SOLDIERS' WIVES.1 [Archibald Forbes, born in Morayshire, 1838. Journalist and miscellaneous writer. He served several years in a cavalry regiment, and his knowledge of a soldier's life proved useful to him when, as special correspondent for the Daily News, he accompanied the German army throughout the late war with France. His works are: Drawn from Life, a military novel; My Experiences of the War between France and Germany: and Soldiering and Scribbling, a series of sketches from which we quote-published by H. S. King & and two men's room. No privacy of any kind was afforded them, save what they could contrive for themselves; and the married soldier was wont to rig up around his matrimonial bower an environment of canvas screening, something over six feet high, and inclosing a very little domain of floor-space in addition to that occupied by the two beds, placed together. In most regiments the "woman of the room cooked for the room at the fireplace therein, in return for which office it was customary for a "mess" to be cut off for her out of the men's Co. He writes with humour, ease, and much descrip- rations; for in the days of which I am speaking tive power.] married couples were entitled to no rations— this arrangement is one of the beneficent outcomes of the commissariat system. The married man was put out of mess, and he had wherewithal to maintain himself and his family nothing save his bare pay, in addition to anything that the wife might earn. In our regimental library I am unable to find any information as to whether the wives of Roman soldiers dwelt in the Prætorium, the Castrum, or the Vallum. Nor have I been more successful in gathering any details as to the early history of the wife of the British sol- The very idea of a married couple living and dier-when she first became a recognized insti- sleeping in a common room with a dozen or tution in the service, and what was the nature more of single men, partitioned off but by a of the first privileges accorded to her. I flimsy curtain, is outrageously repulsive to our requested a friend in London to make some sense of decency. One may well be struck inquiry on the subject at head-quarters, but the with wonderment that the arrangement should result was by no means encouraging. He have been left uninterfered with so long. went first to the War Office, whence they sent When the soldier got married in those times him to the Horse Guards. But the Horse he strained every effort, it is true, gradually to Guards "did not know, you know," and so acclimatize his wife to the barrack-room, fresh he came empty away. So I leave to some one as she was, in many cases, from a quiet country else, with better opportunities, the task of cottage, or from service in a decent family. dealing with the historical part of the subject, He was wont to take lodgings outside for the and with no affectation of regret because of the first week of the married life, so that at least narrowing of my bounds, I will confine myself the earliest quarter of the honeymoon should to narrating what has come under my own be invested with some of the sacred privacy of observation since I joined Her Majesty's serwhich there was to be so little afterwards. vice, with respect to the condition, habits, But men have told me how they have seen morality, and manner of life generally of the a pure girl brought straight from the church private soldier's wife. to the barrack-room corner, and the tremor of mortal shame that overwhelmed her. It wore off, as most things of the kind mercifully do wear off, under exposure to the chafe of custom and necessity; but the bride's blushes for herself fell to be renewed at an after period on the tanned cheek of the mother. It was before I became an unit in the musterroll of Britain's defenders, that the women of the regiment who were married with leave technically, "on the strength"-lived, without exception, in the barrack-room among the men. There were commonly a married couple in each room. To them, through long consuetude, was assigned the corner farthest from the door. No matter what their number in family might be, they were allowed but two single bedsteads The article under this heading is one of a series contributed to St. Paul's Magazine under the signature of "A Private Dragoon." The condition of the soldier's wife has been considerably improved during Mr. Cardwell's tenure of office. A recent order enacts the beneficent provision that threepence a day may be deducted from the soldier's pay for the maintenance of his wife, even if he has married "without leave." Children were not, indeed, born in the corner; the woman, when her time was near at hand, was removed to lodgings outside, where, at her husband's expense, she tarried till her recovery; but in the corner daughters grew from childhood to girlhood, with but the screen between them and the men outside. When a daughter fell out of place, all the home she had to come to was the corner; and it was noways uncommon for grown women to sleep therein, on the top of the chest, alongside the bed of their parents. When the family was large, living, or at all events sleeping, in the corner, | was little better than pigging, strictly limited as the authorized sleeping accommodation was to the two narrow regulation bedsteads. The woman used to dispose of her boys in the vacant beds of soldiers who were on duty; but in the case of girls there was nothing for it but close packing behind the screen. Bad as all this was disgusting in theory, and repulsive, in many respects, in practicethere were in it, strange as it may seem, some compensatory elements of good. Although the woman had to reconcile herself, with what contentment she might, to a life that perpetually violated the instincts of womanhood, she simply became blunted, not degraded. In proportion as she lived