Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846
We have seen our sights, and are returned, and waiting to go on shore. Our paddle-wheels are once more at rest in the harbour of Messina! They have let down the windows of the long room on deck, in which we had taken shelter from the vermin below, and wake we must, though it is not five o'clock. The sun breaks cover to-day, magnificently, behind Messina; but the Health-office having no inducement to open its eyes prematurely, will not, for some time, send its delegates on board, to announce our liberty to land. We have nothing for it but to look over the boat, or study haggard faces reflected in the unflattering mirror of a beautiful sea. The hauling about of things on deck is always pleasant, as a signal of voyage over! The sun still shines full upon the long row of houses on the quay – fishing boats are entering with abundance of fresh fish for our dinner, and shoals of silvery sardines, untaken, are leaping out of the water near our prow, to escape from a large body of mackerel which is pursuing them. The authorities are coming! We don't want any cards to hotels, but cram a dozen into our pockets, and ask if there are any more here? We are sorry to take a new guide. Jack Robertson has spoiled us for some time. When he pocketed our supplementary piece, as we were coming off, he told us, "haud sine lacrymis," it should buy a linen shirt for his youngest child. "I good Christian, sir, I no tell you lie, sir! I love my children, upon my word! When they go to bed, my wife not able to attend them, sir! They cry, father. I say, yes! Bread, says little Bill – I get up; give him some bread. Mary say, water, and I get up for water six times every night! – no story, sir!" "How many hours do you work?" "When sun get up, sir, till it be mid-day; I go see childer till three, den work hard at build wall till sun go down; den I go home. I wish I could speak English better; but you understand me, sir." We rowed off with many vivas, and this poor mason's "hopes" that we "might find all square at home." At home! Oh, that we had a home!! – an unassuming wife – placens et tacens uxor; an unpretending house, with a comfortable guest-chamber; and no noiseless nursery, unfendered and uncared for! But the bells of Messina, all let loose together, interrupt our pleasing reverie, and our friends, who have been hovering round us in a boat, are now permitted to approach, and to land with us at our hotel. 'Tis our last day! – in the evening, we go to hear Sicilian vespers for the last time; and the next day we are off for Naples!
Addio! Sicilia!
On deck! – off! – Stromboli is already veiling himself in the rapidly encroaching shades of darkness, and it is time to say good-night to this fair night, and to go to our cabin. Beautiful Sicily! may this not be our final leave-taking! We found no poetry below, and in a short time are driven back from the cabin by its complicated nuisances, to moonlight contemplation, and catching cold. An hour elapses – a town not to be forgotten by the Neapolitans is just ahead. The moon shines brightly on its high-perched castle, and we have scarce stopped the paddles, when our deck is invaded by a new freightage of passengers, already far too many. Twenty boats full of noise and animation, with all the exaggeration that attends both in these latitudes; every pair of oars fighting for a fare, and knocking one another over board in contention for passenger or parcel destined to land at Pizzo. They ship about with the wildness and alacrity of South-Sea islanders; some are all but naked, and every quarrel is conducted in such a Calabrian brogue, that the very men of Messina profess not to understand them, and to treat them as savages rather than as countrymen. The small fort in front was disgraced by the nocturnal trial and prompt execution of the unfortunate Murat. It is long ago; but of these noisy disputants for the things to be landed, some probably had been eyewitnesses of the last bloody act of a blood-stained throne. A poor sick horse, confined in his narrow crib on deck, blinks at the moonlight, and can neither sleep nor eat his corn; he drops his lower lip, and presents an appearance of more physical suffering than we should have thought could have been recognized in face of quadruped; but pain traces stronger lines, and understands the anatomy of expression better than pleasure. We wished to land for half an hour, but this being impossible, addio Pizzo! Our vessel is quickly off, and our Cyclopean