Sketches and Travels in London Read online

  "I SAY!" howled a man; "I say!--a word!--I say! Pasagero!

  Pasagero! Pasage-e-ero!" We were two hundred yards ahead by this

  time.

  "Go on," says the captain.

  "You may stop if you like," says Lieutenant Bundy, exerting his

  tremendous responsibility. It is evident that the lieutenant has a

  soft heart, and felt for the poor devil in the boat who was howling

  so piteously "Pasagero!"

  But the captain was resolute. His duty was NOT to take the man up.

  He was evidently an irregular customer--someone trying to escape,

  possibly.

  The lieutenant turned away, but did not make any further hints.

  The captain was right; but we all felt somehow disappointed, and

  looked back wistfully at the little boat, jumping up and down far

  astern now; the poor little light shining in vain, and the poor

  wretch within screaming out in the most heartrending accents a last

  faint desperate "I say! Pasagero-o!"

  We all went down to tea rather melancholy; but the new milk, in the

  place of that abominable whipped egg, revived us again; and so

  ended the great events on board the "Lady Mary Wood" steamer, on

  the 25th August, 1844.

  CHAPTER II: LISBON--CADIZ

  A great misfortune which befalls a man who has but a single day to

  stay in a town, is that fatal duty which superstition entails upon

  him of visiting the chief lions of the city in which he may happen

  to be. You must go through the ceremony, however much you may sigh

  to avoid it; and however much you know that the lions in one

  capital roar very much like the lions in another; that the churches

  are more or less large and splendid, the palaces pretty spacious,

  all the world over; and that there is scarcely a capital city in

  this Europe but has its pompous bronze statue or two of some

  periwigged, hook-nosed emperor, in a Roman habit, waving his bronze

  baton on his broad-flanked brazen charger. We only saw these state

  old lions in Lisbon, whose roar has long since ceased to frighten

  one. First we went to the Church of St. Roch, to see a famous

  piece of mosaic-work there. It is a famous work of art, and was

  bought by I don't know what king for I don't know how much money.

  All this information may be perfectly relied on, though the fact

  is, we did not see the mosaic-work: the sacristan, who guards it,

  was yet in bed; and it was veiled from our eyes in a side-chapel by

  great dirty damask curtains, which could not be removed, except

  when the sacristan's toilette was done, and at the price of a

  dollar. So we were spared this mosaic exhibition; and I think I

  always feel relieved when such an event occurs. I feel I have done

  my duty in coming to see the enormous animal: if he is not at

  home, virtute mea me, &c.--we have done our best, and mortal can do

  no more.

  In order to reach that church of the forbidden mosaic, we had

  sweated up several most steep and dusty streets--hot and dusty,

  although it was but nine o'clock in the morning. Thence the guide

  conducted us into some little dust-powdered gardens, in which the

  people make believe to enjoy the verdure, and whence you look over

  a great part of the arid, dreary, stony city. There was no smoke,

  as in honest London, only dust--dust over the gaunt houses and the

  dismal yellow strips of gardens. Many churches were there, and

  tall half-baked-looking public edifices, that had a dry,

  uncomfortable, earth-quaky look, to my idea. The ground-floors of

  the spacious houses by which we passed seemed the coolest and

  pleasantest portions of the mansion. They were cellars or

  warehouses, for the most part, in which white-jacketed clerks sat

  smoking easy cigars. The streets were plastered with placards of a

  bull-fight, to take place the next evening (there was no opera that

  season); but it was not a real Spanish tauromachy--only a

  theatrical combat, as you could see by the picture in which the

  horseman was cantering off at three miles an hour, the bull

  tripping after him with tips to his gentle horns. Mules

  interminable, and almost all excellently sleek and handsome, were

  pacing down every street: here and there, but later in the day,

  came clattering along a smart rider on a prancing Spanish horse;

  and in the afternoon a few families might be seen in the queerest

  old-fashioned little carriages, drawn by their jolly mules and

  swinging between, or rather before, enormous wheels.

