1875
The civilian world, even that portion of it which lives by the
profusest sweat of its brow, enjoys an occasional holiday in the course
of the year besides Christmas Day. Good Friday brings to most an
enforced cessation from toil. Easter and Whitsuntide are recognised
seasons of pleasure in most grades of the civilian community. There are
few who do not compass somehow an occasional Derby day; and we may
safely aver that the amount of work done on New Year's Day is not very
great. But in all the year the soldier has but one real holiday--a
holiday with all the glorious accompaniments of unwonted varieties of
dainties and full liberty to be as jolly as he pleases without fear of
the consequences. True, the individual soldier may have his day's
leave, nay, his month's furlough; but his enjoyments resulting
therefrom are not realised in the atmosphere of the barrack-room, but
rather have their origin in the abandonment for the nonce of his
military character and a _pro tempore_ return into civilian life.
Christmas Day is the great regimental merry-making, free to and
appreciated by the veteran and the recruit alike; and as such it is
looked forward to for many a month prior to its advent and talked of
many a day after it is past and gone.
About a month before Christmas the observer skilled in the signs of the
times may begin to notice the tokens of its approach. Self-deniant
fellows, men who can trust themselves to carry a few shillings about
with them without experiencing a chronic sensation that the accumulated
pelf is burning a hole in their pockets, busy themselves in
constructing "dimmocking bags" for the occasion, such being the
barrack-room term for receptacles for money-hoarding purposes. The weak
vessels, those who mistrust their own constancy under the varied
temptations of dry throats, empty stomachs, and a scant allowance of
tobacco, manage to cheat their fragility of "saving grace" by
requesting their sergeant-major to put them "on the peg,"--that is to
say, place them under stoppages, so that the accumulation takes place
in his hands and cannot be dissipated by any premature weaknesses of
the flesh. Everybody becomes of a sudden astonishingly sober and
steady. There is hardly any going out of barracks now; for a walk
involves the expenditure of at least "the price of a pint," and in the
circumstances this extravagance is not allowable. The guard-room is
unwontedly empty--nobody except the utterly reckless will get into
trouble just now; for punishment at this season involves the forfeiture
of certain privileges and the incurring of certain penalties--the
former specially prized, the latter exceptionally disgusting at this
Christmas season.
Slowly the days roll on with anxious expectancy, the coming event
forming the one engrossing topic of conversation alike in barrack-room,
in stable, in canteen, and in guard-room. The clever hands of the troop
are deep in devising a series of ornamentations for the walls and roof
of the common habitation. One fellow spends all his spare time on the
top of a table with a bed on top of that again, embellishing the wall
above the fireplace with a florid design in a variety of colours meant
to be an exact copy of the device on the regiment's kettledrums, with
the addition of the legend, "A Merry Christmas to the old Straw-boots,"
inscribed on a waving scroll below. The skill of another decorator is
directed to the clipping of sundry squares of coloured paper into
wondrous forms--Prince of Wales's feathers, gorgeous festoons, and the
like--with which the gas pendants and the edges of the window-frames
are disguised out of their original nakedness and hardness of outline,
so as to be almost unrecognisable by the eye of the matter-of-fact
barrack-master himself. What is this felonious-looking band up
to--these four determined rascals in the forbidden high-lows and stable
overalls who go slinking mysteriously out at the back gate just at the
gloaming? Are they Fenian sympathisers bound for a secret meeting, or
are they deserters making off just at the time when there is the least
likelihood of suspicion? Nay, they are neither; but, nevertheless,
their errand is a nefarious one. Watch at the gate for an hour and you
will see them come back again each man laden with the spoils of the
shrubberies--holly, mistletoe, and evergreens--ruthlessly plundered
under cover of the darkness. A couple of days before "the day," the
sergeant-major enters the barrack-room, a smile playing upon his
rubicund features. We all know what his errand is and he knows right
well that we do; but he cannot refrain from the customary short
patronising harangue, "Our worthy captain--liberal gent you
know--deputed me--what you like for dinner--plum-puddings, of course--a
quart of beer a man; make up your minds what you'll have--anything but
game and venison;" and so he vanishes grinning a saturnine grin. The
moment is a critical one. We ought to be unanimous. What shall we have?
