Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places

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FOR THE SICK AND WOUNDED

Dear and trusty Deliverer, Jesus Christ, I know in my necessity and pains
no whither to flee to but to Thee, my Saviour, who hast suffered for me,
and hast called unto all ailing and miserable ones, "Come unto Me, all ye
who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Oh, relieve me,
also, of Thy love and kindness, stretch out Thy healing and almighty hand,
and restore me to health. Free me with Thy aid from my wounds and my
pains, and console me with Thy grace who art vouchsafed to heal the broken
heart, and to console all the sorrowful ones. Dost Thou take pleasure in
our destruction? Our groaning touches Thee to the heart, and those whom
Thou hast cast down Thou wilt lift up again. In Thee, Lord Jesus, I put my
trust; I will not cease to importune Thee that Thou bringest me not to
shame. Help me, save me, so I will praise Thee for ever. Amen.

Alas for Gretchen and her brood! The 4th of December has dawned, and still
Hans lies unfound in the corrie of the vineberg. He has no pain now, for
his shattered limb has been numbed by the cruel frost. His eyes are waxing
dim and he feels the end near at hand. The foul raven of the battlefield
croaks above him in his enfeebled loneliness, impatient for its meal. The
grim king of terrors is very close to thee, poor honest soldier of the
Fatherland; but thou canst face him as boldly as thou hast faced the foe,
with the help of the little book of which thy frost-chilled fingers have
never lost the grip. The gruesome bird falls back as thou murmurest the
prayer

AT THE NEAR APPROACH OF DEATH

Merciful heavenly Father, Thou God of all consolation, I thank Thee that
Thou hast sent Thy dear Son Jesus Christ to die for me. He has through His
death taken from death his sting, so that I have no cause to fear him
more. In that I thank Thee, dear Father, and pray Thee receive my spirit
in grace, as it now parts from life. Stand by me and hold me with Thine
almighty hand, that I may conquer all the terrors of death. When my ears
can hear no more, let Thy Spirit commune with my spirit, that I, as Thy
child and co-heir with Christ, may speedily be with Jesus by Thee in
heaven. When my eyes can see no more, so open my eyes of faith that I may
then see Thy heaven open before me and the Lord Jesus on Thy right hand;
that I may also be where He is. When my tongue shall refuse its utterance,
then let Thy Spirit be my spokesman with indescribable breathings, and
teach me to say with my heart, "Father, into Thy hands I commit my
spirit." Hear me, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

Would it harm the British soldier, think you, if in his kit there was a
_Gebetbuch fuer Soldaten_?

MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE

1879

In broad essentials the marryings and givings in marriage of India
nowadays do not greatly differ from these natural phenomena at home; but
to use a florist's phrase, they are more inclined to "sport." The old days
are over when consignments of damsels were made to the Indian
marriage-market, in the assured certainty that the young ladies would be
brides-elect before reaching the landing ghat. The increased facilities
which improved means of transit now offer to bachelors for running home on
short leave have resulted in making the Anglo-Indian "spin" rather a drug
in the market; and operating in the same untoward direction is the growing
predilection on the part of the Anglo-Indian bachelor for other men's
wives, in preference to hampering himself with the encumbrance of a wife
of his own. Among other social products of India old maids are now
occasionally found; and the fair creature who on her first arrival would
smile only on commissioners or colonels has been fain, after a few--yet
too many--hot seasons have impaired her bloom and lowered her
pretensions, to put up with a lieutenant or even with a dissenting
_padre_. Slips between the cup and the lip are more frequent in India than
in England. Loving and riding away is not wholly unknown in the
Anglo-Indian community; and indeed, by both parties to the contract,
engagements are frequently regarded in the mistaken light of ninepins.
Hearts are seldom broken. At Simla during a late season a gallant captain
persistently wore the willow till the war broke out, because he had been
jilted in favour of a colonel; but his appetite rapidly recovered its tone
on campaign, and he was reported to have reopened relations by
correspondence from the tented field with a former object of his
affections. Not long ago there arrived in an up-country station a box
containing a wedding trousseau, which a lady had ordered out from home as
the result of an engagement between her and a gallant warrior. But in the
interval the warrior had departed elsewhere and had addressed to the lady
a pleasant and affable communication, setting forth that there was
insanity in his family and that he must have been labouring under an
access of the family disorder when he had proposed to her. It was hard to
get such a letter, and it must have been harder still for her to gaze on
the abortive wedding-dress. But the lady did not abandon herself to
despair; she took a practical view of the situation. She determined to
keep the trousseau by her for six months, in case she might within that
time achieve a fresh conquest, when it would come in happily. Should
fortune not favour her thus far she meant to advertise the wedding-gear
for sale.

