up the hill…”

Russell observed what he could that day and retiredexhausted for the night without writing anything. “My eyes swam as I tried to make notes of what I heard,” Russell recalled later.50 “I was worn out with excitement, fatigue, and want of food. I had been more than ten hours in the saddle; my wretchedhorse, bleeding badly from a cut in he leg, was unable to carry me. My head throbbed, my heart beatas though it would burst. I support I was unnerved by want of food and rest, I was so much overcome bywhat I saw that I could not remain where the fight had been closest and deadliest. I longed to get

50 Russell, William Howard; The British Expedition to the Crimea; Routledge, 1858

away from it – from the exultation of others in which thought for the dead was forgotten or unexpressed. I was now that the weight of the task I had accepted fell on my soul like lead.”

A kind person gave him a corner in their tent and Russell fell into a fitful sleep, disturbed by the moaning of the wounded. In the morning, September 21st, he rose at dawn and lay on the grass in hot sun. He had a quill and the yellowing pages of a Russian account book on which to write his vivid and passionate account of the battle. A further account, written on the 22nd, was an illuminating description of the battlefield after the allied victory.

“The greater part of the English killed and woundedwere here, and there were at least five Russians toevery Englishman. One could not walk for bodies. The most frightful mutilations the human body can suffer – the groans of the wounded – the packs, helmets, arms, clothes, scattered over the ground –all formed a scene that one could never forget. There, writhing in their gore – racked with the agony of every imaginable wound – famishing with thirst – chilled with the cold night air – the combatants lay indiscriminately; no attempt being made to relieve their sufferings until the next day…

“What is that gray mass on he plain, which seems settled down upon it almost without life or motion?Now and then, indeed, an arm may be seen waved aloft, or a man raises himself for a moment, looks

around, and then lies down again. Alas! That plain is covered with the wounded Russians still. Nearly sixty long hours have they passed in agony on the ground; and now, with but little hope of help of succour more, we must leave them as they lie. All this nameless, inconceivable misery – this curelesspain – to be caused by the caprice of one man! Seven hundred and fifty men are still on the groundand we can do nothing for them…”

Russell reported that nearly 3,000 men were killed or wounded among the combined allied forces – but that up to 12,000 Russians were killed or wounded. With his dispatches from Alma, Russell’s reputationsoared… and with it, sales of The Times. The edition that carries his description of the Battle of Alma sold 70,000 copies. At the start of the war, it wasselling around 40,000 a day and there was little doubt but that the extraordinary increase in sales was because of interest in the conflict generated by Russell’s reporting. In October, the owner of The Times, John Walter (the son of the newspaper’s founder of the same name) wrote a glowing letter toRussell, praising his work telling him that as a measure of corporate gratitude for his efforts, £500 was to be used to set up a trust fund for the benefit of his children.51

By the time the British marched south to prepare toattack Sabastopol, they left behind 700 Russian able-bodied prisoners and 4,000 wounded. Russell A reference to Tsar Nicholas, evidently51 £500 in 1855 is equivalent to around £34,000 at 2010 values or €40,000. Historic currency rates; www.xe.com

himself caught fever after the Battle of Alma and was transported to Balaclava on the back of a hay cart, looked after by two servants, Angelo and Virgilio, from whom he had been separated before battle.

From Balaclava, he wrote to Delane complaining about the slowness of the allies in laying siege tothe Russian stronghold – “… we are giving the Russian every advantage in time and he is fortifying his weak points as hard as he can”. Reports published in The Times detailed the spread ofdisease among the men: cholera, dysentery and fever. They could not be treated at Balaclava but were shipped to Scutari from where Thomas Chenery dispatched his devastating reports about the miserable conditions that, far from aiding the men,hastened the death of many.