stokers are already mopping off their black sweat in the dreadful glare of the engine-room. Some cages, full of canaries and parrots, just become our fellow-passengers, are all in a fluster at the screaming and bustle to which they are unused, and a large cargo of turkeys, with fettered legs, and fowls that can only flap their wings, do so in despair at the treatment threatened them by the dogs on deck – second and third class passengers are fighting for prerogatives in misery, amidst the clatter of unclean plates, and the remains of the supper of the fore-cabin. The space for walking, is encumbered with coils of cordage, and the empty water-barrels are all taken possession of for seats. Bad tobacco, even among the élite, and garlic every where, drive us to the fore-deck, or to the neutral ground between it and ours. A passage, which promised fair when we started, begins, now that we are half over, to look suspicious; and a preliminary lurch or two, as the breeze freshens, converts many from an opinion they had begun to promulgate, that the steamer on the Mediterranean afforded, on the whole, the most eligible mode of traversing space. We looked at each other piteously enough, on seeing that we were fast going to face a magnificent specimen of a wave, of which our piston was determined to try the valour, and if possible abate the confidence. When Greek meets Greek, said we, as we dashed through it, and gave a warning to old Neptune to take care of his interests below! Other huge parcels of water hit us obliquely, or come down upon us with a swoop like a falchion; steam hisses, and chimney gets red-hot; but though the vessel yields not, there be those on board who do: an Anglo-Sicilian pleasure party is quenched in twenty blanched faces at once; conversation is over, women retire, and the deck is deserted. Against such ups and downs as these, the very philosophy of the Stoics were powerless! – even thou, O moon! seemest a little disconcerted, and hast withdrawn thy pale face from thy whilom plate-glass, the Mediterranean, so often, for weeks together, like the inland lake of the north,
"Thy mirror! to inform
Thee, if the dark and arrowy storm
The forest boughs that brake,
Require thy slender silvery hand, to still
Thy ruffled wreath of lily and jonquil!"
Pindemonte.
Whew! – wind gets up, and takes part with wave, and all against us – never mind! —
"Hurrah! for the marvels of steam,
As thus through the waters we roam;
For pistons that smite, oh! for funnels that gleam,
And to carry us safe through the foam."
Whew, whew! – but greater divinities than Neptune are abroad to-night! – What! expect our black chimney to show the white feather! Pooh! pooh! old Eunosigæus, what are thy white horses to the invisible hoofs of two hundred and forty coal-black steeds stamping in the hold? We had, however, a sharp seven-hours' tussle for it; at the end of which, the buffeted Mongibello came bounding into the harbour, and swirled round in the face of Vesuvius, who was smoking his cigar as quietly as ever!
We have tried several Mediterranean steamers, and our report of all is much the same – bad is the best! A sea passage any where, to be comfortable, depends solely on the smoothness of the water; if this be rough, what care you for mahogany, rosewood, and plate-glass? Whether the cabin where you are to be sick, and to hear others groan, has its Scotts, its Byrons, and its Moores, under a convex mirror; its rows of curtained births, and horse-hair sofas, and its long line of polished, well articulated tables? Whether the smell of empyreumatised grease be wafted to the nostrils by a Maudsley or a Bell? Whether the captain have his ears bored, or be an Englishman? Your brass nails and varnished buffets are very well in dock, when the vessel has stank off her last voyage, and lies clean washed, like that other syren of the opposite coast, who coaxed Ulysses and his men, some years ago – not, indeed, to come on board, but the contrary. But when her deck is all soot and nastiness, when she has quartered her vermin on her passengers, and goes gurgling along, as if she had an Empyema under her pleura costalis; when she pitches into the waves, as if to punish them, and tramples on their crests, as if to crush them under her keel, why all the brass you want is "æs triplex;" and there is no varnish in the world that will enable you to put a good face on it. A few heaves more, such as those of our present imagining, and brandy and water, bottled porter, and bottled philosophy, are uncorked in vain!