Miss Priest was no "spin" lingering on in spinsterhood against her will.
It is true that when I saw her first she had already been "out" three
years, but she might have been married a dozen times over had she chosen.
I have seen many pretty faces in the fair Anglo-Indian sisterhood, but
Miss Priest had a brightness and a sparkle that were all her own. At
flirting, at riding, at walking, at dancing, at performing in amateur
theatricals, at making fools of men in an airy, ruthless, good-hearted
fashion, Miss Priest, as an old soldier might say, "took the right of the
line." There was a fresh vitality about the girl that drew men and women
alike to her. You met her at dawn cantering round Jakko on her pony.
Before breakfast she had been rinking for an hour, with as likely as not a
waltz or two thrown in. She never missed a picnic to Annandale, the
Waterfalls, or Mashobra. Another turn at the Benmore rink before dinner,
and for sure a dance after, rounded off this young lady's normal day
during the Simla season. But if pleasure-loving, capricious, and reckless,
she scraped through the ordeal of Simla gossip without incurring scandal.
She was such a frank, honest girl, that malign tongues might assail her
indeed, but ineffectually. And she had given proof that she knew how to
take care of herself, although her only protectress was a perfectly
inoffensive mother. On the occasion of the Prince of Wales's visit to
Lahore, had she not boxed the ears of a burly and somewhat boorish swain,
who had chosen the outside of an elephant as an eligible _locale_ for a
proposal, the uncouth abruptness of which did not accord with her notion
of the fitness of things?

Miss Priest may be said to have lived in a chronic state of engagements.
The engagements never seemed to come to anything, but that was on account
mostly of the young lady's wilfulness. It bothered her to be engaged to
the same man for more than from a week to ten days on end. No bones were
broken; the gentleman resigned the position at her behest, and she would
genially dance with him the same night. Malice and heartburning were out
of the question with a lissom, winsome, witching fairy like this, who
played with her life as a child does with soap-bubbles, and who was as
elusory and irresponsible as a summer-day rainbow. But one season at
Mussoorie Miss Priest contracted an engagement somewhat less evanescent.
Mussoorie of all Himalayan hill-stations is the most demure and proper.
Simla occasionally is convulsed by scandals, although dispassionate
inquiry invariably proves that there is nothing in them. The hot blood of
the quick and fervid Punjaub--casual observers have called the Punjaub
stupid, but the remark applies only to its officials--is apt to stir the
current of life at Murree. The chiefs of the North-West are invariably so
intolerably proper that occasional revolt from their austerity is all but
forced on Nynee Tal, the sanatorium of that province. But Mussoorie,
undisturbed by the presence of frolicsome viceroys or austere
lieutenant-governors, is a limpid pool of pleasant propriety. It is not so
much that it is decorous as that it is genuinely good; it is a favourite
resort of clergymen and of clergymen's wives. It was at Mussoorie that
Miss Priest met Captain Hambleton, a gallant gunner. They danced together
at the Assembly Rooms; they rode in company round the Camel's Back; they
went to the same picnics at "The Glen." The captain proposed and was
accepted. For about the nineteenth time Miss Priest was an engaged young
lady. And Captain Hambleton was a lover of rather a different stamp from
the men with whom her name previously had been nominally coupled. He was
in love and he was a gentleman; he had proposed to the girl, not that he
and she should be merely engaged but that they should be married also.
This view of the subject was novel to Miss Priest and at first she thought
it rather a bore; but the captain pegged away and gradually the lady came
rather to relish the situation. Men and women concurred that the wayward
pinions of the fair Bella were at last trimmed, if not clipped; and to do
her justice the general opinion was that, once married, she would make an
excellent wife. As the close of the Mussoorie season approached the
invitations went out for Bella Priest's wedding, and for "cake and wine
afterwards at the house." The wedding-breakfast is a comparatively rare
_tamasha_ in India; the above is the formula of the usual invitation at
the hill-stations.