A council of deliberation is constituted on the spot and proceeds to
the discussion of the weighty question. The suggestions are not
numerous. The alternative lies between pork and goose. The old
soldiers, for some inscrutable reason, go for goose to a man. The
recruits have a carnal craving after the flesh of the pig. I did once
hear a "carpet-bag" recruit[1] hesitatingly broach the idea of mutton,
but he collapsed ignominiously under the concentrated stare of
righteous indignation with which his heterodox suggestion was received.
Goose versus pork is eagerly debated. As regards quantity the question
is a level one, since the allowance from time immemorial has been a
goose or a leg of pork among three men.
[Footnote 1: "Carpet-bag" recruit is the barrack-room appellation of
contempt for the young gentleman recruit who joins his regiment
_omnibus impedimentis_--who, in fact, brings his baggage with him, to
find it, of course, utterly useless.]
At length the point is decided during the evening stable-hour,
according as old or young soldiers predominate in the room. The
sergeant-major is informed of the conclusion arrived at, and in the
evening the corporal of each room accompanies him on a marketing
expedition into the town. Another important duty devolves upon the said
corporal in the course of this marketing tour. The "dimmocking bags"
have been emptied; the accumulations in the sergeant-major's hands have
been drawn, and the corporal, freighted with the joint savings, has the
task of expending the same in beer. In this undertaking he manifests a
preternatural astuteness. He is not to be inveigled into giving his
order at a public-house,--swipes from the canteen would do as well as
that,--nor do the bottled-beer merchants tempt him with their high
prices for dubious quality. No, he goes direct to the fountain-head. If
there be a brewery in the place he finds it out and bestows his order
upon it, thus triumphantly securing the pure article at the wholesale
price. His purchasing calculation is upon the basis of two gallons per
man. If, as is generally the case, the barrack-room he represents
contains twelve men, he orders a twenty-four gallon barrel of
porter--always porter; and if he has a surplus left he disburses it in
the purchase of a bottle or two of spirits, for the behoof of any fair
visitors who may haply honour the barrack-room with their presence.
It is Christmas Eve. The evening stable-hour is over and all hands are
merrily engaged in the composition of the puddings; some stoning fruit,
others chopping suet, beating eggs, and so forth. The barrel of beer is
in the corner but it is sacred as the honour of the regiment! Nothing
would induce the expectant participants in its contents to broach it
before its appointed time shall come. So there is beer instead from the
canteen in the tin pails of the barrack-room, and the work of
pudding-compounding goes on jovially to the accompaniments of song and
jest. Now, there is a fear lest too many fingers in the pudding may
spoil it--lest a multitude of counsellors as to the proportions of
ingredients and the process of mixing may be productive of the reverse
of safety. But somehow a man with a specialty is always forthcoming,
and that specialty is pudding-making. Most likely he has been the butt
of the room--a quiet, quaint, retiring, awkward fellow who seemed as if
he never could do anything right. But he has lit upon his vocation at
last--he is a born pudding-maker. He rises with the occasion, and the
sheepish "gaby" becomes the knowing practical man; his is now the voice
of authority, and his comrades recant on the spot, acknowledge his
superiority without a murmur, and perform "ko-tow" before the once
despised man of undeveloped abilities. They pull out their clean towels
with alacrity in response to his demand for pudding-cloths; they run to
the canteen enthusiastically for a further supply on a hint from him
that there is a deficiency in the ingredient of allspice. And then he
artistically gathers together the corners of the cloths and ties up the
puddings tightly and securely; whereupon a procession is formed to
escort them into the cook-house, and there, having consigned them into
the depths of the mighty copper, the "man of the time" remains watching
the caldron bubble until morning, a great jorum of beer at his elbow
the ready contribution of his now appreciative comrades.
