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XXI.

The Guillotine and Madame Rachel

232

XXII.

Reminiscences of the Purple

243

XXIII.

Dhuleep Singh and Fifty Years after

257

XXIV.

The last of the Old Brigade

264

CHAPTER I.
1860.

London in the sixties was so different from the London of to-day that, looking back through the long vista of years, one is astonished at the gradual changes—unnoticed as they proceed.  Streets have been annihilated and transformed into boulevards; churches have been removed and flats substituted; night houses and comfortable taverns demolished and transformed into plate-glass abominations run by foreigners and Jews, whilst hulking louts in uniform, electro-plate and the shabby-genteel masher have taken the place of solid silver spoons and a higher type of humanity.  So extensive indeed has been the transformation, that, if any night-bird of those naughty days were suddenly exhumed, and let loose in Soho, he would assuredly wander into a church in his search of a popular resort, and having come to scoff, might remain to pray, and so unwittingly fall into the goody-goody ways that make up our present monotonous existence.

The highest in the land in those benighted days turned up their coat collars and rubbed shoulders after dusk with others of their species in recreations which, if indulged in now, would be tantamount to social ostracism, or imperilling the “succession.”

It was, in short, the tail end of the days of the Regency, changed, virtuous reader, for better or worse.  It was, nevertheless, distinctly enjoyable and straightforward, for it showed its worst, and blinked nothing in hypocrisy.

The only recommendation for this appearance is its authenticity; every incident passed within (or very near) my ken, for I was a veritable “front-rank man” in that long-ago disbanded army—a veteran left behind when better men have passed away—one of the few who could attend a muster parade of that vast battalion of roysterers, and who, by sheer physical strength, has survived what weaker constitutions have succumbed to—a living contradiction of the theory of the “survival of the fittest.”

It was one morning early in 1860 that I proudly saw my name in the Gazette—as a full-blown ensign.  I had scanned every paper for weeks, although aware that our late gracious Sovereign (or her deputy) could hardly have had time to decide the momentous question as to whether I was to be a fusilier, a rifleman, or a Highlander, so short was the period between passing my examination and the announcement I so fervently awaited.  But I had great Army interest, and so it came to pass that, within six weeks of leaving Chelsea Hospital (where the examinations took place), I held a commission in a distinguished regiment.

To give the number of the dear old corps would at best be misleading, for numerals and the prestige that attached to them were wiped out long ago by one scratch of the pen of that great civilian who remodelled our Army from what it was when it suppressed the Mutiny to what it became before the Boer War.

England at this period bristled with soldiers—bronzed old warriors with beards down to their waists, who had not seen their native shores for twelve or fifteen or twenty years; who, till they were scraped (in conformity with St. James’s campaigning ideas), looked fit to do anything, or go anywhere—men who had survived the trenches and the twenty degrees of frost in the Crimea, and sweltered twelve months later at Gwalior, Jhansi, Lucknow, and Delhi, and had at last found their reward, amidst cocked hats, red tape, recruits’ drill, and discharge, in that haven of rest, “merrie England.”

My future regiment, then on its way home, was no exception to the rule, and I remember, as but yesterday, the comparisons I drew a few weeks later on the Barrack Square of the (then) new barracks at Gosport, between the pasty-faced “strong-detachment” from the depôt and the grand old veterans that towered over them.

And every man-jack of them was possessed of valuable jewels.  Where the worthy rogues had captured the loot needs not to inquire, suffice to say that oriental stones worth hundreds were retailed for a few shillings, and found their way to the coffers, and tended to build up the fortune, of an astute Hebrew who, by “the encouragement of British industries,” eventually became a knight, and died not long ago in the odour of sanctity, rich and respected—as all rich men do.

It was amid these surroundings that I began my military career, despite the fact that every rascal with anything to sell had radiated towards Gosport from every point of the compass.

Gosport and Portsmouth were in those days the first stepping stones in the filtration towards Aldershot, after which, and only after a drill season, the grandest soldiers England ever possessed, were considered as presentable troops.

The barrack squares in those happy days, after a regiment had landed, resembled oriental bazaars rather than the starchy, adamant quadrangles familiar to the present generation.  Every forenoon officers and men were surrounded by hucksterers of every care and creed, and one’s very quarters were invaded by Jews and Gentiles anxious to sell or buy something.

“This is the most arakristic trap in the west of England, so ’elp me Gawd; isn’t it, Cyril?” one Hebrew would inquire of another, as the points of an ancient buggy and a quadruped standing in the square were extolled to ambitious youngsters; and “Yes it is, so ’elp me Gawd,” often succeeded in selling a rattle-trap that had done duty in every regiment stationed at Gosport from time immemorial.  Old clothes-dealers, too, abounded by the score, ready to buy anything for next to nothing.  But some of us youngsters were not to be caught like the veterans who were unfamiliar with depôt ways, and the judicious deposit of a farthing in a pocket now and again resulted in phenomenal prices for cast-off garments till the hucksterers “tumbled,” and the harvests ended; and so, between the goose step and a thousand other delights, the happiest days many of us ever enjoyed (though unaware of it at the time) passed slowly on.

At this period the Volunteers had just come into existence, and, not having developed the splendid qualities they proved themselves