The fact is that the feather-bonnet, and all other exaggerated and expensive head-dresses, should be as resolutely relegated to limbo as the hideous masks worn by the fighting men of Old Japan. Both were designed to overawe the enemy; but, as modern fighting is done in forage-caps, that naïve purpose cannot be carried into effect, and the object should be to provide such clothing as will best enable a man to keep himself, in the Duke of Wellington’s words, ‘clean and smart, as a soldier ought to be.’ And no headgear is smarter, none more easily kept clean, than the Glengarry bonnet.
While it is hardly possible to imagine any dress better calculated to impede a soldier’s movements than the uniforms inflicted upon all arms in the service during the early years of the nineteenth century, one should not overlook the relief that was ordained in a detail that was a source of constant unnecessary trouble to the soldier. Clubbed pigtails had been transmitted as an irksome legacy from Marlborough’s army, until in 1808 the Horse Guards decreed their abolition. When Sir Arthur Wellesley landed in Mondego Bay on August 1-5 in that year, one of his first orders was that these senseless, dirty appendages were to be cut off. Never, one may believe, was an order more cheerfully obeyed. A counter-order was issued shortly after from the Horse Guards, requiring the retention of pigtails, but it was beyond the power of man to comply with it. It was easy to cut off pigtails, but they could not be replaced; and now the only vestige of a barbarous fashion in the army remains in the bow of black ribbon worn by the Welsh Fusiliers at the back of the collar of the tunic.
Unfortunately, the irrational fashion of tight clothing for the army instituted by the Prince Regent endures to this day. It is true that a sensible field-dress of khaki was devised and worn during the South African War, and is now the service dress of the army; but the full dress for officers and the ‘walking-out’ uniform for men is still cut and fitted on the old excruciating lines. I think it took three weeks to fit a young friend of mine, joining a battalion of Guards a few years ago, before the adjutant of that corps d’élite passed the tunic as satisfactory. Every crease and wrinkle had to be obliterated, at such cost to freedom of limbs and lungs as may be imagined. It may not be an extravagant hope that, when our army returns once more to a peace footing, the full dress may be designed with more regard to health and comfort than hitherto. Our eyes have grown accustomed during the present war to seeing soldiers in a costume, far from beautiful, indeed, but easy and respectable. There is no reason why a scarlet coat should be less comfortable than a dust-coloured one, and it will be a sad thing if the historic red of the English infantry is not preserved for full dress. But even if it were not, the khaki uniform might be rendered very becoming by the addition of a little modest ornament, especially by the restoration of the old regimental facings. These would not make troops one whit more conspicuous in the field; on the contrary, it is a commonplace of optics that parti-coloured objects are less easily detected in a landscape than those of one uniform colour.
One desirable result of making uniform more comfortable wear might be expected to follow; officers might not be so scrupulous to exchange it for mufti the moment they are released from duty. Alone among the nationalities of Europe has the British officer hitherto treated his uniform as if it were something to be ashamed of in private life. It is an unseemly, even an unhandsome practice, seeing that non-commissioned officers and privates are not allowed to disport themselves in what they call ‘private clothes.’ Nor was it the custom among officers in the eighteenth century, when uniform was as easy and becoming as any other dress. The usual dress of an officer, even when on leave, was then his undress uniform, just as it is now in Continental armies. The change in the British Army was the direct outcome of the Prince Regent’s tyranny in buttoning up soldiers to the throat in clothes which it was a torment to wear.
It must be owned that the Duke of Wellington was in large measure responsible, inasmuch as he set the example of preferring easy clothes to uneasy ones. A plain blue frock opening at the throat to a white cravat was his invariable dress throughout his campaigns. He had for his own wear a cocked hat one third the size of the huge one prescribed for general officers. There was a famous occasion in 1814, after the restoration of Louis XVIII., when the King and the Royal Princes, with a brilliant suite, attended a state performance in the Odéon Theatre. The house was ablaze with uniforms of many nations and the gay dresses of ladies of the Court. In a box immediately opposite the royal one sat the Duke—in plain clothes! ‘The pride that apes humility’? Not a bit. Le vainqueur des vainqueurs could scarcely be suspected of that. Simply, as he had to sit through a long performance, he chose to do so in clothes that enabled him to sit in comfort.
Much praiseworthy attention is now given to the equipment and clothing of British troops serving in hot climates, but it was otherwise throughout most of the nineteenth century, and it is incalculable how much suffering, disease, and death was caused by neglect of any such provision. When Colonel Luard was preparing his book in 1850-52 he received letters from many officers calling his attention to this matter. One of these writes:
‘I shall be very glad if you dedicate a portion of your work to the dress of our soldiers in the colonies.... I have myself seen the Spanish, French, and Danish troops in the West Indies much more healthy than our own, from great attention to their comfort in their dress.... The whole body of civilians in the tropics appear in loose white jackets and trousers and a skull-cap ... the shakoes and red coats of our troops were not altered in our West India colonies.’
A cavalry officer remarks: ‘I hope you will dwell on the madness of our soldiers wearing leather caps under a tropical sun’; while another observes that ‘a brass helmet was not found serviceable in Africa by the 7th Dragoon Guards when that regiment was at the Cape.’
Our troops suffered horribly during the first Kaffir war, 1846-48, from being clothed exactly as they had been at home—leather stocks, tight coatees, heavy shakoes, and all the rest of it. Some consideration was shown for the soldier in the second Kaffir war, 1851-52. Captain King, of the 74th Highlanders, describes how his regiment landed at Cape Town (after a voyage from England of two months!) wearing their ordinary clothing, and it was not until they had marched far into the interior that ‘our bonnets and plaids were replaced by a costume more suitable for the bush—viz., a short dark canvas blouse; in addition to which feldt-schoen and lighter pouches, made of untanned leather, were issued to the men, and broad leather peaks affixed to their forage-caps.’[9]
Captain King’s narrative is illustrated by lithographs from his own excellent drawings, which show his men, heavily accoutred with pack and pouch, and with no protection against the sun except the aforesaid peak to the forage-cap, severely handicapped in fighting nearly naked blacks armed with rifles. No wonder the 74th lost heavily, their commander, Colonel Fordyce, falling at their head in a bush fight, together with some of his best officers.