[Footnote 192:  Shirley the younger to Morris, 23 May, 1755.]

[Footnote 193:  Franklin, Autobiography.]

“He once had a duel with Colonel Gumley, Lady Bath’s brother, who had been his great friend.  As they were going to engage, Gumley, who had good-humor and wit (Braddock had the latter), said:  ’Braddock, you are a poor dog!  Here, take my purse; if you kill me, you will be forced to run away, and then you will not have a shilling to support you.’  Braddock refused the purse, insisted on the duel, was disarmed, and would not even ask his life.  However, with all his brutality, he has lately been governor of Gibraltar, where he made himself adored, and where scarce any governor was endured before."[194]

[Footnote 194:  Letters of Horace Walpole (1866), II. 459, 461.  It is doubtful if Braddock was ever governor of Gibraltar; though, as Mr. Sargent shows, he once commanded a regiment there.]

Another story is told of him by an accomplished actress of the time, George Anne Bellamy, whom Braddock had known from girlhood, and with whom his present relations seem to have been those of an elderly adviser and friend.  “As we were walking in the Park one day, we heard a poor fellow was to be chastised; when I requested the General to beg off the offender.  Upon his application to the general officer, whose name was Dury, he asked Braddock how long since he had divested himself of the brutality and insolence of his manners?  To which the other replied:  ’You never knew me insolent to my inferiors.  It is only to such rude men as yourself that I behave with the spirit which I think they deserve.’”

Braddock made a visit to the actress on the evening before he left London for America.  “Before we parted,” she says, “the General told me that he should never see me more; for he was going with a handful of men to conquer whole nations; and to do this they must cut their way through unknown woods.  He produced a map of the country, saying at the same time:  ‘Dear Pop, we are sent like sacrifices to the altar,’"[195]—­a strange presentiment for a man of his sturdy temper.

[Footnote 195:  Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy, written by herself, II. 204 (London, 1786).]

Whatever were his failings, he feared nothing, and his fidelity and honor in the discharge of public trusts were never questioned.  “Desperate in his fortune, brutal in his behavior, obstinate in his sentiments,” again writes Walpole, “he was still intrepid and capable."[196] He was a veteran in years and in service, having entered the Coldstream Guards as ensign in 1710.

[Footnote 196:  Walpole, George II., I. 390.]