Lord Raglan set up headquarters on the plateau north of Balaclava, whose harbour allowed supplies reach the British forces. From the plateau, Raglan

Most officers in the Crimea had servants, as did Russell. Angelo (“a tall, straight, handsome fellow, who had a most gallant bearing except when he was near a horse”, according to Atkins, vol I, page 164) was a former Brigadier with the Papal Dragoons who followed Russell to the Crimea. Virgilio Sebastiani, an Italian like Angelo, was an ex-soldier who, because he was deft with a scissors and razor, Russell thought was a barber. The reporter refers to both in his diaries as “my drones”. Their predecessor, hired in Malta and rashly paid in advance, absconded with his pay and most of Russell’s belongings. Angelo and Virgilio went their own way at Balaclava: Virgilio “bolted with the excuse of sickness” according to Atkins, vol I, page 180; Angelo to set himself upas a provisions merchant. Russell then retained as servant an Armenian named Agapo, who soon decided that life as a baker in Balaclava might belonger than one looking after The Times correspondent. He charged Russelldouble price for his bread!

had a commanding view of Sebastopol, about 10 milesnorth of the little port. A friend of Russell’s on Raglan’s staff offered him shelter in his tent and so for a while, the Times’ correspondent was living as close as possible to the man directing British forces, although Raglan continued to ignore the reporter.

In late October, a military strategy unfolded that was to presage tactics later employed in the first World War.52 Trenches were dug all around the southern flank of Sebastopol, a city that looked north and out to sea. On the highest ground overlooking the city, the French and British mounted their batteries. Below them, a complex interlocking network of trench passages, each in front of the other, dug at alternate angles to afford some protection from snipers on the walls ofthe Russian-held city. From the walls, and from forts within them – the Redan and the Malakoff – that became household names in England as a result of Russell’s reports, Russian batteries and rifles sought to repel any advance by French or British troops.

An allied bombardment to stun and terrify the city’s Russian defenders was to be followed by a final assault on October 17th 1854. But the assault failed. Russell estimated that 1,000 Russians were

52 As David Murphy has pointed out (Ireland and the Crimean War), the war was fought primarily by riflemen and artillery, rather than cavalry, and thegreat role accorded to military engineers made it a very modern conflictwhose military and strategic significance has to some extent been overlooked.

killed in their batteries, and French and British losses number just 300 by comparison. It was clear,however, the Russian forces were well dug in and not for easy shifting. The siege of Sebastopol had begun and would last for almost a year until the city fell on September 9th 1855. During that time, the troops contended with an appalling winter and regular skirmishes as the enemy tried to break out.On one such occasion, on October 25th 1854, the Russians launched an assault on Balaclava.

Russell had a commanding view of the charge of the Light Brigade. Talking to survivors before writing his report, he found they had no distinct image in their own minds as to what had happened. But in duecourse he sat down (on a saddle, writing on paper over his knee and with a candle in a bottle for light) and composed the account that bought him immortality in the annals of reporting.

First, he described the Russian attack and how newsof it was brought to headquarters by a galloping orderly. A strong corps of Russians horses, with guns and infantry was seen advancing towards Balaclava; retaliatory forces were scrambled and took up positions defending the approach to the town. To the disgust of British soldiers, Turkish troops abandoned their positions and fled. The Russian cavalry charge and cut down the fleeing men. The British forces – the Enniskillens, the Royal Irish, the Dragoon Guards and the Royal Dragoons, the light cavalry and a line of Highlanders, the 93rd lying two deep and under the command of Sir Colin Campbell – bided their time.

Russell takes up the story, switching to the present tense, quickening the pace of the narrative, seeming to bring it closer to the reader.

“The Russians on their left drew breath for a moment, and then in one grand line dashed at the Highlanders. The ground flies beneath their horses’feet; gathering speed at every stride, they dash ontowards that thin red streak topped with a line of steel. The Turks fire a volley at eight hundred yards and run. As the Russians come within six hundred yards, down goes that line of steel in front and out rings a volley of Minie musketry. Thedistance is too great; the Russians are not checked, but still sweep onwards with the whole force of horse and man, through the smoke, here andthere knocked over by the shot of our batteries above. With breathless suspense every one awaits the bursting of the wave upon the line of Gaelic rock; but ere they come within a hundred and fifty yards another deadly volley flashes from the levelled rifles, and carries death and terror into the Russians. They wheel about, open fire right andleft, and fly back faster than they came. ‘Bravo Highlanders! Well done!’ shout the excited spectators; but events thicken…”

