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UNDER THE SUN. 
 
LONDON : 
 ROBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, K.W 
 
UNDER THE SUN 
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 Mainly written in Hot Countries 
 
 GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA, 
 
 • &utf)or of 
 
 MY DIARY IN AMERICA IN THE MIDST OF WAR j GASLIGHT AND 
 DAYLIGHT ; PAPERS HUMOROUS AND PATHETIC ; ETC. 
 
 'The Thing that hath heen is that which shall he; and that which is 
 done is that which shall be done. And there is no New Thing under 
 the Sun.'— Eccl. i. 9. 
 
 ^4£^VVASH\^^ 
 
 LONTTON: 
 TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18 CATHERINE ST. STRAND. 
 
 1872. 
 

TO 
 
 LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JAMES E. FORD, 
 
 SCOTS FUSILIER GUARDS, 
 
 fflflft $00k, 
 
 IN PLEASANT MEMOBY OF DATS PASSED LONG AGO 
 
 UNDER THE SUN, 
 
 IS CORDIALLY DEDICATED. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 AN ESSAY ON WARM WEATHER ix 
 
 EMPTY BOXES i 
 
 FORM-SICKNESS 18 
 
 UNDER THE GUNS OF THE MORRO 34 
 
 THE HUMOURS OF HAVANA 53 
 
 HAVANA CIGARS 77 
 
 HAVANA CIGARITOS 97 
 
 A COURT-YARD IN HAVANA . . . . . . .113 
 
 THE VOLANTE 132 
 
 A HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL 151 
 
 THE DIVERSIONS OF LA SOLEDAD 172 
 
 THE CITY OF THE ANGELS 187 
 
 COCKPIT ROYAL 204 
 
 CUAGNAWAGHA 225 
 
 LITTLE OLD MEN , . .248 
 
 NOBODY ABROAD 266 
 
 SHOCKING! 283 
 
 KING PIPPIN'S PALACE 300 
 
 STALLS 317 
 
 WRETCHEDVILLE . , . . . . . .329 
 
 THE HOTEL CHAOS 347 
 
 THE IDLE LAKE 366 
 
 POSTE RESTANTE 381 
 
/ 
 
 AN ESSAY ON WARM WEATHER. 
 
 I have the greater need to pen an Essay with such 
 a title as that which appears above, as introductory 
 to Under the Sun, since I sit down to write it on the 
 Twenty -fifth of May — the merry month of May! — 
 with a blazing fire in my study, and the cat dozing on 
 the hearth-rug, instead of enjoying her natural otium 
 at this time of the year, in blinking on the coping 
 of the garden wall. The housekeeper has just knocked 
 at the door to say that the coals are nearly 'out,' and 
 that in view of such c bitter weather,' it would be as 
 well to communicate with Messrs. Cockerell without 
 delay. If the men with the sacks do not come, I 
 shall be fain to bite my thumbs to warm them ; and 
 I may well strive to kindle a little mental caloric by 
 writing about Warm Weather, lest — with the ther- 
 mometer looking at me with the stony stare of a 
 refrigerator — I should forget that there was such a 
 season as Summer at all, or that anything but frost 
 and fog could be felt and seen c Under the Sun.' 
 
 I have given to this collection of Sketches of 
 Travels and Maimers the title they bear, for the rea- 
 son that the majority of their number have a direct 
 
AN ESSAY ON WJtflM WEATHER. 
 
 reference to the Hot Climates of the lands in which 
 I have wandered. The eldest of the papers is nine 
 years old; and most of them were originally pub- 
 lished in the pages of All the Year Round, from which 
 periodical they have been reprinted with the sanction 
 of the Editor and Proprietor, Mr. Charles Dickens. 
 It may strike the reader (and in a stronger degree 
 the critic) that some of the chapters in this volume 
 are, neither subjectively nor objectively, of a very 
 sunny nature, and have nothing to do with hot 
 countries. I may point in explanation, first, to 
 the reservation ' mainly' which appears on the face 
 of the book ; and next, to the facts that I wrote 
 1 Wretchedville' in Eome, and c Stalls' in Spain, under 
 circumstances of an abnormally inflammatory nature. 
 Those essays were both composed c in a state of 
 siege/ and in the midst of revolutionary crises ; and 
 they should properly smell of brimstone and boiling 
 lava. With regard to the c Hotel Chaos,' in which 
 I have endeavoured to depict the aspect of the city 
 of Metz during the month of July 1870, I can 
 scarcely think that even the severest censor would 
 feel inclined to question that it was hot enough 
 in Lorraine in the city, and at the time I have 
 mentioned. 
 
 So much for my book: but this is not by any 
 means all I have to say on the subject of Heat. It 
 has long been my ambition to say something in print 
 on the subject of Warm Weather and Warm Blood 
 in connection with their influence on the Literary 
 
AN ESSAY ON WARM WEATHER. xi 
 
 Style and Character ; and I should wish it, in the 
 outset, to be distinctly understood that I am not 
 addressing myself to the jelly-fish section of mankind, 
 to whom Weather, torrid or frigid, is a matter of 
 indifference; nor to those Hyperboreans who revel, 
 physically, in cold ; who c tub' in cold water on the 
 First of January, and even when they are forced to 
 break the ice with a hammer to reach their bath; 
 who delight in skating, sliding, snow-balling, sleigh- 
 ing, ; curling,' and other arctic diversions, which to 
 me only represent so many varieties of self-inflicted 
 agony. Those whom I desire to reach should be 
 warm-blooded animals, swarthy and sanguineous souls, 
 worn black by the Sun's am'rous pinches. I am not 
 writing for Philosophers of the Glacial Period, or 
 the shareholders of the Wenham Lake Ice Company, 
 or the dragmen of the Royal Humane Society. 
 
 Many more years ago than I care to name, when 
 I was a little boy, the house in which I lived used to 
 be thrown into periodical commotion by sudden and 
 alarming fits of indisposition with which a near and 
 dear relative of mine used, from time to time, to be 
 attacked. Such a running up and down stairs as 
 took place on these occasions is difficult of descrip- 
 tion. Warm flannels and hot -water bottles were 
 sent for from the lower regions. There were no 
 railway rugs — and few railways, indeed, in those 
 days — but the thickest of shawls and wraps were in 
 request. When the spasmodic sufferings of the in- 
 valid in the drawing-room became unusually violent, 
 
AN ESSAY ON WARM WEATHER. 
 
 the doctor would be sent for. I can remember that 
 when the medical practitioner came he was accus- 
 tomed to smile, and to say that the sufferer would 
 be ' all right presently,' and that his invariable pre- 
 scription in alleviation of the symptoms was sherry - 
 and - water hot. And, indeed, when the flannels 
 and bran-bags and water-bottles had been applied; 
 when the patient had had a dozen extra coverings 
 wrapped round her ; when she had been laid on the 
 sofa with a pillow under her head; and especially 
 when the fire had been well -stirred and the hot 
 sherry-and-water administered — she would rarely fail 
 to fall into a tranquil slumber, and to wake up after- 
 wards quite composed and cheerful, to be, as here- 
 tofore, our hope, and comfort, and joy. I should 
 observe that these visitations always took place in 
 the winter months, that their severity was in a pre- 
 cisely proportionate ratio to the asperity of the 
 weather, and that their most marked symptoms were 
 a (deficiency of circulation in the extremities, accom- 
 panied by violent shivering. We children, under 
 these terrifying circumstances, used to cower in 
 corners, quaking with appalling misgivings; for we 
 were but five left from thirteen brothers and sisters, 
 and we had very early indeed begun to understand 
 what Death meant. As it happened, my relative 
 survived the severest of her shivering fits (one which 
 took place when I was a very small boy) full fiYe- 
 and-twenty years; and I am glad to conjecture, nay, 
 to believe, now, that ague or palsy had nothing what- 
 
AN ESSAY ON WARM WEATHER. 
 
 ever to do with my dear Mother's ailment. She 
 trembled only because it was January, and a hard 
 winter, and she was so very cold. She was a West 
 Indian, and Cold to her was Pain. 
 
 I had the fortune, or misfortune, in after years to 
 be sent to a school in which the boys were never 
 beaten— nay, not to the extent of a rapped knuckle 
 or a boxed ear; and to that circumstance, perhaps, 
 may be ascribed the generally imperfect nature of 
 my education, and my inability at this day to mas- 
 ter the niceties of Latin prosody. Had I been 
 duly scourged, I might by this time have become 
 another Codrus, and — in slightly bronchitic accents — 
 have recited another Theseid. I can nevertheless 
 conscientiously aver, comparing my own experiences 
 with those of friends educated under the beneficent 
 rule of Doctor Busby, Professor Thwackum, and Mr. 
 Plagosus Orbilius, M.R.C.P., that the physical an- 
 guish I endured during my school-life was quite as 
 severe, although not so ignominious, as though I had 
 been beaten every day into bruises and blains. I was 
 never Warm enough. From July to September (if 
 the skies were favourable, and there was nothing the 
 matter with the Gulf Stream) I enjoyed a temporary 
 respite from chilliness. During the remainder of the 
 year I shivered. The Getting-up Bell (which was 
 rung at half-past five) pealed on my ear as awfully, 
 in degree, as the dreadful ding-dong of St. Sepulchre's 
 may peal on the tympanum of the wretch in Newgate 
 doomed to die : yet, happier he, the knell is audible 
 
AN ESSAY ON WARM WEATHER. 
 
 to him but once. / heard the Getting-up Bell every 
 morning, clamouring and screeching, ' Come out. 
 Come and be cold. Come and have a blue tip to your 
 nose, and gooseflesh at the ends of your fingers, and 
 chilblains on all your toes. Come, and shudder, and 
 clash your teeth together.' That was the kind of 
 invite I heard in the bell. I know that for a length 
 of time I spent half my pocket-money in bribing a 
 boy, whose seat was nearer the stove than mine in 
 the class-room, to allow me to occupy his warm cor- 
 ner, and that 1 would smuggle additional clothes into 
 the dormitories, or borrow my schoolfellows' blankets, 
 to cover myself at night. I know that I have had 
 impositions of horrible length set me for the offence 
 of going to bed with the major part of my garments 
 on. I had a schoolmaster, once, who was a clever and 
 excellent man, but a little mad, and who had a craze 
 about making boys ' hardy.' He was pleased to fix 
 upon me as a ' chilly mortal,' and expressed a deter- 
 mination to ' make a man of me.' The process of 
 manufacture demanded that when I was snuggling 
 over the fire and a book in play-time, I should be 
 driven forth into the bleak and bitter open c to play.' 
 Now I never could play. At this date, when I am 
 grizzling, I scarcely know a cricket-bat from a stump, 
 or prisoner's base from rounders. I never could throw 
 a ball, or catch one, properly ; and in childhood I was 
 utterly unable even to 4 tuck in my twopenny' at leap- 
 frog, or to drive a hoop. So, while a hundred merry 
 lads round me raced and gambolled, I used to lurk 
 
AN ESS A Y ON WARM WEATHER. xv 
 
 in a corner of the playground and Shiver. We had a 
 large bathroom, and (always with the benevolent idea 
 of 4 making a man of me') I was put through a bas- 
 tard course of hydropathy. I declare that in the 
 midst of the most biting winter weather I have 
 undergone the cold douche, the cold shower-bath, 
 and the cold sitz; that I have been packed in wet 
 sheets ; that I have been made to put a dry pair 
 of socks over a wet pair, and thus accoutred have 
 been ordered to walk from Hammersmith to Kew 
 Bridge, before breakfast, in the dark, to make me 
 'hardy.' Unless another boy of the same 'hardy' 
 breed was sent with me to see that I went through 
 my training properly, I used to perform the journey 
 from Hammersmith to Kew Bridge by sneaking to 
 the widow Crump's shop at Turnham Green — she sold 
 fruit, toys, periodicals, and sweet-stuff — and sitting 
 by the fire in her little parlour, drinking warm gin- 
 ger-beer, and reading the Lives of the Pirates and 
 Highwaymen. 
 
 The puling, sneaking, lily-livered milksop ! I hear 
 the Hyperboreans cry. I acknowledge the hardest of 
 the impeachments; and I confess, indeed, that indi- 
 rectly I defrauded my parents by my persistent chilli- 
 ness; for we had a racquet court, a quintain, and a 
 gymnastic apparatus at school. We were entitled to 
 lessons in swimming, fencing, riding, and calisthenics ; 
 and had I availed myself of all the Olympian facilities 
 at my command, I might by this time have become a 
 distinguished athlete, well known in the higher mus- 
 
AN ESSAY ON WARM WEATHER. 
 
 cular circles in Elis. As it chanced, my good crazy- 
 master did not make a man of me. I grew up to be 
 only a sickly, long-legged, weak-knee'd youth, with 
 premature pains in the bones, which developed in 
 later years into chronic rheumatism and intermittent 
 neuralgia. 
 
 I had some glimpses of Warm Weather when I was 
 a child, being much abroad, but only in temperate 
 climes. But from the age of thirteen to nearly thirty 
 I lived mainly in London, and you know what Cold 
 Weather, and Warm Weather, in the British metro- 
 polis mean. With Creole, Italian, Portuguese, Red 
 Indian blood in my veins (I am afraid that my great- 
 grandmother on the maternal side was a squaw, and 
 was tattooed), I was always panting to be Under the 
 Sun — the real Sun, not the tepid simulacrum we see 
 in this country — but it seemed as though my wish 
 was never to be gratified. I was always repeating : 
 
 Yet bear me from the harbour's mouth, 
 "Wild winds ; I seek a warmer sky ; 
 And I shall see before I die 
 
 The Palms and Temples of the South. 
 
 I saw them, and the Sun himself, at last; but I was 
 constrained to seek my goal by a round-about route. 
 The first real, glorious, blazing, sweltering Summer 
 I basked in was in Russia. The Cholera was rife 
 in St. Petersburg when I went there. The fashion- 
 able season was over, and all the grand folks were 
 out of town. The streets were dusty, the canals were 
 malodorous. What did all these things matter to me ? 
 
AN ESSAY ON WARM WEATHER. xvii 
 
 It was Summer, it was Hot. My rheumatism took 
 unto itself wings, and flew away. I could once more 
 feel my blood in its circuits. A long- congealed mind 
 began to thaw, and during that summer in Russia I 
 studied and worked more vigorously than ever I had 
 worked or studied before, in my life. 
 
 Now and then, among the few favourable things 
 people have been good enough to say about me, I have 
 been complimented on the score of my 'industry.' 
 Hearing such a compliment, I have chuckled, not bit- 
 terly, but with much inward merriment, as knowing 
 myself to be constitutionally one of the most indolent 
 of men. ' Ah, monsieur,' pleaded the French beggar to 
 the stern economist who reproached him with his vaga- 
 bondage, c sivous saviez combienje suis paresseux!' 
 If you only knew how idle I was; how I have wasted 
 three-fourths of the time at my disposal — after the 
 necessary deductions for sleep, meals, and recreation 
 had been made — in purposeless ' mooning,' in hatching 
 vain schemes, in covering the margins of books with 
 trivial notes, in filling commonplace books with use- 
 less entries, in making sketches for pictures I shall 
 never be able to paint ! In the face of a shelf full 
 of books, and thousands of newspaper-columns I have 
 scrawled, I know that, so far as Time is concerned, 
 I have wantonly squandered my substance and wasted 
 my oil. I know, and can honestly declare, that so 
 strongly is the far niente temper ingrained within me, 
 that 1 have never sat down to serious labour without 
 reluctance, nor risen from it without exultation, I 
 
 b 
 
AN ESSAY ON WARM WEATHER. 
 
 wonder how many 'prolific writers/ 'interminable 
 scribblers/ 'assiduous hacks/ might make the same 
 confession, were they only candid enough to do so? 
 
 One cannot, indeed, repudiate one's own handi- 
 work; and during a literary course of three-and- 
 twenty years, a man whose only source of livelihood 
 has been his pen, must needs have accumulated a 
 mass of work performed in some manner or another. 
 The craziest dunce's punishment-tasks will fill many 
 copybooks. Thus, when I look at the volumes and the 
 newspaper-files before me, and ask how ever I could 
 have nerved myself to knead all these stacks of bricks 
 — often with the scantiest allowance of straw — I 
 remember that I have always worked better in sum- 
 mer than in winter, and that I have always worked 
 best Under the Sun, thousands of miles away. The 
 Summer of 1864 was intensely hot; yet I managed 
 to do more work in the United States, in Mexico, 
 and in the West Indies, in three months than I had 
 done in all the preceding three years. I felt my 
 blood in every vein, and it oozed out of my fingers, 
 and so into my pen's point, into red ink. The 
 glorious warm weather melted away the mists and 
 fogs by which I had been surrounded. I had been 
 Hot and Happy. In a kindred but modified degree 
 I have recognised the same influence of Sunshine as 
 encouraging activity in my own individual case — and 
 what do I know about other people's ? — in Italy, in 
 Spain, and in Africa. I have been at home now, 
 with brief intervals of continental travelling, for four 
 
AN ESSAY ON WARM WEATHER. 
 
 years, and I have written nothing worth reading. No 
 original book of mine has seen the light for a very- 
 long time ; and my publisher had to make my life a 
 torment to me ere he could incite me to collect these 
 papers and correct the proofs. If any persons wish me 
 to be industrious, let them combine in demanding 
 that I should be banished very far beyond the seas, 
 and to the hottest climate procurable. A double 
 purpose would thus be served. Those who disliked 
 me personally would be able to get rid of me; where- 
 as those who did not hate me might profit by my 
 absence by communing with me from afar off. 
 
 GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 
 
 Brompton, May 1872. 
 
 (It is the warmest part of London that I can find 
 to dwell in ; and the mud in the Fulham-road 
 takes trvo days longer to dry up than is the case 
 at Hampstead. ) 
 
UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 ESSAYS MAINLY WEITTEN IN HOT COUNTEIES. 
 
 EMPTY BOXES. 
 
