At the back of the Hard was Jack's own pleasure-ground—half a dozen streets belonging to him, to the watermen, and to those who made it their business to look after Jack. These streets were full of strange things. There were shops where they sold old clos', with many queer things that came home on board. There were birds—parrots, parraquits, avvadavats, love-birds, monkeys, lemurs, flying-fish dried, rotting bananas, Venus's fingers from the Philippines, cocos de mer from the Seychelles, carved wooden boxes from China, queer little nameless things from Japan, curved swords from Malay, groups of figures from India—all these things are common now; they were not common then. I would gaze at them displayed behind the small windows illuminated at night by a single candle, with a sick yearning because I could not buy them all. Meantime—oh, heavenly sound!—the fiddle at the public-house next door strikes up. It is an ancient tavern; the floor was lower than the street; the windows were decorated with transparencies showing the valor of the British tar when engaged with the Chinese. Heavens! How those Chinamen ran! And with what a rapturous sense of duty did Jack seize a pigtail with the left hand, and with the right decapitate poor John Chinaman! It was after the war of 1842, or thereabouts—a war now wellnigh forgotten. Within—I would look in and even step in unregarded—the fiddler sat on a stool at the end of the long low room. He was a Pole. He had but one leg, and he fiddled marvellously, so as to make even a man with a gouty toe stand up and shake that limb. Jack danced hornpipes chiefly; he liked best to dance by himself because the cavalier seul enjoyed more scope for figure-dancing and for flourishes; also because the undivided applause and attention of the house were bestowed upon him. In the reel, in which the fair sex took a share, beauty more than skill—looks, rather than merit—provoked admiration. Poor Jack! Poor fair sex! Was it possible for any human creatures to look more deliriously happy?
I have said that the watermen also lived in those back streets; I believe, however, that the watermen lived apart from the sailors; the most of them had been sailors—they were all full of yarns—they were all heroes of the old war; their sons were sailors; but they themselves were married men with families. It was not considered the thing for a sturdy old waterman to frequent the same tavern as Jack ashore; his time for the hornpipe and the fiddle was over.
I have said that Jack's face and appearance have not been transmitted to his grandsons. There was one peculiarity about Jack of '48 that has been somewhat forgotten. He of 1800 wore a pigtail—that pigtail was cut off. I do not know, exactly, in what year. It was succeeded, however, by ringlets. The Jack of '48 wore ringlets very carefully curled, glossy, and artistic. If you passed Jack to leeward you perceived—what? Rowland's Macassar? Tallow? My friends, let us never inquire into the machinery by which those ringlets were made to curl so gracefully, and to assume an appearance so beautifully, so wonderfully glossy.
Of the Dock-yard I must say little, though the part it plays in Portsmouth is like the part played in Winchester by the cathedral, or in Cambridge by the university. There were the huge skeletons of the wooden ships, one after the other, in various stages; there were the dry docks, with the workmen hurrying round the sides on narrow boards, calking and painting; there was the pond, where they laid up the timber to "season"; there was the Rope-house, a quarter of a mile long, where the men "who made their living backwards" so walked all day long twisting the yarn; there was the place where they steamed the beams so that they could be bent; there was the carver of figure-heads; there were the manufacturing of blocks and the making of spars. And every day and all day long the sound of multitudinous hammers, the creaking of cranes, the grinding of saws, went on without stopping. A lovely workshop, and now, I believe, more wonderful still!
