In a neat, well-appointed barouche, with clever, high-stepping brown horses and everything complete, a party of three well-dressed persons are gliding easily out of town, sniffing by anticipation the breezes of the country, and greeting every morsel of verdure with a rapture only known to those who have been for several weeks in London. Past the barracks at Knightsbridge, where the windows are occupied by a race of giants in moustaches and shirt-sleeves, and the officers in front of their quarters are educating a poodle; past the gate at Kensington, with its smartest of light-dragoon sentries, and the gardens with their fine old trees disguised in soot; past dead walls overtopped with waving branches; on through a continuous line of streets that will apparently reach to Bath; past public-houses innumerable, and grocery-shops without end; past Hammersmith, with its multiplicity of academies, and Turnham Green, and Chiswick, and suburban terraces with almost fabulous names, and detached houses with the scaffolding still up; past market-gardens and rosaries, till Brentford is reached, where the disappointed traveller, pining for the country, almost deems himself transported back again east of Temple Bar. But Brentford is soon left behind, and a glimpse of the “silver Thames” rejoices eyes that have been aching for something farther afield than the Serpentine, and prepares them for the unbounded views and free, fresh landscape afforded by Hounslow Heath. “This is really the country,” says Blanche, inhaling the pure air with a sigh of positive delight, while the General exclaims, at the same instant, with his accustomed vigour, “Zounds! the blockhead’s missed the turn to the barracks, after all.”
The ladies are very smart; and even Mary Delaval (the third occupant of the carriage), albeit quieter and more dignified than ever, has dressed in gaudier plumage than is her wont, as is the practice of her sex when they are about to attend what they are pleased to term “a breakfast.” As for Blanche, she is too charming—such a little, gossamer bonnet stuck at the very back of that glossy little head, so that the beholder knows not whether to be most fascinated by the ethereal beauty of the fabric, or wonder-struck at the dexterity with which it is kept on. Then the dresses of the pair are like the hues of the morning, though of their texture, as of their “trimmings,” it becomes us not to hazard an opinion. Talk of beauty unadorned, and all that! Take the handsomest figure that ever inspired a statuary—dress her, or rather undress her to the costume of the Three Graces, or the Nine Muses, or any of those dowdies immortalised by ancient art, and place her alongside of a moderately good-looking Frenchwoman, with dark eyes and small feet, who has been permitted to dress herself: why, the one is a mere corporeal mass of shapely humanity, the other a sparkling emanation of light and smiles and “tulle” (or whatever they call it) and coquetry and all that is most irresistible. Blanche and Mary, with the assistance of good taste and good milliners, were almost perfect types of their different styles of feminine beauty. The General, too, was wondrously attired. Retaining the predilections of his youth, he shone in a variety of under-waistcoats, each more gorgeous than its predecessor, surmounting the whole by a blue coat of unexampled brilliancy and peculiar construction. Like most men who are not in the habit of “getting themselves up” every day, he was always irritable when thus clothed in “his best,” and was now peculiarly fidgety as to the right turn by which his carriage should reach the barracks where the “Loyal Hussars,” under the temporary command of Major D’Orville, were about to give a breakfast of unspeakable splendour and hospitality.
“That way—no—the other way, you blockhead!—straight on, and short to the right!” vociferated the General to his bewildered coachman, as they drew up at the barrack-gate; and Blanche timidly suggested they should ask “that officer,” alluding to a dashing, handsome individual guarding the entrance from behind an enormous pair of dark moustaches.
“That’s only the sentry, Blanche,” remarked Mary Delaval, whose early military experience made her more at home here than her companion.
“Dear,” replied Blanche, colouring a little at her mistake, “I thought he was a captain, at least—he’s very good-looking.”
But the barouche rolls on to the mess-room door, and although the ladies are somewhat disappointed to find their entertainers in plain clothes (a woman’s idea of a hussar being that he should live and die en grande tenue), yet the said plain clothes are so well put on, and the moustaches and whiskers so carefully arranged, and the fair ones themselves received with such empressement, as to make full amends for any deficiency of warlike costume. Besides, the surrounding atmosphere is so thoroughly military. A rough-rider is bringing a young horse from the school; a trumpet is sounding in the barrack-yard; troopers lounging about in picturesque undress are sedulously saluting their officers; all is suggestive of the show and glitter which makes a soldier’s life so fascinating to woman.
Major D’Orville is ready to hand them out of the carriage. Lacquers is stationed on the door steps. Captain Clank and Cornet Capon are in attendance to receive their cloaks. Even Sir Ascot Uppercrust, who is here as a guest, lays aside his usual nonchalance, and actually “hopes Miss Kettering didn’t catch cold yesterday getting home from Chiswick.” Clank whispers to Capon that he thinks “Uppy is making strong running”; and Capon strokes his nascent moustaches, and oracularly replies, “The divil doubt him.”
No wonder ladies like a military entertainment. It certainly is the fashion among soldiers, as among their seafaring brethren, to profess far greater devotion and exhibit more empressement in their manner to the fair sex than is customary in this age with civilians.
The latter, more particularly that maligned class, “the young men of the present day,” are not prone to put themselves much out of their way for any one, and treat you, fair daughters of England, with a mixture of patronage and carelessness which is far from complimentary. How different you find it when you visit a barrack or are shown over a man-of-war! Respectful deference waits on your every expression, admiring eyes watch your charming movements, and stalwart arms are proffered to assist your delicate steps. Handsome, sunburnt countenances explain to you how the biscuit is served out; or moustaches of incalculable volume wait your answer as to “what polka you choose their band to perform.” You make conquests all around you, and wherever you go your foot is on their necks; but do not for this think that your image never can be effaced from these warlike hearts. A good many of them, even the best-looking ones, have got wives and children at home; and the others, unencumbered though they be, save by their debts, are apt to entertain highly anti-matrimonial sentiments, and to frame their conduct on sundry aphorisms of a very faithless tendency, purporting that “blue water is a certain cure for heart-ache”; that judicious hussars are entitled “to love and to ride away”; with other maxims of a like inconstant nature. Nay, in both services there is a favourite air of inspiriting melody, the burden and title of which, monstrous as it may appear, are these unfeeling words, “The girls we leave behind us!” It is always played on marching out of a town.