Sketches and Travels in London Read online

breezes facing the water. Nor are there any corks to the bulls'

  horns here, as at Lisbon. A small old English guide who seized

  upon me the moment my foot was on shore, had a store of agreeable

  legends regarding the bulls, men, and horses that had been killed

  with unbounded profusion in the late entertainments which have

  taken place.

  It was so early an hour in the morning that the shops were scarcely

  opened as yet; the churches, however, stood open for the faithful,

  and we met scores of women tripping towards them with pretty feet,

  and smart black mantillas, from which looked out fine dark eyes and

  handsome pale faces, very different from the coarse brown

  countenances we had seen at Lisbon. A very handsome modern

  cathedral, built by the present bishop at his own charges, was the

  finest of the public edifices we saw; it was not, however, nearly

  so much frequented as another little church, crowded with altars

  and fantastic ornaments, and lights and gilding, where we were told

  to look behind a huge iron grille, and beheld a bevy of black nuns

  kneeling. Most of the good ladies in the front ranks stopped their

  devotions, and looked at the strangers with as much curiosity as we

  directed at them through the gloomy bars of their chapel. The

  men's convents are closed; that which contains the famous Murillos

  has been turned into an academy of the fine arts; but the English

  guide did not think the pictures were of sufficient interest to

  detain strangers, and so hurried us back to the shore, and grumbled

  at only getting three shillings at parting for his trouble and his

  information. And so our residence in Andalusia began and ended

  before breakfast, and we went on board and steamed for Gibraltar,

  looking, as we passed, at Joinville's black squadron, and the white

  houses of St. Mary's across the bay, with the hills of Medina

  Sidonia and Granada lying purple beyond them. There's something

  even in those names which is pleasant to write down; to have passed

  only two hours in Cadiz is something--to have seen real donnas with

  comb and mantle--real caballeros with cloak and cigar--real Spanish

  barbers lathering out of brass basins--and to have heard guitars

  under the balconies: there was one that an old beggar was jangling

  in the market, whilst a huge leering fellow in bushy whiskers and a

  faded velvet dress came singing and jumping after our party,--not

  singing to a guitar, it is true, but imitating one capitally with

  his voice, and cracking his fingers by way of castanets, and

  performing a dance such as Figaro or Lablache might envy. How

  clear that fellow's voice thrums on the ear even now; and how

  bright and pleasant remains the recollection of the fine city and

  the blue sea, and the Spanish flags floating on the boats that

  danced over it, and Joinville's band beginning to play stirring

  marches as we puffed out of the bay.

  The next stage was Gibraltar, where we were to change horses.

  Before sunset we skirted along the dark savage mountains of the

  African coast, and came to the Rock just before gun-fire. It is

  the very image of an enormous lion, crouched between the Atlantic

  and the Mediterranean, and set there to guard the passage for its

  British mistress. The next British lion is Malta, four days

  further on in the Midland Sea, and ready to spring upon Egypt or

  pounce upon Syria, or roar so as to be heard at Marseilles in case

  of need.

  To the eyes of the civilian the first-named of these famous

  fortifications is by far the most imposing. The Rock looks so

  tremendous, that to ascend it, even without the compliment of

  shells or shot, seems a dreadful task--what would it be when all

  those mysterious lines of batteries were vomiting fire and

  brimstone; when all those dark guns that you see poking their grim

  heads out of every imaginable cleft and zigzag should salute you

  with shot, both hot and cold; and when, after tugging up the

  hideous perpendicular place, you were to find regiments of British

  grenadiers ready to plunge bayonets into your poor panting stomach,

  and let out artificially the little breath left there? It is a

  marvel to think that soldiers will mount such places for a

  shilling--ensigns for five and ninepence--a day: a cabman would

  ask double the money to go half way! One meekly reflects upon the

  above strange truths, leaning over the ship's side, and looking up

  the huge mountain, from the tower nestled at the foot of it to the

  thin flagstaff at the summit, up to which have been piled the most

  ingenious edifices for murder Christian science ever adopted. My

  hobby-horse is a quiet beast, suited for Park riding, or a gentle

  trot to Putney and back to a snug stable, and plenty of feeds of

  corn:- it can't abide climbing hills, and is not at all used to

  gunpowder. Some men's animals are so spirited that the very

  appearance of a stone-wall sets them jumping at it: regular

  chargers of hobbies, which snort and say "Ha, ha!" at the mere

  notion of a battle.

