“For now sits expectation in the air,
And shews a sword from hilt unto the point.”
Henry V.
Never shall I forget the delightful sensations my mind experienced on reading, in the long-expected Gazette, the announcement of my first military appointment. I was in London at the time, and had been residing three weeks at Old Slaughter's Coffee House, in St. Martin's Lane, deferring from Tuesday 'till Saturday, and from Saturday 'till Tuesday, the fulfilment of my mother's strict injunctions “to take lodgings and live economically,” when one evening the waiter handed to me, damp from the press, the official sheet which was to terminate all my anxiety. There I was in print,—in absolute print; and that, too, in the Gazette—by the King's Royal Authority!
There are many youths, who, in such a situation, would, from the ecstatic impulse of their feelings, have upset the table; or have flung the decanter at the waiter's head; or, perhaps, have snatched the wig off the head of any respectable gentleman who might have happened to be sitting within reach; but I acted differently. Had it been an ordinary impulse of gladness, I should, no doubt, have poured forth my ebullition of pleasant feeling upon tables, decanters, waiters, and wigs of elderly gentlemen; but this was no everyday sensation,—no flash in the pan: it was a splendid coruscation, the intensity of which dazzled all my senses, and marvellously heightened my ideas of self-importance. The auditory organs of the Waterloo hero thrilled not more at the first announcement of his Grace's Dukedom, than mine, as my lips pronounced the consummation of my almost wearied hopes—an Ensigncy. I was more than a Duke, more than a King, more than an Emperor: I was a Subaltern. In idea, I was already a Captain, a Colonel, a General! I gave the reins to my enthusiastic imagination, and would not, I believe, have exchanged my commission for a coronet.
I instantly brought my body to an acute angle with my inferior extremities, by placing the latter longitudinally on the seat of the box in which I had placed myself, and, elevating my shirt-collar to a parallel line with my nose, ordered the waiter to bring me a bottle of claret. For the half hour I was engaged in drinking it, I continued to gaze at the Gazette, to the no small mortification of several fidgetty gentlemen who were waiting for a sight of it. Yet all I read, and all I could read, was “W****, A****, B***. Gent. to be Ensign, vice Thompson, killed in action!”
I was just turned of nineteen, a well grown and somewhat precocious lad, generally considered by my father and his friends as a shrewd and well-disposed fellow, who was likely one day or other to cut a figure in the army; but, by my mother and her female côterie, (all above the middle age,) I was set down, nem. con., as an arch wild dog, on whom a little military discipline would be by no means thrown away; for I was a second son, and my mother, although affectionate enough, did not evince towards me that strength—or, more properly speaking, that weakness—of maternal fondness which she lavished on my elder brother, (her favourite,) who was specially designed for the pulpit by her and her devout advisers. My own opinion of my disposition was about half-way between that of my father and mother. I never, to my knowledge, did much harm, except occasionally hoaxing our parson and apothecary; or operating a few nocturnal exchanges of signs[1] between barbers, pawnbrokers, inn-keepers, and undertakers; or perhaps an occasional shot at a villager's cat. But the best cannot please every body; and even in the case of their own fathers and mothers, young fellows experience different opinions upon their merits. However, this I knew—that I pleased myself: I was backed by an indulgent father, health, spirits, and plenty of money; so, in military phrase, I may say that I was ready primed for mischief, and did not care a doit for the devil.
When I had finished my bottle, and tolerably satisfied myself with repeating over and over the terms of my appointment, in a semi-audible tone, I sallied forth. It was a fine evening in the beginning of July 1809, and town was crammed with military men in mufti. They had, as it seemed to me, even in plain clothes, an air peculiarly striking; and it excited at once my delight and envy to see them stared at by all; but particularly by the ladies, whose glances, to me, from my earliest age, were always bewitching in the extreme. I burned to mingle in the glory, and to share with my now brother-officers, the smiles of the fair; but my sun-burned drab coat, with broad buttons, together with my slouched hat, white Windsor-cord breeches and top-boots, presented an odious barrier to my hopes and desires. O for a military tailor!—
“That great enchanter, at whose rod's command,
Beauty springs forth, and nature's self turns paler;
Seeing how art can make her work more grand,
When she don't pin men's limbs in like a jailor.”
Of course, I soon found one. My first few paces in the Strand brought me in front of a shop-window, within which were profusely displayed braided coats, epaulettes, sword-knots, and brass heel-spurs. I could no more have passed it, without entering, than could the camel of the desert a clear and gushing spring without dipping his nostrils into it. Although particularly directed, both by my father and mother, to order my regimentals from our family tailor, I immediately proceeded to the man of measures, who, at first, eyed me in a careless, tooth-picking sort of way; but when he learned the nature and purport of my visit, he became the most polite and complaisant of tailors.