MY CUSTOMERS AT THE BRITISH HOTEL.
I shall proceed in this chapter to make the reader acquainted with
some of the customers of the British Hotel, who came there for its
creature comforts as well as its hostess's medicines when need was;
and if he or she should be inclined to doubt or should hesitate at
accepting my experience of Crimean life as entirely credible, I beg
that individual to refer to the accounts which were given in the
newspapers of the spring of 1855, and I feel sure they will acquit me
of any intention to exaggerate. If I were to speak of all the nameless
horrors of that spring as plainly as I could, I should really disgust
you; but those I shall bring before your notice have all something of
the humorous in them--and so it ever is. Time is a great restorer, and
changes surely the greatest sorrow into a pleasing memory. The sun
shines this spring-time upon green grass that covers the graves of the
poor fellows we left behind sadly a few short months ago: bright
flowers grow up upon ruins of batteries and crumbling trenches, and
cover the sod that presses on many a mouldering token of the old time
of battle and death. I dare say that, if I went to the Crimea now, I
should see a smiling landscape, instead of the blood-stained scene
which I shall ever associate with distress and death; and as it is
with nature so it is with human kind. Whenever I meet those who have
survived that dreary spring of 1855, we seldom talk about its horrors;
but remembering its transient gleams of sunshine, smile at the fun and
good nature that varied its long and weary monotony. And now that I am
anxious to remember all I can that will interest my readers, my memory
prefers to dwell upon what was pleasing and amusing, although the time
will never come when it will cease to retain most vividly the pathos
and woe of those dreadful months.
I have said that the winter had not ended when we began operations at
the British Hotel; and very often, after we considered we were fairly
under spring's influence, our old enemy would come back with an angry
roar of wind and rain, levelling tents, unroofing huts, destroying
roads, and handing over May to the command of General Fevrier. But the
sun fought bravely for us, and in time always dispersed the leaden
clouds and gilded the iron sky, and made us cheerful again. During the
end of March, the whole of April, and a considerable portion of May,
however, the army was but a little better off for the advent of
spring. The military road to the camp was only in progress--the
railway only carried ammunition. A few hours' rain rendered the old
road all but impassable, and scarcity often existed in the front
before Sebastopol, although the frightened and anxious Commissariat
toiled hard to avert such a mishap; so that very often to the British
Hotel came officers starved out on the heights above us. The dandies
of Rotten Row would come down riding on sorry nags, ready to carry
back--their servants were on duty in the trenches--anything that would
be available for dinner. A single glance at their personal appearance
would suffice to show the hardships of the life they were called upon
to lead. Before I left London for the seat of war I had been more than
once to the United Service Club, seeking to gain the interest of
officers whom I had known in Jamaica; and I often thought afterwards
of the difference between those I saw there trimly shaven, handsomely
dressed, with spotless linen and dandy air, and these their
companions, who in England would resemble them. Roughly, warmly
dressed, with great fur caps, which met their beards and left nothing
exposed but lips and nose, and not much of those; you would easily
believe that soap and water were luxuries not readily obtainable, that
shirts and socks were often comforts to dream about rather than
possess, and that they were familiar with horrors you would shudder to
hear named. Tell me, reader, can you fancy what the want of so simple
a thing as a pocket-handkerchief is? To put a case--have you ever gone
out for the day without one; sat in a draught and caught a sneezing
cold in the head? You say the question is an unnecessarily unpleasant
one, and yet what I am about to tell you is true, and the sufferer is,
I believe, still alive.
An officer had ridden down one day to obtain refreshments (this was very
early in the spring); some nice fowls had just been taken from the spit,
and I offered one to him. Paper was one of the most hardly obtainable
luxuries of the Crimea, and I rarely had any to waste upon my customers;
so I called out, "Give me your pocket-handkerchief, my son, that I may
wrap it up." You see we could not be very particular out there; but he
smiled very bitterly as he answered, "Pocket-handkerchief, mother--by
Jove! I wish I had one. I tore my last shirt into shreds a fortnight
ago, and there's not a bit of it left now."