  CHAPTER III: THE "LADY MARY WOOD"

  Our week's voyage is now drawing to a close. We have just been to

  look at Cape Trafalgar, shining white over the finest blue sea.

  (We, who were looking at Trafalgar Square only the other day!) The

  sight of that cape must have disgusted Joinville and his fleet of

  steamers, as they passed yesterday into Cadiz bay, and to-morrow

  will give them a sight of St. Vincent.

  One of their steam-vessels has been lost off the coast of Africa;

  they were obliged to burn her, lest the Moors should take

  possession of her. She was a virgin vessel, just out of Brest.

  Poor innocent! to die in the very first month of her union with the

  noble whiskered god of war!

  We Britons on board the English boat received the news of the

  "Groenenland's" abrupt demise with grins of satisfaction. It was a

  sort of national compliment, and cause of agreeable congratulation.

  "The lubbers!" we said; "the clumsy humbugs! there's none but

  Britons to rule the waves!" and we gave ourselves piratical airs,

  and went down presently and were sick in our little buggy berths.

  It was pleasant, certainly, to laugh at Joinville's admiral's flag

  floating at his foremast, in yonder black ship, with its two

  thundering great guns at the bows and stern, its busy crew swarming

  on the deck, and a crowd of obsequious shore-boats bustling round

  the vessel--and to sneer at the Mogador warrior, and vow that we

  English, had we been inclined to do the business, would have

  performed it a great deal better.

  Now yesterday at Lisbon we saw H.M.S. "Caledonia." THIS, on the

  contrary, inspired us with feelings of respect and awful pleasure.

  There she lay--the huge sea-castle--bearing the unconquerable flag

  of our country. She had but to open her jaws, as it were, and she

  might bring a second earthquake on the city--batter it into

  kingdom-come--with the Ajuda palace and the Necessidades, the

  churches, and the lean, dry, empty streets, and Don John,


  tremendous on horseback, in the midst of Black Horse Square.

  Wherever we looked we could see that enormous "Caledonia," with her

  flashing three lines of guns. We looked at the little boats which

  ever and anon came out of this monster, with humble wonder. There

  was the lieutenant who boarded us at midnight before we dropped

  anchor in the river: ten white-jacketed men pulling as one, swept

  along with the barge, gig, boat, curricle, or coach-and-six, with

  which he came up to us. We examined him--his red whiskers--his

  collars turned down--his duck trousers, his bullion epaulets--with

  awe. With the same reverential feeling we examined the seamen--the

  young gentleman in the bows of the boat--the handsome young

  officers of marines we met sauntering in the town next day--the

  Scotch surgeon who boarded us as we weighed anchor--every man, down

  to the broken-nosed mariner who was drunk in a wine-house, and had

  "Caledonia" written on his hat. Whereas at the Frenchmen we looked

  with undisguised contempt. We were ready to burst with laughter as

  we passed the Prince's vessel--there was a little French boy in a

  French boat alongside cleaning it, and twirling about a little

  French mop--we thought it the most comical, contemptible French

  boy, mop, boat, steamer, prince--Psha! it is of this wretched

  vapouring stuff that false patriotism is made. I write this as a

  sort of homily 'a propos of the day, and Cape Trafalgar, off which

  we lie. What business have I to strut the deck, and clap my wings,

  and cry "Cock-a-doodle-doo" over it? Some compatriots are at that

  work even now.

