Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo
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William Makepeace Thackeray >> Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo
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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
cloud-land, where my friend the meek lieutenant should find the
yards of his ship manned as he went on board, all the guns firing
an enormous salute (only without the least noise or vile smell of
powder), and he be saluted on the deck as Admiral Sir James, or Sir
Joseph--ay, or Lord Viscount Bundy, knight of all the orders above
the sun.
I think this is a sufficient, if not a complete catalogue of the
worthies on board the "Lady Mary Wood." In the week we were on
board--it seemed a year, by the way--we came to regard the ship
quite as a home. We felt for the captain--the most good-humoured,
active, careful, ready of captains--a filial, a fraternal regard;
for the providor, who provided for us with admirable comfort and
generosity, a genial gratitude; and for the brisk steward's lads--
brisk in serving the banquet, sympathising in handing the basin--
every possible sentiment of regard and good-will. What winds blew,
and how many knots we ran, are all noted down, no doubt, in the
ship's log: and as for what ships we saw--every one of them with
their gunnage, tonnage, their nation, their direction whither they
were bound--were not these all noted down with surprising ingenuity
and precision by the lieutenant, at a family desk at which he sat
every night, before a great paper elegantly and mysteriously ruled
off with his large ruler? I have a regard for every man on board
that ship, from the captain down to the crew--down even to the
cook, with tattooed arms, sweating among the saucepans in the
galley, who used (with a touching affection) to send us locks of
his hair in the soup. And so, while our feelings and recollections
are warm, let us shake hands with this knot of good fellows,
comfortably floating about in their little box of wood and iron,
across Channel, Biscay Bay, and the Atlantic, from Southampton
Water to Gibraltar Straits.
CHAPTER IV: GIBRALTAR
Suppose all the nations of the earth to send fitting ambassadors to
represent them at Wapping or Portsmouth Point, with each, under its
own national signboard and language, its appropriate house of call,
and your imagination may figure the Main Street of Gibraltar:
almost the only part of the town, I believe, which boasts of the
name of street at all, the remaining houserows being modestly
called lanes, such as Bomb Lane, Battery Lane, Fusee Lane, and so
on. In Main Street the Jews predominate, the Moors abound; and
from the "Jolly Sailor," or the brave "Horse Marine," where the
people of our nation are drinking British beer and gin, you hear
choruses of "Garryowen" or "The Lass I left behind me;" while
through the flaring lattices of the Spanish ventas come the clatter
of castanets and the jingle and moan of Spanish guitars and
ditties. It is a curious sight at evening this thronged street,
with the people, in a hundred different costumes, bustling to and
fro under the coarse flare of the lamps; swarthy Moors, in white or
crimson robes; dark Spanish smugglers in tufted hats, with gay silk
handkerchiefs round their heads; fuddled seamen from men-of-war, or
merchantmen; porters, Galician or Genoese; and at every few
minutes' interval, little squads of soldiers tramping to relieve
guard at some one of the innumerable posts in the town.
Some of our party went to a Spanish venta, as a more convenient or
romantic place of residence than an English house; others made
choice of the club-house in Commercial Square, of which I formed an
agreeable picture in my imagination; rather, perhaps, resembling
the Junior United Service Club in Charles Street, by which every
Londoner has passed ere this with respectful pleasure, catching
glimpses of magnificent blazing candelabras, under which sit neat
half-pay officers, drinking half-pints of port. The club-house of
Gibraltar is not, however, of the Charles Street sort: it may have
been cheerful once, and there are yet relics of splendour about it.
When officers wore pigtails, and in the time of Governor O'Hara, it
may have been a handsome place; but it is mouldy and decrepit now;
and though his Excellency, Mr. Bulwer, was living there, and made
no complaints that I heard of, other less distinguished persons
thought they had reason to grumble. Indeed, what is travelling
made of? At least half its pleasures and incidents come out of
inns; and of them the tourist can speak with much more truth and
vivacity than of historical recollections compiled out of
histories, or filched out of handbooks. But to speak of the best
inn in a place needs no apology: that, at least, is useful
information. As every person intending to visit Gibraltar cannot
have seen the flea-bitten countenances of our companions, who fled
from their Spanish venta to take refuge at the club the morning
after our arrival, they may surely be thankful for being directed
to the best house of accommodation in one of the most unromantic,
uncomfortable, and prosaic of towns.