 This will be, I know, but a beggarly account. There 
 are few things in the world so hopelessly dreary to 
 look upon, as are empty boxes. It is a truism to 
 say that you can get nothing out of them. A full 
 box may be picturesque, poetical. It may be Pan- 
 dora's box, or one of Portia's caskets. It may be 
 the Iron Chest, or Somebody's Luggage. It may be 
 that notable trunk in which the mysterious Spanish 
 Hidalgo, to whom Gil Bias was valet, kept his pistoles. 
 It may be the coffer, gorged of millions, of the Wan- 
 dering Jew. It may be Autolycus' box, crammed 
 with c ribbons, chains, and ouches,' or it may be the 
 ; chest with the spring -lock immortalised in the story 
 of Ginevra and the ballad of the Mistletoe-bough, or 
 it may be the cowskin trunk in which Richard Crom- 
 well kept the 'lives and fortunes of the people of 
 England' — in the shape of the addresses presented 
 to him by the English municipalities when he was 
 
 B 
 
UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 Lord Protector of the Commonwealth — or it may 
 be the inscrutable sea-chest astride which Washing- 
 ton Irving's Dutchman went to sea in a storm. In 
 short, a box with anything in it will furnish a plot 
 for a melodrama or a novel, inspire poets and painters, 
 awaken cupidity, excite ambition, fan the flame of 
 loye. With what wistful eyes have I scanned the 
 great iron safe in a City counting-house! With 
 what rapture have I gazed on a lady's jewel-box 
 — the tiny casket with a patent lock, steel beneath, 
 russia leather above — and pictured the dainty gems 
 within : their lustre prisoned in coffins of morocco 
 lined with white satin ! Nor without a pleasant 
 trembling — a hope not unmingled with fear — have 
 I beheld the cash-box which Mr. Elzevir, of Lud- 
 gate-hill, has produced from his drawer, when, my 
 account being audited, he has been persuaded to 
 draw a cheque in my favour. Sweet cash-box, full 
 of cheques, crisp bank-notes, gold and silver, and 
 sometimes of acceptances at three months and 1 IPs ! 
 — I say that I have trembled, for it has been just 
 within the bounds of possibility that Mr. Elzevir, a 
 sudden spasm of hardness coming over his heart, 
 might push his cash-box back into the drawer, double- 
 lock it, and suddenly remembering that my account 
 was overdrawn, button up his pantaloons, and dismiss 
 me chequeless. Or, how would it be if, opening the 
 cash-box, Mr. Elzevir discovered that his cheque-book 
 was worn to the last stump, and begged me to call 
 the day after to-morrow? 
 
EMPTY BOXES. 
 
 If this paper were to be devoted to the topic of 
 boxes that were full, you should see that I had plenty 
 to say, and to spare. The account of the work-box 
 of a woman would fill a page at least. I could expa- 
 tiate till you were tired on a schoolboy's play-trunk, 
 with its hidden hoard of slate-pencil, and its inevit- 
 able substratum of contraband goods — say gun- 
 powder, silkworms, cayenne pepper, or the Adven- 
 tures of Robin Hood; — and I am sure I could pen 
 several columns on the subject of a box to me the 
 most curious of all, — the key-box ; the locked-up re- 
 ceptacle for things which lock up others, the wheel 
 without the wheel, the keeper of the keepers. It is 
 on empty boxes, however, that I am at present intent. 
 
 Empty boxes ! Take that symmetrical sarco- 
 phagus of cedar which, a month since, held one 
 hundred choice Havanas. They, the flor fina of 
 Colorado Claros, are all smoked out; you have not 
 even preserved their ashes, which, mingled with 
 camphorated chalk, are said to make an excellent 
 tooth-powder, or, ground with poppy oil, will afford, 
 for the use of the painter, a varied series of delicate 
 grays. Old Isaac Ostade so utilised the ashes of his 
 pipe ; but, had he been aware of Havanas, he would 
 have given us pictures even more pearly in tone 
 than those which he has left for the astonishment 
 and delight of mankind.* 
 
 * Much has been talked in modern times about the ' lost secrets' of 
 the Venetian painters ; and Messrs. Winsor and Newton have been wor- 
 ried to death by artists to produce new blues, new crimsons, and new 
 yellows, by means of which the gorgeous hues of Titian and Giorgione 
 
UNDER THE SUN 
 
 The empty cigar-box makes you sad. You must 
 have injured your constitution to an appreciable de- 
 gree by smoking, say fifty out of that century of Colo- 
 rado Claros. You have lately discovered that your 
 cousin Tom, on whom you pressed a handful of your 
 choicest cigars when you left him at Gravesend, on his 
 way to Bombay, is a humbug. It was owing to your 
 cruel and brutal persistence in smoking the last of 
 your cigars in the Blue Boudoir, thereby disturbing 
 the afternoon nap of the Italian greyhound, and caus- 
 ing that intolerable little beast to sneeze thrice, that 
 you had last Thursday a few words with the partner 
 of your joys and woes, and afterwards looked out in 
 the Court Directory the private address of the judge 
 who sits in divorce and matrimonial causes, and has 
 power to loose and to bind. Worse than all, you have 
 a running account with Messrs. Lope de Yega and 
 Co., cigar merchants of Bond-street, W., and the hun- 
 dred Colorado Claros, all smoked out, remain to be 
 paid for. 
 
 If empty boxes yield anything, the harvest is 
 but one of regrets. The scholar who bade Albertus 
 
 might be rivalled. But the tints most thoroughly lost or mislaid are, 
 to my mind, the pearly gray tones of the Dutchmen. Very few modem 
 painters seem to be aware that gray may be, and should be, a cunning 
 compound of all colours, and not mere black and white, with a season- 
 ing of lake, or indigo, or ochre, to make it cold or warm. The finest 
 grays, perhaps, in modern art are those of M. Abel de Pujol, in the 
 imitation of bas-reliefs on the coved roof of the Paris Bourse. Those 
 who have closely examined them may have noticed that in the shadows 
 there are great splashes of positive colour, bright vermilion, chrome, 
 and cobalt, which, at the distance of the ordinary spectator from the 
 picture, give pearliness and transparency to the whole. 
 
EMPTY BOXES. 
 
 Magnus raise the devil for him, found, dashed in his 
 face, an empty purse; and if you would conjure up 
 the ghosts of dead hopes, and the phantom of the 
 love that is no more, and the skeleton ribs, black and 
 rotten, of the Ship of Ambition, aboard which you 
 vowed to ride into the Port of Fame and seize the 
 Golden Fleece — if you would lift the veil, and recall 
 the agony, .and survey the wilderness of desolation 
 and the valley of dry bones, I would advise you to 
 f)lunge into the contemplation of empty boxes. 'The 
 late Miss Craggs's Estate.' Such an inscription on a 
 japanned tin box, in a lawyer's office near Cavendish- 
 square, once meant to me a thousand pounds. The 
 box was full. I saw a will, trust-deeds, dividend- 
 warrants, through its tin sides. I walked round the 
 house that held the box, in my dreams, and woke up 
 in terror, thinking that thieves had stolen it, and 
 longed for the day when I should be twenty-one, and 
 find a swift stockbroker, and sell my money out. It 
 never did anybody any good. It is lost in the fast- 
 nesses of the Neilgherry Hills ; it is at the bottom of 
 the river Rhine; it is in Kensal-green. I shudder 
 now to think that I may meet some day in Ship-yard 
 or Broker s'-row an empty box, the japanning half 
 worn off the tin, and the late Miss Craggs's Estate 
 grinning out of the shadows made by piles of second- 
 hand office furniture. I do not think I could bear 
 that sight. I should buy the box, and scrape out 
 all remembrance of Miss Craggs, and melt up the 
 japanned tin to an unrecognisable lump. Saddest 
 
UNDER THE SUN 
 
 of empty boxes ; and the vanity of youth unto- 
 ward, ever spleeny, ever froward! What a school 
 might be built, what a house bought, what a neat 
 little purse made against the laying of the first stone 
 of the Asylum for Decayed Turncocks by H.R.H. the 
 Prince of Wales, what a capital venture made to the 
 Spanish Main, with a thousand pounds! Depend 
 upon it, the Prodigal Son had an empty box, and 
 sat upon it the while he tended swine and fed on 
 draff and husks. 
 
 Saddest of empty boxes ? No, not the saddest. 
 There are boxes whose aspect is even more melan- 
 choly. Kicked about in yards, despised as the vilest 
 rubbish, are the boxes which once held the sparkling 
 chefs-d'oeuvre of Mumm and Roederer, and Jacques- 
 son, and the Widow Clicquot. Who cares for an 
 empty champagne -box ? An empty egg -box is 
 stouter. The empty box which has contained bottles 
 of Warren's blacking will afford a firmer rostrum 
 from which Stump Orator may address his dupes. 
 It is not generally known that the haut pas of the 
 thrones from which theatrical kings and queens issue 
 their decrees, and witness the evolutions of the occa- 
 sional ballet, are often built up from egg -boxes. 
 Champagne -boxes would be too fragile. This is 
 the end, then, of all your frothing, and popping, and 
 spuming forth effervescent delight. A bottle, if it 
 be not cracked, may serve again. Shot, or a wire 
 besom, may cleanse its interior. It may be degraded 
 to serve as a candlestick for a tallow dip, but it may 
 
EMPTY BOXES. 
 
 be washed and purified, re-filled, re-corked, re-wired, 
 re-wrapped in pink paper, re-exported, to make the 
 name of the Widow Clicquot famous to the ends of 
 the earth. But its empty box will never serve again. 
 Rough deals are cheap, and can be easily nailed to- 
 gether, and daubed with mystic trades-marks and 
 legends, as 'Fragile,' 'With care,' 'This side up- 
 ward,' and a portrait of a full (not empty) bottle. 
 
 Writers who set up for cynics are very apt to 
 talk of the skeleton closet which is said — although I 
 do not believe anything of the sort — to form part 
 of the architectural arrangements of every modern 
 house. At least, I do not believe in the solitary 
 skeleton — the one bony osteological 'boguey' — hang- 
 ing to a nail in one particular cupboard, of which only 
 the master — if it be not the mistress — of the estab- 
 lishment keeps the key. But if you will mount to 
 an apartment at the top of the house — an apartment 
 which is open to all, cook, butler, and housemaid, and 
 whither the children often repair for the purpose of 
 playing at Wild Beasts, or at Shops — you may find, 
 not one, but twenty skeletons, in the shape of empty 
 boxes. There are the portmanteaus, long since bulged 
 into uselessness; the bullock- trunks of the lieutenant 
 who died in India; the bonnet -boxes of the girl 
 who bloomed into a woman and is now a widow ; 
 the carpet-bag you used to carry on those rare 
 fishing excursions to Walton-on- Thames ; the little, 
 fat, black valise which was your companion during 
 that notable week you stayed at the country-house of 
 
UNDER THE SUN 
 
 the Lord Viscount Toombsley — the only lord you 
 ever knew — and he cut you dead in the Burlington 
 Arcade last Wednesday was a week. Pleasant jour- 
 neys, joyous outings, trips to Paris, runs to the 
 Rhine, wedding tours, jolly friends, pretty girls, 
 merry meetings : the spectres of all these linger 
 about the empty boxes. Look at the luggage-labels. 
 You can hear the pat of the paste-brush, and see the 
 red-faced porter trundling the luggage along the plat- 
 form. You are off by the express. A guard has 
 winked at you. He feels that you want a locked-up 
 coupe, that you mean to smoke, and that he will have 
 half-a-crown. You are off for Paris. You are off 
 for Switzerland. You are off for the East. Empty 
 boxes! I have one, the bare sight of the luggage- 
 labels on which fills me with sorrow, with remorse, 
 with bitter shame. ' Liverpool,' l Manchester,' ' Bos- 
 ton,' 'Niagara,' 'Madrid,' 'Riga,' 'Cronstadt,' 'Wien,' 
 ' Seville,' ' Frankfort,' ' Homburg,' ' Venezia,' ' Paris,' 
 ' Macon,' c Milan' — it is a Bradshaw cut up into strips 
 and stuck hup-hazard all over the lid and sides. I 
 thank the prudent porters who have striven to tear 
 off some of the labels. I am spared the remembrance 
 of some. This empty box has held my gala clothes, 
 my dearest books, my choicest photographs, my rarest 
 bits of bric-a-brac, and c the soul of the licentiate Pe- 
 dro Garcia.' And what has come of it all, beyond forty 
 and odd years, an augmenting stomach, a damaged 
 liver, and a confused consciousness that one has made 
 rather a mess of it, and had better have stayed at home ? 
 
EMPTY BOXES. 
 
 But we will endeavour to be cheerful, if you 
 please. Cheerful ! How can cheerfulness be ex- 
 tracted from empty boxes : far less when I am about 
 to conduct you to the dullest and gloomiest of all the 
 boxes in the empty world. Silent rows the songless 
 gondolier, and sullen plash his oar-blades on the 
 waters of the back-slum canal. I am going to see 
 the mornfulest sight in Yenice. At the prow crouches 
 the hotel guide. He too looks sad, although he is 
 in my service to-day; for I have told him that to- 
 morrow I shall have no need for his services. I have 
 ' done' all the lions of Venice twice over ; and Venice 
 is in a state of siege, and I am the only tourist in the 
 desolate city ; and my guide has been half starving 
 for weeks, and will wholly starve, I fear, when he 
 has spent the last two florins I purpose to bestow 
 upon him. For charity begins at home ; and few 
 travellers care to grant weekly pensions to hotel 
 guides out of work, who are always bores, and often 
 rascals. The oars continue dully to plash ; and the 
 gondolier — who has not had a fare for a week — only 
 breaks the sickening silence by his lugubrious cry of 
 warning when he turns a corner. There was a time 
 when I went a gondoliering with the pleasantest of 
 poodles at the prow; but darker and darker days 
 have set in for Venice; and things have gone from 
 bad to worse, and the city has faded into a cemetery. 
 Whither are we bound? To the magnificent palace 
 which has been turned into the governmental pawn- 
 shop, and through whose windows, now close barred, 
 
io UNDER THE SUN 
 
 but whose balconies were once hung with rich tapes- 
 tries, and over whose sills fair ladies smiled, moun- 
 tains of unredeemed pledges in ghostly bundles palely 
 loom ? Not thither. To the deserted halls of the 
 great Pesaro Palace, now converted into an old- 
 curiosity shop, rented by a Jew from Geneva? Not 
 thither. To the empty arsenal, with its shipless 
 basins and ropeless rope-walks — the arsenal where 
 Dante once saw the pitch and tar boiling in huge 
 caldrons that reminded him of the Stygian Lake ? 
 No; not thither. Nor to the island of Murano, 
 where the huge mirrors and crystal chandeliers of 
 Venice were once made, but where now there is only 
 a paltry manufactory of toy-beads. Nor to picture- 
 gallery, nor church, nor cabinet of mosaics. We are 
 only on our way to see some empty boxes. 
 
 A dreadful beggar-man, by his father's side a 
 leper, by his mother's a hunchback, and himself an 
 idiot ; a creature whose rags are so intimate with his 
 flesh that the tatters might be strips of unwashed 
 epidermis — this specimen of the Eepublic in Kuins 
 with a long hook draws our gondola to the landing- 
 place, holds out his shrivelled arm to help me to 
 shore, cringing low as he begs an obolus for the sake 
 of the Madonna, and is grateful for the farthing which 
 I give him. (For as, all day long, the beggars of 
 Venice buzz about you, and you are bound to relieve, 
 say one in ten, you will find that a soldo, or farthing, 
 at a time will make, before midnight, a considerable 
 vacuum in your pocket.) We mount some slimy 
 
EMPTY BOXES. n 
 
 steps, and pass under a colonnade, whose stones are 
 damp and green, and recall those of a dead-house by 
 the water-side. Between each pair of columns hangs 
 a huge lamp, some faded gilding clinging to its iron- 
 work, and its top crowned with the battered effigy of 
 a phoenix. c Those lamps,' whispers the guide, c have 
 not been lighted for seven years.' We stand before 
 an old wooden door, the knocker and the keyhole 
 red with rust, the huge-headed nails which once 
 studded it half gone, the holes left black and mean- 
 ingless, like the sockets of dead eyes. Paint it must 
 have had, this door, in the bygone ; but mildew has 
 picked the pigment away, and streaks and smears of 
 oozy moisture laugh grimly at what the painter's 
 brush may have effected years ago. This was once 
 a stage door. Hither the pets of the ballet came 
 tripping to rehearsal, with wreaths of artificial flow- 
 ers in their reticules, and practising shoes under 
 their arms. Here the servitors of the Venetian no- 
 bility left perfumed billets. Here the great prima 
 donna, Assoluta di Cartello, landed from her own 
 splendid gondola, and, perhaps, condescended to be 
 assisted to shore by the primo tenore. Where once 
 her stately feet trod, is now only the brackish sea- 
 slime. We knock at the door, and, after a while, a 
 Judas-wicket opens, and through the grating peers 
 a wrinkled old parchment face, with a few white 
 bristles on the chin, which Balthazar Denner might 
 have painted. A piping voice inquires our will. I 
 answer, that I wish to see the empty boxes, and 
 
12 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 I softly slap some loose florins in my pocket. The 
 Judas -trap closes ; but anon the door itself is 
 opened, and a little old man, who might have been 
 a junior clerk in an office close to the Eialto when 
 Shylock did business there — who, as a specimen of 
 Venice Preserved — seemingly in a solution of garlic 
 — is highly respectable no doubt, but who is assur- 
 edly the nastiest old man I have set eyes upon dur- 
 ing many a long day's march — entreats me, with 
 many bows and complimentary adjurations, to enter. 
 We cross a vestibule — the stage-doorkeeper's den — 
 and see the rusty nails whence once hung the keys 
 of the dressing-rooms, and the places of the racks 
 where the perfumed billets once rested. It is inex- 
 pressibly dingy, and smells of lamp-oil a hundred 
 years old. The nasty old man has kindled a rush- 
 light, and, by its pale glimmer, guides us up a damp 
 stone staircase. Then we go down some steps, then 
 mount again, then pass through a narrow corridor. 
 I remember that, some months ago, a guide as old 
 and as nasty led me up and down the stone staircases 
 in the palace of the Escorial. He was a sexton, and 
 took me to the sepulchre where the kings and queens 
 of Spain are buried in stone boxes resting on shelves, 
 and where there are yet some empty boxes waiting 
 for the kings and queens of Spain that are to die. 
 