The hours roll on; and at length out into the darkness of the
barrack-square stalks the trumpeter on duty, and the shrill notes of
the _réveille_ echo through the stillness of the yet dark night. On an
ordinary morning the _réveille_ is practically negatived, and nobody
thinks of stirring from between the blankets till the "warning" sounds
quarter of an hour before the morning stable-time. But on this morning
there is no slothful skulking in the arms of Morpheus. Every one jumps
up, as if galvanised, at the first note of the _réveille_. For the
fulfilment of a time-honoured custom is looked forward to--a remnant of
the old days when the "women" lived in the corner of the barrack-room.
The soldier's wife who has the cleaning of the room and who does the
washing of its inmates--for which services each man pays her a penny a
day, has from time immemorial taken upon herself the duty of bestowing
a "morning" on the Christmas anniversary upon the men she "does for."
Accordingly, about a quarter to six, she enters the room--a
hard-featured, rough-voiced dame, perhaps, with a fist like a shoulder
of mutton, but a soldier herself to the very core and with a big,
tender heart somewhere about her. She carries a bottle of whisky--it is
always whisky, somehow--in one hand and a glass in the other; and,
beginning with the oldest soldier administers a calker to every one in
the room till she comes to the "cruity," upon whom, if he be a
pullet-faced, homesick, bit of a lad, she may bestow a maternal salute
in addition, with the advice to consider the regiment as his mother
now, and be a smart soldier and a good lad.
Breakfast is not an institution in any great acceptation in a cavalry
regiment on Christmas morning. When the stable-hour is over a great
many of the troopers do not immediately reappear in the barrack-room.
Indeed they do not turn up until long after the coffee is cold; and,
when they do return there is a certain something about them which, to
the experienced observer, demonstrates the fact that, if they have been
thirsty, they have not been quenching their drought at the pump. It is
a standing puzzle to the uninitiated where the soldier in barracks
contrives to obtain drink of a morning. The canteen is rigorously
closed. No one is allowed to go out of barracks and no drink is allowed
to come in. A teetotallers' meeting-hall could not appear more rigidly
devoid of opportunities for indulgence than does a barrack during the
morning. Yet I will venture to say, if you go into any barrack in the
three kingdoms, accost any soldier who is not a raw recruit, and offer
to pay for a pot of beer, that you will have an instant opportunity
afforded you of putting your free-handed design into execution any time
after 7 A.M. I don't think it would be exactly grateful in me to
"split" upon the spots where a drop can be obtained in season; many a
time has my parched throat been thankful for the cooling surreptitious
draught and I refuse to turn upon a benefactor in a dirty way.
Therefore suffice it to say that many a bold dragoon when he re-enters
the barrack-room to get ready for church parade, has a wateriness about
the eye and a knottiness in the tongue which tell of something stronger
than the matutinal coffee. Indeed, when the trumpet sounds which calls
the regiment to assemble on the parade-ground, there is dire misgiving
in the mind of many a stalwart fellow, who is conscious that his face,
as well as his speech, "berayeth him." But the lynx-eyed men in
authority who another time would be down on a stagger like a
card-player on the odd trick and read a flushed face as a passport to
the guard-room, are genially blind this morning; and so long as a man
possesses the capacity of looking moderately straight to his own front
and of going right-about without a flagrant lurch, he is not looked at
in a critical spirit on the Christmas church parade. And so the
regiment marches off to church, the band playing merrily in its front.
I much fear there is no very abiding sense in the bosoms of the
majority of the sacred errand on which they are bound.
But there are two of the inmates of each room who do not go to church.
