History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, Vol. 1: Compiled from the Original RecordsDuncan, Francis
History
History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, Vol. 1: Compiled from the Original Records
Duncan, Francis
Great Britain. Army. Royal Regiment of Artillery
"For want of such a ready communication with the town of Woolwich, with
regard to my Family, I am subject to much inconvenience. For, the way by
the gate of the Warren makes the distance to and from my house so great,
that I can't have the necessary provisions brought to me as other people
have, by Bakers, Butchers, Milkmen, &c., without great additional
expense, and many not even for that at any rate. So that I am obliged to
send my servants round about by all that way, on all occasions, to bring
in all things necessary to the Family. This is not the worst of it; for
all kinds of Family necessaries not being constantly to be bought in the
shops in such a place as Woolwich, many things are brought only
occasionally and cried about the streets, when it is matter of no small
grief that such things as may then be much wanted in the family can be
heard to be cried immediately behind the house, without a possibility of
coming at them, but by going half a mile round about, when perhaps the
servants can be least spared to go, and when they do go, it is ten to
one they are disappointed by the crier then being gone quite out of
sight and hearing. And besides all this, it is not always that I can
prevail on my good and sober female servants to be willing so frequently
to go through by the Warren gate, as it is next to an impossibility that
such persons can pass so many soldiers as are generally there assembled,
without sometimes being subject to rencounters disagreeable to them."
The Lieutenant-Governor, who had not merely official troubles with the
Masters to vex him, but had also to listen to such harrowing domestic
details as those just given, was not a man to be envied. Even a hundred
years later, as the student comes on this plaintive picture, his
imagination begins to work, and he sees, tearing his hair in his study,
the ill-fated teacher listening to the well-known cry, just over the
Warren walls, which told him that some much-loved delicacy was there—so
near and yet so far.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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