“What, upon the old trot, Master?” observed a funny-mover,[463] as I descended the rotten old stairs of Hungerford Market. “Will you make one with us? I know you don’t mind where you steer.” We had hardly made Chelsea Reach, when one of our crew noticed a foundered freshman, who had most ingeniously piloted himself into a cluster of osiers, in order to adjust his cravat, as a lady in our boat was to meet him that evening in Vauxhall Gardens. Our steersman, who was fond of a bit of fun, thus assailed him, “I say, Maty, why you’re water-logged there; you put me in mind of the Methodist parson who ran adrift last Saturday nearly in the same place: he made a pretty good thing of it.” “Ay,” observed a dry old fresh-water passenger in our boat, “I saw the fellow; and when the Battersea gardeners[464] quizzed him, he attempted to stand up like a poplar; but the wind operating upon his head, it hung like a bulrush. However, when he was seated, instead of advising them to make ready for simpling-time, or bespattering them with low language, he exercised his pulpit volubility in favour of vegetables, declaring that for years he had lived upon them, and insisted that every young person of every climate should eat nothing else, strengthening this opinion with the following quotation from Jeremy Taylor, who declared that ‘a dish of lettuce and a clear fountain would cool all his heats.’ After this he most strenuously advised them to ask more money for their pecked fruit than they had been accustomed to receive, observing, that they should keep Shakspeare’s caution in mind, ‘Beware all fruit but what the birds have pecked.’[465] At the close of his address, a descendant of old Mother Bagley, called ‘The King of Spades,’ proposed to his men not only to join him in all their coppers, but to fresh-water the poor fellow’s boat, for which he thanked them, and declared that he was almost ready to float in his own perspiration; but that he, like Sterne’s[466] ‘Starling,’ could not get out. The Mortlake boys soon gave him three cheers, and away he scuttled like an eel towards Limehouse Hole, sticking as close to his boat as a toad to the head of a carp.”
At this the lady simpered. “Bless your heart, fair one,” observed the narrator, addressing the lady who was destined for Vauxhall Gardens, “you never saw such a skeleton as this vegetable-eater. As for his complexion, it was for all the world like—what shall I say?”
“Perhaps a Queen Anne’s guinea,” observed our waterman, “that they used to let into the bottom of punch-ladles”—many of which were frequently to be seen in the pawnbrokers’ windows in Wapping.
“As for his voice during his preaching,” rejoined our entertaining companion, “no lamb’s could be more innocent.”
As we were tacking about, the wind standing fair to drop the lady at Vauxhall-stairs, our old weathergage, the waterman, who reminded me of Copper Holmes, thus addressed a lopped Chelsea Pensioner:—“I say, old Granby,[467] people say that he who loves fighting is much more the sexton’s friend than his own.” “Ay, Master Smelter,” answered the corporal, “we are all alive here, and, like the Greenwich boys, willing to fight again; Old England for ever!”
I then requested the waterman to put me on shore, in order to visit Chelsea College, purposely to see what had been done with my friend Ward’s allegorical picture of the Triumph of the Duke of Wellington. The Right Hon. Noblemen and Gentlemen, Governors of the British Institution, wishing to perpetuate the memory of the noble victory on the plains of Waterloo, they, with their accustomed liberality to the fine arts, commissioned James Ward, Esq., R.A., to paint an allegorical picture worthy a place in the Hall of that glorious establishment, Chelsea Hospital. Having heard that Mr. Ward’s picture had been hung up, I went thither, but, to my utter astonishment, found it not only suspended without a frame (just as a showman in a fair would put out his large canvas to display “the true and lively portraiture” of a giant, the Pig-faced Lady, or the Fire-eater), but with its lower part projecting over a gallery, just like the lid of a kitchen salt-box; so that the upper and greater half, being on an inclined plane, had copiously received the dust, and doubtless, if it be allowed to accumulate, the Duke’s scarlet coat will undergo a brick-dust change, and his cream-coloured horses become the dirtiest of all the drabs.
If this picture be considered worth preserving, why expose it so shamefully to injury by suffering it to hang as it does? If, on the contrary, why not at once consign it to the waters of oblivion, by casting it into Chelsea Reach? Mr. Ward’s superior talents have been in numerous instances acknowledged by some of the best judges.
Descending Villiers Street on one of my peregrination mornings, a tremendous storm obliged me to request shelter of Mrs. Scott, the wife of the present keeper of York Terrace, and successor of Hugh Hewson, a man who declared himself to be the genuine character famed by Dr. Smollett in The Adventures of Roderick Random, under the appellation of Hugh Strap.[468] Here I met with a young man whose father had attended Hewson’s funeral, who informed me that Hugh had been frequently known to amuse the ambulators of that walk by recapitulating the enterprising events which had taken place during his travels with the Doctor. Hugh, who had for years followed the trade of a hairdresser, was buried in St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, and his funeral was attended by three generations.
On my way towards Hungerford Stairs, my organ of inquisitiveness was arrested by two carvings in stone, of a wheatsheaf and sickles, let into either side of the north-end houses in the alley leading to the “The Swan.” A waterman informed me that the south portion of Hungerford Market was originally allotted for the sale of corn, but I have since learned that that device is the crest of the Hungerford family. “Pray now,” said I to my oracle, “do enumerate the signs of Swans remaining on the banks of the Thames, between London and Battersea Bridges.” “Why, let me see, Master, there’s the Old Swan at London Bridge, that’s one;—there’s the Swan in Arundel Street, two;—then ours here, three;—the Swan at Lambeth, that’s down, though;—well then, the Old Swan at Chelsea, but that has long been turned into a brewhouse, though that was where our people rowed to formerly, as mentioned in Doggett’s Will; now they row to the sign of the New Swan beyond the Physic Garden; we’ll say that’s four;—then there’s the two Swan signs at Battersea, six.”[469]
Next evening, away I trudged to take water with George Heath (Mathews’s Joe Hatch) at Strand Lane. “I find the Swan to be your usual sign up the river,” said I.