Soyer's Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War.: With The Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil Institutions

doll, were hanging by the neck from a cross beam at the top of the stage; the elaborately-painted curtain was torn into ribbons, the scenery partly whitewashed over, and the furniture of the apartment of Serjeant Blowhard was thrust into Miss Greenfinch’s bedroom; while Slasher and Crasher had left the theatre in a most dilapidated state. Female attire, including wings, ringlets, caps, bonnets, bunches of flowers, crinolines, and toilets of all fashions, bedaubed with chalk, bismuth, vermilion, and red brickdust, instead of carmine, were scattered about the stage in such a state that a French _chiffonnier_ would not have disgraced his hamper by including them amongst its contents. The painting-room floor was like a rainbow; all the powdered colours had been kicked in every direction, forming a mulligatawny of shades enough to puzzle an Owen Jones and his disciples. The benches in the stalls and pit were piled up into a formidable barricade. Nothing had been respected but her Majesty’s royal arms, which ornamented the centre of the proscenium. These had been painted by Major Dallas, General Garrett’s aide-de-camp. By the aid of a ladder, I carefully removed them, with the intention of placing them amongst my Sebastopol trophies, as a memento of the dramatic art in the Crimea. Upon leaving this desolated skeleton temple of Melpomene, I inquired of Mr. Stuart’s bottle-breaker the cause of this awful disorder. He told me, frankly enough, that so far as the wardrobe was concerned, the rats had taken possession, but that for the remainder, himself and a few friends had done the work of devastation by way of closing the season. Thus terminated the dramatic performances in the Theatre Royal of the Fourth Division; and it was, no doubt, a fair specimen of what happened in other divisions, if left in the hands of similar good managers. Indeed, I could not but feel hurt at this sudden devastation, for it was only a few evenings before that this tumble-down temple of Momus was gloriously shining through the resplendent glare of a dozen brown candles, and that the celebrated band of the Rifles