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!
In the lofty halls and corridors of the Governor’s house, some
portraits of the late Grand Masters still remain: a very fine one, by
Caravaggio, of a knight in gilt armour, hangs in the dining- room, near
a full-length of poor Louis XVI., in Royal robes, the very picture of
uneasy impotency. But the portrait of De Vignacourt is the only one
which has a respectable air; the other chiefs of the famous Society are
pompous old gentlemen in black, with huge periwigs, and crowns round
their hats, and a couple of melancholy pages in yellow and red. But
pages and wigs and Grand Masters have almost faded out of the canvas,
and are vanishing into Hades with a most melancholy indistinctness. The
names of most of these gentlemen, however, live as yet in the forts of
the place, which all seem to have been eager to build and christen: so
that it seems as if, in the Malta mythology, they had been turned into
freestone.
In the armoury is the very suit painted by Caravaggio, by the side of
the armour of the noble old La Valette, whose heroism saved his island
from the efforts of Mustapha and Dragut, and an army quite as fierce
and numerous as that which was baffled before Gibraltar, by similar
courage and resolution. The sword of the last-named famous corsair (a
most truculent little scimitar), thousands of pikes and halberts,
little old cannons and wall-pieces, helmets and cuirasses, which the
knights or their people wore, are trimly arranged against the wall,
and, instead of spiking Turks or arming warriors, now serve to point
morals and adorn tales. And here likewise are kept many thousand
muskets, swords, and boarding-pikes for daily use, and a couple of
ragged old standards of one of the English regiments, who pursued and
conquered in Egypt the remains of the haughty and famous French
republican army, at whose appearance the last knights of Malta flung
open the gates of all their fortresses, and consented to be
extinguished without so much as a remonstrance, or a kick, or a
struggle.
We took a drive into what may be called the country; where the fields
are rocks, and the hedges are stones—passing by the stone gardens of
the Florian, and wondering at the number and handsomeness of the stone
villages and churches rising everywhere among the stony hills. Handsome
villas were passed everywhere, and we drove for a long distance along
the sides of an aqueduct, quite a Royal work of the Caravaggio in gold
armour, the Grand Master De Vignacourt. A most agreeable contrast to
the arid rocks of the general scenery was the garden at the Governor’s
country-house; with the orange-trees and water, its beautiful golden
grapes, luxuriant flowers, and thick cool shrubberies. The eye longs
for this sort of refreshment, after being seared with the hot glare of
the general country; and St. Antonio was as pleasant after Malta as
Malta was after the sea.
We paid the island a subsequent visit in November, passing seventeen
days at an establishment called Fort Manuel there, and by punsters the
Manuel des Voyageurs; where Government accommodates you with quarters;
where the authorities are so attentive as to scent your letters with
aromatic vinegar before you receive them, and so careful of your health
as to lock you up in your room every night lest you should walk in your
sleep, and so over the battlements into the sea—if you escaped drowning
in the sea, the sentries on the opposite shore would fire at you, hence
the nature of the precaution. To drop, however, this satirical strain:
those who know what quarantine is, may fancy that the place somehow
becomes unbearable in which it has been endured. And though the
November climate of Malta is like the most delicious May in England,
and though there is every gaiety and amusement in the town, a
comfortable little opera, a good old library filled full of good old
books (none of your works of modern science, travel, and history, but
good old USELESS books of the last two centuries), and nobody to
trouble you in reading them, and though the society of Valetta is most
hospitable, varied, and agreeable, yet somehow one did not feel SAFE in
the island, with perpetual glimpses of Fort Manuel from the opposite
shore; and, lest the quarantine authorities should have a fancy to
fetch one back again, on a pretext of posthumous plague, we made our
way to Naples by the very first opportunity—those who remained, that
is, of the little Eastern Expedition. They were not all there. The
Giver of life and death had removed two of our company: one was left
behind to die in Egypt, with a mother to bewail his loss, another we
buried in the dismal lazaretto cemetery.
* * *
One is bound to look at this, too, as a part of our journey. Disease
and death are knocking perhaps at your next cabin door. Your kind and
cheery companion has ridden his last ride and emptied his last glass
beside you. And while fond hearts are yearning for him far away, and
his own mind, if conscious, is turning eagerly towards the spot of the
world whither affection or interest calls it—the Great Father summons
the anxious spirit from earth to himself, and ordains that the nearest
and dearest shall meet here no more.
Such an occurrence as a death in a lazaretto, mere selfishness renders
striking. We were walking with him but two days ago on deck. One has a
sketch of him, another his card, with the address written yesterday,
and given with an invitation to come and see him at home in the
country, where his children are looking for him. He is dead in a day,
and buried in the walls of the prison. A doctor felt his pulse by
deputy—a clergyman comes from the town to read the last service over
him—and the friends, who attend his funeral, are marshalled by
lazaretto-guardians, so as not to touch each other. Every man goes back
to his room and applies the lesson to himself. One would not so depart
without seeing again the dear dear faces. We reckon up those we love:
they are but very few, but I think one loves them better than ever now.
Should it be your turn next?—and why not? Is it pity or comfort to
think of that affection which watches and survives you?
The Maker has linked together the whole race of man with this chain of
love. I like to think that there is no man but has had kindly feelings
for some other, and he for his neighbour, until we bind together the
whole family of Adam. Nor does it end here. It joins heaven and earth
together. For my friend or my child of past days is still my friend or
my child to me here, or in the home prepared for us by the Father of
all. If identity survives the grave, as our faith tells us, is it not a
consolation to think that there may be one or two souls among the
purified and just, whose affection watches us invisible, and follows
the poor sinner on earth?