It was on May 25, 1865, that I enlisted in her Majesty's Fourth Royal
Irish Dragoon Guards. I was just past my eighteenth birthday, and, for
reasons not worth specifying nowadays, the world had come to an end.
Civil life afforded no appropriate means of exit from this mortal stage,
and I was in a condition (theoretically) to march with pleasure against
a savage foe. I was ignorant of these little matters, and was not
aware of the fact that the Fourth Royal Irish was mainly a stay-at-home
regiment.
My ardour for the military life was cooled pretty early. I dare say that
things have mended somewhat in the last seven-and-twenty years; but my
experience was in the main a record of petty tyrannies and oppressions,
at the memory of some of which my blood boils even unto this day. There
is a comic side to everything, however, and I can laugh over a good many
of my own experiences. I had a dinner engagement that day with a friend
in the Haymarket, and finding myself a little too early for it, I stood
to watch the fountains playing in Trafalgar Square. My mind was in a
state of moody grandeur, which is both comic and affecting to recall at
this distance of time. I was quite a misunderstood young person, and was
determined to be revenged for it, on all and sundry, myself included.
The blue-coated brass-buttoned old spider who came to weave his web
around me had no need to be elaborate. I closed with him at once, and he
led me with a stealthy seeming of indifference into a back yard, where
he put the statutory questions and handed over the statutory shilling.
I had supposed that I should at once enter upon my military career,
but, to my surprise, I was ordered to report myself at the depot at
St. George's Barracks on the following day at noon. Failing this, I was
instructed that I should be held a rogue and vagabond, and should be
liable to a period of imprisonment I went on to dinner, and bore myself
there with a mysterious gloom, which, as I learned long afterwards, gave
rise to a good deal of conjecture. Next day I was sworn in in a frowsy
back room behind the Westminster Police Court, and learned that I was
now formally bound to the service of her Majesty for a term of twelve
years, my sole hope of escape being the payment of a sum of thirty
pounds as purchase-money.
My military ardour had been a little cooled already at the medical
examination, where, to my horrible embarrassment, I was made to strip
stark naked, and was inspected by an elderly gentleman in a _pince-nez_,
with half a dozen uninterested people looking on, amongst them two or
three louts in fustian who were awaiting their turn. I was put into
a variety of postures, all of which I felt to be ridiculous and
humiliating; and when this ordeal was over there came the swearing-in
and a visit to the depot canteen, where I received payment of a sum of
seven and sixpence and was introduced to some of the raw material of the
fighting forces of the nation.
I may say quite frankly that I did not like the raw material. The young
men who composed it were without exception vulgar and loutish. Their
language was absolutely unreportable, and they were all more or less
flushed with beer. I had been almost a total abstainer all my life, and
though I drank a little of it out of complaisance I thought the canteen
tack the nastiest stuff I had ever tasted The depot barrack-room in
which the recruits slept until the time of their deportation echoed
morning, noon, and night with unmeaning ribaldries and obscenities,
and was stale with the smoke of bad tobacco and the fumes of that most
indifferent beer. I learned that I was bound for Ireland, and that the
head-quarters of my regiment were at Cahir. One respectable old depot
sergeant took some interest in my quiet and isolation. 'You'll be out of
this lot soon,' he said, 'and you'll never see anything like it again.
These chaps'll learn manners when they join the colours; and you're
lucky in the regiment you're going to--there's no smarter in the
service.'
I have made one or two uncomfortable journeys in my time, but I can
recall nothing quite so comfortless as the march with that ragged and
disreputable contingent along Piccadilly, across Hyde Park, down the
Edgware Road, and so on to Paddington Station. It was all very well for
the sore and rebellious heart to be singing inwardly, 'Yes, let me like
a soldier fall,' but this was a sordid beginning for military glory,
and I would sooner have been shot outright than I would have encountered
anybody I knew on that journey. I reached the station unobserved, so far
as I know, and was glad to hide myself in a third-class carriage, into
which the sergeant in charge of the party beckoned me. He was very kind
and friendly indeed, advising me in a score of ways suggested by his own
experience, and talking constantly with his hand upon my shoulder. I had
begun to think him quite a genuine good fellow, and my heart was warming
to him, when he let the cat out of the bag.
I was handsomely attired, and the morning suit I was wearing was barely
a week old. He was good enough to offer me ten shillings and a rig-out
for a scarecrow in exchange for it. I declined the friendly offer,
and the sergeant cooled. He condescended to accept a drink at Didcot
Junction; indeed, he did me the honour to ask for it; but when it was
consumed he ordered me into a carriage already fully occupied by half a
score of my fellow recruits, and in their society I finished the journey
to Bristol.
We put up at the Gloucester Barracks, which, as I understood, had once
been an hotel, and the escort sergeant, who had turned spiteful, set me
to work to carry coal upstairs.
This was my first experience of fatigue duty, and I was kept at it
till I was very fatigued indeed, and my smart summer trousers and
spick-and-span shirt-cuffs were a little damaged. This duty over, I met
the escort sergeant no more, but was transferred to the care of a quaint
old boy who made an astonishing display of learning. He had four or five
Latin proverbs at his command. He knew the Greek alphabet, had picked
up a bit of Hindostani on Indian service, and a little bit of French
and Turkish in the Crimea. All these he aired upon me in a very natural
manner, and I was much impressed with his erudition, until a grinning
depot man got me into a corner and told me that 'the sergeant had
shown me the whole bag o' thricks at wonst,' He paid every well-dressed
recruit that compliment, it seemed; and the depot man warned me that
he too would make a bid for my clothes, and would offer me a scarecrow
rig-out in return.
