themselves to the high duties of their station, regardless of its pleasures, than in any other: men who recognize practically the responsibility of their rank, and do not shirk from them; men who think they have something to do, and something to repay, for the accidents of birth and fortune–who, in the senate, in the field, or in the less prominent, but not less noble, career of private life, act, as they feel, with the poet:
“At heros, et decus, et quae non fecimus ipsi, Vix ea nostra voco.”
It has been admirably remarked, by some one whose name we forget, that the grand advantage of high birth is, placing a man as far forward at twenty-five as another man is at fifty. We might, as a corollary to this undeniable proposition, add, that birth not only places, but keeps a man in that advance of his fellows, which in the sum of life makes such vast ultimate difference in the prominence of their position.
This advantage enjoyed by the aristocracy of birth, of early enrolling themselves among the aristocracy of power, has, like every thing in the natural and moral world, its compensating disadvantage: they lose in one way what they gain in another; and although many of them become eminent in public life, few, very few, comparatively with the numbers who enter the arena, become great. They are respected, heard, and admired, by virtue of a class-prepossession in their favour; yet, after all, they must select from the ranks of the aristocracy of talent their firmest and best supporters, to whom they may delegate the heavy responsibilities of business, and lift from their own shoulders the burden of responsible power.
One striking example of the force of birth, station, and association in public life, never fails to occur to us, as an extraordinary example of the magnifying power of these extrinsic qualities, in giving to the aristocracy of birth a consideration, which, though often well bestowed, is yet oftener bestowed without any desert whatever; and that title to admiration and respect, which has died with ancestry, patriotism, and suffering in the cause of freedom, is transferred from the illustrious dead to the undistinguished living.
Without giving a catalogue _raisonne_ of the slow fellows, (we use the term not disrespectfully, but only in contradistinction to the others,) we may observe that, besides the public service in which the great names are sufficiently known, you have poets, essayists, dramatists, astronomers, geologists, travellers, novelists, and, what is better than all, philanthropists. In compliment to human nature, we take the liberty merely to mention the names of Lord Dudley Stuart and Lord Ashley. The works of the slow fellows, especially their poetry, indicate in a greater or less degree the social position of the authors; seldom or never deficient in good taste, and not without feeling, they lack power and daring. The smooth style has their preference, and their verses smack of the school of Lord Fanny; indeed, we know not that, in poetry or prose, we can point out one of our slow fellows of the present day rising above judicious mediocrity. It is a curious fact, that the most daring and original of our noble authors have, in their day, been fast fellows; it is only necessary to name Rochester, Buckingham, and Byron.
Among the slow fellows, are multitudes of pretenders to intellect in a small way. These patronize a drawing-master, not to learn to draw, but to learn to talk of drawing; they also study the _Penny Magazine_ and other profound works, to the same purpose; they patronize the London University, and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, as far as lending their names; for, being mostly of the class of fashionable _screws_, they take care never to subscribe to any thing. They have a refined taste in shawls, and are consequently in the confidence of dressy old women, who hold them up as examples of every thing that is good. They take chocolate of a morning, and tea in the evening; drink sherry with a biscuit, and wonder how people _can_ eat those hot lunches. They take constitutional walks and Cockle’s pills; and, by virtue of meeting them at the Royal Society, are always consulting medical men, but take care never to offer them a guinea. They talk of music, of which they know something–of books, of which they know little–and of pictures, of which they know less; they have always read “the last novel,” which is as much as they can well carry; they know literary, professional, and scientific men at Somerset House, but, if they meet them in Park Lane, look as if they never saw them before; they are very peevish, have something to say against every man, and always say the worst first; they are very quiet in their manner, almost sly, and never use any of the colloquialisms of the fast fellows; they treat their inferiors with great consideration, addressing them, “honest friend,” “my good man,” and so on, but have very little heart, and less spirit.
They equally abhor the fast fellows and the pretenders to fashion. They are afraid of the former, who are always ridiculing them and their pursuits, by jokes theoretical and practical. If the fast fellows ascertain that a slow fellow affects sketching, they club together to annoy him, talking of the “autumnal tints,” and “the gilding of the western hemisphere;” if a botanist, they send him a cow-cabbage, or a root of mangel-wurzel, with a serious note, stating, that they hear it is a great curiosity in _his line_; if an entomologist, they are sure to send him away “with a flea in his ear.” If he affects poetry, the fast fellows make one of their servants transcribe, from _Bell’s Life_, Scroggins’s poetical version of the fight between Bendigo and Bungaree, or some such stuff; and, having got the slow fellow in a corner, insist upon having his opinion, and drive him nearly mad. All these, and a thousand other pranks, the fast fellows play upon their slow brethren, not in the hackneyed fashion which low people call “_gagging_,” and genteel people “_quizzing_,” but with a seriousness and gravity that heightens all the joke, and makes the slow fellow inexpressibly ridiculous.
It is astonishing, considering the opportunities of the slow fellows, that they do not make a better figure; it seems wonderful, that they who glide swiftly down the current of fortune with wind and tide, should be distanced by those who, close-hauled upon a wind, are beating up against it all their lives; but so it is;–the compensating power that rules material nature, governs the operations of the mind. To whom much is given of opportunity, little is bestowed of the exertion to improve it. Those who rely more or less on claims extrinsic, are sure to be surpassed by those whose power is from within. After all, the great names of our nation (with here and there an exception to prove the rule) are plebeian.
OF THE ARISTOCRACY OF POWER.
In their political capacity, people of fashion, among whom, for the present purpose, we include the whole of the aristocracy, are the common butt of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.
They are accused of standing between the mass of the people and their inalienable rights; of opposing, with obstinate resistance, the progress of rational liberty, and of—-but, in short, you have only to glance over the pages of any democratic newspaper, to be made aware of the horrible political iniquity of the aristocracy of England.
The aristocracy in England, considered politically, is a subject too broad, too wide, and too deep for us, we most readily confess; nor is it exactly proper for a work of a sketchy nature, in which we only skim lightly along the surface of society, picking up any little curiosity as we go along, but without dipping deep into motives or habits of thought or action, especially in state affairs.
Since our late lamented friends, the Whigs, have gone to enjoy a virtuous retirement and dignified ease, we have taken no delight in politics. There is no fun going on now-a-days–no quackery, no mountebankery, no asses, colonial or otherwise. The dull jog-trot fellows who have got into Downing Street have made politics no joke; and now that silence, as of the tomb, reigns amongst _quondam_ leaders of the Treasury Benech–now that the camp-followers have followed the leader, and the auxiliaries are dispersed, we really have nobody to laugh at; and, like our departed friends, have too little of the statesman to be serious about serious matters.
With regard to the aristocracy in their public capacity, this is the way we always look at them.
In the first place, they govern us through the tolerance of public opinion, as men having station, power, property, much to lose, and little comparatively to gain–men who have put in bail to a large amount for their good behaviour: and, in the second place, they govern us, because really and truly there are so many outrageously discordant political quacks, desirous of taking our case in hand, that we find it our interest to entrust our public health to an accomplished physician, even although he charges a guinea a visit, and refuses to insure a perfect cure with a box of pills costing thirteenpence-halfpenny. There can be no doubt whatever, that the most careful men are the men who have most to care for: he that has a great deal to lose, will think twice, where he that has nothing to lose, will not think at all: and the government of this vast and powerful empire, we imagine, with great deference, must require a good deal of thinking. In a free press, we have a never-dying exponent of public opinion, a perpetual advocate of rational liberty, and a powerful engine for the exposure, which is ultimately the redress, of wrong: and although this influential member of our government receives no public money, nor is called right honourable, nor speaks in the House, yet in fact and in truth it has a seat in the Cabinet, and, upon momentous occasions, a voice of thunder.
That the aristocracy of power should be in advance of public opinion, is not in the nature of things, and should no more be imputed as a crime to them, than to us not to run when we are not in a hurry: they cannot, as a body, move upwards, because they stand so near the top, that dangerous ambition is extinguished; and it is hardly to be expected that, as a body, they should move downwards, unless they find themselves supported in their position upon the right of others, in which case we have always seen that, although they descend gradually, they descend at last.
This immobility of our aristocracy is the origin of the fixity of our political institutions, which has been, is, and will continue to be, the great element of our pre-eminence as a nation: it possesses a force corrective and directive, and at once restrains the excess, while it affords a point of resistance, to the current of the popular will. And this immobility, it should never be forgotten, is owing to that very elevation so hated and so envied: wanting which the aristocracy would be subject to the vulgar ambitions, vulgar passions, and sordid desires of meaner aspirants after personal advantage and distinction. It is a providential blessing, we firmly believe, to a great nation to possess a class, by fortune and station, placed above the unseemly contentions of adventurers in public life: looked up to as men responsible without hire for the public weal, and, without sordid ambitions of their own, solicitous to preserve it: looked up to, moreover, as examples of that refinement of feeling, jealous sense of honour, and manly independence, serving as detersives of the grosser humours of commercial life, and which, filtering through the successive _strata_ of society, clarify and purify in their course, leaving the very dregs the cleaner for their passage.
A body thus by habit and constitution opposed to innovation, and determined against the recklessness of inconsiderate reforms, has furnished a stock argument to those who delight in “going a-head” faster than their feet, which are the grounds of their arguments, can carry them. We hear the aristocracy called stumbling-blocks in the way of legislative improvements, and, with greater propriety of metaphor, likened to drags upon the wheel of progressive reform; and so on, through all the regions of illustration, until we are in at the death of the metaphor. How happens to be overlooked the advantage of this anti-progressive barrier, to the concentration and deepening of the flood of opinion on any given subject? how is it that men are apt altogether to forget that this very barrier it is which prevents the too eager crowd from trampling one another to death in their haste? which gives time for the ebullitions of unreasoning zeal, and reckless enthusiasm, and the dregs of agitation, quietly to subside; and, for all that, bears the impress of reason and sound sense to circulate with accumulated pressure through the public mind? Were it not for the barrier which the aristocracy of power thus interposes for a time, only to withdraw when the time for interposition is past, we should live in a vortex of revolution and counter-revolution. Our whole time, and our undivided energies, would be employed in acting hastily, and repenting at leisure; in repining either because our biennial revolutions went too far, or did not go far enough; in expending our national strength in the unprofitable struggles of faction with faction, adventurer with adventurer: with every change we should become more changeful, and with every settlement more unsettled: one by one our distant colonies would follow the bright example of our people at home, and our commerce and trade would fall with our colonial empire. In fine, we should become in the eyes of the world what France now is–a people ready to sacrifice every solid advantage, every gradual, and therefore permanent, improvement, every ripening fruit that time and care, and the sunshine of peace only can mature, to a genius for revolution.
This turbulent torrent of headlong reform, to-day flooding its banks, to-morrow dribbling in a half-dry channel, the aristocracy of power collects, concentrates, and converts into a power, even while it circumscribes it, and represses. So have we seen a mountain stream useless in summer, dangerous in winter, now a torrent now a puddle, wasting its unprofitable waters in needless brawling; let a barrier be opposed to its downward course, let it be dammed up, let a point of resistance be afforded where its waters may be gathered together, and regulated, you find it turned to valuable account, acting with men’s hands, becoming a productive labourer, and contributing its time and its industry to advance the general sum of rational improvement.
From the material to the moral world you may always reason by analogy. If you study the theory of revolutions, you will not fail to observe that, wherever, in constructing your barrier, you employ ignorant engineers, who have not duly calculated the depth and velocity of the current; whenever you raise your dam to such a height that no flood will carry away the waste waters; whenever you talk of finality to the torrent, saying, thus long shalt thou flow, and no longer; whenever you put upon your power a larger wheel than it can turn–you are slowly but surely preparing for that flood which will overwhelm your work, destroy your mills, your dams, and your engines; in a word, you are the remote cause of a revolution.