If one had a right to break the sacred confidence of the mahogany,
I could entertain you with many queer stories of Gibraltar life,
gathered from the lips of the gentlemen who enjoyed themselves
round the dingy tablecloth of the club-house coffee-room, richly
decorated with cold gravy and spilt beer. I heard there the very
names of the gentlemen who wrote the famous letters from the
"Warspite" regarding the French proceedings at Mogador; and met
several refugee Jews from that place, who said that they were much
more afraid of the Kabyles without the city than of the guns of the
French squadron, of which they seemed to make rather light. I
heard the last odds on the ensuing match between Captain Smith's b.
g. Bolter, and Captain Brown's ch. c. Roarer: how the gun-room of
Her Majesty's ship "Purgatory" had "cobbed" a tradesman of the
town, and of the row in consequence. I heard capital stories of
the way in which Wilkins had escaped the guard, and Thompson had
been locked up among the mosquitoes for being out after ten without
the lantern. I heard how the governor was an old -, but to say
what, would be breaking a confidence: only this may be divulged,
that the epithet was exceedingly complimentary to Sir Robert
Wilson. All the while these conversations were going on, a strange
scene of noise and bustle was passing in the market-place, in front
of the window, where Moors, Jews, Spaniards, soldiers were
thronging in the sun; and a ragged fat fellow, mounted on a
tobacco-barrel, with his hat cocked on his ear, was holding an
auction, and roaring with an energy and impudence that would have
done credit to Covent Garden.
The Moorish castle is the only building about the Rock which has an
air at all picturesque or romantic; there is a plain Roman Catholic
cathedral, a hideous new Protestant church of the cigar-divan
architecture, and a Court-house with a portico which is said to be
an imitation of the Parthenon: the ancient religions houses of the
Spanish town are gone, or turned into military residences, and
masked so that you would never know their former pious destination.
You walk through narrow whitewashed lanes, bearing such martial
names as are before mentioned, and by-streets with barracks on
either side: small Newgate-like looking buildings, at the doors of
which you may see the sergeants' ladies conversing; or at the open
windows of the officers' quarters, Ensign Fipps lying on his sofa
and smoking his cigar, or Lieutenant Simson practising the flute to
while away the weary hours of garrison dulness. I was surprised
not to find more persons in the garrison library, where is a
magnificent reading-room, and an admirable collection of books.
In spite of the scanty herbage and the dust on the trees, the
Alameda is a beautiful walk; of which the vegetation has been as
laboriously cared for as the tremendous fortifications which flank
it on either side. The vast Rock rises on one side with its
interminable works of defence, and Gibraltar Bay is shining on the
other, out on which from the terraces immense cannon are
perpetually looking, surrounded by plantations of cannon-balls and
beds of bomb-shells, sufficient, one would think, to blow away the
whole peninsula. The horticultural and military mixture is indeed
very queer: here and there temples, rustic summer-seats, &c. have
been erected in the garden, but you are sure to see a great squat
mortar look up from among the flower-pots: and amidst the aloes
and geraniums sprouts the green petticoat and scarlet coat of a
Highlander. Fatigue-parties are seen winding up the hill, and busy
about the endless cannon-ball plantations; awkward squads are
drilling in the open spaces: sentries marching everywhere, and
(this is a caution to artists) I am told have orders to run any man
through who is discovered making a sketch of the place. It is
always beautiful, especially at evening, when the people are
sauntering along the walks, and the moon is shining on the waters
of the bay and the hills and twinkling white houses of the opposite
shore. Then the place becomes quite romantic: it is too dark to
see the dust on the dried leaves; the cannon-balls do not intrude
too much, but have subsided into the shade; the awkward squads are
in bed; even the loungers are gone, the fan-flirting Spanish
ladies, the sallow black-eyed children, and the trim white-jacketed
dandies. A fife is heard from some craft at roost on the quiet
waters somewhere; or a faint cheer from yonder black steamer at the
Mole, which is about to set out on some night expedition. You
forget that the town is at all like Wapping, and deliver yourself
up entirely to romance; the sentries look noble pacing there,
silent in the moonlight, and Sandy's voice is quite musical as he
challenges with a "Who goes there?"
