by Dudley Costello (uncredited).
Originally published in Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) vol.2 #45 (01 Feb 1851).
Part III
At the period when Maurice arrived in Halifax, the Lieutenant-Governor of the province was in England, on leave, and during his absence the command of the garrison devolved on the senior officer for the time being, with additional pay and allowances, and the title of "Commandant." In this office the Lieutenant-Colonel of Maurice's regiment found himself invested at the moment of his arrival; not, however, to his surprise, for he was aware of the Lieutenant-Governor's absence, and had embarked in the first transport, in order to profit by his seniority as soon as possible.
Colonel Stormy was a man who, in the course of a tolerably long military career, had seen some service, here and there, though none of the most brilliant kind; a circumstance partly owing to the nature of the expeditions in which he had served, and partly to the natural wrong-headedness that distinguished him. It was not his fault, to be sure, that Flanders should first have called for the display of his abilities; but if he had not been so obstinately bent on mistaking a celery bed for the trenches before Courtray, he would not have received that shot through his left leg which gave him an agreeable limp for the rest of his clays. It was through no mistake of his that Whitelock's army surrendered at Buenos Ayres; but if he had followed that prudent General's example, he certainly might have escaped the lasso which would either have strangled or made him prisoner, in a skirmish there, if a friendly sword had not severed the obnoxious cord. It was not he who was responsible for the failure at Walcheren; but he might, perhaps, have avoided the fever, if he had followed the advice of the regimental surgeon, and not have gone to bed in his wet boots, after reconnoitring all day in a fog, without orders to that effect. Unfortunate expeditious, in short, were the scenes of all his exploits, and it was his peculiar fate to illustrate them to his own disadvantage. We are wrong, however, in saying "all,"—for, at the battle of Moose Island, in the Bay of Fundy (which was not recorded on the regimental colours, and is, indeed, remembered by few, having been somehow eclipsed by Waterloo) where Colonel Stormy was not present—at the battle of Moose Island, he carried a village of wigwams, at the head of his grenadiers, in very gallant style; and had the capture of that island made him master—as he supposed—of the key to the whole American continent, he might possibly have received the Order of the Bath, which he always considered his due, and grumbled at the Horse Guards for withholding it. But, if he did not obtain that merited distinction, he held Moose Island with his regiment, against all comers, for full six months after peace had been agreed on, and during that time acquired the taste for absolute government which he never afterwards lost an opportunity of developing.
This taste was aided by the pecuniary recommendations of "a command," and, as a soldier and a Scotchman, he had a keen appetite for all the loaves and fishes that came in his way. His talents for civil government were on a par with his military qualifications, and hot water was, consequently, the element in which he chiefly resided. Colonel Stormy did not deserve the entire application of Dryden's celebrated lines, but he laid claim to one which he made peculiarly his own; and nobody who had the fortune to serve under him, was slow to discover that the Commandant was not only "stiff in opinion," but most assuredly also "ever in the wrong." To complete this outline of the man, whose position enabled him to sway the destinies of so many of his fellows, it must be added that he was excessively passionate, but—as a set-off to the less amiable traits of his character—he was quick to forgive, of a jovial temperament, and sufficiently good-natured when not particularly thwarted. As all persons in authority in the army have their sobriquet, we may as well mention that the colonel was familiarly known as "Mad Jock."
A regiment, under the command of an officer such as we have described Colonel Stormy to have been, was not likely to maintain a very high reputation for discipline, in spite of the exertions of two steady-going majors and an adjutant, whose strictness bordered very closely on severity; and as long as Colonel Stormy had no other object to engage his attention, the regiment was knocked about like a shuttlecock—at one moment all work and at another all play. But the commandantship of a garrison, composed of three complete regiments, besides Artillery and Engineers, and a numerous local staff, gave Mad Jock a wide field for interference, and left his own corps comparatively undisturbed, while it afforded its more responsible officers an opportunity of getting the regiment in order.
Amongst those profited by the new state of things was Maurice Savage. The pride which he had originally felt in wearing a red coat, had not been discouraged; and he had learnt from MacManus that to be "smart" was the first step towards the promotion which the old soldier had, all along, so unambitiously neglected. Maurice, therefore, took pains with his personal appearance, and it was not long before he attracted the adjutant's attention at guard mounting, and, instead of being told off for the usual tour of duty, was very frequently ordered to fall out as an orderly for the day, in which situation a private soldier enacts at humble distance the part of aide-de-camp—without any increase pf pay, but with a little more personal liberty than if he had his eight hours' sentry to perform. As an "orderly," his attendance on the adjutant, who sometimes selected Maurice specially to convey his orders, led him to observe the advantages which accrued to those men who were most regular in their attendance at school.