This is the danger into which aristocracies of power are prone to fall: the error of democracies is, to delight in the absolutism of liberty; but thus it is with liberty itself, that true dignity of man, that parent of all blessings: absolute and uncontrolled, a tyranny beyond the power to endure itself, the worst of bad masters, a fool who is his own client; restrained and tempered, it becomes a wholesome discipline, a property with its rights and its duties, a sober responsibility, bringing with it, like all other responsibilities, its pleasures and its cares; not a toy to be played with, nor even a jewel to be worn in the bonnet, but a talent to be put out to interest, and enjoyed in the unbroken tranquillity of national thankfulness and peace.
Another defect in the aristocracy of power is, the narrow sphere of their sympathies, extending only to those they know, and are familiar with; that is to say, only as far as the circumference of their own limited circle. This it is that renders them keenly apprehensive of danger close at hand, but comparatively indifferent to that which menaces them from a distance. Placed upon a lofty eminence, they are comparatively indifferent while clouds obscure, and thunder rattles along the vale; their resistance is of a passive kind, directed not to the depression of those beneath them, nor to overcome pressure from above, but to preserve themselves in the enviable eminence of their position, and there to establish themselves in permanent security.
As a remedy for this short-sightedness, the result of their isolated position, the aristocracy of power is always prompt to borrow from the aristocracy of talent that assistance in the practical working of its government which it requires; they are glad to find safe men among the people to whom they can delegate the cares of office, the annoyances of patronage, and the odium of power; and, the better to secure these men, they are always ready to lift them among themselves, to identify them with their exclusive interests, and to give them a permanent establishment among the nobles of the land.
* * * * *
THE PHILOSOPHY OF DRESS.
Perhaps we may be expected to say something of the dress of men of fashion, as it is peculiar, and not less characteristic than their manner. Their clothes, like their lives, are usually of a neutral tint; staring colours they studiously eschew, and are never seen with elaborate gradations of under waistcoats. They would as soon appear out of doors _in cuerpo_, as in blue coats with gilt buttons, or braided military frocks, or any dress smacking of the professional. When they indulge in fancy colours and patterns, you will not fail to remark that these are not worn, although imitated by others. The moment a dressy man of fashion finds that any thing he has patronized gets abroad, he drops the neckcloth or vest, or whatever it may be, and condemns the tailor as an “unsafe” fellow. But it is not often that even the most dressy of our men of fashion originate any thing _outre_, or likely to attract attention; of late years their style has been plain, almost to scrupulosity.
Notwithstanding that the man of fashion is plainly dressed, no more than ordinary penetration is required to see that he is excellently well dressed. His coat is plain, to be sure, much plainer than the coat of a Jew-clothesman, having neither silk linings, nor embroidered pocket-holes, nor cut velvet buttons, nor fur collar; but see how it fits him–not like cast iron, nor like a wet sack, but as if he had been born in it.
There is a harmony, a propriety in the coat of a man of fashion, an unstudied ease, a graceful symmetry, a delicacy of expression, that has always filled us with the profoundest admiration of the genius of the artist; indeed, no ready money could purchase coats that we have seen–coats that a real love of the subject, and working upon long credit, for a high connexion, could alone have given to the world–coats, not the dull conceptions of a geometric cutter, spiritlessly outlined upon the shop-board by the crayon of a mercenary foreman, but the fortunate creation of superior intelligence, boldly executed in the happy moments of a generous enthusiasm!
Vain, very vain is it for the pretender to fashion to go swelling into the _atelier_ of a first-rate coat architect, with his ready money in his hand, to order such a coat! _Order_ such a coat, forsooth! order a Raphael, a Michael Angelo, an epic poem. Such a coat–we say it with the generous indignation of a free Briton–is one of the exclusive privileges reserved, by unjust laws, to a selfish aristocracy!
The aristocratic trouser-cutter, too, deserves our unlimited approbation. Nothing more distinguishes the nineteenth century, in which those who can manage it have the happiness to live, than the precision we have attained in trouser-cutting. While yet the barbarism of the age, or poverty of customers, _vested_ the office of trouser-cutter and coat architect in the same functionary, coats were without _soul_, and “inexpressibles” inexpressibly bad, or, as Coleridge would have said, “ridiculous exceedingly.” In our day, on the contrary, we have attained to such a pitch of excellence, that the trouser-cutter who fails to give expression to his works, is hunted into the provinces, and condemned for life to manufacture nether garments for clergymen and country gentlemen.
The results of the minute division of labour, to which so much of the excellence of all that is excellent in London is mainly owing, is in nothing more apparent than in that department of the fine arts which people devoid of taste call fashionable tailoring. We have at the West End fashionable _artistes_ in riding coats, in dress coats, in cut-aways; one is superlative in a Taglioni, another devotes the powers of his mind exclusively to the construction of a Chesterfield, a third gives the best years of his life to the symmetrical beauty of a barrel-trouser; from the united exertions of these, and a thousand other men of taste and genius, is your indisputably-dressed man of fashion turned out upon the town. Then there are constructors of Horse Guards’ and of Foot Guards’ jacket, full and undress; the man who contrives these would expire if desired to turn his attention to the coat of a marching regiment; a hussar-pelisse-maker despises the hard, heavy style of the cutters for the Royal Artillery, and so on. Volumes would not shut if we were to fill them with the infinite variety of these disguisers of that nakedness which formerly was our shame, but which latterly, it would seem, has become our pride. With the exception of one gentleman citywards, who has achieved an immortality in the article of box-coats, every contriver of men of fashion, we mean in the tailoring, which is the principal department, reside in the parish of St James’s, within easy reach of their distinguished patrons. These gentlemen have a high and self-respecting idea of the nobleness and utility of their vocation. A friend of ours, of whom we know no harm save that he pays his tailors’ bills, being one day afflicted with this unusual form of insanity, desired the artist to deduct some odd shillings from his bill; in a word, to make it pounds–“Excuse me, sir,” said Snip, “but pray, let _us_ not talk of pounds–pounds for tradesmen, if you please; but artists, sir, _artists_ are always remunerated with guineas!”
To return to the outward and visible man of fashion, from whose peculiarities our dissertation upon the sublime and beautiful in tailoring has too long detained us. The same subdued expression of elegance and ease that pervades the leading articles of his attire, extends, without exception, to all the accessories; or if he is deficient in aught, the accessorial _toggery_, such as hats, boots, _choker_, gloves, are always carefully attended to; for it is in this department that so distinguished a member of the detective police as ourselves is always enabled to arrest disguised snobbery. You will never see a man of fashion affect a Paget hat, for example, or a D’Orsayan beaver: the former has a ridiculous exuberance of crown, the latter a by no means allowable latitude of brim–besides, borrowing the fashion of a hat, is with him what plagiarizing the interior furniture of the head is with others. He considers stealing the idea of a hat low and vulgar, and leaves the unworthy theft to be perpetrated by pretenders to fashion: content with a hat that becomes him, he is careful never to be before or behind the prevailing hat-intelligence of the time. Three hats your man of fashion sedulously escheweth–a new hat, a shocking bad hat, and a gossamer. As the song says, “when into a shop he goes” he never “buys a four-and-nine,” neither buyeth he a Paris hat, a ventilator, or any of the hats indebted for their glossy texture to the entrails of the silk worm; he sporteth nothing below a two-and-thirty shilling beaver, and putteth it not on his head until his valet, exposing it to a shower of rain, has “taken the shine out of it.”
In boots he is even more scrupulously attentive to what Philosopher Square so appropriately called the fitness of things: his boots are never square-toed, or round-toed, like the boots of people who think their toes are in fashion. You see that they fit him, that they are of the best material and make, and suitable to the season: you never see him sport the Sunday patent-leathers of the “snob,” who on week-a-days proceeds on eight-and-sixpenny high-lows: you never see him shambling along in boots a world too wide, nor hobbling about a crippled victim to the malevolence of Crispin. The idiosyncrasy of his foot has always been attended to; he has worn well-fitting boots every day of his life, and he walks as if he knew not whether he had boots on or not. As for stocks, saving that he be a military man, he wears them not; they want that easy negligence, attainable only by the graceful folds of a well tied _choker_. You never see a man of fashion with his neck in the pillory, and you hardly ever encounter a Cockney whose cervical investment does not convey at once the idea of that obsolete punishment. A gentleman never considers that his neck was given him to show off a cataract of black satin upon, or as a post whereon to display gold-threaded fabrics, of all the colours of the rainbow: sooner than wear such things, he would willingly resign his neck to the embraces of a halter. His study is to select a modest, unassuming _choker, fine_ if you please, but without pretension as to pattern, and in colour harmonizing with his residual _toggery_: this he ties with an easy, unembarrassed air, so that he can conveniently look about him. Oxford men, we have observed, tie chokers better than any others; but we do not know whether there are exhibitions or scholarships for the encouragement of this laudable faculty. At Cambridge (except Trinity) there is a laxity in chokers, for which it is difficult to account, except upon the principle that men there attend too closely to the mathematics; these, as every body knows, are in their essence inimical to the higher departments of the fine arts. There is no reason, however, why in this important branch of learning, which, as we may say, comes home to the bosom of every man, one Alma Mater should surpass another; since at both the intellects of men are almost exclusively occupied for years in tying their abominable white chokers, so as to look as like tavern waiters as possible.
Another thing: if a gentleman sticks a pin in his choker, you may be sure it has not a head as big as a potatoe, and is not a sort of Siamese Twin pin, connected by a bit of chain, or an imitation precious stone, or Mosaic gold concern. If he wears studs, they are plain, and have cost not less at the least than five guineas the set. Neither does he ever make a High Sheriff of himself, with chains dangling over the front of his waistcoat, or little pistols, seals, or trinketry appearing below his waistband, as much as to say, “_if you only knew what a watch I have inside_!” Nor does he sport trumpery rings upon raw-boned fingers; if he wears rings, you may depend upon it that they are of value, that they are sparingly distributed, and that his hand is not a paw.
A man of fashion never wears Woodstock gloves, or gloves with double stitches, or eighteen-penny imitation French kids: his gloves, like himself and every thing about him, are the real thing. Dressy young men of fashion sport primrose kids in the forenoon; and, although they take care to avoid the appearance of snobbery by never wearing the same pair a second day, yet, after all, primrose kids in the forenoon are not the thing, not in keeping, not quiet enough: we therefore denounce primrose kids, and desire to see no more of them.
If you are unfortunate enough to be acquainted with a snob, you need not put yourself to the unnecessary expense of purchasing an almanac for the ensuing year: your friend the snob will answer that useful purpose completely to your satisfaction. For example, on Thursdays and Sundays he shaves and puts on a clean shirt, which he exhibits as freely as possible in honour of the event: Mondays and Fridays you will know by the vegetating bristles of his chin, and the disappearance of the shirt cuffs and collar. These are replaced on Tuesdays and Saturdays by supplementary collar and cuffs, which, being white and starched, form a pleasing contrast with that portion of the original _chemise_, vainly attempted to be concealed behind the folds of a three-and-six-penny stock. Wednesdays and Fridays you cannot mistake; your friend is then at the dirtiest, and his beard at the longest, anticipating the half-weekly wash and shave: on quarter-day, when he gets his salary, he goes to a sixpenny barber and has his hair cut.
A gentleman, on the contrary, in addition to his other noble inutilities, is useless as an almanac. He is never half shaven nor half shorn: you never can tell when he has had his hair cut, nor has he his clean-shirt days, and his days of foul linen. He is not merely outwardly _propre_, but asperges his cuticle daily with “oriental scrupulosity:” he is always and ever, in person, manner, dress, and deportment, the same, and has never been other than he now appears.
