![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
*bounces* Started reading Kincaid's "Adventures in the Rifle Brigade", yay!
It's so much fun!
He's not impressed by his sea-faring bretheren:
I had never before been in a ship of war, and it appeared to me, the first night, as if the sailors and marines did not pull well together, excepting by the ears ; for my hammock was slung over the descent into the cockpit, and I had scarcely turned-in when an officer of marines came and abused his sentry for not seeing the lights out below, according to orders. The sentry proceeded to explain, that the middies would not put them out for him, when the naked shoulders and the head of one of them, illuminated with a red nightcap, made its appearance above the hatchway, and began to take a lively share in the argument. The marine officer, looking down, with some astonishment, demanded, " damn you, sir, who are you ?" to which the head and shoulders immediately rejoined, "and damn and blast you, sir, who are you?"
Kincaid was much shocked by meeting a Portugese madwoman:
Our men were lodged for the night in a large barn, and the officers billetted in town. Mine chanced to be on the house of a mad-woman, whose extraordinary appearance I never shall forget. Her petticoats scarcely reached to the knee, and all above the lower part of the bosom was bare.
He beat a hasty retreat: ...nor did I feel perfectly at ease until I found myself stretched on a bundle of straw in a comer of the barn occupied by the men.
Sharpe and Harper can count themselves lucky that they were with the 'South Essex' and had Ramona to do the washing for them... their real counterparts in the 95th had to do without that luxury:
We had no women with the regiment; and the ceremoy of washing a shirt amounted to my servant's taking it by the collar, and giving it a couple of shakes in the water, and then hanging it up to dry. Smoothing-irons were not the fashion of the times, and, if a fresh well-dressed aide-de-camp did occasionally come from England, we used to stare at him with about as much respect as Hotspur did at his "waiting gentlewoman".
It's so much fun!
He's not impressed by his sea-faring bretheren:
I had never before been in a ship of war, and it appeared to me, the first night, as if the sailors and marines did not pull well together, excepting by the ears ; for my hammock was slung over the descent into the cockpit, and I had scarcely turned-in when an officer of marines came and abused his sentry for not seeing the lights out below, according to orders. The sentry proceeded to explain, that the middies would not put them out for him, when the naked shoulders and the head of one of them, illuminated with a red nightcap, made its appearance above the hatchway, and began to take a lively share in the argument. The marine officer, looking down, with some astonishment, demanded, " damn you, sir, who are you ?" to which the head and shoulders immediately rejoined, "and damn and blast you, sir, who are you?"
Kincaid was much shocked by meeting a Portugese madwoman:
Our men were lodged for the night in a large barn, and the officers billetted in town. Mine chanced to be on the house of a mad-woman, whose extraordinary appearance I never shall forget. Her petticoats scarcely reached to the knee, and all above the lower part of the bosom was bare.
He beat a hasty retreat: ...nor did I feel perfectly at ease until I found myself stretched on a bundle of straw in a comer of the barn occupied by the men.
Sharpe and Harper can count themselves lucky that they were with the 'South Essex' and had Ramona to do the washing for them... their real counterparts in the 95th had to do without that luxury:
We had no women with the regiment; and the ceremoy of washing a shirt amounted to my servant's taking it by the collar, and giving it a couple of shakes in the water, and then hanging it up to dry. Smoothing-irons were not the fashion of the times, and, if a fresh well-dressed aide-de-camp did occasionally come from England, we used to stare at him with about as much respect as Hotspur did at his "waiting gentlewoman".
Tags:
no subject
no subject