The
average wife of the average officer of a Line regiment is a wonderful
little woman.
The supper-parties in the married officers' quarters at Prospect Camp
were the cheeriest entertainments I have ever been at. Every one had
to contribute something. My own culinary attainments being confined to
the preparation of three dishes, I was compelled to repeat them
monotonously. The subalterns were made to carry the dishes from the
kitchen, and to "wash-up" afterwards, yet I am sure that the average
London hostess would have envied the jollity, the fun and high spirits
that made those informal supper-parties so delightful, and would have
given anything to introduce some of this cheery atmosphere into her
own decorous and extremely dull entertainments, where the guests did
not have to cook their own dinners.
I gave a dinner-party at an hotel to eleven people, all officers or
officers' wives. The conversation turned on birthplaces, and the
answers given were so curious, that I wrote them all down. Not only
were all my guests soldiers and soldiers' wives, but they were nearly
all the sons and daughters of soldiers as well. One major had been
born at Cape Town; his very comely wife in Barbados. The other major
had been born at Meerut in India, his wife at Quebec, and her
unmarried sister in Mauritius; and so it was with all of them.
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