ABSTRACT
We are very soon furnished with painful proof that two battalions of husbands and fathers cannot be sent away at a week's notice without some expense in feminine tears, as well as in troopships and stores. The acknowledged wives who trudged along with their departing lords last Thursday to the railway station, though sorrowful enough, were less to be pitied than some whose nuptials had been less prudently contracted. Our readers are probably aware that though large numbers of our soldiers are married, the rules and regulations of the service do not allow them to enter the holy state without permission from their commanding officers. A soldier is cared for by his superiors, clothed and fed, is safe from the workhouse, and never out of employment; but in return for these advantages he makes a complete sacrifice of his own free will, and cannot take a day's holiday, leave his barracks unless with official consent, or, amongst other things, get married without leave and license from the constituted authorities. Whether he gets permission from his officers or not, however, he exercises a great power of fascination over the female heart. Except in India, where the superior status of civilians and the excessive supply of warriors renders the black coat more attractive than the red, the Queen's uniform is renowned all over Her Majesty's dominions for its power over what Mr. Weller, sen., calls the "soft sex." In whatever class of society the gallant defenders of their country are placed, they are looked on with indulgent eyes by the ladies. It is true that in classes where tender hearts are guarded by watchful mothers, a soldier who has nothing to recommend him but his gallant profession has formidable odds against him, and though he may inflict some wounds, the consequences are seldom serious. In a lower stratum of life, however, fair damsels have no prudent parents to save them from becoming a prey to their impetuous affections. Servant maids are endued with human feelings as well as their mistresses, and tall guardsmen are as pleasing in the kitchen as their more polished officers in the drawing-room. So, when the period of company keeping is over, many a poor Mary or Susan plunges wildly into matrimony to live as best she may on the very small modicum of cash that her husband can give her, eked out by her own exertions. If the wedding is countenanced by the colonel of the regiment, matters are not so very bad after all. Soldiers' wives have some little privileges. They find washing to do for the officers, and are not left absolutely to starve, when their husbands are sent away on foreign service, or sent away from this world altogether by some unlucky bullet. But if the wedding has not been contracted under official sanction, the case is widely different. The authorities cannot recognise any wife whose marriage is not as valid in the War-Office as in the Church. Though she should bear her husband a dozen pledges of her affection, he is still regarded as a single man. As a single man, relentless Routine orders him away to Canada when the time comes, and refuses to see the abandoned wife and little ones, or hear their cry of distress. It was very imprudent, no doubt, of the poor woman to get married without the proper forms, but it may have been that these were unattainable. Only a certain number of men in each battalion are allowed the privilege of taking unto themselves wives, and if the full proportion of Grenadiers or Coldstreams, as the case may be, are in the bonds of wedlock, the remainder must stay single, or incur the penalties of yielding to an unfortunate attachment. It must certainly be very hard upon a loving housemaid, after she has given her heart into the keeping of a tall admirer in a red coat, to find that she is debarred from giving him her hand as well, because so many hundred men in his regiment have got the start of him, and have enlisted as many fair recruits as the rules of the service allow. No wonder that in such cases a good many women revenge themselves upon the rules by marrying in spite of them. The rules are none the worse, it is true, and the women always are in the long run; but though we talk a good deal of prudence we very few of us practise it, and it is well to be lenient towards others who are weak like ourselves.