Shortly after, a hundred dozen of these useful articles came to my
store, and I sold them all to officers and men very speedily.
For some time, and until I found the task beyond my strength, I kept
up a capital table at the British Hotel; but at last I gave up doing
so professedly, and my hungry customers had to make shift with
whatever was on the premises. Fortunately they were not over-dainty,
and had few antipathies. My duties increased so rapidly, that
sometimes it was with difficulty that I found time to eat and sleep.
Could I have obtained good servants, my daily labours would have been
lightened greatly; but my staff never consisted of more than a few
boys, two black cooks, some Turks--one of whom, Osman, had enough to
do to kill and pluck the poultry, while the others looked after the
stock and killed our goats and sheep--and as many runaway sailors or
good-for-noughts in search of employment as we could from time to time
lay our hands upon; but they never found my larder entirely empty. I
often used to roast a score or so of fowls daily, besides boiling hams
and tongues. Either these or a slice from a joint of beef or mutton
you would be pretty sure of finding at your service in the larder of
the British Hotel.
Would you like, gentle reader, to know what other things suggestive of
home and its comforts your relatives and friends in the Crimea could
obtain from the hostess of Spring Hill? I do not tell you that the
following articles were all obtainable at the commencement, but many
were. The time was indeed when, had you asked me for mock turtle and
venison, you should have had them, preserved in tins, but that was
when the Crimea was flooded with plenty--too late, alas! to save many
whom want had killed; but had you been doing your best to batter
Sebastopol about the ears of the Russians in the spring and summer of
the year before last, the firm of Seacole and Day would have been
happy to have served you with (I omit ordinary things) linen and
hosiery, saddlery, caps, boots and shoes, for the outer man; and for
the inner man, meat and soups of every variety in tins (you can
scarcely conceive how disgusted we all became at last with preserved
provisions); salmon, lobsters, and oysters, also in tins, which last
beaten up into fritters, with onions, butter, eggs, pepper, and salt,
were very good; game, wild fowl, vegetables, also preserved, eggs,
sardines, curry powder, cigars, tobacco, snuff, cigarette papers, tea,
coffee, tooth powder, and currant jelly. When cargoes came in from
Constantinople, we bought great supplies of potatoes, carrots,
turnips, and greens. Ah! what a rush there used to be for the greens.
You might sometimes get hot rolls; but, generally speaking, I bought
the Turkish bread (_ekmek_), baked at Balaclava.
Or had you felt too ill to partake of your rough camp fare, coarsely
cooked by a soldier cook, who, unlike the French, could turn his hand
to few things but fighting, and had ridden down that muddy road to the
Col, to see what Mother Seacole could give you for dinner, the chances
were you would have found a good joint of mutton, not of the fattest,
forsooth; for in such miserable condition were the poor beasts landed,
that once, when there came an urgent order from head-quarters for
twenty-five pounds of mutton, we had to cut up one sheep and a half
to provide the quantity; or you would have stumbled upon something
curried, or upon a good Irish stew, nice and hot, with plenty of
onions and potatoes, or upon some capital meat-pies. I found the
preserved meats were better relished cooked in this fashion, and well
doctored with stimulants. Before long I grew as familiar with the
mysteries of seasoning as any London pieman, and could accommodate
myself to the requirements of the seasons as readily. Or had there
been nothing better, you might have gone further and fared on worse
fare than one of my Welch rabbits, for the manufacture of which I
became so famous. And had you been fortunate enough to have visited
the British Hotel upon rice-pudding day, I warrant you would have
ridden back to your hut with kind thoughts of Mother Seacole's
endeavours to give you a taste of home. If I had nothing else to be
proud of, I think my rice puddings, made without milk, upon the high
road to Sebastopol, would have gained me a reputation. What a shout
there used to be when I came out of my little caboose, hot and
flurried, and called out, "Rice-pudding day, my sons." Some of them
were baked in large shallow pans, for the men and the sick, who always
said that it reminded them of home. You would scarcely expect to
finish up your dinner with pastry, but very often you would have found
a good stock of it in my larder. Whenever I had a few leisure moments,
I used to wash my hands, roll up my sleeves and roll out pastry. Very
often I was interrupted to dispense medicines; but if the tarts had a
flavour of senna, or the puddings tasted of rhubarb, it never
interfered with their consumption. I declare I never heard or read of
an army so partial to pastry as that British army before Sebastopol;
while I had a reputation for my sponge-cakes that any pastry-cook in
London, even Gunter, might have been proud of. The officers, full of
fun and high spirits, used to crowd into the little kitchen, and,
despite all my remonstrances, which were not always confined to words,
for they made me frantic sometimes, and an iron spoon is a tempting
weapon, would carry off the tarts hot from the oven, while the
good-for-nothing black cooks, instead of lending me their aid, would
stand by and laugh with all their teeth. And when the hot season
commenced, the crowds that came to the British Hotel for my claret and
cider cups, and other cooling summer drinks, were very complimentary
in their expressions of appreciation of my skill.
