On Chatham Hill.
This [sketch], in the pocket-book of an artist, suddenly startled recollection to the April of my life—the season of sunshine hopes, and stormy fears—when each hour was a birth-time of thought, and every new scene was the birth-place of a new feeling. The drawing carried me back to an October morning in 1797, when I eagerly set off on an errand to Boughton-hill, near Canterbury, for the sake of seeing the country on that side of Chatham for the first time. The day was cloudy, with gales of wind. I reached Chatham-hill, and stood close to this sign, looking over the flood of the Medway to the Nore, intently peering for a further sea-view. Flashes of fire suddenly gleamed in the dim distance, and I heard the report of cannon. Until then, such sounds from the bosom of the watery element were unknown to me, and they came upon my ear with indescribable solemnity. We were at war with France; and supposing there was a battle between two fleets off the coast, my heart beat high; my thoughts were anxious, and my eyes strained with the hope of catching something of the scene I imagined. The firing was from the fleet at the Nore, in expectation of a royal review. The king was then proceeding from Greenwich to Sheerness, in the royal yacht, attended by the lords of the admiralty, to go on board the Dutch ships captured by lord Duncan, at the battle of Camperdown.[181] On my return to Chatham, the sign of “the Star” was surrounded by sailors, who, with their shipmates inside the house, were drinking grog out of pewter-pots and earthen basins, and vociferating “Rule Britannia.”
The following year, on the evening of a glorious summer’s day, I found refuge in this house from the greatest storm I had then seen. It came with gusts of wind and peals of thunder from the sea. Standing at the bow-window, I watched the lightning sheeting the horizon, making visible the buried objects in the black gloom, and forking fearfully down, while the rain fell in torrents, and the trees bent before the furious tempest like rushes. The elements quickly ceased their strife, the moon broke out, and in a few minutes there was
The spacious firmament on high,
And all the blue ethereal sky
And spangled heavens, a shining frame.
The “Star” in war time was the constant scene of naval and military orgies, and therefore rather repelled than courted other visitants. It is now a respectable inn and a stage for the refreshment of coach travellers. During a hasty trip to Canterbury a short time ago, Mr. Samuel Williams stopped there long enough to select its sign, and the character of the view beyond it, as “a bit” for his pencil, which I, in turn, seized on, and he has engraved it as a decoration for the Table Book.
My readers were instructed at the outset of the work that, if they allowed me to please myself, we might all be pleased in turn. If I am sometimes not their most faithful, I am never otherwise than their most sincere servant; and therefore I add that I am not always gratified by what gratifies generally, and I have, in this instance, presented a small matter of my particular liking. I would have done better if I could. There are times when my mind foils and breaks down suddenly—when I can no more think or write than a cripple can run: at other times it carries me off from what I ought to do, and sets me to something the very negative to what I wish. I then become, as it were, possessed; an untamable spirit has its will of me in spite of myself:—what I have omitted, or done, in the present instance, illustrates the fact.
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