 We emerge into a dim area, and stand on the 
 stage of an enormous theatre. The sconces of the 
 footlights seem to mark the boundaries of another 
 world, and all beyond them yawns the dark vasty gulf 
 
EMPTY BOXES. 13 
 
 of pit. From a window in the topmost gallery darts, 
 sharp and clear, one transverse ray of light, and I 
 am enabled to make out at last five tiers of boxes, 
 all perfectly empty. The woodwork of the stage 
 is half decayed. There are as many inequalities 
 on its surface as in the mosaic pavement of St. Mark's 
 church. Can this rotten and grimy expanse, whose 
 stiffened traps might be the ' drops' on which doomed 
 wretches stand, the ropes round their necks secured 
 to the timbers of the flies above, be the same boards 
 on which Ellsler, Cerrito, Taglioni, have danced, in 
 the midst of a sea of gas, and a shower of bouquets 
 and a storm of plaudits? Can this be the place where 
 Billington and Catalani, Pasta and Malibran, have 
 sung ? Yes ; look behind you ; piled pell-mell against 
 the stark damp walls, rigid and faded, like the mum- 
 mies of Titans, are the 'flats' and 'wings' and set 
 pieces of the place. There are Norma's altar, and 
 Amina's bridge, and Zerlina's bedroom, and Don Gio- 
 vanni's villa, and Ninus's tomb, and Marta's spinning- 
 wheel, and the supper-table of Lucrezia Borgia. I 
 follow the nasty old man up and down more dark 
 staircases and through more dark corridors, and now 
 he unlocks a door, and I stumble into a kind of cell, 
 which, the rushlight being held up and waved around, 
 turns out to be a proscenium box, with a frescoed 
 ceiling, and walls brave with mirrors and damask 
 hangings. I have nearly broken my shin over an 
 antique fauteuil once splendid in carving, gilding, 
 and velvet, but which, on inspection, turns out to 
 
14 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 have but three legs : and my foot is caught, to my 
 almost overthrow, in one of the holes of a once gor- 
 geous Turkey carpet. As we pass from the box, the 
 nasty old man holds his rushlight to the central 
 panel of the door, and there I see a flourishing coat 
 of arms, with as many quarterings as there were in 
 the scutcheon of the Princess Cunegonde, beloved of 
 Candide. But marked with the stigmata of desola- 
 tion is all that heraldry. The blazonry has faded, or 
 has turned from sable and gules to grubbiness. I 
 cannot make out the motto beneath, but it should be 
 'Resurgam,' seeing how remarkably like the whole 
 affair is to the hatchments set up by cheap under- 
 takers, who strive to persuade the natives of Soho or 
 Tottenham-court-road in far-off London to allow 
 them to conduct their funerals, by heraldically hint- 
 ing in their windows that they have already buried 
 half Boyle's Court Guide. 
 
 This proscenium box, and the next, and the next, 
 all round, from the P. S. to the 0. P. side, pertain to 
 the proudest families of the Venetian nobility. The 
 house, indeed, belongs to a proprietary, and three- 
 fourths of the shareholders are Venetian nobles. On 
 many box doors are their spectral achievements 
 of arms and their antique titles. Tier above tier, 
 vasty gulf of pit, stately crush-room with mirrors yet 
 uncracked, and settees of velvet, and ceiling of fresco, 
 and flooring of gesso, but all obscure and faded ; cor- 
 ridor, and lobby, and ante-chamber, and grand stair- 
 case, and vestibule, are haunted by pallid spectres, 
 
EMPTY BOXES. 
 
 '5 
 
 calling themselves Foscari and Falier, Grimani and 
 Contarini, Pesaro and Grani, Papadopoulo and Nani- 
 Mocenigo. I return to the stage, and peer into the 
 cavern of shadows, sharp sected by that transverse 
 ray from the topmost gallery, when, all at once, the 
 empty boxes fill ! Yes ; there they are, fair women 
 and brave men, in veils, and lace, and silk, and satin, 
 and broidered stuffs, with swords, and fans, and 
 flashing gems. The great theatre is lighted a giorno. 
 The huge chandelier blazes up with countless crystals, 
 in the midst of a frescoed firmament; and then the 
 orchestra fills too, and I see the conductor, white- 
 gloved, waving his baton. I hear the loud bassoon, 
 and the crash of the cymbals, and the scraping of 
 many fiddles. The footlights flash up, like the demon 
 lights in the Freyschiltz. A vision in gauze and silk 
 and artificial flowers bounds by me. It is Marie 
 Taglioni. Why not ? The Queen of Dance is alive 
 still, and it would do her old bones good to come 
 and foot a final jig in this place. For this is the 
 famous Opera House of La Fenice. Yonder, in his 
 box of state, is the King of Italy. Around him 
 are the nobility and the beauty, not alone of Venice, 
 but of his whole magnificent kingdom — There's no 
 such thing ; at least, not yet. There is nothing but 
 darkness, and desolation, and empty boxes. If I can 
 find e'er a ghost to tenant the state box, it will be a 
 phantom in a white coat — the Cavaliere Toggenburg, 
 indeed Luogotenente, or civil governor of Venice, 
 representing the Austrian Kaiser. I see this ghost 
 
1 6 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 of Toggenburg continually squabbling with the noble 
 shareholders of La Fenice, worrying and baiting 
 them; and they, it must be owned, rendering him as 
 good as he gives; for the Italians are eminently 
 skilled in the art of ingeniously tormenting, and 
 these fifty years past the Venetians, if they have 
 groaned under tyranny, and suffered misery from the 
 presence of the stranger, have at least succeeded in 
 making their masters desperately uncomfortable. Sir 
 John Falstaff declined to march through Coventry 
 with his ragged regiment ; but I could tell of a pen- 
 ance far more disagreeable — to be in command of a 
 regiment not at all ragged, but beautifully made up, 
 and then to be sent to Coventry, and quartered in 
 Coventry, and forced to stop in Coventry, year after 
 year, to be cut, shunned, loathed, scowled upon, 
 scorned, when, at the bottom of their hearts, your 
 command is really a very jolly regiment, fond of 
 waltzing, and good cheer, and blithesome company. 
 Cavalier e Toggenburg wishes La Fenice to be opened, 
 in order that everybody may enjoy themselves, and 
 that his tight- waisted, white-coated officers may flirt 
 with the Venetian ladies, and listen to the opera for 
 fourpence-halfpenny, according to the tariff made 
 and provided in dear old unsophisticated Deutsch- 
 land. But the noble shareholders of La Fenice snarl 
 1 No !' If they open the theatre at all, it shall be to 
 hang it with black crape, and light it with corpse- 
 candles, and intone a mortuary mass there, for Venice, 
 laid out on the Lagoons so cold and stark. 4 Come,' 
 
EMPTY BOXES. 17 
 
 cries Toggenburg, 'let bygones be bygones. Here 
 are fifty thousand florins as a subvention from my 
 government. Engage an energetic impresario and 
 a first-rate troupe. Let us have plenty of masked 
 balls next carnival, and the Austrian Hymn, with full 
 chorus, on the Kaiser's birthday V The noble share- 
 holders will have none of Toggenburg's money. At 
 the last carnival ball given here, there were but six 
 maskers, and this forlorn half-dozen were dressed and 
 paid by the police. From 1859 — the year of hoped- 
 for liberation, but, as it turned out, the year of the re- 
 newal of the lease of Venetian slavery — unto the year 
 1866 La Fenice has been entirely closed, and the spi- 
 der has woven his web, and the flea has gone to sleep 
 for want of somebody to bite, in these empty boxes. 
 Empty, but not, perchance, for ever. Ere these 
 lines shall be printed, it is to be hoped and believed 
 that the emptiness of La Fenice will have become a 
 thing of the past — that the splendid house will be 
 really lighted a giorno — that a substantial King of 
 Italy will sit in the state box and listen, not to the 
 Austrian Kaiser's, but to his own national hymn — 
 and that the boxes of this historical theatre will be 
 full to overflowing of the noblest blood, the brightest 
 beauty, the keenest intellect, and the soundest worth 
 of the peninsula. 
 
 Note : — The Canticle of Simeon can be sung now, as regards these ' Empty 
 Boxes.' In November 1866 I went to a masquerade at the Fenice Theatre. 
 Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, sat in the state-box listening to the shouts 
 of ' Italia Una ' and ' Venezia Libera ' ringing through the house. They only 
 wanted Rome in '66. They have got that, now. 
 
 C 
 
FORM-SICKNESS. 
 
 There is a mysterious disease which the doctors 
 find difficult of diagnosis, and from which foreign 
 conscripts are said to suffer. They call it nostalgia, 
 or le mal du pays — in plainer English, home-sickness. 
 We have all read how the band-masters of the Swiss 
 regiments in the French service were forbidden to 
 play the Ranz des Vaches, lest the pensive chil- 
 dren of the mountains, inspired by the national 
 melody, should run home too quickly to their cows 
 — that is to say, desert. That dogs will pine and 
 fret to death for love of the masters they have lost, 
 is an ascertained fact ; and I have been told that the 
 intelligent and graceful animal, the South American 
 llama, if you beat, or overload, or even insult him, 
 will, after one glance of tearful reproach from his fine 
 eyes, and one meek wail of expostulation, literally 
 lay himself down and die. Hence, the legend that 
 the bat-men, ere they load a llama, cover his head 
 with a poncho, or a grego, or other drapery, in order 
 that his susceptibilities may not be wounded by a 
 sight of the burden he is to endure : a pretty con- 
 ceit vilely transposed into English in a story about a 
 cab-horse whose eyes were bandaged by his driver, 
 
FORM-SICKNESS. 19 
 
 lest lie should be ashamed of the shabbiness of the fare 
 who paid but sixpence for less than a mile's drive. 
 I was never south of the Isthmus, and never saw a 
 llama, save in connection with an overcoat on a cheap 
 tailor's show-card; but I am given to understand 
 that what I have related is strictly true. 
 
 If the lower animals, then, be subject to nos- 
 talgia, and if they be as easily killed by moral as by 
 physical ailments, why should humanity be made of 
 sterner stuff ? After all, there may be such things as 
 broken hearts. "With regard to home-sickness, how- 
 ever, I hold that, generally, that malady is caused 
 less by absence from home than by the depri- 
 vations of the comforts and enjoyments which home 
 affords. Scotchmen and Irishmen are to be found 
 all over the world, and get on pretty well wherever 
 they are ; but a Scot without porridge to sup, or an 
 Irishman without buttermilk to drink at breakfast, 
 is always more or less miserable. The Englishman, 
 accustomed to command, to compel, and to trample 
 difficulties under his feet, carries his home-divinities 
 with him, and has no sooner set up his tent in Kedar 
 than he establishes one supplementary booth for 
 making up prescriptions in accordance with the 
 ritual of the London Pharmacopoeia, another for the 
 sale of pickles, pale ale, and green tea, and a third 
 for the circulation of tracts intended to convert the 
 foreigners among whom he is to abide. He suffers 
 less, perhaps, from home-sickness than any other 
 wanderer on the face of the earth ; since he sternly 
 
20 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 refuses to look upon his retirement from his own 
 country as anything but a temporary exile ; he de- 
 mands incessant postal communication with home, or 
 he will fill the English newspapers with the most vehe- 
 ment complaints ; he will often — through the same 
 newspapers — carry on controversies, political or reli- 
 gious, with adversaries ten thousand miles away; and 
 after an absence from England of twenty years, he 
 will suddenly turn up at a railway meeting, or in the 
 chair at a public dinner ; bully the board ; move the 
 previous question ; or, in proposing the toast of the 
 evening, quote the statistics of the Cow-cross Infir- 
 mary for Calves, as though he had never been out 
 of Middlesex. In short, he no more actually expa- 
 triates himself than does an attache to an English 
 embassy abroad, who packs up Pall-Mali in his port- 
 manteau, parts his hair down the middle, and carries 
 a slender umbrella— never under any circumstances 
 unfurled — in the streets of Teheran. 
 
 But are you aware that there is another form of 
 nostalgia which afflicts only Europeans, and, so far 
 as I know, is felt only in one part of the world ? Its 
 symptoms have not hitherto been described, and I 
 may christen it Form-sickness. I should wish to 
 have Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Tom Taylor, and Mr. Beresford 
 Hope, on the medical board to which I submitted 
 my views on this disease ; for it is one architec- 
 turally and aesthetically occult. Form-sickness begins 
 to attack you after you have resided some time 
 — say a couple of months — in the United States of 
 
FORM-SICKNESS. 21 
 
 America. Its attacks are more acutely felt in the 
 North than in the South ; for in the last-named parts 
 of the Union there are hg and orange trees, and wild 
 jungles and cane brake — some of the elements of 
 Form, in fact. It is the monotony of Form, and its 
 deficiencies in certain conditions- — that is to say, 
 curvature, irregularity, and light and shade — that 
 make you sick in the North. I believe that half 
 the discomfort and the uneasiness which many edu- 
 cated Englishmen experience from a protracted resi- 
 dence hi the States, springs from the outrage offered 
 to their eye in the shape of perpetual flat surfaces, 
 straight vistas, and violent contrasts of colour. 
 There are no middle tints in an American landscape. 
 In winter, it is white and blue ; in spring, blue and 
 green ; in summer, blue and brown ; in autumn, all 
 the colours of the rainbow, but without a single 
 neutral tint. The magnificent October hues of the 
 foliage on the Hudson 'and in Vermont simply dazzle 
 and confound you. You would give the world for an 
 instant of repose : — for a gray tower, a broken wall, 
 a morsel of dun thatch. The immensity of the area 
 of vision is too much for a single spectator. Don't 
 you remember how Banvard's gigantic panorama of 
 the Mississippi used to make us first wonder and then 
 yawn ? Banvard is everywhere in the States ; and 
 so enormous is the scale of the scenery in this colos- 
 sal theatre, that the sparse dramatis personam are all 
 but invisible. An English landscape painter would 
 scarcely dream of producing a picture, even of cabi- 
 
22 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 net size, without a group of peasants, or children, or 
 a cow or two, or a horse, or at least a flock of geese, 
 in some part of the work. You shall hardly look 
 half a dozen times out of the window of a carriage 
 of an express train in England, without seeing some- 
 thing that is Alive. In America, the desolation of 
 Emptiness pervades even the longest settled and the 
 most thickly populated States. How should it be 
 otherwise? How should you wonder at it when, as 
 in a score of instances, not more people than inhabit 
 Hertfordshire are scattered over a territory as large 
 as France ? One of the first things that struck me 
 when I saw the admirable works of the American 
 landscape painters — of such men as Church and 
 Kensett, Bierstadt and Hart — was the absence of 
 animal life from their scenes. They seemed to have 
 been making sketches of the earth before the birth 
 of Adam. 
 
 This vacuous vastness is one of the provocatives 
 of Form-sickness. To the European, and especially 
 to the Englishman, a country without plenty of 
 people, pigs, poultry, haystacks, barns, and cottages, 
 is as intolerable as the stage of the Grand Opera 
 would be if it remained a whole evening with a 
 sumptuously set scene displayed, but without a single 
 actor. New England is the state in which, perhaps, 
 the accessories of life are most closely concentrated ; 
 but even in New England you traverse wastes into 
 which it appears to you that the whole of Old Eng- 
 land might be dropped with no more chance of 
 
FORM-SICKNESS, 23 
 
 being found again than has a needle in a pottle of 
 hay. But it is when you come to dwell in towns 
 that Form-sickness gets its firmest grip of you. In 
 a city of three or four hundred thousand inhabitants, 
 you see nothing but mere flat surfaces, straight lines, 
 right angles, parallel rows of boards, and perpen- 
 dicular palings. The very trees lining the streets 
 are as straight as walking-sticks. Straight rows of 
 rails cut up the roadway of the straight streets. The 
 hotels are marble packing-cases, uniformly square, 
 and pierced with many quadrangular windows ; the 
 railway cars and street omnibuses are exact oblongs ; 
 and to crown all, the national flag is ruled in parallel 
 crimson stripes, with a blue quadrangle in one corner, 
 sown with stars in parallel rows. Philadelphia, from 
 its rectangularity, has been called the ' chess-board 
 city ;' Washington has been laid out on a plan quite 
 as distressingly geometrical ; and nine-tenths of the 
 other towns and villages are built on gridiron li nes . 
 There are some crooked streets in Boston, and that is 
 why Europeans usually show a preference for Boston 
 over other Northern American cities ; while in the 
 lower part of New York, a few of the thoroughfares 
 are narrow, and deviate a little from the inexorable 
 straight line. In most cases there is no relaxation 
 of the cord of tension. There are no corners, nooks, 
 archways, alleys : no refuges, in fact, for light and 
 shade. In the State of Yirginia, there is one of the 
 largest natural arches in the world ; but in American 
 architecture a curved vault is one of the rarest of 
 
24 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 structures. The very bridges are on piers without 
 arches. Signboards and trade effigies, it is true, 
 project from the houses, but always at right angles. 
 This rigidity of outline makes its mark on the nomen- 
 clature and on the manners of the people. The names 
 of the streets are taken from the letters of the alpha- 
 bet and the numerals in the Ready Reckoner. I 
 have lived in G-street. I have lived in West Four- 
 teenth, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Mathe- 
 matical calculation is the basis of daily life. You 
 are fed at the hotels at stated hours ; and the doors 
 of the dining-room are kept locked until within a 
 moment of the gong's sounding. At some tables 
 d'hote, fifty negro waiters stand mute and immobile 
 behind the chairs of two hundred and fifty guests ; 
 and at a given signal uncover, with the precision of 
 clock-work, one hundred dishes. These are not 
 matters of fancy ; they are matters of fact. Routine 
 pursues you everywhere : from the theatre to the 
 church ; from the fancy fair to the public meeting. 
 In the meanest village inn, as in the most palatial 
 hotel, there is a travellers' book, in which you are 
 bound to enter your name. You may assume an 
 alias ; but you must be Mr. Somebody. You cannot 
 be, as in England, the 4 stout party in Number Six/ 
 or the 'tall gent in the Sun.' You must shake 
 hands with every one to whom you are introduced ; 
 you must drink when you are asked, and then ask 
 the asker to drink — though I am bound to say that 
 this strictly mathematical custom has, owing to the 
 
FORM-SICKNESS. 25 
 
 piteous protests of Europeans, somewhat declined, of 
 late. 
 
 If you enter a barber's shop to be shaved, a ne- 
 gro hands you a check bearing a number, and you 
 must await your turn. When your turn arrives, 
 you must sit in a certain position in a velvet-covered 
 fauteuil with high legs, and must put your feet up 
 on a stool on a level therewith. The barber shaves 
 you, not as you like, but as he likes ; powders you, 
 strains a napkin over your countenance ; sponges you ; 
 shampoos you; pours bay rum and eau-de-Cologne on 
 your head ; greases, combs you out ; and ' fixes' you 
 generally. The first time I was ever under the 
 hands of an American tonsor, I rose as soon as he 
 had laid down his razor, and made a move in the 
 direction of the washhand basin. He stared at me 
 as though I had gone mad. c Hold] on !' he cried, in 
 an authoritative accent. 'Hold on ! Guess I'll have 
 to wash you up.' That I should be c washed up ' or 
 4 fixed,' was in accordance with the mathematical 
 code. 
 
