ARMY UNIFORMS, PAST AND PRESENT.

BY THE RT. HON. SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, BT.

In the early ’seventies of last century there was staged in London a very amusing musical comedy called The Happy Land, the scene being laid in Paradise. Among the principal characters were extremely skilful and poignant burlesques of Mr. Gladstone, Prime Minister at the time, Mr. Lowe, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Ayrton, First Commissioner of Works. The piece had but a short, though brilliant, run in the metropolis; for the Lord Chamberlain ordered it off the stage, not on the grounds of what is usually implied by immorality, but because it brought Her Majesty’s Ministers into contempt by mordant caricature of their features and action.[3] It is not known—to me, at least—which of the three victims set the censorship in motion. Certainly it was not ‘Bob’ Lowe, who was gifted with a fine strain of humour. Probably it was done at Mr. Ayrton’s instance, he being destitute of that saving grace, and, besides, having been more mercilessly satirised in the play than his colleagues. He had outraged public feeling, if not public taste, by some acts of his administration as ædile, notably by painting grey some of the fine stone-work in the lobbies of the Houses of Parliament. I forget the libretto of The Happy Land; but this much I remember, that, whereas in the first act the scenery of Paradise appeared glowing with rainbow radiance and shimmering with gems, in the second act it represented the effect of Ayrton’s régime—everything had been painted ‘government grey.’

All this was brought to mind by the change wrought upon the appearance of the British Army after the outbreak of the South African war in 1899. By a wave of his wand or a scratch of his quill the Secretary of State for War, Mr. St. John Brodrick (now Viscount Midleton) quenched all gaiety of colour in the fighting dress of our troops; the historic thin red line was to be seen no more; the glittering squadrons were doomed to ride in raiment as sombre as the dust of their own raising; henceforward standards and regimental colours were to be returned to store before the troops went on active service.

Had that been all, it would have sufficed to mark a notable era in the operations of war—a wise measure, imposed upon the Army Council by the vast improvement in the range, trajectory, and precision of artillery and small arms. Hitherto it had been the object of the military authorities of all nations to make their fighting men as conspicuous as possible, exaggerating their stature by fantastic headgear and setting them in strong relief to every variety of natural background by means of bright colours and pipeclay. The Brigade of Guards landed in the Crimea without their knapsacks, which followed in another ship. The men had to do without them for some weeks; but the cumbrous bearskin caps were considered indispensable, and offered a fine target for the Russian defenders of the slopes of the Alma. The hint was thrown away upon our military authorities. It required a sharper lesson to convince them of the cruel absurdity of figging out men for battle in a dress that hampered the limbs and obscured the eyesight. The Guards were not more absurdly dressed on that occasion than the rest of the British troops. The late Sir William Flower described to me his feelings when, as surgeon of an infantry regiment, he stepped out from a boat on the wet sands at the mouth of the Alma, dressed in a skin-tight scarlet coatee with swallow tails, a high collar enclosing a black stock, close-fitting trousers tightly strapped over Wellington boots, and a cocked hat!

Two years before that—in 1852—Colonel Luard published his History of the Dress of the British Soldier. Having served as a heavy dragoon in the Peninsula, as a light dragoon at Waterloo, as a lancer in India, and as a staff officer both in India and at home, he had practical experience of the variety of torment inflicted by different kinds of uniform. He advocated many reforms in the soldier’s dress, tending as much to increased efficiency as to comfort, and he supported his argument by extracts from his correspondence with regimental officers. One of these wrote—‘If an infantry soldier has to step over a drain two feet broad, he has to put one hand to his cap to keep it on his head, and his other to his pouch, and what becomes of his musket?’ And this, be it remembered, was the fighting-kit; for no general in those days ever dreamed of taking troops into action except in full review order.

James I. was not a warlike king, but he was a pretty shrewd observer of men and matters. He was not far wrong when he observed that plate armour was a fine thing, for it not only protected the life of the wearer, but hindered him from hurting anybody else! The remark might have been applied with equal justice to the costume of British soldiers in the Crimean campaign, except that it afforded no protection to the wearer’s life or limb. It required nearly one hundred years of painful experience to convince the War Office that it was cruel stupidity to put men in the field in clothing so tight as to fetter the limbs and compress the chest. That was the legacy of George IV. to the British Army.