"All's Well" is very pleasant when sung decently in tune, and
inspires noble and poetic ideas of duty, courage, and danger: but
when you hear it shouted all the night through, accompanied by a
clapping of muskets in a time of profound peace, the sentinel's cry
becomes no more romantic to the hearer than it is to the sandy
Connaught-man or the bare-legged Highlander who delivers it. It is
best to read about wars comfortably in Harry Lorrequer or Scott's
novels, in which knights shout their war-cries, and jovial Irish
bayoneteers hurrah, without depriving you of any blessed rest. Men
of a different way of thinking, however, can suit themselves
perfectly at Gibraltar; where there is marching and counter-
marching, challenging and relieving guard all the night through.
And not here in Commercial Square alone, but all over the huge Rock
in the darkness--all through the mysterious zig-zags, and round the
dark cannon-ball pyramids, and along the vast rock-galleries, and
up to the topmost flagstaff, where the sentry can look out over two
seas, poor fellows are marching and clapping muskets, and crying
"All's Well," dressed in cap and feather, in place of honest
nightcaps best befitting the decent hours of sleep.
All these martial noises three of us heard to the utmost advantage,
lying on iron bedsteads at the time in a cracked old room on the
ground-floor, the open windows of which looked into the square. No
spot could be more favourably selected for watching the humours of
a garrison town by night. About midnight, the door hard by us was
visited by a party of young officers, who having had quite as much
drink as was good for them, were naturally inclined for more; and
when we remonstrated through the windows, one of them in a young
tipsy voice asked after our mothers, and finally reeled away. How
charming is the conversation of high-spirited youth! I don't know
whether the guard got hold of them: but certainly if a civilian
had been hiccuping through the streets at that hour, he would have
been carried off to the guard-house, and left to the mercy of the
mosquitoes there, and had up before the Governor in the morning.
The young man in the coffee-room tells me he goes to sleep every
night with the keys of Gibraltar under his pillow. It is an awful
image, and somehow completes the notion of the slumbering fortress.
Fancy Sir Robert Wilson, his nose just visible over the sheets, his
night-cap and the huge key (you see the very identical one in
Reynolds's portrait of Lord Heathfield) peeping out from under the
bolster!
If I entertain you with accounts of inns and nightcaps it is
because I am more familiar with these subjects than with history
and fortifications: as far as I can understand the former,
Gibraltar is the great British depot for smuggling goods into the
Peninsula. You see vessels lying in the harbour, and are told in
so many words they are smugglers: all those smart Spaniards with
cigar and mantles are smugglers, and run tobaccos and cotton into
Catalonia; all the respected merchants of the place are smugglers.
The other day a Spanish revenue vessel was shot to death under the
thundering great guns of the fort, for neglecting to bring to, but
it so happened that it was in chase of a smuggler: in this little
corner of her dominions Britain proclaims war to custom-houses, and
protection to free trade. Perhaps ere a very long day, England may
be acting that part towards the world, which Gibraltar performs
towards Spain now; and the last war in which we shall ever engage
may be a custom-house war. For once establish railroads and
abolish preventive duties through Europe, and what is there left to
fight for? It will matter very little then under what flag people
live, and foreign ministers and ambassadors may enjoy a dignified
sinecure; the army will rise to the rank of peaceful constables,
not having any more use for their bayonets than those worthy people
have for their weapons now who accompany the law at assizes under
the name of javelin-men. The apparatus of bombs and eighty-four-
pounders may disappear from the Alameda, and the crops of cannon-
balls which now grow there may give place to other plants more
pleasant to the eye; and the great key of Gibraltar may be left in
the gate for anybody to turn at will, and Sir Robert Wilson may
sleep in quiet.
I am afraid I thought it was rather a release, when, having made up
our minds to examine the Rock in detail and view the magnificent
excavations and galleries, the admiration of all military men, and
the terror of any enemies who may attack the fortress, we received
orders to embark forthwith in the "Tagus," which was to early us to
Malta and Constantinople. So we took leave of this famous Rock--
this great blunderbuss--which we seized out of the hands of the
natural owners a hundred and forty years ago, and which we have
kept ever since tremendously loaded and cleaned and ready for use.