Russell’s memorable phrase entered the lexicon as “the thin red line” and for Victorian England, cameto symbolise the sort of stiff upper lip heroic military restraint and determination which people liked to think reflected the essence of national

character. Russell’s lengthy account described the to and fro of further battle in great detail beforecoming to “the disastrous cavalry charge”, as he termed it: “Don Quixote, in his tilt against the windmills, was not near so rash and reckless as thegallant fellows who prepared without a thought to rush on almost certain death.”

After telling how the Light Brigade of a little over 600 men charged down the valley, Russell’s report continued:

“At the distance of 1,200 yards, the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from thirty iron mouths, aflood of smoke and flame, through which hissed the deadly balls. Their flight was marked by instant gaps in the gallant ranks, by dead men and horses, by steeds flying wounded or riderless across the plain. The first line is broken – it is joined by asecond – they never halt of check their speed an instant… We saw them riding through the guns; and soon again, to our frenzied delight, we saw them returning after breaking through a column of Russian infantry, and scattering them like chaff, when the flank fire of the battery on the hill swept them down, scattered and broken as they were.Wounded men and dismounted troopers flying towards us told the tale; demi-gods could not have done what we failed to do…

“With courage too great almost for credence, they were breaking their way through the columns that enveloped them, when there took place an act of atrocity without parallel in the modern warfare of

civilized nations. The Russian gunners, when the storm of cavalry passed, returned to their guns. They saw their own cavalry mingled with the troopers who had just ridden over them, and, to theeternal disgrace of the Russian name, the miscreants poured a murderous volley of grape and canister on the mass of struggling men and horses, mingling friend and foe in one common ruin.”

Despite the heroic disaster of the Charge of the Light Brigade, Balaclava was defended successfully and the Russians repelled. Russell’s account of thebattle to defend it noted that the British dead numbered something over 500, some 400 of them, fromthe Brigade. As he noted ruefully, “Another such victory would ruin us.”

The winter of 1854-55 was horrendous and Russell knew how bad it would be. On November 9th, he wrote to Delane saying: “The prospect of wintering here is appalling. The families in Balaclava say that once winter sets in, they shut their houses, light their stoves, and grin and bear it. The bears walk about the streets, or used to in winters past… Ugh!the cold in the tents at nights!”53

For a brief period, Russell managed to commandeer asmall, damaged house in Balaclava which rank-and-file sailors and soldiers helped repair and make habitable for him. But his good fortune did not last long: in early December an army officer ordered him out (the army had assumed control over

53 Atkins, vol I, page 175

all property in the town). He walked out into the mud, reports Atkins, carried his bed up to the front, and became once more a wanderer, sometimes making use of the tents of his friends and sometimes taking refuge on board ship…”54

Russell continued to live in this manner until, around March 1855, a wooden hut sent from England arrived and was erected (by an Irishman named Doyle, a member of the Army Works Corps) on Cathcart’s Hill, which had a good view towards Sabastopol. It had two rooms and Russell later added a stable and two stalls. Doyle’s men painted the building and Russell added a flowerbed, a remarkable thing to do in the middle of a war zone but, as Russell showed in boyhood, he had an interest in the natural world.

During the worst of the winter when Russell lived in grace and favour tents, there were skirmishes and some substantial battles between the British and Russians. Russell reported the conflict, including the two Battles of Inkerman (October and November 1855) but the reporting that had most impact was his description of the appalling conditions under which the army laboured. In November a hurricane tore through the camps and sank forty six allied vessels in various ports around the Crimean peninsula. Munitions, medicines and clothing were lost.

54 Atkins, vol I, page 180

In a report written near Sebastopol on November 25th, Russell outlined how. “It is now pouring rain, the skies are black as ink, the wind is howling over the ragged tents, in which the water is sometimes a foot deep; the trenches are turned into dykes; the men have not either warm or water-proof clothing, and are out for twelve hours at a time in the trenches; they are plunged into the inevitable miseries of a winter campaign – and not a soul seems to care for their comfort, or even their lives.”