Although, to one looking back over the history of what is now the United Kingdom, the most salient features seem to be campaigns and battles, invasion and counter-invasion, it was not until the Civil War that any attempt was made towards a uniform dress for any army. It is true that both the English and Scottish Parliaments from time to time prescribed with the utmost care the offensive and defensive armour with which every able-bodied subject was to provide himself or be provided by his feudal chief, and if that chief were a wealthy baron his following would be clothed in his liveries. Thus, in describing the famous scene at Lauder when Archibald Douglas, fifth Earl of Angus, won his sobriquet of Bell-the-Cat, Pitscottie tells us in deliciously quaint phrase how luckless Thomas Cochrane, newly created Earl of Mar, rode down to the kirk where the disaffected lords were in conference, at the head of three hundred men all dressed in his liveries of white doublets with black bands. Cromwell was the first ruler of England who succeeded in what several of his predecessors had failed—in maintaining a standing army. At one time he had 80,000 men under arms. There was a degree of uniformity in the dress of his cavalry and infantry. It consisted mainly of buff coats, with the addition of breast and back pieces, iron caps, and other defensive armour. But that army was disbanded after the Restoration, and it was not until the reign of William III. that a standing army was finally constituted, and colonels commanding regiments, being allowed a sufficient sum for clothing the men, were required to do so according to sealed pattern.

Throughout the eighteenth century, the British soldier’s dress was, on the whole, both picturesque and comfortable. In cut, it conformed pretty faithfully to the fashion prevailing in civilian attire, though there occurred an interval when George II. inflicted upon his Guards regiments the preposterous conical head-dress, copied from the Prussian Guards of Frederick the Great. This disfiguring headgear did not last very long, and gave place before the end of the century to the three-cocked hat of the style called, I believe, Nivernois or Kevenhüller.

The easy grace of the full-dress uniform of an officer of the Guards towards the close of the eighteenth century is admirably shown in Romney’s portrait of John, tenth Earl of Westmorland, now at Osterley Park. It shows a long-skirted scarlet frock, lined with white, faced with blue, with ruffles at the wrists, and without any ornament save a pair of gilt epaulets of moderate size and soft material, very different from the cumbrous, unyielding things now prescribed for naval officers and lords-lieutenant. The frock is worn open over a Ramillies cravat and waistcoat and breeches of white kersey. It would be difficult to devise a dress for a soldier so well combining comfort and dignified distinction. To one feature only can objection be taken. The powdered and curled hair, clubbed in a pigtail, looks charming on Romney’s canvas, but must have proved an intolerable nuisance both to officers and men.

‘During the command of the late Duke of Kent at Gibraltar [1802-3], when a field-day was ordered, there not being sufficient barbers in the town to attend to all the officers in the morning, the seniors claimed the privilege of their rank; the juniors consequently were obliged to have their heads dressed the night before; and to preserve the beauty of this artistic arrangement—pomatumed, powdered, curled and clubbed—these poor fellows were obliged to sleep on their faces! It is said that in the adjutant’s office of each regiment there was kept a pattern of the correct curls, to which the barbers could refer.’[4]

The men wore tunics of a cut similar to those of the officers, but of coarser cloth. They were buttoned up on duty, the skirts being looped back. It was a thoroughly sensible and workmanlike dress, giving perfect freedom to breathing and circulation, together with protection to loins and thighs. The Chelsea pensioners wear a coat of the old infantry pattern to this day.

With the Regency came a vicious change. The Prince Regent paid incessant attention to dress—both to his own and that of others. He was proud of his figure, which, indeed, was a fine one till it was ruined by excess, and he loved to display it in closely fitting dress. Nor was he content until he got his father’s army buttoned up to the limit of endurance and disfigured by headgear of appalling dimensions. The easy open collar and Ramillies tie were replaced by an upright fence of buckram and a leather stock. It would be hardly credible, were there not abundant evidence in the correspondence of the Horse Guards to prove it, that while Wellington was absorbed in manœuvring against immensely superior forces in Spain, he had to give attention to correspondence about changes in the dress of the army, not with a view to making it more comfortable and workmanlike, but in order to gratify the caprice of the Prince Regent. No man ever gave less thought to niceties of tailoring than Lord Wellington (as he was at that time). His views are set forth in a letter to the Military Secretary who had consulted him about the uniform to be prescribed for those regiments of Light Dragoons which the Prince Regent had desired the Duke of York (recently reinstated as Commander-in-Chief) to convert into Hussars.

