224 ARMY UNIFORMS-PAST AND PRESENT 



Household Cavalry to masquerade in such attire as it 

 would be grotesque to imagine them wearing in 

 modern warfare. 



About the same time as the cuirass was inflicted on 

 the Household Cavalry, the sentry-boxes in London 

 and at Windsor Castle had to be increased in height 

 in order to accommodate a new pattern of bearskin 

 cap which had been approved for the Foot Guards. 

 The old pattern, which had superseded the three- 

 cocked hat at the end of the eighteenth century, was 

 a sensible affair of reasonable dimensions; but the 

 army tailors had their ingenuity in devising extra- 

 vagant uniforms stimulated by the new king, and the 

 bearskin was caused to shoot upwards several inches. 

 ' Ridicule/ observes Colonel Luard, ' subsides when the 

 eye is no longer a stranger to the object of excitement ; 

 otherwise the little boys would run after the guards- 

 men when they appear in the streets of London, and 

 shout at the overwhelming, preposterous, hideous 

 bearskin caps.' It is rumoured that the supply of the 

 right sort of bear is running short. It may not be an 

 extravagant hope that the return of the Guards 

 Division victorious may be marked by the invention 

 of a full-dress uniform for them more rational and 

 comfortable than a skin-tight tunic and a head-dress 

 out of all proportion to the human frame. Londoners, 

 intensely and laudably conservative in what they have 

 become used to, would be the less likely to murmur at 

 the reform inasmuch as they have grown accustomed 

 during the War to see guard-mounting performed in 

 forage- caps. 