You will say, perhaps, this is all very fine; but give me the money the man of fashion has got, and I will be as much a man of fashion as he: I will wear my clothes with the same ease, and be as free, unembarrassed, _degage_, as the veriest Bond Street lounger of them all. Friend, thou mayest say so, or even think so, but I defy thee: snobbery, like murder, will out; and, if you do not happen to be a gentleman born, we tell you plainly you will never, by dint of expense in dress, succeed in “topping the part.”
We have been for many years deeply engaged in a philosophical enquiry into the origin of the peculiar attributes characteristic of the man of fashion. A work of such importance, however, we cannot think of giving to the world, except in the appropriate envelope of a ponderous quarto: just now, by way of whetting the appetite of expectation, we shall merely observe, that, after much pondering, we have at last discovered the secret of his wearing his garments “with a difference,” or, more properly, with an indifference, unattainable by others of the human species. You will conjecture, haply, that it is because he and his father before him have been from childhood accustomed to pay attention to dress, and that habit has given them that air which the occasional dresser can never hope to attain: or that, having the best _artistes_, seconded by that beautiful division of labour of which we have spoken heretofore, he can attain an evenness of costume, an undeviating propriety of toggery–not at all: the whole secret consists in _never paying, nor intending to pay, his tailor_!
Poor devils, who, under the Mosaic dispensation, contract for three suits a-year, the old ones to be returned, and again made new; or those who, struck with more than money madness, go to a tailor, cash in hand, for the purpose of making an investment, are always accustomed to consider a coat as a representative of so much money, transferred only from the pocket to the back. Accordingly, they are continually labouring under the depression of spirits arising from a sense of the possible depreciation of such a valuable property. Visions of showers of rain, and March dust, perpetually haunt their morbid imaginations. Greasy collars, chalky seams, threadbare cuffs, (three warnings that the time must come when that tunic, for which five pounds ten have been lost to them and their heirs for ever, will be worth no more than a couple of shillings to an old-clothesman in Holywell Street,) fill them, as they walk along the Strand, with apprehensions of anticipated expenditure. They walk circumspectly, lest a baker, sweep, or hodman, stumbling against the coat, may deprive its wearer of what to him represents so much ready money. These real and imaginary evils altogether prohibit the proprietor of a paid-up coat wearing it with any degree of graceful indifference.
But when a family of fashion, for generations, have not only never thought of paying a tailor, but have considered taking up bills, which the too confiding snip has discounted for them, as decidedly smacking of the punctilious vulgarity of the tradesman; thus drawing down upon themselves the vengeance of that most intolerant sect of Protestants, the Notaries Public; when a young man of fashion, taught from earliest infancy to regard tailors as a Chancellor of the Exchequer regards the people at large, that is to say, as a class of animals created to be victimized in every possible way, it is astonishing what a subtle grace and indescribable expression are conveyed to coats which are sent home to you for nothing, or, what amounts to exactly the same thing, which you have not the most remote idea of paying for, _in secula seculorum_. So far from caring whether it rains or snows, or whether the dust flies, when you have got on one of these eleemosynary coats, you are rather pleased than otherwise. There is a luxury in the idea that on the morrow you will start fresh game, and victimize your tailor for another. The innate cruelty of the human animal is gratified, and the idea of a tailor’s suffering is never conceived by a customer without involuntary cachinnation. Not only is he denied the attribute of integral manhood–which even a man-milliner by courtesy enjoys–but that principle which induces a few men of enthusiastic temperament to pay debts, is always held a fault when applied to the bills of tailors. And, what is a curious and instructive fact in the natural history of London fashionable tailors, and altogether unnoticed by the Rev. Leonard Jenyns, in his _Manual of British Vertebrate Animals_, if you go to one of these gentlemen, requesting him to “execute,” and professing your readiness to pay his bill on demand or delivery, he will be sure to give your order to the most scurvy botch in his establishment, put in the worst materials, and treat you altogether as a person utterly unacquainted with the usages of polite society. But if, on the contrary, you are recommended to him by Lord Fly-by-night, of Denman Priory–if you give a thundering order, and, instead of offering to pay for it, pull out a parcel of bill-stamps, and _promise_ fifty per cent for a few hundreds down, you will be surprised to observe what delight will express itself in the radiant countenance of your victim: visions of cent per cent, ghosts of post-obits, dreams of bonds with penalties, and all those various shapes in which security delights to involve the extravagant, rise flatteringly before the inward eye of the man of shreds and patches. By these transactions with the great, he becomes more and more a man, less and less a tailor; instead of cutting patterns and taking measures, he flings the tailoring to his foreman, becoming first Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer to peers of the realm.
With a few more of the less important distinctive peculiarities of the gentleman of fashion, we may dismiss this portion of our subject. A gentleman never affects military air or costume if he is not a military man, and even then avoids professional rigidity and swagger as much as possible; he never sports spurs or a riding-whip, except when he is upon horseback, contrary to the rule observed by his antagonist the snob, who always sports spurs and riding-whip, but who never mounts higher than a threepenny stride on a Hampstead donkey. Nor does a gentleman ever wear a _moustache_, unless he belongs to one of the regiments of hussars, or the household cavalry, who alone are ordered to display that ornamental exuberance. Foreigners, military or non-military, are recognized as wearing hair on the upper lip with propriety, as is the custom of their country. But no gentleman here thinks of such a thing, any more than he would think of sporting the uniform of the Tenth Hussars.
There is an affectation among the vulgar clever, of wearing the _moustache_, which they clip and cut _a la Vandyk_: this is useful, as affording a ready means of distinguishing between a man of talent and an ass–the former, trusting to his head, goes clean shaved, and looks like an Englishman: the latter, whose strength lies altogether in his hair, exhausts the power of Macassar in endeavouring to make himself as like an ourang-outang as possible.
Another thing must be observed by all who would successfully ape the gentleman: never to smoke cigars in the street in mid-day. No better sign can you have than this of a fellow reckless of decency and behaviour: a gentleman smokes, if he smokes at all, where he offends not the olfactories of the passers-by. Nothing, he is aware, approaches more nearly the most offensive personal insult, than to compel ladies and gentlemen to inhale, after you, the ejected fragrance of your penny Cuba or your three-halfpenny mild Havannah.
In the cities of Germany, where the population almost to a man inhale the fumes of tobacco, street smoking is very properly prohibited; for however agreeable may be the sedative influence of the Virginian weed when inspired from your own manufactory, nothing assuredly is more disgusting than inhalation of tobacco smoke at second-hand.
Your undoubted man of fashion, like other animals, has his peculiar _habitat_: you never see him promenading in Regent Street between the hours of three and five in the afternoon, nor by any chance does he venture into the Quadrant: east of Temple Bar he is never seen except on business, and then, never on foot: if he lounges any where, it is in Bond Street, or about the clubs of St James’s.
OF PRETENDERS TO FASHION.
“Their conversation was altogether made up of Shakspeare, taste, high life and the musical glasses.”–_Vicar of Wakefield_.
We will venture to assert, that in the course of these essays on the aristocracies of London life, we have never attempted to induce any of our readers to believe that there was any cause for him to regret, whatever condition of life it had pleased Providence to place him in, or to suppose, for one moment, that reputable men, though in widely different circumstances, are not equally reputable. We have studiously avoided portraying fashionable life according to the vulgar notions, whether depreciatory or panegyrical. We have shown that that class is not to be taken and treated of as an integral quantity, but to be analyzed as a component body, wherein is much sterling ore and no little dross. We have shown by sufficient examples, that whatever in our eyes makes the world of fashion really respectable, is solely owing to the real worth of its respectable members; and on the contrary, whatever contempt we fling upon the fashionable world, is the result of the misconduct of individuals of that order, prominently contemptible.
Of the former, the example is of infinite value to society, in refining its tone, and giving to social life an unembarrassed ease, which, if not true politeness, is its true substitute; and, of the latter, the mischief done to society is enhanced by the multitude of low people ready to imitate their vices, inanities, and follies.
Pretenders to fashion, who hang upon the outskirts of fashionable society, and whose lives are a perpetual but unavailing struggle to jump above their proper position, are horrid nuisances; and they abound, unfortunately, in London.
In a republic, where practical equality is understood and acted upon, this pretension would be intolerable; in an aristocratic state of society, with social gradations pointedly defined and universally recognized, it is merely ridiculous to the lookers-on; to the pretenders, it is a source of much and deserved misery and isolation.
There are ten thousand varying shades and degrees of this pretension, from the truly fashionable people who hanker after the _exclusives_, or seventh heaven of high life, down to the courier out of place, who, in a pot-house, retails Debrett by heart, and talks of lords, and dukes, and earls, as of his particular acquaintance, and how and where he met them when on his travels.
The _exclusives_ are a queer set, some of them not by any means people of the best pretensions to lead the _ton_. Lady L—- and Lady B—- may be very well as patronesses of Almack’s; but what do you say to Lady J—-, a plebeian, and a licensed dealer in money, keeping her shop by deputy in a lane somewhere behind Cornhill? Almack’s, as every body knows who has been there, or who has talked with any observing _habitue_ of the place, contains a great many queer, spurious people, smuggled in somehow by indirect influence, when royal command is not the least effectual: a surprizing number of seedy, poverty-stricken young men, and, in an inverse ratio, women who have any thing more than the clothes they wear: yet, by mere dint of difficulty, by the simple circumstance of making admission to this assembly a matter of closeting, canvassing, balloting, black-balling, and so forth, people of much better fashion than many of the exclusives make it a matter of life and death to have their admission secured. Admission to Almack’s is to a young _debutante_ of fashion as great an object as a seat at the Privy Council Board to a flourishing politician: your _ton_ is stamped by it, you are of the exclusive _set_, and, by virtue of belonging to that set, every other is open to you as a matter of course, when you choose to condescend to visit it. The room in which Almack’s balls are held we need not describe, because it has been often described before, and because the doorkeeper, any day you choose to go to Duke Street, St James’s, will be too happy to show it you for sixpence; but we will give you in his own words, all the information we could contrive to get from a man of the highest fashion, who is a subscriber.
“Why, I really don’t know,” said he, “that I have any thing to tell you about Almack’s, except that all that the novel-writers say about it is ridiculous nonsense: the lights are good, the refreshments not so good, the music excellent; the women dress well, dance a good deal, and talk but little. There is a good deal of envy, jealousy, and criticism of faces, figures, fortunes, and pretensions: one, or at most two, of the balls in a season are pleasant; the others _slow_ and very dull. The point of the thing seems to be, that people of rank choose to like it because it stamps a set, and low people talk about it because they cannot by any possibility know any thing about it.”
Such is Almack’s, of which volumes have been spun, of most effete and lamentable trash, to gratify the morbid appetites of the pretenders to fashion.
We must not omit to inform our rural readers, that no conventional rank gives any one in London a patent of privilege in truly fashionable society. An old baronet shall be exclusive, when a young peer shall have no fashionable society at all: a lord is by no means necessarily a man in what the fashionable sets call good society: we have many lords who are not men of fashion, and many men of fashion who are not lords.
Professional peers, whether legal, naval, or military, bishops, judges, and all that class of men who attain by talents, interest, and good fortune, or all, or any of these, a lofty social position, have no more to do with the exclusive or merely fashionable sets than you or I. A man may be a barrister in full practice to-day, an attorney-general to-morrow, a chief-justice the day after with a peerage: yet his wife and daughter visit the same people, and are visited by the same people, that associated with them before. If men of fashion know them, it is because they have business to transact or favours to seek for, or because it is part of their system to keep up a qualified intimacy with all whom they think proper to lift to their own level: but this intimacy is only extended by the man of birth to the man of talent. His family do not become people of fashion until the third or fourth generation: he remains the man of business, the useful, working, practical, brains-carrying man that he was; and his family, if they are wise, seek not to become the familiars of the old aristocracy, and if they are foolish, become the most unfortunate pretenders to fashion. They are too near to be pleasant; and the gulf which people of hereditary fashion place between is impassable, even though they flounder up to their necks in servile mud.
