Wimbledon & The Volunteers

	Wimbledon & The Volunteers by David Minshall	INDEX
Volunteers & The NRA National Rifle Meeting Royal Patronage Competitions The Novelty Acts Volunteer Camp Camp Comforts Entertainment Serious Aims Common Problems	Entertainment
	The NRA Council fitted up a club-tent. "If you have ever seen a comfortable club-room in town, you need no description of the National Rifle Association Club-tent, the sole difference being that the one is a tent and has a piano in it," wrote one commentator in 1867. Entertainment for the Volunteers in camp was sometimes provided in the club-tent, while the regimental camps vied with each other in friendly rivalry in their almost unbounded hospitality. The bagpipes of the London Scottish were however a cause of terror at first to the weaker-minded. So, at least, reported The Earwig, camp newspaper of the Victoria Rifles:	The Club Tent (Illustrated London News, 16 July 1864)
	"Last evening a sudden and violent illness seized the members of the Victoria Camp, and caused great anxiety to their worthy and much respected surgeon. On mature inquiry, it was found to arise from the effect of playing of the bagpipes in the Scottish camp; on the cessation of the noise the symptoms of the illness deceased, and the members gradually recovered." The mess tent in the evenings was the site of much conviviality. A Volunteer writing in 1867 described the scene when he entered the tent to find "the men assembled and busily engaged in quaffing a fiery compound, which the members of the staff were pouring from a huge tin." The effects were apparently wonderfully potent in the "promotion of jollity," inducing many a chorus, with song succeeding song in rapid succession while the fun-promoting contents of the huge tin fast disappeared. With the bugle sounding the ten minute warning prior to lights out, and after a heartrending verse of "God save the Queen" it was time to retire: this was not necessarily easy to accomplish as our Volunteer recalled. "Some wonderful natural convulsion appeared to be taking place as we issued forth from the mess-tent, causing the contents to whirl round and round, and then dart from side to side, in the most surprising manner, rendering it a work of no slight difficulty to catch them. Fortunately I was perfectly sober, so bided my time; and when I saw our tent make a slight pause in its wild career past us, with a mighty spring I threw myself upon it, and grasping one of its ropes with both hands, held on firmly in spite of all its attempts to shake me off. The convulsion soon passed over, and Miller, who was very drunk, pulled me into the tent, and implored me to get into bed. Knowing how hopeless it was to reason with one in his unfortunate state, I complied with his request, and tumbled in just as the camp guard was threatening to cut our tent-ropes if the light were not extinguished immediately." While the mess tents catered for the masses, select tea-parties were to be found amidst the camp tents and on occasions an entertainment of a more refined sort might be found where perhaps a young lady made music with a violin.

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