A Regimental Affair

season, the ante-room would have been full of those who had had a half-day with hounds, not yet ready to take out a second charger to hear the huntsman blow ‘home’. But this late on, they would be out for a full day no doubt. Perhaps they would be few at luncheon.

Hervey looked about the walls. There were familiar pictures he had last seen in Cork, and some less so. There was an exceptionally fine portrait of the Earl of Sussex in the uniform of colonel; by the hand of Sir Thomas Lawrence, said an inscription. But he couldn’t find the girlish Romney of Princess Caroline, and he supposed it must be elsewhere, in the headquarters, perhaps. The Times of three days before lay open in a chair, testimony to a recent, perhaps hurried, departure — or to the steward’s indolence. There were copies of regimental orders in leather binders on a table, together with the regimental list. Hervey picked up the latter and settled in a low chair to study it. Half the names he did not recognize. The major’s — Eustace Joynson — he did. ‘An able administrator, I think,’ the Earl of Sussex had said; but Hervey was as certain as the colonel had implied that Joynson had no great instinct for the field, where the actions of the enemy, or even the mere chafing of events and the elements, soon brought even well-laid plans to naught. Second Squadron bore not a single officer he recognized. Its captain, Lord Henry Manners, was one of the Marquess of Selby’s sons. That much was promising, for the marquess had been a much regarded brigadier before a tirailleur had shot him down outside Badajoz. The other troop in the squadron was commanded by a Captain Addy, and the subalterns were likewise unknown to him. Cornet the Marquess Wymondham’s name was there with Third Troop, still to be excised. Hervey sighed at the remembrance of the boy’s broken head resting in his hands in that gloomy alehouse.

Third Squadron was a mix. Strickland, its captain (and E Troop leader), he knew well enough. Strickland had bought in from the Tenth just before Waterloo and quickly won the confidence of the ranks for his cool head under the heaviest fire that day. Hervey was glad at least of one veteran of the Sixth of Irvine and Edmonds. And there was ‘Saint’ Lawrence, too — the junior cornet at Waterloo, whom Hervey had placed in charge of old Chantonnay and his ravished daughters on the road to Paris. F Troop — black, like B — was as unfamiliar as D. Its captain, Hugh Rose, by reputation a buck, had exchanged from the Thirteenth when they were warned for India. Hervey didn’t suppose he would see him much with London only a chariot’s gallop away.

But in what would be his own squadron — First — came the real surprise, for there, with B Troop, he read the name of Ezra Barrow. Barrow had been adjutant for half a dozen years or more, brought in on commissioning from serjeant-major by Lord George Irvine, and so Hervey supposed that his getting a troop must be field promotion rather than purchase. Yet how that had been, he couldn’t imagine, for so rapidly were regiments being disbanded — all but the first two ‘twenties’ had gone — that there could hardly be room for promotion without purchase. In any event, Barrow’s was not the name he would have chosen for his second troop, though it was at least one he knew, and one that had known the regiment under Irvine and Edmonds. The Sixth hadn’t had a troop leader from the ranks for a decade or more. It was always tricky. He’d seen one or two in other regiments, and good they’d been too, but often as not it was the men themselves who disliked it most. He wondered how the lieutenant colonel was taking to it. But then he read one name that cheered him heartily — Seton Canning, now a lieutenant. At Waterloo, Seton Canning had been his only officer by the time he had had to step into command of First Squadron. ‘The boots’ had brought out First Troop from the terrible melee after the Greys had run on, and with all the skill of an old hand, though it had been his first time shot-over. Good, good, thought Hervey: Canning and Armstrong — a start, at least. How he had missed Serjeant Armstrong’s straight talking and powerful sword arm in India. How grand — as Armstrong himself would have said — to see him again. Just as he was about to turn the page to study the quartermasters’ lists, a noise in the entrance hall announced the arrival of the first for luncheon.

They were a dozen at table. And a good table it was too, thought Hervey, even for a high day (which it was not) — plover’s eggs, turbot and a baron of Somerset beef, with hock and a Chambertin. The troop leaders were there, less Manners, as well as a couple of new cornets. There were two officers from the Rifles, guests of Addy, and the DAAG from the district headquarters. But there were no quartermasters and no riding master, no surgeon (medical or veterinary) nor paymaster. Perhaps, thought Hervey, they were all at duty elsewhere, but it still seemed strange.