To seize and have it is doubtless a gallant thing; it is like one
of those tests of courage which one reads of in the chivalrous
romances, when, for instance, Sir Huon of Bordeaux is called upon
to prove his knighthood by going to Babylon and pulling out the
Sultan's beard and front teeth in the midst of his Court there.
But, after all, justice must confess it was rather hard on the poor
Sultan. If we had the Spaniards established at Land's End, with
impregnable Spanish fortifications on St. Michael's Mount, we
should perhaps come to the same conclusion. Meanwhile let us hope,
during this long period of deprivation, the Sultan of Spain is
reconciled to the loss of his front teeth and bristling whiskers--
let us even try to think that he is better without them. At all
events, right or wrong, whatever may be our title to the property,
there is no Englishman but must think with pride of the manner in
which his countrymen have kept it, and of the courage, endurance,
and sense of duty with which stout old Eliott and his companions
resisted Crillon and the Spanish battering ships and his fifty
thousand men. There seems to be something more noble in the
success of a gallant resistance than of an attack, however brave.
After failing in his attack on the fort, the French General visited
the English Commander who had foiled him, and parted from him and
his garrison in perfect politeness and good-humour. The English
troops, Drinkwater says, gave him thundering cheers as he went
away, and the French in return complimented us on our gallantry,
and lauded the humanity of our people. If we are to go on
murdering each other in the old-fashioned way, what a pity it is
that our battles cannot end in the old-fashioned way too!
One of our fellow-travellers, who had written a book, and had
suffered considerably from sea-sickness during our passage along
the coasts of France and Spain, consoled us all by saying that the
very minute we got into the Mediterranean we might consider
ourselves entirely free from illness; and, in fact, that it was
unheard of in the Inland Sea. Even in the Bay of Gibraltar the
water looked bluer than anything I have ever seen--except Miss
Smith's eyes. I thought, somehow, the delicious faultless azure
never could look angry--just like the eyes before alluded to--and
under this assurance we passed the Strait, and began coasting the
African shore calmly and without the least apprehension, as if we
were as much used to the tempest as Mr. T. P. Cooke.
But when, in spite of the promise of the man who had written the
book, we found ourselves worse than in the worst part of the Bay of
Biscay, or off the storm-lashed rocks of Finisterre, we set down
the author in question as a gross impostor, and had a mind to
quarrel with him for leading us into this cruel error. The most
provoking part of the matter, too, was, that the sky was
deliciously clear and cloudless, the air balmy, the sea so
insultingly blue that it seemed as if we had no right to be ill at
all, and that the innumerable little waves that frisked round about
our keel were enjoying an anerithmon gelasma (this is one of my
four Greek quotations: depend on it I will manage to introduce the
other three before the tour is done)--seemed to be enjoying, I say,
the above-named Greek quotation at our expense. Here is the dismal
log of Wednesday, 4th of September: --"All attempts at dining very
fruitless. Basins in requisition. Wind hard ahead. Que diable
allais-je faire dans cette galere? Writing or thinking impossible:
so read 'Letters from the AEgean.'" These brief words give, I
think, a complete idea of wretchedness, despair, remorse, and
prostration of soul and body. Two days previously we passed the
forts and moles and yellow buildings of Algiers, rising very
stately from the sea, and skirted by gloomy purple lines of African
shore, with fires smoking in the mountains, and lonely settlements
here and there.
On the 5th, to the inexpressible joy of all, we reached Valetta,
the entrance to the harbour of which is one of the most stately and
agreeable scenes ever admired by sea-sick traveller. The small
basin was busy with a hundred ships, from the huge guard-ship,
which lies there a city in itself;--merchantmen loading and crews
cheering, under all the flags of the world flaunting in the
sunshine; a half-score of busy black steamers perpetually coming
and going, coaling and painting, and puffing and hissing in and out
of harbour; slim men-of-war's barges shooting to and fro, with long
shining oars flashing like wings over the water; hundreds of
painted town-boats, with high heads and white awnings,--down to the
little tubs in which some naked, tawny young beggars came paddling
up to the steamer, entreating us to let them dive for halfpence.