 This all but utter absence of variety of form, of 
 divergence of detail, of play of light and shade, is pro- 
 ductive, in the end, of that petulant and discontented 
 frame of mind — of that soreness of spirit — with 
 which so many tourists who have visited the Great 
 Republic have come at last to regard its civilisation. 
 As a rule, the coarser the traveller's organisation — the 
 less he cares -about art or literature — the better he 
 will get on in America. I met a fellow-countryman 
 
26 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 once, the son of an English earl, at one of the biggest, 
 most mathematical, and most comfortless, of the New 
 York hotels, who told me that he should be very well 
 content to live there for ten years. ' Why,' he said, 
 'you can have five meals a day if you like.' This is the 
 kind, of traveller, — the robust hardy strong-stomached, 
 youth, fresh from a public school, who goes to Ame- 
 rica, and does not grumble. But do you take, not a 
 travelled Englishman, but a travelled American — one 
 who has been long in Europe, and has appreciated 
 the artistic glories of the Continent ; and you will dis- 
 cover that he finds it almost impossible to live in his 
 own country, or ' board' at an American hotel. Every 
 continental city has its colony of refined Americans, 
 good patriots and stanch republicans, but who are 
 absolutely afraid to go back, to their native land. 
 They dread the mathematical system. Those who, for 
 their families' or their interests' sake, are compelled 
 to abide in the States, live at hotels conducted, not on 
 the American, but on the European system — that is 
 to say, where they can dine, breakfast, or sup, not as 
 the landlord likes, but as they themselves like. Those 
 who are wealthy, shut themselves up in country- 
 houses, or splendid town mansions, surrounded by 
 books, and pictures, and statues, and tapestry, and 
 coins from Europe, until their existence is almost ig- 
 nored by their countrymen. In no country in the 
 world are so many men of shining talents, of noble 
 mind, of refined taste, buried alive as in the United 
 States. 
 
FORM-SJCKNESS. 27 
 
 That which I call the 'Mathematical System' is only 
 another name for a very stringent and offensive social 
 tyranny ; and, did we not remember that humanity 
 is one mass of inconsistencies and contradictions, it 
 would be difficult to understand how this social des- 
 potism could be made compatible with the existence 
 of an amount of political liberty never before equalled 
 in this world. Until 1861, the American citizen was 
 wholly and entirely free ; and now that the only pre- 
 text for the curtailment of his liberties has disap- 
 peared, he will enter upon, it is to be hoped, a fresh 
 lease of freedom, as whole and unrestricted as of yore. 
 How far the social despotism spoken of has extended 
 would be almost incredible to those who have not 
 resided in America. 'Whatever you do,' said an 
 American to me on the first day of my landing in 
 the States, ' don't live in a boarding-house where you 
 are to be treated as one of the family. They'll worry 
 you to death by wanting to take care of your morals/ 
 To have one's morals taken care of is a very excellent 
 thing ; but, as a rule, you prefer to place the curator- 
 ship thereof in the hands of your parents and guar- 
 dians, or of your ghostly director, or, being of ma- 
 ture age, of yourself. ' Taking care of morals' is apt 
 to degenerate into petty impertinence and espionage. 
 One of the most eminent of living sculptors in New 
 York told me that for many years he experienced the 
 greatest difficulty in pursuing the studies incidental 
 to, and indeed essential to his attaining excellence in 
 
 7 o 
 
 his profession, owing to the persistent care taken of 
 
28 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 his morals by the lady who officiated as housekeeper 
 in the chambers where he lived. It must be pre- 
 mised that these chambers formed part of a building 
 specially erected for the accommodation of artists^ 
 and with a view to their professional requirements. 
 Our sculptor had frequent need of the assistance of 
 female models, and the c Janitress,' as the lady house- 
 keeper was called, had a virtuously indignant objec- 
 tion to young persons who posed as Yenuses or 
 Hebes, in the costume of the mythological period, for 
 a dollar an hour. She could only be induced by the 
 threat of dismissal from the proprietor of the studio 
 building to grant admission to the models at all ; even 
 then she would await their exit at her lodge gate, 
 and abuse them as they came down-stairs. Much 
 more acclimatised to models was the good sister of 
 William Etty, who used to seek out his Venuses for 
 him; but a transition state of feeling was that of 
 the wife of Nollekens, the sculptor, who, whenever 
 her husband had a professional sitter, and the day 
 was very cold, used to burst into the studio with 
 a basin in her hand, crying: 'You nasty, good-for- 
 nothing hussey, here's some hot mutton broth for 
 you.' 
 
 To recapitulate a little. Form- sickness is the un- 
 satisfied yearning for those broken lines, irregular 
 forms, and infinite gradations of colour — reacting as 
 those conditions of form invariably do on the man- 
 ners and characteristics of the people — which are 
 only to be met with in very old countries. However 
 
FORM-SICKNESS. 29 
 
 expensively and elegantly dressed a man may be, he 
 is apt to feel uncomfortable in a bran-new hat, a 
 bran-new coat and trowsers, and bran-new boots 
 and gloves ; and I believe that if he were compelled 
 to put on a bran-new suit every morning, he would 
 hang himself before a month was over, and send his 
 abhorred garments to Madame Tussaud's, to swell 
 the wardrobe in the Chamber of Horrors. The sensa- 
 tion of entire novelty is one inseparable from the 
 outward aspect of America. You can smell the paint 
 and varnish; the glue is hardly dry. The reasons 
 for this are very obvious. American civilisation is 
 an independent and self-reliant entity. It has no con- 
 nections, or ties, or foregathering s with any predeces- 
 sors on its own soil. It is not the heir of long en- 
 tailed patrimony. It is, like Rodolph of Hapsburg, 
 the first of its race. It has slain and taken possession. 
 In Great Britain we have yet Stonehenge and some 
 cairns and cromlechs to remind us of the ancient 
 Britons' acts; but in the settled j)arts of the United 
 States, apart from the Indian names of some towns 
 and rivers, there remains not the remotest vestige to 
 recall the existence of the former possessors of the 
 soil. There are yet outlying districts, millions of 
 acres square, where Red Indians hunt, and fight, and 
 steal, and scalp; but American civilisation marches 
 up, kills or deports them — at all events, entirely 'im- 
 proves' them off the face of the land. They leave no 
 trace behind; and the bran-new civilisation starts up 
 in a night, like a mushroom. Where yesterday was 
 
3 o UNDER THE SUN 
 
 a wigwam, to-day is a Doric meeting-house, also a 
 bank, and a grand pianoforte; where yesterday the 
 medicine-man muttered his incantations, to-morrow an 
 advertising corn-cutter opens his shop ; and in place 
 of a squaw, embroidering moccasins, and cudgelled 
 hy the drunken brave, her spouse, we have a tight- 
 laced young lady, with a chignon and a hooped skirt, 
 taking academical degrees, and talking shrilly about 
 Woman's Rights.* A few years since, the trapper and 
 pioneer race formed a transition stage between the 
 cessation of barbarism and the advent of civilisation. 
 The pioneer was a simple-minded man ; and so soon 
 as a clearing grew too civilised for him, he would 
 shoulder his hatchet and rifle, and move farther out 
 into the wilds. I have heard of one whose signal for 
 departure was the setting up of a printing press in 
 his settlement. 4 Those darned newspapers,' he re- 
 marked, ' made one's cattle stray so.' But railway 
 extension, and the organisation in the Atlantic cities 
 of enormous caravans of emigrants, are gradually 
 thinning the ranks of the pioneers. In a few years, 
 Natty Bumppo, Leatherstocking, the Deerslayer, the 
 Pathfinder, will be legendar}^ Civilisation moves 
 now en masse. There is scarcely any advanced guard. 
 Eew skirmishers are thrown, out. The main body 
 swoops down on the place to be occupied, and civil- 
 ises it in one decided charge. 
 
 It may be advantageous to compare such a sud- 
 
 * And I wish that she would talk more shrilly still, all over the world, 
 until those Eights are granted. 
 
FORM-SICKNESS. 31 
 
 den substitution of a settled community for a howling 
 wilderness, with the slow and tentative growth of our 
 home surroundings. European civilisation resembles 
 the church of St. Eustache at Paris, in whose ex- 
 terior Gothic niches and pinnacles, Byzantine arches, 
 Corinthian columns, Composite cornices, and Renais- 
 sance doorways, are all jumbled together. Every 
 canon of architectural taste is violated; but the 
 parts still cohere; a very solid facade still rears its 
 head ; and, at a certain distance, its appearance is not 
 inharmonious. At Cologne, in Germany, they will 
 point out to you an ancient building, here a bit of 
 Lombard, here a morsel of florid Gothic, here some 
 unmistakable Italian, and here ten feet of genuine 
 old Roman wall. There are many Christian churches 
 in Italy whose walls are supported by columns taken 
 from Pagan temples. The entire system, physical as 
 well as moral, has been the result of growth upon 
 growth, of gradual intercalation and emendation, of 
 perpetual cobbling and piecing and patching; and 
 although at last, like Sir John Cutler's silk stockings, 
 which his maid darned so often with worsted that no 
 part of the original fabric remained, the ancient foun- 
 dations may have become all but invisible, they are 
 still latent, and give solidity to the superstructure. 
 We look upon the edifice, indeed, as we would on 
 something that has taken root : — that has something to 
 rest upon. "We regard it as we -would that hoary old 
 dome of St. Peter's at Rome. We know how long 
 it took to build, and we trust that it will endure 
 
32 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 for ever. The bran-new civilisation we are apt to 
 look at more in the light of a balloon. It is very 
 astonishing. We wonder how ever it contrived to 
 rise so high, and how long it will be before it comes 
 down again ; and we earnestly hope that it will not 
 burst. 
 
 It is not necessary to avow any kind of partisan 
 predilection for one phase of civilisation as against 
 another. It is sufficient to note the fact : that Euro- 
 peans the least prejudiced, and the most ardent ad- 
 mirers of the political institutions of the United 
 States, very soon grow fretful and uneasy there, and 
 are unable to deny, when they come back, that the 
 country is not an elegant or a comfortable one to 
 look upon. I attribute this solely to aesthetic causes. 
 I do not believe that Englishmen grumble at America 
 because the people are given to expectoration, or 
 1 guessing,' or ' calculating,' or trivialities of that kind. 
 Continental Europeans expectorate quite as freely as 
 the Americans, and for rude cross questioning of 
 strangers, I will back a German against the most in- 
 quisitive of New Englanders. It is in the eye that 
 the mischief lies. It is the bran-new mathematical 
 outline of Columbia that drives the Englishman into 
 Form-sickness, and ultimately to the disparagement 
 and misrepresentation of a very noble country. In 
 many little matters of detail, American manners dif- 
 fer from ours ; but in the aggregate we are still one 
 family. Americans speak our language — frequently 
 with far greater purity and felicity of expression than 
 
FORM-SICKNESS. 
 
 33 
 
 we ourselves do — they read our books, and we are 
 very often glad and proud to read theirs. They have 
 a common inheritance with us in the historic memo- 
 ries we most prize. If they would only round off 
 their corners a little ! If they would only give us a 
 few crescents and ovals in lieu of c blocks' ! If they 
 would only remember that the circle as well as the 
 rectangle is a figure in mathematics, and that the 
 curvilinear is, after all, the Line of Beauty ! 
 
 D 
 
UNDER THE GUNS OF THE MORRO. 
 
 Theee used some years ago to be a little tobacconist's 
 shop, somewhere between Pali-Mall and Duncannon- 
 street, by the sign of the Morro Castle. It was such 
 a little shop, and it smelt so strongly of cedar and of 
 the Indian weed, that itself was not unlike a cigar- 
 box. Here I used to think a threepenny cigar about 
 the greatest luxury in which a young man of pleasure 
 could indulge ; but a luxury only to be ventured upon 
 at the occurrence of solemn festivals, and when the 
 treasures of the mines of Potosi, to the extent of 
 a few shillings, lay loose in one's waistcoat-pocket. 
 There were threepenny cigars in th ose days, and they 
 were delicious. I am afraid that the manufacture has 
 ceased, or that the threepennies have lost their fla- 
 vour, for Ensign and Lieutenant Dickeystrap, of the 
 Guards, declares that you cannot get anything fit to 
 smoke under ninepence, and that a really tolerable 
 * weed ' will ' stand you in ' eighteenpence. Prince 
 Portunatus, they say, gives half-a-crown apiece for 
 his Regalias. The Morro Castle, however, did a 
 very modest but, I believe, remunerative business 
 in cigars at from threepence to sixpence each. 
 Well do I remember courtly old Mr. Alcachofado, 
 the proprietor of the Morro — always in the same 
 
UNDER THE GUNS OF THE MORRO. 35 
 
 well-buttoned frock-coat, always with the same tall 
 shiny hat with the broad turned-up brim — always 
 puffing at, apparently, the same stump of a choice 
 Londres. It was well worth while laying out three- 
 pence at the Morro Castle; for, in consideration 
 of that modest investment, you were treated, for 
 at least fi.ve minutes, like a peer of the realm. Mr. 
 Alcachofado himself selected your cigar, and, if you 
 approved of it, snipped off the end in a little patent 
 machine, and presented it to you with a grave bow. 
 You proposed to light it; but this Mr. Alcachofado 
 would by no means permit. He drew a splint from a 
 stack in a japanned stand, kindled it at the gas-jet, 
 and with another bow handed it to you. If you 
 wished to fill the heart of Mr. Alcachofado with an- 
 guish, and to pass in his eyes for a person of the very 
 worst breeding, you would, when the splint had served 
 your turn, cast it on the floor, and trample it under 
 foot. I have seen the proprietor of the Morro glare at 
 people who did this, as though he would have dearly 
 liked to take off his curly -brimmed hat and fling it at 
 their heads. Regular customers knew well the eti- 
 quette of the Morro, which was gently to blow out the 
 tiny flame of the splint, and place it horizontally on 
 the top of the fasces in the japanned tin box. Then 
 you bowed to Mr. Alcachofado, and he bowed in re- 
 turn ;^and, taking a seat, if you liked, on a huge cigar 
 chest, you proceeded to smoke the calumet of peace. 
 Did I say that for five minutes you would be treated 
 like a nobleman ? You might softly kick your heels, 
 
36 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 and meditate on the transitory nature of earthly 
 things, in that snug little shop for nearly half an hour. 
 Threepenny cigars lasted five-and-twenty minutes in 
 those days. Austere personages of aristocratic mien 
 patronised Mr. Alcachofado. They looked like County 
 Members, masters in Chancery, Charity Commissioners. 
 They looked as though they belonged to clubs. They 
 called the proprietor Alcatchanything, without the 
 Mr. He was gravely courteous to them, but not 
 more so than to humbler patrons. I remember that 
 he always took in the second edition of the Globe. 
 I have, in my time, bespoken it, I think, not without 
 fear and trembling, from a Baronet. They were af- 
 fable creatures, those exalted ones, and talked sedate 
 commonplaces about the House, and the crops, and 
 the revenue, until I used to fancy I had land and 
 beeves and a stake in the country. There was only 
 one absolutely haughty customer. He wore a spencer 
 and gaiters, and sometimes swore. He smoked a 
 costlier cigar than the ordinary race of puffers ; and 
 one had to rise from the big cigar chest while Mr. 
 Alcachofado, a shining bunch of keys in hand, like a 
 discreet sacristan, unlocked this treasure-coffer, and 
 produced regalias of price. Yet even this haughty 
 man in the spencer gave me a bow once when I 
 brushed by him in the lobby of the House, where I 
 had been waiting two hours and a quarter on a, night 
 when Sir Robert Peel was ' up,' in the vain hope of 
 getting into the strangers' gallery with an Irish 
 member's order. The haughty man thought he knew 
 
UNDER THE GUNS OF THE MORRO. 37 
 
 me. I felt so proud that I had my hair cut the very 
 next day, and determined, like Mr. Pepys, to 'go 
 more like myself.' A grave company we were at 
 Mr. Alcachofado' s. Now and then, on Opera nights, 
 dandies in evening dress would stroll in to smoke a 
 cigarette. There was great scandal one evening — it 
 was Grisi's benefit — when a tall young man, with a 
 white cravat and a tawny moustache, ordered Mr. 
 Alcachofado to l open him a bottle of soda, and look 
 sharp.' Those were his very words. There was a 
 commotion among the customers. Soda-water ! Was 
 this a tobacconist's and fancy stationer's in the Clap- 
 ham-road ? As well might you have asked the beadle 
 of St. George's, Hanover- square, for hot whisky-toddy 
 between psalm and sermon. Mr. Alcachofado, under 
 the circumstances, was calm. He gave the tall young 
 desperado one look, to wither him, and in slow and 
 measured accents, not devoid of a touch of sarcasm, 
 replied, C I sell neither soda-water, nor ginger-beer, 
 nor walking-sticks, nor penny valentines, sir.' The 
 customers grimly chuckled at this overwhelming re- 
 buke. There was nothing left for the tall young man 
 but to withdraw ; but, as I was nearest the door, I 
 am constrained to state that as he lounged out he re- 
 marked that the ■ old guy,' meaning Mr. Alcachofado, 
 4 seemed doosid crusty.' 
 
 He is gone, this Grandison of the counter and till 
 — gone, seemingly, with most other professors of the 
 grande maniere. The modern tobacconist is loud 
 voiced and obtrusive ; proposes to send you home a 
 
38 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 box of the ' Cabana Kings ' of which you have scarcely 
 tasted one ; and, ere you have been in his shop 
 five minutes, gives you a tip for the Two Thousand 
 Guineas. This was not Mr. Alcachofado's way of 
 doing business. By-the-by, why wasn't he a Senor ? 
 But he betrayed no symptoms of Iberian extraction ; 
 and when, seeing an engraving of the Morro Castle 
 itself on one of his cedar boxes, I strove to draw him 
 out, and asked him if the picture resembled the place 
 itself, he replied, ambiguously, that he had not visited 
 foreign parts — adding, after a moment's pause, that he 
 did not approve of their ways. Whence his Spanish 
 name, then ? Whence anybody's name? I dealt with 
 a greengrocer once who had the self-same appellation 
 as the last prime minister of Constantine Paheologus. 
 How Mr. Alcachofado had come to enter the tobacco 
 business — unless he was a retired Custom-house 
 officer — was to me a mystery. There was a dim 
 something about him that always led you to fancy 
 that before he had dealt in cigars, he had been in 
 the Church. 
 