‘Freneda, 6th November, 1811.

‘... There is no subject of which I understand so little [as military uniforms], and, abstractedly speaking, I think it indifferent how a soldier is clothed, provided it is in an uniform manner, and that he is forced to keep himself clean and smart, as a soldier ought to be. But there is one thing I deprecate, and that is any imitation of the French in any manner. It is impossible to form an idea of the inconvenience and injury which result from having anything like them, either on horseback or on foot.[5] Lutyens and his piquet were taken in June because the 3rd Hussars had the same caps as the French Chasseurs-à-cheval and some of their Hussars, and I was near being taken on September 25 from the same cause. At a distance or in action colours are nothing; the profile and shape of a man’s cap, and his general appearance, are what guide us; and why should we make our people look like the French?... I only beg that we may be as different as possible from the French in everything. The narrow tops of our infantry, as opposed to their broad top caps, are a great advantage to those who are to look at long lines of posts opposed to each other.’

Two years later, at the battle of Vitoria, the justice of Wellington’s views about the soldier’s uniform received apt illustration. Wellington on that day kept the Light Division and 4th Division under his immediate command. The 3rd and 7th Divisions, under Picton and Lord Dalhousie, were to join him in order to complete the centre of the line, but they had difficult ground to traverse, and were late. The Zadora flowed swift and deep in front of the French position. A countryman having informed Wellington that the bridge of Tres Puentes was unguarded, Kempt’s riflemen were sent forward to seize it, which they did, and went so far up the heights on the farther side that they were able to establish themselves in shelter of a crest well in rear of a French advanced post. There they lay, until Wellington’s line was completed by the arrival of ‘old Picton, riding at the head of the 3rd Division, dressed in a blue coat and a round hat, swearing as loudly all the way as if he wore two cocked ones.’[6] The 7th Division came up at the same time, and while they were deploying the enemy opened fire upon them. Kempt immediately drew his riflemen from their shelter and took the French batteries in flank, thereby enabling the 3rd Division to cross the bridge of Mendoza without loss. But the dark uniforms of the Rifles deceived the British on the other side of the river into the belief that they were French. A battery opened upon them and continued pounding them with round shot and shrapnel till the advance of Picton’s Division revealed the blunder.

Wellington’s warning against copying the uniforms of other nations received little attention. After 1815, when he was in command of the Army of Occupation in Paris, it was decided to arm four regiments of cavalry with lances, a most effective weapon which had not been carried by British troops since the seventeenth century. One would have supposed that the lance might be wielded as effectively by a man dressed as a light dragoon or a hussar as in any other rig; but the Prince Regent hailed the innovation as an opportunity for an entirely new costume. Consequently the 9th, 12th, 16th and 23rd Light Dragoons were put into a Polish dress, modified in such manner as to agree with his Royal Highness’s sartorial taste.

‘An officer of rank commanding one of the Lancer regiments was ordered to attend the Prince Regent to fit the new jacket on him. The tailor, with a pair of scissors, was ordered to cut smooth every wrinkle and fine-draw the seams. The consequence was that the coats of the private soldiers, as well as those of the officers, were made so tight they could hardly get into them; the freedom of action was so restricted that the infantry with difficulty handled their muskets, and the cavalry could scarcely do the sword exercise.’

The cuirass had been discontinued in the British cavalry since 1794, when it had been found most unsuitable for active service in the Netherlands. But it was far too showy a piece of goods to escape the Prince Regent’s attention. Accordingly the three regiments of Household Cavalry were made to appear at his coronation in 1820 in steel cuirasses and burnished helmets, with enormous combs of bearskin; the latter, as Colonel Luard caustically observes, rendering it impossible for a man to deliver the sixth cut in the sword exercise of that day. The cuirass and helmet remain, with the unwieldy jack-boots and leather breeches, an effective, if archaic, part of a theatrical pageant which Londoners have learnt to love; but as the equipment of a modern soldier the costume is ludicrously inapt and very costly. In an era when war has become more terrible and more intensely destructive than in any previous age, and at a time when the whole resources of the nation are strained for the country to hold its own, it may well be asked whether money might not be more profitably employed than in causing the splendid men of the Household Cavalry to masquerade in such attire as would be grotesque to imagine them wearing in modern warfare.