The clever pudding-maker and a sub of his selection are left to cook
the Christmas dinner. This, as regards the exceptional dainties, is
done at the barrack-room fire, the cook-house being in use only for the
now despised ration meat and for the still simmering puddings. The
handy man cunningly improvises a roasting-jack, and erects a screen
consisting of bed-quilts spread on a frame of upright forms, for the
purpose of retaining and throwing back the heat. He is a most versatile
genius, this handy man. Now we see him in the double character of cook
and salamander, and anon he develops a special faculty as a clever
table-decorator as well. This latter qualification asserts itself in
the face of difficulties which would be utterly discomfiting to one of
less fertility of resource. There is, indeed, a large expanse of table
in every barrack-room; but the War Department has not yet thought
proper to consider private soldiers worthy to enjoy the luxury of
table-linen. Yet bare boards at a Christmas feast are horribly
offensive to the eye of taste. Something must be done; something has
already been done. Ever since the last issue of clean sheets, one or
two whole-souled fellows have magnanimously abjured these luxuries _pro
bono publico_. Spartan-like they have lain in blankets, and saved their
sheets in their pristine cleanliness wherewithal to cover the Christmas
table. So now these are brought forth, not snow-white certainly, nor of
a damask texture, being indeed somewhat sackclothy in their appearance,
but still they are immeasurably in advance of the bare boards; and when
the covers are laid, with each man's best knife and fork, with a little
additional crockery-ware borrowed of a beneficent married woman and
with the dainty sprigs of evergreen stuck on every available coign, the
effect is triumphantly enlivening.
By the time these preparations are complete the men are back from
church; and after a brief attendance at stables to water and feed they
assemble fully dressed in the barrack-room, hungrily silent. The
captain enters the room and _pro formâ_ asks whether there are "any
complaints?" A chorus of "No, sir," is his reply; and then the oldest
soldier in the room with profuse blushing and stammering takes up the
running, thanks the officer kindly in the name of his comrades for his
generosity, and wishes him a "Happy Christmas and many of 'em" in
return. Under cover of the responsive cheer the captain makes his
escape, and a deputation visits the sergeant-major's quarters to fetch
the allowance of beer which forms part of the treat. Then all fall to
and eat! Ye gods, how they eat! Let the man who affirmed before the
Recruiting Commission that the present scale of military rations was
liberal enough show himself now, and then for ever hide his head! The
troopers seem to have become sudden converts to Carlyle's theory on the
eloquence of silence. It reigns supreme, broken only by the rattle of
knives and forks and by an occasional gurgle indicative of a man
judiciously stratifying the solids and liquids, for a space of about
twenty minutes, by which time--be the fare goose or pork--it is,
barring the bones, only "a memory of the past." The puddings, turned
out of the towels in which they have been boiled, then undergo the
brunt of a fierce assault; but the edge of appetite has been blunted by
the first course and with most of the men a modicum of pudding goes on
the shelf for supper. The soldier is very sensitive on the subject of
his Christmas pudding. I remember once seeing a cook put on the table
and formally "strapped" for allowing the pudding to stick to the bottom
of the pot for lack of stirring.
At length dinner is over. Beds are drawn up from the sides of the room
so as to form a wide circle of divans round the fire, and the big
barrel's time has come at last. A clever hand whips out the bung, draws
a pailful, and reinserts the bung till another pailful is wanted, which
will be very soon. The pail is placed upon the hearthstone and its
contents are decanted into the pint basins, which do duty in the
barrack-room for all purposes from containing coffee and soup to mixing
chrome-yellow and pipe-clay water. The married soldiers come dropping
in with their wives, for whom the corporal has a special drop of
"something short" stowed in reserve on the shelf behind his kit. A song
is called for; another follows, and yet another and another. Now it is
matter of notice that the songs of soldiers are never of the modern
music-hall type. You might go into a hundred barrack-rooms or soldier's
haunts and never hear such a ditty as "Champagne Charley" or "Not for
Joseph." The soldier takes especial delight in songs of the sentimental
pattern; and even when for a brief period he forsakes the region of
sentiment, it is not to indulge in the outrageously comic but to give
vent to such sturdy bacchanalian outpourings as the "Good Rhine Wine,"
"Old John Barleycorn," and "Simon the Cellarer." But these are only
interludes. "The Soldier's Tear," "The White Squall," "There came a
Tale to England," "Ben Bolt," "Shells of the Ocean," and other melodies
of a lugubrious type, are the special favourites of the barrack-room. I
remember once hearing a cockney recruit attempt "The Perfect Cure" with
its accompanying gymnastic efforts; but he was I not appreciated, and
indeed, I think broke down in the middle for want of encouragement.
