Grief and old age had seized upon the father, and worn out his life; and premature decay soon seized upon the son, and gnawed away his vain ambition, and his useless strength, till he prayed to be borne, not the way yonder that was most opposite to his father and his mother, but even the same way they had gone—the way which leads to the Old Churchyard Tree.
VI.
The Modern “Officer’s” Progress.
I.—JOINING THE REGIMENT.
“I HAVE got some very sad news to tell you,” wrote Lady Pelican to her friend, Mrs. Vermeil, a faded lady of fashion, who discontentedly occupied a suite of apartments at Hampton Court; “our Irish estates are in such a miserable condition—absolutely making us out to be in debt to them, instead of adding to our income, that poor George—you will be shocked to hear it—is actually obliged to go into the Infantry!”
The communication of this distressing fact may stand instead of the regular Gazette, announcing the appointment of the Hon. George Spoonbill to an Ensigncy, by purchase, in the 100th regiment of foot. His military aspirations had been “Cavalry,” and he had endeavored to qualify himself for that branch of the service by getting up an invisible moustache, when the Irish agent wrote to say that no money was to be had in that quarter, and all thoughts of the Household Brigade were, of necessity, abandoned. But, though the more expensive career was shut out, Lord Pelican’s interest at the Horse Guards remained as influential as before, and for the consideration of four hundred and fifty pounds which—embarrassed as he was—he contrived to muster, he had no difficulty in procuring a commission for his son George, in the distinguished regiment already named. There were, it is true, a few hundred prior claimants on the Duke’s list; “but,” as Lord Pelican justly observed, “if the Spoonbill family were not fit for the army, he should like to know who were!” An argument perfectly irresistible. Gazetted, therefore, the young gentleman was, as soon as the Queen’s sign-manual could be obtained, and the usual interval for preparation over, the Hon. George Spoonbill set out to join. But before he does so, we must say a word of what that “preparation” consisted in.
Some persons may imagine that he forthwith addressed himself to the study of Polybius, dabbled a little in Cormontaigne, got up Napier’s History of the Peninsular War, or read the Duke’s Despatches; others, that he went down to Birdcage-Walk, and placed himself under the tuition of Color-Sergeant Pike, of the Grenadier Guards, a warrior celebrated for his skill in training military aspirants, or that he endeavored by some other means to acquire a practical knowledge, however slight, of the profession for which he had always been intended. The Hon. George Spoonbill knew better. The preparation he made, was a visit, at least three times a day, to Messrs. Gorget and Plume, the military tailors in Jermyn Street, whose souls he sorely vexed by the persistance with which he adhered to the most accurate fit of his shell-jacket and coatee, the set of his epaulettes, the cut of his trowsers, and the shape of his chako. He passed his days in “trying on his things,” and his evenings—when not engaged in the Casino, the Cider Cellar, or the Adelphi—in dining with his military friends at St. James’s Palace, or at Knightsbridge Barracks. In their society he greatly improved himself, acquiring an accurate knowledge of lansquenet and ecarté, cultivating his taste for tobacco, and familiarizing his mind with that reverence for authority which is engendered by the anecdotes of great military commanders that freely circulate at the mess-table. His education and his uniform being finished at about the same time, George Spoonbill took a not uncheerful farewell of the agonized Lady Pelican, whose maternal bosom streamed with the sacrifice she made in thus consigning her offspring to the vulgar hardships of a marching regiment.
An express train conveyed the honorable Ensign in safety to the country town where the “Hundredth” were then quartered, and in conformity with the instructions which he received from the Assistant Military Secretary at the Horse Guards—the only instructions, by-the-bye, which were given him by that functionary—he “reported” himself at the Orderly-room on his arrival, was presented by the Adjutant to the senior Major, by the senior Major to the Lieutenant-Colonel, and by the Lieutenant-Colonel to the officers generally when they assembled for mess.
