As I was sitting in my chamber, and thinking on a subject for my next
_Spectator_, I heard two or three irregular bounces at my landlady’s
door, and, upon the opening of it, a loud cheerful voice inquiring
whether the philosopher was at home. The child who went to the door
answered very innocently, that he did not lodge there. I immediately
recollected that it was my good friend Sir Roger’s voice; and that I
had promised to go with him on the water to Spring-garden, in case it
proved a good evening. The knight put me in mind of my promise from
the bottom of the staircase, but told me, that if I was speculating,
he would stay below till I had done. Upon my coming down, I found all
the children of the family got about my old friend, and my landlady
herself, who is a notable prating gossip, engaged in a conference with
him; being mightily pleased with his stroking her little boy upon the
head, and bidding him be a good child, and mind his book.
We were no sooner come to the Temple-stairs, but we were surrounded
with a crowd of watermen, offering us their respective services. Sir
Roger, after having looked about him very attentively, spied one with a
wooden leg, and immediately gave him orders to get his boat ready. As
we were walking toward it, “You must know,” said Sir Roger, “I never
make use of anybody to row me, that has not either lost a leg or an
arm. I would rather bate him a few strokes of his oar than not employ
an honest man that has been wounded in the Queen’s service. If I was
a lord or a bishop, and kept a barge, I would not put a fellow in my
livery that had not a wooden leg.”
My old friend, after having seated himself and trimmed the boat with
his coachman, who, being a very sober man, always serves for ballast
on these occasions, we made the best of our way for Vauxhall. Sir
Roger obliged the waterman to give us the history of his right leg;
and, hearing that he had left it at La Hogne, with many particulars
which passed in that glorious action, the knight, in the triumph of
his heart, made several reflections as to the greatness of the British
nation; as, that one Englishman could beat three Frenchmen; that we
could never be in danger of popery so long as we took care of our
fleet; that the Thames was the noblest river in Europe; that London
bridge was a greater piece of work than any of the seven wonders of the
world; with many other honest prejudices which naturally cleave to the
heart of a true Englishman.
After some short pause, the old knight, turning about his head twice or
thrice, to take a survey of this great metropolis, bid me observe how
thick the city was with churches, and that there was scarce a single
steeple on this side Temple-bar. “A most heathenish sight!” says Sir
Roger: “there is no religion at this end of the town. The fifty new
churches will very much mend the prospect: but church-work is slow,
church-work is slow.”
I do not remember I have anywhere mentioned, in Sir Roger’s character,
his custom of saluting everybody that passes by him with a good-morrow
or good-night. This the old man does out of the overflowings of his
humanity, though at the same time it renders him so popular among all
his country neighbours, that it is thought to have gone a good way in
making him once or twice knight of the shire. He cannot forbear this
exercise of benevolence even in town, when he meets with any one in his
morning or evening walk. It broke from him to several boats that passed
by upon the water; but to the knight’s great surprise, as he gave the
good-night to two or three of the young fellows a little before our
landing, one of them, instead of returning the civility, asked us what
queer old put we had in the boat, and whether he was not ashamed to go
a-wenching at his years; with a great deal of the like Thames ribaldry.
Sir Roger seemed a little shocked at first; but, at length assuming a
face of magistracy, told us, “That if we were a Middlesex justice, he
would make such vagrants know that her Majesty’s subjects were no more
to be abused by water than by land.”
We were now arrived at Spring-garden, which is exquisitely pleasant
at this time of the year. When I consider the fragrancy of the walks
and bowers, with the choirs of birds that sung upon the trees, and the
loose tribe of people that walked under the shades, I could not but
look upon the place as a kind of Mahometan paradise. Sir Roger told me
it put him in mind of a little coppice by his house in the country,
which his chaplain used to call an aviary of nightingales. “You must
understand,” says the knight, “there is nothing in the world that
pleases a man in love so much as your nightingales. Ah, Mr. Spectator!
the many moonlight nights that I have walked by myself, and thought
on the Widow by the music of the nightingale!” He here fetched a deep
sigh, and was falling into a fit of musing, when a mask, who came
behind him, gave him a gentle tap upon the shoulder, and asked him if
he would drink a bo mead with her. But the knight, being startled by
so unexpected a familiarity, and displeased to be interrupted in his
thoughts of the Widow, told her, _She was a wanton baggage_, and bid
her go about her business.
We concluded our walk with a glass of Burton ale, and a slice of hung
beef. When we had done eating, ourselves, the knight called a waiter to
him, and bid him carry the remainder to the waterman that had but one
leg. I perceived that the fellow stared upon him at the oddness of the
message, and was going to be saucy; upon which I ratified the knight’s
commands with a peremptory look.
As we were going out of the garden, my old friend thinking himself
obliged, as a member of the _quorus_, to animadvert upon the morals of
the place, told the mistress of the house, who sat at the bar, that
he should be a better customer to her garden, “if there were more
nightingales and fewer improper persons.”
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