"There are only two things in this land worth talking about," said an English merchant to me at Cadiz; "the steamers of Lopez and the races of Jerez."
The hunting (thanks to brave old Admiral Fleming for having started that diversion) was over too. The meets have to come off, naturally, outside the frontier of British Spain. The sport is pretty good—one cannot quite expect the Melton country, of course—the riding hard, and the horses invariably Spanish; no English horses would do, for no English horse would be equal to climbing up a perpendicular bank with sixteen stone on his back, and that is a feat the native steeds, bestridden by British warriors in pink who follow the Calpe pack, have sometimes to accomplish. There is a Spanish lyrical and theatrical troop in the town; but it is Holy Week, and lyricals and theatricals are under taboo. Occasionally charity concerts are given by amateurs, and plays are even performed in Lent Champagne, of the Fizzers, has won a reputation by his success on the boards when he dons the habiliments of lovely woman beyond a certain age. But, as I told you before, I arrived at the wrong season. There are no balls at the Convent, which is the Governor's residence; and, touching these balls, I have a grievance to ventilate, at the request of Mrs. Quartermaster Damages. She specially imported frilled petticoats from England to display in the mazy dance, and she assured me they were turning sere and yellow in her boxes. She never gets a chance of bringing them out except once in the twelvemonth, when she is asked to the "Quartermasters' Ball." But there is a reason for everything, and Mrs. Quartermaster Damages is fat and forty, and not fair, and—tell it not out of mess—they say she has a tongue.
At this particular time, you perceive, this fortified fragment of the empire was dull; but usually it is gay, and the officer quartered there has always an excellent opportunity of learning his trade and acquiring skill in the gentlemanly game of billiards. He can make maps and surveys of the neutral ground, and watch the guard mounting on the Alameda, or read the account of the siege in Drinkwater's days; and when he tires of the green cloth and its distractions, and of his own noble profession, he can throw a sail to the breeze in the unequalled Bay, or take a flying trip to Tarifa to sketch the beautiful from the living model, or go to Ceuta to see the Spanish galley-slaves and disciplinary regiments, forgetful of our own chain-gangs; or steam across to Tangier to riot in Nature and a day's pig-sticking.
The Bay, the Alameda, and Tarifa—these are the three delights of Gibraltar.
You have heard of the Bay of Naples, and the Bay of Dublin, which equals it in Paddy Murphy's estimation. I know both; and Gibraltar, the little-spoken-of, leaves them nowhere. The sky, and the undulating mirror below that reflects it, are such a blue; the rocks are such an ashen-grey; the Spanish sierras such a leonine brown, with summits wrapped in clouds like rolling smoke; and the sun goes down to his bath in the west 'mid such a vaporous glow of yellowing purple and rosy gold!
The Alameda is a bower of Venus cinctured by Mars. Here is a gravelled expanse bounded by hill and sea, with cosy benches under the shade of palmitos—the civilization of the West in alliance with the rich vegetation of the East. Sometimes, in the morning, five hundred men or more—garrison artillery, engineers, and infantry—muster there, previous to marching to their posts; there is a banging of drums, a blowing of bugles, a bobbing vision of cocked-hats, and a roar of hoarse words of command—all the pomp and pride and circumstance of glorious war before the fighting begins. Sometimes, in the evening, a band plays, and the Alameda is the resort of fashion and of nursery-maids.
Tarifa, shining in the sunset across the water, is a tempting morsel for the landscape-painter, and the dwellers in Tarifa are the best teachers of Spanish. A British subaltern bent on improving his mind could encounter an infinitely better preceptor there than "Jingling Johnny," the self-appointed professor to the garrison, who hires himself on Monday, makes you a present of a guitar-tutor on Tuesday, and asks you to favour him with six months' payment in advance on Wednesday. To be sure, the Spanish those Tarifans speak is slightly Arabified; but their tones of voice are persuasive, and their methods of teaching agreeable. The professor taken by the British subaltern is invariably a female, and the females of Tarifa are not the ugliest in the world. They still retain many customs peculiar to their Moorish ancestors. They wear a manta, not a mantilla—a sort of large-hooded mantle, with which they hide the light of their countenance, except an eye—but that is a piercer, ye gods I and they keep it open for business. When a stranger passes, especially if he looks like a sucking lieutenant from the fortress beyond, the manta falls, disclosing the soft loveliness beneath, and the wearer affects a pretty confusion, and hastens with judicious slowness to re-adjust its folds. The British subaltern reels to his quarters seriously wounded, and may be seen the following morning, with his hair blown back, spouting poetry to the zephyrs on Europa Point. Oh no!—that only occurs in romances; but he may be seen drinking brandy-and-soda moderately in the Club-House.