About the same time that the cuirass was inflicted upon the Household Cavalry, the sentry boxes in London and at Windsor Castle had to be increased in height in order to accommodate a new pattern of bearskin cap which had been approved for the Foot Guards. The old pattern, which had superseded the three-cocked hat at the end of the previous century, was a sensible affair of reasonable dimensions; but the army tailors, encouraged by the new King, were indefatigable in devising extravagance in uniforms, and the bearskin was made to shoot up several inches in height. ‘Ridicule,’ observed Colonel Luard, ‘subsides when the eye is no longer a stranger to the object of excitement; otherwise the little boys would run after the guardsmen when they appear in the streets of London, and shout at the overwhelming, preposterous, hideous bearskin caps.’ It is rumoured that the supply of the right sort of bear is now running short. It may not be too much to hope that, when our armies return victorious at the end of the war, the occasion may be marked by the invention of some uniform for the Brigade of Guards more comfortable and workmanlike than a skin-tight tunic and a grossly exaggerated fur-cap. Londoners, laudably conservative in what they have become used with, would be the less likely to murmur at the change, inasmuch as they have grown accustomed to see guard-mounting performed in forage-caps.

Among all the variety of uniforms of the British infantry, none has undergone so little change in the last hundred and fifty years as that of the Highland regiments. Well that it is so, for there is none other that so admirably sets off a soldier-like figure, none that stirs so much enthusiasm among the spectators at a field-day. So fully has this been recognised that a society has recently been formed to protest against and endeavour to remedy what is deemed the unmerited neglect of Lowland Scottish regiments, whereof the records certainly are no whit inferior in lustre to those of the Highland corps. It is complained that the Lowland regiments are always kept in the background; that Edinburgh, though a Lowland city, is invariably garrisoned by a Highland regiment, and that facilities for recruiting in Edinburgh and Glasgow are accorded to Highland regiments and refused to Lowland regiments. Much of this is unfortunately true; but the real reason for it exists in the greater popularity of the Highland uniform. No amount of protest or persuasion will prevail to make the general public take the same interest in a trousered regiment as in a kilted one. Might not the surest remedy be to put the Lowland regiments also into kilts? Purists will object that Lowlanders have no business to don the philabeg; but, for that matter, neither have they any business to wear tartan trews, which all the Lowland regiments do at the present time, besides being furnished with kilted pipers.[7] Then all Scottish regiments would be on an equal footing, and no material would remain for the present irritation. It is difficult to understand, impossible to explain, the emotion—involuntary, as all true emotion must be—roused, even in Saisneach breasts, by the sight of a Highland regiment marching to the skirl of the pipes. In order to illustrate it, let me lapse for a moment into the first person singular.

During Queen Victoria’s memorable progress through her metropolis in the Diamond Jubilee of 1897, I was seated with two ladies of my family in the stand set up for members of Parliament in Palace Yard. The long hours of waiting on that shining summer forenoon were enlivened by the march of many regiments, headed by their bands, passing to their appointed places in the route. It was a shifting pageant of stirring sight and sound. Presently, over Westminster Bridge came the Seaforth Highlanders stepping to the lively strains of The Muckin’ o’ Geordie’s Byre.[8] The effect was indescribable—the swing of kilts and sporrans, the dark waving plumes, the gallant but simple melody, thrilled all spectators. As for myself, I felt a big lump in my throat, and I was ashamed to feel something trickle down both cheeks. Yet am I a Lowland Scot, if anybody is; so far as I am aware, I can lay no claim to any strain of Celtic blood. If such an one was so deeply moved by the passing of a single Highland regiment, why should not all the Scottish regiments be clothed in the romantic garb of Old Gaul, with the desirable result of rendering the Lowland corps as well-beloved by the people as the Highlanders? If this were carried out, it would be esteemed a privilege by the former and a compliment by the latter. Objection on the score of economy would be raised because of the cost of the full-dress feather-bonnet, which, though picturesque, is but a tailor’s parody of the bonnet of the duine uasail. Let the Lowland regiments be content, then, with the Glengarry. Nobody who has seen a battalion of the London Scottish marching through Pall Mall, and listened to the comments of those who crowd to the club windows at the sound of the pibroch, will tell you that that fine corps would gain anything in soldierly appearance by wearing feather-bonnets. That head-dress was condemned in 1882, but in deference to Queen Victoria’s wishes it was restored. Its abolition had previously been hotly challenged in the House of Commons by certain perfervid Scots, one of whom volunteered a quaint explanation to an honourable member who had ventured to express some doubt about ostrich feathers being an appropriate ornament for a Scottish soldier. He gravely assured the House that the costume had its origin in Sir Ralph Abercromby’s Egyptian campaign in 1801, when the Highland soldiers picked up ostrich feathers in the desert and stuck them in their bonnets as a protection from the sun!

