English Emma Blooms

Life at the Shop for a Gentleman Cadet was similar to life at a boarding school except that we had to be cleaner, our buttons had to be brightly polished and our boots mirror-like. Spit and Kiwi were used alternately for hours on end during our first term and our boots shone in Splendour, unless some careless ass trod on the toe when falling in on parade. But the discipline was harder than at school, and, since it was administered by the senior term, whose members were only one year older than the snookers, it was considerably rougher. Public schools were run on the principal that the younger boy was barely human. Snookers were not given the benefit of he doubt. They were sub-human. When my term reached the height of being Senior, we achieved the improbable and had questions asked of us in the House of Commons. It came about over the Snookers' Dance. This institution had been hallowed. The senior term decreed that the snookers would assemble in the gymnasium at a certain ti...

I admit it now without equivocation, that the final report on my riding abilities when I left the Shop was "Very Indifferent. Has no Ability." Very fairly put. In fact, digressing, I remember no reports on myself during my army career except this one about horsemanship and a later one by a distinguished general, who, at a crucial time when it was soon to be decided whether or not I was to be a future brigadier myself, wrote "I scarcely know this officer. He seems to have improved his unit. He has certainly improved his officer's mess.” That he should have been required to write on the capabilities of an officer who did not serve under him was due to the peculiarities of the confidential report system of the day. That he should have taken no trouble to make my acquaintance showed him in an indifferent light. That I should not have brought myself forcibly to his notice demonstrates either my lack of ambition or my modest retiring nature. The Shop in my day was commande...