in public, she felt herself amenable to public opinion as represented by the little world of her room; and lowly as her sphere was, and rough as too often became her manners and speech, underneath the skindeep blemishes there lay self-respect and discretion. She would take her share of a gallon of porter at the common table, but she durst not get drunk, conscious as she was of the critics of her conduct around her. And she made the barrack-room more of a home-of a family circle than it is to-day. The men of her room looked upon her in some such light as they would upon a sister keeping house for them. On a change of quarters they always struggled hard to keep their coterie together, with the same woman for its presiding genius. She humanized the barrack-room with the sacred influence of her true if somewhat rough womanhood. There was far less profanity among the men then than there is now; and that obscenity of habitual expression which must startle and shock any visitor to the barrack-room of to-day, was unknown then, quelled wholly by the woman within hearing. Ruffians there were in the service then as there are now, and an outbreak of foul language sometimes came from the lips of one of them. But he was sternly put down and silenced; if a hint from an old soldier, and the finger pointed toward the screen did not suffice, a straight right-hander formed a ready and very convincing argument. The woman was a kindly, motherly soul to the forlorn "cruitie," and would cheer him up with homely words of encouragement as he sat on his bed-iron mopingly thinking of home. She was always obliging if you entreated her civilly, whether to sew on a button or lend a shilling. If she was anything of a scholar, to her fell the office of letter-writer-general for the fellows whose penmanship had been neglected in early days, and thus she became the repository of not a few confidences, which she scorned to violate. Sometimes, as an especial favour, she would allow a man to bring his sweetheart on a Sunday afternoon to a modest tea within the screen in the corner; and if friends came from a distance to see one of "her men," the married woman was always ready to do her best for the credit's sake of the hospitality of her room. There can be little doubt that fewer scandals were current in those days about married women than there are now, and I question much whether, accepting the roughness of the husk as a necessary outcome of their situation, the women who dwelt in the corners were not more genuine at the core than are the ladies who now inhabit the married quarters. Besides the evils I have alluded to, there was another connected with the position of the former that must not be forgotten. Soldiers are very fond of children, but are apt to look upon them in the light rather of monkeys than of creatures with souls in their little bodies. So the imps grew up tutored in all manner of tricks-developing a weird precocity in tossing off a basinful of porter and smoking the blackest of pipes, and using not the most choice language. Mostly they went either into the band of the regiment, or into one of the military schools; and thus, under the old longservice regime, the country had an hereditary soldiery, not a few of whom, born at the foot of the regimental ladder, have climbed up it no inconsiderable distance. In the days I now speak of, there were few railways save some of the great trunk lines. When a regiment went on the line of march, the women rode on the accompanying baggagewaggons, with their brats stowed away in odd corners among the other miscellaneous goods and chattels, and went to their husband's billet, if the people were willing to admit them-as, to their credit, they mostly were. When they were not, the husband had to find lodgings for his wife somewhere else; and when the funds were low, it was customary for women to be smuggled into the hay-loft above the troophorses, and sometimes even to bivouac on the lee-side of a hedge. To some extent the railways entailed an additional charge on the married soldier's slender purse. He had always had to pay for his baggage; for the chest or two, the feather bed,-if the couple had got that length in prosperity, and the few feminine belongings which the wife could call her own; but now the husband had to pay for the warrant under which his wife and family were conveyed by rail. Within the last | to talk, and would submit to be jeered on ten years, however, " 'baggage funds" have subjects which were ignored under the old been formed in most regiments, the proceeds system. of which go far to meet the travelling charges of the women and children of the regiment. In the days I refer to, if women had to live outside the barracks because of want of room inside, there was no allowance in the shape of lodging-money. The first grant of this was made, I think, in 1852, and consisted of one penny a day, paid quarterly. It was gradually increased, till now I believe the allowance is fourpence per day. This may be taken as a rough epitome of the condition of the soldier's wife up till the end of 1848, or the beginning of 1849. About that period, I think, through some troubles in the financial world, an exceptional number of better-class men joined the service, and struck with the indecency of the arrangement then in force, not a few sent in anonymous complaints to the Horse Guards; others, through the press, stimulated public opinion to demand a change, and the authorities sluggishly complied. The reform was not carried through with any great promptitude, for I have heard of women living in the barrack-rooms after the Crimean war. But the change was made in the regiment to which I belonged in the year 1849. It was no great change for the better. Into one attic in Christchurch Barracks seven families were huddled pell-mell. No more arrangements