Place confidence in what he says, and he will use no deception; doubt his word, and he will indulge you with some of the purest rhodomontade that ingenious fancy can invent. He will swear that he had a messmate who knew the man in the moon, and on one occasion went hand-over-hand up a rainbow to pay him a visit. He himself was once powder-monkey in the Volcano bomb, and he will tell you a story of his falling asleep in the mortar at the bombardment of Toulon, and his body being discharged from its mouth instead of a carcass. With all the precision of an engineer, he will describe his evolutions in the air when they fired him off, and the manner in which he was saved from being dashed to pieces in his fall. All this he repeats without a smile upon his countenance, and he expects you to believe it: but you may soon balance the account, for tell him what absurdity you will, he receives it with the utmost credulity and is convinced of its truth. His courage is undoubted, for he will stand on the deck undismayed amidst the blood and slaughter of battle; yet on shore, he is seized with indescribable apprehensions at the sight of a coffin. The wailings of distress find a ready passport to his heart; but to disguise the real motives which prompt immediate aid, he swears that the object of his charity does not deserve a copper, yet gives a pound with only this provision,—that the individual relieved does not bother him about gratitude. You may know him from a thousand; for though in his dress conspicuously neat, and his standing and running rigging in exact order, yet they are arranged with a certain careless ease, as if he had but just come down from reefing topsails. The truck at the mast-head does not sit better than his tarpaulin hat, neither does the shoe upon the pea of the anchor fit tighter than his long quartered pumps. Grog is his ambrosia, his necktar; and he takes it cold, without sugar, that he may have the full smack of the rum.
And these are the characters at Greenwich Hospital, who after fighting the battles of their country are honoured with a palace. Oh, it was a proud display of national gratitude to such brave defenders! England has been compared to a huge marine animal, whose ports were its mouths, and whose navy formed its claws. What then is Greenwich but a receptacle for superannuated claws? I dearly love to get amongst them,—nearly two thousand shattered emblems of Britain’s triumphs,—the returned stores of our naval glory. Ay, there they are with their snug little cabins, like turtles under their shells. But let us enter the
Painted Wall,
formerly the refectory for the pensioners, but now devoted to the commemoration of their gallant achievements. There are the portraits of the heroes of the olden time, whose memorials cannot perish; and there too is old Van Tromp, the Dutchman, who is honoured with a distinguished place amongst the brave of England’s pride.
Here the old blades are a cut above the common; the small iron-bound officers who attend on visiters and point out the well-remembered features of commanders long since numbered with the dead.
“That ’ere, sir, on your right, is the battle of Trafflygar,” said a short thickset man, apparently between sixty and seventy years of age. His countenance was one of mild benevolence, and yet there was a daring in his look that told at once a tale of unsubdued and noble intrepidity; whilst the deep bronze upon his skin was finely contrasted with the silky white locks that hung straggling on his brow.—“That ’ere, sir, is the battle of Trafflygar, in which I had the honour to be one.”
“Were you with Nelson?” inquired I.
“I was, your honour,” he replied, “and those were the proudest days of my life. I was with him when he bore up out of the line off Cape St. Vincent, and saved old Jarvis from disgrace. I was one of the boarders, too, when we took the Saint Joseph,—there’s the picture, there in the middle of the hall;—and I was with him in that ship there,—the Victory,—though it arn’t a bit like her,—and stationed on the quarter-deck at Trafflygar.”
This was spoken with such an air of triumph, that the old man’s features were lighted up with animation; it called to his remembrance scenes in which he had shared the glory of the day and saved his country. His eye sparkled with delight, as if he again saw the British ensign floating in the breeze as the proud signal for conquest; or was labouring at the oar with his darling chief, like a tutelar deity of old, guiding the boat through the yielding element, and leading on to some daring and desperate enterprise.
“I don’t like the picture,” said I; “the perspective is bad, and the ship is too long and flat; besides the colour is unnatural.”