As to particular steamers, the Castor since he lost his twin-brother, who was run down off Capo D'Anzo (he forgot, we suppose, to invoke Fortune "gratum quæ regit Antium"), has become quite negligent of toilette, and incredulous about the powers of soap and sand. The bugs in only one of her beds would defy Bonnycastle! Fast enough, however, goes the Castor! Orestes, pursued by the furies, never rushed more impetuously on than does this child of Leda, with all his vermin in the locker. Of Virgil in the water, we have no experience, but they say his prosody is perfect, and his quantity (of accommodation) blameless. The Dante under paddles is unknown to us; but the poem which his customers read oftenest on board is doubtless the Purgatory. The captain of the Palermo, an obliging man, with ear-rings, and speaking Siculo-English, does his job in nineteen hours; and giving you one execrable meal, gives you more than enough. This vessel (blessed privilege!) carries some of the Teffin family (Mr Teffin, our readers know, was bug-destroyer to the king), and is said to have no bugs. As to the two floating volcanoes, Vesuvius and Mongibello, we had heard much against the Neapolitan crater (cabin they call it), and, after due preparation, we precipitated ourselves into the latter, which placards her two hundred and fifty horse-power. The engineer, however, if you acquire his confidence, reduces the team considerably, taking off at least one-fifth. Horse-power is, after all, we fear, an appeal to the imagination! How do you measure horse-power? and what horses? Calabrian nags? Arab stallions? Dutch mares? or English drays? or perhaps you mean sea-horses? That every vessel has a great rocking-horse power we know by sad experience, and are come to read one hundred and fifty, two hundred, &c., with great tranquillity, being convinced that when the translation from horse-power into paddle-power is effected, you obtain no corresponding result.
ÆSTHETICS OF DRESS
Military Costume
Military dress is almost as difficult and dangerous a thing to deal with as ladies' attire; as various in its hues and forms, as fanciful in its conceits, as changeable in its fashions, and as touchy in the temper of its wearers. To pull a guardsman by his coat-tail would be as unpardonable an offence as to tread on a lady's skirt; and to offer an opinion upon a lancer's cap might be considered as impertinent as to criticise a lady's bonnet. Having, however, been bold enough to commit offences of the latter description, we will now venture to brave the wrath of the whole of Her Majesty's forces, horse, foot, and artillery, while we read those gallant gentlemen a lecture on their costume; and we will even add into the bargain that other most honourable and equally useful branch of the public force "the mariners of England;" – as for "the force," the police, truly we eschew them and their deeds. They are a perverse, stiff-necked race, who wear two abominations, round hats and short coats, and they have a villanous propensity of following you home from your club of an evening, and inveigling you every now and then to Bow Street, thrusting a broken knocker or two into your pocket as you go along, and then pestering your bewildered memory with all sorts of nocturnal misdemeanors; truly they are a race of noxious vermin; pretty well, perhaps, for the protection of the swinish multitude; but for us gentlemen, why, they "come betwixt the wind and our nobility," and their remembrance stinks in our nostrils! One thing only we know in their favour, – they dress all in one colour; their blueness alone makes them sufferable in this nineteenth century of ours, and whenever they depart from this great principle of æsthetic unity, we will bring in a bill for their suppression.
Now, if there be any thing more self-evident than the ante-Noachian problem that "two and two make four," it is this axiom, the verity of which was demonstrated long before Achilles behaved in so ungentlemanlike a manner to Hector, when he took him that dirty drive round Troy, viz., that utility for purposes of service is the very essence and spirit of military costume. The finest dressed army in the world had better be in plain clothes, if the excellence of their clothing depends only upon its ornament; while, on the contrary, the plainest and most rudely equipped corps will come out of campaign with excellent military effect and appearance, provided only that their clothing has been suited to their service. "My dear fellow," said an old moustache to us one day on the Place du Carrousel, "give me 20,000 men who have served in nothing but blouses and blue caps, and I'll make you ten times as fine a line as all that mob of national guards there in their new uniforms." And he was right; in military matters it is the man that produces the real effect, as to appearance, upon the long run; and the practised eye of the old campaigner would prefer a Waterloo man in a smock-frock to any flunkey you could pick out, even though he were dressed up as fine as Lady L – 's favourite chasseur. We assert, then, that a scrupulous attention to the nature of the service should form the basis and the starting point of all discussions as to military costume; but we will not go so far as to say that ornament is inadmissible or unnecessary for military men. On the contrary, we know that the adornment of the person has been attended to by the bravest men in all ages and in all armies; and we know further, that it does produce a powerful effect on the morale of a corps. We intend to advocate the use of frequent but consistent ornament for our soldiers, but we do not wish to turn then into mere paraders. Use first and before every thing, in this case at least – ornament next and entirely subsidiary to it; keep to this rule, and you shall see an army turned out into the field better than most that pass muster now-a-days.