Songs and beer form the staple of the afternoon's enjoyment,
intermingled with quiet chat consisting generally of reminiscences of
bygone Christmases. Here and there a couple get together who are
"townies," i.e. natives of the same district; and there is a good deal
of undemonstrative feeling in the way they talk of the scenes and folks
of boyhood. There is no speechifying. Your soldier is not an oratorical
animal. Not but what he heartily enjoys a speech; but he somehow cannot
make one, or will not try. I remember me, indeed, of a certain quiet
Scotsman who one Christmastime being urgently pressed to sing and being
unblessed with a tuneful voice, volunteered in utter desperation a
speech instead. He referred in feeling language to the various
troop-mates who had left us since the preceding Christmas, made a
touching allusion to the happy home circle in which the Christmases of
our boyhood had been spent, referred to the manner in which the old
"Strawboots" had cut their way to glory through the dense masses of
Russian horsemen on the hillside of Balaclava, and wound up
appropriately by proposing the toast of "our noble selves." He created
an immense sensation, was vociferously applauded, and, indeed, was the
hero of the hour; but ere next Christmas he was among the "have beens"
himself, and his mantle not having devolved upon any successor we had
to content ourselves with the songs and the beer.
It is a lucky thing for a good many that there is no roll-call at the
Christmas evening stable-hour. The non-commissioned officers mercifully
limit their requirements to seeing the horses watered and bedded down
by the most presentable of the roisterers, whose desperate efforts to
simulate abject sobriety in order to establish their claim for
strong-headedness are very comical to witness. It has often been matter
of wonderment to me how the orders for the following day which are
"read out" at the evening stable-hour, are realised on Christmas
evening with clearness sufficient to ensure their being complied with
next day without a hitch; but the truth is that, as we shall presently
see, a certain order of things for the morning after Christmas has
become stereotyped.
This interruption of the evening stable-hour over the circle re-forms
round the fire, and the cask finally becomes a "dead marine." The cap
is then sent round for contributions towards a further instalment of
the foundation of conviviality, which is fetched from the canteen or
the sergeant's mess; and another and yet another supply is sent for, as
long as the funds hold out and somebody keeps sober enough to act as
Ganymede. The orderly sergeant is not very particular to-night about
his watch-setting report, for he knows that not many have the physical
ability to be absent if they were ever so eager. And so the lights go
out; the sun of the dragoon may be said to set in beer and he is left
to do his best to sleep himself sober. For in the morning the reins of
discipline are tightened again. The man who is foolish enough to
revivify the drink which "is dying out in him" by a refresher is apt to
find himself an inmate of the black-hole on very scant warning.
Headaches and thirst are curiously rife, and the consumption of
"fizzers"--a temperance beverage of an effervescent character vended by
an individual with the profoundest trust in human nature on the subject
of deferred payments--is extensive enough to convert the regiment into
a series of walking reservoirs of carbonic acid gas. The authorities
display a demoniacal ingenuity in working the beer out of the system of
the dragoon. The morning duty on the day following Christmas is
invariably "watering order with numnahs," the numnah being a felt
saddle-cloth without stirrups. Every man without exception rides
out--no dodging is permitted--and the moment the malicious fiend of an
orderly officer gets clear of the barracks he gives the word "Trot!"
Six miles of it without a break is the set allowance; and it beats
vinegar, pickles, tea smoked in a tobacco-pipe, or any other nostrum,
as an effectual generator of sobriety. Six miles at the full trot
without stirrups on a rough horse I can conscientiously recommend to
the inebriated gentleman who fears to encounter a justly irate wife at
two in the morning. I wont answer for the integrity of his cuticle when
it is over; but I will stake my existence on the abject profundity of
his sobriety. The process would extract the alcohol from a cask of
spirits of wine, let alone dispel an average skinful of beer.
And thus evaporates the last vestige of the dragoon's Christmas
festivity. It may be urged that the enjoyments of which I have
endeavoured to give a faithful narrative are gross and have no
elevating tendency. I fear the men of the spur and sabre must bow to
the justice of the criticism; and I know of nothing to advance in
mitigation save the old Scotch proverb: "It is ill to mak' a silk purse
out o' a sow's ear."