It is the same with baronets, M.P.’s, and all that sort of people. These handles to men’s names go down very well in the country, where it is imagined that a baronet or an M.P. is, _ex officio_, a man of consequence, and that, rank being equal, consequence is also equal. In London, on the contrary, people laugh at the idea of a man pluming himself upon such distinctions without a difference: in town we have baronets of all sorts–the “Heathcotes, and such large-acred men,” Sir Watkyn, and the territorial baronetage: then we have the Hanmers, and others of undoubted fashion, to which their patent is the weakest of their claims: then we have the military, naval, and medical baronet: descending, through infinite gradations, we come down to the tallow-chandling, the gin-spinning, the banking, the pastry-cooking baronetage.
What is there, what can there be, in common with these widely severed classes, save that they equally enjoy _Sir_ at the head and _Bart_. at the tail of their sponsorial and patronymic appellations? Do you think the landed Bart. knows any more of the medical Bart. than that, when he sends for the other to attend his wife, he calls him generally “doctor,” and seldom Sir James: or that the military Bart. does not much like the naval Bart.? and do not all these incongruous Barts. shudder at the bare idea of been seen on the same side of the street with a gin-spinning, Patent-British-Genuine-Foreign-Cognac Brandy-making Bart.? and do not each and every one of these Barts. from head to tail, even including the last-mentioned, look down with immeasurable disdain upon the poor Nova Scotia baronets, who move heaven and earth to get permission to wear a string round their necks, and a badge like the learned fraternity of cabmen?
Then as to the magic capitals M.P., which provincial people look upon as embodying in the wearer the concentrated essence of wisdom, eloquence, personal distinction, and social eminence. Who, in a country town, on a market day, has not seen tradesmen cocking their eye, apprentices glowering through the shop front, and ladies subdolously peeping behind the window-shutter to catch a glimpse of the “member for our town,” and, having seen him, think they are rather happier then they were before? The greatest fun in the world is to go to a _cul-de-sac_ off a dirty lane near Palace Yard, called Manchester Buildings, a sort of senatorial pigeon-house, where the meaner fry of houseless M.P.’s live, each in his one pair, two pair, three pair, as the case may be, and give a postman’s knock at every door in rapid succession. In a twinkling, the “collective wisdom” of Manchester Buildings and the Midland Counties poke out their heads. Cobden appears on the balcony; Muntz glares out of a second floor, like a live bear in a barber’s window; Wallace of Greenock comes to the door in a red nightcap; and a long “tail” of the other immortals of a session. You may enjoy the scene as much as you please; but when you hear one or two of the young Irish patriotic “mimbers” floundering from the attics, the wisest course you can take will be incontinently to “mizzle.” These men, however, have one redeeming quality–that they live in Manchester Buildings, and don’t care who knows it; they are out of fashion, and don’t care who are in; they are minding their business, and not hanging at the skirts of people ever ready and willing to kick them off.
Then there are the “dandy” M.P.’s, who ride hack-horses, associate with fashionable actresses, and hang about the clubs. Then there is the chance or accidental M.P., who has been elected he hardly knows how or when, and wonders to find himself in Parliament. Then there is the desperate, adventuring, ear-wigging M.P., whose hope of political existence, and whose very livelihood, depend upon getting or continuing in place. Then there is the legal M.P., with one eye fixed on the Queen’s, the other squinting at the Treasury Bench. Then there is the lounging M.P., who is usually the scion of a noble family, and who comes now and then into the House, to stare vacantly about, and go out again. Then there is the military M.P., who finds the House an agreeable lounge, and does not care to join his regiment on foreign service. Then there is the bustling M.P. of business, the M.P. of business without bustle, and the independent country gentleman M.P., who wants nothing for himself or any body else, and who does not care a turnip-top for the whole lot of them.
The aggregate distinction, as a member of Parliament, is totally sunk in London. It is the man, and not the two letters after his name, that any body whose regard is worth the having in the least regard. There are M.P.s never seen beyond the exclusive set, except on a committee of the House, and then they know and speak to nobody save one of themselves. There are other M.P.s that you will find in no society except Tom Spring’s or Owen Swift’s, at the Horse-shoe in Litchborne Street.
These observations upon baronets and M.P.s may be extended upwards to the peerage, and downwards to the professional, commercial, and all other the better classes. Every man hangs, like a herring, by his own tail; and every class would be distinct and separate, but that the pretenders to fashion, like some equivocal animals in the chain of animated nature, connect these different classes by copying pertinaciously the manners, and studying to adopt the tastes and habits of the class immediately above them.
Of pretenders to fashion, perhaps the most successful in their imitative art are the
SHEENIES.–By this term, as used by men of undoubted _ton_ with reference to the class we are about to consider, you are to understand runagate Jews rolling in riches, who profess to love roast pork above all things, who always eat their turkey with sausages, and who have _cut_ their religion for the sake of dangling at the heels of fashionable Christians. These people are “swelling” upon the profits of the last generation in St Mary Axe or Petticoat Lane. The founders of their families have been loan-manufacturers, crimps, receivers of stolen goods, wholesale nigger-dealers, clippers and sweaters, rag-merchants, and the like, and conscientious Israelites; but their children, not having fortitude to abide by their condition, nor right principle to adhere to their sect, come to the west end of the town, and, by right of their money, make unremitting assaults upon the loose fish of fashionable society, who laugh at, and heartily despise them, while they are as ashes in the mouths of the respectable members of the persuasion to which they originally belonged.
HEAVY SWELLS are another very important class of pretenders to fashion, and are divided into civil and military. Professional men, we say it to their honour, seldom affect the heavy swell, because the feeblest glimmerings of that rationality of thinking which results from among the lowest education, preserves them from the folly of the attempt, and, in preserving from folly, saves them from the self-reproaching misery that attends it. Men of education or of common sense, look upon pretension to birth, rank, or any thing else to which they have no legitimate claim, as little more than moral forgery; it is with them an uttering base coin upon false pretences. It is generally the wives and families of professional men who are afflicted with pretension to fashion, of which we shall give abundant examples when we come to treat of gentility-mongers. But the heavy swell, who is of all classes, from the son and heir of an opulent blacking-maker down to the lieutenant of a marching regiment on half-pay, is utterly destitute of brains, deplorably illiterate, and therefore incapable, by nature and bringing-up, of respecting himself by a modest contented demeanour. He is never so unhappy as when he appears the thing he is–never so completely in his element as when acting the thing he is not, nor can ever be. He spends his life in jumping, like a cat, at shadows on the wall. He has day and night dreams of people, who have not the least idea that such a man is in existence, and he comes in time, by mere dint of thinking of nobody else, to think that he is one of them. He acquaints himself with the titles of lords, as other men do those of books, and then boasts largely of the extent of his acquaintance.
Let us suppose that he is an officer of a hard-fighting, foreign-service, neglected infantry regiment. This, which to a soldier would be an honest pride, is the shame of the Heavy Military Swell. His chief business in life, next to knowing the names and faces of lords, is concealing from you the corps to which he has the dishonour, he thinks, to belong. He talks mightily of the service, of hussars and light dragoons; but when he knows that you know better, when you poke him hard about the young or old buffs, or the dirty half-hundred, he whispers in your ear that “my fellows,” as he calls them, are very “fast,” and that they are “all known in town, very well known indeed”–a piece of information you will construe in the case of the heavy swell to mean, better known than trusted.
When he is on full pay, the heavy swell is known to the three old women and five desperate daughters who compose good society in country quarters. He affects a patronizing air at small tea-parties, and is wonderfully run after by wretched un-idea’d girls, that is, by ten girls in twelve; he is eternally striving to get upon the “staff,” or anyhow to shirk his regimental duty; he is a whelp towards the men under his command, and has a grand idea of spurs, steel scabbards, and flogging; to his superiors he is a spaniel, to his brother officers an intolerable ass; he makes the mess-room a perfect hell with his vanity, puppyism, and senseless bibble-babble.
On leave, or half-pay, he “mounts mustaches,” to help the hussar and light-dragoon idea, or to delude the ignorant into a belief that he may possibly belong to the household cavalry. He hangs about doors of military clubs, with a whip in his hand; talks very loud at the “Tiger” or the “Rag and famish,” and never has done shouting to the waiter to bring him a “Peerage;” carries the “Red Book” and “Book of Heraldry” in his pocket; sees whence people come, and where they go, and makes them out somehow; in short, he is regarded with a thrill of horror by people of fashion, fast or slow, civil or military.
The Civil Heavy Swell affects fashionable curricles, and enjoys all the consideration a pair of good horses can give. He rides a blood bay in Rotten Row, but rides badly, and is detected by galloping, or some other solecism; his dress and liveries are always overdone, the money shows on every thing about him. He has familiar abbreviations for the names of all the fast men about town; calls this Lord “Jimmy,” ‘tother Chess, a third Dolly, and thinks he knows them; keeps an expensive mistress, because “Jimmy” and Chess are supposed to do the same, and when he is out of the way, his mistress has some of the fast fellows to supper, at the heavy swell’s expense. He settles the point whether claret is to be drank from a jug or black bottle, and retails the merits of a _plateau_ or _epergne_ he saw, when last he dined with a “fellow” in Belgrave Square.
The _Foreigneering_ Heavy Swell has much more spirit, talent, and manner, than the home-grown article; but he is poor in a like ratio, and is therefore obliged to feather his nest by denuding the pigeon tribe of their metallic plumage. He is familiarly known to all the fast fellows, who _cut_ him, however, as soon as they marry, but is not accounted good _ton_ by heads of families. He is liked at the Hells and Clubs, where he has a knack of distinguishing himself without presumption or affectation. He is a dresser by right divine, and dresses ridiculously. The fashionable fellows affect loudly to applaud his taste, and laugh to see the vulgar imitate the foreigneering swell. He is the idol of equivocal women, and condescends to patronize unpresentable gentility-mongers. He is not unhappy at heart, like the indigenous heavy swell, but enjoys his intimacy with the fast fellows, and uses it.
There is an infallible test we should advise you to apply, whenever you are bored to desperation by any of these heavy swells. When he talks of “my friend, the Duke of Bayswater,” ask him, in a quiet tone, where he last met the _Duchess_. If he says Hyde-Park (meaning the Earl of) is an honest good fellow, enquire whether he prefers Lady Mary or Lady Seraphina Serpentine. This drops him like a shot–he can’t get over it.
It is a rule in good society that you know the set only when you know the women of that set; however you may work your way among the men, whatever you may do at the Hells and Clubs, goes for nothing–the _women_ stamp you counterfeit or current, and–
“Not to know _them_, argues yourself unknown.”
* * * * *
EYRE’S CABUL.
The Military Operations at Cabul, which ended in the Retreat and Destruction of the British Army, January 1842; with a Journal of Imprisonment in Affghanistan. By Lieutenant Vincent Eyre, Bengal Artillery, late Deputy-Commissary of Ordnance at Cabul. London: John Murray.
This is the first connected account that has appeared of the military disasters that befell the British army at Cabul–by far the most signal reverse our arms have ever sustained in Asia. The narrative is full of a deep and painful interest, which becomes more and more intense as we approach the closing catastrophe. The simple detail of the daily occurrences stirs up our strongest feelings of indignation, pity; scorn, admiration, horror, and grief. The tale is told without art, or any attempt at artificial ornament, and in a spirit of manly and gentlemanlike forbearance from angry comment or invective, that is highly creditable to the author, and gives us a very favourable opinion both of his head and of his heart.