This was even then an optional course, and in the earlier days of MacManus and a few of the old soldiers of the regiment, had no existence; but when Maurice joined the service, the acquirement of education was every day becoming more widely extended, and at the present time, happily, we have it to say, the most effectual step towards advancement in the army lies through the school-room doors.
The Limited Enlistment Bill is a vast improvement, moreover, on the old system, which was generally for life; for now, a young man may enter the service at eighteen, and be dismissed at twenty-eight a perfectly educated man. This phrase is no hyperbole, for education in the army is not confined at present, as it was of yore, to the mere rudiments, sufficient to render the possessor of them capable of writing out the orders or of paying a company—but embraces a well grounded knowledge of history and geography (leaving the locality of "Novy Skoshy" no longer a matter of doubt), and a competent acquirement, not only of arithmetic and mathematics, but of geometry, algebra, mensuration, and fortification; so that, on returning to "civil life," the soldier is not compelled to fall back on the little mechanical knowledge which, peradventure, he owned before he exchanged the cobbler's awl, or the tailor's needle, for the musket and bayonet, but may earn an honourable existence by teaching those sciences which he has acquired in his military capacity.[1] The difficulty which the schoolmasters of regiments now have, is, not the task of employment in teaching, but positive overwork, the consequence of the avidity with which the men who have joined the battalion attend the classes. The barrack library—successful rival of the barrack canteen—towards the support of which the soldier now cheerfully pays his penny per month, convincingly proves that the desire for education has taken root in the British service, and we trust the time is not far distant when the reproach will be removed from our army of being, in point of intellectual cultivation, so far behind the armies of Prance and Prussia.
We have said, that when the spirit of emulation awoke in the breast of Maurice Savage, the education of the men was in no wise compulsory; they were not then required, even as recruits, to attend school for two hours a-day, and afterwards continue at their own will and pleasure to be students; but, still, it frequently happened that a man preferred the request to be allowed to pick up the crumbs of knowledge that fell from the schoolmaster's table,—and Maurice Savage was one of these. It followed, in proportion to his assiduity, not that he became estranged from his comrades, but that he rose superior to the greater part of those by whom he was surrounded. His newly awakened desire for study brought with it another notable advantage; it kept him from those haunts of idleness and vice where nothing is learnt but that which tends to degradation and leads to crime.
It is the misfortune of most of our colonies that spirits are excessively cheap, and that even the little pocket-money which comes to the soldier may, if he is so disposed, at any moment, purchase liquor enough to make him "the worse for it." When once he gets a taste for the rum and whiskey, which are so abundant in the North American garrison towns, his demoralisation becomes as complete as that of the Red Indian, who is now seldom seen in quarters except as an object for men to make sport withal as he exhibits his drunken antics. The vice of drinking, growing by that it feeds on, cannot continue to be indulged in by the soldier, out of the pittance which, if saved, might, in the course of time, accumulate, in the Regimental Savings' Bank, to a respectable sum; his own respectability being insured the while. To obtain the unhallowed gratification, he runs in debt at the low grog-shops; and to pay his debt—for the villainous storekeeper threatens to complain, though he knows be cannot claim the amount, the credit of the troops having been "cried down,"—the drunkard sells his necessaries. Ho is confined, and put under stoppages for this; but his downward career is too often only arrested for a time, and when the opportunity offers of getting out of barracks, he again frequents the grog-shop, spends more than he can call his own, and, anticipating severer punishment, makes up his mind to commit the worst crime in the catalogue of military offences, by deserting.
Halifax is, in many respects, an excellent military station; but the fatal facility of procuring cheap spirits is only too patent there. We know not whether the nest of abomination is yet to be found, which, when Maurice first went out to the colony, was still in existence, and from the frequency of the disturbances which took place there, went by the name of "Knock-me-down Street;" but if not "put down," it is a crying infamy that calls for immediate extirpation. The inhabitants of the hovels that formed this appropriately-named spot, were a small colony of black people of both sexes, originally brought from one of the remote West India islands, by the admiral on the station, and permitted to settle in Halifax, as a compensation for some loss or damage experienced by them, in the course of the war. Their notions of colonisation were of a peculiar kind, and consisted in drinking, and making others drunk, in fiddling, dancing, singing, shouting, and fighting. The squeaking tones of the kit, the shrill laughter, and shriller screams of the women, and the occasional report of fire-arms, showed that the place was not only disorderly, but dangerous, and that whoever had a reputation worth procuring, or a life he was not quite tired of, would do well to shun the disgusting dens of Knock-me-down Street. This "Suburra" was, unluckily, situated exactly between the barracks, where different regiments were quartered, and those who passed from one to the other, were obliged to pass through it. Its external hideousness was insufficient to repel visitors from the orgies which were held within, though by daylight no soldier ever dared to enter; but the case was different after dark, and many a man lived to rue the time when his foot first crossed the threshold of one of these haunts of licentiousness and crime.
