Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places by Archibald Forbes

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CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT

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."

THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER

In these modern days men live fast and forget fast; yet, since it was
barely twenty-six years ago, numbers among us must still vividly remember
the lurid autumn of 1870. Eastern and Northern France had been deluged
with French and German blood. During the month of fighting from the 2nd of
August to the 1st of September the regular armies of France had suffered
defeat on defeat, and were now blockaded in Metz or were tramping from the
catastrophe of Sedan to captivity in Germany. The Empire in France had
fallen like a house of cards; Napoleon the Third was a prisoner of war in
Cassel; the Empress and the ill-fated Prince Imperial were forlorn exiles
in England. To the Empire had succeeded, at not even a day's notice--for
in France a revolution is ever a summary operation--the Government of
National Defence with the watchword of "War to the bitter end" rather than
cede a foot of territory or one stone of a fortress. The Germans made no
delay. The blood-tint had scarcely faded out of the waters of the Meuse,
the unburied dead of Sedan yet festered in the sun-heat, and the blackened
ruins of Bazeilles still smoked and stank, when their heads of columns set
forth on the march to Paris. The troops were full of ardour; but in the
Royal headquarters there was not a little disquietude. The old King made a
long stay in the old cathedral city of Rheims, while men all over Europe
were asking each other whether the catastrophe of Sedan had not virtually
ended the war and were hoping for the white dove of peace to alight on the
blood-stained land. But that happy consummation was not yet to be. When
King Wilhelm crossed the frontier he had proclaimed that he warred not
with the French nation but with its ruler. That ruler was now his prisoner;
but Wilhelm had for adversary now the French nation, because it had taken
up the quarrel which might have gone with the _Déchéance_ and in effect
had made it its own. In the absence of overtures there was no alternative
but to march on Paris.

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