Round this busy blue water rise rocks, blazing in sunshine, and
covered with every imaginable device of fortification; to the
right, St. Elmo, with flag and lighthouse; and opposite, the
Military Hospital, looking like a palace; and all round, the houses
of the city, for its size the handsomest and most stately in the
world.
Nor does it disappoint you on a closer inspection, as many a
foreign town does. The streets are thronged with a lively
comfortable-looking population; the poor seem to inhabit handsome
stone palaces, with balconies and projecting windows of heavy
carved stone. The lights and shadows, the cries and stenches, the
fruit-shops and fish-stalls, the dresses and chatter of all
nations; the soldiers in scarlet, and women in black mantillas; the
beggars, boat-men, barrels of pickled herrings and macaroni; the
shovel-hatted priests and bearded capuchins; the tobacco, grapes,
onions, and sunshine; the signboards, bottled-porter stores, the
statues of saints and little chapels which jostle the stranger's
eyes as he goes up the famous stairs from the Water-gate, make a
scene of such pleasant confusion and liveliness as I have never
witnessed before. And the effect of the groups of multitudinous
actors in this busy cheerful drama is heightened, as it were, by
the decorations of the stage. The sky is delightfully brilliant;
all the houses and ornaments are stately; castle and palaces are
rising all around; and the flag, towers, and walls of Fort St. Elmo
look as fresh and magnificent as if they had been erected only
yesterday.
The Strada Reale has a much more courtly appearance than that one
described. Here are palaces, churches, court-houses and libraries,
the genteel London shops, and the latest articles of perfumery.
Gay young officers are strolling about in shell-jackets much too
small for them: midshipmen are clattering by on hired horses;
squads of priests, habited after the fashion of Don Basilio in the
opera, are demurely pacing to and fro; professional beggars run
shrieking after the stranger; and agents for horses, for inns, and
for worse places still, follow him and insinuate the excellence of
their goods. The houses where they are selling carpet-bags and
pomatum were the palaces of the successors of the goodliest company
of gallant knights the world ever heard tell of. It seems
unromantic; but THESE were not the romantic Knights of St. John.
The heroic days of the Order ended as the last Turkish galley
lifted anchor after the memorable siege. The present stately
houses were built in times of peace and splendour and decay. I
doubt whether the Auberge de Provence, where the "Union Club"
flourishes now, has ever seen anything more romantic than the
pleasant balls held in the great room there.
The Church of St. John, not a handsome structure without, is
magnificent within: a noble hall covered with a rich embroidery of
gilded carving, the chapels of the different nations on either
side, but not interfering with the main structure, of which the
whole is simple, and the details only splendid; it seemed to me a
fitting place for this wealthy body of aristocratic soldiers, who
made their devotions as it were on parade, and, though on their
knees, never forgot their epaulets or their quarters of nobility.
This mixture of religion and worldly pride seems incongruous at
first; but have we not at church at home similar relics of feudal
ceremony?--the verger with the silver mace who precedes the vicar
to the desk; the two chaplains of my Lord Archbishop, who bow over
his Grace as he enters the communion-table gate; even poor John,
who follows my Lady with a coroneted prayer-book, and makes his
conge as he hands it into the pew. What a chivalrous absurdity is
the banner of some high and mighty prince, hanging over his stall
in Windsor Chapel, when you think of the purpose for which men are
supposed to assemble there! The Church of the Knights of St. John
is paved over with sprawling heraldic devices of the dead gentlemen
of the dead Order; as if, in the next world, they expected to take
rank in conformity with their pedigrees, and would be marshalled
into heaven according to the orders of precedence. Cumbrous
handsome paintings adorn the walls and chapels, decorated with
pompous monuments of Grand Masters. Beneath is a crypt, where more
of these honourable and reverend warriors lie, in a state that a
Simpson would admire. In the altar are said to lie three of the
most gallant relics in the world: the keys of Acre, Rhodes, and
Jerusalem. What blood was shed in defending these emblems! What
faith, endurance, genius, and generosity; what pride, hatred,
ambition, and savage lust of blood were roused together for their
guardianship!
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