I Enlist--St George's Barracks--The Recruits--From Bristol
to Cork--Sergeants--The Bounty and the Free Kit--Life in the
Army--My Discharge--A Sweet Revenge.
I am not very good at dates, but there are a few which I can recall with
unfailing accuracy. On 25th May 1865, whilst I was staring at one of
the sunlit fountains in Trafalgar Square, and listening to the bells of
Westminster as they chimed the hour of four, a venerable old spider in a
blue uniform with brass buttons, and a triple chevron of gold lace upon
his arm, accosted me without introduction and asked me what I thought
about life in the Army. Until then, so far as I can remember, I had
never thought about the Army at all. My eighteenth birthday was just one
month and twelve days behind me; I had one and sevenpence in the wide
world; I was smoking the last cigar of an expensive box, in the purchase
of which I had not been justified by the means at my disposal; and I was
in mortal terror of my landlady. It had been discovered at the printing
office of Messrs Unwin Bros., at which I had been engaged as an
“improver,” that I had no regular indentures, and I had been thrown upon
a merely casual employment amongst as undesirable and as hopeless a set
as could have been found at that time in my trade in London. Apart from
all these considerations, the world had come to an end because a
certain young lady, who, to the best of my belief, is still alive, and
a prosperous and happy grandmother, had unequivocally declined to marry
me. The blue-clad spider had no need to spread the web of temptation. I
resolved in an instant, and he and I adjourned to a backyard somewhere
in the neighbourhood, for which I have long since sought in vain.
I rather fancy that the wide spaces of Northumberland Avenue have
displaced it; but, in any case, the route we took led us towards the
river, the smell of which comes back to my nostrils at the moment at
which I write, with a queer mingled suggestion of sludge, and sunlight,
and sewage.
In that backyard I was put to a sort of mild ordeal by question. Was I
married? Was I an apprentice? Had I ever been refused for either of Her
Majesty's Services on account of any physical defect? Was I aware of any
such defect as would debar me from service? Had I ever been convicted of
any crime or misdemeanour? To all these queries I was able to answer in
the negative; but, whilst the solemn interrogation was going on, a young
man with his head full of flour, and his hands and arms covered with
little spirals and pills of dough, appeared at the top of a neighbouring
wall. “Don't you believe a word of what that cove is telling you,” he
counselled, and so disappeared, in obedience to a rather urgent gesture
from the blue old spider. I took the shilling, and the spider hinting
that a dry bargain was likely to prove a bad bargain, I expended it in
two glasses of sherry at some neighbouring “wine shade,” to which he
conducted me--the sort of institution which the Bodega Company has very
advantageously superseded. It was a dirty place, with rotting sawdust on
the floor, and little hollows beaten into the pewter counter, in which
were small lakes of stale wasted liquors of various kinds; and the smell
of it, also, is in my nostrils as I write. I was instructed to present
myself at St George's Barracks, Westminster, at eleven o'clock on the
following morning, and was told that if I failed in that respect I
should become in the eye of the law a rogue and vagabond, and should be
liable to summary indictment. I was dressed in my best, because I
was going out to tea that evening with an old family friend in the
Haymarket, a picture-restorer, whose shop and studio were next door
to the old Hay-market Theatre. My host told me that at the very last
appearance of Madame Goldschmit (Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale),
he had sat at his open window, and had heard her sing as clearly as if
he had been one of a paying audience who spent anything from a hundred
pounds to a guinea to enjoy that privilege; and I can well believe
him, because I heard easily the quaint chuckle of old Buckstone's voice
through the open windows of the studio. I am not sure at this distance
of time, but I think he was then playing the part of Asa Trenchard, with
Sothern, in _Dundreary Married and Done For_.
I got home that night without any interview with the dreaded landlady,
and made a bolt very early in the morning, leaving books, pictures, and
wardrobe to solve my bill. That night I slept in the great London
depot barracks. I know perhaps as well as anybody how Tommy Atkins has
improved in character and conduct since those days, but I can aver that
never before or since have I encountered a crew so wholly shameless and
abominable as I found that night at St George's, Westminster. It is
not a pretty thing to be the only decently bred and sober man amongst
a howling crowd of yokel drunkards, whose every phrase is built on a
foundation of hitherto unconceived obscenities. The night was enough;
and, with three half-crowns in my pocket, paid to me as subsistence
money for the three days ensuing between that date and the date of
my departure, I betook myself to a common lodging-house, and lived
in comparative decency. Some score of us, or perhaps a dozen, went up
together for surgical examination, and were made to strip stark naked in
each other's presence. I had never objected to this amongst my own kind
and kindred, when one exposed one's nudity by the side of the clean
brook or yellow canal in which we used to bathe in boyhood; but amongst
this crew it was hard, and even terrible. We had all been bathed,
perforce, before the medical examination began; but a mere tubbing does
not cleanse the mind or tongue, and I loathed alike the ceremony itself
and the men amongst whom I was forced to submit to it.