'If ye'll take my tip,' said the depot man, 'ye'll say neither yes nor
no till ye get to barracks. Kape the ould blagyard hangin' on and off
till ye get inside the gates, and then tell him to go to blazes. If ye
loike to work him properly, ye can kape him as smooth as soft soap all
the way. If ye say no too early he'll be on t'ye like a ton o' pig-iron.
It's the truth I'm tellin' ye,' he added, 'as sure as God made little
apples.'
He thought his advice was worth a drink. I thought so too, and he got
it.
We steamed away next day in the _Apollo_, bound for Cork. We had a
rough passage, and the depot sergeant took me into his private cabin
and cheered me with a glass of whisky, the first I had ever tasted. He
began, when he had thus softened my heart, to try the bargain about the
suit of clothes, and produced a set of garments the like of which I do
not think I ever saw.
'You'll not be allowed to keep these,' he explained, fingering me all
over to test the quality of the cloth I wore. 'You'll be in regimentals
in a day or two, and it'll make no difference to you.'
One of the officers of the vessel looked in whilst this business was
going on and broke in gruffly, 'You join your regiment looking like a
gentleman, young man. Your officers won't think any the worse of you
for going in decent. Damn it all, sergeant, what d'ye want to spoil the
lad's prospects for?'
So a second time the suit was saved; but it went a week later to an old
soldier who was leaving the regiment and whom it fitted to a hair. He
was to leave a certain portion of his kit behind for me, which, as he
assured me, would be of the utmost use; but he sold such articles as
belonged to him to the men in his own barrack-room that evening, and
decamped without seeing me again.
The stormy passage ended delightfully amidst the quiet beauties and
serene shelter of the Cove of Cork. I have seen a great many of the
world's show-places since 1865, and I dare say that my inexperience
counted for much; but I cannot recall any natural spectacle which
afforded me a more genuine delight. It was the morning of the 30th of
May. The sun was just rising, and the roofs and spires of the city
were outlined against a lucent belt of sky. Spike Island lay green and
smiling in the middle of the cove; and on either side, on the emerald
slopes, white villas were dotted here and there. The whole scene looked
very sweet and pure and homelike, and there were certain thoughts in my
own mind which made the view memorable.
We were all bundled up to the Cat's Hill Barracks, and there held over
Sunday. My companions melted away unregarded, and I travelled down to
Cahir under the charge of a decent old fellow who did not try to buy my
clothes, but spent a good deal of time in exhorting me to write to my
friends and beg their pardon for having made a fool of myself.
'Yell be doing it late,' he said, 'and ye may as well be doing it soon.'
I was quite lonely and sore enough to have taken the advice, and
military glory looked a long way off; but a silly pride withheld me, and
I pretended to feel well satisfied with my prospects and surroundings.
When I came to understand things a little I could see that the regiment
was in a splendid state of discipline and efficiency. It had not been so
a few years before, when the Lieutenant Robinson episode at Birmingham
had brought the command of Colonel Bentinck into grave disrepute.
Lieutenant-Colonel Shute, on whom the actual charge of the regiment
devolved, set to work to bring cosmos out of chaos; and did it, though
it took him a day or two of very uphill work. I know more of what a
regiment should be than I did then, and I do not ask a firmer or a
more judicious discipline. The men were enthusiastically loyal to their
colonel, and believed in him as if he had been a sort of deity. I am
persuaded that they would have gone anywhere and have done anything for
him. There is nothing the British soldier respects like justice, and he
likes it none the less if it is a little stern. We all had a holy dread
of the colonel, though he was not a bit more of a martinet than any good
officer should be; and his wife, who had a habit of giving autographed
Prayer Books to the men, was regarded with a genuine affection.
I found the men, in the main, very good fellows indeed. Of course there
were all sorts among them. Many were well bred and well educated, and
one or two might have been met without surprise in almost any society.
Some, again, were thorough-going blackguards, and others, who were
among the most popular and the best soldiers, were incurably rackety and
undisciplined. One man, who had thrice won his stripes as full corporal,
was for the third time broken and reduced to the ranks during my first
month of service. He would keep away from drink for two or three years
at a time, and then in a night would undo all the results of hard work
and self-denial. Take the men in the main, and it would be difficult to
find a better lot; but the petty officers seemed to make it the business
of their lives to put the heaviest of burdens on the shoulders of any
promising recruit. They were none of them very well educated, and I
suppose that it was only natural that they should fear the advancement
of a youngster better tutored than themselves, and should do their best
to keep him down. One only found this disposition amongst the younger
non-coms.--men who had not held their places long enough to grow used to
the dignity of rank.
There is, or was in my time, a soldiers' proverb, 'As nasty as a
new-made corporal,' With one exception the sergeant-majors were good
fellows and popular with their men. I shall not give the name of the
exception, for he may be still alive; but he was commonly known as 'The
Pig,' and he deserved his title. There was no meanness and no denial
of military etiquette of which he would not be guilty to get a man into
trouble. One badgered private assaulted him violently with a pitchfork,
and suffered two years' imprisonment for that misdemeanour. 'The Pig'
was quite uncured by this experience; and one night, prowling round the
barrack-rooms after 'lights out' to see if he could find an after-dark
smoker, he was assailed with a tremendous shower of highlows from every
quarter of the room. The cavalry highlow, well aimed and low, as Count
Billy Considine said about the decanter, may be made a very effective
missile, and its powers of offence are not diminished by the fact that
it pretty often carries a spur in the heel of it This event was spoken
of with bated breath about the regiment for a day or two, but nothing
came of it 'The Pig' was by no means sure of his popularity with his
superiors; and there is an admirable and most trustworthy military
tradition to the effect that no good officer is ever assaulted by his
men.