Reports such as this throughout the winter had a devastating effect on public opinion in England. Soon, people started sending food and clothes to the troops, sometimes addressed simply to: Times correspondent, Crimea. The newspaper set up a fund which quickly accrued £30,000 in donations. What Russell described in his reports was supported by evidence against which there could be no argument: in September 1854, the sick numbered 11,693; in November the figure was 16,846; by December 19,479 and by January 1855, an astonishing 23,076 men wereill or dying from cholera, dysentery or other form of fever. The number of dead from non-combat causeswas eight times greater than those killed in battleor who died from their wounds.The plateau between Balaclava and Sebastopol on which most of the army was encamped was said by Russell to be “a vast black waste of saddened earth, when it was not covered with snow, dotted with little pools of foul water and seamed by

brown-coloured streamlets strewn with carcases of horses.”55

The Times did not restrain itself. Two days before Christmas 1854, Delane thundered in an editorial that “the noblest army ever sent from these shores has been sacrificed to the grossest mismanagement. Incompetency, lethargy, aristocratic hauteur, official indifference, favour, routine, perverseness, and stupidity reign, revel and riot in the Camp before Sebastopol.” On Christmas Eve, the newspaper said Raglan should be dismissed and the War Office reorganised; there should be no question of senior officers coming back to England “to enjoy pensions and honours amid the bones of 50,000 British soldiers.”56

It mattered nothing to Delane that the bulk of the political establishment railed against his newspaper and Russell, who was accused of being little more than a spy for the Russians. Queen Victoria herself was reputed to have commented on “the infamous attacks against the army which have disgraced our newspapers”. Her husband, Prince Albert fumed that “the pen and ink of one miserablescribbler is despoiling the country of all the advantages which the heart’s blood of twenty thousand of its noblest sons should have earned!!!”

55 Some 21,097 British soldiers died in the Crimea: 2,755 killed in action, 2,019 from wounds and 16,323 from diseases. It is estimated thatover 7,000 Irish died in the war. Sweetmen, John, The Crimean War, cited by Murphy, Ireland and the Crimean War.56 Delane’s 50,000 appears to have been a feared toll which was not, in the end, borne out

It was to no avail – popular opinion was with Russell, The Times and the truth. On January 23rd

1855, a radical MP, John Arthur Roebuck, tabled what amounted to a motion of confidence in the government of Lord Aberdeen. It called for an inquiry into the conditions of the army at Sebastopol. It was carried by 305 votes in favour to 148 against. A few days before the vote, Russelltold Delane that the Times’ attack on Lord Raglan appeared to be bearing fruit for the men: equipmentand reinforcements began arriving at the front. During January and February, Raglan broke with habit and visited his men almost every day.

The siege of Sebastopol continued throughout the winter, with regular skirmishes between the allies and Russians and a number of significant battles asthe Russians tried to break the French-British stranglehold. By early summer 1855, the balance of forces among the allies had the French taking the lead role. This was due at least in part to the appalling state of the disease-ravaged British forces, compared to the French and their superior medical care. In early June, the two armies launched what they hoped would be their final assaults on forts within the city walls: the Frenchattacking Malakoff, the British the Redan. The attacks failed and on June 28th, Lord Raglan, exhausted and a broken man, died. In a letter to Delane, Russell lamented his passing but wrote thathe was “as hard as marble to all but his own”.

It was not until September that a further assault was made. On the 5th, the French and British

launched a bombardment of the city; three days later, the infantry attacked. The French succeeded in overwhelming the Russian forces inside the Malakoff, in sufficient number to repel any counterattack. The British attacked the Redan but with toofew men to hold it and were repulsed later in the day. A second attack planned for September 9th proved unnecessary: the Russians stole away during the night and the war was all but over.