We marched through the London streets to Paddington, and I, having
ingratiated the sergeant who escorted us by a drink or two, was
permitted to walk by his side, whilst the ragged, semi-drunken
contingent went rolling and cursing ahead. We embarked for Bristol, and
there spent a night at the Gloucester Barracks, where a cross-grained
old sergeant, who had vainly tempted me to sell my clothes, and to
exchange them for a suit of rags, compelled me to carry endless loads of
coals up endless flights of stairs. He began his intercourse with me
by addressing me in Greek, of which language I knew nothing; and he
followed it with a dog-French which, ignorant as I was, I was able to
detect. In the morning we were taken aboard the paddleship _Appollo_,
bound for Cork, and I am in debt to the chief officer of that craft for
the advice he gave me. “It's the ambition of these beggars,” he said,
intending thereby the convoying sergeants, “to land any decent chap at
the barracks looking like a scarecrow. There's a good half of them
no better than dealers in old clothes. You take my advice: go to your
regiment looking like a gentleman. When you get your regimentals, you
can sell your civilian clothes for twice as much as these sharks would
give you.” I followed the advice thus given, and I had reason to be
grateful to the adviser.
The drunken, howling, cursing, foolish contingent with which I started
were scattered far and wide from the Catshill Barracks at Cork, and I
travelled thence under the care of a sedate old sergeant to Cahir, in
Tipperary. The sergeant was talkative and friendly, but I paid little
heed to him, for it was here, if I mistake not, that the joy of
landscape first entered into my soul. I have an impression only of an
abounding green and blue in general, but one or two stopping-points are
as clear in my mind as if I had seen them yesterday. Amongst them is
some old grey stone bridge near Limerick, where the train slowed down
and my Irish companion--Limerick born and bred, and rejoicing to show
his own country to a landscape lover--declared that he had travelled
almost dry-shod over the backs of the salmon which once thronged along
that river. I had my doubts at the moment as to the literal truth of
this statement, and I am not quite sure that I do not nurse them still.
Anyhow, the country struck me with that deceptive sense of fruitfulness
which besets every Englishman on his first travels into the fertile
districts of Ireland; and partly, perhaps, because I was half a Celt to
begin with, the “wearing of the green” became then and there a symbol in
my mind.
Finally, at the end of a fairly long day's run--for the cheaper kind of
train travelled slowly in those days--the convoying sergeant and I were
dumped down at the station at Cahir, which had not yet become celebrated
in that gorgeous fiction which was woven about it in later years by
the claimant to the Tichborne estates. Night was falling as we tramped
through the village, and on the road beyond we came across the ghostly
shell of an old castle, standing, I think, in the Byrne demesne, which
was packed full of jackdaws, who had caught one or two human phrases
from some half-Christianised member of their fellowship, and who woke
the echoes in answer to our footsteps with a hundred semi-human cries.
They had only a phrase or two amongst them, but they gave one clearly
the impression that they represented a Babylonian crowd intent on
insurrection.
I was passed from one sergeant to another in the course of my transfer
from St George's Barracks to Clare in the county Tipperary, and there
was not one of them who did not try to induce me to change a reputable
garb for a set of garments that would have done justice to a scare-crow.
The contingent with which I was shipped from Bristol to Cork composed
as ribald and foul-mouthed a crew as I remember to have seen, and long
before I assumed Her Majesty's uniform, I was sickened of the enterprise
on which I had embarked. I think I am justified in saying that I was
instrumental in bringing about one great and much needed reform. In
those days, the recruit on enlistment was supposed to receive a
bounty and a free kit; as the thing was worked out by the regimental
quartermaster, he never saw one or the other. He had served out to him
on his arrival at his depot a set of obsolete garments which he was
forbidden to wear and was compelled to return to stores, when a new
outfit at his own cost had been supplied to him. My gorge rose at this
bare-faced iniquity, and as a protest against it, I attired myself on
my first Sunday in barracks in the clothes which had been fraudulently
assigned to me, and joined the regiment on church parade. I suppose no
soldier had been so attired since Waterloo, and my appearance was the
signal for a roar of laughter in which men and officers alike joined,
and which was not extinguished until I had been ignominiously hustled
back to quarters. In the Fourth Royal Irish Dragoon Guards at least, I
know myself to have been the last man whom the wicked system attempted
to pillage in that fashion. As a matter of course, I was marked from
that moment.