That a British army of nearly six thousand fighting men–occupying a position chosen and fortified by our own officers, and having possession, within two miles of this fortified cantonment, of a strong citadel commanding the greater part of the town of Cabul, a small portion only of whose population rose against us at the commencement of the revolt–should not only have made no vigorous effort to crush the insurrection; but that it should ultimately have been driven by an undisciplined Asiatic mob, destitute of artillery, and which never appears to have collected in one place above 10,000 men, to seek safety in a humiliating capitulation, by which it surrendered the greater part of its artillery, military stores, and treasure, and undertook to evacuate the whole country on condition of receiving a safe conduct from the rebel chiefs, on whose faith they placed, and could place, no reliance; and finally, that, of about 4500 armed soldiers and twelve thousand camp-followers, many of whom were also armed, who set out from Cabul, only one man, and he wounded, should have arrived at Jellalabad; is an amount of misfortune so far exceeding every rational anticipation of evil, that we should have been entitled to assume that these unparalleled military disasters arose from a series of unparalleled errors, even if we had not had, as we now have, the authority of Lord Ellenborough for asserting the fact.
But every nation, and more particularly the British nation, is little inclined to pardon the men under whose command any portion of its army or of its navy may have been beaten. Great Britain, reposing entire confidence in the courage of her men, and little accustomed to see them overthrown, is keenly jealous of the reputation of her forces; and, as she is ever prompt to reward military excellence and success, she heaps unmeasured obloquy on those who may have subjected her to the degradation of defeat. When our forces have encountered a reverse, or even when the success has not been commensurate with the hopes that had been indulged; the public mind has ever been prone to condemn the commanders; and wherever there has been reason to believe that errors have been committed which have led to disaster, there has been little disposition to make any allowances for the circumstances of the case, or for the fallibility of man; but, on the contrary, the nation has too often evinced a fierce desire to punish the leaders for the mortification the country has been made to endure.
This feeling may tend to elevate the standard of military character, but it must at the same time preclude the probability of calm or impartial examination, so far as the great body of the nation is concerned; and it is therefore the more obviously incumbent on those who, from a more intimate knowledge of the facts, or from habits of more deliberate investigation, are not carried away by the tide of popular indignation and invective, to weigh the circumstances with conscientious caution, and to await the result of judicial enquiry before they venture to apportion the blame or even to estimate its amount.
“The following notes,” says Lieutenant Eyre in his preface, “were penned to relieve the monotony of an Affghan prison, while yet the events which they record continued fresh in my memory. I now give them publicity, in the belief that the information which they contain on the dreadful scenes lately enacted in Affghanistan, though clothed in a homely garb, will scarcely fail to be acceptable to many of my countrymen, both in India and England, who may be ignorant of the chief particulars. The time, from the 2d November 1841, on which day the sudden popular outbreak at Cabul took place, to the 13th January 1842, which witnessed the annihilation of the last small remnant of our unhappy force at Gundamuk, was one continued tragedy. The massacre of Sir Alexander Burnes and his associates,–the loss of our commissariat fort–the defeat of our troops under Brigadier Shelton at Beymaroo–the treacherous assassination of Sir William Macnaghten, our envoy and minister–and lastly, the disastrous retreat and utter destruction of a force consisting of 5000 fighting men and upwards of 12,000 camp-followers,–are events which will assuredly rouse the British Lion from his repose, and excite an indignant spirit of enquiry in every breast. Men will not be satisfied, in this case, with a bare statement of the facts, but they will doubtless require to be made acquainted with the causes which brought about such awful effects. We have lost six entire regiments of infantry, three companies of sappers, a troop of European horse-artillery, half the mountain-train battery, nearly a whole regiment of regular cavalry, and four squadrons of irregular horse, besides a well-stocked magazine, which _alone_, taking into consideration the cost of transport up to Cabul, may be estimated at nearly a million sterling. From first to last, not less than 104 British officers have fallen: their names will be found in the Appendix. I glance but slightly at the _political_ events of this period, not having been one of the initiated; and I do not pretend to enter into _minute_ particulars with regard to even our _military_ transactions, more especially those not immediately connected with the sad catastrophe which it has been my ill fortune to witness, and whereof I now endeavour to portray the leading features. In these notes I have been careful to state only what I know to be undeniable facts. I have set down nothing on mere hearsay evidence, nor any thing which cannot be attested by living witnesses or by existing documentary evidence. In treating of matters which occurred under my personal observation, it has been difficult to avoid _altogether_ the occasional expression of my own individual opinion: but I hope it will be found that I have made no observations bearing hard on men or measures, that are either uncalled for, or will not stand the test of future investigation.”
After the surrender of Dost Mahomed Khan, there remained in Affghanistan no chief who possessed a dominant power or influence that made him formidable to the government of Shah Shoojah, or to his English allies; and the kingdom of Cabul seemed to be gradually, though slowly, subsiding into comparative tranquillity. In the summer of the year 1841, the authority of the sovereign appears to have been acknowledged in almost every part of his dominions. A partial revolt of the Giljyes was speedily suppressed by our troops. The Kohistan, or more correctly, Koohdaman of Cabul, a mountainous tract, inhabited by a warlike people, over whom the authority of the governments of the country had long been imperfect and precarious, had submitted, or had ceased to resist. A detachment from the British force at Kandahar, after defeating Akter Khan, who had been instigated by the Vezeer of Herat to rebel, swept the country of Zemindawer, drove Akter Khan a fugitive to Herat, received the submission of all the chiefs in that part of the kingdom, and secured the persons of such as it was not thought prudent to leave at large in those districts.
The Shah’s authority was not believed to be so firmly established, that both Sir William Macnaghten, the British envoy at Cabul, who had recently been appointed governor of Bombay, and Sir Alexander Burnes, on whom the duties of the envoy would have devolved on Sir W. Macnaghten’s departure, thought that the time had arrived when the amount of the British force in Affghanistan, which was so heavy a charge upon the revenues of India, might with safety be reduced, and General Sale’s brigade was ordered to hold itself in readiness to march to Jellalabad, on its route to India.
Even at this time, however, Major Pottinger, the political agent in Kohistan, including, we presume, the Koohdaman, thought the force at his disposal too small to maintain the tranquillity of the district; and the chiefs of the valley of Nijrow, or Nijrab, a valley of Kohistan Proper, had not only refused to submit, but had harboured the restless and disaffected who had made themselves obnoxious to the Shah’s government. But although Major Pottinger had no confidence in the good feelings of the people of his own district to the government, and even seems to have anticipated insurrection, no movement of that description had yet taken place.
Early in September, however, Captain Hay, who was with a small force in the Zoormut valley, situated nearly west from Ghuznee and south from Cabul, having been induced by the representations of Moollah Momin–the collector of the revenues, who was a Barikzye, and a near relation of one of the leaders of the insurrection, in which he afterwards himself took an active part–to move against a fort in which the murderers of Colonel Herring were said to have taken shelter, the inhabitants resisted his demands, and fired upon the troops. His force was found insufficient to reduce it, and he was obliged to retire; a stronger force was therefore sent, on the approach of which the people fled to the hills, and the forts they had evacuated were blown up. This occurrence was not calculated seriously to disturb the confident hopes that were entertained of the permanent tranquillity of the country; but before the force employed upon that expedition had returned to Cabul, a formidable insurrection had broken out in another quarter.
“Early in October,” says Lieutenant Eyre, “three Giljye chiefs of note suddenly quitted Cabul, after plundering a rich cafila at Tezeen, and took up a strong position in the difficult defile of Khoord-Cabul, about ten miles from the capital, thus blocking up the pass, and cutting off our communication with Hindostan. Intelligence had not very long previously been received that Mahomed Akber Khan, second son of the ex-ruler Dost Mahomed Khan, had arrived at Bameean from Khooloom, for the supposed purpose of carrying on intrigues against the Government. It is remarkable that he is nearly connected by marriage with Mahomed Shah Khan and Dost Mahomed Khan, also Giljyes, who almost immediately joined the above-mentioned chiefs. Mahomed Akber had, since the deposition of his father, never ceased to foster feelings of intense hatred towards the English nation; and, though often urged by the fallen ruler to deliver himself up, had resolutely preferred the life of a houseless exile to one of mean dependence on the bounty of his enemies. It seems, therefore, in the highest degree probable that this hostile movement on the part of the Eastern Giljyes was the result of his influence over them, combined with other causes which will be hereafter mentioned.”
The other causes here alluded to, appear to be “the deep offence given to the Giljyes by the ill-advised reduction of their annual stipends, a measure which had been forced upon Sir William Macnaghten by Lord Auckland. This they considered, and with some show of justice, as a breach of faith on the part of our Government.”
We presume that it is not Mr Eyre’s intention to assert that this particular measure was ordered by Lord Auckland, but merely that the rigid economy enforced by his lordship, led the Envoy to have recourse to this measure as one of the means by which the general expenditure might be diminished.
Formidable as this revolt of the Giljyes was found to be, we are led to suspect that both Sir W. Macnaghten and Sir A. Burnes were misled, probably by the Shah’s government, very greatly to underrate its importance and its danger. The force under Colonel Monteath,[16] which in the first instance was sent to suppress it, was so small that it was not only unable to penetrate into the country it was intended to overawe or to subdue, but it was immediately attacked in its camp, within ten miles of Cabul, and lost thirty-five sepoys killed and wounded.
[16] 35th Reg. N.I.; 100 sappers; 1 squadron 5th Cav.; 2 guns.
Two days afterwards, the 11th October, General Sale marched from Cabul with H.M.’s 13th light infantry, to join Colonel Monteath’s camp at Bootkhak; and the following morning the whole proceeded to force the pass of Khoord-Cabul, which was effected with some loss. The 13th returned through the pass to Bootkhak, suffering from the fire of parties which still lurked among the rocks. The remainder of the brigade encamped at Khoord-Cabul, at the further extremity of the defile. In this divided position the brigade remained for some days, and both camps had to sustain night attacks from the Affghans–“that on the 35th native infantry being peculiarly disastrous, from the treachery of the Affghan horse, who admitted the enemy within their lines, by which our troops were exposed to a fire from the least suspected quarter. Many of our gallant sepoys, and Lieutenant Jenkins, thus met their death.”
On the 20th October, General Sale, having been reinforced, marched to Khoord-Cabul; “and about the 22d, the whole force there assembled, with Captain Macgregor, political agent, marched to Tezeen, encountering much determined opposition on the road.”
“By this time it was too evident that the whole of the Eastern Giljyes had risen in one common league against us.” The treacherous proceedings of their chief or viceroy, Humza Khan, which had for some time been suspected, were now discovered, and he was arrested by order of Shah Shoojah.
“It must be remarked,” says Lieutenant Eyre, “that for some time previous to these overt acts of rebellion, the always strong and ill-repressed personal dislike of the Affghans towards Europeans, had been manifested in a more than usually open manner in and about Cabul. Officers had been insulted and attempts made to assassinate them. Two Europeans had been murdered, as also several camp-followers; but these and other signs of the approaching storm had unfortunately been passed over as mere ebullitions of private angry feeling. This incredulity and apathy is the more to be lamented, as it was pretty well known that on the occasion of the _shub-khoon_, or first night attack on the 35th native infantry at Bootkhak, a large portion of our assailants consisted of the armed retainers of the different men of consequence in Cabul itself, large parties of whom had been seen proceeding from the city to the scene of action on the evening of the attack, and afterwards returning. Although these men had to pass either through the heart or round the skirts of our camp at Seeah Sung, it was not deemed expedient even to question them, far less to detain them.
“On the 26th October, General Sale started in the direction of Gundamuk, Captain Macgregor having half-frightened, half-cajoled the refractory Giljye chiefs into what proved to have been a most hollow truce.”
