The Wistful Army

When the first call to arms came in England, one body of Englishmen and gentlemen hurried out at the earliest note to offer themselves for service. Time after time they put themselves forward, and even to this day they hang about recruiting stations, urgent and importunate, but always they are ignored. Officers do not look aside for them; clerks do not raise their heads. The clumsiest and most reluctant of recruits can take place before them.

Yet they are the eternal population of England; they are more English than any one generation of English; they belong to every hour and every period; but they are laid aside in books. Clamor they ever so loudly for their patriotic chance, no one will hear them. And yet, they people England in such wise as does no living generation. We could dispense with any one hour of England, but we could never separate ourselves from them, and their eternal moment.

Most of them were created before any notion of pacifism, or even of international law, complicated patriotism or modified reasons for fighting on the side of one’s country. All of English writing gives them birth, and they set forth all of English living. To look on them is to look on a nation. Chaucer’s Knight has appeared daily, sober and ready, and the young Squire, freshly uniformed and debonair, but looking for a chance to be serviceable. The Bastard is blustering about; and Colonel Newcome, denying that years affect fighting force; and Tom Jones, untrained, but a natural fighter and longing to do for a few Germans, — for whom he has a worse name, — and a whole troop of Scott. The Black Knight has offered to raise a whole regiment out of the Waverley books, guaranteeing their fighting quality, from Lochinvar to Rob Roy. The idle gentlemen of the Restoration drama have suddenly turned into vigorous men and forgotten all their philandering. Charles Surface has dashed in, demanding a hard post, — Joseph is a pacifist and stays at home, — and the Vicar wants to go along as chaplain, but to be allowed to wear a sword. Childe Harold is there, on second thoughts; and Romeo, since born in England, wants to enlist under the English flag. The Wife of Bath was discovered in man’s dress, — though she really wore it with a good masculine air, — and was sent home in defiant disgrace. They have offered her Red Cross work, but she will none of it.

There are many more of them — no one can count the eager wistful hosts. One can hardly tell either, which Briton has created most of them. Scott elbows Shakespeare for high place, and that is but natural. But though they were not soldiers and Ben Jonson was, he has hardly an Englishman ready to go. How he would regret it now, could he know! Richardson sends a few, — not many, — full of moral reasons for enlisting; and Fielding has more, fine fellows when they really have something to do; and Smollett has a noisy swaggering lot, who would go, not especially to fight for England, but simply to fight — and Heaven help the company they get into and the officers who are over them!

The Soldiers Three are looking on at the recruiting, with a scornful eye on the new Tommies, and a wish that they might have the training of them. Stevenson has a bully lot, into whose former history recruiting officers had better not look too closely; Mallory’s Knights have much in common with them. There is many another knight also. In their day there was no Prussia, they say; but when they hear the story of Belgium they see another crusade, and would ride forth.

Thackeray has almost an army himself—you would hardly believe how many: not only the Colonel and Clive, and the Major and his now serious nephew, but dozens of other colonels, and majors, and captains, and their club friends; and talking young artists and journalists, and all the Warringtons and Esmonds, first and last. I am not sure that Scott would have more, after all. Beside them, how meagre a lot Dickens sends! There is David, of course, and Nicholas; and the Cheeryble Brothers and Mr. Jarndyce are supporting families of men who are at the front; so, also, is Mr. Boffin. But Dickens has hardly a trained soldier ready, and, when you think of it, hardly an able-bodied man who can pass the examination. You may be sure that the Skimpoles and Heeps and Pecksniffs are finding some way out of it. Tom Pinch will be there, of course, in some capacity, and young Martin, to his soul’s good, and Mark Tapley and John Harmon. But the Dickens forces come out stronger in the Red Cross section. Agnes would shine there, and brave Lizzie Hexam, and Esther Summerson; and Caddie Jellyby would find her place; and Betsy Trotwood would like to open her house to convalescents, since she can’t get to the front herself; and Jennie Wren has thought of a way to do her bit if she will only be allowed. But it must be confessed that a good many Dickens ladies are quietly weeping at home. Trollope, on the other hand, has the most fascinating, compensating, curing nurses that could possibly cross the Channel. Nobody more useful ever stepped into a hospital ward than Lily Dale, or Mary Thorne, or Lucy Roharts. But Barsetshire is rather to seek when it comes to soldiers — chaplains, yes, but warriors, no. It is said, however, that the Archdeacon wanted to go in the ranks.

One must wonder, though it is hardly safe to surmise, how many men recently born into fiction are in the pressing host. There must be some — you seem to see them; but when you look closely at the spot where you thought they were, apparently nothing is there. They have probably come up to enlist, but instead have gone away to think about themselves a while. Are there good fighters in modern novels, men who would dash into a cause without calculation or reconsideration? Would the self-considering egoists of recent invention be either fit to command as officers, or reliable under orders as men? The restless young women are, of course, glad to take their own motor-cars, and rush off to France with them. But what sort of soldiers will their lovers and tentative husbands make?

There is no way to test them, for the recruiting officers go on securing the mortal material men they see, and the longing eternal host importunes in vain.