 The Morro Castle had to me always a fascinating 
 sound. There were three boys at the school at 
 Turnham-green, where I completed my education — 
 that is to say, where on the last day of my last 6 half 
 I began to discover that I didn't know anything — 
 three Spanish Creole boys, all hailing from Havana. 
 They kept very close together, and aloof from the rest 
 of the school, and wrapped themselves up in Castilian 
 pride as in cloaks ; indeed, one of them subsequently 
 
UNDER THE GUNS OF THE MORRO. 39 
 
 admitted to me, that, on leaving Cuba, his papa had 
 given him two special cautions : to beware of the 
 ' Estrangeros,' and not to show them — 'ensefiar' — 
 the Spanish tongue. We, too, were rather shy of 
 them at first ; for there was a received tradition 
 among us, that all foreign boys, when moved to anger, 
 stabbed. Yery unjustly we christened the youngest 
 Creole, Dagger; his little brother, Bodkin; and the 
 third, who was a tall lean lad with glittering eyes, 
 Carving-knife. I think a good deal of nonsense — as 
 could be proved by the police reports and the Old 
 Bailey sessions papers — has been talked about the 
 ' un-English ' nature of the crime of stabbing. It is 
 not the custom to carry deadly weapons on the person 
 in England, for the reason that the laws for the "pro- 
 
 O / jl 
 
 tection of life and property are very stringent, and, in 
 the main, efficiently administered; but 1 never heard of 
 a drunken savage Englishman, who could get hold of 
 a knife in a row, icho icouldnH use it; nor, as regards 
 the softer sex, are the biting off the nose of an adver- 
 sary, and the searing of her face with a red-hot poker 
 quite ' un-English' or un-Irish practices. 
 
 Our schoolmaster, who was an eccentric instructor, 
 half Pestalozzi andhalf Philosopher Square, had an idea 
 that all Spanish children were weaned upon tobacco, 
 and absolutely permitted these three Creole lads to 
 smoke : on condition, however, that they should not 
 light up their papelitos until night-time, when the 
 other boys went to bed. How we used to envy them, 
 as, marching in Indian file to our dormitories, we could 
 
40 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 see those favoured young Dons enrolling their squares 
 of tissue-paper, preparatory to a descent into the play- 
 ground and a quiet smoke ! The demoralisation among 
 the juvenile community, caused by this concession to 
 Spanish customs, was but slight. One or two of us 
 tried surreptitious weeds on half-holiday afternoons ; 
 but the Widow Jones in Chiswick-lane did not keep 
 quite such choice brands in stock as did Mr. Alcacho- 
 faclo of the Morro Castle ; and Nemesis, in the shape 
 of intolerable nausea, very soon overtook us. It is 
 astounding, at fourteen years of age, how much agony 
 of heart, brain, and stomach, can be got out of one 
 penny Pickwick. Pestalozzi Square, Ph. Dr., very 
 wisely refrained from excessive severity on this head. 
 He made it publicly known that a boy detected in 
 smoking would not necessarily be caned, but that on 
 three alternate clays for a week following the discov- 
 ery of his offence, he would be supplied at 1 p.m. 
 with a clean tobacco-pipe and half an ounce of prime 
 shag in lieu of dinner. We had very few unlicensed 
 smokers after this announcement. 
 
 It was my singular good fortune, ere I left the 
 tutelage of the sage of Turnham-green, to be ad- 
 mitted to the acquaintance, and almost to the inti- 
 macy, of the three Creoles. I had somewhat of a 
 Spanish-sounding name and lineage, and they deemed 
 me not wholly to belong to the 'Estrangeros ;' at 
 all events, they talked to me, - showed ' me some Cas- 
 tilian which was subsequently very useful to me, 
 and told me as much as I hungered and thirsted 
 
UNDER THE GUNS OF THE MORRO. 41 
 
 to know about the Morro Castle. For, long before I 
 began to deal with Mr. Alcachofado, I had pondered 
 over a picture of this fortress, and mused as to what 
 its real aspect might be. So, softly and gratefully as 
 dried mint falls upon pea-soup, did the tales of these 
 Spanish boys about the rich strange island of Cuba fall 
 upon my willing ear. I saw it in its golden prime, 
 all sugar and spice, and redolent of coffee-berries and 
 the most fragrant of cigars. I basked in the rich full 
 light of the tropical sun. I saw the caballero gravely 
 pacing on his Andalusian jennet ; the lazy negro paus- 
 ing as he cut the sugar-cane to suck the luscious tubes ; 
 the senora in her mantilla; the senorita with her fan. 
 I revelled in a voluptuous dream of the torrid clime, 
 where you ate fifteen oranges before breakfast, and a 
 plateful of preserved cocoa-nut at breakfast; where 
 you never failed to take a siesta in your hammock 
 during the noontide heats ; where full evening costume 
 consisted of a suit of white linen, a Panama hat, and 
 a guitar; and where, with any little circumspection, 
 you might win the hundred thousand dollar prize in 
 the lottery. I longed to go to Havana, or 4 the Havan- 
 nah,' as it was termed in our time. Who has not so 
 longed to visit strange countries when he was young, 
 and imaginative, and had no money ? Byron's words 
 used to drive us crazy to see Sestos, and Abydos, and 
 Athens. Anastasius, or the Memoirs of a Greek — 
 why does not some one republish that pearl of pica- 
 roon romance ? — made us tremble with eagerness to 
 see the Fanal of Constantinople and the Bagnio of 
 
42 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 Sm}Tna ; and, later in the day, Eothen sent us wild to 
 catch a gazelle, and bathe in the Dead Sea, and read 
 the Quarterly Review in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. I 
 cannot say the same of Gil Bias. Unsurpassed as Le 
 Sage's great work is, as a feat of story-telling, it is to 
 me singularly deficient in local colour. The Robbers' 
 Cave might be in Italy, or in England in the clays of 
 Robin Hood. The Archbishop of Granada might be 
 resident at Barchester Towers. I know Doctor San- 
 grado. He lives in Bloomsbury. Xow Don Quixote, 
 on the contrary, is odorous of the real Spanish garlic 
 from the first to the last page. But Don Quixote 
 is not a boys' book, whatever you may say. It is 
 a book for men. 
 
 Well, the great whirling teetotum of life spun 
 round, and one day it fell, spent, athwart a spot on 
 the map marked c United States of America.' I packed 
 up my bundle, and crossed the Atlantic ; but with no 
 more idea of visiting Havana than I have, at this 
 present writing, of going to Afghanistan. I am not 
 ashamed to confess that I had but a very dim notion 
 indeed respecting the topographical relation in which 
 2sew York stood towards the Island of Cuba. I 
 think there must have been something wrong in the 
 manner they taught boys geography in our time ; 
 it was too sectional; you were made to swallow Mer- 
 cator's Projection in isolated scraps of puzzles; and if 
 your eye wandered towards the Gulf of Mexico when 
 it should have been intent on the Bay of Fundy, 
 they boxed your ears. We used to learn all about 
 
UNDER THE GUNS OF THE MORRO. 43 
 
 the West Indies, and Wilberforce, and " Clarkson, and 
 Granville Sharpe ; but no stress was laid on the fact 
 that Cuba, and St. Domingo, and St. Thomas, were 
 likewise West India Islands ; and they were never 
 mentioned in connection with North America. I 
 think Admiral Christopher Columbus, or the Spanish 
 Consilio de las Indias, must take some of the blame 
 in this matter. What on earth made them call those 
 American, or rather Columbian islands, Indian ones? 
 I have never surmounted the early perplexity which 
 beset me on the subject, and to this day it is to me 
 incomprehensible why the passage from Halifax to 
 Bermuda should be such a short and easy one; you 
 ought to go round the Cape, surely, to the Indies. 
 
 Round again went the teetotum, and the tip of its 
 tiny staff pointed to the Southern Atlantic. 4 Havana' 
 was inscribed on the uppermost facet, xlgain I packed 
 my bundles, and, taking passage in a United States 
 mail steamer, sped past Charleston, the which luckless 
 city General Gillmore was then actively engaged in 
 warming with Greek fire, and which Northern 
 preachers were cheerfully and charitably comparing 
 every Sunday to Sodom and Gomorrah. On the 
 third clay we were close on the Gulf Stream, and the 
 usual feat of parlour, or rather gangway magic, was 
 performed by a boatswain's mate, who lowered a 
 bucket of water over the side, and bade us plunge 
 our hands into it. It was cold as ice. Twenty min- 
 utes afterwards he lowered the bucket again, drew up 
 more water, and bade us dip. We did, and the water 
 
44 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 was tepid, almost warm. There was an increase of 
 thirty degrees in temperature, and we were in that 
 stream which an irate American politician once 
 threatened to dam up and divert from the shores of 
 England, thus leaving us ' out in the cold/ and freez- 
 ing perfidious Albion to the glacial mean of Spitz- 
 bergen. 
 
 Three times — I do not understand the mysteries 
 of navigation — we crossed the Gulf Stream. We 
 skirted the coast of Florida so closely that we could 
 see the pines that made a grim horizon to that 
 swampy shore — so closely, that you might almost 
 fancy you could see Secession in arms shaking its 
 fists at the Stars and Stripes we carried. All this 
 country was, at the time to which I refer, a land 
 tabooed and accursed in Northern eyes. It was the 
 coast of a rebellious state. Below St. Augustines, 
 half way between that and Key West, we saw the 
 coral reefs and the Everglades. Coral reefs, 1 may 
 observe, do not make so pretty a show on the coast 
 of Florida as the material does, in the form of brace- 
 lets and earrings, in Mr. Phillips's windows in Cock- 
 spur-street. In fact, a prudent shipmaster keeps as 
 far away from the coral reefs as he possibly can. 
 
 We should also have sighted Cape Florida Light 
 and Carysfort Light; but the Confederates having 
 carefully put the lights out, to favour blockade run- 
 ning and perplex their enemies as far as they could, 
 it was rather ticklish navigation after sunset. How- 
 ever, it is but a few days' voyage from New York to 
 
UNDER THE GUNS OF THE MORRO. 45 
 
 Cuba, and we had a tight ship and great confidence in 
 our captain. Occasionally, when the look-out man 
 signalled a sail, there was a slight exhibition of ner- 
 vousness among the passengers. The loyal immedi- 
 ately assumed the stranger to be the Alabama — not 
 yet scuttled by the Kearsage off Cherbourg — and in- 
 dulged in dire forebodings that within two hours the 
 steamer's chronometers would be ticking in the cabin 
 of Captain Raphael Semmes, C.S.A., the ship burnt 
 or bonded, and themselves carried off to some port 
 in the White Sea or the Indian Archipelago, thence 
 to find their way to their destination as best they 
 could. The disloyal, of whom I am afraid we had a 
 considerable proportion among our passengers, gene- 
 rally jumped at the conclusion that the speck on the 
 horizon, momentarily growing larger, was a Yankee 
 gunboat, specially detached from the blockading 
 squadron to overhaul us. What sudden declarations 
 there were of ' whole hog' Union sentiments ! — 
 what divings into state-roms, there presumably to 
 make such little matters as revolvers, Confederate 
 commissions, and rebel mail-bags, snug! The cap- 
 tain was a discreet man, Union to the backbone, but 
 not inveterate against the opposite party. We had one 
 passenger on board who, for all the privacy in which 
 he kept, and the very large cloak in which he wrapped 
 himself, was unmistakably, inside and out, Southern 
 Greyback and Secesh. To this gentleman in political 
 difficulties, I heard our worthy captain remark one 
 morning, ' My Christian friend, I'll tell you what it is : 
 
46 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 as soon as we get inside the Morro I should advise you 
 to clear out of one of the starboard ports, and never 
 stop running till we've got steam up again. The smell 
 of Uncle Sam's mail -bags ain't good for you. It ain't, 
 indeed. ' The which, I take it, was very sensible, and 
 at the same time very kind-hearted counsel. 
 
 All this time, while we were eating and drinking, 
 and lounging and smoking, and dawdling over books 
 and newspapers, and card-playing, and listening to 
 the grand pianoforte in the saloon, which was exeni- 
 plarily punished at least a dozen times a day by Mrs. 
 Colonel Spankie and Miss Alexandra McStinger, lady 
 passengers — and pretending that the time hung heav- 
 ily on our hands, when, to tell the truth, sluggards as 
 we were, we revelled in our laziness — there was going 
 on all around us, and to a certain extent in our very 
 selves, a curiously phenomenal process called Transfor- 
 mation. You have read poor Hawthorne's delicious 
 book; you have readi^ms^ (with an English c crib';) 
 you have seen Lucas Cranach's picture of the Fontaine 
 de Jouvence in the Berlin gallery ? "Well, we and our 
 surroundings had become transformed. I had left 
 New York in the middle of January, and in the rigid- 
 est throes of a Northern winter. The snow lay thick 
 in the streets. They were skating on the lake in the 
 Central Park. There were midnight sleighing parties 
 on the Bloomingdale-road. The steamers on the North 
 river had frozen fringes on the water-lines of their 
 hulls, like the callous raggedness thrown out from 
 the ends of a fractured bone ; and you could see the 
 
UNDER THE GUNS OF THE MORRO. 47 
 
 very shapes of the ferry-boats' keels cut out in the 
 quickly parting ice that gathered about the landing- 
 place. I had left Pier No. Seventy-seven, bottom of 
 I forget which street, swathed in furs and woollens, 
 and shivering through all my wrappers. I heaped 
 mountains of extraneous coverlets in my berth that 
 night. It was not quite so cold next day. On the 
 third it was positively mild. On the fourth morning, 
 taking my ante-breakfast walk on deck, I remarked 
 with astonishment that I was clad in a full suit of the 
 very thinnest nankeen, and that I wore a very broad- 
 brimmed straw hat. Nankeen white linen, or thin blue 
 flannel, was the only wear among my fellow-passen- 
 gers, and the ladies had become positive Zephyrs. The 
 smallest children on board testified very conclusively 
 indeed as to the weather having become warmer, by 
 removing their apparel altogether, unless restrained 
 by parents or nurses; and then I remembered that I had 
 kicked off all the bed-clothes during the night, and 
 had had troubled dreams bearing on iced cider-cup. 
 We had all become Transformed. Where yesterday 
 was a fire shovel, to-day was a fan. We looked no 
 more on a gray angry wintry ocean, but on a summer 
 sea. It seemed ten years ago since there had been 
 any winter; and yet that was only the day before 
 yesterday. 
 
 For four -and -twenty hours did we sigh and 
 swelter, and complain of the intolerable heat, and 
 yet think it the most delightful thing in the world. 
 We dined at four o'clock, as usual ; but the purser, 
 
48 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 if he contracted for our meals, must have made 
 rather a good thing of our repast that day. The 
 first course was scarcely over, before seven-eighths 
 of the diners rushed on deck to see the highlands of 
 Cuba. Yonder, rather blue and indistinct as yet, 
 was the Pan of Matanzas. That day we dined no 
 more ; but, there being a ' bar' on deck, forward, with 
 a New England bar -keeper of many virtues and 
 accomplishments in his profession, sundry cheerful 
 spirits adjourned to his little caboose, and, with 
 steadfast and smiling conviviality of countenance, 
 did 'liquor up' on Bourbon and old Rye, till the Pan 
 of Matanzas, to which we had come so close that it 
 was clearly visible to the naked eye, must have been, 
 to the convivialists, more indistinct than ever. 
 
 We were yet many miles from Havana; but by 
 the help of strong opera-glasses, and lively conver- 
 sation, and a glorious tropical sunset, they were 
 the shortest miles I ever knew, by land or sea. 
 Coasting along the northern shore of Cuba from 
 Matanzas westward, by high hills and white houses 
 which, without any intervening beach or sand, came 
 right down to the water's edge, like the castle - 
 crowned vine-hills of the Rhine, we sighted, just be- 
 fore sundown, the Morro Castle itself: a great mass 
 of dun -coloured rock, and tower, and battlement, 
 and steep, of which the various parts seem to have 
 grown into one another, like the rocky convent of 
 the Sagra di San Miguel, so that you could scarcely 
 tell which was castle and which crag. From its 
 
UNDER THE GUNS OF THE MORRO. 49 
 
 summit floats the flag of the Most Catholic Queen, 
 blood-red and gold; and in front, and in the sea, 
 like a tall grenadier on guard, stands the Morro 
 Lighthouse. No Confeds have put that out. We 
 pass between the Morro and a promontory called the 
 Punta, and can see a harbour, forested with masts, 
 and a city all glancing and twinkling with light. 
 We revel in thoughts of landing ; of abandoning our 
 keys to a commissionnaire, and leaving the examina- 
 tion of our luggage until the morrow morning; of 
 rushing to an hotel ; of bathing and supping, and 
 going to the Tacon Theatre, or eating ices at La 
 Dominica, after the band had done playing on the 
 Plaza de Armas. Bless you, we know all about 
 Havana by this time. I seem to have been familiar 
 with the place for years. Did not Dagger and Bod- 
 kin and eke Carving-knife tell me all about it? But 
 the Captain of the Port of San Cristobal de la Habana 
 is a great man — a very great man, under correction 
 of the Captain-General Dulce, be it spoken — and his 
 laws are stringent. The sunset gun has been fired; 
 the last notes of the warning trumpets have died 
 away from the ramparts. We are just permitted to 
 snuggle into the outer harbour ; but there is no 
 landing for us until six a.m., and under the guns of 
 the Morro we are bound to remain all night. A very 
 few years ago, even this privilege would not have 
 been granted us, and we should have been forced to 
 turn our heads seaward, and anchor in the roads. 
 It was tantalising, certainly ; but still it was 
 
 E 
 
50 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 exceedingly pleasant, and. no one felt inclined to 
 grumble. It was something, at least, to know that 
 the huo;e engines were at rest, and that we should 
 hear their churning and grinding, their panting and 
 trembling, no more, until, like Poor Jack in Dibdin s 
 song, we ' went to sea again. 7 So all the call was 
 for coffee and cigars; and we idled about the deck, 
 and speculated on what might be going on in the 
 innumerable tenements in which the lights, now dim, 
 now bright, were shining. Then out came the moon, 
 like a great phantom of greenish, white, and spread 
 her arms right over the city of Havana. We could 
 make out the hoary towers of the cathedral, and the 
 church where is the tomb of Christopher Colombus ; 
 we could see the long slanting shadows cast by the 
 beetling guns of the Morro on the rubbled walls. 
 Boats came and went on the glassy waters of the 
 harbour. There were lights in the port-holes of the 
 ships too. What was going on there, I wonder ? 
 Skipper drinking cold rum-and-water. First officer 
 playing a quiet rubber with the surgeon, the super- 
 cargo, and dummy. Purser making up his accounts; 
 foremast men drinking Sweethearts and Wives, in the 
 round-house. Everybody glad that the voyage is 
 over, save, perhaps, that poor Northern lady in the 
 captain's state-room, propped up with pillows, affec- 
 tionately tended by that little band of Sisters of 
 Charity who are going to New Orleans, and who is 
 dying of consumption. Even she, perchance, is grate- 
 ful that the restless engines no longer moan and 
 
UNDER THE GUNS OF THE MORRO. 
 