On the same day, the 37th native infantry, three companies of the Shah’s sappers under Captain Walsh, and three guns of the mountain train under Lieutenant Green, retraced their steps towards Cabul, where the sappers, pushing on, arrived unopposed; but the rest of the detachment was attacked on the 2d November–on the afternoon of which day, Major Griffiths, who commanded it, received orders to force his way to Cabul, where the insurrection had that morning broken out. His march through the pass, and from Bootkhak to Cabul, was one continued conflict; but the gallantry of his troops, and the excellence of his own dispositions, enabled him to carry the whole of his wounded and baggage safe to the cantonments at Cabul, where he arrived about three o’clock on the morning of the 3d November, followed almost to the gates by about 3000 Giljyes.
The causes of the insurrection in the capital are not yet fully ascertained, or, if ascertained, they have not been made public. Lieutenant Eyre does not attempt to account for it; but he gives us the following memorandum of Sir W. Macnaghten’s, found, we presume, amongst his papers after his death:–
“The immediate cause of the outbreak in the capital was a seditious letter addressed by Abdoollah Khan to several chiefs of influence at Cabul, stating that it was the design of the Envoy to seize and send them all to London! The principal rebels met on the previous night, and, relying on the inflammable feelings of the people of Cabul, they pretended that the King had issued an order to put all infidels to death; having previously forged an order from him for our destruction, by the common process of washing out the contents of a genuine paper, with the exception of the seal, and substituting their own wicked inventions.”
But this invention, though it was probably one of the means employed by the conspirators to increase the number of their associates, can hardly be admitted to account for the insurrection. The arrival of Akber Khan at Bameean, the revolt of the Giljyes, the previous flight of their chiefs from Cabul, and the almost simultaneous attack of our posts in the Koohdaman, (called by Lieutenant Eyre, Kohistan,) on the 3d November–the attack of a party conducting prisoners from Candahar to Ghuznee–the immediate interruption of every line of communication with Cabul–and the selection of the season of the year the most favourable to the success of the insurrection, with many other less important circumstances, combine to force upon us the opinion, that the intention to attack the Cabul force, so soon as it should have become isolated by the approach of winter, had been entertained, and the plan of operations concerted, for some considerable time before the insurrection broke out. That many who wished for its success may have been slow to commit themselves, is to be presumed, and that vigorous measures might, if resorted to on the first day, have suppressed the revolt, is probable; but it can hardly be doubted that we must look far deeper, and further back, for the causes which united the Affghan nation against us.
The will of their chiefs and spiritual leaders–fanatical zeal, and hatred of the domination of a race whom they regarded as infidels–may have been sufficient to incite the lower orders to any acts of violence, or even to the persevering efforts they made to extirpate the English. In their eyes the contest would assume the character of a religious war–of a crusade; and every man who took up arms in that cause, would go to battle with the conviction that, if he should be slain, his soul would go at once to paradise, and that, if he slew an enemy of the faith, he thereby also secured to himself eternal happiness. But the chiefs are not so full of faith; and although we would not altogether exclude religious antipathy as an incentive, we may safely assume that something more immediately affecting their temporal and personal concerns must with them, or at least with the large majority, have been the true motives of the conspiracy–of their desire to expel the English from their country. Nor is it difficult to conceive what some of these motives may have been. The former sovereigns of Affghanistan, even the most firmly-established and the most vigorous, had no other means of enforcing their commands, than by employing the forces of one part of the nation to make their authority respected in another; but men who were jealous of their own independence as chiefs, were not likely to aid the sovereign in any attempt to destroy the substantial power, the importance, or the independence of their class; and although a refractory chief might occasionally, by the aid of his feudal enemies, be taken or destroyed, and his property plundered, his place was filled by a relation, and the order remained unbroken. The Affghan chiefs had thus enjoyed, under their native governments, an amount of independence which was incompatible with the system we introduced–supported as that system was by our military means. These men must have seen that their own power and importance, and even their security against the caprices of their sovereign, could not long be preserved–that they were about to be subjected as well as governed–to be deprived of all power to resist the oppressions of their own government, because its will was enforced by an army which had no sympathy with the nation, and which was therefore ready to use its formidable strength to compel unqualified submission to the sovereign’s commands.
The British army may not have been employed to enforce any unjust command–its movements may have been less, far less, injurious to the countries through which it passed than those of an Affghan army would have been, and its power in the moment of success may have been far less abused; but still it gave a strength to the arm of the sovereign, which was incompatible with the maintenance of the pre-existing civil and social institutions or condition of the country, and especially of the relative positions of the sovereign and the noble. In the measures we adopted to establish the authority of Shah Shoojah, we attempted to carry out a system of government which could only have been made successful by a total revolution in the social condition of the people, and in the relative positions of classes; and as these revolutions are not effected in a few years, the attempt failed.[17]
[17] The system, unpalatable as it was to the nation, might, no doubt, have been carried through by an overwhelming military force, if the country had been worth the cost; but if it was not intended to retain permanent possession of Affghanistan, it appears to us that the native government was far too much interfered with–that the British envoy, the British officers employed in the districts and provinces, and the British army, stood too much between the Shah and his subjects–that we were forming a government which it would be impossible to work in our absence, and creating a state of things which, the longer it might endure, would have made more remote the time at which our interference could be dispensed with.
But if the predominance of our influence and of our military power, and the effects of the system we introduced, tended to depress the chiefs, it must have still more injuriously affected or threatened the power of the priesthood.
This we believe to have been one of the primary and most essential causes of the revolt–this it was that made the insurrection spread with such rapidity, and that finally united the whole nation against us. With the aristocracy and the hierarchy of the country, it must have been but a question of courage and of means–a calculation of the probability of success; and as that probability was greatly increased by the results of the first movement at Cabul, and by the inertness of our army after the first outbreak, all acquired courage enough to aid in doing what all had previously desired to see done.
But if there be any justice in this view of the state of feeling in Affghanistan, even in the moments of its greatest tranquillity, it is difficult to account for the confidence with which the political authorities charged with the management of our affairs in that country looked to the future, and the indifference with which they appear to have regarded what now must appear to every one else to have been very significant, and even alarming, intimations of dissaffection in Cabul, and hostility in the neighbouring districts.
But it is time we should return to Lieutenant Eyre, whose narrative of facts is infinitely more attractive than any speculations we could offer.
“At an early hour this morning, (2d November 1841,) the startling intelligence was brought from the city, that a popular outbreak had taken place; that the shops were all closed; and that a general attack had been made on the houses of all British officers residing in Cabul. About 8 A.M., a hurried note was received by the Envoy in cantonments from Sir Alexander Burnes, stating that the minds of the people had been strongly excited by some mischievous reports, but expressing a hope that he should succeed in quelling the commotion. About 9 A.M., however, a rumour was circulated, which afterwards proved but too well founded, that Sir Alexander had been murdered, and Captain Johnson’s treasury plundered. Flames were now seen to issue from that part of the city where they dwelt, and it was too apparent that the endeavour to appease the people by quiet means had failed, and that it would be necessary to have recourse to stronger measures. The report of firearms was incessant, and seemed to extend through the town from end to end.
“Sir William Macnaghten now called upon General Elphinstone to act. An order was accordingly sent to Brigadier Shelton, then encamped at Seeah Sung, about a mile and a half distant from cantonments, to march forthwith to the _Bala Hissar_, or _royal citadel_, where his Majesty Shah Shoojah resided, commanding a large portion of the city, with the following troops:–viz. one company of H.M. 44th foot; a wing of the 54th regiment native infantry, under Major Ewart; the 6th regiment Shah’s infantry, under Captain Hopkins; and four horse-artillery guns, under Captain Nicholl; and on arrival there, to act according to his own judgment, after consulting with the King.
“The remainder of the troops encamped at Seeah Sung were at the same time ordered into cantonments: viz. H.M. 44th foot, under Lieutenant-Colonel Mackerell; two horse-artillery guns, under Lieutenant Waller; and Anderson’s irregular horse. A messenger was likewise dispatched to recall the 37th native infantry from Khoord-Cabul without delay. The troops at this time in cantonments were as follows: viz. 5th regiment native infantry, under Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver; a wing of 54th native infantry; five six-pounder field guns, with a detachment of the Shah’s artillery, under Lieutenant Warburton; the Envoy’s body-guard; a troop of Skinner’s horse, and another of local horse, under Lieutenant Walker; three companies of the Shah’s sappers, under Captain Walsh; and about twenty men of the Company’s sappers, attached to Captain Paton, assistant-quartermaster-general.
“Widely spread and formidable as this insurrection proved to be afterwards, it was at first a mere insignificant ebullition of discontent on the part of a few desperate and restless men, which military energy and promptitude ought to have crushed in the bud. Its commencement was an attack by certainly not 300 men on the dwellings of Sir Alexander Burnes and Captain Johnson, paymaster to the Shah’s force; and so little did Sir Alexander himself apprehend serious consequences, that he not only refused, on its first breaking out, to comply with the earnest entreaties of the wuzeer to accompany him to the Bala Hissar, but actually forbade his guard to fire on the assailants, attempting to check what he supposed to be a mere riot, by haranguing the attacking party from the gallery of his house. The result was fatal to himself; for in spite of the devoted gallantry of the sepoys, who composed his guard, and that of the paymaster’s office and treasury on the opposite side of the street, who yielded their trust only with their latest breath, the latter were plundered, and his two companions, Lieutenant William Broadfoot of the Bengal European regiment, and his brother, Lieutenant Burnes of the Bombay army, were massacred, in common with every man, woman, and child found on the premises, by these bloodthirsty miscreants. Lieutenant Broadfoot killed five or six men with his own hand, before he was shot down.
“The King, who was in the Bala Hissar, being somewhat startled by the increasing number of the rioters, although not at the time aware, so far as we can judge, of the assassination of Sir A. Burnes, dispatched one of his sons with a number of his immediate Affghan retainers, and that corps of Hindoostanees commonly called Campbell’s regiment, with two guns, to restore order: no support, however, was rendered to these by our troops, whose leaders appeared so thunderstruck by the intelligence of the outbreak, as to be incapable of adopting more than the most puerile defensive measures. Even Sir William Macnaghten seemed, from a note received at this time from him by Captain Trevor, to apprehend little danger, as he therein expressed his perfect confidence as to the speedy and complete success of Campbell’s Hindoostanees in putting an end to the disturbance. Such, however, was not the case; for the enemy, encouraged by our inaction, increased rapidly in spirit and numbers, and drove back the King’s guard with great slaughter, the guns being with difficulty saved.
“It must be understood that Captain Trevor lived at this time with his family in a strong _bourge_ or tower, situated by the river side, near the Kuzzilbash quarter, which, on the west, is wholly distinct from the remainder of the city. Within musket-shot, on the opposite side of the river, in the direction of the strong and populous village of Deh Affghan, is a fort of some size, then used as a godown, or storehouse, by the Shah’s commissariat, part of it being occupied by Brigadier Anquetil, commanding the Shah’s force. Close to this fort, divided by a narrow watercourse, was the house of Captain Troup, brigade-major of the Shah’s force, perfectly defensible against musketry. Both Brigadier Anquetil and Captain Troup had gone out on horseback early in the morning towards cantonments, and were unable to return; but the above fort and house contained the usual guard of sepoys; and in a garden close at hand, called the _Yaboo-Khaneh_, or lines of the baggage-cattle, was a small detachment of the Shah’s sappers and miners, and a party of Captain Ferris’s juzailchees. Captain Trevor’s tower was capable of being made good against a much stronger force than the rebels at this present time could have collected, had it been properly garrisoned.