The fact is that the feather-bonnet, and all other exaggerated and expensive head-dresses, should be as resolutely relegated to limbo as the hideous masks worn by the fighting men of Old Japan. Both were designed to overawe the enemy; but, as modern fighting is done in forage-caps, that naïve purpose cannot be carried into effect, and the object should be to provide such clothing as will best enable a man to keep himself, in the Duke of Wellington’s words, ‘clean and smart, as a soldier ought to be.’ And no headgear is smarter, none more easily kept clean, than the Glengarry bonnet.

While it is hardly possible to imagine any dress better calculated to impede a soldier’s movements than the uniforms inflicted upon all arms in the service during the early years of the nineteenth century, one should not overlook the relief that was ordained in a detail that was a source of constant unnecessary trouble to the soldier. Clubbed pigtails had been transmitted as an irksome legacy from Marlborough’s army, until in 1808 the Horse Guards decreed their abolition. When Sir Arthur Wellesley landed in Mondego Bay on August 1-5 in that year, one of his first orders was that these senseless, dirty appendages were to be cut off. Never, one may believe, was an order more cheerfully obeyed. A counter-order was issued shortly after from the Horse Guards, requiring the retention of pigtails, but it was beyond the power of man to comply with it. It was easy to cut off pigtails, but they could not be replaced; and now the only vestige of a barbarous fashion in the army remains in the bow of black ribbon worn by the Welsh Fusiliers at the back of the collar of the tunic.

Unfortunately, the irrational fashion of tight clothing for the army instituted by the Prince Regent endures to this day. It is true that a sensible field-dress of khaki was devised and worn during the South African War, and is now the service dress of the army; but the full dress for officers and the ‘walking-out’ uniform for men is still cut and fitted on the old excruciating lines. I think it took three weeks to fit a young friend of mine, joining a battalion of Guards a few years ago, before the adjutant of that corps d’élite passed the tunic as satisfactory. Every crease and wrinkle had to be obliterated, at such cost to freedom of limbs and lungs as may be imagined. It may not be an extravagant hope that, when our army returns once more to a peace footing, the full dress may be designed with more regard to health and comfort than hitherto. Our eyes have grown accustomed during the present war to seeing soldiers in a costume, far from beautiful, indeed, but easy and respectable. There is no reason why a scarlet coat should be less comfortable than a dust-coloured one, and it will be a sad thing if the historic red of the English infantry is not preserved for full dress. But even if it were not, the khaki uniform might be rendered very becoming by the addition of a little modest ornament, especially by the restoration of the old regimental facings. These would not make troops one whit more conspicuous in the field; on the contrary, it is a commonplace of optics that parti-coloured objects are less easily detected in a landscape than those of one uniform colour.

One desirable result of making uniform more comfortable wear might be expected to follow; officers might not be so scrupulous to exchange it for mufti the moment they are released from duty. Alone among the nationalities of Europe has the British officer hitherto treated his uniform as if it were something to be ashamed of in private life. It is an unseemly, even an unhandsome practice, seeing that non-commissioned officers and privates are not allowed to disport themselves in what they call ‘private clothes.’ Nor was it the custom among officers in the eighteenth century, when uniform was as easy and becoming as any other dress. The usual dress of an officer, even when on leave, was then his undress uniform, just as it is now in Continental armies. The change in the British Army was the direct outcome of the Prince Regent’s tyranny in buttoning up soldiers to the throat in clothes which it was a torment to wear.

