The Autobiography had been carefully preserved by Sir Harry’s former aide-de-camp and friend, General Sir Edward Alan Holdich, K.C.B., but, as it happened, I was not myself aware of its existence until, owing to the fresh interest awakened in Sir Harry Smith and his wife by the siege of Ladysmith early in 1900, I inquired from members of my family what memorials of my great-uncle were preserved. Sir Edward then put this manuscript and a number of letters and documents at my disposal. It appeared to me and to friends whom I consulted that the Autobiography was so full of romantic adventure and at the same time of such solid historical value that it ought no longer to remain unpublished, and Mr. John Murray, to whom I submitted a transcription of it, came at once to the same conclusion.
My task as Editor has not been a light one. In Sir Harry’s letter to Mrs. Sargant of 15th October, 1844,[1] he says of his manuscript, “I have never read a page of it since my scrawling it over at full gallop;” and in a letter of 14th January, 1845, “Harry Lorrequer would make a good story of it. You may ask him if you like, and let me know what he says of it.” It is clear from these passages that Sir Harry did not contemplate the publication of his story in the rough form in which he had written it, but imagined that some literary man, such as Charles Lever, might take it in hand, rewrite it with fictitious names, and so fashion out of it a military romance. The chapters[2] on Afghanistan and Gwalior, already written, were, however, of a serious character which would make them unsuitable for such treatment; and the same was the case with the chapters on the Sikh War, afterwards added. Whether Lever ever saw the manuscript I do not know; at any rate, the author’s idea was never carried out.
It is obvious that now that fifty years have passed, some of the reasons which made Sir Harry suggest such a transformation of his story are no longer in force. The actors in the events which he describes having almost all passed away, to suppress names would be meaningless and would deprive the book of the greater part of its interest. And for the sake of literary effect to rewrite Sir Harry’s story would be to destroy its great charm, the intimate relation in which it sets us with his fiery and romantic character.