Later on, there was the Mansfield affair, when a disagreement arose between Sir William Mansfield (afterwards Lord Sandhurst), or his wife, and an aide-de-camp that elicited much that was amusing in regard to purloined jams and other preserves, for which her ladyship was supposed to be celebrated; all which instances ended in the usual way after an infinity of positive assertion met by flat contradiction.
Whether the farce lately enacted, with its lawyers and their speeches, affected the result, or benefited anybody except the lawyers, is a point upon which most people will agree; all which, however, sinks into insignificance in comparison with the question as to when and how did this interference with military tribunals first become tolerated, and how can our Military Council or our Military anything, or the officers constituting the Court, submit to be harangued by “only a civilian,” as one of Robertson’s plays describes outsiders?
In all the military tribunals of the past such an innovation was unheard of. Colonel Crawley, on his trial, had words put into his mouth by Sir William Harcourt (whose reputation as an orator it made), but he was not permitted to address the Court. In the Robertson Court Martial it was the same, and in the Navy to-day a prisoner is defended by “a friend,” but no civilian would be permitted to “quarter deck it” in that conservative service.
Even Colonel Dawkins—who, by the way, was a Household Brigade man—amongst all his eccentric experiences, never got so far as suggesting that a civilian should bridge the chasm that has hitherto existed between the Law Courts and the Horse Guards by all this special pleading, and one wonders what old Sir George Browne or General Pennefather would have said (or sworn) if such a suggestion had been proposed to them! It may be too much to say there would have been an earthquake, but the foundations of the house would certainly have vibrated.
And it is the ignorance of what the present privileges of the Guards are that makes it difficult to form any opinion on the merits of the case. The friction that these “privileges” used to cause when a Household regiment was occasionally brigaded at Aldershot or Dublin or the Curragh with regiments of the line was, however, undeniable.
It pained old captains with Crimean and Indian medals to be “turned out” by a field officer with a fluffy upper lip and a youthful voice that had not long before sounded at Eton; it was irritating (at least) for colonels commanding distinguished regiments to see a Guard’s sentry fumbling with his rifle and deliberately coming to the “carry,” and five minutes after “presenting” to a brevet major of the Guards, who was trundling a hoop when the old warrior was in the trenches before Sebastopol; it was annoying to read in general orders special reminders as to the prohibition regarding imperials and capricious shaving, and to see half-a-dozen Guards officers with beards like pioneers; it was amusing to hear (as one did) the son of old Sir Percy Douglas (who was for a little season in the Guards) inform a distinguished field officer that the “executive” command could only be given by a Guardsman to a Guardsman; and still more amusing to hear the retort which made mincemeat of the privilege, at least, on that occasion—all which nonsense has, however, been considerably modified. By all means let the Guards retain their privileges and licences—but let them in mercy be “consumed on the premises.” And if the physique of these favoured regiments is not as fine as of yore, no one will deny that their “marching past” and their “dressing” are far superior to that of the line and “pretty” enough to please even Admiral Scott himself.
It may further be conceded without fear of contradiction that the Queen’s Company of the Grenadiers in 1862 was a magnificent specimen of physique and drilled to perfection under Lord Henry Percy and Micky Bruce.
Beards, indeed, have always been a cause of offence. In the tropics (except in India) a man is compelled to shave; with the thermometer below zero, the same regulation is rigidly enforced.
It was Colonel Crealock’s beard at Gibraltar that was the indirect cause of an officer being tried by Court Martial; it was Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar’s and Colonel Phillip’s beards that led to invidious remarks in the Dublin Division; and, until the razor is abolished beyond the precincts of the four-mile radius, so long will a link remain between the grand old days of the muzzle loader and cold steel and the modern requirements for potting an enemy at a thousand yards rise.
When the Metropolitan Board of Works was at the zenith of its power, and thoroughfares were being projected, and whole streets were disappearing and ancient rookeries being demolished, it was incredible the leakage that appeared to exist, and how the friends of indiscreet or dishonest employés reaped a harvest by acquiring dilapidated buildings for a song, and standing out for huge compensation when the day for demolition drew nigh.