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TITLE: CAMPS, QUARTERS, AND CASUAL PLACES
AUTHOR: ARCHIBALD FORBES
EBOOK: E05509 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

CAMPS, QUARTERS AND CASUAL PLACES

BY ARCHIBALD FORBES, LL.D.

NOTE

My obligations for permission to incorporate some of the articles in this
volume are due to Messrs. George Routledge and Sons, Mr. James Knowles of
the _Nineteenth Century_, Mr. Percy Bunting of the _Contemporary Review_,
and the Proprietor of _McClure's Magazine_.

LONDON, _June_ 1896.

CONTENTS

1. MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE

2. REVERENCING THE GOLDEN FEET

3. GERMAN WAR PRAYERS

4. MISS PRIEST'S BRIDECAKE

5. A VERSION OF BALACLAVA

6. HOW I "SAVED FRANCE"

7. CHRISTMAS IN A CAVALRY REGIMENT

8. THE MYSTERY OF MONSIEUR REGNIER

9. RAILWAY LIZZ

10. MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER

11. THE CAWNPORE OF TO-DAY

12. BISMARCK BEFORE AND DURING THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR

13. THE INVERNESS "CHARACTER" FAIR

14. THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE

15. GEORGE MARTELL'S BANDOBAST

16. THE LUCKNOW OF TO-DAY

17. THE MILITARY COURAGE OF ROYALTY

18. PARADE OF THE COMMISSIONAIRES

19. THE INNER HISTORY OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN

MATRIMONY UNDER FIRE

The interval between the declaration of the Franco-German war of 1870-71,
and the "military promenade," at which the poor Prince Imperial received
his "baptism of fire," was a pleasant, lazy time at Saarbruecken; to which
pretty frontier town I had early betaken myself, in the anticipation,
which proved well founded, that the tide of war would flow that way first.
What a pity it is that all war cannot be like this early phase of it, of
which I speak! It was playing at warfare, with just enough of the grim
reality cropping up occasionally, to give the zest which the reckless
Frenchwoman declared was added to a pleasure by its being also a sin. The
officers of the Hohenzollerns--our only infantry regiment in garrison--
drank their beer placidly under the lime-tree in the market-place, as
their men smoked drowsily, lying among the straw behind the stacked arms
ready for use at a moment's notice. The infantry patrol skirted the
frontier line every morning in the gray dawn, occasionally exchanging with
little result a few shots with the French outposts on the Spicheren or
down in the valley bounded by the Schoenecken wood. The Uhlans, their
piebald lance-pennants fluttering in the wind, cantered leisurely round
the crests of the little knolls which formed the vedette posts, despising
mightily the straggling chassepot bullets which were pitched at them from
time to time in a desultory way; but which, desultory as they were, now
and then brought lance-pennant and its bearer to the ground--an occurrence
invariably followed by a little spurt of lively hostility.

I had my quarters at the Rheinischer Hof, a right comfortable hotel on the
St. Johann side of the Saar, where most of the Hohenzollern officers
frequented the _table d'hote_ and where quaint little Max, the drollest
imp of a waiter imaginable, and pretty Frauelein Sophie the landlord's
niece, did all that in them lay to contribute to the pleasantness and
comfort of the house. Not a few pleasant evenings did I spend at the table
of the long dining-room, with the close-cropped red head of silent and
genial Hauptmann von Krehl looming large over the great ice-pail, with its
_chevaux de frise_ of long-necked Niersteiner bottles--the worthy
Hauptmann supported by blithe Lieutenant von Klipphausen, ever ready with
the _Wacht am Rhein_; quaint Dr. Diestelkamp, brimful of recollections of
"six-and-sixty" and as ready to amputate your leg as to crack a joke or
clink a glass; gay young Adjutant von Zuelow--he who one day brought in a
prisoner from the foreposts a red-legged Frenchman across the pommel of
his saddle; and many other good fellows, over most of whom the turf of the
Spicheren, or the brown earth of the Gravelotte plain, now lies lightly.

But although the Rheinischer Hof associates itself in my mind with many
memories, half-pleasant, half-sad, it was not the most accustomed haunt of
the casuals in Saarbruecken, including myself. Of the waifs and strays
which the war had drifted down to the pretty frontier town the great
rendezvous was the Hotel Hagen, at the bend of the turn leading from the
bridge up to the railway station. The Hagen was a free-and-easy place
compared with the Rheinischer, and among its inmates there was no one who
could sing a better song than manly George--type of the Briton at whom
foreigners stare--who, ignorant of a word of their language, wholly
unprovided with any authorisation save the passport signed "Salisbury,"
and having not quite so much business at the seat of war as he might have
at the bottom of a coal-mine, gravitates into danger with inevitable
certainty, and stumbles through all manner of difficulties and bothers by
reason of a serene good-humour that nothing can ruffle and a cool
resolution before which every obstacle fades away. Was there ever a more
compositely polyglot cosmopolitan than poor young de Liefde--half
Dutchman, half German by birth, an Englishman by adoption, a Frenchman in
temperament, speaking with equal fluency the language of all four
countries, and an unconsidered trifle of some half-dozen European
languages besides? Then there was the English student from Bonn, who had
come down to the front accompanied by a terrible brute of a dog, vast,
shaggy, self-willed, and dirty; an animal which, so to speak, owned his
owner, and was so much the horror and disgust of everybody that on account
of him the company of his master--one of the pleasantest fellows alive--
was the source of general apprehension. There was young Silberer the
many-sided and eccentric, an Austrian nobleman, a Vienna feuilletonist and
correspondent, a rowing man, a gourmet, ever thinking of his stomach and
yet prepared for all the roughness of the campaign--warm-hearted,
passionate, narrow-minded, capable of sleeping for twenty-three out of the
twenty-four hours, and the wearer of a Scotch cap. There was Kuester, a
German journalist with an address somewhere in the Downham Road; and Duff,
a Fellow of ---- College, the strangest mixture of nervousness and cool
courage I ever met.