  The churches I saw were of the florid periwig architecture--I mean

  of that pompous cauliflower kind of ornament which was the fashion

  in Louis the Fifteenth's time, at which unlucky period a building

  mania seems to have seized upon many of the monarchs of Europe, and

  innumerable public edifices were erected. It seems to me to have

  been the period in all history when society was the least natural,

  and perhaps the most dissolute; and I have always fancied that the

  bloated artificial forms of the architecture partake of the social

  disorganisation of the time. Who can respect a simpering ninny,

  grinning in a Roman dress and a full-bottomed wig, who is made to

  pass off for a hero? or a fat woman in a hoop, and of a most

  doubtful virtue, who leers at you as a goddess? In the palaces

  which we saw, several Court allegories were represented, which,

  atrocious as they were in point of art, might yet serve to attract

  the regard of the moraliser. There were Faith, Hope, and Charity

  restoring Don John to the arms of his happy Portugal: there were

  Virtue, Valour, and Victory saluting Don Emanuel: Reading,

  Writing, and Arithmetic (for what I know, or some mythologic

  nymphs) dancing before Don Miguel--the picture is there still, at

  the Ajuda; and ah me! where is poor Mig? Well, it is these State

  lies and ceremonies that we persist in going to see; whereas a man

  would have a much better insight into Portuguese manners, by

  planting himself at a corner, like yonder beggar, and watching the

  real transactions of the day.

  A drive to Belem is the regular route practised by the traveller

  who has to make only a short stay, and accordingly a couple of

  carriages were provided for our party, and we were driven through

  the long merry street of Belem, peopled by endless strings of

  mules,--by thousands of gallegos, with water-barrels on their

  shoulders, or lounging by the fountains to hire,--by the Lisbon and

  Belem omnibuses, with four mules, jingling along at a good pace;

  and it seemed to me to present a far more lively and cheerful,

  though not so regular, an appearance as the stately quarters of the

  city we had left behind us. The little shops were at full work--

  the men brown, well-dressed, manly, and handsome: so much cannot,

  I am sorry to say, be said for the ladies, of whom, with every

  anxiety to do so, our party could not perceive a single good-

  looking specimen all day. The noble blue Tagus accompanies you all

  along these three miles of busy pleasant street, whereof the chief

  charm, as I thought, was its look of genuine busines
s--that

  appearance of comfort which the cleverest Court-architect never

  knows how to give.

  The carriages (the canvas one with four seats and the chaise in

  which I drove) were brought suddenly up to a gate with the Royal

  arms over it; and here we were introduced to as queer an exhibition

  as the eye has often looked on. This was the state-carriage house,

  where there is a museum of huge old tumble-down gilded coaches of

  the last century, lying here, mouldy and dark, in a sort of limbo.

  The gold has vanished from the great lumbering old wheels and

  panels; the velvets are wofully tarnished. When one thinks of the

  patches and powder that have simpered out of those plate-glass

  windows--the mitred bishops, the big-wigged marshals, the shovel-

  hatted abbes which they have borne in their time--the human mind

  becomes affected in no ordinary degree. Some human minds heave a

  sigh for the glories of bygone days; while others, considering

  rather the lies and humbug, the vice and servility, which went

  framed and glazed and enshrined, creaking along in those old

  Juggernaut cars, with fools worshipping under the wheels, console

  themselves for the decay of institutions that may have been

  splendid and costly, but were ponderous, clumsy, slow, and unfit

  for daily wear. The guardian of these defunct old carriages tells

  some prodigious fibs concerning them: he pointed out one carriage

  that was six hundred years old in his calendar; but any connoisseur

  in bric-a-brac can see it was built at Paris in the Regent Orleans'

  time.

