For this service General MacDonald was selected as military secretary, and any one who had the capacity of passing his meshes was enabled to present himself at his Royal Highness’s next levée.
These functions were divested of all formality; an extension of leave, a request to go to the depôt, an application to join the service companies, was invariably more successful if preferred personally, and “Well, sir, what is it?” with a kindly shake of the hand saved many a heart-burning and protracted filtration through a dozen departments, usually ending in a snub.
Seated in the room was his aide-de-camp—the solitary specimen in uniform. Colonel Fraser, V.C., had commanded for years the celebrated “Cherry-bobs” (11th Hussars), and if a little unsociable whilst in actual command, the mannerism had entirely disappeared in the courteous mouthpiece of the Duke.
Gazing one afternoon on the placid features of the “Royal George” before the new War Office, the occasion on which he once visited a station not 100 miles from London and told the colonel and officers generally that he didn’t believe a word they said, and stamped and fumed and swore and threatened, came vividly to my mind. There had been a fracas in the canteen during the officers’ mess hour, which eventually developed into a riot, and then was quelled. No one in the mess-house appears to have heard it, and it was only next morning that the matter, after investigation, was reported to the Horse Guards. The “Royal George,” who was distinctly apoplectic, ran many such chances of combustion in his younger days, for the old warrior was by no means mealy-mouthed and was not above playing to the gallery, as represented by the Press, and although he could never aspire to rank with General Pennefather, he could, when circumstances demanded, swear like any trooper.
It was the 11th that Lord Cardigan brought to such a wonderful state of perfection and for the command of which he had paid upwards of £20,000 over regulation. It was in the 11th that the fire-eating Colonel shot a captain of his regiment dead in a duel, and only saved his commission by his overwhelming interest. It was a regiment in which every private was dressed and redressed at his Captain’s expense as if his uniform had been made by Poole, and where the overalls and sleeves were so tight that one marvelled how officers or men ever got in or out of them.
What a beautiful regiment it was in the old sixties. And one felt it was a national crime to send such troops to India. But all that, alas! is long since changed; the Pimlico Clothing Works, economy, and paternal letters to The Times have done the rest; and the abolition of purchase, the breech-loader, and the new type of British officer have completed the inauguration of the “slops” period, and abolished once and for ever well-dressed regiments and esprit de corps.
Whilst on this delicate subject memory suggests many presumptuous reminiscences.
When Prince Alfred was a supernumerary Lieutenant of the Racoon, what an ideal brick he was! Scraping on a fiddle, myself at the piano, and Arthur Hood (lately become Viscount Bridport) with a brass instrument of deafening intensity, what harmonious discord has not shaken the rafters of the old Casemates at Gibraltar; and when the Prince seated himself at the piano and sang “In ancient days there lived a squire,” one forgets the retiring potentate that eventually ruled over Gotha.
It was on one of these occasions that during a lull in the festivities a steady tramp outside was wafted to our musical ears, and going out to discover the cause, I was horrified to see an elderly gentleman, ablaze with decorations, in evening attire, who, with numerous apologies, was conducted into the room.
He was in fact the Duc d’Alençon’s equerry, who had honoured the private concert with his presence, and for the past hour had sat a transfixed witness of our marvellous harmony. At this time the Racoon was commanded by Count Gleichen—a nephew of the late Queen’s—who once happened to be on the P. and O. at the same time as myself, both returning from leave to Gibraltar.