was receiving only 7s 6d a week, though by 1850 this had risen to 11s. A man robust enough to take work as a heavy clay digger at this time, however, brought home 2s 6d a day, which, at 15s for a six-day week, was good money for a labouring man. In 1820 a village schoolmistress earned £20 a year.
In 1760 a large tot (probably a quarter pint) of cheap gin cost 1d and beer was 2d a pint: if one was drinking simply for effect, as so many were, then liquor was not simply quicker but cheaper. A dozen bottles of claret cost £1. A bread and cheese supper cost 3d, a dinner of cold meat, bread, cheese and beer 7d, and a slap-up meal in a chophouse, with a steak smoking enticingly at its centrepiece was 1s. A cheap room cost 2s a week to rent, a smart town house on Grosvenor Square was £300 a year, and a prosperous merchant in Colchester might house and feed his wife, four children and servants for £350 a year. 6s 6d bought a sturdy gown for a servant girl, and £8 a year, all found, hired her for a year. A clerk’s suit cost £4 10s and a gentleman’s £8 8s.
In 1762 James Boswell, whose father gave him an allowance of £25 every six weeks, stayed in Queen Street, Westminster – ‘an obscure street but pretty lodgings’ – for £22 a year. He paid the Jermyn Street sword-cutler Mr Jeffreys five guineas for a handsome silver-hilted small-sword; a ‘low brimstone’ girl demanded 6d to permit him to ‘dip my machine in the Canal’, and his surgeon charged him five guineas to cure the resultant gonorrhoea. Lord Alvanley, who had similar weaknesses but more money with which to indulge them, gave five guineas for one night with the blonde and well-upholstered Mrs Dubois in 1808. I hope that she was worth what a working man could only have regarded as absurdly conspicuous expenditure.
A quartern loaf (weighing 41b 50z) cost 6d or 8d in 1790 but 15d or 16d in 1801, though it had dropped to 9d in 1830 and was 1s in 1850. In 1796 model cottages cost £58 in wood or £66 in brick. It cost about 30s to £2 a year to rent a cottage in 1790 and £5 to £10 a year in 1824. In 1815 a coat cost £1 7s 1d in Chelsea and shoes were 7s a pair. A lady’s good serge suit was £1 in 1850. In 1859, a clean unskilled labourer in London, taking home 18s a week, would spend 4s of it on bread, 1s 2d on beer, 3s 6d on meat and potatoes, 1s 6d on butter and cheese, 6d on wood and candles, 1s on coal, 2s 6d on clothes and shoes, 2s on rent and 10d on soap and sundries. In 1813 the standard infantry musket cost around £2, and it is high time that we turned our attention to these artefacts of walnut, brass and steel and to the men who used them.
HE HAS NOT SHAVED this morning. And from the look of things he shaved neither yesterday nor the day before. Ginger stubble sprouts from a sun-tanned face, with red-rimmed blue eyes and a mouth whose teeth stand anyhow, like a line of newly raised militia. Bushy sideburns, ending in a forward sweep just below the ear, emerge from a battered black shako fronted with an oval brass plate and topped with a white over red pom-pom which has seen better days, and many of them. His red coat, waist-length in front, with short skirts at the back, is closed by ten pewter buttons, grouped in twos, with a broad oblong of white worsted lace framing the button holes. Its high collar and deep cuffs are yellow, and trimmed with more white lace. The effect is not improved by the fact that collar and coat-front alike are flecked with small burns made by gunpowder. Around his neck is knotted a piece of material which is now unquestionably black, though it might be that it started out much lighter. Grey trousers, knees and seat patched with cloth which has an uncanny resemblance to that worn by Franciscan friars, hang loose, without benefit of gaiter, over square-toed black boots.
His name is Ezekiel Hobden, Hobden to officers, NCOs and most private soldiers but Zeke to a favoured few. On his attestation form he signified his intention ‘to serve His Majesty until I be legally discharged’ with a bold cross, alongside which a Justice of the Peace and another witness (who has helpfully included Esquire as part of his signature to make the point) have appended their names. He used to be a plough-boy from the gentle downlands above Alresford in Hampshire, but a row with his master and an evening’s drinking saw him take the King’s shilling in Winchester. Now his old calling is like some half-remembered dream, although when he sees Portuguese peasants ploughing their red soil he still recalls the plodding team in front and the rich dark earth rolling from the coulter behind. Had he ever heard of Shakespeare he would agree that ‘things without remedy should be without regard’, but today it will be enough for him to be alive come sunset.
He stands 5ft 6ins tall – taller than many of his comrades – and now he himself is a beast of burden. Broad buff-leather cross belts meet on his chest, with an oval plate at their intersection; thinner buff straps run down from his shoulders and across his chest, and a brown leather strap lies across his right shoulder with the thick canvas belt of a haversack alongside it. We can see, even from the front, the edges of his black canvas pack, and the grey greatcoat strapped on top of it stands well above his shoulders. A black cartridge box hangs at his right hip, and bayonet-scabbard and round wooden water bottle at his left.
His hands have the same worn-leather hue and texture as his face, and their short finger-nails are black-edged. They bear a dozen new cuts and old scars, and his right thumb is thickened with a mighty callous. His left hand hangs loosely by his side, while his right – thumb and forefinger apart – rests lightly on the bright steel barrel of his upright musket. Its 39-inch barrel is tipped with a bayonet, sixteen inches of triangular steel, its point level with his shako-plate.
There is an animal tang about him which even that fine natural deodorant, the pervasive wood-smoke, cannot conceal. In part, it stems from the fact that he has worn the same jacket for six months and it smells powerfully of old sweat laced with the bad-egg stink of black powder, the muddy odour of the pipe-clay which whitens his belts, and the sharper nip of the brick-dust which, dampened by water, brings the metalwork of his musket and the brass of his accoutrements to a shine. It must be said, though, that not much polishing has gone on of late. He has only worn his heavy linen shirt for a week, and so may hope to get another week or more from it yet, but our nose tells us that it is already past its best, and is not much helped by the fact that, long tails tucked in between his legs, it doubles as underwear. Even when clean it was not entirely sweet: the soap used to wash it was made from mutton-fat, and the gentlest scent of roast lamb mingles with the other smells. He cleaned his teeth this morning, using the well-chewed end of a green twig as a brush, but these efforts cannot conceal the facts that there were onions in his supper and rum after it.
To left and right, in a line 250 yards long, stand similar figures. And similar is the word, for they are by no means uniform: there is infinite variety in the injury sustained by shakos and the nature and quality of the patches on clothes. One man has lost his shako altogether, and wears an incongruous round black hat. He does not look his best, and not simply because of this sartorial defect: we may confidently assume that the missing item will not redound to his advantage. The men stand shoulder to shoulder, elbows touching, in two ranks a pace apart, in ten distinct company groups. Each company has about fifty private soldiers and corporals, with three officers, two sergeants and a drummer