  We have lost one by one all our jovial company. There were the

  five Oporto wine-merchants--all hearty English gentlemen--gone to

  their wine-butts, and their red-legged partridges, and their duels

  at Oporto. It appears that these gallant Britons fight every

  morning among themselves, and give the benighted people among whom

  they live an opportunity to admire the spirit national. There is

  the brave honest major, with his wooden leg--the kindest and

  simplest of Irishmen: he has embraced his children, and reviewed

  his little invalid garrison of fifteen men, in the fort which he

  commands at Belem, by this time, and, I have no doubt, played to

  every soul of them the twelve tunes of his musical-box. It was

  pleasant to see him with that musical-box--how pleased he wound it

  up after dinner--how happily he listened to the little clinking

  tunes as they galloped, ding-dong, after each other! A man who

  carries a musical-box is always a good-natured man.

  Then there was his Grace, or his Grandeur, the Archbishop of

  Beyrouth (in the parts of the infidels), His Holiness's Nuncio to

  the Court of Her Most Faithful Majesty, and who mingled among us

  like any simple mortal,--except that he had an extra smiling

  courtesy, which simple mortals do not always possess; and when you

  passed him as such, and puffed your cigar in his face, took off his

  hat with a grin of such prodigious rapture, as to lead you to

  suppose that the most delicious privilege of his whole life was

  that permission to look at the tip of your nose or of your cigar.

  With this most reverend prelate was his Grace's brother and

  chaplain--a very greasy and good-natured ecclesiastic, who, from

  his physiognomy, I would have imagined to be a dignitary of the

  Israelitish rather than the Romish Church--as profuse in smiling

  courtesy as his Lordship of Beyrouth. These two had a meek little

  secretary between them, and a tall French cook and valet, who, at

  meal times, might be seen busy about the cabin where their

  reverences lay. They were on their backs for the greater part of

  the voyage; their yellow countenances were not only unshaven, but,

  to judge from appearances, unwashed. They ate in private; and it

  was only of evenings, as the sun was setting over the western wave,

  and, comforted by the dinner, the cabin-passengers assembled on the

  quarter-deck, that we saw the dark faces of the reverend gentlemen

  among us for a while. They sank darkly into their berths when the

  steward's bell tolled for tea.

  At Lisbon, where we came to anchor at midnight, a special boat came

  off, whereof the crew exhibited every token of reverence for the

  ambassador of the ambassador of Heaven, and carried him off from

  our company. This abrupt departure in the darkness disappointed

  some of us, who had promised ourselves the pleasure of seeing his

  Grandeur depart in state in the morning, shaved, clean, and in full

  pontificals, the tripping little secretary swinging an incense-pot

  before him, and the greasy chaplain bearing his crosier.

  Next day we had another bishop, who occupied the very same berth

  his Grace of Beyrouth had quitted--was sick in the very same way--

  so much so that this cabin of the "Lady Mary Wood" is to be

  christened "the bishop's berth" henceforth; and a handsome mitre is

  to be painted on the basin.

  Bishop No. 2 was a very stout, soft, kind-looking old gentleman, in

  a square cap, with a handsome tassel of green and gold round his

  portly breast and back. He was dressed in black robes and tight

  purple stockings: and we carried him from Lisbon to the little

  flat coast of Faro, of which the meek old gentleman was the chief

  pastor.

  We had not been half-an-hour from our anchorage in the Tagus, when

  his Lordship dived down into the episcopal berth. All that night

  there was a good smart breeze; it blew fresh all the next day, as

  we went jumping over the blue bright sea; and there was no sign of

  his Lordship the bishop until we were opposite the purple hills of

  Algarve, which lay some ten miles distant,--a yellow sunny shore

  stretching flat before them, whose long sandy flats and villages we

  could see with our telescope from the steamer.

  Presently a little vessel, with a huge shining lateen sail, and

  bearing the blue and white Portuguese flag, was seen playing a sort

  of leap-frog on the jolly waves, jumping over them, and ducking

  down as merry as could be. This little boat came towards the

  steamer as quick as ever she could jump; and Captain Cooper roaring

  out, "Stop her!" to "Lady Mary Wood," her Ladyship's paddles

  suddenly ceased twirling, and news was carried to the good bishop

  that his boat was almost alongside, and that his hour was come.