“As it was, the Hazirbash,[18] or King’s lifeguards, were, under Captain Trevor, congregated round their leader, to protect him and his family; which duty, it will be seen, they well performed under very trying circumstances. For what took place in this quarter I beg to refer to a communication made to me at my request by Captain Colin Mackenzie,[19] assistant political agent at Peshawur, who then occupied the godown portion of the fort above mentioned, which will be found hereafter.[20]
“I have already stated that Brigadier Shelton was, early in the day, directed to proceed with part of the Seeah Sung force to occupy the Bala Hissar, and, if requisite, to lead his troops against the insurgents. Captain Lawrence, military secretary to the Envoy, was at the same time sent forward to prepare the King for that officer’s reception. Taking with him four troopers of the body-guard, he was galloping along the main road, when, shortly after crossing the river, he was suddenly attacked by an Affghan, who, rushing from behind a wall, made a desperate cut at him with a large two-handed knife. He dexterously avoided the blow by spurring his horse on one side; but, passing onwards, he was fired upon by about fifty men, who, having seen his approach, ran out from the Lahore gate of the city to intercept him. He reached the Bala Hissar safe, where he found the King apparently in a state of great agitation, he having witnessed the assault from the window of his palace. His Majesty expressed an eager desire to conform to the Envoy’s wishes in all respects in this emergency.
“Captain Lawrence was still conferring with the King, when Lieutenant Sturt, our executive engineer, rushed into the palace, stabbed in three places about the face and neck. He had been sent by Brigadier Shelton to make arrangements for the accommodation of the troops, and had reached the gate of the _Dewan Khaneh_, or hall of audience, when the attempt at his life was made by some one who had concealed himself there for that purpose, and who immediately effected his escape. The wounds were fortunately not dangerous, and Lieutenant Sturt was conveyed back to cantonments in the King’s own palanquin, under a strong escort. Soon after this Brigadier Shelton’s force arrived; but the day was suffered to pass without any thing being done demonstrative of British energy and power. The murder of our countrymen, and the spoliation of public and private property, was perpetrated with impunity within a mile of our cantonment, and under the very walls of the Bala Hissar.
“Such an exhibition on our part taught the enemy their strength–confirmed against us those who, however disposed to join in the rebellion, had hitherto kept aloof from prudential motives, and ultimately encouraged the nation to unite as one man for our destruction.
“It was, in fact, the crisis of all others calculated to test the qualities of a military commander. Whilst, however, it is impossible for an unprejudiced person to approve the military dispositions of this eventful period, it is equally our duty to discriminate. The most _responsible_ party is not always the most culpable. It would be the height of injustice to a most amiable and gallant officer not to notice the long course of painful and wearing illness, which had materially affected the nerves, and probably even the intellect, of General Elphinstone; cruelly incapacitating him, so far as he was personally concerned, from acting in this sudden emergency with the promptitude and vigour necessary for our preservation.
“Unhappily, Sir William Macnaghten at first made light of the insurrection, and, by his representations as to the general feeling of the people towards us, not only deluded himself, but misled the General in council. The unwelcome truth was soon forced upon us, that in the whole Affghan nation we could not reckon on a single friend.
“But though no active measures of aggression were taken, all necessary preparations were made to secure the cantonment against attack. It fell to my own lot to place every available gun in position round the works. Besides the guns already mentioned, we had in the magazine 6 nine-pounder iron guns, 3 twenty-four pounder howitzers, 1 twelve-pounder ditto, and 3 5-1/2-inch mortars; but the detail of artillerymen fell very short of what was required to man all these efficiently, consisting of only 80 Punjabees belonging to the Shah, under Lieutenant Warburton, very insufficiently instructed, and of doubtful fidelity.”
[18] Affghan horse.
[19] The detachment under Captain Mackenzie consisted of about seventy juzailchees or Affghan riflemen, and thirty sappers, who had been left in the town in charge of the wives and children of the corps, all of whom were brought safe into the cantonments by that gallant party, who fought their way from the heart of the town.
[20] “I am sorry to say that this document has not reached me with the rest of the manuscript. I have not struck out the reference, because there is hope that it still exists, and may yet be appended to this narrative. The loss of any thing else from Captain Mackenzie’s pen will be regretted by all who read his other communication, the account of the Envoy’s murder.–EDITOR.”
The fortified cantonment occupied by the British troops was a quadrangle of 1000 yards long by 600 broad, with round flanking bastions at each corner, every one of which was commanded by some fort or hill. To one end of this work was attached the Mission compound and enclosure, about half as large as the cantonment, surrounded by a simple wall. This space required to be defended in time of war, and it rendered the whole of one face of the cantonment nugatory for purposes of defence. The profile of the works themselves was weak, being in fact an ordinary field-work. But the most strange and unaccountable circumstance recorded by Lieutenant Eyre respecting these military arrangements, is certainly the fact, that the commissariat stores, containing whatever the army possessed of food or clothing, was not within the circuit of these fortified cantonments, but in a detached and weak fort, the gate of which was commanded by another building at a short distance. Our author thus sums up his observations on these cantonments:–
“In fact, we were so hemmed in on all sides, that, when the rebellion became general, the troops could not move out a dozen paces from either gate without being exposed to the fire of some neighbouring hostile fort, garrisoned, too, by marksmen who seldom missed their aim. The country around us was likewise full of impediments to the movements of artillery and cavalry, being in many places flooded, and every where closely intersected by deep water-cuts.
“I cannot help adding, in conclusion, that almost all the calamities that befell our ill-starred force may be traced more or less to the defects of our position; and that our cantonment at Cabul, whether we look to its situation or its construction, must ever be spoken of as a disgrace to our military skill and judgment.”
_Nov_. 3.–The 37th native infantry arrived in cantonments, as previously stated.
“Early in the afternoon, a detachment under Major Swayne, consisting of two companies 5th native infantry, one of H.M. 44th, and two H.A. guns under Lieutenant Waller, proceeded out of the western gate towards the city, to effect, if possible, a junction at the Lahore gate with a part of Brigadier Shelton’s force from the Bala Hissar. They drove back and defeated a party of the enemy who occupied the road near the Shah Bagh, but had to encounter a sharp fire from the Kohistan gate of the city, and from the walls of various enclosures, behind which a number of marksmen had concealed themselves, as also from the fort of Mahmood Khan, commanding the road along which they had to pass. Lieutenant Waller and several sepoys were wounded. Major Swayne, observing the whole line of road towards the Lahore gate strongly occupied by some Affghan horse and juzailchees, and fearing that he would be unable to effect the object in view with so small a force unsupported by cavalry, retired into cantonments. Shortly after this, a large body of the rebels having issued from the fort of Mahmood Khan, 900 yards southeast of cantonments, extended themselves in a line along the bank of the river, displaying a flag; an iron nine-pounder was brought to bear on them from our southeast bastion, and a round or two of shrapnell caused them to seek shelter behind some neighbouring banks, whence, after some desultory firing on both sides, they retired.
“Whatever hopes may have been entertained, up to this period, of a speedy termination to the insurrection, they began now to wax fainter every hour, and an order was dispatched to the officer commanding at Candahar to lose no time in sending to our assistance the 16th and 43d regiments native infantry, (which were under orders for India,) together with a troop of horse-artillery and half a regiment of cavalry; an order was likewise sent off to recall General Sale with his brigade from Gundamuk. Captain John Conolly, political assistant to the Envoy, went into the Bala Hissar early this morning, to remain with the King, and to render every assistance in his power to Brigadier Shelton.”
On this day Lieutenants Maule and Wheeler were murdered at Kahdarrah in Koohdaman; the Kohistan regiment of Affghans which they commanded, offering no resistance to the rebels. The two officers defended themselves resolutely for some time, but fell under the fire of the enemy. Lieutenant Maule had been warned of his danger by a friendly native, but refused to desert his post.
On this day also Lieutenant Rattray, Major Pottinger’s assistant, was treacherously murdered at Lughmanee, during a conference to which he had been invited, and within sight of the small fort in which these two gentlemen resided. This act was followed by a general insurrection in Kohistan and Koohdaman, which terminated in the destruction of the Goorkha regiment at Charikar, and the slaughter of all the Europeans in that district except Major Pottinger and Lieutenant Haughton, both severely wounded, who, with one sepoy and one or two followers, succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the Affghan parties, who were patrolling the roads for the purpose of intercepting them, and at length arrived in cantonments, having actually passed at night through the town and bazars of Cabul. For the details of this interesting and afflicting episode in Mr Eyre’s narrative, we must refer our readers to the work itself. Major Pottinger appears on this occasion to have exhibited the same high courage and promptitude and vigour in action, and the same resources in difficulty, that made him conspicuous at Herat, and Lieutenant Haughton was no unworthy companion of such a man.
“_November_ 4.–The enemy having taken strong possession of the _Shah Bagh_, or King’s Garden, and thrown a garrison into the fort of Mahomed Shereef, nearly opposite the bazar, effectually prevented any communication between the cantonment and commissariat fort, the gate of which latter was commanded by the gate of the Shah Bagh on the other side of the road.
“Ensign Warren of the 5th native infantry at this time occupied the commissariat fort with 100 men, and having reported that he was very hard pressed by the enemy, and in danger of being completely cut off, the General, either forgetful or unaware at the moment of the important fact, that upon the possession of this fort we were entirely dependent for provisions, and anxious only to save the lives of men whom he believed to be in imminent peril, hastily gave directions that a party under the command of Captain Swayne, of H.M.’s 44th regiment, should proceed immediately to bring off Ensign Warren and his garrison to cantonments, abandoning the fort to the enemy. A few minutes previously an attempt to relieve him had been made by Ensign Gordon, with a company of the 37th native infantry and eleven camels laden with ammunition; but the party were driven back, and Ensign Gordon killed. Captain Swayne now accordingly proceeded towards the spot with two companies of H.M.’s 44th; scarcely had they issued from cantonments ere a sharp and destructive fire was poured upon them from Mahomed Shereef’s fort which, as they proceeded, was taken up by the marksmen in the Shah Bagh, under whose deadly aim both officers and men suffered severely; Captains Swayne and Robinson of the 44th being killed, and Lieutenants Hallahan, Evans, and Fortye wounded in this disastrous business. It now seemed to the officer, on whom the command had devolved, impracticable to bring off Ensign Warren’s party without risking the annihilation of his own, which had already sustained so rapid and severe a loss in officers; he therefore returned forthwith to cantonments. In the course of the evening another attempt was made by a party of the 5th light cavalry; but they encountered so severe a fire from the neighbouring enclosures as obliged them to return without effecting their desired object, with the loss of eight troopers killed and fourteen badly wounded. Captain Boyd, the assistant commissary-general, having meanwhile been made acquainted with the General’s intention to give up the fort, hastened to lay before him the disastrous consequences that would ensue from so doing. He stated that the place contained, besides large supplies of wheat and attah, all his stores of rum, medicine, clothing, &c., the value of which might be estimated at four lacs of rupees; that to abandon such valuable property would not only expose the force to the immediate want of the necessaries of life, but would infallibly inspire the enemy with tenfold courage. He added that we had not above two days’ supply of provisions in cantonments, and that neither himself nor Captain Johnson of the Shah’s commissariat had any prospect of procuring them elsewhere under existing circumstances. In consequence of this strong representation on the part of Captain Boyd, the General sent immediate orders to Ensign Warren to hold out the fort to the last extremity. (Ensign Warren, it must be remarked, denied having received this note.) Early in the night a letter was received from him to the effect that he believed the enemy were busily engaged in mining one of the towers, and that such was the alarm among the sepoys that several of them had actually made their escape over the wall to cantonments; that the enemy were making preparations to burn down the gate; and that, considering the temper of his men, he did not expect to be able to hold out many hours longer, unless reinforced without delay. In reply to this he was informed that he would be reinforced by two A.M.