The “Hundredth,” being “Light Infantry,” called itself “a crack regiment:” the military adjective signifying, in this instance, not so much a higher reputation for discipline and warlike achievements, as an indefinite sort of superiority arising from the fact that no man was allowed to enter the corps who depended on his pay only for the figure he cut in it. Lieutenant-Colonel Tulip, who commanded, was very strict in this particular, and, having the good of the service greatly at heart, set his face entirely against the admission of any young man who did not enjoy a handsome paternal allowance, or was not the possessor of a good income. He was himself the son of a celebrated army clothier, and in the course of ten years, had purchased the rank he now held, so that he had a right, as he thought, to see that his regiment was not contaminated by contact with poor men. His military creed was, that no man had any business in the army who could not afford to keep his horses or tilbury, and drink wine every day; that he called respectable, anything short of it the reverse. If he ever relaxed from the severity of this rule, it was only in favor of those who had high connections; “a handle to a name” being as reverently worshipped by him as money itself; indeed, in secret, he preferred a lord’s son, though poor, to a commoner, however rich; the poverty of a sprig of nobility not being taken exactly in a literal sense. Colonel Tulip had another theory also: during the aforesaid ten years, he had acquired some knowledge of drill, and possessing an hereditary taste for dress, considered himself, thus endowed, a first-rate officer, though what he would have done with his regiment in the field is quite another matter. In the meantime he was gratified by thinking that he did his best to make it a crack corps, according to his notion of the thing, and such minor points as the moral training of the officers, and their proficiency in something more than the forms of the parade ground, were not allowed to enter into his consideration. The “Hundredth” were acknowledged to be “a devilish well-dressed, gentlemanly set of fellows,” and were looked after with great interest at country-balls, races, and regattas; and if this were not what a regiment ought to be, Colonel Tulip was, he flattered himself, very much out in his calculations.
The advent of the Hon. George Spoonbill was a very welcome one, as the vacancy to which he succeeded had been caused by the promotion of a young baronet into “Dragoons,” and the new comer being the second son of Lord Pelican, with a possibility of being graced one day by wearing that glittering title himself, the hiatus caused by Sir Henry Muff’s removal was happily filled up without any derogation to the corps. Having also ascertained, in the course of five minutes’ conversation, that Mr. Spoonbill’s “man” and two horses were to follow in a few days with the remainder of his baggage; and the young gentlemen having talked rather largely of what the Governor allowed him (two hundred a-year is no great sum, but he kept the actual amount in the back ground, speaking “promiscuously” of “a few hundreds”), and of his intimacy with “the fellows in the Life Guards;” Colonel Tulip at once set him down as a decided acquisition to the “Hundredth,” and intimated that he was to be made much of accordingly.
When we described the regiment as being composed of wealthy men, the statement must be received with a certain reservation. It was Colonel Tulip’s hope and intention to make it so in time, when he had sufficiently “weeded” it, but en attendant there were three or four officers who did not quite belong to his favorite category. There were the senior Major, and an old Captain, both of whom had seen a good deal of service, the Surgeon, who was a necessary evil, and the Quarter-master, who was never allowed to show with the rest of the officers except at “inspection,” or some other unusual demonstration. But the rank and “allowance” of the first, and something in the character of the second, which caused him to be looked upon as a military oracle, made Colonel Tulip tolerate their presence in the corps, if he did not enjoy it. Neither had the Adjutant quite as much money as the commanding officer could have desired, but as his position kept him close to his duties, doing that for which Colonel Tulip took credit, he also was suffered to pass muster; he was a brisk, precise, middle-aged personage, who hoped in the course of time to get his company, and whose military qualifications consisted chiefly in knowing “Torrens,” the “Articles of War,” the “Military Regulations,” and the “Army List,” by heart. The last-named work was, indeed, very generally studied in the regiment, and may be said to have exhausted almost all the literary resources of its readers, exceptions being made in favor of the weekly military newspaper, the monthly military magazine, and an occasional novel from the circulating library. The rest of the officers must speak for themselves, as they incidentally make their appearance. Of their character, generally, this may be said; none were wholly bad, but all of them might easily have been a great deal better.