London at the End of the Century:A Book of Gossip
a Beckett, Arthur William
1900
THE REVIVAL OF 1860.
It may be possible that the merry treatment that the solitary defender of Brook Green received at the pen and pencil of his biographers made people a little nervous about a revival. I think that Captain Hans Busk was the first to suggest the establishment | |
176 | of Rifle clubs. He did not venture at first to carry his idea any further. There were to be rifle clubs where men should fire at targets representing enemies instead of potting clay balls in lieu of pigeons. The clubs were a great success, and very shortly after their inauguration the brilliant notion occurred to someone to convert them into regiments. From that moment to this the Volunteers have flourished. They have had their ups and downs. They have been chaffed, but they have lived it down. there are several specimens of the humour that found its subject in the doings of the Volunteers. The reason that a more encouraging tone was adopted later on is possibly attributable to the fact that Charles Keene was a private in the Artists' corps and Tom Taylor a captain in the Civil Service Rifles. Be this as it may, there is no doubt that Mr. ever since has done his level best to support the Volunteers, and with excellent results. usually sets the fashion, and certainly in this case the mode has been followed by all his more serious contemporaries. John Leech often sketched the riflemen after their revival, but the Brook Green Private was never reproduced. And of this series, I may note that Gilbert Abbott & Beckett, the author of the was himself the son of an officer of |
177 | Volunteers. His father was a captain in the St. James's Corps in . |