“At about nine o’clock P.M., there was an assembly of staff and other officers at the General’s house, when the Envoy came in and expressed his serious conviction, that unless Mahomed Shereef’s fort were taken that very night, we should lose the commissariat fort, or at all events be unable to bring out of it provisions for the troops. The disaster of the morning rendered the General extremely unwilling to expose his officers and men to any similar peril; but, on the other hand, it was urged that the darkness of the night would nullify the enemy’s fire, who would also most likely be taken unawares, as it was not the custom of the Affghans to maintain a very strict watch at night. A man in Captain Johnson’s employ was accordingly sent out to reconnoitre the place. He returned in a few minutes with the intelligence that about twenty men were seated outside the fort near the gate, smoking and talking; and, from what he overheard of their conversation, he judged the garrison to be very small, and unable to resist a sudden onset. The debate was now resumed, but another hour passed and the General could not make up his mind. A second spy was dispatched, whose report tended to corroborate what the first had said. I was then sent to Lieutenant Sturt, the engineer, who was nearly recovered from his wounds, for his opinion. He at first expressed himself in favour of an immediate attack, but, on hearing that some of the enemy were on the watch at the gate, he judged it prudent to defer the assault till an early hour in the morning: this decided the General, though not before several hours had slipped away in fruitless discussion.
“Orders were at last given for a detachment to be in readiness at four A.M. at the Kohistan gate; and Captain Bellew, deputy-assistant quartermaster-general, volunteered to blow open the gate; another party of H.M.’s 44th were at the same time to issue by a cut in the south face of the rampart, and march simultaneously towards the commissariat fort, to reinforce the garrison. Morning had, however, well dawned ere the men could be got under arms; and they were on the point of marching off, when it was reported that Ensign Warren had just arrived in cantonments with his garrison, having evacuated the fort. It seems that the enemy had actually set fire to the gate; and Ensign Warren, seeing no prospect of a reinforcement, and expecting the enemy every moment to rush in, led out his men by a hole which he had prepared in the wall. Being called upon in a public letter from the assistant adjutant-general to state his reasons for abandoning his post, he replied that he was ready to do so before a court of enquiry, which he requested might be assembled to investigate his conduct; it was not, however, deemed expedient to comply with his request.
“It is beyond a doubt that our feeble and ineffectual defence of this fort, and the valuable booty it yielded, was the first _fatal_ blow to our supremacy at Cabul, and at once determined those chiefs–and more particularly the Kuzzilbashes–who had hitherto remained neutral, to join in the general combination to drive us from the country.”
“_Nov_. 5.–It no sooner became generally known that the commissariat fort, upon which we were dependent for supplies, had been abandoned, than one universal feeling of indignation pervaded the garrison. Nor can I describe,” says Lieutenant Eyre, “the impatience of the troops, but especially of the native portion, to be led out for its recapture–a feeling that was by no means diminished by seeing the Affghans crossing and re-crossing the road between the commissariat fort and the gate of the _Shah Bagh_, laden with the provisions upon which had depended our ability to make a protracted defence.”
That the whole commissariat should have been deposited in a detached fort is extraordinary and inexcusable, but that the garrison of that fort should not have been reinforced, is even more unintelligible; and that a sufficient force was not at once sent to succour and protect it when attacked, is altogether unaccountable. General Elphinstone was disabled by his infirmities from efficiently discharging the duties that had devolved upon him, but he appears to have been ready to act upon the suggestion of others. What then were his staff about?–some of them are said to have had little difficulty or delicacy in urging their own views upon their commander. Did they not suggest to him in time the importance, the necessity, of saving the commissariat at all hazards?
At the suggestion of Lieutenant Eyre, it was determined to attempt the capture of Mahomed Shereef’s fort by blowing open the gate, Mr Eyre volunteering to keep the road clear for the storming party with the guns. “The General agreed; a storming party under Major Swayne, 6th native infantry, was ordered; the powder bags were got ready, and at noon we issued from the western gate.” “For twenty minutes the guns were worked under a very sharp fire from the fort;” but “Major Swayne, instead of rushing forward with his men as had been agreed, had in the mean time remained stationary, under cover of the wall by the road-side.” The General, seeing that the attempt had failed, recalled the troops into cantonments.
“_Nov_. 6.–It was now determined to take the fort of Mahomed Shereef by regular breach and assault.” A practicable breach was effected, and a storming party composed of one company H.M. 44th, under Ensign Raban, one ditto 5th native infantry, under Lieutenant Deas, and one ditto 37th native infantry, under Lieutenant Steer, the whole commanded by Major Griffiths, speedily carried the place. “Poor Raban was shot through the heart when conspicuously waving a flag on the summit of the breach.”
As this fort adjoined the Shah Bagh, it was deemed advisable to dislodge the enemy from the latter if possible. This was partially effected, and, had advantage been taken of the opportunity to occupy the buildings of the garden gateway, “immediate re-possession could have been taken of the commissariat fort opposite, which had not yet been emptied of half its contents.”
In the mean time, our cavalry were engaged in an affair with the enemy’s horse, in which we appear to have had the advantage. “The officers gallantly headed their men, and encountered about an equal number of the enemy who advanced to meet them. A hand-to-hand encounter took place, which ended in the Affghan horse retreating to the plain, leaving the hill in our possession. In this affair, Captain Anderson personally engaged and slew the brother in-law of Abdoolah Khan.”
But the Affghans collected from various quarters; the juzailchees,[21] under Captain Mackenzie, were driven with great loss from the Shah Bagh which they had entered; and a gun which had been employed to clear that enclosure was with difficulty saved. Our troops having been drawn up on the plain, remained prepared to receive an attack from the enemy, who gradually retired as the night closed in.
[21] Affghan riflemen.
_Nov_. 8.–An attempt was made by the enemy to mine a tower of the fort that had been taken, which they could not have done had the gate of the Shah Bagh been occupied. The chief cause of anxiety now was the empty state of the granary. Even with high bribes and liberal payment, the Envoy could not procure sufficient for daily consumption. The plan of the enemy now was to starve us out, and the chiefs exerted all their influence to prevent our being supplied.
_Nov_. 9.–The General’s weak state of health rendered it necessary to relieve him from the command of the garrison, and at the earnest request of the Envoy, Brigadier Shelton was summoned from the Bala Hissar, “in the hope that, by heartily co-operating with the Envoy and General, he would strengthen their hands and rouse the sinking confidence of the troops. He entered cantonments this morning, bringing with him one H.A. gun, one mountain-train ditto, one company H.M.’s 44th, the Shah’s 6th infantry, and a small supply of attah (flour.)”
“_November_ 10.–Henceforward Brigadier Shelton bore a conspicuous part in the drama, upon the issue of which so much depended. He had, however, from the very first, seemed to despair of the force being able to hold out the winter at Cabul, and strenuously advocated an immediate retreat to Jellalabad.
“This sort of despondency proved, unhappily, very infectious. It soon spread its baneful influence among the officers, and was by them communicated to the soldiery. The number of _croakers_ in garrison became perfectly frightful, lugubrious looks and dismal prophecies being encountered every where. The severe losses sustained by H.M.’s 44th under Captain Swayne, on the 4th instant, had very much discouraged the men of that regiment; and it is a lamentable fact that some of those European soldiers, who were naturally expected to exhibit to their native brethren in arms an example of endurance and fortitude, were among the first to loose confidence, and give vent to feelings of discontent at the duties imposed on them. The evil seed, once sprung up, became more and more difficult to eradicate, showing daily more and more how completely demoralizing to the British soldier is the very idea of a retreat.
“Sir William Macnaghten and his suite were altogether opposed to Brigadier Shelton in this matter, it being in his (the Envoy’s) estimation a duty we owed the Government to retain our post, at whatsoever risk. This difference of opinion, on a question of such vital importance, was attended with unhappy results, inasmuch as it deprived the General, in his hour of need, of the strength which unanimity imparts, and produced an uncommunicative and disheartening reserve in an emergency which demanded the freest interchange of counsel and ideas.”
On the morning of this day, large parties of the enemy’s horse and foot occupied the heights to the east and to the west of the cantonments, which, it was supposed, they intended to assault. No attack was made; but “on the eastern quarter, parties of the enemy, moving down into the plain, occupied all the forts in that direction. … At this time, not above two days’ provisions remained in garrison; and it was very clear, that unless the enemy were quickly driven out from their new possession, we should soon be completely hemmed in on all sides.” At the Envoy’s urgent desire, he taking the entire responsibility on himself, the General ordered a force, under Brigadier Shelton, to storm the Rikabashee fort, which was within musket-shot of the cantonments, and from which a galling fire had been poured into the Mission compound by the Affghans. About noon, the troops assembled at the eastern gate; a storming party of two companies from each regiment taking the lead, preceded by Captain Bellew, who hurried forward to blow open the gate–but missing the gate, he blew open a small wicket, through which not more than two or three men could enter abreast, and these in a stooping posture. A sharp fire was kept up from the walls, and many of the bravest fell in attempting to force their entrance through the wicket; but Colonel Mackerell of the 44th, and Lieutenant Bird of the Shah’s 6th infantry, with a handful of Europeans and a few sepoys, forced their way in–the garrison fled through the gate which was at the opposite side, and Colonel Mackerell and his little party closed it, securing the chain with a bayonet; but, at this moment, some Affghan horse charged round the corner–the cry of cavalry was raised–“the Europeans gave way simultaneously with the sepoys–a bugler of the 6th infantry, through mistake, sounded the retreat–and it became for a time, a scene of _sauve qui peut_.” In vain did the officers endeavour to rally the men, and to lead them back to the rescue of their commanding-officer and their comrades; only one man, private Stewart of the 44th, listened to the appeal and returned.
“Let me here (says Lieutenant Eyre) do Brigadier Shelton justice: his acknowledged courage redeemed the day.” After great efforts, at last he rallied them–again advancing to the attack, again they faltered. A third time did the Brigadier bring on his men to the assault, which now proved successful; but while this disgraceful scene was passing outside the fort, the enemy had forced their way into it, and had cut to pieces Colonel Mackerell and all his little party, except Lieutenant Bird, who, with one sepoy, was found in a barricaded apartment, where these two brave men had defended themselves till the return of the troops, killing above thirty of the enemy by the fire of their two muskets.
Our loss on this occasion was not less than 200 killed and wounded; but the results of this success, though dearly purchased, were important. Four neighbouring forts were immediately evacuated by the enemy, and occupied by our troops: they were found to contain 1400 maunds of grain, of which about one-half was removed into cantonments immediately; but Brigadier Shelton not having thought it prudent to place a guard for the protection of the remainder, it was carried off during the night by the Affghans. “Permanent possession was, however, taken of the Rikabashee and Zoolfikar forts, and the towers of the remainder were blown up on the following day.”
It cannot fail to excite surprise, that these forts, which do not seem to have been occupied by the enemy till the 10th, were not either occupied or destroyed by the British troops before that day.
_Nov_. 13.–The enemy appeared in great force on the western heights, where, having posted two guns, they fired into cantonments with considerable precision. At the entreaty of the Envoy, it was determined to attack them–a force, under Brigadier Shelton, moved out for that purpose–the advance, under Major Thain, ascended the hill with great gallantry; “but the enemy resolutely stood their ground at the summit of the ridge, and unflinchingly received the discharge of our musketry, which, strange to say, even at the short range of ten or twelve yards, did little or no execution.”
The fire of our guns, however, threw the Affghans into confusion. A charge of cavalry drove them up the hill, and the infantry advancing, carried the height, the enemy retreating along the ridge, closely followed by our troops, and abandoning their guns to us; but, owing to the misconduct of the troops, only one of them was carried away, the men refusing to advance to drag off the other, which was therefore spiked by Lieutenant Eyre, with the aid of one artilleryman.
“This was the last success our arms were destined to experience. Henceforward it becomes my weary task to relate a catalogue of errors, disasters, and difficulties, which,