Hervey sat between Joynson and Strickland, almost directly opposite Lord Towcester. The lieutenant colonel’s manner was markedly different from that at orderly room. Hervey might have called it exuberant, even. Yet although Lord Towcester’s mouth smiled, his eyes did not, and there was an edge to his manner still which Hervey could not quite fathom. Conversation seemed also less than free, dictated more by the colonel than flowing naturally, as he remembered it at its best.

‘Might we have the cellars better found, Joynson?’ said Lord Towcester, frowning at the Chambertin. ‘I can scarcely ask the Prince Regent to disturb his digestion with this.’

It was well known to all at the table but Hervey that the colonel was intent on entertaining the Regent as soon as he might. ‘Whatever your lordship wishes,’ replied Major Joynson obligingly.

There was the beginning of a silence that Hervey thought he might ease. ‘Where is the portrait of Princess Caroline, sir?’ he asked Joynson.

The major turned red.

The adjutant answered for him. ‘His lordship has ordered its removal.’

Hervey realized the danger too late, for the mess had long held a truce on the matter. Until the end of the Peninsula, Caroline had officially remained their colonel-in-chief (unofficially, they had been known as Princess Caroline’s Own), and there had remained an affection for her, especially among the quartermasters and serjeants, with many old hands able to recall her warm if sometimes indelicate manners during her visits. There had been many an opinion in Cork that the Regent had ill-used the princess.

‘She is grown monstrous fat, I hear,’ said Lord Towcester abruptly.

Hervey was taken aback, and evidently visibly, for Ezra Barrow shook his head at him, warning him to let it go.

‘What’s that, Barrow? You know otherwise do you?’ challenged Towcester, his face reddening and his eyes narrowing.

‘I know nothing of the princess, your lordship,’ replied Captain Barrow quickly. ‘Except that it would be a pity if Her Royal Highness were to tax her constitution as badly as does the Regent.’

The response did not please the commanding officer. ‘Do you say that the Prince Regent is obese, sir?’

Barrow remained more perfectly in control of matters than Hervey would have supposed possible. ‘I do not say so, your lordship. One more opinion would scarcely be of any point when there are so many already on the matter.’

The adjutant now joined the colloquy and piled the coals higher. ‘I hear tell she wore a gown so sheer in Naples last month it was as if she wore none at all!’

‘Scarcely an alluring sight,’ scoffed the colonel.

This was really most unbecoming, thought Hervey, and his fault, too, for mentioning the picture.

‘She seduced Murat there, y’know,’ continued the adjutant, blithely. ‘And now she’s living openly with a Mussulman of all things — the Dey of Algiers!’

There was an anxious silence.

Strickland broke it. ‘And she is happy, as the Dey is long!’

It was a mercy, for there was laughter all round. Indeed, so keen was it that the chaplain must have laughed had he been there.

It even seemed to restore Lord Towcester’s equilibrium. ‘Call for the port, someone,’ he said, taking a cigar from the box which the steward had brought. ‘Now’s as good a time as any to announce our good fortune. Gentlemen,’ he beamed, ‘this autumn we are to furnish the escorts at Brighton!’

There was a general hubbub, during which Ezra Barrow leaned across to Hervey and shook his head again. ‘Time for me to go, this news. I can’t afford the expense of that place. It ain’t soldiering.’ The Birmingham vowels were as strong as ever.

Hervey wasn’t so sure. There was nothing like ceremonial to fill a regiment with pride — except a famous victory. He thought it no bad thing at all that the Sixth be given this trial, for it would take effort indeed to be fit for the Regent’s eyes, as well as for those of the population of Brighton, doubtless become expert during the past decade. And what gentler way, too, to begin the married state than wintering by the English seaside? ‘Let’s take a walk after this is done,’ he said to Barrow.

But spirits were high about the table. ‘Where is the betting book?’ came a voice from the end.

A footman brought it to Captain Rose. ‘Very well. Cornet Finucane wagers Mr Seton Canning the sum of five