Now, supposing that you had made a hearty dinner and were thinking of
starting homeward--if I can use so pleasant a term in reference to
your cheerless quarters--it was very natural that you should be
anxious to carry back something to your hut. Perhaps you expected to
be sent into the trenches (many a supper cooked by me has been
consumed in those fearful trenches by brave men, who could eat it with
keen appetites while the messengers of death were speeding around
them); or perhaps you had planned a little dinner-party, and wanted to
give your friends something better than their ordinary fare. Anyhow,
you would in all probability have some good reason for returning laden
with comforts and necessaries from Spring Hill. You would not be very
particular about carrying them. You might have been a great swell at
home, where you would have shuddered if Bond Street had seen you
carrying a parcel no larger than your card-case; but those
considerations rarely troubled you here. Very likely, your servant was
lying crouched in a rifle pit, having "pots" at the Russians, or
keeping watch and ward in the long lines of trenches, or, stripped to
his shirt, shovelling powder and shot into the great guns, whose
steady roar broke the evening's calm. So if you did not wait upon
yourself, you would stand a very fair chance of being starved. But you
would open your knapsack, if you had brought one, for me to fill it
with potatoes, and halloo out, "Never mind, mother!" although the
gravy from the fowls on your saddle before you was soaking through the
little modicum of paper which was all I could afford you. So laden,
you would cheerfully start up the hill of mud hutward; and well for
you if you did not come to grief on that treacherous sea of mud that
lay swelling between the Col and your destination. Many a mishap,
ludicrous but for their consequences, happened on it. I remember a
young officer coming down one day just in time to carry off my last
fowl and meat pie. Before he had gone far, the horse so floundered in
the mud that the saddle-girths broke, and while the pies rolled into
the clayey soil in one direction, the fowl flew in another. To make
matters worse, the horse, in his efforts to extricate himself, did for
them entirely; and in terrible distress, the poor fellow came back for
me to set him up again. I shook my head for a long time, but at last,
after he had over and over again urged upon me pathetically that he
had two fellows coming to dine with him at six, and nothing in the
world in his hut but salt pork, I resigned a plump fowl which I had
kept back for my own dinner. Off he started again, but soon came back
with, "Oh, mother, I forgot all about the potatoes; they've all rolled
out upon that ---- road; you must fill my bag again." We all laughed
heartily at him, but this state of things _had_ been rather tragical.
Before I bring this chapter to a close, I should like, with the
reader's permission, to describe one day of my life in the Crimea.
They were all pretty much alike, except when there was fighting upon a
large scale going on, and duty called me to the field. I was generally
up and busy by daybreak, sometimes earlier, for in the summer my bed
had no attractions strong enough to bind me to it after four. There
was plenty to do before the work of the day began. There was the
poultry to pluck and prepare for cooking, which had been killed on the
previous night; the joints to be cut up and got ready for the same
purpose; the medicines to be mixed; the store to be swept and cleaned.