It must be owned that the Duke of Wellington was in large measure responsible, inasmuch as he set the example of preferring easy clothes to uneasy ones. A plain blue frock opening at the throat to a white cravat was his invariable dress throughout his campaigns. He had for his own wear a cocked hat one third the size of the huge one prescribed for general officers. There was a famous occasion in 1814, after the restoration of Louis XVIII., when the King and the Royal Princes, with a brilliant suite, attended a state performance in the Odéon Theatre. The house was ablaze with uniforms of many nations and the gay dresses of ladies of the Court. In a box immediately opposite the royal one sat the Duke—in plain clothes! ‘The pride that apes humility’? Not a bit. Le vainqueur des vainqueurs could scarcely be suspected of that. Simply, as he had to sit through a long performance, he chose to do so in clothes that enabled him to sit in comfort.

Much praiseworthy attention is now given to the equipment and clothing of British troops serving in hot climates, but it was otherwise throughout most of the nineteenth century, and it is incalculable how much suffering, disease, and death was caused by neglect of any such provision. When Colonel Luard was preparing his book in 1850-52 he received letters from many officers calling his attention to this matter. One of these writes:

‘I shall be very glad if you dedicate a portion of your work to the dress of our soldiers in the colonies.... I have myself seen the Spanish, French, and Danish troops in the West Indies much more healthy than our own, from great attention to their comfort in their dress.... The whole body of civilians in the tropics appear in loose white jackets and trousers and a skull-cap ... the shakoes and red coats of our troops were not altered in our West India colonies.’

A cavalry officer remarks: ‘I hope you will dwell on the madness of our soldiers wearing leather caps under a tropical sun’; while another observes that ‘a brass helmet was not found serviceable in Africa by the 7th Dragoon Guards when that regiment was at the Cape.’

Our troops suffered horribly during the first Kaffir war, 1846-48, from being clothed exactly as they had been at home—leather stocks, tight coatees, heavy shakoes, and all the rest of it. Some consideration was shown for the soldier in the second Kaffir war, 1851-52. Captain King, of the 74th Highlanders, describes how his regiment landed at Cape Town (after a voyage from England of two months!) wearing their ordinary clothing, and it was not until they had marched far into the interior that ‘our bonnets and plaids were replaced by a costume more suitable for the bush—viz., a short dark canvas blouse; in addition to which feldt-schoen and lighter pouches, made of untanned leather, were issued to the men, and broad leather peaks affixed to their forage-caps.’[9]

Captain King’s narrative is illustrated by lithographs from his own excellent drawings, which show his men, heavily accoutred with pack and pouch, and with no protection against the sun except the aforesaid peak to the forage-cap, severely handicapped in fighting nearly naked blacks armed with rifles. No wonder the 74th lost heavily, their commander, Colonel Fordyce, falling at their head in a bush fight, together with some of his best officers.

It is not only in matters of dress and equipment that we have learnt consideration for our troops on foreign service. The splendid organisation of the Royal Army Medical Corps has been severely tested in coping with the requirements of such a force as it was never contemplated Great Britain would or could put in the field; but the test has been nobly met; the latest discoveries in science have been employed to avert disease and mortality from wounds, thereby saving soldiers and their families and friends from an incalculable amount of misery. The Transport Service has not only met the extraordinary demand upon its resources in the conveyance of necessary supplies—food, munitions, &c.—but has proved equal to the punctual deliverance of the vast stores of comforts and even luxuries consigned from voluntary sources at home.

Among the said luxuries is one whereon the Iron Duke would have turned no favouring eye. The tobacco which has been supplied to our troops at the front—aye, and in hospital at home—must amount to a prodigious figure. When the Duke was Commander-in-Chief in 1845 he issued the following counterblast:

‘G.O. No. 577.—The Commander-in-Chief has been informed that the practice of smoking, by the use of pipes, cigars and cheroots, has become prevalent among the Officers of the Army, which is not only in itself a species of intoxication occasioned by the fumes of tobacco, but, undoubtedly, occasions drinking and tippling by those who acquire the habit; and he intreats the Officers commanding Regiments to prevent smoking in the Mess Rooms of their several Regiments, and in the adjoining apartments, and to discourage the practice among the Officers of Junior Rank in their Regiments.’

There was no Press Censor in those days, and Punch, which was then a vigorous stripling in its fourth year, was allowed to make merry over this fulmination, declaring that officers of the Army were greatly perturbed, ‘dreading the possibility of being thrown upon their conversational resources, which must have a most dreary effect.’ Tobacconists drove a brisk trade in pipe-stoppers carved in the likeness of the Duke’s head. These might now be a fitting object of pursuit on the part of collectors.

FOOTNOTES: