Prince Charles's alter ego fined for a kick up the arse

There's no disputing that Captain Burnaby, on whose portrait the Prince of Wales seems to have based his 60th birthday snap, was an all-round Victorian hero. Aside from his military exploits, he was, as Valentine Low reports, the first solo balloonist to fly the Channel, "dispensing altogether with  anything in the shape of life-saving apparatus"; he rode 3,000 miles across Russia, returning to write a bestselling book about his journey - "Captain Burnaby has tried the Russians, and found them wanting, while the Turks have secured his verdict of approbation" - and he was an enthusiastic  amateur scientist.

But his early career was somewhat less glorious. A scandal over a punch up at a shooting party in Tunbridge Wells nearly cost him his Army career, and earned his this stinging condemnation in the Army and Navy Gazette:

Although the imputations of cowardly brutality made against him by some of our contemporaries are quite unwarranted, his conduct on the occasion appears to have been far from that which we should like to see imitated by the gentlemen of the army. He and Mr Hooker appear to have abused each other like fishwives, and Mr Burnaby to have ended the discussion after a fashion natural enough among navvies, but not quite in harmony with the feelings of gentlemen.

The court case had been reported in every gory detail:

"The defendant [Burnaby] was a person whose extraordinary muscular powers far surpassed his intellectual powers", says The Times Law Report. Burnaby had complained to Hooker that there weren't enough birds; Hooker accused him of "shooting sparrows and robin redbreasts"; Burnaby called him a bankrupt, and poacher: Hooker retorted that Burnaby was a swindler; Burnaby challenged him to a fight; Hooker said he wasn't taking on "a trained pugilist", and threatened to shoot if attacked. Anyway, attacked he was, and received several right hooks and a sound kicking to the rear, for which Burnaby was bound over to pay him £150 compensation.

But Burnaby's blood was still up. He wrote to The Times, a long-winded self-justifying version of events which, he said, he'd not been allowed to give in court. Hooker wrote straight back, followed by a platoon of Burnaby's friends, at which point the letters editor printed this rather weary footnote:

It seems unfortunate that Mr Burnaby and his friends were not called at the trial to give in the witness box their explanation of the circumstances in which the cause of action arose. Their obvious remedy is to apply for a new trial; but we cannot permit the case to be re-tried in our columns, and can insert no further letters on the subject.

All-in-all, Burnaby sounds like the sort of soldier who's a menace in peacetime and the Army were probably highly relieved when he took himself off on his adventures in far-flung climes. He redeemed himself when there was legitimate fighting to be done, and his obituary described him as the bravest man who ever lived, with a total disregard of danger.

Comments

[john bentley]

same old arrogance

[Luís ferreira]

Is this Captain Burnaby the Real Flashman?

[Kevin Dunn]

What a splendd fellow he sounds! We could do with a few like him today! I can think of a number of people in public place who a kick in the arse would benefit greatly.