It is of no use going into that diffuse subject – that vexatissima quæstio– of how far the military dress of ancient days accorded with the wants and uses of the service; the reader may go and look into that dusty little volume of Vegetius de Re Militari, if he is fond of dabbling in military antiquities; or he may consult our learned old friend, Captain Grose of facetious memory; or still better, let him be off to Goderich Court, and ask the porter to admit him to a sight of the finest collection of armour in the world. We are not going to dive into these matters; we will rather say roundly, that ever since armour came to be disused, we think military men have gone clean daft in equipping themselves. Only look at the uniforms of the campaigns of the Grand Monarque or William of Orange; see what inconvenient coats those glorious fellows that won Blenheim and Ramilies wore; recollect the absurd turn-out of Charles XII., and even of Frederick the Great. Convenience and comfort seem to have been totally out of the question in those days – not that they made the men worse soldiers – they all fought admirably – but we question whether their fatigues would not have been less, and their health sounder, had they been clad and equipped in a sensible manner. Oh, the powder, and the pigtails, and the broad cuffs, and the Ramilies cock, and the sword tucked through the coat-tail! Glories of glorious times, ye are gone for ever! But so, too, are the tactics of your wearers; all is changed; another Cæsar has swept you all off the field; and even the famous uniforms of the French empire, so brilliant, – but at times so absurd, – even they have been altered. They have had their day, and most of them are fit now only for fancy-balls and old-clothes' shops. Nothing is so short-lived as a good uniform; it varies with the taste of a commander-in-chief, or a commander-in-chief's toady; or the fancy of some royal favourite. It's like the wind in the Mediterranean; you never know what is coming upon you till you are in the midst of it; and so it is with your uniform. Get a new one, and the probability is that you will not show it on parade half-a-dozen times before a new regulation is out, and then more work for the tailors. Be it so, then; military costume, like all other kinds, is doomed to change; let us aim only at keeping its vagaries within something like the limits of common sense.
The infantry of our own army – the successors of those noble fellows that walked across Spain – have no better covering for their backs than the scanty and useless coatee; in this they parade, and in this they are supposed to fight. Behind, two little timid-looking skirts descend any thing but gracefully; they are too small to have any grace in them; and a pair of sham cotton epaulettes, or large unmeaning wings, are supposed, by a pleasing fiction of the military tailors, to adorn their shoulders. Now, this garment, we contend, is neither ornamental nor graceful: were it cut down into the common jacket, it would be better; were the excrescences at the shoulders removed, it would be more seemly; it has no warmth in it, and offers little or no protection against the rain. No soldier, who has been reduced to his coatee in a campaign, but must have sighed after his original smock-frock, or any other outer covering that had at least some pretensions to being useful. Since, however, the idea of defending the body of the foot-soldier by steel or leather is given up, the two things requisite in a serviceable coat are warmth and convenience. No coatee nor jacket can be warm enough for the British service, exposed as the men are to all varieties of climate; and infinitely more to cold and wet than to sunshine. In India, and in some of the colonies, a lighter kind of clothing may be indeed necessary; but for the common use of the army, a coat is wanted that shall be a protection against wet and cold, and yet not inconvenient to the wearer – making him comfortable, in fact, while it allows him free use of all his limbs and muscles. For the heavy infantry, therefore, we would propose such a coat as we have before recommended for all civilians; nothing more nor less than a frock-coat, coming down half way along the thighs, and close buttoned above to the chin. Every body knows that this is the most comfortable thing he can put on for all kinds of wear; and the evolutions of a good infantry soldier can be perfectly well gone through by whoever wears it. The shoulders, if they require external ornament, should have something that is really useful at the same time; not merely tinsel or cotton lace; and, therefore, it should be the adaptation of a thick woollen pad, ornamented with metal or coloured lace, calculated to take off the pressure of the musket and of the knapsack-straps from the bones of the neck and arm. Whoever has carried a musket twelve or fourteen hours continuously, and has had his pack on at the same time, well knows how comfortable and how really useful such an addition to his dress would have been. The coat should be furnished with two small pockets in front, just to hold a knife, some money, and things of that kind; and they should be close to the circle of pressure at the waist.
