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Updated: May 8, 2025
And now, before turning the page, and leaving the period that had, on the whole, been full of brightness, will be the best time to give Mr. Codrington's account of the manner of life at St. Barnabas, while the Bishop was still in his strength:
He records Codrington's leap on his grey Arab into the breast-work of the Great Redoubt; Lacy Yea's passionate energy in forcing his clustered regiment to open out; Miller's stentorian "Rally" in reforming the Scots Greys after the Balaclava charge; Clarke losing his helmet in the same charge, and creating amongst the Russians, as he plunged in bareheaded amongst their ranks, the belief that he was sheltered by some Satanic charm.
There was an Afghan force still in arms at Istalif, a beautiful village of the inveterately hostile Kohistanees; a division marched to attack it, carried the place by assault, burnt part of it, and severely smote the garrison. Utter destruction was the fate of Charikar, the capital of the Kohistan, where Codrington's Goorkha regiment had been destroyed.
Taken in connection with these, Codrington's story of his physical weakness bears the note, not of pathos only, but of encouragement; for the whole testifies assuredly to the persistence, through great bodily debility, of a strong quality diligently cultivated in the days of health and vigor. In truth, it was impossible for Howe to purpose otherwise.
Codrington's photograph taken at this time shows how much changed and aged he had become. The quiet in which he now lived resulted in much letter-writing, taking up correspondences that had slumbered in more busy times, as his mind flew back to old friends: though, indeed, the letters given in the preceding Memoir must not be taken by any means to represent the numbers he wrote.
This judgment is thoroughly borne out by the Bishop's own letter to his sisters of October 27, wherein it appears how considerable an element of his enjoyment and comfort was Mr. Codrington's own companionship, partly as a link with the younger members of the little community:
Of these seven are now in Codrington's house, half-way between hospital and ordinary school life. They are convalescents, real convalescents. You know how much so-called convalescents need care in recovering from fever, but these seven have had the fever very slightly indeed, thank God; the type of the disease is much less severe than it was at first.
If General Codrington's promotion could have been delayed a little more than eighteen months, it might have occurred appropriately on the centennial anniversary of the death of that ill-fated naval commander, convicted by court-martial and shot for "not doing his utmost"! On the evening of the 8th of September, the Russians blew up their magazines, fired the buildings, and evacuated the town.
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