Amidst the various blunders, practical and theoretical, which occupied the time of Mad Jock, was an occasional resolve to "look up" his own regiment, the discipline of which he would have acted wisely in leaving altogether to the senior major. We do not mean to say that the cares of his new station ought to have withdrawn Colonel Stormy from the paramount duty of superintending his own corps; on the contrary, he might have exercised a constant regimental superintendence, and at the same time have neglected none of the staff occupations of the garrison. But it was his misfortune to do everything by fits and starts; at one moment he would delegate the entire control of the regiment to the officer next in seniority; and at another he would, without any previous warning, resume the command, enter into the minutest details, order and counter-order, revise and find fault with everything to which he had previously given his sanction. Because he was not there to look after everything, he would say the regiment was going to the devil: everyone neglected his duty; the officers thought of nothing but balls and plays, and shooting parties, and gallivanting after the ladies—he knew what they were about when they little dreamt he was watching them; the non-commissioned officers were a pack of ignorant beasts—"lazy dromedaries,"—(this was his favourite phrase), and deserved "to be broke," every one of them; as to the men, they were, one and all, a set of drunken blackguards; nothing but flogging would do them good; and straightway he would order a parade in heavy marching order, where, without giving time for the regiment to appear properly under arms, he would stalk up and down the ranks, prancing, and taking snuff, and brandishing his cane, and swearing at everything and everybody that came in his way. The usual result of one of these sudden "inspections" (as he called them) was the ordering of half-a-dozen courts-martial on as many unlucky fellows for unsoldierlike conduct in not appearing properly dressed at parade; or for some other offence equally slight—or, it might be, altogether fanciful. He would then call for the defaulters' book, fasten on the words "drunk on duty," hurry to the front some three or four scapegraces of the regiment whom, in spite of the standing orders to the contrary, he had ordered to be "logged," and read the entire regiment a lecture on drunkenness, so worded, as to include everyone present, and lead a bystander to suppose, that from the senior officer to the smallest drummer-boy on parade, they were all a parcel of Helots; and that it was his mission to expose and punish everyone alike; his constant peroration being—
"But I'll take the rum out of you. Gentlemen! Demmee, I'll take the rum out of you!"
And the plan he adopted to effect this laudable object, was forthwith to call for his horse, and, riding in front, order the regiment out to the Common, where he would put it through a series of manœuvres, executed in "double time," till the men and officers were ready to drop with fatigue: nor cease from his exertions till he had clubbed the battalion and rendered himself inaudible between rage and hoarseness. He would then call the officers to the front, desire the Adjutant to extricate the men from the confusion into which he had thrown them, and march them home; counter-order the court-martial; and, after a few pinches of snuff, taken with a sort of grim unction, resume his ordinary manner, satisfied that he had given the regiment a lesson which would not be forgotten in a hurry.
Nor were these lessons thrown away; but their result was to render the officers dissatisfied, and the men discontented: the former felt that all their efforts were held as nought, and the latter that no amount of good conduct made them safe, when Mad Jock gave way to one of his indiscriminate fits of passion; for on such occasions the best man was as likely to suffer as the worst. In short, these ill-considered visitations on the part of Mad Jock had a precisely contrary effect to that which he intended; they caused him to be held up to ridicule by the men; neutralised the authority of the officers in general; and drove more than one man to desertion.