Poor British subaltern! How Sutlersville does exploit him! He is a sheep, and bears his fleecing without a kick. Watch those lazy, lounging, able-bodied, smoking, and salivating loons who prop up every street-corner, and monopolize the narrow pathways—these all live by him; they eat up his substance, and fatten thereupon. These are the touting and speculating sons of the Rock, the veritable Scorpions, who are ever ready to find the "cap'n" a dog or a horse or a boat, or something not so harmless, to help him on the road to ruin, and whisper in his ear what a fine fellow he is—"As ver fine a fellow—real gemman—as Lord Tomnoddy, who give me such a many dollars when he go away." The first word these loons pronounce after coming into the world must be baksheesh. They are born with beggary in their mouths, and the British subaltern acts as if he were born to be their victim. There he is below, of every type, lolling outside the hotel-door that looks on that Commercial Square which is so thorough a barrack-square, with its romping children, its dogs, its dust, its guard-house with chatting soldiers on a form in front, and the important sentinel pacing to and fro, regular and rigid as a pendulum, keeping vigilant watch and ward over nothing in particular. We have a rare company to-day; besides the engineers and bombardiers, and the linesmen of the 24th, 31st, 71st, and 81st, the four infantry regiments on the station, we have men on leave from Malta. They came up to the races, and are waiting for the P. and O. steamer to take them back. That fat little customer is your sporting sub. I only wonder he is not in cords, tops, and spurs. What a hearty voice he talks in! He asks for the Field as if he were giving a view-halloo. Then there is the moist-eyed, mottle-cheeked, puffy, convivial sub, who is knowing on the condition of ale, and is too friendly with Saccone's sherry. The convivial sub, I am happy to say, is dying out. Then there is the prig, who is "going in" for his profession. I call him a prig, because when people are going in for anything they should have the good sense not to blow about it. To hear Mr. Shells and his prattle about Hamley and Brialmont and Jomini, kriegspiel and the new drill, you would imagine he was bound to put the extinguisher on Marlborough, Wellington, Wolseley, and the rest of them; and yet the chances are, if you meet him twenty years hence, he will be a captain on the recruiting service, with no forces to marshal but six growing children. Then there is the sentimental sub, the perfect ladies' man, who plays croquet and the flute, pleads guilty to having cultivated the Nine, and affects a simpering pooh-pooh when he is impeached with having inspired that wicked but so witty bit of scandal in the local paper. By singularity of pairing, his fast friend is the muscular sub, who walks against time, and can write his initials with a hundredweight hanging from his index-finger.
Happy dogs in the heyday of life, all of them; how I envy them their buoyant spirits, their rollicking enjoyment of to-day, and their contempt for the morrow! But the morrow will come nevertheless, and with it Black Care will come often. Gib is a haunt of the Hebrews; they or their myrmidons beset the subaltern at genial hours, after luncheon or after mess, pester him with vamped-up knick-knacks for sale, appeal to him to patronize a poor man by buying articles he does not and never by any means can want—"pay me when you likes, Cap'n, one yearsh, two yearsh." The "cap'n," who may have left Sandhurst but six months, may be weakly good-natured, and ignore the fact that his income is not elastic; some day that he thinks of taking a run to England Ben Solomon, who seems to be able to read the books in the Adjutant-General's Office through the walls, pounces upon him with his little bill, and he is arrested if he cannot satisfy his Jewish benefactor. Loans are advanced at a high rate "per shent" by the harpies, and enable him to stave off the temporary embarrassment; the "cap'n" is happy for the moment, but the reckoning is only deferred that it may grow. The arrival of Black Care is adjourned, not averted. The plain truth of it is, Gibraltar is a den of thieves, and has been the burial-pit of many a promising young fellow's hopes. There are two tariffs for everything—one for natives, the other for the British subaltern and the British tourist; and the British subaltern and the British tourist are foolish enough to submit to the extortion in most cases. With some half-dozen honourable exceptions, the traders are what is popularly known as "Jews" in their mode of dealing. They cozen on principle, sell articles that will not last, and charge preposterous prices for them; they impose upon the young officer's softness or delicate gentlemanly feeling, and consider themselves smart for so doing. In this manner Gibraltar, with all its discomforts, is dearer than the most expensive and luxurious quarter in the British Isles.
But we have other specimens of the genus officer in the lounging slaughterers by profession, who are so busy killing time. The lean bronzed aristocratic major, whose temper long years in India have not soured; the squat pursy paymaster (why are paymasters so fearfully inclined to fat?); the raw-boned young surgeon with the Aberdeen accent; "the ranker," erect and grizzled, and looking ever so little not quite at his ease, you know, for the languid lad with fawn-coloured moustache straddling on the chair beside him is an Honourable; the jovial portly Yorkshireman, who is in the Highland Light Infantry, naturally; and the lively loud-voiced Irishman, laughing consumedly at his own jokes—all are here, conversing, smoking, mildly chaffing each other, and exchanging "tips" as to the next Derby. They make a book in a quiet way, and occasionally invest in a dozen tickets in a Spanish lottery. What will you? One cannot perpetually play shop, and the British officer has a rooted objection to it, although he does his duty like a man when the tug of war arises. Better that he should join in a regimental sweepstakes, or lose what he can afford to lose to a comrade, than give way to the blues. He does not gamble or curse, like his Spanish confrère; his potations are not deep, nor is he quick to quarrel. Then let him race on the Neutral Ground; let him hunt with the Calpe pack; and let him back his fancy for the big event at Epsom. Those are his chief excitements at Gib, and help to give a fillip to life in that circumscribed microcosm, pending the anxiously expected morn when the route will come, or, mayhap, the call to active service, in one of those petty wars which are constantly breaking the monotony of this so-called pacific reign.