WE are rather at a loss to imagine how it has come to pass that military
young gentlemen have obtained so much favour in the eyes of the young
ladies of this kingdom. We cannot think so lightly of them as to suppose
that the mere circumstance of a man’s wearing a red coat ensures him a
ready passport to their regard; and even if this were the case, it would
be no satisfactory explanation of the circumstance, because, although the
analogy may in some degree hold good in the case of mail coachmen and
guards, still general postmen wear red coats, and _they_ are not to our
knowledge better received than other men; nor are firemen either, who
wear (or used to wear) not only red coats, but very resplendent and
massive badges besides—much larger than epaulettes. Neither do the
twopenny post-office boys, if the result of our inquiries be correct,
find any peculiar favour in woman’s eyes, although they wear very bright
red jackets, and have the additional advantage of constantly appearing in
public on horseback, which last circumstance may be naturally supposed to
be greatly in their favour.
We have sometimes thought that this phenomenon may take its rise in the
conventional behaviour of captains and colonels and other gentlemen in
red coats on the stage, where they are invariably represented as fine
swaggering fellows, talking of nothing but charming girls, their king and
country, their honour, and their debts, and crowing over the inferior
classes of the community, whom they occasionally treat with a little
gentlemanly swindling, no less to the improvement and pleasure of the
audience, than to the satisfaction and approval of the choice spirits who
consort with them. But we will not devote these pages to our
speculations upon the subject, inasmuch as our business at the present
moment is not so much with the young ladies who are bewitched by her
Majesty’s livery as with the young gentlemen whose heads are turned by
it. For ‘heads’ we had written ‘brains;’ but upon consideration, we
think the former the more appropriate word of the two.
[Picture: The Military Young Gentleman]
These young gentlemen may be divided into two classes—young gentlemen who
are actually in the army, and young gentlemen who, having an intense and
enthusiastic admiration for all things appertaining to a military life,
are compelled by adverse fortune or adverse relations to wear out their
existence in some ignoble counting-house. We will take this latter
description of military young gentlemen first.
The whole heart and soul of the military young gentleman are concentrated
in his favourite topic. There is nothing that he is so learned upon as
uniforms; he will tell you, without faltering for an instant, what the
habiliments of any one regiment are turned up with, what regiment wear
stripes down the outside and inside of the leg, and how many buttons the
Tenth had on their coats; he knows to a fraction how many yards and odd
inches of gold lace it takes to make an ensign in the Guards; is deeply
read in the comparative merits of different bands, and the apparelling of
trumpeters; and is very luminous indeed in descanting upon ‘crack
regiments,’ and the ‘crack’ gentlemen who compose them, of whose
mightiness and grandeur he is never tired of telling.
We were suggesting to a military young gentleman only the other day,
after he had related to us several dazzling instances of the profusion of
half-a-dozen honourable ensign somebodies or nobodies in the articles of
kid gloves and polished boots, that possibly ‘cracked’ regiments would be
an improvement upon ‘crack,’ as being a more expressive and appropriate
designation, when he suddenly interrupted us by pulling out his watch,
and observing that he must hurry off to the Park in a cab, or he would be
too late to hear the band play. Not wishing to interfere with so
important an engagement, and being in fact already slightly overwhelmed
by the anecdotes of the honourable ensigns afore-mentioned, we made no
attempt to detain the military young gentleman, but parted company with
ready good-will.
Some three or four hours afterwards, we chanced to be walking down
Whitehall, on the Admiralty side of the way, when, as we drew near to one
of the little stone places in which a couple of horse soldiers mount
guard in the daytime, we were attracted by the motionless appearance and
eager gaze of a young gentleman, who was devouring both man and horse
with his eyes, so eagerly, that he seemed deaf and blind to all that was
passing around him. We were not much surprised at the discovery that it
was our friend, the military young gentleman, but we _were_ a little
astonished when we returned from a walk to South Lambeth to find him
still there, looking on with the same intensity as before. As it was a
very windy day, we felt bound to awaken the young gentleman from his
reverie, when he inquired of us with great enthusiasm, whether ‘that was
not a glorious spectacle,’ and proceeded to give us a detailed account of
the weight of every article of the spectacle’s trappings, from the man’s
gloves to the horse’s shoes.
