The Making Of A Novelist / An Experiment In Autobiography

by David Christie Murray

I had supposed that I should at once enter upon my military career, but, to my surprise, I was ordered to report myself at the depot at St. George's Barracks on the following day at noon. Failing this, I was instructed that I should be held a rogue and vagabond, and should be liable to a period of imprisonment I went on to dinner, and bore myself there with a mysterious gloom, which, as I learned long afterwards, gave rise to a good deal of conjecture. Next day I was sworn in in a frowsy back room behind the Westminster Police Court, and learned that I was now formally bound to the service of her Majesty for a term of twelve years, my sole hope of escape being the payment of a sum of thirty pounds as purchase-money.

My military ardour had been a little cooled already at the medical examination, where, to my horrible embarrassment, I was made to strip stark naked, and was inspected by an elderly gentleman in a pince-nez, with half a dozen uninterested people looking on, amongst them two or three louts in fustian who were awaiting their turn. I was put into a variety of postures, all of which I felt to be ridiculous and humiliating; and when this ordeal was over there came the swearing-in and a visit to the depot canteen, where I received payment of a sum of seven and sixpence and was introduced to some of the raw material of the fighting forces of the nation.

I may say quite frankly that I did not like the raw material. The young men who composed it were without exception vulgar and loutish. Their language was absolutely unreportable, and they were all more or less flushed with beer. I had been almost a total abstainer all my life, and though I drank a little of it out of complaisance I thought the canteen tack the nastiest stuff I had ever tasted The depot barrack-room in which the recruits slept until the time of their deportation echoed morning, noon, and night with unmeaning ribaldries and obscenities, and was stale with the smoke of bad tobacco and the fumes of that most indifferent beer. I learned that I was bound for Ireland, and that the head-quarters of my regiment were at Cahir. One respectable old depot sergeant took some interest in my quiet and isolation. 'You'll be out of this lot soon,' he said, 'and you'll never see anything like it again. These chaps'll learn manners when they join the colours; and you're lucky in the regiment you're going to—there's no smarter in the service.'

I have made one or two uncomfortable journeys in my time, but I can recall nothing quite so comfortless as the march with that ragged and disreputable contingent along Piccadilly, across Hyde Park, down the Edgware Road, and so on to Paddington Station. It was all very well for the sore and rebellious heart to be singing inwardly, 'Yes, let me like a soldier fall,' but this was a sordid beginning for military glory, and I would sooner have been shot outright than I would have encountered anybody I knew on that journey. I reached the station unobserved, so far as I know, and was glad to hide myself in a third-class carriage, into which the sergeant in charge of the party beckoned me. He was very kind and friendly indeed, advising me in a score of ways suggested by his own experience, and talking constantly with his hand upon my shoulder. I had begun to think him quite a genuine good fellow, and my heart was warming to him, when he let the cat out of the bag.

I was handsomely attired, and the morning suit I was wearing was barely a week old. He was good enough to offer me ten shillings and a rig-out for a scarecrow in exchange for it. I declined the friendly offer, and the sergeant cooled. He condescended to accept a drink at Didcot Junction; indeed, he did me the honour to ask for it; but when it was consumed he ordered me into a carriage already fully occupied by half a score of my fellow recruits, and in their society I finished the journey to Bristol.

We put up at the Gloucester Barracks, which, as I understood, had once been an hotel, and the escort sergeant, who had turned spiteful, set me to work to carry coal upstairs.

This was my first experience of fatigue duty, and I was kept at it till I was very fatigued indeed, and my smart summer trousers and spick-and-span shirt-cuffs were a little damaged. This duty over, I met the escort sergeant no more, but was transferred to the care of a quaint old boy who made an astonishing display of learning. He had four or five Latin proverbs at his command. He knew the Greek alphabet, had picked up a bit of Hindostani on Indian service, and a little bit of French and Turkish in the Crimea. All these he aired upon me in a very natural manner, and I was much impressed with his erudition, until a grinning depot man got me into a corner and told me that 'the sergeant had shown me the whole bag o' thricks at wonst,' He paid every well-dressed recruit that compliment, it seemed; and the depot man warned me that he too would make a bid for my clothes, and would offer me a scarecrow rig-out in return.

'If ye'll take my tip,' said the depot man, 'ye'll say neither yes nor no till ye get to barracks. Kape the ould blagyard hangin' on and off till ye get inside the gates, and then tell him to go to blazes. If ye loike to work him properly, ye can kape him as smooth as soft soap all the way. If ye say no too early he'll be on t'ye like a ton o' pig-iron. It's the truth I'm tellin' ye,' he added, 'as sure as God made little apples.'

He thought his advice was worth a drink. I thought so too, and he got it.

We steamed away next day in the Apollo, bound for Cork. We had a rough passage, and the depot sergeant took me into his private cabin and cheered me with a glass of whisky, the first I had ever tasted. He began, when he had thus softened my heart, to try the bargain about the suit of clothes, and produced a set of garments the like of which I do not think I ever saw.