for privacy were made than had existed in the common barrack-rooms. Each separate ménage was curtained off by what may be styled private enterprise. There was but one fireplace in the room, and the women squabbled vehemently over their turns for cooking, and were forced to have recourse to the fires in the men's barrack rooms. The moral and social tone was visibly deteriorated under this arrangement below that which had characterized the common barrackroom. The women, congregated as they were, and with no check upon them, were too prone to club for gin, and conviviality was chequered with quarrels, into which the husbands were not unfrequently drawn. There was a percep tible growth of coarseness of tone among both the women and the men, that became actual grossness; and I question if a young woman, with some of Nature's modesty clinging to her, did not have it more violently outraged in this congeries of married coupies than would have been the case in the old corner-of-the-barrackroom arrangement. Of this at least I am certain, that with ominous rapidity she learned The over-crowding, also, which was all but universal, was physically injurious to both adults and children. The latter did not count in allocating quarters. I have known ten families in one long room in Weedon Barracks. Eight families in a hut in the North Camp at Aldershot was nothing uncommon. But a better régime is now rapidly obtaining. There are few barracks now which do not contain married quarters; where each couple have a room to themselves. I know not whether the inception of this new system was due to our gracious Queen, but the rapidity with which married quarters have become all but universal is certainly owing in the main to her womanly sympathy with her sex. THE CHILD'S WISH IN JUNE. [Mrs. Caroline (Howard) Gilman, born in Boston, America, 8th October, 1794. Novelist, poet, and miscellaneous writer. She is best known by her Recollections of a New England Housekeeper, and Recollections af a Southern Matron; but she has written and edited numerous other works, amongst which are Jephthah's Rash Vow, and Jairus's Daughter, poems; Tales and Ballads: Verses of a Life Time; Ruth Raymond, and Vernon Grove, novels.] Mother, mother, the winds are at play, And he sits and twitters a gentle note, You bid me be busy; but, mother, hear I wish, oh, I wish, I was yonder cloud, STORY OF LE FEVRE. [Laurence Sterne, born at Clonmel, Ireland, 24th November, 1713; died in London 18th March, 1768. He graduated at Cambridge; took orders, and obtained the livings of Sutton, Stillington, and Coxwold in Yorkshire, and he was a prebendary of York Cathedral. His works are: Sermons; The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent.; and A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Scott summed up his characteristics by saying that he was "one of the most affected and one of the most simple of writers-one of the greatest plagiarists and one of the most original geniuses whom England has produced."] My uncle Toby was one evening sitting at his supper, when the landlord of a little inn in the village came into the parlour, with an empty phial in his hand, to beg a glass or two of sack: "'Tis for a poor gentleman-I think of the army," said the landlord, "who has been taken ill at my house four days ago, and has never held up his head since, or had a desire to taste anything till just now, that he has a fancy for a glass of sack and a thin toast;-I think, said he, taking his hand from his forehead, it would comfort me. 'If I could neither beg, borrow, or buy such a thing," added the landlord, "I would almost steal it for the poor gentleman, he is so ill.— I hope in God he will still mend," continued he," we are all of us concerned for him." "Thou art a good-natured soul, I will answer for thee," cried my uncle Toby, "and thou shalt drink the poor gentleman's health in a glass of sack thyself,-and take a couple of bottles, with my service, and tell him he is heartily welcome to them, and to a dozen more if they will do him good. Though I am persuaded," said my uncle Toby, as the landlord shut the door, "he is a very compassionate fellow, Trim, yet I cannot help entertaining a high opinion of his guest too; there must be something more than common in him, that in so short a time should win so much on the affections of his host: " “And of his whole family," added the corporal, "for they are all concerned for him." "Step after him," said my uncle Toby, "do, Trim, and ask if he knows his name." "I have quite forgot it, truly," said the landlord, coming back into the parlour with the corporal, "but I can ask his son again." "Has he a son with him then?" said my uncle Toby. "A boy," replied the landlord, "of about eleven or twelve years of age; but the poor creature has tasted almost as little as his father; he does nothing but mourn and lament for him night and day: he has not stirred from the bed-side these two days." My uncle Toby laid down his knife and fork, and thrust his plate from before him as the landlord gave him the account; and Trim, without being ordered, took it away without saying one word, and in a few minutes after brought him his pipe and tobacco. Stay in the room a little," said my uncle "Trim!" said my uncle Toby, after Toby. he had lighted his pipe and smoked about a dozen whiffs-Trim came in front of his master and made his bow-my uncle Toby smoked on, and said no more." Corporal!" said my uncle Toby; the corporal made his bow-my uncle Toby proceeded no farther, but finished his pipe. "Trim!" said my uncle Toby, "I have a project in my head, as it is a bad night, of wrapping myself up warm in my roquelaure, and paying a visit to this poor gentleman." "Your honour's roquelaure," replied the corporal, "has not once been had on since the night before your honour received your wound, when we mounted guard in the trenches before the gate at St. Nicholas; and besides it is so cold and rainy a night, that what with the roquelaure, and what with the weather, 'twill be enough to give your honour your death, and bring on your honour's torment in your groin." "I fear so," replied my uncle Toby; "but I am not at rest in my mind, Trim, since the account the landlord has given me.