Russell’s dispatch of the crucial battle was an astonishing 10,000 words long and was dated September 8th, the day before the city was overrun by the British and French. But it was a report dated September 12th that captured the horror of war. It described the inside of the main hospital in Sepastopol where the Russian dead and wounded had been abandoned by their comrades. Russell saw “… the rotten and festering corpses of the soldiers, who were left to die in their extreme agony, untended, uncared for, packed as close as they could be stowed, some on the floor, others on wretched trestles and bedsteads, or pallets of straw, sopped and saturated with blood, which oozedand trickled through upon the floor, mingling with the droppings of corruption…”

In October, Russell left the Crimea and was home inLondon just after Christmas 1855.

Russell’s dispatches from the Crimea defined his career as a journalist. While he went on to report with distinction from other conflicts – the Indian Mutiny, the American Civil War and the Franco-

Prussian War – had he ceased being a reporter after1855, he place in journalism would have been assured still by his achievements in the Crimea alone. All the problems that Russell faced there – from efforts by the military and government to curbhis reporting; to accusations by senior officers that he was giving succour to the enemy; plus the physical danger he faced and the stresses and strains of writing in camp or beside the battlefield and having his material delivered back to his newspaper – have been faced by countless colleagues ever since. Technology has advanced and changed the way reporters do their job but the dynamics and default positions of all the parties involved have not.

Russell was not without flaws; he could on occasionbe over enthusiastic to the point of mild jingoism but his achievement rightly overshadows this. His anchor was his persistent adherence to the truth, without fear or favour. He succeeded for several reasons. They include keeping to his own high standards of telling it like it was; telling what he saw without regard to criticisms from vested interests, military or political. And of course hisimpact had much to do also with the quality of his descriptive writing.

In a craft not renowned for generosity among rivals, a contemporary of Russell’s in the Crimea, another Irishman, as coincidence would have it, named Edwin Lawrence Godwin, paid him handsome tribute. “In [Russell’s] hands, correspondence fromthe field really became a power before which the

generals began to quail… I therefore cannot help thinking that the appearance of the Special Correspondent in the Crimea, to whatever evils and abuses it may afterwards have led, was a troubling of the waters which was a good thing for both the British army and people. It led to a real awakeningof the official mind. It brought home to the War Office the fact that the public has something to say about the conduct of wars, and that they are not the concern exclusively, as that delightful oldcharlatan, Lord Beaconsfield said, of ‘sovereigns and statesmen’.”57

But Russell could not have succeeded as he did, hadhe not the support of an astute editor of principlewho swung behind his man on the ground against all critics, no matter how powerful. The quality of friendship between reporter and editor is revealed in a correspondence between them during Delane’s illness. In February 1876 as Delane lay ill without“heart or strength to write” he told Russell, who was abroad, that he might soon die: “so good-bye,

57 Godkin, Edwin Lawrence; The Life and Letters of Edwin Lawrence Godkin; Ogden, Rollo (ed); The Macmillan Company, New York, 1907; pages 100-102. Godkinwas born in Moyne, Co Wicklow, in 1831, the son of a Presbyterian minister, the Rev James Godkin, a committed nationalist and supporter ofHome Rule for Ireland and the Young Ireland movement. Like Russell, Godkin studied law in London and became a journalist by fluke. In 1853, he wrote a letter for publication to the editor of the Daily News. It concerned the Greek claim to Constantinople. It was printed and so impressed was the editor, that he offered Godkin a job as a reporter when the Crimean war erupted. Somewhat unjustly, Godkin’s achievements have been overshadowed by Russell. His reporting from the Crimea was also exceptional but his newspaper did no have the clout of The Times. Godkin subsequently made a major contribution to journalism in the United States, founding The Nation newspaper, which continues to this day.

my dear old friend, and if you do not find me here to welcome you on your return you will have lost a sincere friend…” Russell wrote back distressed, saying he would not express his feelings. But he did so three years later when, on Delane’s death, he wrote to his daughter saying “the pain I feel now is incurable”.