It happened that just two days before the day fixed for the marriage of
Miss Priest and Captain Hambleton, there was a fancy-dress ball in the
Assembly Rooms at Mussoorie. I think that as a rule fancy-dress balls are
greater successes in India than at home. People in India give their minds
more to the selection and to the elaboration of costumes; and there is
less of that _mauvaise honte_ when masquerading in fancy costume, which
makes a ball of this description at home so wooden and wanting in go. At a
fancy ball in India "the devil" acts accordingly, and manages his tail
with adroitness and grace. It is a fact that at a recent fancy-dress ball
in Lahore a game was played on the lap of a lady who appeared as "chess,"
with the chess-men which had formed her head-dress. This Mussoorie ball,
being the last of the season, was to excel all its predecessors in
inventive variety. A _padre's_ wife conceived the bright idea of appearing
as Eve; and only abandoned the notion on finding that, no matter what
species of thread she used, it tore the fig-leaves--a result which,
besides causing her a disappointment, imperilled her immortal soul by
engendering doubts as to the truth of the Scriptural narrative of the
creation. Miss Priest determined to go to this ball, although doing so
under the circumstances was scarcely in accordance with the _convenances_;
but she was a girl very much addicted to having her own way. Captain
Hambleton did not wish her to go, and there was a temporary coolness
between the two on the subject; but he yielded and they made it up. The
principle as to her going once established, Miss Priest's next task was to
set about the invention of a costume. It was to be her last effort as a
"spin"; and she determined it should be worthy of her reputation for
brilliant inventiveness. She had shone as a _Vivandiere_, as the Daughter
of the Regiment, as a Greek Slave, Grace Darling, and so forth, times out
of number; but those characters were stale. Miss Priest had a form of
supple rounded grace, nor had Diana shapelier limbs. A great inspiration
came to her as she sauntered pondering on the Mall. Let her go as Ariel,
all gauze, flesh-tints, and natural curves. She hailed the happy thought
and invested in countless yards of gauze. She had the tights already by
her.

Now Miss Priest, knowing the idiosyncrasy of Captain Hambleton, had little
doubt that he would put his foot down upon Ariel. But she knew he loved
her, and with characteristic recklessness determined to trust to that and
to luck. She too loved him, even better, perhaps, than Ariel; but she
hoped to keep both the captain and the character. She did not, however,
tell him of her design, waiting perhaps for a favourable opportunity. But
even in Arcadian Mussoorie there are the "d----d good-natured friends" of
whom Byron wrote; and one of those--of course it was a woman--told Captain
Hambleton of the character in which Miss Priest intended to appear at the
fancy ball. The captain was a headstrong sort of man--what in India is
called _zubburdustee_. Instead of calling on the girl and talking to her
as a wise man would have done, he sat down and wrote her a terse letter
forbidding her to appear as Ariel, and adding that if she should persist
in doing so their engagement must be considered at an end. Miss Priest
naturally fired up. Strangely enough, being a woman, she did not reply to
the captain's letter; but when the evening of the ball came, she duly
appeared as Ariel with rather less gauze about her shapely limbs than had
been her original intention. She created an immense sensation. Some of the
ladies frowned, others turned up their noses, yet others tucked in their
skirts when she approached; and all vowed that they would decline to touch
Miss Priest's hand in the quadrille. Miss Priest did not care a jot for
these demonstrations, and she never danced square dances. Among the
gentlemen she created a perfect furore.

Captain Hambleton was present at the ball. For the greater part of the
evening he stood near the door with his eye fixed on Miss Priest,
apparently rather in sorrow than in anger. His gaze seemed but to
stimulate her to more vivacious flirtation; and she "carried on above a
bit," as a cynical subaltern remarked, with the gallant major to whom she
had been penultimately engaged. Toward the close of the evening Captain
Hambleton relinquished his post of observation, seemed to accept the
situation, and was observed at supper-time paying marked attention to a
married lady with whom his name had been to some extent coupled not long
before his engagement to Miss Priest.

Next morning Miss Priest took time by the forelock. She waited for no
further communication from Captain Hambleton; he had already sent his
ultimatum and she had dared her fate. The morrow was the day fixed for the
marriage. Many people had been bidden. Mussoorie, including Landour, is a
large station, and the postal delivery of letters is not particularly
punctual. So she adopted a plan for warning off the wedding-guests
identical with that employed in Indian stations for circulating
notifications as to lawn-tennis gatherings and unimportant intimations
generally. At the head of the paper is written the notification,
underneath are the names of the persons concerned. The document is
intrusted to a messenger known as a _chuprassee_, who goes away on his
circuit; and each person writes "Seen" opposite his or her name in
testimony of being posted in the intelligence conveyed in the
notification. Miss Priest divided the invited guests into four rounds and
despatched four _chuprassees_, each bearing a document curtly announcing
that "Miss Priest's marriage will not come off as arranged, and the
invitations therefore are to be regarded as cancelled."

