1881, when an unofficial hint was sent round the barrack-rooms beforehand that it was to be put well on the top of the head, and generally made to appear as hideous as possible. Every one did his best, or rather his worst, to comply with the hint, and when the Duke—never in too good a temper early in the day—came on parade, the sight of the disfigured regiment nearly gave him a fit. It was alleged that he went back to the Horse Guards and wrote a furious letter to the War Office condemning the cap, but it remained the regulation article for some years afterwards, although the original pattern was still allowed to be worn off parade, and at the expense of the owner.
The cavalry recruit was kept hard at work, riding-drill, stables, foot-drill, gymnastics, and school following each other in bewildering fashion from six in the morning till six in the evening, without any appreciable interval for rest. Riding-school was the terror of most recruits, few of whom had ever before been across a horse. For some weeks no saddle was allowed, no stirrups for some months, and the chief aim of the instructor, or "rough-rider," was not to give his pupil confidence but as many falls as possible. The "rough-rider" deserved his name, for he was as rough with a young horse as with a young recruit. He seldom possessed a decent pair of hands, and his system of training a horse was of the break-down rather than the break-in type. These unintelligent methods have long since passed into oblivion.
Gymnastics, or physical exercises, were conducted on much the same lines. Every recruit was expected to do the same thing in an equally proficient way, no allowance being made fer differences in age, build, or general physical capacity.
A robust constitution was required in winter to withstand the cold and draughty stables and the biting winds which swept across the barrack square during foot-drill, where the shivering recruit would struggle to grasp the explanations of drill gabbled out by his instructor, and painfully endeavour to master the mysteries of the "goose-step" and the art of drawing swords "by numbers." I succumbed twice during my first winter, once being in