 5i 
 
 labour, and that to-morrow she may land, and die in 
 peace. 
 
 As ' good nights' and ' buenas noches' cross each 
 other in the harbour, you begin to wish you could 
 find a friend to take a second in i All's well.' For 
 the waning moon now deserts you, and only the 
 twinkling lights shine out from the black masses of 
 buildings. The lights, too, are growing fewer, and 
 ever since you came into port — which was at about 
 eight o'clock — you have heard from time to time 
 gusts of wild martial music from the shore. These 
 gusts, the captain tells you, are the strains of the 
 military bands playing in the Plaza de Armas. Hark ! 
 a most tremendous crash! then what a quaint }^et 
 plaintive flow of melody. Is that a Seguidilla, or a 
 Cubana, or one of the hundred variations of the Jota 
 Aragonese? Now, comes another crash; the cym- 
 bals have it clearly; the bassoons have given out; 
 'tis the big drum that is making all the running; 
 the cymbals are nowhere; bah, it is a dead heat, 
 and the grosse caisse and the plated dishes come 
 in together. Now, the .sounds have changed their 
 direction. The soldiers are marching home to their 
 barracks. Now, the wild sounds grow fainter ; now, 
 they die away altogether, and Havana is left to 
 silence and to me. 
 
 I walked the deck until long after the ship was 
 wrapped in darkness — all save the illumined binna- 
 cles and my fellow deck-walkers' cigar-tips. It was 
 
 not at all the kind of night for going to bed. It 
 
52 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 was, the rather, a night on which to stroll and stroll, 
 and indulge in the deleterious habit of smoking, and 
 wonder how many broadsides from the guns of the 
 Morro it would take to blow you out of the water, 
 and try to remember one of the movements of the 
 Jota Aragonese, and at last, softly stealing into the 
 saloon, and quite disdaining state-room berth, to 
 fling yourself on a couch, and dream till morning of 
 Mr. Alcachofado and the three young Creoles of 
 Turnham-green. 
 
 Hasta Manana, In my next I will relate some- 
 thing cogent as to what ' Manana ' means in this part 
 of the world. 
 
THE HUMOUES OF HAVANA. 
 
 The morning, you may be sure, did not find me a 
 sluggard on my couch in the saloon. Never rose a 
 lark, or a landscape-painter on his first sketching-tour 
 in Wales, with more alacrity than did I from the 
 steam-packet's scrubby velvet sofa. Early bird as I 
 was, there had been even lighter sleepers; and the 
 ship, above and below, was full of joyous life. Dur- 
 ing the few hours of darkness, too, that process of 
 Transformation I lately spoke of had been making 
 rapid progress. I had fallen to sleep, it is true, in 
 Spanish waters, but in Anglo-Saxon company, but I 
 woke up on board a caravel belonging to the 
 Spanish Armada. The grave, sonorous, and dignified 
 Castilian — noblest and most Komanesque of tongues 
 — resounded on every side; and although the day 
 wanted several hours of breakfast -time, the blue 
 filmy fumes of the cigar itos were floating about the 
 cabin like aromatic gossamer. The consumption of 
 chocolate was immense. Only yesterday we had 
 been content with an early morning cup of coffee ; but 
 chocolate is the sole recognised Spanish desayuno, 
 or ' break-fast,' nor, with a glass of cold water and a 
 cigarito afterwards, does it make you so very bilious. 
 
54 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 Or is it that your liver becomes, on your entrance 
 into these torrid climes, so utterly disorganised, that 
 nothing can make you more bilious, save the yellow 
 fever, which kills you? 'If in doubt, take a drink,' 
 says the American proverb. You had better give 
 chocolate the benefit of the doubt, and drink that; for 
 although made so thick that a spoon will well-nigh 
 stand upright in the cup, it is a most delicious and 
 refreshing beverage. I noticed, too, that several of 
 our transatlantic fellow-passengers, in compliment to 
 the climate and the Spanish flag, had substituted 
 chocolate for their habitual 4 morning glory,' or cock- 
 tail; in fact, one gentleman, used to these latitudes, 
 informed me that he had i swore off" alcohol alto- 
 gether, until when returning from New Orleans, 
 whither he was bound, he should be north of Cape 
 Florida again ; ' and then,' he concluded, c I guess I 
 will change my breath, and nominate my p'ison,' — a 
 prudent resolve, and one that Englishmen as well as 
 Americans would do well to imitate in the tropics. 
 Yellow Jack is a bitter foe, and swamp fever a fear- 
 some scourge ; but I will back Old Rye and brandy- 
 pawnee to sweep off more Anglo-Saxons in a week, 
 than the vomito or the fever will do in a month. 
 
 Tables and chairs covered with oranges — come 
 from none could tell precisely where ; but it seems to 
 rain oranges in Havana — and the presence of sundry 
 officials in suits of white linen or faint blue stripe, 
 with huge Panama, hats, helped to complete the idea 
 of Transformation. Are you aware of the beauties of 
 
THE HUMOURS OF HAVANA. 55 
 
 a Panama hat ? It is of fine straw — straw so fine and 
 so exquisitely plaited, that it appears to be of one 
 united glossy nature. It is as soft as silk, and as 
 strong as chain-mail, and as elastic as caoutchouc. 
 If you are caught in a shower of rain, and your Pan- 
 ama gets wet through, you have only to wring it out 
 as though it were a towel, and hang it on your walk- 
 ing-stick to dry, and in a quarter of an hour it will 
 have regained its pristine shape. The Spaniards de- 
 clare that a Panama is shot-proof, and an infallible 
 protection against sunstroke; but of these assertions 
 I have my doubts. The life of a Panama hat may be 
 measured by that of a raven. It is supposed never 
 to wear out. At all events, there is a cunning hatter 
 in New York, who, for ten dollars, will undertake to 
 return to you, as good as new, a Panama which is 
 twenty years old, and has been in the wars, and ship- 
 wrecked, and thrown into a lime- kiln, a tan-pit, and a 
 bucket of tar. This peerless hat is not to be pur- 
 chased at a mean price. It is the dearest head-gear 
 manufactured. Ked-skinned maidens have intoned 
 whole cantos of Indian epics while they plaited and 
 sewed together those minute circles of straw. A good 
 Panama will stand you in from fifty to seventy-five 
 pesos de oro — from ten to fifteen pounds sterling. 
 
 And now, on this first of tropical mornings, did 
 the steamer's state-rooms give up their semi- dead. 
 Whole families of Seiloras and Sefioritas made their 
 appearance in shiny black and pink silks, and low 
 mantillas, and pink stockings, and white satin shoes, 
 
56 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 and colossal fans, ready for any amount of flirtation, 
 serenade-hearing, and bull-fight witnessing. Where 
 had those Seiloras and Senoritas been for the last five 
 days ? On their backs, I trow, in their berths, screech- 
 ing piteously when the steamer pitched ; moaning dis- 
 mally when she rolled; imbibing chlorodyne, cognac, 
 tea, and other nostrums against sea-sickness, and call- 
 ing upon many Saints. Our Lady de los Remedios 
 might be the best to invoke under such circum- 
 stances, perchance. 
 
 There is an immensely stout old lady in violet- 
 coloured satin, with a back-comb as high as the horn 
 of Queen Philippa in old illuminations, a burnt-sienna 
 countenance, a cavalry recruit's moustache, a bright 
 green umbrella, and an oaken casket clasped with 
 brass under one arm. This is the old lady, I appre- 
 hend, to whom the stewardess used to take in such 
 tremendous rations of stewed beefsteak, fried bananas, 
 and bottled ale every day at dinner-time. She suf- 
 fered awfully. Her cries for ' Cerveza Inglesa ' were 
 incessant. She was troubled in her mind one after- 
 noon, when we had a chopping sea on, and sent for 
 one of the Sisters of Charity; but I am sorry to say 
 that nurse and patient did not agree, and that the 
 good sister was speedily dismissed with unhandsome 
 epithets. Sister Egyptiaca being of Irish extraction, 
 fresh from an orphanage in New York,— whence she 
 was going, good little creature, in perfect peace and 
 contentment, to risk her life in the fever-haunted wards 
 of a New Orleans hospital — and speaking nothing but 
 
THE HUMOURS OF HAVANA. 57 
 
 English, and the old lady only talking Spanish, may 
 have had something to do with their misunderstand- 
 ing. However, the old lady is all right now. She is 
 very voluble; she has given the steward a golden 
 ducat; and he has kindled a match for her, and she 
 has begun to smoke a cigarette. It is reported that 
 the oaken casket with the brass "clasps is full of dia- 
 monds. The stewardess says, she always kept it under 
 her pillow during the voyage. She looks a rich old 
 lady; comfortably quilted with ounces, moidores, and 
 pieces of eight. I connect her in my mind with a 
 huge sugar estate and teeming gangs of negroes. I 
 would rather be her Overseer than her Slave, I think. 
 It is worthy of remark, as another element in the 
 Transformation we have undergone, that our talk is 
 now all of a metallic coinage. Five days ago, nobody 
 had anything but greenbacks. The stewards won't 
 look at greenbacks now. Five days ago, the pas- 
 senger who had hoarded a silver dollar was quite a 
 lion; he who had an English sovereign hanging to 
 his watch-chain was made much of; and one thin, 
 dry New Englander, who was absolutely the owner 
 of an American gold double eagle — the handsomest 
 coin in the world — kept it in a wash-leather case, like 
 a watch ; would only exhibit it on pressing solicita- 
 tion ; and, I am led to infer, made rather a good thing 
 of it by taking the precious piece forward, and allow- 
 ing the ' hands ' to smell it at five cents a sniff. But 
 what cared we for paper money now ? Piles of gold 
 suddenly made their appearance. Little bills for 
 
58 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 stimulants were paid in five-dollar pieces bearing the 
 effigy of Isabel Seguncla. For the first time in my 
 life I saw those numismatic parallels to Brobdingnag 
 and Lilliput — to dignity and impudence — the gold 
 dollar, which is about the size of an English silver 
 penny, and the gold doubloon, or ounce, which, to the 
 dazed and delighted eye of the possessor, looks as 
 large as one of King Croesus's chariot wheels, but is 
 in reality about the diameter of a crown-piece, and is 
 worth three pounds ten shillings sterling. They say 
 Havana is the dearest city in the world ; and I cannot 
 help thinking that the costliness of living there is 
 mostly due to the fact of the ounce being held to 
 many intents and purposes the financial unit. It is 
 the Creole sovereign. If you stay at a friend's 
 country-house and his body- servant has valeted you, 
 you give the man an ounce; if you bet on a cock- 
 fight, you bet an ounce ; if a bull-fighter has won your 
 approbation, you send him -an ounce ; if the prima 
 donna at the Tacon takes a benefit, you purchase a 
 stall and pay an ounce — or as many ounces as your 
 admiration for the prima donna prompts you to dis- 
 burse: A whole lottery-ticket — an entiero, as it is 
 called — costs an ounce. If you hire a volante and 
 two horses for the day, the driver very coolly de- 
 mands an ounce for his fare : in short, I should im- 
 agine that the only wild animal in Cuba must be the 
 Ounce. ' I call that man a gentleman,' I once heard 
 a German settler in Havana remark, ' who can afford 
 to lose at monte or tressilio, every day of his life, four 
 
THE HUMOURS OF HAVANA. 59 
 
 or five ounces.' Four or five ounces! Ingots and 
 goldbeaters' hammers! to what a Tom Tiddler's 
 ground had I come ! 
 
 I went on deck, where everything was noise r 
 bustle, and Transformation, and where they seemed 
 already to be taking in oranges, bananas, and cocoa- 
 nuts, as a return cargo. The skipper only remained 
 untransformed. He wore the same fluffy white hat, 
 the same long-skirted bottle-green coat with the same 
 blue-black velvet collar, and the same shepherd's-plaid 
 trousers in which he had stood imposingly on the 
 paddle-bridge of his ship, foot of pier Number Some- 
 thing, New York city, five days since. He had a 
 heart of oak, this skipper of ours, and I believe was 
 an excellent seaman and navigator; but I could never 
 divest myself of the impression that he had been con- 
 cerned in dry goods, or even a wooden nutmeg fac- 
 tory, before he had taken to going down to the sea in 
 ships. He had made, I daresay, fifty trips to Cuba, 
 but he couldn't speak Spanish yet. He pressed the 
 doctor into his service, to act as interpreter in a slight 
 dispute with the health officer. ' Ain't posted up in 
 his lingo,' he unaffectedly remarked. 
 
 I looked over the side, and drank in a spectacle 
 the most gloriously picturesque I had ever beheld. 
 I have travelled a good deal; but there are many 
 spots, even on the map of Europe, which to me are 
 still terra incognita. I have never been to India. I 
 have never been in Australia. Looking out upon 
 the crowded port of Havana, I was reminded irresis- 
 
60 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 tibly of the market-scene in Masaniello — the Morro 
 Castle doing duty for Vesuvius. We were close 
 upon a quay swarmed with sunburnt varlets in red 
 nightcaps, in striped nightcaps, in broad flapping 
 straw hats, and some with silken kerchiefs of gay 
 colours twisted round their heads. Nearly all wore 
 gaudy sashes round their loins. They were bare- 
 armed and bare-legged : their shirts were open at the 
 breast, and, if they had jackets, those garments hung 
 loose upon their shoulders, or with the sleeves tied in 
 a knot before them. Dark elf locks, black glittering 
 eyes, earrings, and little dangling crosses round the 
 neck ; baskets of fish and baskets of fruit, crates of 
 crockery, coops of poultry; cries of gratulation, wel- 
 come, derision, defiance, quarrels never ending in 
 blows, general hubbub and confusion; and over all 
 the hot, hot Sun and the cloudless vault of blue. 
 
 But the market-scene in Masaniello soon faded 
 away to nothingness. Havana began to assert its own 
 individuality. I saw a town whose houses were 
 painted in all the colours of the rainbow. I saw long 
 lines of gray and crumbling bastions, and curtains 
 and ravelins built in old time by jealous Spanish vice- 
 roys, and which, I learned, not without pleasure, 
 General Dulce, the then Captain-General, was begin- 
 ning to demolish, to give the pent-up city of Havana 
 elbow-room. From all these bastions and ravelins 
 the morning drums and trumpets of the garrison 
 were braying and rub-a-dubbing at the most alarming 
 rate. The port seemed as full of shipping as the 
 
THE HUMOURS OF HAVANA. 61 
 
 Pool of London ; and what scant show of blue water 
 there was to spare was packed close as Cowes harbour 
 at a regatta with the shore-boats. Pretty little skiffs 
 they are, with a lateen sail, often decorated with a 
 full-length portrait of San Cristobal, the patron saint of 
 Havana, and with a gaily striped awning, aft. From 
 where we lay was a good twenty minutes' row or sail 
 to the custom-house. Were the Americans to gain 
 possession of Cuba — a consummation which, for many 
 reasons, is most devoutly to be wished, for they 
 would be bound to commence their occupation by the 
 abolition of slavery — they would have twenty piers 
 built in the inner port in less than six months, and 
 the passenger steamers would come quietly up to the 
 pier-foot and discharge their passengers on the 
 wharves without any boats at all; but this is not the 
 Spanish way of doing business. 'Mariana,' they 
 would answer, were this necessary reform pressed on 
 their attention. The authorities are of opinion that 
 the harbour boatmen have a right to live as well as 
 other folks ; so you are not allowed to proceed from 
 your ship to the shore without the intermediary of a 
 boatman, to whom you pay a dollar, and as much 
 more as he can argue you out of. He never threatens, 
 never is rude : his endeavours to obtain an additional 
 four and twopence cannot even be called begging. He 
 puts the case to you as one between man and man ; 
 he appeals to your sense of justice, your self-respect, 
 your honour. You are a caballero ; he is a caballero. 
 This — here he rests on his oars a moment, or objur- 
 
62 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 gates Pepe, his assistant, who is putting on too much 
 sail — will at once lead you to accede to his demand. 
 The name of the boat which conveyed me to the 
 shore on this said morning was 4 La Rectitud.' The 
 boatman was a most unconscionable rogue ; but there 
 was something in the calm assumption of dignity in 
 the name on the stern, which drew the dollars from 
 us as though we had been two-years children. I am 
 reminded that when I use the first person singular, I 
 might with greater propriety use the plural ; for in 
 this trip to Havana I made one in a party of three. 
 I had two genial travelling-companions, both fellow- 
 countrymen, in whose mirthful fellowship I enjoyed 
 to the full all the humours of Havana, and with one 
 of whom I was destined to travel to a stranger and 
 more distant land, of which, in process of time, I pur- 
 pose to discourse. But, as these travelling com- 
 panions happen to be alive and merry — as they will 
 probably read these papers, and as one in the Old 
 and the other in the New World are as well known as 
 Charing Cross* — I feel that it would be impertinent 
 to dra^ them into a rambling and fantastic narration, 
 
 O O 7 
 
 full of perverse conceits and most egregious fancies ; 
 and I hesitate, too, to veil them under thin pseudo- 
 
 * I may partially lift the veil as regards tliem, now. One of my tra- 
 velling companions (alas), Don Eustaquio Barron, whom to know was to love, 
 and whose princely hospitality I enjoyed during my stay in Mexico, is dead. 
 Of mingled British and Spanish lineage — he used laughingly to say that he 
 scarcely knew whether it was in English or in Spanish that he thought — his 
 friends declared that he had Two Hearts, and that both were of gold. He was 
 continually travelling about, doing kind and generous and noble things ; and 
 gentle and simple, rich and poor, alike bewailed his untimely death. 
 