  It was rather an affecting sight to see the poor old fat gentleman,

  looking wistfully over the water as the boat now came up, and her

  eight seamen, with great noise, energy, and gesticulation laid her

  by the steamer. The steamer steps were let down; his Lordship's

  servant, in blue and yellow livery (like the Edinburgh Review),

  cast over the episcopal luggage into the boat, along with his own

  bundle and the jack-boots with which he rides postilion on one of

  the bishop's fat mules at Faro. The blue and yellow domestic went

  down the steps into the boat. Then came the bishop's turn; but he

  couldn't do it for a long while. He went from one passenger to

  another,
sadly shaking them by the hand, often taking leave and

  seeming loth to depart, until Captain Cooper, in a stern but

  respectful tone, touched him on the shoulder, and said, I know not

  with what correctness, being ignorant of the Spanish language,

  "Senor 'Bispo! Senor 'Bispo!" on which summons the poor old man,

  looking ruefully round him once more, put his square cap under his

  arm, tucked up his long black petticoats, so as to show his purple

  stockings and jolly fat calves, and went trembling down the steps

  towards the boat. The good old man! I wish I had had a shake of

  that trembling podgy hand somehow before he went upon his sea

  martyrdom. I felt a love for that soft-hearted old Christian. Ah!

  let us hope his governante tucked him comfortably in bed when he

  got to Faro that night, and made him a warm gruel and put his feet

  in warm water. The men clung around him, and almost kissed him as

  they popped him into the boat, but he did not heed their caresses.

  Away went the boat scudding madly before the wind. Bang! another

  lateen-sailed boat in the distance fired a gun in his honour; but

  the wind was blowing away from the shore, and who knows when that

  meek bishop got home to his gruel?

  I think these were the notables of our party. I will not mention

  the laughing ogling lady of Cadiz, whose manners, I very much

  regret to say, were a great deal too lively for my sense of

  propriety; nor those fair sufferers, her companions, who lay on the

  deck with sickly, smiling female resignation: nor the heroic

  children, who no sooner ate biscuit than they were ill, and no

  sooner were ill than they began eating biscuit again: but just

  allude to one other martyr, the kind lieutenant in charge of the

  mails, and who bore his cross with what I can't but think a very

  touching and noble resignation.

  There's a certain sort of man whose doom in the world is

  disappointment,--who excels in it,--and whose luckless triumphs in

  his meek career of life, I have often thought, must be regarded by

  the kind eyes above with as much favour as the splendid successes

  and achievements of coarser and more prosperous men. As I sat with

  the lieutenant upon deck, his telescope laid over his lean legs,

  and he looking at the sunset with a pleased, withered old face, he

  gave me a little account of his history. I take it he is in nowise

  disinclined to talk about it, simple as it is: he has been seven-

  and-thirty years in the navy, being somewhat more mature in the

  service than Lieutenant Peel, Rear-Admiral Prince de Joinville, and

  other commanders who need not be mentioned. He is a very well-

  educated man, and reads prodigiously,--travels, histories, lives of

  eminent worthies and heroes, in his simple way. He is not in the

  least angry at his want of luck in the profession. "Were I a boy

  to-morrow," he said, "I would begin it again; and when I see my

  schoolfellows, and how they have got on in life, if some are better

  off than I am, I find many are worse, and have no call to be

  discontented." So he carries Her Majesty's mails meekly through

  this world, waits upon port-admirals and captains in his old glazed

  hat, and is as proud of the pennon at the bow of his little boat,

  as if it were flying from the mainmast of a thundering man-of-war.

  He gets two hundred a year for his services, and has an old mother

  and a sister living in England somewhere, who I will wager (though

  he never, I swear, said a word about it) have a good portion of

  this princely income.

  Is it breaking a confidence to tell Lieutenant Bundy's history?

  Let the motive excuse the deed. It is a good, kind, wholesome, and

  noble character. Why should we keep all our admiration for those

  who win in this world, as we do, sycophants as we are? When we

  write a novel, our great stupid imaginations can go no further than

  to marry the hero to a fortune at the end, and to find out that he

  is a lord by right. O blundering lickspittle morality! And yet I

  would like to fancy some happy retributive Utopia in the peaceful