  Hence it is but a step to an institution in full life and vigour,--

  a noble orphan-school for one thousand boys and girls, founded by

  Don Pedro, who gave up to its use the superb convent of Belem, with

  its splendid cloisters, vast airy dormitories, and magnificent

  church. Some Oxford gentlemen would have wept to see the

  desecrated edifice,--to think that the shaven polls and white gowns

  were banished from it to give place to a thousand children, who

  have not even the clergy to instruct them. "Every lad here may

  choose his trade," our little informant said, who addressed us in

  better French than any of our party spoke, whose manners were

  perfectly gentlemanlike and respectful, and whose clothes, though

  of a common cotton stuff, were cut and worn with a military

  neatness and precision. All the children whom we remarked were

  dressed with similar neatness, and it was a pleasure to go through

  their various rooms for study, where some were busy at mathematics,

  some at drawing, some attending a lecture on tailoring, while

  others were sitting at the feet of a professor of the science of

  shoemaking. All the garments of the establishment were made by the

  pupils; even the deaf and dumb were drawing and reading, and the

  blind were, for the most part, set to perform on musical

  instruments, and got up a concert for the visitors. It was then we

  wished ourselves of the numbers of the deaf and dumb, for the poor

  fellows made noises so horrible, that even as blind beggars they

  could hardly get a livelihood in the musical way.

  Hence we were driven to the huge palace of Necessidades, which is

  but a wing of a building that no King of Portugal ought ever to be

  rich enough to complete, and which, if perfect, might outvie the

  Tower of Babel. The mines of Brazil must have been productive of

  gold and silver indeed when the founder imagined this enormous

  edifice. From the elevation on which it stands it commands the

  noblest views,--the city is spread before it, with its many

  churches and towers, and for many miles you see the magnificent

  Tagus, rolling by banks crowned with trees and towers. But to

  arrive at this enormous building you have to climb a steep suburb

  of wretched huts, many of them with dismal gardens of dry cracked

  earth, where a few reedy sprouts of Indian corn seemed to be the

  chief cultivation, and which were guarded by huge plants of spiky

  aloes, on which the rags of the proprietors of the huts were

  sunning themselves. The terrace before the palace was similarly

  encroached upon by these wretched habitations. A few millions

  judiciously expended might make of this arid hill one of the most

  magnificent gardens in the world; and the palace seems to me to

  excel for situation any Royal edifice I have ever seen. But the

  huts of these swarming poor have crawled up close to its gates,--

  the superb walls of hewn stone stop all of a sudden with a lath-

  and-plaster hitch; and capitals, and hewn stones for columns, still

  lying about on the deserted terrace, may lie there for ages to

  come, probably, and never take their places by the side of their

  brethren in yonder tall bankrupt galleries. The air of this pure

  sky has little effect upon the edifices,--the edges of the stone

  look as sharp as if the builders had just left their work; and

  close to the grand entrance stands an outbuilding, part of which

  may have been burnt fifty years ago, but is in such cheerful

  preservation that you might fancy the fire had occurred yesterday.

  It must have been an awful sight from this hill to have looked at

  the city spread before it, and seen it reeling and swaying in the

  time of the earthquake. I thought it looked so hot and shaky, that

  one might fancy a return of the fit. In several places still

  remain gaps and chasms, and ruins lie here and there as they

  cracked and fell.

  Although the palace has not attained anything like its full growth,

  yet what exists is quite big enough for the monarch of such a

  little country; and Versailles or Windsor has not apartments more

  nobly proportioned. The Queen resides in the Ajuda, a building of

  much less pretensions, of which the yellow walls and beautiful

  gardens are seen between Belem and the city. The Necessidades are

  only used for grand galas, receptions of ambassadors, and

  ceremonies of state. In the throne-room is a huge throne,

  surmounted by an enormous gilt crown, than which I have never seen

  anything larger in the finest pantomime at Drury Lane; but the

  effect of this splendid piece is lessened by a shabby old Brussels

  carpet, almost the only other article of furniture in the

  apartment, and not quite large enough to cover its spacious floor.

