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Title: Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places
Author: Archibald Forbes
Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9460]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on October 3, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPS, QUARTERS, AND CASUAL PLACES ***
Produced by Eric Eldred, Andy Schmitt and PG Distributed Proofreaders
CAMPS, QUARTERS AND CASUAL PLACES
BY ARCHIBALD FORBES, LL.D.
NOTE
My obligations for permission to incorporate some of the articles in this
volume are due to Messrs. George Routledge and Sons, Mr. James Knowles of the _Nineteenth Century_, Mr. Percy Bunting of the _Contemporary Review_, and the Proprietor of _McClure's Magazine_.
LONDON, _June_ 1896.
CONTENTS
1. MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE
2. REVERENCING THE GOLDEN FEET
3. GERMAN WAR PRAYERS
4. MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE
5. A VERSION OF BALACLAVA
6. HOW I "SAVED FRANCE"
7. CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT
8. THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER
9. RAILWAY LIZZ
10. MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER
11. THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY
12. BISMARCK BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR
13. THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR
14. THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE
15. GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST
16. THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY
17. THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY
18. PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES
19. THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN
MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE
The interval between the declaration of the Franco-German war of 1870-71,
and the "military promenade," at which the poor Prince Imperial received
his "baptism of fire," was a pleasant, lazy time at Saarbr cken; to which
\ufffd
pretty frontier town I had early betaken myself, in the anticipation,
which proved well founded, that the tide of war would flow that way first.
What a pity it is that all war cannot be like this early phase of it, of
which I speak! It was playing at warfare, with just enough of the grim
reality cropping up occasionally, to give the zest which the reckless
Frenchwoman declared was added to a pleasure by its being also a sin. The
officers of the Hohenzollerns--our only infantry regiment in garrison--
drank their beer placidly under the lime-tree in the market-place, as
their men smoked drowsily, lying among the straw behind the stacked arms
ready for use at a moment's notice. The infantry patrol skirted the
frontier line every morning in the gray dawn, occasionally exchanging with
little result a few shots with the French outposts on the Spicheren or
down in the valley bounded by the Sch necken wood. The Uhlans, their
\ufffd
piebald lance-pennants fluttering in the wind, cantered leisurely round
the crests of the little knolls which formed the vedette posts, despising
mightily the straggling chassepot bullets which were pitched at them from
time to time in a desultory way; but which, desultory as they were, now
and then brought lance-pennant and its bearer to the ground--an occurrence
invariably followed by a little spurt of lively hostility.
I had my quarters at the Rheinischer Hof, a right comfortable hotel on the
St. Johann side of the Saar, where most of the Hohenzollern officers
frequented the _table d'h te_ and where quaint little Max, the drollest
\ufffd
imp of a waiter imaginable, and pretty Fra lein Sophie the landlord's
\ufffd
niece, did all that in them lay to contribute to the pleasantness and
comfort of the house. Not a few pleasant evenings did I spend at the table
of the long dining-room, with the close-cropped red head of silent and
genial Hauptmann von Krehl looming large over the great ice-pail, with its
_chevaux de frise_ of long-necked Niersteiner bottles--the worthy
Hauptmann supported by blithe Lieutenant von Klipphausen, ever ready with
the _Wacht am Rhein_; quaint Dr. Diestelkamp, brimful of recollections of
"six-and-sixty" and as ready to amputate your leg as to crack a joke or
clink a glass; gay young Adjutant von Z low--he who one day brought in a
\ufffd
prisoner from the foreposts a red-legged Frenchman across the pommel of
his saddle; and many other good fellows, over most of whom the turf of the
Spicheren, or the brown earth of the Gravelotte plain, now lies lightly.
But although the Rheinischer Hof associates itself in my mind with many
memories, half-pleasant, half-sad, it was not the most accustomed haunt of
the casuals in Saarbr cken, including myself. Of the waifs and strays
\ufffd
which the war had drifted down to the pretty frontier town the great
rendezvous was the H tel Hagen, at the bend of the turn leading from the
\ufffd
bridge up to the railway station. The Hagen was a free-and-easy place
compared with the Rheinischer, and among its inmates there was no one who
could sing a better song than manly George--type of the Briton at whom
foreigners stare--who, ignorant of a word of their language, wholly
unprovided with any authorisation save the passport signed "Salisbury,"
and having not quite so much business at the seat of war as he might have
at the bottom of a coal-mine, gravitates into danger with inevitable
certainty, and stumbles through all manner of difficulties and bothers by
reason of a serene good-humour that nothing can ruffle and a cool
resolution before which every obstacle fades away. Was there ever a more
compositely polyglot cosmopolitan than poor young de Liefde--half
Dutchman, half German by birth, an Englishman by adoption, a Frenchman in
temperament, speaking with equal fluency the language of all four
countries, and an unconsidered trifle of some half-dozen European
languages besides? Then there was the English student from Bonn, who had
of 00
Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places by Forbes, Archibald, 1838-1900
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