THE HUMOURS OF HA VAN A. 63 
 
 nyms or provoking dashes. Let me, then, the old 
 Babbler, be solely responsible for all I put my egotism 
 to : and as for any other travellers, not my immedi- 
 ate companions, whom I may touch upon, do you set 
 them down as mere brain-worms, abstractions, and 
 creatures of the imagination. Do you know that I was 
 once most savagely handled by the Affectionate Review 
 for having made an 'unmanly attack' on the character 
 of a lady, in depicting the airiest shadow in the world 
 of a harmless spinster, by name Miss Wapps, with 
 whom I journeyed due north, as far as Cronstadt, six- 
 teen years ago ? To please critics of the affectionate 
 school, all travellers should be blind, and deaf, and 
 dumb, and should write their words in invisible ink, 
 and publish them in coal-cellars. 
 
 I, then, Babbler, having, after many shouts, and 
 with much loss of inward animal moisture, selected 
 a boat from among upwards of fifty applicants, saw 
 my luggage thereinto, and free pratique having been 
 granted by the officer of health, was rowed to shore. 
 I should not have minded that health-officer's boat 
 as a conveyance, but for the thought that people 
 whose business is mainly with the quarantine and the 
 lazaretto usually carry about with them the seeds 
 of the cholera or the yellow fever, and die thereof. 
 It was a most luxurious shallop, with an awning 
 striped crimson and white, a rich carpet, and cushioned 
 benches. The crimson and gold banner of Spain, 
 with the crown on, floated at the stern; and under 
 the awning the health officer lolled at his ease, clad 
 
64 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 in bright nankeen, a red cockade in his Panama, and 
 smoking a very big paro. My passport, a docu- 
 ment with a very big red seal, granted me by Mr. 
 Archibald, her Majesty's Consul at New York, had 
 been left with the purser on board the steamer, and 
 would duly be transferred to the Havana police 
 authorities. The journey to the shore is very pictu- 
 resque, though somewhat tedious. One man rows; 
 another attends to the sail; both are smoking and 
 occasionally squabble; and you, the passenger, are 
 expected to steer. If you happen to be totally 
 unacquainted with that art and mystery, the possi- 
 bility of your running foul of other craft in the port 
 is not a very remote one; and sometimes, while the 
 boatmen are quarrelling or singing a little duet about 
 4 Juani-i-i-ta, la chi-i-i-quita !' the boat lets you know 
 that she has something to say for herself, by heeling 
 over and capsizing. But I believe no passenger in a 
 shore-boat was ever known to be drowned before he 
 had paid his fare ; and if you steer badly, the helms- 
 man in the next boat may be steering worse; and 
 the two negatives make an affirmative, saying 'yes' 
 to the question whether you are to get safe to the 
 custom-house. I suppose there are persons who can 
 steer by intuition. I know there are people who can 
 drive mail phaetons, mix salad, and compose cha- 
 rades, without ever having been taught. It is a gift. 
 One is born to it, as to roasting meat and playing 
 the overture to Semiramide on the chin. 
 
 The custom-house was an apartment as big as 
 
THE HUMOURS OF HAVANA. 65 
 
 a barn — all the rooms in Havana are huge. The 
 floor was intolerably dirty ; but the roof was a mag- 
 nificent open timber one : the timber being in 
 solid beams of delightfully fragrant cedar. So you 
 had the Augean Stables underneath, and Solomon's 
 Palace in all its glory above — not an uncommon con- 
 trast in Cuba. The custom-house officers gave us 
 very little trouble. I addressed the first gentleman 
 with a cockade I met as c Seilor ' — I should perhaps 
 have called him 4 Caballero ' — begged a cigar light 
 from him, and slipped a dollar into his hand. He 
 opened one of my trunks, let a little tobacco-smoke 
 into the orifice to fumigate it, and then dismissed me 
 with a very low bow. Then I was handed to a little 
 grated wicket, where another official, who was smok- 
 ing so desperately that he sat, as it were, in the 
 midst of a fleecy cloud, like one of Sir James Thorn- 
 hill's allegories in the Painted Hall at Greenwich, 
 asked me my name and country, and delivered to 
 me a printed license to reside in Cuba for the space 
 of three calendar months : which was very kind on 
 his part, seeing that I only intended to remain in the 
 island until the West India mail-packet came in from 
 St. Thomas. This license cost a good deal of money, 
 four or five dollars, I think ; and I noticed that when 
 the official had filled up the form, he was a very 
 long time in sanding it from a small pepper-caster, 
 and looked very hard at me. I know, from long ex- 
 perience, what being intently regarded by an official 
 of the Latin race means, and so c executed' myself 
 
66 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 without delay. We parted the best of friends, and I 
 was a dollar the poorer. 
 
 I was now free to proceed to an hotel; but this 
 was much more easily said than done. In. the first 
 place, there were no public conveyances about, save 
 the volantes, which are vehicles far too ethereal to 
 carry heavy luggage ; in the next, to find any toler- 
 ably comfortable hotel in Havana is a labour which, 
 had it been imposed on Hercules, might have caused 
 that strong man to be a little less conceited about his 
 triumph over the Erymanthian boar and the eleven 
 other difficulties. The wealthy and splendid city of 
 Havana is worse off for hotels than any other in the 
 civilised world. The Antilles, perhaps, cannot be 
 held as belonging entirely to civilisation ; but, as the 
 ' Queen' of the Antilles, I think Havana might main- 
 tain at least one decent inn. There is an hotel in 
 the Plaza Isabel Segunda, close to the Tacon The- 
 atre, kept by M. Legrand, a Frenchman ; but I had 
 heard dismal reports as to its cleanliness, and it 
 was situated, besides, beyond the walls, whereas I 
 wanted to be near the Plaza de Armas and the sea, 
 There is a very excellent boarding-house, clean, com- 
 fortable, and well appointed, kept by Mrs. Alme, an 
 American lady; but her accommodation is limited, 
 and her establishment is nearly always as ' complete* 
 as a Parisian omnibus on a wet day. I have been 
 told, also, that there is a slight drawback to the 
 comfort you enjoy at Mrs. Alme's, in the fact of the 
 house being the chosen resort of consumptive invalids 
 
THE HUMOURS OF HAVANA. 67 
 
 from the United States, who have fled from the as- 
 perity of the northern winter to the warmer sky of 
 Cuba. But they are often in the penultimate stage 
 of the disease when they land; they don't get better; 
 and it is apt to spoil your dinner — so I was told — 
 when, inquiring for your next neighbour of the day 
 before, who talked so charmingly of the last opera, 
 and so hopefully of the coming bull-fight, you are 
 informed that he has been dead for some hours, and 
 will be buried this sundown in the Potters' Field. 
 You grow accustomed to this at last ; for it may be 
 said, without exaggeration, life in these regions of 
 vomito and fever resembles life on board a man-o'- 
 war in war-time. You are very merry with Jack and 
 Tom overnight ; and on the morrow Jack is ' knocked 
 over/ and Tom 'loses the number of his mess,' and 
 you say 'Poor Jack!' 'Poor Tom!' Their clothes are 
 sold by auction before the mast, and you forget all 
 about the sad occurrence. 
 
 With the exception of Legrand's and Mrs. Alme's, 
 the inns of Havana are all very like what I should 
 imagine the fondas and posadas of Old Spain, away 
 from Madrid, to be. I had heard such dreadful 
 stories about them, that, blinking the pulmonary 
 drawback, I determined to try Mrs. Alme's. By 
 this time, with the assistance of several willing and 
 grinning negroes, who danced with delight at the 
 gift of a very small silver coin — I never saw any 
 copper money in Havana — my luggage had been 
 piled on a machine closely resembling one of those 
 
68 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 miniature drays in England, on which a very small 
 barrel of beer is drawn by a very big horse, con- 
 ducted by a very big man. The beast of draught 
 was in this case a bullock, with a tremendous yoke, 
 not over his shoulders, but right across his forehead. 
 The poor animal certainly earned his bread by the 
 sweat of his brow; and, to judge from his lean flanks 
 and protruding bones, I should infer that the jerked 
 beef he might furnish, subsequent to his demise, 
 would be dear at threepence a pound. The con- 
 ductor, who sat the horse side-saddle fashion, was a 
 wrinkled old negro whose wool had turned white, 
 and whose wicked old head — he was such a nasty- 
 looking old man — was surmounted by a ragged straw 
 hat. He was singing, of course, occasionally varying 
 that recreation by skinning and gobbling the pulp of 
 some oranges, of which he had a pocketful, and, on 
 the whole, took things very easily. I presume he 
 was a slave. I was bound to walk behind this sable 
 drayman, for, although I might have taken a volante, 
 was it not my duty to follow my luggage? And, 
 but for an uncomfortable fancy that if I stepped on 
 the dray and sat aside my trunk I should look like a 
 traitor being drawn to execution at Tyburn on a 
 sledge, I would have patronised that mode of locomo- 
 tion. 
 
 There was no obtaining admission at Mrs. Alme's. 
 Intending visitors had written for their rooms a 
 month or six weeks in advance; and the mansion 
 was as full of phthisis as a Ventnor lodging-house. 
 
THE HUMOURS OF HAVANA. 69 
 
 Next I tried the ' Fonda de America/ a few streets 
 off. There was some room in that hotel, which was 
 under the arcades of a crumbling old portal, not 
 unlike the Covent-garden Piazzas, with the aroma of 
 all the Spanish onions, leeks, and shallots of the ad- 
 joining market hanging about the staircase: — a des- 
 potism of garlic tempered by tobacco-smoke. The 
 landlady was a German — fair, fat, and twenty-five, 
 and was basking in a rocking-chair, enjoying the 
 smoke and the smell of onions with apparently in- 
 tense gusto. The perfume was almost like Father- 
 land. She had one huge apartment to let. It was 
 not vacated yet; but the occupant, a French com- 
 mercial traveller, who had seemingly just risen, and 
 who was carefully oiling and curling himself before a 
 glass, most courteously permitted me to inspect the 
 room. He was quite affable, indeed, and was good 
 enough to inform me that a packet I saw lying on 
 a side-table contained some of the genuine Amaran- 
 thine soap of her Majesty Queen Yictoria, patented 
 and gold medalled at the Universal Exhibition of 
 1855, and that he was just then clearing through the 
 custom-house eighteen cases of Bully's Toilet Vine- 
 gar. Ere I quitted his quarters, he likewise enounced 
 the opinion that the island of Cuba was un fichu 
 pays, and that the landlady of the Fonda de America 
 was a Megere. Heaven bless the Frenchman, wher- 
 ever in the world's weary journey you find him! 
 He is always easy, sprightly, confidential, and con- 
 versational. Bless him for his grimaces, his airy 
 
70 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 philosophy, his harmless, naive vanity. He is, with 
 the exception of the Englishman, the best travelling 
 comrade in the world; only, for an Englishman to 
 speak to a stranger to whom he has not been intro- 
 duced, the stranger must be in the cramp-stage of 
 the cholera morbus, or on the point of having his 
 brains blown out by robbers. Then, but then only, 
 the Briton becomes own brother to the man he 
 doesn't know. But the Frenchman waits for no 
 such crisis. 
 
 There was room at the ' America,' but not for all 
 of me. You will bear in mind that I was in tripli- 
 cate; and so raw was I then to Hispano- American 
 usages, that I imagined that a traveller with money 
 in his pocket had a right to a bedroom to himself. 
 I had yet to learn that our English word comrade is 
 derived from three Spanish words — 'camar a dos,' 
 double-bedded lodgings. I took a bath at the 
 America, for the good of the house and my own (the 
 oftener you bathe before eating, and the more seldom 
 afterwards, in the tropics, the better it will be for 
 you) ; and then the dray, and I and the negro, who 
 was a spiteful old man, and had lost his temper fear- 
 fully by this time, resumed our peregrinations. We 
 tried, I think, at ' Los Dos Amigos,' ' La Reyna de 
 Inglaterra,' ' La Corona de Espafia,' and other hostel- 
 ries; but the answer in all of them was 'no room, 7 
 or 'not room enough.' I was, for the nonce, El 
 Seilor 'Ferguson,' and not fated to lodge anywhere; 
 and the negro sitting side-saddle on the bullock 
 
THE HUMOURS OF HAVANA. 71 
 
 began to spit and swear in Spanish, like an infu- 
 riated old cat. 
 
 But to me the time was not all lost. Far from 
 it. I had begun to study the humours of Havana. 
 The time had worn away, it was ten o'clock, and the 
 city had burst into the full blaze of tropical life. 
 The Anglo-Americans rail at Havana, because the 
 streets are so narrow and so tortuous ; but ah ! from 
 ten to four p.m., how grateful you are for narrow 
 devious lanes, in lieu of broad staring thoroughfares! 
 You have the inestimable blessing of Shade. Now 
 and then you must take, perforce, a hot bath, and 
 frizzle for a moment in the sunshine as you cross a 
 plaza; or, turning a corner, the sun, suddenly espy- 
 ing you, cleverly shoots a ray at your head, which 
 pierces your brain well-nigh as an arrow would : but 
 you are soon in the shade again. The streets of 
 Havana are perhaps as clean as those of most southern 
 European towns. The principal sanitary inspectors 
 are named Garlic and Tobacco-smoke. They are at 
 least determined to keep the other stenches down. 
 The roadway is littered and untidy, but who should 
 complain of litter composed mainly of orange-peel, 
 the rinds of pine-apples, cocoanut shells, fragments 
 of melons, and exhausted Indian corn-cobs ? I must 
 go to Covent-garden again for a comparison. Don't 
 you know that delightful litter between the grand 
 avenue and the Old Hummums — -I mean that spot 
 where the orange-boxes are bursting, and the almonds 
 are tumbling out of their sacks, and the Irish market- 
 
72 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 women sit in the June afternoon shelling peas. The 
 scene is untidy, but grand. I always think of the 
 Garden of Eden run to seed, in consequence of the 
 gardener, Adam, having been turned away for stealing 
 apples. 
 
 There is but a ridiculous apology for a foot-pave- 
 ment in these streets. The average width of the 
 trottoir certainly does not exceed twelve inches. It 
 is a kerbstone with nothing to curb. I have fancied 
 this exiguity of path to be a deliberate device on the 
 part of the municipality to keep up the practice of 
 politeness in Havana, for of course, if you meet any 
 one on the trottoir proceeding in a contrary direction 
 to your own, you naturally step into the kennel to 
 allow him to pass. You don't give him the wall, you 
 give him the totality of the pavement. This hypo- 
 thesis, I fear, however, is as fantastical as the one sug- 
 gested, that the narrowness of the streets in Havana 
 is also due to premeditation, and is designed to allow 
 opposite neighbours to light their cigars from each 
 other's weeds. Small as is the space between the 
 houses, they preserve, nevertheless, a tolerably per- 
 pendicular elevation ; whereas in the town of Algiers, 
 which in the narrowness of its thoroughfares closely 
 resembles Havana, the houses are built on the lean-to 
 principle. Each story seems on the brink of toppling 
 over; and at the roofs, opposite houses nearly kiss 
 each other. I have heard that the Moorish architects 
 adopted this style of construction from notions of 
 economy. You see that all but the very narrowest 
 
THE HUMOURS OF HAVANA. 73 
 
 strip of sky must be shut out. Why ? The heavens 
 above are for ten hours out of the twenty -four 
 one blazing basin of burnished copper. The Cubans, 
 however, being wealthy, can afford to leave a wider 
 space between their houses ; but while the sun 
 shines they shut him out with vast awnings of 
 particoloured stuffs. This aspect of Havana would 
 delight the heart of an Edgington. The populous 
 part of the city is one huge marquee. 
 
 Ah, and how shady the shops are! There are 
 some as dark as the purser's store-room in a cockpit. 
 You enter them, not only to shop, but to bestow 
 yourself in a rocking-chair, to nod, and to take, if you 
 please, forty winks. The shopkeeper never dreams 
 of disturbing you. He puts your nap in the bill ; 
 that is to say, he adds fifty per cent to the price of 
 the articles you wish to purchase. Of course you beat 
 him down. Your bargain for everything in Havana 
 mayor o menor, wholesale or retail. The apothecary 
 who sells you a blue pill expects an amicable little 
 tussle over the price. What matter ? It fills up the 
 time ; and unless you are concerned in sugar or coffee, 
 you are sure to have plenty of time hanging on your 
 hands. 'Are there no beggars at your gate? are 
 there no poor about your lands ? the Poet Laureate 
 might indignantly ask. Well, the poor are slaves, 
 and are very fat and shiny, and seemingly well cared 
 for (which does not in the least militate against 
 slavery being a stupid, blundering, and accursed an- 
 achronism, of which the Spaniards themselves are 
 
74 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 heartily sick), and as for the beggars, I never saw 
 any in Havana; and, had I met one, I should cer- 
 tainly not have presumed to offer him less than a 
 golden dollar. 
 
 The tradespeople seldom, if ever, put their names 
 over their shop-fronts. They adopt signs instead — 
 not painted or plastic ones as the Americans and the 
 Germans do, but simply written inscriptions usually 
 implying some ethical allusion. 'La Rectitud,' our 
 old friend of the boat, is much patronised by the 
 mercers ; but that tradesman in the Calle O'Reilly 
 must have had queer ideas of rectitude when he 
 charged me seventy-five dollars for a dress professedly 
 made of pina or pine-apple fibre, but which subse- 
 quently turned out to be a silk grenadine from Lyons, 
 not worth three guineas. Then you have ' La Pro- 
 bidad,' 'La Integridad,' 'La Buena Fe,' 'La Con- 
 sciencia' — all special favourites with the gentlemen 
 of the narrow width and ell wand. Their signs are 
 very pretty, but methinks they do profess too much. 
 Some are simply arrogant, ' Todos mi elogian '■ — I am 
 praised by everybody; ' Mi famo per l'Orbo vuela' — 
 my fame is universal : these are over the cigar- shops. 
 The photographer has a flourish about ' El Sol de 
 Madrid ' and ' El Kayo de Luz ;' one studio went by 
 the name of ' El Relampago ' — the flash of lightning ; 
 and I never could refrain from laughing at the motto 
 adopted by the proprietor of a shop for the sale of 
 lucifer nfatches — 'La Explosion.' 
 