We have made it a practice since, to take the Horse Guards in our daily
walk, and we find it is the custom of military young gentlemen to plant
themselves opposite the sentries, and contemplate them at leisure, in
periods varying from fifteen minutes to fifty, and averaging twenty-five.
We were much struck a day or two since, by the behaviour of a very
promising young butcher who (evincing an interest in the service, which
cannot be too strongly commanded or encouraged), after a prolonged
inspection of the sentry, proceeded to handle his boots with great
curiosity, and as much composure and indifference as if the man were
wax-work.
But the really military young gentleman is waiting all this time, and at
the very moment that an apology rises to our lips, he emerges from the
barrack gate (he is quartered in a garrison town), and takes the way
towards the high street. He wears his undress uniform, which somewhat
mars the glory of his outward man; but still how great, how grand, he is!
What a happy mixture of ease and ferocity in his gait and carriage, and
how lightly he carries that dreadful sword under his arm, making no more
ado about it than if it were a silk umbrella! The lion is sleeping: only
think if an enemy were in sight, how soon he’d whip it out of the
scabbard, and what a terrible fellow he would be!
But he walks on, thinking of nothing less than blood and slaughter; and
now he comes in sight of three other military young gentlemen,
arm-in-arm, who are bearing down towards him, clanking their iron heels
on the pavement, and clashing their swords with a noise, which should
cause all peaceful men to quail at heart. They stop to talk. See how
the flaxen-haired young gentleman with the weak legs—he who has his
pocket-handkerchief thrust into the breast of his coat-glares upon the
fainthearted civilians who linger to look upon his glory; how the next
young gentleman elevates his head in the air, and majestically places his
arms a-kimbo, while the third stands with his legs very wide apart, and
clasps his hands behind him. Well may we inquire—not in familiar jest,
but in respectful earnest—if you call that nothing. Oh! if some
encroaching foreign power—the Emperor of Russia, for instance, or any of
those deep fellows, could only see those military young gentlemen as they
move on together towards the billiard-room over the way, wouldn’t he
tremble a little!
And then, at the Theatre at night, when the performances are by command
of Colonel Fitz-Sordust and the officers of the garrison—what a splendid
sight it is! How sternly the defenders of their country look round the
house as if in mute assurance to the audience, that they may make
themselves comfortable regarding any foreign invasion, for they (the
military young gentlemen) are keeping a sharp look-out, and are ready for
anything. And what a contrast between them, and that stage-box full of
grey-headed officers with tokens of many battles about them, who have
nothing at all in common with the military young gentlemen, and who—but
for an old-fashioned kind of manly dignity in their looks and
bearing—might be common hard-working soldiers for anything they take the
pains to announce to the contrary!
Ah! here is a family just come in who recognise the flaxen-headed young
gentleman; and the flaxen-headed young gentleman recognises them too,
only he doesn’t care to show it just now. Very well done indeed! He
talks louder to the little group of military young gentlemen who are
standing by him, and coughs to induce some ladies in the next box but one
to look round, in order that their faces may undergo the same ordeal of
criticism to which they have subjected, in not a wholly inaudible tone,
the majority of the female portion of the audience. Oh! a gentleman in
the same box looks round as if he were disposed to resent this as an
impertinence; and the flaxen-headed young gentleman sees his friends at
once, and hurries away to them with the most charming cordiality.
Three young ladies, one young man, and the mamma of the party, receive
the military young gentleman with great warmth and politeness, and in
five minutes afterwards the military young gentleman, stimulated by the
mamma, introduces the two other military young gentlemen with whom he was
walking in the morning, who take their seats behind the young ladies and
commence conversation; whereat the mamma bestows a triumphant bow upon a
rival mamma, who has not succeeded in decoying any military young
gentlemen, and prepares to consider her visitors from that moment three
of the most elegant and superior young gentlemen in the whole world.