People who have a practical knowledge of modern Army life tell me that
things have changed altogether for the better since those far bygone
days of 1865; and I am disposed to believe that no such shameless
swindles as were then perpetrated could possibly continue for a week
under existing conditions. A Press which makes us familiar with all
sorts of grievances, and an inquiring Parliamentarian or two, would
provide a short shrift and a long rope for the perpetrator of any such
bare-faced robbery as I suffered under when I first joined the Fourth
Royal Irish Dragoon Guards. The motive of my enlistment had no remotest
connection with the bounty offered. I joined the Army simply out of that
green-sickness of the mind from which so many young men suffer, and
some nebulous notions of heroism in falling against a savage foe in
some place not geographically defined. But in the printed terms of the
agreement which I signed it was promised that I should receive a three
pound bounty and a free kit. As a matter of fact, I received neither one
nor the other. I was served out, as I have stated, with an absolutely
obsolete uniform, which I was forbidden to wear, and my bounty was
impounded to pay for regulation clothing.
This initial struggle made me from the first a personage of mark in the
regiment; for when I was summoned to my first parade, I had
deliberately donned the clothes which had been dealt out to me from the
quartermaster's stores, and presented myself to public view in a uniform
which had probably been seen on no parade ground in England since Her
late Majesty's accession to the throne. It was a sufficiently solemn
proceeding on my own part, for I was warned that I was being guilty of
a military misdemeanour of the gravest sort But if the thing was serious
to me, it was a matter of rejoicing comedy--or even, if you like, of
screaming farce--to the troops who were paraded for church that Sunday
morning. Men fairly shrieked with laughter at the sight of the old
Kilmarnock cap, the ridiculous tailed jacket, and the rough shoddy
trousers bagging at the seat. The officers made an attempt at decorum
which was not too successful; and I was hustled from the ground, and
escorted to the guard-room, for the high crime and misdemeanour of
presuming to appear in the clothes which had officially been served
out to me. I appeared at the orderly-room next morning, and underwent
a severe wigging from the officer who was in temporary command of the
regiment; but the incident was mercifully allowed to close with a mere
reprimand. It did a little good, perhaps, for I never knew any other
recruit to be served out with an utterly obsolete and useless kit so
long as I remained with the regiment; but, until the hour at which
my discharge was purchased, I was taught that it was not conducive to
personal comfort to rebel against any form of tyranny and extortion
which might be condoned by tradition in the Army.
Honestly, I do not think that I look with a jaundiced eye upon my
remembrances of that most unhappy time, but, as I remember, to have had
an education a little better than that of the average ploughman, and
to show an inclination to be smart and quick at duty, was a certain
passport to the hostility of the non-commissioned officers of the time.
They regarded themselves, as I am now inclined to fancy, as a sort of
close corporation, and I cannot help thinking that they felt it a kind
of duty to themselves to repress the ambitions of any youngster who
seemed likely to be marked for promotion. A mere recruit, who had not
yet learned the simple mysteries of the goose-step, had registered an
objection to being robbed at the outset of his career, and had thereby
revealed himself as a person of dangerous ideas which, if pursued to
their ultimate, would make an end of all manner of illegitimate
profits; and I am not careful to suggest that any special aptitude for a
soldier's life on my own part was responsible for the dead set which
was made at me by all the non-coms, of the regiment. There was one
troop-sergeant-major, as already stated, who was currently known
throughout the corps as The Pig. A furious and determined attempt was
made upon his life by a man named Lovell, who was sent to a military
convict prison for twelve years, if I remember rightly. Now, I
have never heard of any ordinarily decent officer, commissioned or
non-commissioned, being assaulted by a subordinate; and the civilian
observer of Army life may be assured that, almost without exception,
whenever that kind of thing occurs, petty tyrannies and intermeddlings
on the part of the superior are answerable for it. I met this particular
man on one occasion only. I suppose that I had been pointed out to him
as the young insubordinate who had dared to trespass on tradition by
wearing the clothes served out to him. He stopped me in the middle of
the barrack square at Cahir, and offered me a solemn warning: “You go on
as you've begun, young man, and we'll make life hell to you.” I do not
claim that I am in any special sense a lover of justice, but I know
that my gorge rose less at the sense of personal injury, than against a
scheme of organised robbery; but, luckily for myself, I refrained from
answer, and passed on.