“It is now more than thirty years since [Delane] began the friendship which on his side was marked by the greatest kindness, and on my side, I know, by affection and gratitude, and now I feel the lastlink in the chain which bound me with and to the past is gone.”58

Soon after returning the Crimea, Russell was awarded his honorary LLD by Trinity College, Dublin. Thereafter he was known as Dr Russell. It was not until 1895, that the Establishment brought itself to giving him a knighthood, announced to Russell in No 10 Downing Street by the then prime minister, Lord Roseberry, leader of the Liberal Party. He received numerous letters congratulating him, many lamenting the delay in the acknowledgement of his achievement. He died in London on February 10th 1907 aged 86.

His Irish Times obituary concluded: “With him a great personality passes from the stage upon which he played a strenuous part nobly, unselfishly and withan earnestness of purpose to which other men of his

58 Russell-Delane letters, cited by Atkins, vol II, page 263; Russell toMiss Delane, Atkins, vol II, page 293

profession are much indebted, recognising in him their doyen and highest exemplar.”

Epilogue

PROTECTIVE STEEL mesh covers every window of Kiltalown House, childhood home of William Howard Russell.

Closed circuit TV cameras are mounted high on the façade, well out of reach of vandals. To protect the cameras from whatever might be thrown at them, they are boxed inside steel mesh cages, as are all external lights. The whole property is ringed by tall, spike-topped green-painted metal fencing, thesort used to keep intruders out of waste ground or industrial estates. The estate is greatly reduced in size since the 1820s: the former garden to the rear has long since disappeared and most of the land in front of the house – which is in a good state of repair – is a public park.

Suburban houses lap up against the edges of Kiltalown. They are part of the vast, sprawling newtown of Tallaght that emerged in west Dublin since the 1970s. Many of the houses in Tallaght and its satellite towns of Fettercairn and Jobstown that abut Kiltalown are poorly built. Some are not well looked after, a few are abandoned, sheet metal shutters covering their windows, fire scorch marks on the walls. Broken glass is a common sight on

pavements and roads. Some evidence of the fruits ofeconomic boom is still to be seen: brash, four wheel drives are not uncommon; freshly minted apartment abound. But precisely for that, Tallaght feels the effects of the recession more than many other places – the let down is greater, the unemployment higher.

Kiltalown House today is a drug rehabilitation centre; a place of hope perhaps for the victims of a modern urban scourge. It is headquarters of the Tallaght Rehabilitation Project, a long road travelled from the fox hunting days of his grandfather, Jack Kelly. The project “provides a supportive and nurturing environment where participants are encouraged to work in a therapeutic process on their previous drug use,” asthose who run the house put it. They promote “a healthy lifestyle in a structured and safe way, through education and training. From this, participants are encouraged to make an informed choice to ultimately become and remain drug free.”59

There is no sign giving the name of the house (although it is the acknowledged address of the project), much less a plaque saying who once lived here. The same anonymity attends his home in Dublin, No 40 Upper Baggot Street. And in journalism schools across Ireland, William Howard Russell’s groundbreaking contribution to reporting is very largely unremembered.

59 Tallaght Rehabilitation Project; http://www.tallaghtrehabproject.ie/contact

Kiltalown House may no longer be the most appropriate place to remember the boy who lived andplayed there before setting out to make his mark onthe world. In London, apart from that bust in St Paul’s Cathedral, Russell is remembered in the Frontline Club in Paddington, where issues about conflict reporting, international affairs and the role of independent journalism are highlighted through seminars and lectures – in an atmospheres made convivial through food and wine. It is the sort of place where Russell might well have felt athome, socialising with his newspaper and literary colleagues. It is fitting, therefore, that Russell’s Crimea boots, the ones he wore in the iconic Roger Fenton photograph, are on show in the Frontline Club.

Sir William Howard Russell never forgot his countryand paid many visits to Ireland throughout his life. He was conscious and proud of his heritage and aware of the debt he owed to that part of his make-up that saw him through many difficult situations. Ruminating in his diary two decades after his Crimea experience, he wrote: “I don’t think but for my Irish nature I could have got on so well.”60

60 WHR diary, march 30th 1874