The town, I said, had little beauty in its streets. There was a George the Second church, which had a spaciousness and a dignity of its own. There was another which had neither dignity nor space. There were no public buildings to speak of. But there were the Walls. The Walls! Oh, the Walls! These are all levelled and pulled down now. Nobody knows why they were levelled, but they were; and with them disappeared the beauty and the glory of the town. They were not ancient stone Walls, but earthworks in the style approved about the year 1780. I append a section of the Wall as I remember it. An open space, A B, separated it from the building of the town. A slope, B C, brought one to a broad road, C D, for the carriage and passage of cannon, ammunition, etc. At D, another low slope, about three feet high, to a narrow standing-place, D E, in front of which ran E F, a breast-work. The defenders were to fire, thus protected, across F F. F G was the slope to a level lower than that of A B on the other side. At H H was a narrow moat, but the intention of the builders of the Wall was to let in the water so as to cover up the whole of the valley G H; at H the ground sloped up; at many places the ground beyond H was also protected by an earth-work. The Wall ran in lengths protected by bastions; these bastions were mounted with cannon. At intervals there were stone gates with stone lookout-places, most mysterious. The town was divided into two parts, a Wall ran round each. No one would believe what a lovely place for a boy was the Wall—either Wall—to walk upon, or sit upon, or linger, and look, and listen, and dream upon. If you wanted a quiet place for reading you could sit protected from cold wind on a cannon-wheel; if you wanted to dream you could lean over a certain angle on the Queen's Bastion—was it the Queen's?—and there below stretched out the whole extent of the harbor, a broad lagoon at high tide, four miles from north to south and six from west to east; at the head of the harbor, Porchester Castle stood out, gray and frowning over the clear water that lapped her water-gate. This was a Roman fort; the outer Walls—the Roman work—still stand, and will continue to stand for many centuries; within there are the ruins of a Norman castle, the lofty design still uninjured; in another corner is a long and narrow Saxon church—a fine thing, this, for a boy to gaze upon. But that was not all. The space in front of the Wall was laid out in grass; in spring these meadows were full of buttercups; in the summer the grass all over the Walls, the parapet, the slopes, the sloping up of the Wall, the spaces on the bastions between the cannons, were filled with clover, daisies, buttercups, wild convolvulus, colored grasses—everything. There were also trees—"to catch the shells," we used to say; they were planted all along the Walls, and made a sweet and delightful walk in summer-time. And it was so quiet all day long upon the Walls; nobody but a few children ever came there; we had our own favorite bastion, our own view across the harbor; we carried home handfuls of the wild flowers.
If one of the two Walls looked out over the harbor, the other looked out over the Solent and Spithead. The second Wall was not so beautiful in my eyes as the first. It began at a place which even a boy would not but recognize as squalid and horrible. Very near there stood a church of great interest, though of repellent appearance—I know not why it was repellent to look at, but it was. Between the church and the Wall lay a broad piece of consecrated ground. More than once have I been reminded what this ground was used for. More than once have I stood upon the Wall and looked down upon a funeral; the coffin, borne by six soldiers, was covered with the union-jack for a pall—could one have a better? behind, marched, with guns reversed, a small company of soldiers; in front went the muffled drums and the fifes. 'Twas the burial-place, you see, of the private soldier. When the service was over, the soldiers stood over the grave and fired their last farewell to their poor dead comrade; then the drummers took off their muffling and they fell in, and the fifes struck up a merry tune and so away back to barracks. Poor lad! Who was he? No one knew; no one cared. In those days no one, I believe, ever sent a message to his people that he was dead.
On the outside, where the moat and slopes afforded a fine place for practice, the young drummers and the young buglers were practising all day long. I never hear a bugle-call, to this day, without being reminded of morning upon Portsmouth Walls. At the other end of this Wall were two or three very fine bastions, armed with larger cannon and with bombs which looked out on Spithead, where the fleets assembled before they put to sea. From Spithead sailed those great fleets, the Baltic and the Black Sea fleets, at the beginning of the Crimean war. A very splendid sight it was. The Queen led the way in her yacht. Then followed the Admiral, old Charley Napier; then came the gallant line-of-battle ships, each in place. To look at a ship of the modern type and to think of that magnificent fleet reminds one of the Israelites when they wept at the opening of the second Temple, to think of the perished glories of the first!
It was in the harbor, from the Dock-yard, that the troops used to embark. There is a picture, I forget by whom, representing the embarkation of a regiment for the Crimea. I can testify that the picture is faithful, for I saw, I believe, that very embarkation. There are the girls crying—I saw them; the young fellows full of spirit and courage—I saw them with envy and admiration; the sailors quietly carrying out their orders—I saw them too. As one recalls the scene, one thinks of what these poor fellows were going to endure—the cold of a Crimean winter; boots made of brown paper; coats of shoddy; green coffee-berries with which to make their coffee; oh! the blind rage! the helpless rage! the bitter tears of rage! of the whole country! and nothing done—no—nothing. Alas for the wickedness of it! Yet nobody hanged—and these poor brave fellows done to death—not by the enemy, but by their own people!
Besides the embarkation, I remember seeing the return of one of these regiments. It had been terribly cut up at Inkermann or at some other engagement; once, too, a shell burst in the middle of their band. They marched, what was left of them, up the street, colors flying, band playing. And all the way along the women wailed aloud and the men choked. For of all the band there remained but five; of all the gallant boys who marched out playing the fife and beating the drum there were but two; of all the men who played the cornet and the clarion and the serpent and the rest of the wonderful instruments there were but three.