DANCING SAILOR.
Here, where the stone stairs lead down into the water, is Portsmouth Point. Mark it well, for from this spot have embarked countless fine fellows to serve King and country afloat. What would we not give for a moment’s glimpse of “Point” (as Portsmouth folk call it, with a brevity born of every-day use) just a hundred years ago? Fortunately the genius of Rowlandson has preserved for us something of the appearance of Portsmouth Point at that time, when war raged over nearly all the civilized world, when wooden ships rode the waves buoyantly, when battles were the rule and peace the exception.
A PATHETIC FIGURE
The Point was in those days simply a collection of taverns giving upon the harbour and the stairs, whence departed a continuous stream of officers and men of the navy. It was a place throbbing with life and excitement—the sailors going out and returning home; the leave-takings, the greetings; the boozing and the fighting, are all shown in Rowlandson’s drawing as on a stage, while the tall ships form an appropriate background, like the back-cloth of a theatrical scene. It is a scene full of humour. Sailors are leaning on their arms out of window; a gold-laced officer bids good-bye to his girl while his trunks are being carried down to the stairs; a drunken sailor and his equally drunken woman are belabouring one another with all the good-will in the world, and a wooden-legged sailor-man is scraping away for very life on a fiddle and dancing grotesquely to get a living. He is a funny figure, you say; but, by your leave, it seems to me that he is only a figure of a very great pathos. Belisarius, over whom historians have wept as they recounted his fall and his piteous appeals for the scanty charity of an obolus, was but a rascally Roman general who betrayed his trust and became a peculator of the first magnitude; and he deserved his fate. But here is a poor devil who has been maimed in battle and left to earn his bread by playing the fool before a crowd of careless folk, happy if he can excite their compassion to the extent of a stray sixpence or an occasional drink. No: his is not a funny figure.
XXXVIII
The old coach offices clustered about this spot. Several stood in Bath Square, and here, among others, was the Old Van Office, kept by Uriah Green. The vans were similar to the stage-coaches, but much larger and clumsier, and jogged along at a very easy pace. They took, in fact, from fifteen to sixteen hours to perform the journey under the most favourable circumstances, and in bad weather no one ventured to prophesy at what time they would arrive.
The fares were, consequently, very much lower than those of the swifter coaches, which stood at £1 1s. 0d. inside, and 12s. 6d. outside. One might, on the other hand, take a trip from Portsmouth to London on the outside of a van for 6s. 6d. The cheapness of these conveyances caused them to be largely patronized by blue-jackets. One van left Portsmouth at four p.m. every day for the “Eagle,” City Road, London, arriving there at about seven or eight o’clock the next morning, and another left the “Eagle” for Portsmouth at the same time.
ROAD TRAVEL