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
Sketches and Travels in London Page 3