Of very great importance, with all these things to see after, were the
few hours of quiet before the road became alive with travellers. By
seven o'clock the morning coffee would be ready, hot and refreshing,
and eagerly sought for by the officers of the Army Works Corps engaged
upon making the great high-road to the front, and the Commissariat and
Land Transport men carrying stores from Balaclava to the heights.
There was always a great demand for coffee by those who knew its
refreshing and strengthening qualities, milk I could not give them (I
kept it in tins for special use); but they had it hot and strong, with
plenty of sugar and a slice of butter, which I recommend as a capital
substitute for milk. From that time until nine, officers on duty in
the neighbourhood, or passing by, would look in for breakfast, and
about half-past nine my sick patients began to show themselves. In
the following hour they came thickly, and sometimes it was past twelve
before I had got through this duty. They came with every variety of
suffering and disease; the cases I most disliked were the frostbitten
fingers and feet in the winter. That over, there was the hospital to
visit across the way, which was sometimes overcrowded with patients. I
was a good deal there, and as often as possible would take over books
and papers, which I used to borrow for that purpose from my friends
and the officers I knew. Once, a great packet of tracts was sent to me
from Plymouth anonymously, and these I distributed in the same manner.
By this time the day's news had come from the front, and perhaps among
the casualties over night there would be some one wounded or sick, who
would be glad to see me ride up with the comforts he stood most in
need of; and during the day, if any accident occurred in the
neighbourhood or on the road near the British Hotel, the men generally
brought the sufferer there, whence, if the hurt was serious, he would
be transferred to the hospital of the Land Transport opposite. I used
not always to stand upon too much ceremony when I heard of sick or
wounded officers in the front. Sometimes their friends would ask me to
go to them, though very often I waited for no hint, but took the
chance of meeting with a kind reception. I used to think of their
relatives at home, who would have given so much to possess my
privilege; and more than one officer have I startled by appearing
before him, and telling him abruptly that he must have a mother, wife,
or sister at home whom he missed, and that he must therefore be glad
of some woman to take their place.
Until evening the store would be filled with customers wanting
stores, dinners, and luncheons; loungers and idlers seeking
conversation and amusement; and at eight o'clock the curtain descended
on that day's labour, and I could sit down and eat at leisure. It was
no easy thing to clear the store, canteen, and yards; but we
determined upon adhering to the rule that nothing should be sold after
that hour, and succeeded. Any one who came after that time, came
simply as a friend. There could be no necessity for any one, except on
extraordinary occasions, when the rule could be relaxed, to purchase
things after eight o'clock. And drunkenness or excess were discouraged
at Spring Hill in every way; indeed, my few unpleasant scenes arose
chiefly from my refusing to sell liquor where I saw it was wanted to
be abused. I could appeal with a clear conscience to all who knew me
there, to back my assertion that I neither permitted drunkenness among
the men nor gambling among the officers. Whatever happened elsewhere,
intoxication, cards, and dice were never to be seen, within the
precincts of the British Hotel. My regulations were well known, and a
kind-hearted officer of the Royals, who was much there, and who
permitted me to use a familiarity towards him which I trust I never
abused, undertook to be my Provost-marshal, but his duties were very
light.
At first we kept our store open on Sunday from sheer necessity, but
after a little while, when stores in abundance were established at
Kadikoi and elsewhere, and the absolute necessity no longer existed,
Sunday became a day of most grateful rest at Spring Hill. This step
also met with opposition from the men; but again we were determined,
and again we triumphed. I am sure we needed rest. I have often
wondered since how it was that I never fell ill or came home "on
urgent private affairs." I am afraid that I was not sufficiently
thankful to the Providence which gave me strength to carry out the
work I loved so well, and felt so happy in being engaged upon; but
although I never had a week's illness during my campaign, the labour,
anxiety, and perhaps the few trials that followed it, have told upon
me. I have never felt since that time the strong and hearty woman that
I was when I braved with impunity the pestilence of Navy Bay and
Cruces. It would kill me easily now.