I was once on board a man-of-war for a few days in which this unsociability was carried to such a degree that at the gun-room mess every officer, at breakfast and tea, used to produce, from the depths of his bunk, a pot of jam, or a tin of potted meat, and devour it all by himself without offering it or saying a word to his comrades.
Then there is the naval officer, who, before you have fairly set foot on board, rushes at you and informs you that you have omitted saluting the quarter-deck; and who always loses his temper when you tell him that you do not know where it is, and are looking for it; and the self-asserting man who is perpetually telling you what his relative rank is. I remember an individual of this latter class, who when a guest at a military detachment mess, the senior dining member of which was a captain, kept remarking.—
“You know I’m senior to all you fellows. As I’m a lieutenant of eight years’ service I rank with a major.”
He might have ranked with a major-general for all any one cared, but after he had said this at intervals some nine or ten times it began to become monotonous; so somebody said, as if to the punkah:—
“I’ve often heard that remark made before, but I never yet heard a major in the army boast that he ranked with a lieutenant in the navy.”
Society at Sierra Leone is in a very bad way; in fact from an English point of view one may say that there is no society at all. The only Europeans in the place are the officers of the garrison, the Colonial officials, and a few shop-keepers, who, although they will sell anything from three-pence worth of rum upwards, rejoice here in the title of merchants. Ladies there are none, except on the few occasions on which an officer’s wife may be found residing at Tower Hill, so what little society there is consists of men alone, and is composed of the most heterogeneous elements. Most of the so-called merchants appear to have sprung from the lower strata of English life, many of them have black wives, and a large majority of the Colonial officers are coloured; the Governors never seem to make the slightest attempt to collect around themselves the more cultivated members of the Colony, and everybody does that which seems good in his own eyes. The élite of the coloured population sometimes get up balls, similar to the one I witnessed at Lagos, and which like it usually terminate in an orgie, and to these Europeans are occasionally invited; but it is only those who have no sense of the ludicrous, or who have their facial muscles well under control, that can afford to go. The retailing of scandal seems to be the principal occupation of the town society, and if one were to place implicit credence in the tales and gossip which abound one would inevitably arrive at the conclusion that there was not an honourable man or a virtuous woman in the place.
In by-gone years the officers of the garrison used to inaugurate races, and a tract of ground near Kissi, on which stands a diminutive grand-stand, is still called the race-course; but now the sole amusement of the colony is the performance of the band of the regiment therein stationed, on the green patch of ground known as the Battery. This performance takes place once a week, but the majority of the people are too lazy and apathetic to go to hear it, and, with the exception of a few Colonial officers and some forty or fifty ragged children, the musicians discourse to empty air. There was one Colonial officer who was a regular attendant on band days, and whose principal aim in life seemed to be to pose as an authority on music before the uninitiated. As he knew nothing whatever of the science, and had successfully picked up the phrases used in music without in the least understanding their meaning, he frequently entangled himself in the most irretrievable confusion, and was a source of much amusement.
One day the band was playing Gounod’s Serenade, and during the performance the critic walked round and round as usual, beating time in the air with his walking-stick, and assailing every inoffensive bystander with a hailstorm of scientific jargon. When the piece was finished he nodded approval and said:—
“Ah! pretty thing—pretty thing. Fine scale of minor fifths. Let me see; what is it called?”
“That? Oh! it’s one of Whistler’s ‘Nocturnes,’” said somebody.