The Gentleman Cadet

The examination in other subjects, such as fortifications, geometrical drawing, French, German, etc, I did well in, but as mathematics counted most, I hoped for much out of that.

It was usual formerly to continue studies after the examinations, and we therefore sometimes managed to obtain information from the masters as to how we had done. Believing I might gain some information, I made an excuse for asking the master how I had done, or if he knew yet how any one had done. I saw a pleasant expression in the mathematician’s face, who said, “In the first two papers you are several marks ahead of anybody. Have you done as well in the others?”

“I think I have,” I replied.

“I’m very glad of it, as I told the Inspector I believed you would come out well.”

This information I kept to myself, and waited patiently for the whole examination to be made known, though I could not help being amused at hearing many of the cadets below me speaking of it as a certainty that they were sure to take my place, as I had not worked at all.

The morning at length arrived when the marks were to be read out, and we all rushed into academy and waited with great anxiety to hear the result of the examination. The master took the paper in his hand very deliberately, put on his spectacles, and said, “Silence, gentlemen, if you please, and I will read out the marks for the mathematical examination.”

We were all as quiet as mice, and waited, pencil in hand, for the news. The master then said, “First” – and after waiting half a minute, as though to increase our curiosity, repeated – “First, Mr Shepard; decimal 78. Second, Mr Hackland; decimal 75. Third, Mr Bowden; decimal 8” – and so on.

When my name was read out as first I could scarcely forbear a smile. I knew it was a total surprise to the whole class, and to me it was unexpected, for I never hoped to get higher than third or fourth; and on finding myself first, I would not at the time have changed places with a lord. Helen Stanley came to my mind, and I thought what she would say when she heard I was first, and saw my name in the paper as having gained the second mathematical prize. I lost interest in the reading out of the marks after the first half dozen names had been given. The cadet who stood third had what we called “a shorter coarse” than I had, and was lower than I was, because he gained less marks, though he had done slightly better than I had in his shorter subjects, gaining decimal 8 in what he had done. He was a cadet who had joined three months after me, and who had come to the Academy knowing enough mathematics to pass him through without any further trouble, his father having been a Cambridge Wrangler, who had taught him algebra about the same time he taught him his letters.

After the reading out of the marks I was congratulated by several cadets, whilst surprise was expressed as to how I had done so well, when, as was supposed, I had never worked out of academy. In reality, I believe I had worked my brain more than any other cadet in the class, and to this was mainly due my success, for I had developed a power of independent and intense thought, which made thinking easy, and enabled me to solve problems which a superficial or unthinking system of working never would have enabled me to solve.

For several days after the examination I felt very happy, little dreaming that a disappointment was in store for me, for the fact of being first in an examination had on all previous occasions secured the mathematical prize. I believed I should not have been first had not the best man been compelled to go to hospital; but this I looked on as the fortune of war, like a horse breaking down in its training. Just before the public examination, however, I learnt that I was not to receive the prize, but that it was to be given to Bowden, who was third, the reason assigned being that he was junior to me in joining the Academy, and had gained a higher decimal than I had. This was my first disappointment and my first experience of what I at least believed to be injustice. During the half-year I had passed Bowden, and during the previous half-year I had come from nearly last of the class to within two places of him. These facts made me feel half angry, half disappointed, and produced on me a sort of irritation that nearly induced me to become insubordinate, for I could not help fancying that favouritism had something to do with the selection. I, however, made no appeal, and took the matter as patiently as I could.

It seemed now tolerably certain that the next half-year I should qualify for my commission, and might hope to be in the first four or five of my batch – a position that I never hoped to attain after I had been three months at the Academy, and which seemed impossible when I was straggling to cram at Mr Hostler’s academy.

The next half-year I should become a corporal, and should be one of the seniors, and should, consequently, have far more authority than I possessed as an old cadet only. It would be my last also at the Academy, for on joining the practical class we were removed to the Arsenal, and there occupied so exalted a rank that we did not mix much with cadets at the Upper Academy, as it was termed, in consequence of its standing on higher ground than the cadet barracks at the Arsenal.

