GENTLEMEN -- THE REGIMENT!

A Victorian novel, in traditions and background. The story of a military family, and of the misfit to whom the ""regiment"" was not the breath of life. He runs counter to the rules laid down for him, finds life hard sledding, loves the wrong girl and eventually betakes himself to the Crimean War and survives to head his family and to accept the code. A picture of a period that is past, with colorful records of life, social and military, and a rigid code of manners and morals, with the hypocrisy and shame and brutalities below. Not a particularly easy book to place. Men of the old school will like it better than women.