The appearance of a close-buttoned coat of this kind, not caricatured about the shoulders, is manly and dignified; it proclaims its usefulness at the first glance; and, whatever be its colour, will form a handsome uniform. The cross-belts should be done away with – being at once ugly, expensive, and inconvenient – a plain broad strap, white or black, as you please, should gird the waist up well; and the cartouche-box, which could be made to slide upon it, might be worn, while out of battle, behind; but, in actual engagement, in front. The bayonet (which might advantageously be lengthened, and made to approximate rather more to the nature of a sword, or a long knife, than it does now) should always have its sheath fixed to the belt, at the left side.
The soldier would in this way have his habiliments warmer, his equipments tighter and more simple, and his appearance in line or on guard, highly improved. Only think of how you would dress yourself if you were going out deer-stalking, and you will come to something of this kind – barring the pockets of your shooting-coat, which are certainly inadmissible, from motives of military neatness and discipline; and barring, too, the buttoning up to the chin, which, on the mountain's side, you had perhaps rather dispense with; but which the soldier must adhere to, if he would keep up the essential degree of stiffness and smartness of dress. Coats of this kind, and equipments of this nature, are worn by the Prussian and French infantry – two good authorities in military matters; they have been tried on our police force; something of the sort has been used for clothing the pensioners; and we venture to predict, that, in a few years, a dress upon these principles will become universal in the British service.
Should a man have a cloak or a great-coat? – It should be a compound of both – a small cloak with sleeves; and it might be worn either rolled up, as at present, on the top of the kit; or else, as some of the French troops wear it – both conveniently and gracefully – made up into a long thin roll, going over the left shoulder, and with the ends strapped together upon the right hip. The Scotch regiments would wear their plaids most effectively in this fashion; and it is a good guise to adopt, whether you are on the rough lands of Spain, or in the thick woods of America. A warm coat and a blanket are two of the soldier's dearest friends in winter and have kept many a man out of hospital.
The light-infantry man – and there ought to be more distinction made in the uniforms than there is – might wear a long jacket, descending below the hips, instead of a frock-coat: his cloak, too, should be lighter: and, in fact, his whole equipments constructed for quick and active service. So should be the rifleman's clothing and arms; everything should be designed to serve the one end had in view – the real use and intent of that particular arm, whatever it might be; and, if so, then let the officers of the rifles leave off their long trailing sabres – fitter for a light dragoon than for one who is supposed to be hopping about, like a Will o' the Wisp, in swampy brakes; or creeping, like a serpent, through rushes and long grass. Their present swords are good for nothing but to trip them up in their movements, or to give them the pleasure of holding the sheath in one hand, and the blade in the other.
For the leg-clothing of our men, give us the trouser, and let us keep to it; we do not indeed seem likely to change it; yet, who can tell? Just as the civilian seems to have decided upon this happy invention, as the most useful and comfortable thing he ever donned, so will all military men agree in its praises. It is not so good for parade purposes, as the light pantaloon and gaiter, in as much as it conceals defects of limbs; but, on the long run, it is far to be preferred; it lasts better, keeps cleaner, and does more comfortable service to its wearer, than any thing else. One point not sufficiently attended to by our military authorities, and yet which affects the health of the men, is, that their trousers, whether in parade or for service, whether for winter or for summer use, should be made of such a woollen fabric as will allow of frequent washing. It is impossible for the cleanliness of the soldier to be sufficiently kept up without this; and the material now used for plaids of various kinds, or the common blanketing for sailors' clothes, might be easily modified, so as to be suitable for this purpose. Linen trousers are indispensable for foreign service of some kinds; but for summer clothing at home, a light white blanketing, which has the curious faults of being cool in warm weather, and warm in cold, is the proper substitute; our men often get sudden chills in summer evenings, which send then to the fever ward, and the cause is mainly attributable to undue exposure in insufficient clothing. To complete the lower portions of the soldier's dress, let him wear either the shoe and gaiter, or the low boot; either is good, there is hardly a choice – comfort preponderates in favour of the gaiters – ornament in that of the boot.