  The looms of Kidderminster have supplied the web which ornaments

  the "Ambassadors' Waiting-Room," and the ceilings are painted with

  huge allegories in distemper, which pretty well correspond with the

  other furniture. Of all the undignified objects in the world, a

  palace out at elbows is surely the meanest. Such places ought not

  to be seen in adversity,--splendour is their decency,--and when no

  longer able to maintain it, they should sink to the level of their

  means, calmly subside into manufactories, or go shabby in

  seclusion.

  There is a picture-gallery belonging to the palace that is quite of

  a piece with the furniture, where are the mythological pieces

  relative to the kings before alluded to, and where the English


  visitor will see some astonishing pictures of the Duke of

  Wellington, done in a very characteristic style of Portuguese art.

  There is also a chapel, which has been decorated with much care and

  sumptuousness of ornament--the altar surmounted by a ghastly and

  horrible carved figure in the taste of the time when faith was

  strengthened by the shrieks of Jews on the rack, and enlivened by

  the roasting of heretics. Other such frightful images may be seen

  in the churches of the city; those which we saw were still rich,

  tawdry, and splendid to outward show, although the French, as

  usual, had robbed their shrines of their gold and silver, and the

  statues of their jewels and crowns. But brass and tinsel look to

  the visitor full as well at a little distance,--as doubtless Soult

  and Junot thought, when they despoiled these places of worship,

  like French philosophers as they were.

  A friend, with a classical turn of mind, was bent upon seeing the

  aqueduct, whither we went on a dismal excursion of three hours, in

  the worst carriages, over the most diabolical clattering roads, up

  and down dreary parched hills, on which grew a few grey olive-trees

  and many aloes. When we arrived, the gate leading to the aqueduct

  was closed, and we were entertained with a legend of some

  respectable character who had made a good livelihood there for some

  time past lately, having a private key to this very aqueduct, and

  lying in wait there for unwary travellers like ourselves, whom he

  pitched down the arches into the ravines below, and there robbed

  them at leisure. So that all we saw was the door and the tall

  arches of the aqueduct, and by the time we returned to town it was

  time to go on board the ship again. If the inn at which we had

  sojourned was not of the best quality, the bill, at least, would

  have done honour to the first establishment in London. We all left

  the house of entertainment joyfully, glad to get out of the sun-

  burnt city and go HOME. Yonder in the steamer was home, with its

  black funnel and gilt portraiture of "Lady Mary Wood" at the bows;

  and every soul on board felt glad to return to the friendly little

  vessel. But the authorities of Lisbon, however, are very

  suspicious of the departing stranger, and we were made to lie an

  hour in the river before the Sanita boat, where a passport is

  necessary to be procured before the traveller can quit the country.

  Boat after boat laden with priests and peasantry, with handsome

  red-sashed gallegos clad in brown, and ill-favoured women, came and

  got their permits, and were off, as we lay bumping up against the

  old hull of the Sanita boat; but the officers seemed to take a

  delight in keeping us there bumping, looked at us quite calmly over

  the ship's sides, and smoked their cigars without the least

  attention to the prayers which we shrieked out for release.

  If we were glad to get away from Lisbon, we were quite as sorry to

  be obliged to quit Cadiz, which we reached the next night, and

  where we were allowed a couple of hours' leave to land and look

  about. It seemed as handsome within as it is stately without; the

  long narrow streets of an admirable cleanliness, many of the tall

  houses of rich and noble decorations, and all looking as if the

  city were in full prosperity. I have seen no more cheerful and

  animated sight than the long street leading from the quay where we

  were landed, and the market blazing in sunshine, piled with fruit,

  fish, and poultry, under many-coloured awnings; the tall white

  houses with their balconies and galleries shining round about, and

  the sky above so blue that the best cobalt in all the paint-box

  looks muddy and dim in comparison to it. There were pictures for a

  year in that market-place--from the copper-coloured old hags and

  beggars who roared to you for the love of Heaven to give money, to

  the swaggering dandies of the market, with red sashes and tight

  clothes, looking on superbly, with a hand on the hip and a cigar in

  the mouth. These must be the chief critics at the great bull-fight

  house yonder by the Alameda, with its scanty trees, and cool