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French said, “The line came to me from ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade,’ the Tennyson poem, you know—‘Cannons to the right of them, cannons to the left of them, cannons in front of them.’

BEIRUT, Lebanon — These are the words of William Howard Russell, writing in The Times of London newspaper in October 1854 about The Charge of the Light Brigade, the doomed assault by a few hundred British mounted cavalrymen against Russian artillery at Balaclava during the Crimean War.

Among the poems that he read out to us were “Aylmer’s Field,” the “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington,” parts of “Maud,” “Guinevere,” “The Holy Grail,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” “The Revenge,” “The Defence of Lucknow,” “In the Valley of Cauteretz.”

Moreover, the commissionaire outside, whose medals prove that he has seen service in the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Black Hole of Calcutta, and the Great Raid on the House of Commons in 1910, is not one of those blatant-voiced showmen who clamour for patronage; he is a quiet and dignified réceptionnaire, content to rely on the fame and good repute of his theatre.

In a literature lesson in a Form III class on The Charge of the Light Brigade, the preparation would involve a recall of some deed of personal heroism with which the pupils are familiar, such as that of John Maynard, Grace Darling, or any similar one nearer home.