Miss Priest had no fortune, and her mother was by no means wealthy. It may
seem strange to English readers--not nearly so much so, however, as to
Anglo-Indian ones--that Captain Hambleton had thought it a graceful and
kindly attention to provide the wedding-cake. It had reached him across
the hills from Peliti's the night of the ball, and now here it was on his
hands--a great white elephant. Whether in the hope that it might be
regarded as an olive-branch, whether that he burned to be rid of it
somehow, or whether, knowing that Miss Priest was bound to get married
some day and thinking that it would be a convenience if she had a
bridecake by her handy for the occasion, there is no evidence. Anyhow, he
sent it to Mrs. Priest with his compliments. That very sensible woman did
not send it back with a cutting message, as some people would have done.
Having considerable Indian experience, she had learned practical wisdom
and the short-sighted folly of cutting messages. She kept the bridecake,
and enclosed to the gallant captain Gosslett's bill for the dozen of
simkin that excellent firm had sent in to wash it down wherewithal.

Bridecakes are bores to carry about from place to place, and Miss Priest
and her mother were rather birds of passage. Peliti declined to take this
particular bridecake back, for all Simla had seen it in his window and he
saw no possibility of "working it in." So the Priests, mother and
daughter, determined to realise on it in a somewhat original and indeed
cynical fashion. The cake was put up to be raffled for.

All the station took tickets for the fun of the thing. Captain Hambleton
was anxious to show that there was no ill-feeling, and did not find
himself so unhappy as he had expected--perhaps from the _redintegratio
amoris_ in another quarter; so he took his ticket in the raffle like other
people. It is needless to say that he won; and the cake duly came back to
him.

Had Captain Hambleton been a superstitious man, he might have regarded
this strange occurrence as indicating that the Fates willed it that he
should compass somehow a union with Miss Priest. But the captain had no
superstition in his nature; and, indeed, had begun to think that he was
well out of it; besides which it was currently reported that Miss Priest
had already re-engaged herself to another man. But the bridecake was upon
him as the Philistines upon Samson; and the question was, what the devil
to do with it? He could not raffle it over again; nobody would take
tickets. He had half a mind to trundle it over the _khud_ (_Anglice_,
precipice) and be done with it; but then, again, he reflected that this
would be sheer waste and might seem to indicate soreness on his part. It
cost him a good many pegs before he thought the matter out in all its
bearings, for, as has been said, he was a gunner, but as he sauntered away
from the club in the small hours a happy thought came to him.

He would give a picnic at which the bogey bridecake should figure
conspicuously, and then be laid finally by the process of demolition. His
leave was nearly up; he had experienced much hospitality and a picnic
would be a graceful and genial acknowledgment thereof. And he would ask
the Priests just like other people, and no doubt they would enter into the
spirit of the thing and not send a "decline." Bella, he knew, liked
picnics nearly as well as balls, and it must be a powerful reason indeed
that would keep her away from either.

Captain Hambleton's picnic was the last of the season, and everybody
called it the brightest. "The Glen" resounded to the laughter at tiffin,
and the shades of night were falling ere stray couples turned up from its
more sequestered recesses. Amid loud cheers Miss Priest, although still
Miss Priest, cut up her own bridecake with a serene equanimity that proved
the charming sweetness of her disposition. There was no marriage-bell yet
all went merry as a marriage-bell, which is occasionally rather a sombre
tintinnabulation; and the _debris_ of the bridecake finally fell to the
sweeper.

I would fain that it were possible, having a regard to truth, to round off
this little story prettily by telling how in a glade of "The Glen" after
the demolition of the bridecake, Miss Priest and the captain "squared
matters," were duly married and lived happily ever after, as the
story-books say. But this consummation was not attained. Miss Priest
indeed was in the glade, but it was not with the captain, or at least this
particular captain; and as for him, he spent the afternoon placidly
smoking cigarettes as he lay at the feet of his married consoler. To the
best of my knowledge Miss Priest is Miss Priest still.