It was in the midst of troubled waters like these that Maurice Savage had to steer his way, to avoid punishment, and acquire approbation; that he succeeded in doing so, was owing to more causes than one. The counsel of MacManus, whose motto was, "Do your duty first, Maurice, and complain afterwards," proved of no slight service; not less so was the spectacle of Corporal Rattler, whom nothing could keep from coming drunk to parade, for which he was reduced to the ranks—flogged—sent to hospital—and finally sent home with phthisis pulmonalis, an incurable invalid; nor was the example thrown away of two or three men, little older than himself, but who had been better prepared before they joined for the education they now received, and were already making their way upward; but, without doubt, the most serviceable thing for Maurice, as well as for the whole regiment, was the displacement of Colonel Stormy from his command, by the sudden return of the Lieutenant-Governor of the province, who had been hastily ordered out by the Horse Guards, when the consequence of certain indiscretions on the part of Mad Jock became only too apparent at head-quarters. A private letter from a friend in office, to the last named gallant but blundering individual, advising retirement, and showing where good terms might be had, induced Colonel Stormy to apply for leave of absence as soon as the General arrived; and, after taking farewell of "his boys," with tears in his eyes and something that sounded very like "dromedaries" on his lips, he recrossed the Atlantic, was gazetted a few months afterwards, as having sold out, pocketed a heavy sum by the transaction, and was never heard of afterwards.
The regiment, left in the mean time to the care of the steady-going Major, began once more to hold up its head, and by the time the new Lieutenant-Colonel joined, was in a fit state to profit by the measures which the latter had been instructed by the Commander-in-Chief to adopt, in anticipation of general improvements which "the Duke" then meditated.
This officer was discriminating, just and liberal; he knew how to make allowances for the temptations to which a soldier is exposed; he was able to forbear when, more from thoughtlessness than wilful misconduct, a man got into trouble; he saw clearly what was fairly to be expected from the troops under his command, and refrained from exacting impossibilities; and he was endowed with that accuracy of judgment which, made all his rewards worthily bestowed. Thus qualified, he was quick to discover that Maurice Savage was not the least undeserving of the care with which he regarded all, and the recommendation of the young man to the probationary rank of lance-corporal was favourably received. The advice which he gave on the occasion, was not thrown away, and five years had not passed by from the time when Maurice Savage "took the shilling" from Serjeant Pike, before he became that worthy's superior in rank; indeed the last reports from the regiment, now stationed in Upper Canada, make mention of the early retirement of the Serjeant-Major who is about to claim his discharge and settle in that country, and the letter which conveys this intelligence adds, that when this event takes place it is almost certain he will be succeeded by Colour-Serjeant Savage.
At his age, with the testimonials of good conduct which he has already received, and the prospect which now opens before him, there is nothing improbable in the expectation, that in a few years he may be recommended for a commission. He has always invested his spare money in the Regimental Savings' Bank, where it is as safe and as lucrative to him as if in the Bank of England. His increased pay enables him constantly to add to the amount; and, should the expectation be realised, which has become a legitimate goal for the soldier's hopes, Maurice Savage will scarcely stand in need of the hundred pounds which is now presented to every non-commissioned officer, to enable him to bear the expenses and assist him in supporting the rank to which he has wisely been permitted to attain.
A word on parting about Patrick MacManus. The new system was introduced too late for him to profit by it to any extent. He was "too ould," he said, "to learn from books and them kind of things, but he didn't see that they did the boys any kind of harrum." He thought, perhaps, that "he might have cut more of a figure, if, instead of powthering the outside of his head when he first entered the service, he had been made to put something into it. He was thankful, too," he added, "for the warrant that gave him an extra sevenpence a-day pension for good sarvice, after knocking about for more than thirty years; and anyhow he'd be happy to drink long life to them as made it their study now to care for the soldier's wants, and give him a man's chance of gettin' on in the world, as if he had a body worth presarvin' and a sowl worth savin'."
These sentiments he constantly repeated, after he had obtained his discharge, when he used to pitch his quarters as near the barracks as he could get a place to put himself into; where, on a fine summer's evening, when the men were off duty, he would gather a knot round him, as he sat on a log smoking his pipe, and tell them long stories about "His R'yal Highness Prince Edward," and the long list of martinets, which ended "let us hope, boys, in Mad Jock!"
1. That genius will make its way in spite of every obstacle, is too trite a theme for us to insist upon in this place, but during the two hundred years' existence of a standing army in England, how few have been the instances of private soldiers elevated to distinction by the force of education. Coleridge is not an example, for he owed his advancement to the accidental discovery of his being an educated man before he enlisted in the dragoons; but the late Mr. William Sturgeon, of Manchester, was one of those rare exceptions. He was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and disliking that employment, at the age of nineteen entered the Westmoreland Militia, and two years later enlisted in the Royal Artillery. "While in this corps," says a recent biographical notice of him, "he devoted his leisure to scientific studies, and appears to have made himself familiar with all the great facts of electricity and magnetism, which were then opening on the world. His subsequent career has created for him a name in the annals of scientific discovery."