London at the End of the Century:A Book of Gossip
a Beckett, Arthur William
1900
THE CAMP AT CHOBHAM.
The first idea of the sort was (I fancy) associated with the camp of Chobham a short while before the Crimean War. Until then we had no thought of tactics, and even the great Duke of Wellington expressed his doubts about the possibility of getting ten thousand men in or out of the Park via Hyde Park Corner. Nowadays, the heroes of a hundred fights would be greatly astounded to see the ease with which | |
163 | the unemployed invade the Row and . If the volunteer movement has taught us nothing else, at least it has instructed us in the art of moving about in fours and columns. The camp at Chobham was the first rough notion of the coming school of Aldershot. We were just recovering from when it was supposed that war (except, perhaps, on the stage and in the circus of Astley's) had become obsolete. Certainly, we had some slight trouble in various parts of our colonial possessions, but that was only in connection with And under the generic term of we included all sorts and conditions of coloured men. Under this category we classed Indians (West and natives of Hindostan), New Zealanders, Hottentots, Zulus, and copper-coloured heroes of Cooper's romances. That Europeans would quarrel after Sir Joseph Paxton had built a gigantic conservatory and had awarded prize medals to the manufacturers of soaps, pianofortes, biscuits, and locomotives, seemed to us simply a ridiculous impossibility. Still, there was no harm to play at soldiers, and the camp at Chobham was the outcome of the inclination. The military gathering on the Surrey downs produced a profound sensation. It was quite to take tea with the military, and John Leech in the pages of showed how things were done in the shape of hospitality by |
164 | the gallant defenders of our never-to-be-anything- but-at-peaceful country. |