—I wish I had not known so much of this affair," added my uncle Toby, "or that I had known more of it:-how shall we manage it?" "Leave it, an' please your honour, to me," quoth the corporal; "I'll take my hat and stick, and go to the house and reconnoitre, and act accordingly; and I will bring your honour a full account in an hour." "Thou shalt go, Trim," said my uncle Toby, "and here's a shilling for thee to drink with his servant." "I shall get it all out of him," said the corporal, shutting the door. My uncle Toby filled his second pipe; and had it not been that he now and then wandered from the point, with considering whether it was not full as well to have the curtain of the tenaille a straight line as a crooked one, he might be said to have thought of nothing else but poor Le Fevre and his boy the whole time he smoked it. It was not till my uncle Toby had knocked the ashes out of his third pipe that Corporal 120 Trim returned from the inn, and gave him the | being toasted by an old soldier.-The youth "I despaired at first," said the corporal, "of being able to bring back to your honour any kind of intelligence concerning the poor sick lieutenant." "Is he in the army then?" said my uncle Toby. "He is," said the corporal. "And in what regiment?" said my uncle Toby. "I'll tell your honour," replied the corporal, "everything straight forwards, as I learned it." "Then Trim, I'll fill another pipe," said my uncle Toby, "and not interrupt thee till thou hast done; so sit down at thy ease, Trim, in the window seat, and begin thy story again." The corporal made his old bow, which generally spoke as plain as a bow could speak ityour honour is good:--and having done that, he sat down as he was ordered, and began the story to my uncle Toby over again, in pretty nearly the same words. "I despaired at first," said the corporal, "of being able to bring back any intelligence to your honour about the lieutenant and his son; for when I asked where his servant was, from whom I made myself sure of knowing everything which was proper to be asked," "That's a right distinction, Trim," said my uncle Toby, 'I was answered, and please your honour, that he had no servant with him;-that he had come to the inn with hired horses, which, on finding himself unable to proceed (to join, I suppose, the regiment), he had dismissed the morning after he came.-If I get better, my dear, said he, as he gave his purse to his son to pay the man, we can hire horses from hence. But, alas! the poor gentleman will never get from hence, said the landlady to me, for I heard the death-watch all night long; and when he dies the youth his son will certainly die with him; for he is brokenhearted already. "I was hearing this account," continued the corporal, "when the youth came into the kitchen, to order the thin toast the landlord spoke of;-but I will do it for my father myself, said the youth. Pray let me save you the trouble, young gentleman, said I, taking up a fork for that purpose, and offering him a chair to sit down by the fire, whilst I did it. -I believe, sir, said he, very modestly, I can please him best myself.—I am sure, said I, his honour will not like the toast the worse for tears. has been bred up from an infant in the army, "Poor youth!" said my uncle Toby, "he his ears like the name of a friend;-I wish I and the name of a soldier, Trim, sounded in had him here." corporal, "had so great a mind to my dinner, "I never, in the longest march," said the could be the matter with me, an' please your as I had to cry with him for company; what honour?" uncle Toby, blowing his nose, "but that thou "Nothing in the world, Trim," said my art a good-natured fellow." the corporal, "I thought it was proper to tell "When I gave him the toast," continued your honour (though a stranger) was extremely him I was Captain Shandy's servant, and that concerned for his father: and that if there was anything in your house or cellar"-("and thou mightest have added my purse too," said my uncle Toby)-"he was heartily welcome meant to your honour), but no answer, for his to it: he made a very low bow (which was heart was so full-so he went up stairs with the toast:-I warrant you, my dear, said I, as I opened the kitchen door, your father will be well again.-Mr. Yorick's curate was smoking good or bad, to comfort the youth.—I though a pipe by the kitchen fire; but said not a word, it wrong," added the corporal. "I think so too," said my uncle Toby. of sack and toast he felt himself a little revived, "When the lieutenant had taken his glass and sent down into the kitchen to let me know that in about ten minutes he should be glad if I would step up-stairs. I believe, said the landlord, he is going to say his prayers, for there was a book laid upon the chair by his bed-side, and as I shut the door I saw his son take up a cushion. I thought, said the curate, that you gentlemen of the army, Mr. Trim, poor gentleman say his prayers last night, said never said your prayers at all.-I heard the ears, or I could not have believed it.-Are you the landlady, very devoutly, and with my own sure of it, replied the curate.-A soldier, an please your reverence, said I, prays as often (of his own accord) as a parson; and when he is fighting for his king, and for his own life, and for his honour too, he has the most reason to pray to God of any one in the whole world." "Twas well said of thee, Trim," said my your reverence, has been standing for twelve |