Every man had his nickname in the regiment, and I was christened Oxford.
I was on stable sentry duty at some idle high noon of mid-summer, and a
playful chum of mine, whose name was Barlow, laid a little trap for
me. “Oxford,” says he, “who do you think is the ugliest beggar in the
regiment?” I answered, without hesitation, “Sergeant So-and-So;”
and Sergeant So-and-So was at that very moment coming--miching
mallecho--through the stables. He heard both the question and the
answer, and he was naturally displeased. From that hour whatever chance
I might have had of a peaceful life in the regiment disappeared.
The non-coms, began to lay plots against me, and I recall one day in
particular, after weeks of rain, during which the horses' legs had been
thickening for want of exercise, we got out into a very muddy ménage
with what we called the “young horse ride.” I was mounted on a most
unmanageable, untrained beast, and before the work was over he was in a
lather from nose to tail, and I was encased in mud from the spur to the
chrome-yellowed button on the top of my forage cap. It was the custom,
after having unsaddled one's mount, to pass a hasty oil-rag over bit
and bridoon and stirrups, and then to fall to upon the grooming of the
horse. My ugly sergeant had found a collaborateur, who wanted to know
what the blank blank I meant by leaving my horse to shiver in the cold
whilst I loitered about this customary duty. I set to work upon the
horse at once, and, as the collaborating sergeant disappeared at one
stable door, my ugly friend turned up at the other, wanting to know
why the blank blank I had not oiled my stirrup irons. I took up the
discarded oil-rag with all activity; the ugly man vanished, and his
collaborateur appeared at the door on the other side of the stables.
“Now, didn't I tell you not to let your horse catch cold?” said he.
“Haven't you the brains to go and groom him?” I had learned long since
the wisdom of silence, and I began to groom with a will. When my ugly
friend once more appeared with a command “to the stirrup irons;” back
I went, forboding the disaster which swiftly came. The accommodating
friend of the ugly man swooped down, and I was haled before the officer
on duty on a charge of having thrice neglected to obey a given order.
But the colonel of our regiment, the late Sir Charles Cameron Shute,
since then for many years Member for Brighton, was at headquarters. He
was a good deal of a martinet, but he was justice incarnate. I told
my story, and I offered him my witnesses. His word to me was a simple
right-about-face and march; but, as I put on my forage cap in the
anteroom, I heard him thundering at the accusing sergeants to the effect
that he would not have his recruits bullied, that he would not endure to
have plots laid against them, and that on any repetition of the manouvre
now exposed, he would break the pair of them, and return them to the
ranks.
And here occurs what is to me a very curious reminiscence. A dear old
great-aunt of mine had purchased my discharge, and had furnished me
with money to go home. We were then stationed at Ballincollig, in County
Cork, and I had secured a suit of civilian toggery from a Cork tailor. I
was waiting for the jaunting car which was to carry me to town, when my
ugly friend heaved in sight, and, finding a man in civilian dress with
the undeniable air of the barrack-yard upon him, and being, as I guess,
a little short-sighted, he saluted me as he would have saluted an
officer in passing. Discovering his error, he was very angry, and he
began to cite all the pains and penalties to which a man was liable who
smoked a cigar within a given distance of some powder-magazine which
then existed there. When I had pointed out to him the fact that I was
twenty yards beyond the limit, I promised him, with all the sincerity
of youth, that whenever and wherever I might meet him in civil life, I
would do my honest best to give him a hiding for the twelve months of
misery he had caused me. It was years before I saw him again, and he did
not know me. I had grown a beard, and an increasing shortness of sight
had forced me to the use of an eyeglass. He was a commissionaire at some
glassworks which stand opposite to the offices of a journal with which I
have been now intimately concerned for some years. I hailed him by name,
and asked him why he had left his old regiment He told me that he was
suffering from hernia and pulmonary consumption; and when I left the
place, after seeing the picture on glass which I had been invited to
view, I enjoyed the sweetest vengeance of my lifetime in tipping the
ex-sergeant half-a-crown, and in leaving him without any disclosure of
my own identity.