And now for the head-gear of the British Achilles: a touching and a troublesome subject, which has bothered all heads, from those of the humble wearer up to the field-marshal, who is content under the shadow – not of his laurels – but his plumes – to design any kind of uncomfortable and ugly thing that strikes his imagination, and to clap it on the cranium of steady veteran and raw recruit. Truly we have been most unfortunate, æsthetically speaking, in our military caps; and, to go no further back than Peninsular recollections, – from the conico-cylindrical cap of Vimiera to the funny little thing with a flap up in front of Vittoria and Waterloo, down through the inverted cone-shaped shako of recent days – until we have come to the very bathos of all chapellerie that now disgraces the heads of too many among our infantry regiments – all has been bad. Never, since the day when men first armed their heads for the fight, has there been seen such a paltry, ugly, useless, bastard kind of a thing as the last cap turned out for the British army. With its poke before and behind, its conical top and low elevation, it is a degraded cross between a Germano-Tyrolese cap and a policeman's hat – a bad mixture of both. May it be sent back to Germany, where the idea came from, and may it be stuffed into a barrel of sour-crout, not to come out till it is thoroughly rotted.
There is only this choice for the useful and graceful covering of the foot-soldier's head; either the small slouched hat of the old Spanish infantry – a hat very liable to be turned into something slovenly and dirty – or the foraging cap of our undress – a covering most comfortable, but not quite strong enough for campaigning use, as well as for parade; or the helmet of antique form, shaped, that is to say, in some conformity with the make of the head, and more or less ornamented with crest and plume. We incline on the whole to the latter, and for two reasons: it is not so liable to get altered in shape by service as the others; it will wear well for a longer time; it is more useful in mêlées and against cavalry; and it is the most becoming of any. In Prussia it has lately been adopted with great success; and the appearance of the infantry there is now warlike and graceful in the highest degree. The helmet need not be made of metal; boiled leather is the proper material – ventilation and lightness can be easily provided for in it, and any degree of ornament may be superadded – crest or feathers, each is becoming.
For Eastern service something lighter than this is of course necessary – a cap or a broad hat might easily be adopted there; and for American service another description of covering is also most essential to the health and comfort of the soldier. We mean the close-fitting and well-formed fur cap, which can protect the head, neck, and cheeks of the wearer from the extraordinary rigour of a Canadian winter. The cap worn by our guards when last on service in these regions, was at once comfortable, useful, and handsome.
For the cavalry, where ornament seems to be required much more than amongst the infantry – for they fancy themselves, if indeed they are not, the top sawyers in all matters of service – the head-dress must be not only useful, but can hardly be made too ornamental, within the limits of good taste. And here allow us to say that the infantry shako and the great grenadier's cap are perfectly absurd and misplaced; the one will never give a man any chance against a sabre-cut, and the other is fit only to tumble off within the first two minutes of a charge. In heavy cavalry nothing but the helmet, richly plumed and crested, should be allowed; constructed either of leather or metal, yellow brass or silvery steel, and adorned sometimes with skins, sometimes with graven plates. The handsomest helmet worn by any regiment in Europe, is that of the old gardes du corps of Charles X., the same as that now worn by the gardes municipaux à cheval in Paris; a metal helm with leopard-skin visir; a lofty crest, with a horse-tail streaming down the back, and a high red and white feather rising from the left side. Beauty of natural form, the sharp contrast of flowing lines between the feather and the tailed crest, and the general brilliancy of colour, render this by far the most effective head-dress for cavalry which we have ever seen. Our helmets in England, for the dragoon guards, are too heavy, too theatrical; there is no life and spirit in them.
In light cavalry of all kinds, except lancers, the fur cap, lately re-introduced into the British army, is the most useful and most suitable covering; it is at once comfortable and becoming; its form is warlike and harmonious; its colour rich; and it admits of as much or as little ornament as you please to put upon it. Without a feather it is good, with one it is better; guard-bands add to its appearance without troubling the wearer; and it has the merit of lasting to look well longer than any other kind of cap whatever. In the lancers they should always preserve that national cap which tells us of the origin of this arm, and which is an ingenious and elegant adaptation of the strength of the helmet to the lightness of the shako; it is beautiful and graceful as the lance itself; we have nothing to say of it but what is in its favour.