We were a kind of happy family at the Hagen; the tone of the coterie was
that of the easiest intimacy into which every newcomer slid quite
naturally. Thus when on the 31st July there was a somewhat sensational
arrival, the stolid landlord had not turned the gas on in the empty saal
before everybody knew and sympathised with the errand of the strangers.
The party consisted of a plump little girl of about eighteen with a bonny
round face and fine frank eyes; her sister who was some years older; and a
brother, the eldest of the three. They had come from Silesia on rather a
strange tryst. Little Minna Vogt had for her _Braeutigam_ a young Feldwebel
of the second battalion of the Hohenzollerns, a native of Saarlouis. The
battalion quartered there was under orders to join its first battalion at
Saarbruecken, and young Eckenstein had written to his betrothed to come and
meet him there, that the marriage-knot might be tied before he should go
on a campaign from which he might not return. The arrangement was
certainly a charming one; we should have a wedding in the Hagen! There was
no nonsense about our young _Braut_. She told me the little story at
supper on the night of her arrival in the most matter-of-fact way
possible, drank her two glasses of red wine, and went off serenely to bed
with a dainty lisping _Schlafen Sie wohl!_

While Minna was between the sheets in the pleasant chamber in the Hagen
her lover was lying in bivouac some fifteen miles away. In the afternoon
of the next day his battalion approached Saarbruecken and bivouacked about
two miles from the town. Of course we all went out to welcome it; some
bearing peace-offerings of cigars, others the drink-offering of potent
Schnapps. The Vogt family were left the sole inmates of the Hagen,
delicacy preventing their accompanying us. The German journalist, however,
had a commission to find out young Eckenstein and tell him of the bliss
that awaited him two short miles away. Right hearty fellows were the
officers of the second battalion--from the grizzled Oberst down to the
smooth-faced junior lieutenant; and the men who had been marching and
bivouacking for a fortnight looked as fresh as if they had not travelled
five miles. Kuester soon found the young Feldwebel; and the Hauptmann of
his company when he heard the state of the case, smiled a grim but kindly
smile, and gave him leave for two days with the proviso, that if any
hostile action should be taken in the interval he should rejoin the
colours immediately and without notice. "No fear of that!" was
Eckenstein's reply with a significant down glance at his sword; and then,
after a cheery "good-night" to the hardy bivouackers, we visitors started
in triumph on our return to the Hagen, the young Feldwebel in our midst It
was good to see the unrestraint with which Minna--she of the apple face
and frank eyes--threw herself round the neck of her betrothed as she met
him on the steps of the Hagen, and his modest manly blush as he returned
the embrace. Ye gods! did not we make a night of it! Stolid Hagen came out
of his shell for once, and swore, _Donner Wetter_ that he would give us a
supper we should remember; and he kept his word. The good old pastor of
the snow-white hair and withered cheeks--he had been engaged to perform
the ceremony of the morrow--we voted into the chair whether he would or
not; and on his right sat Minna and Eckenstein, their arms interlacing and
whispering soft speeches which were not for our ears. The table was
covered with bottles of Blume de Saar, the champagne peculiar of the Hagen;
and the speed with which the full bottles were converted into "dead
marines" was a caution to teetotallers. Then de Liefde the polyglot gave
the health of the happy couple in a felicitous but composite speech, in
which half a dozen languages were impartially intermixed so that all might
understand at least a portion. George the jolly insisted in leading off
the honours with a truly British "three times three;" and that horrible
dog of Hyndman's gave the time, like a beast as he was, with stentorian
barkings. Then Minna and her sister retired, followed by Herr Pastor; and
after a considerable number of more bottles of Blume de Saar had met their
fate we formed a procession and escorted the happy Eckenstein to the
Rheinischer Hof where he was to sleep.

Next morning by eleven, we had all reassembled in the second saal of the
Hagen. In the great room the marriage-breakfast was laid out, and in the
kitchen Hagen and his Frau were up to their eyes in mystic culinary
operations. Minna looked like a rosebud in her pretty low-necked blue

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