It is natural enough that to a lad accustomed to fresh air, green fields, and out-of-door exercise, the close atmosphere, dull aspect, and sedentary position awaiting an attorney’s under-clerk at Gray’s Inn must have been hateful. But William Cobbett never once thought of escaping from what he called “an earthly hell” by a return to his home and friends. This would have been to confess himself beaten, which he never meant to be. On the contrary, rushing from one bold step to another still more so, he enlisted himself (1784) as a soldier in a regiment intended to serve in Nova Scotia. His father, though somewhat of his own stern and surly nature, begged, prayed, and remonstrated. But it was useless. The recruit, however, had some months to pass in England, since, peace having taken place, there was no hurry in sending off the troops. These months he spent in Chatham, storing his brains with the lore of a circulating library, and his heart with love-dreams of the librarian’s daughter.
To this period he owed what he always considered his most valuable acquisition, a knowledge of his native language; the assiduity with which he gave himself up to study, on this occasion, insured his success and evinced his character. He wrote out the whole of an English grammar two or three times; he got it by heart; he repeated it every morning and evening, and he imposed on himself the task of saying it over once every time that he mounted guard. “I learned grammar,” he himself says, “when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a day. The edge of my berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my seat to study on; my knapsack was my book-case, a bit of board lying on my lap was my writing-table, and the task did not demand anything like a year of my life.” Such is will. In America, Cobbett remained as a soldier till the month of September, 1791, when his regiment was relieved and sent home. On the 19th of November, he obtained his discharge, after having served nearly eight years, never having once been disgraced, confined, or reprimanded, and having attained, owing to his zeal and intelligence, the rank of sergeant-major without having passed through the intermediate rank of sergeant.
The following was the order issued at Portsmouth on the day of his discharge:
“Portsmouth, 19th Dec. 1791.
“Sergeant-Major Cobbett having most pressingly applied for his discharge, at Major Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s request, General Frederick has ordered Major Lord Edward Fitzgerald to return the Sergeant-Major thanks for his behaviour and conduct during the time of his being in the regiment, and Major Lord Edward adds his most hearty thanks to those of the General.”
III.
At this period Cobbett married. Nobody has left us wiser sentiments or pithier sentences on the choice of a wife. His own, the daughter of a sergeant of artillery, stationed like himself at New Brunswick, had been selected at once. He had met her two or three times, and found her pretty; beauty, indeed, he considered indispensable, but beauty alone would never have suited him. Industry, activity, energy, the qualities which he possessed, were those which he most admired, and the partner of his life was fixed upon when he found her, one morning before it was distinctly light, “scrubbing out a washing-tub before her father’s door.” “That’s the girl for me,” he said, and he kept to this resolution with a fortitude which the object of his attachment deserved and imitated.
The courtship was continued, and the assurance of reciprocated affection given; but before the union of hands could sanctify that of hearts, the artillery were ordered home for England. Cobbett, whose regiment was then at some distance from the spot where his betrothed was still residing, unable to have the satisfaction of a personal farewell, sent her 150 guineas, the whole amount of his savings, and begged her to use it—as he feared her residence with her father at Woolwich might expose her to bad company—in making herself comfortable in a small lodging with respectable people until his arrival. It was not until four years afterwards that he himself was able to quit America, and he then found the damsel he had so judiciously chosen not with her father, it is true, nor yet lodging in idleness, but as servant-of-all-work for five pounds a year, and at their first interview she put into his hands the 150 guineas which had been confided to her—untouched. Such a woman had no ordinary force of mind; and it has been frequently asserted that he who, once beyond his own threshold, was ready to contend with every government in the world, was, when at home, under what has been appropriately called the government of the petticoat.
Cobbett’s marriage took place on the 3rd of February, 1792; that is, about ten weeks after his discharge; but having in March brought a very grave charge against some of the officers of his regiment, which charge, when a court-martial was summoned, he did not appear to support, he was forced to quit England for France, where he remained till September, 1792, when he determined on trying his fortune in the United States.