attempted to go to the Staff College he was continually studying
military works, and often, when his brother subalterns were at polo or
other afternoon amusements, he would remain in his room reading Von
Schmidt, Jomini, or other books on strategy. I recollect once
travelling by rail with him in our subaltern days, when after
observing the country for some time, he broke out: 'There is where I
should put my artillery.' 'There is where I should put my cavalry' and
so on to the journey's end."

In spite of these evidences of a soldier's eye for country, there is
nothing to show that French had developed any abnormal devotion for
his work. He was interested but not absorbed. In 1880 a captaincy and
his marriage probably did something to make him take his career more
seriously. His wife, Lady French, was a daughter of Mr. R.W.
Selby-Lowndes, of Bletchley, Bucks. They have two sons and a daughter.

A few months after his marriage he accepted an adjutancy in the
Northumberland Yeomanry. For four uneventful years he was stationed at
Newcastle, where the work was monotonous and the opportunities almost
_nil_.

[Page Heading: THE WAITING GAME]

Naturally the young man fretted very much at being left behind with
the Yeomanry when his regiment was ordered to embark for Egypt in
1882. And he never rested until he was allowed to follow it out in
1884. It was in many ways a new 19th which the young officer re-joined
in Egypt. The regiment hurried out in 1882 had at last come under a
commander of real genius in Colonel Percy Barrow, C.B., and in that
commander French was to find his first real military inspiration. It