A VERSION OF BALACLAVA

Referring to a particular phase of this memorable combat, Mr. Kinglake
wrote: "The question is not ripe for conclusive decision; some of those
who, as is supposed, might throw much light upon it, have hitherto
maintained silence." It was in 1868 that the fourth volume--the Balaclava
volume--of Mr. Kinglake's History was published. Since he wrote,
singularly few of those who could throw light on obscure points of the
battle have broken silence. Lord George Paget's Journal furnished little
fresh information, since Mr. Kinglake had previously used it extensively.
There is but a spark or two of new light in Sir Edward Hamley's more
recent compendium. As the years roll on the number of survivors diminishes
in an increasing ratio, nor does one hear of anything valuable left behind
by those who fall out of the thinning ranks. The reader of the period, in
default of any other authority, betakes himself to Kinglake. There are
those who term Kinglake's volumes romance rather than history--or, more
mildly, the romance of history. But this is unjust and untrue. It would be
impertinent to speak of his style; that gift apart, his quest for accurate
information was singularly painstaking, searching, and scrupulous. Yet it
cannot be said that he was always well served. He had perforce to lean on
the statements of men who were partisans, writing as he did so near his
period that nearly all men charged with information were partisans.
British officers are not given to thrusting on a chronicler tales of their
own prowess. But _esprit de corps_ in our service is so strong--and, spite
of its incidental failings that are almost merits what lover of his
country could wish to see it weakened?--that men of otherwise implicit
veracity will strain truth, and that is a weak phrase, to exalt the
conduct of their comrades and their corps. No doubt Mr. Kinglake
occasionally suffered because of this propensity; and, with every respect,
his literary _coup d'oeil_, except as regards the Alma where he saw for
himself, and Inkerman where no _coup d'oeil_ was possible, was somewhat
impaired by his having to make his picture of battle a mosaic, each
fragment contributed by a distinct actor concentrated on his own
particular bit of fighting. If ever military history becomes a fine art we
may find the intending historian, alive to the proverb that "onlookers see
most of the game," detailing capable persons with something of the duty of
the subordinate umpire of a sham fight, to be answerable each for a given
section of the field, the historian himself acting as the correlative of
the umpire-in-chief.

[Illustration: MAP OF BALACLAVA PLAIN.

EXPLANATIONS.

* * * * *

Figures 1 to 6 indicate Redoubts.

A. Point of collision.

B. "C" Troop R.H.A.'s position during combat, in support Heavy Cavalry.

C. "C" Troop in action against fugitive Russian Cavalry about D., range
about 750 yards.

E. Lord Lucan's position watching advance of Russian Cavalry mass.

F. Position "C" Troop when approached by Cardigan and Paget after Light
Cavalry charge.

G. Position "C" Troop in support Light Cavalry charge.

H. Russian Cavalry mass advancing at trot up "North" valley.

HH. Russian Cavalry General and Staff trotting along Causeway heights,
with view into both valleys.

K. Line of Light Cavalry charge.

L. Light Brigade during Heavy Cavalry charge.

M. "I" Troop R.H.A. during ditto.

N. Lord Raglan's position (approximate).

O. Scarlett's five squadrons beginning their advance.

P. Russian Cavalry mass halted.]

It is true that the battle of Balaclava was fought to "a gallery"
consisting of the gazers who looked down into the plain from the upland of
the Chersonese. But of close and virtually independent spectators of the
battle's most thrilling episodes, so near the climax of the Heavy Cavalry
charge that they heard the clash of the sabres, so close to the lip of the
Valley of Death that they discerned the wounds of our stricken troopers
who strewed its sward and could greet and be greeted by the broken groups
that rode back out of the "mouth of hell," there was but one small body of
people. This body consisted of the officers and men of "C" Troop, Royal
Horse Artillery. "C" Troop had been encamped from 1st October until the
morning of the battle close to the Light division, in that section of the
British position known as the Right Attack. When the fighting began in the
Balaclava plain on the morning of the 25th, it promptly started for the
scene of action. Pursuing the nearest way to the plain by the Woronzoff
road, at the point known as the "Cutting" it received an order from Lord
Raglan to take a more circuitous route, as by the more direct one it was
following it might become exposed to fire from Russian cannon on the
Fedoukine heights. Pursuing the circuitous route it came out into the
plain through the "Col" then known as the "Barrier," crossed the "South"
or "Inner" valley, and reached the left rear of Scarlett's squadrons
formed up for the Heavy Cavalry charge. Here it received an order from
Brigadier-General Strangways, who commanded the Artillery, with which it
could not comply; and thenceforward "C" Troop throughout the day acted
independently, at the discretion of its enterprising and self-reliant
commander. What it saw and what it did are recorded in a couple of
chapters of a book entitled _From Coruna to Sevastopol_. [Footnote: _From
Coruna to Sevastopol_: The History of "C" Battery, "A" Brigade (late "C"
Troop), Royal Horse Artillery. W.H. Allen and Co.] This volume was
published some years ago, but the interesting and vivid details given in
its pages of the Balaclava combats and the light it throws on many obscure
incidents of the day have been strangely overlooked. The author of the
chapters was an officer in the Troop whose experiences he shared and
describes, and is a man well known in the service to be possessed of acute
observation, strong memory, and implicit veracity. The present writer has
been favoured by this officer with much information supplementary to that
given in his published chapters, which is embodied in the following
account throughout which the officer will be designated as "the 'C' Troop
chronicler."

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