Some of my stoves remained in use in the Crimea till the day of the departure of the First Division. I was in duty bound to watch over and rescue them from the hands of the marauding Tartars, who seemed to claim as their own everything left behind by each regiment, even previous to the surrender of the Crimea by the Allied Governments.
All that remained of the British army consisted of the 20th with two Scotch regiments at Kamara, and a body of the Land Transport Corps at Cathcart’s Hill, (the Land Transport Corps were even at that time raising their bonfires); and the 56th Regiment at head-quarters, as Sir William Codrington’s body-guard. So few troops being left upon such a vast space, made it not only very dull, but also very unsafe, compelling us to keep loaded guns and revolvers at the head of our beds. The precaution was most necessary, for, with all our care, we were daily and nightly robbed by the Tartar Jews who infested the camp. Tents actually disappeared, and several huts were fired in the English camp; and no one could detect the authors of these outrages.
The Fourth Division retained its name and the ground, but that was all. The chief of that colossal body alone remained—General Garrett having to the last maintained his head-quarters upon the memorable spot. The loss most felt upon Cathcart’s Hill was the departure of Lord Alexander Russell’s brigade of Rifles, who were in the habit of parading and exercising daily upon the plateau. A parting dinner given to his lordship by General Garrett, and to which I was invited, closed merrily enough; but the day after their departure the camp was as desolate as a desert; only one regiment, the 20th, remained. General Garrett and myself were the only proprietors on that far-famed spot, Cathcart’s Hill, though no end of new tenants were arriving in shoals; I mean the rats from deserted camps, who boldly took possession of our head-quarters. All around had in a few days assumed such an aspect of desolation, that it appeared to me like a sudden exile from a lively and brilliant capital to a deserted rock: the beating of drums, sounding of trumpets, and the harmony of the bands; as well as the eternal morning parade catechism of the drill-serjeant, shouting with all his might, “Fall in! eyes fifteen paces to the front!”—or occasionally, as the French would say, “Les yeux fixes et la tête à quinze pas!” “Shoulder arms! slope arms!” Now and then, an awkward fellow would be thus apostrophized by the witty Serjeant: “Now, my man, has not your country been generous enough to present you with a musket? Then, do your country justice by learning the use of it.”
The profound silence which succeeded the tumult of camp life would have depressed the greatest philosopher. Stuart’s celebrated canteen, attached to the theatre, and which appeared in the series of engravings already published, was on the move; and Stuart’s head man, Joe, was at his last score of bottle-breaking, when I called and ordered half-a-dozen of pale ale.
“You may boast,” he exclaimed, “of being the last served here, for we are going off to Kadikoi immediately.” I then walked into the theatre. The stage offered a singular coup-d’œil: the figure of a child, as well as a black doll, were hanging by the neck from a cross beam at the top of the stage; the elaborately-painted curtain was torn into ribbons, the scenery partly whitewashed over, and the furniture of the apartment of Serjeant Blowhard was thrust into Miss Greenfinch’s bedroom; while Slasher and Crasher had left the theatre in a most dilapidated state. Female attire, including wings, ringlets, caps, bonnets, bunches of flowers, crinolines, and toilets of all fashions, bedaubed with chalk, bismuth, vermilion, and red brickdust, instead of carmine, were scattered about the stage in such a state that a French chiffonnier would not have disgraced his hamper by including them amongst its contents. The painting-room floor was like a rainbow; all the powdered colours had been kicked in every direction, forming a mulligatawny of shades enough to puzzle an Owen Jones and his disciples. The benches in the stalls and pit were piled up into a formidable barricade. Nothing had been respected but her Majesty’s royal arms, which ornamented the centre of the proscenium. These had been painted by Major Dallas, General Garrett’s aide-de-camp.
By the aid of a ladder, I carefully removed them, with the intention of placing them amongst my Sebastopol trophies, as a memento of the dramatic art in the Crimea. Upon leaving this desolated skeleton temple of Melpomene, I inquired of Mr. Stuart’s bottle-breaker the cause of this awful disorder. He told me, frankly enough, that so far as the wardrobe was concerned, the rats had taken possession, but that for the remainder, himself and a few friends had done the work of devastation by way of closing the season. Thus terminated the dramatic performances in the Theatre Royal of the Fourth Division; and it was, no doubt, a fair specimen of what happened in other divisions, if left in the hands of similar good managers.
Indeed, I could not but feel hurt at this sudden devastation, for it was only a few evenings before that this tumble-down temple of Momus was gloriously shining through the resplendent glare of a dozen brown candles, and that the celebrated band of the Rifles (by permission of Lord A. Russell) was delighting a crowded audience numbering upwards of five hundred soldiers, when, at the end of the first piece, to the astonishment of all, and myself in particular, a distinguished artist and “non-commissioned” poet came forward, who, though not in the style of Victor Hugo or Moore, but rather in the poetless “or you-go-not style,” poured forth the following song, to the amusement of the audience, who at its conclusion encored it most lustily. The “poetry” (?) ran as follows:—
SOYER’S NEW INVENTION.
A trifling thing, gentlemen, I am going to mention;
Oh tell me, pray, have you seen this great and new invention,
To cook in camp I believe it is their intention;
For Soyer’s patent, I confess, it is a perfect creation.
Steam! Steam!
For in it you can burn coal, wood, or patent fuel,
Put in your meat, and then you’ll find it will soon be doing;
And when lighted, away it goes, and everything in motion;
For Soyer’s patent, I confess, it is a perfect creation.
Steam! Steam!