I must confess that when I saw Bowden called from his seat at the public examination, and given the second prize for mathematics, which was delivered to him by a handsome old officer, I felt that if our merits had been fairly weighed I ought to have received the prize; but probably, had I received it, his feelings might have been similar. It is hard to be treated with injustice, but we are all inclined to fancy more or less that our merits are never fully acknowledged, and when certain men are selected for honours, while we are left out in the cold, that our claims were greater than theirs, and that we are victims to favouritism or want of perception in those who ought to have seen our value.

Although I did well in other branches of study, I stood no chance of gaining a prize in anything except mathematics. In drawing I was good, but there were several cadets much better, whom I was not likely to pass or excel.

Just before the vacation I received an invitation from Howard to pass a week with him in London, where he was staying on leave. Such a chance was not to be refused, so on leaving the Academy I went to town and found Howard in lodgings not far from his club. He was very glad to see me, and congratulated me on my success at the Academy, and gave it as his opinion that I had been “chowsed” out of the prize for mathematics.

During the week I passed with Howard in London, I, for the first time, had a taste of what London life was like. Out of the six evenings I was twice at the opera, once at the Haymarket theatre, once at a ball, to which Howard took me, once at a bachelors’ gathering at Evans’s, and the remaining night at Howard’s club. For a week this kind of life, from its novelty, was pleasant, but I made up my mind that it was a mistake, and that the quiet of the forest was healthier and better both for mind and body.

We visited the Row in the morning and the park in the afternoon, and saw certainly some of the most beautiful women in the world, for, no matter where we may travel or what nations we may visit, we come back and see in old England that her daughters are unrivalled.

As I sauntered on with Howard through the crowd I wondered how Helen Stanley would compare with some of the beauties I saw, and, as often happens to us when we think of a person, whom should I suddenly meet but the lady about whom I was thinking. The instant I saw her I knew there was something about her – I could not say what – which made her look different from those near her. She was natural and rather plainly dressed, and not what is, we believe, technically called “made up.” There was no paint or powder, false hair, or strengthened eyebrows, and she therefore seemed like a looker-on on the boards of a theatre where all the others were dressed up to act parts. She was only in town for a short time, and hoped to be down at the Heronry before my vacation was over.

“How is your cousin?” I inquired.

“I believe quite well,” replied Miss Stanley; “but I have seen little of him in the last three months, and shall see less now.”

I looked at Miss Stanley inquiringly, and site read my look correctly, for she volunteered in a low tone the information that it was all off between them.

“That is a thorough genuine, nice girl,” said Howard, as we parted from her. “Who is she?”

I explained to him all I knew about her, and he again declared she was charming. That he thought so, there was no doubt.

Chapter Sixteen

My Last Half

My vacation passed very quietly till within ten days of its termination, at which time Miss Stanley came to stay at the Heronry. I soon went over to call, and found everything much as it was formerly, except that the pedantic cousin was not mentioned. I soon after learnt that he had behaved very discreditably at Oxford and had been obliged to leave, and that his match had been broken off by Miss Stanley.

It is a curious fact, but it is one that experience has taught us, that in almost every case where a man assumes a superiority over all others, and is always endeavouring to expose weak points or want of knowledge in others whilst he thrusts his only slender information forward, that man is an impostor, and, if found out, will generally “go to the bad.” This was the case with Snipson, with Stanley, and with many others we have known; and, if others will recall their own experiences, we believe they also will find they are led to the same conclusion. There is no necessity for a really clever man to be always blowing his own trumpet; his actual works will show what he has in him; whereas a shallow-pated impostor is always trying by tricks to arrive at a notoriety to which he never could attain by fair work and genuine competition, and so loses no opportunity of taking a prominent position for want of assumption.

I found that Miss Stanley had seen Howard several times in London, and pronounced him “charming.” It was supposed that Howard would have to go to Southampton on some duty, and if so he was expected to pass a few days at the Heronry. Now, had it been any one else, I believe I should have been jealous, for, although I had ceased to be spoony on Miss Stanley, yet I liked her society, and should not have felt happy in knowing she was much with any one else. He, however, was an exception. Each time I met Howard I found that my latest experience had given me the capacity to appreciate in him some quality which had before escaped my observation, whereas when I met other men whom I had known when I was a boy, and of whom I had thought most highly, I found them to be rough, uncultivated, and unintellectual – the change really being in myself, not in them.

I looked forward to Howard’s visit to the Heronry, for I hoped then to see more of him and to get more at his mind than I had been able to do in the bustle and gaiety of London. I also wanted to compare his knowledge of mathematics, etc, with mine, in order to see whether the course at the Academy that I had gone through was as sound as it used to be a few years previously.

It wanted only five days to the date at which I had to leave for Woolwich, when Howard came down to the Heronry, and I was asked over to dine and stop the next day. Before I had been half an hour in the house I discovered that Howard and Helen Stanley seemed to be equally pleased with each other, and I felt that my presence was not always looked upon as agreeable. I was not, therefore, surprised when on the next day Howard told me in the strictest confidence that he and Miss Stanley were engaged, and that they were going to be married when he was a captain, which he hoped to be in about a year.

It being the object of this tale to describe the life of a Woolwich cadet thirty years ago, we must leave our friend Howard and the charming Helen at the Heronry, and return once more to the busy scene of my early labours and competition at Woolwich.

On returning to the Academy for my fifth half-year I found I was promoted to corporal, and was third senior. This promotion gave me a pair of epaulettes, which I put on, and wore with great pride. It was the first promotion I had received, and I can fairly say that no step in rank or position that fortune has since favoured me with ever produced one-tenth of the pleasure that I experienced at eighteen years of age in being made a corporal.

My life at Woolwich was now very agreeable. I had made the acquaintance of friends in the neighbourhood, and also in London. I usually went on leave from Saturday afternoon to Sunday evening, staying during the time with friends. At the Academy, being a corporal gave me certain privileges and authority, whilst every neux was to all intents and purposes my slave. I had every prospect of taking a high position in my batch, and after four months at the Arsenal, in the practical class, I should obtain my commission, and start as an officer in either the Artillery or Engineers.

The friends at whose houses I visited congratulated me on my excellent prospects, and seemed to think I was excessively lucky in having such a chance before me.

One of my friends was a retired colonel, who had been through the whole of the Peninsular war, was at Waterloo, and had left the service many years. He was a soldier of the old school, considered the service everything, and that there was only one profession for a gentleman, viz, the army.

After dinner, and when he and I were tête-à-tête, he used to indulge in various hints and opinions as regards the conduct and character of an officer and a gentleman.

“An officer,” he used to say, “must be the most honourable and gentlemanly of men. He must resent instantly the slightest insult. If a man even looks insultingly at you, have him out at once. If the day ever does come (as I fear the radical tendency of the age seems to indicate) that duelling is done away with, a snob and a bully will be able to ride roughshod over a gentleman, and there will be no redress. An officer, too, must learn his profession. It is a mistake to think that an officer should be above his work. He ought to know everything and do everything better than his men. More than once in my service, when I commanded a troop of Dragoons, I have taken off my coat and shown a private how to clean a horse.

“An officer, too, ought to be able to take his wine, and yet show no signs of it. I can’t recommend you any royal road to this,” said the colonel, “except practice. I should like to tell you, also,” he continued, “that many young officers make or mar their reputation daring their first night at mess. I remember once in my old regiment there was a young cornet joined us, who looked all right, and talked all right, but at mess he had to carve some beef for the colonel. He helped the colonel, and sent him a plate laden with two thick slices of beef, and a lump of fat big enough to choke a dog. ‘Good heavens!’ said the colonel, ‘what does that young fellow mean by sending me this mass of food? Does he not know I can come again if I want more? Take my plate away; the fellow has spoiled my dinner!’

“We were now all rather doubtful about our new cornet, who, however, had plenty of money, and had come from one of our first public schools; and sure enough our suspicions proved to be correct – the cloven hoof had peeped out in the overladen plate of beef. The cornet proved to be the only son of a retired contract butcher, who had made a large fortune during the war, and had retired to the country and had tried to make his son a gentleman, but he couldn’t do it, sir; the plate of beef exposed him.”

These and other similar precepts were instilled into me by my old friend daring the time that I took my first practice under his tuition of testing the strength of my head versus the strength of his port wine, and I am happy to say that I gained the colonel’s approval one Saturday evening in an unexpected manner as follows: —

A party of four had been at dinner, all military men. We had sat over our wine a fair time, and, charmed with the conversation, I had done full justice to the port. The colonel then proposed a rubber of whist, at which game he was an adept, and required me to take a hand. I played a fair game of whist for a youngster, and so made up the fourth. Luckily I was on that night a good card-holder, and was the colonel’s partner, and we won. He was delighted, for his whole heart was in the game. When we broke up he gave me a pat on the back and said, “Shepard, I always thought well of you, but I never formed so high an opinion of your talents and power as to-night. You may talk about your examinations in Euclid and mathematics, for which a fellow is crammed like a parrot for months, as a test of a man’s brains and his fitness for a soldier; I think it’s nearly all bosh, and gives no fair test; but if I see a young man do what you’ve done to-night, that is, put a bottle of port under his waistcoat and afterwards play a quiet, steady rubber, and remember whether the twelfth or thirteenth card is the best, I know that fellow has a good head. I believe there is not one youngster in twenty can do this now-a-day. They are all weeds – haven’t the stamina and backbone they used to have – and the Englishman is degenerating to a great extent, I believe, in consequence of the inordinate use of tobacco.”

Daring the present half-year I had taken up cricket, and was very successful as a “fielder,” though my batting was not first-rate. I was good enough, however, to play in the Eleven against the Officers of the Artillery – a match we played each year – and made double figures in my score, and caught out two of the officers.

Although I was nearly always on leave from Saturday to Sunday for the “whole shay,” as it was termed, yet I on one occasion did not go. The result was that I had command of the first company at church-parade, and marched past on the barrack-field before going to church. Several times I had been in the ranks when we had marched past on Sundays, but this was the first time I had ever commanded the company. There was a great crowd to see us march past and to hear the band, and the company was praised for its steadiness. I remembered well my feelings as a schoolboy when I saw a cadet in a similar position to that I now occupied, and I regretted that I had not now the same delight in being where I was that I fancied formerly I should have. It was not a want of enthusiasm, for I had still plenty of that left; but I felt as if I were performing a mere act of business, and was more occupied in seeing that the ranks kept line and proper distance than I was in the thought of commanding the company.

Somehow I had grown to understand that hard work and thought were the means to all success, and that now, when I happened to be senior corporal, it was merely in consequence of others being absent, and that I had attained this position by hard work. I must confess I felt disappointed with myself, for I did not experience one-hundredth part of the pleasure I should have felt had it been possible to transfer me instantly from a schoolboy at Hostler’s to the position I now occupied.

One little incident, however, as we were marching off, did gave me temporary gratification. As I gave to the company the words “Right turn!” “Left wheel!” and we marched across the gravel to the chapel, I passed close to three of Mr Hostler’s masters, who were there with his boys. There was not a face among the boys I recognised. All had changed; but the masters I knew, and I saw they had pointed me out to the youngsters. For a moment the misery of my life at Hostler’s came across me, and a vivid remembrance of the sneering self-sufficiency of one of these tutors, as he tried to impress upon me that I was too stupid to ever learn mathematics. I muttered to myself “Pig-headed idiot!” as I recalled this man’s proceeding, and now noticed a sort of self-complacency in his manner as he was probably explaining to Hostler’s boys that he had trained me for Woolwich.

This my fifth half-year seemed to pass more quickly than a week did when I was a neux, and we again began to talk about examinations and our vacation. To me the final trial was now coming, for although we worked at various subjects in the practical class, yet the work did not count. There was no examination, and our relative positions in the batch were unaltered when once we joined the practical class.

I had succeeded in all the drawings I had done during the half-year, and had adopted a general polishing up in the various branches of study, for our position in the class for commissions was decided by the amount of marks we obtained as a total for all subjects.

Day passed after day, and it was within a fortnight of the examination when I received a letter from Mr Rouse, asking if I would come and pass Saturday and Sunday with him.

On receipt of this letter I felt ashamed of never having once been to see the man to whom alone I was indebted for passing into the Academy. I accepted the invitation, and on Saturday afternoon found myself sitting in Mr Rouse’s drawing-room, chatting with him a sort of shoppy conversation about examinations, marks, cramming, etc.

Mr Rouse was a man who never disappointed me. Whenever I met him, as I did often in afterlife, he invariably showed himself a genius. He was one of those sound thinkers and careful reasoners who are the real discoverers of truths, and who in almost every case remain unknown and unhonoured by the world; whilst superficial men, merely veneered with science by their contact with him, would chatter in learned societies, and be reported in newspapers, and bowed down to as authorities by the ignorant, who could not tell the electro-plated from the real metal.

Even when I was a student at Rouse’s he used to amuse us by reading out from the papers descriptions of various matters supposed to be scientifically written; he would then criticise these and show us that the writer was evidently unacquainted with his subject, and had written it at so much per line.

I was glad to find what an interest he had taken in my career at the Academy; he had noted exactly how I had done at all my examinations, and he said he was very nearly writing to me daring my third half-year to come and work with him occasionally, as he feared I might not pass the probationary examination.

During the evening he put me up to what he called useful dodges in connexion with working various branches of higher mathematics, and I found my evening not only interesting, but profitable, as I made several notes which I could think over and which would be useful to me at my final examination. He gave me also great encouragement about the future, and said that he believed the time would come when the officers of both the Engineers and Artillery would take a higher position in the scientific and literary world than they then did. “You have a capital preparatory course at Woolwich,” he remarked, “and when you get your commission you could build on this. It has often struck me that it is odd how few officers of either Artillery or Engineers have ever made a mark in the world out of their profession, or have come out as leaders in science, and this in the future is sure to be remedied.”

Mr Rouse was right at the time, but since those days a change has occurred, the two corps having produced several men distinguished in subjects not strictly professional.

I returned to the Academy with a feeling of “wound-upness,” and occupied myself in thinking about my coming examination. From being very sickly as a boy (due I believe entirely to the physicking of my aunt), I had become strong and particularly healthy, and found I could stand both mental and bodily work without feeling either much. I took care, however, to follow Mr Rouse’s advice, viz, to work my body by exercise after I had worked my brain, and to get as much fresh air as possible after a long bout of “swatting.” I never attempted to learn anything when I felt tired, and never forced myself to work; by these means I felt certain I got more knowledge into my head than I should have done had I followed the same plan that several cadets followed of working nearly all night with wet cloths round their heads and a dozen books before them.

It was impossible to avoid being anxious about the examination, but I endeavoured to follow my old plan of not driving off everything to the last, and then trying to catch up time by working night and day. I had a sort of idea that the mind was like one’s digestion in some respects, and the way to treat it was to treat it reasonably, and not to expect it to digest in a week as much mental food as it ought to have in three months. Some cadets did adopt this plan, and they generally failed, and not unusually knocked themselves up.