 And now, if you please, picture these thread-my- 
 
THE HUMOURS OF HAVANA. 75 
 
 needle thoroughfares, not one of them a third so wide 
 as Hanway-yard, shady to intensity, but yet rich in 
 the tender tints of reflected light, and semitones steal- 
 ing through the diaphanous awnings overhead, with 
 here and there a burst, a splash, an ' explosion/ of 
 positive light and colour — where the sun has found 
 a joint in the armour of awning, and made play with 
 his diamond dart ; picture these lanes thronged from 
 morning till night with sallow Spanish Creoles, in 
 white linen and Panamas, and negroes and negresses 
 gaudy, gaping, and grinning, according to the wont of 
 our African brothers and sisters. Now and then a 
 slouch-hatted, black-cassocked priest, now and then a 
 demure Jesuit father ; many soldiers in suits of i seer- 
 sucker,' a material resembling thin bed-ticking, straw 
 hats, and red cockades ; many itinerant vendors of 
 oranges, lemonade, sugar-plums, and cigars, for though 
 every third shop is a tobacconist's, there is a lively 
 trade in cigars done in the streets. The narrowness 
 of the foot-pavement affects you little. You may walk 
 in the roadway without inconvenience. There is no- 
 thing to run over you save the bullock-drays, whose 
 rate of speed rarely exceeds a mile an hour, and the 
 pack-mules, which are so laden with fresh-cut Indian 
 corn-stalks for fodder that only their noses and the 
 tips of their tails are visible beneath their burdens, 
 and they look like animated hayricks — and the vo- 
 lantes, which are so light and springy that they would 
 scarcely crush the legs of a fly if their wheels passed 
 over him. 
 
76 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 I confess that these several and sundry humours 
 of Havana were, when first I viewed them, subordi- 
 nated to my intense desire to find an inn in which I 
 could take mine ease ; and I was on the point of de- 
 siring the old negro (who was frantic with rage by 
 this time) to turn his bullock's head to the city gates 
 and journey towards Legrand's, when the odour of a 
 decidedly first-rate cuisine attracted me, and ulti- 
 mately induced me to put up at an inn in the Calle 
 del Obispo. To tell the truth, I wanted my breakfast, 
 desperately. 
 
HAVANA CIGARS. 
 
 She wakes. She is all alive. I have got my 
 Muse fast at Florian's, on St. Mark's Place, Venice, 
 and on a sumptuous summer night. The great full 
 moon hangs over our heads, imminent, like the sign 
 of the World Turned Upside Down. I have regaled 
 my Muse with iced coffee and macaroons. She has 
 even partaken of a bicchierino of maraschino. A 
 ' bicchierino' — isn't it a dainty name for a dram ? 
 Then, rubbing my hands in uncharitable glee, to 
 think that yonder white -jerkined Tedesco officers 
 have nothing choicer to smoke than three-halfpenny 
 ' Virginias' — the actual Virginia of their birth being, 
 probably, the Terra di Lavoro, or the Island of Sar- 
 dinia — I produce from that private case, which has 
 hitherto eluded the lynx eyes of the German Zoll- 
 verein, the Spanish Duana, and the Italian Dogana, a 
 real cigar — a Regalia Britannica, ' Plor fina, Maduro : 
 Havana, 1864.' My Muse lights up at once, and 
 pours forth memory in clouds. You need not be 
 in the least shocked at the idea of this young lady 
 from Parnassus, otherwise a most decorous person, 
 graduate of the Hyde-Park College, and who has 
 been nursery-governess in a nobleman's family, in- 
 
78 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 dulging in a cigar as big as a B.B. pencil, at ten 
 o'clock at night, in front of a public coffee-house. 
 Between ourselves be it mentioned, there are many- 
 ladies in Venice who are, to the full, as inveterate 
 smokers as the ladies of Seville. My Muse, perhaps, 
 is the only high-born dame who puffs in the open 
 Piazza; but then, she is invisible to the vulgar, and 
 an Immortal. You shall scarcely, however, take an 
 evening airing in your gondola without observing 
 numerous fair and graceful forms at their open win- 
 dows, or in their balconies, enjoying, not the pretty 
 puerility of the papelito, but the downright and 
 athletic exer citation of the full-grown cigar. About 
 sundown, on most evenings, our gondoliers row us 
 from the Ponte de' Fuseri to the Giardini Pubblici. 
 We strike the Grand Canal a little below the garden 
 of the Palazzo Reale. At the left-hand corner of the 
 canal from which we emerge there is a pretty little 
 mansion, Venetian Gothic in style, and", for Venice, 
 in excellent repair. It is precisely the little mansion 
 which, if its bodily eradication, shipment to Liver- 
 pool, and removal to London, on the American sys- 
 tem of rollers, was judged impossible, I should like 
 to cause Mr. Barry, R.A., to build for me in Curzon- 
 street, Mayfair; and then, with the title-deeds of the 
 freehold in my strong-box, and the bins of my bijou 
 house well ballasted with curious hocks and peculiar 
 clarets, I would lead a chirping life, entertaining my 
 friends, drinking even mine enemy's health, and 
 wishing him better luck the next time he went out 
 
HAVANA CIGARS. 79 
 
 stabbing. At a charming oriel window of this tiny 
 palazzetto there is sure to be, about this sunset hour, 
 a plump, jovial-looking little lady — very like the 
 portraits of the Countess Guiccioli — and who is pull- 
 ing at a cigar at least half an inch longer and stouter 
 than my Regalia Britannica, I think the plump 
 little lady smokes ' ambasciadores ' — a kind of cigar 
 which you hesitate about consuming habitually unless 
 your income exceeds fifteen thousand a year. In 
 about an hour after sunset we glide back from the 
 Giardini towards the Rialto, and there, at the same 
 oriel window, we are sure to find the same plump 
 little lady pulling away as vigorously as ever at her 
 weed. It is not, I am afraid, the same cigar. Even 
 in an c ambasciador ' there are not more than forty- 
 five minutes' steady and continuous smoking. It has 
 grown dark by this time, and through the open 
 casement I can see a delicious little salon with a 
 frescoed ceiling, containing that 'copiosa quantita 
 d' amoretti' which Cardinal Maurice, of Savoy, was so 
 anxious that Albano, the painter, should supply him 
 with. I see a chandelier, glittering with crystal pen- 
 dents and wax-lights — the good old candles of yellow 
 wax, not the meagre, bleached, half-hearted gentili- 
 ties the chandlers sell us too often nowadays. I 
 see walls with silken draperies, and choice pictures, 
 and rare Venice mirrors, with frames like a whole 
 horticultural show carved in gold. The furniture of 
 the salon is of precisely the pattern I should wish 
 Messrs. Jackson and Graham to send me into Curzon- 
 
80 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 street : — sparing no expense, and asking no questions 
 about settlement. I hope that the eyes which have 
 thus dived into the penetralia of a Venetian dwelling- 
 house are not impertinent. Where is the use of 
 having pretty things, if you don't allow the world 
 outside [to admire them ? and are not all the really 
 nice people who possess pretty things always ready 
 to exhibit their treasures? Finally, at the window 
 of this enchanting chamber, amidst flowers in boxes 
 and flowers in vases, and with a sprightly little 
 Maltese dog snoozing in her sleeve, is the prettiest 
 picture of all — the plump little lady, blowing her 
 placid cloud : 
 
 ' Se non son piii Sovrana, 
 Son sempre Veneziana,' 
 
 she seems to be warbling between her whiffs, in that 
 endearing dialect of the Adriatic which is as soft as 
 creme a la vanille, and a great deal healthier. 
 
 I salute you, noble lady of Venice ! Did I dare 
 to launch into familiarity — did I presume to indulge 
 in slang, I might say what I think — that you are a 
 Brick. In any case, I prefer you to Medora in her 
 bower, to Mariana in the South, and to the Lady of 
 Shalott. I would bow to you, Lady mine, were not 
 bowing under the coved roof of a gondola almost as 
 difficult a feat as bowing in bed. More than once 
 the little lady has waved a smoke-spiral amicably 
 towards me. There is a certain freemasonry among 
 smokers. I am thinking that to-morrow evening I 
 shall wave my handkerchief to her, when I am vio- 
 
HAVANA CIGARS. 81 
 
 lently pulled back on to the cushions of the gondola, 
 and the boatmen are instructed in a passionate femi- 
 nine voice to row faster homewards. There is no 
 harm, surely, in wishing to wave one's handkerchief 
 to such a remarkably plump and jovial-looking little 
 lady. 
 
 Yes, red-sashed boatman, even with my ears 
 boxed, take me home ; and then, when I have filled 
 my inkhorn and nibbed my pen, take me, if you 
 please, back to Havana. Never mind the heat. We 
 shall be hotter before we are through this day's work. 
 Never mind the dust. The sea-breeze will blow 
 some time after gun-fire, and if you can exist un- 
 smothered until then, you will be refreshed. Let us 
 hail the first volante, whose dark and merry-faced 
 postillion invites us to enter, and drive to the cigar 
 manufactory, world famous, and unequalled in the 
 world, perhaps, of c La Hija de Cabana y Carvajal.' 
 For shortness, it is called ' Cabana's.' 
 
 There is no longer a palpable Cabana in the flesh. 
 Firms remain, but partners pass away. Is there a 
 Child ? Is there a Fortnum, or, haply, a Mason ? Is 
 there a Chevet, or a Widow Clicquot ? Did you ever 
 see Swan and Edgar walking together ? There has 
 not been a Cramer for twenty years ; and what con- 
 temporary man ever knew Boodle? The actual 
 representative of the great Cuban house of Cabaiia 
 is the Seiior Anselmo del Yalle. I had had the 
 advantage of a special introduction to this gentleman 
 
 G 
 
82 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 at his retail establishment ere I visited his factory. 
 The monarch of Nicotine sat enthroned among odo- 
 riferous cedar boxes and cigars yet more fragrant, 
 serene and sweet-smelling, like an old Turk mer- 
 chant in the Bezesteen among his shawls, and chi- 
 bouks, and spices, and rose-attar. A lissom, dusky, 
 oily-looking man, if I remember aright, with a lus- 
 trous, bush-like moustache, and who, reclining in a 
 low chair, and in a full suit of white linen, was gently 
 perspiring. The chief monarch of the great mosque 
 of Araby the blest, this Seilor Anselmo del Valle. 
 What a halcyon existence ! A mattress of lotus-hair 
 — a continuous and diaphanous drapery of grateful 
 incense hanging round. Nothing to do all day long- 
 save to loll in a rocking-chair, and take gold ounces 
 in exchange for boxes of superfine Cabanas. For the 
 cigar business is essentially a ready-money one. So 
 many cigars as you make you can sell ; and so many 
 cigars as you sell do you get paid for, in Havana, on 
 the nail. I have often thought that to be a brewer 
 of pale ale at Burton-on- Trent must be the acme of 
 human felicity. You have only to go on brewing 
 barrels of beer, and an ever-thirsty public will go on 
 buying and paying. Dr. Johnson had an inkling of 
 this, when, taking stock, as executor under Thrale's 
 will, of the great brewhouse which was afterwards to 
 become Barclay and Perkins's, he told Topham Beau- 
 clerk that he had at last discovered the ' source of 
 boundless prosperity and inexhaustible riches.' When 
 
HAVANA CIGARS. 83 
 
 I went to Havana, however, I was fain to place the 
 vat in the second rank. The superlative degree I 
 reserve for the cigar trade. 'Boundless prosperity 
 and inexhaustible riches' are, in the case of a Cabana 
 or an Anselnio del Yalle, associated with something 
 even more productive of happiness. The cigar mer- 
 chant can pass, at least, eighteen hours out of the 
 twenty-four in the delicious occupation of smoking 
 his own cigars. JSTow the Burton brewer, however 
 fond he may be of the famous decoction of hops, 
 malt, and the water of the Mendip Hills, fermented 
 on the placid banks of Trent, can scarcely go on 
 drinking his own pale ale all day long. Nature 
 wouldn't stand it. The brain and stomach would 
 alike revolt from this perpetual state of beer. As a 
 rule, traders are averse from consuming their own 
 wares. Some, sagacity warns off : others, satiety 
 sickens. Your provincial innkeeper does not share 
 with a very good grace, and with a chance guest, 
 the bottle of red ink, logwood, and spirits of tur- 
 pentine which he sells as claret, and charges ten and 
 sixpence for. The grocer's apprentice soon grows 
 tired of filching figs and munching raisins — ah! how 
 nice they were when, as children, we were allowed 
 to stone the plums for the Christmas pudding, and 
 stole more than we stoned ! — on the sly. The pastry- 
 cook's girl runs to the counter, indulges in a revel 
 of patties and jam tarts ; but in a fortnight she be- 
 comes palled, and a wilderness of sweets rarely invites 
 
84 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 her to browse. It is different with the merchant 
 who sells good cigars. He knows when he is well 
 off, and makes the most of his opportunity. i Carpe 
 diem' is his motto, as it was that of the Regent 
 Orleans. Heart- complaint, paralysis, liver-complaint, 
 dyspepsia, cerebral disease in its thousand-and-one 
 forms, may menace those who smoke too much ; but 
 the merchant knows when he has a good article on 
 hand, and continues to smoke the choicest weeds in 
 his stock. A cigar merchant who did not smoke 
 seems to me quite as much of a monster as that 
 French bibliomaniac of the eighteenth century, whom 
 La Bruyere knew, who had a library of eighty thou- 
 sand volumes, splendidly bound, and who confessed 
 that he never read a book. 'I think/ says La Bruyere, 
 in his mention of this person, c that he only amassed 
 volumes because he liked the smell of new leather. 
 But why, then, didn't he turn tanner instead of book- 
 worm?' 
 
 I have a distinct impression that after Seilor An- 
 selmo del Valle had squeezed my hand — he squeezed 
 everybody's hand — on my being presented to him, he 
 left in my palm a Cabana regalia. They give away 
 cigars in Cuba as they give away pinches of snuff 
 elsewhere. I w r ent into the back warehouse to choose 
 a case of prensados for ordinary smoking, and the 
 warehouseman gave me a handful just to try what 
 their flavour might be like. These are among the 
 'obsequios.' When I got home to mine inn that 
 
HAVANA CIGARS. 85 
 
 evening, I found even a more splendid 4 obsequio' from 
 the Cabana factory, in the shape of a beautiful crystal 
 casket framed in gilt bronze, inscribed with my name 
 — ' Caballero Ingles' being added as a dignity — and 
 containing one hundred of the superlative cigars 
 known as ' excepcionales.' These are said to be worth 
 in England half-a-crown apiece, and are, indeed, only 
 manufactured in order to be dispensed to crowned 
 heads or presented as l obsequios' to tourists. I am 
 ashamed to say that — sentiments of gratitude apart — 
 I would grudge sixpence for the best excepcionale 
 that ever was made. Their mere fabrication is beyond 
 compare. They are perfect convoluted cylinders of to- 
 bacco-leaf, mathematically symmetrical, showing not a 
 join, a vein, or a pimple — with the broad end as round 
 and smooth as that of a Cumberland pencil; with 
 the narrow end as sharply blunt — a paradox, but a 
 truth for all that — as the agate burnisher used for em- 
 bossing diapers in illumination. I think that were you 
 to throw an excepcionale into the midst of Westmin- 
 ster Hall, it would not break, nor lie, but the rather 
 rebound, elastic, and come back to you at last, intact, 
 but bent, boomerang fashion. Its defect is that it is 
 a world too light — that is to say, too mild in flavour 
 — and that, like all mild cigars, it is hot in the mouth. 
 To the thorough smoker there is no more feverish 
 tobacco than the lightest Latakia, and no cooler than 
 the strongest Cavendish. Mild-tobacco smoking leads 
 to drinking: witness the Turk, with his continually 
 
S6 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 replenished coffee- cup, and the German, who washes 
 down the chopped-up haystacks which he crams into 
 his pipkin of a pipe with innumerable mugs of beer. 
 Not always innumerable. They count them some- 
 times. The Prussian guardsmen who were regaled 
 at the Peace rejoicings at Berlin were limited to 
 one bottle of wine and ten seidels of beer apiece. Ten 
 seidels — ten mortal pints and a half of swipes in one 
 October evening! It must ooze through their 
 pores, and make them clammy. 
 
 From the hospitable retail establishment of the 
 seilor to his factory, or rather that of the Hija de Ca- 
 banas y Carvajal, is a drive of about twenty minutes. 
 The Fabrica is a grandiose building of white stone, 
 and of the architectural style which may be described 
 as West Indian Doric : that is to say, with plenty of 
 porticos, and columns, and vestibules, erected much 
 more for the purpose of producing coolness than pic- 
 torial effect. There are at least a thousand operatives 
 employed here ; but the mere number of hands is no 
 test of the importance of a cigar manufactory. At 
 the huge Eeale Fabrica de Tabacos, in Seville, over 
 four thousand men and women, nearly half of them 
 gipsies, find employment. The Kegio, at Algiers, 
 gives daily work to over fifteen hundred hands. The 
 cigar factories of Bordeaux, Barcelona, Ancona, and 
 Venice, are on a corresponding scale of magnitude ; 
 but please to bear in mind that the staple of the 
 things made in the u sines I have named is mere 
 
HAVANA CIGARS. 87 
 
 muck, rubbish, refuse ; whereas the Hija de Cabailas 
 y Carvajal turns out only choice and fragrant rolls of 
 superfine tobacco. 
 
 If anything could improve on the dreamy balmi- 
 ness which falls on the contemplative mind in these 
 vast halls, all devoted to the treatment and prepara- 
 tion of tobacco, it would be the fact that the ceiling of 
 every room is of cedar. 'Tis in the groves of Mount 
 Lebanon, or, if you choose to be more prosaic, in an 
 atmosphere of lead-pencils, that your weeds are made. 
 1 confess that ere I had been half an hour in the 
 Cabana factory I became immersed in a kind of 
 happy fog or state of coma, such as ordinarily incited 
 Messrs. Coleridge and De Quincey — in the good old 
 days when it was thought no harm to crack a decanter 
 full of laudanum before dinner — to literary composi- 
 tion. This must serve as my excuse for the very 
 vague manner in which I am enabled to describe the 
 process of making cigars. I know that I saw great 
 bales and bundles of tobacco, just brought in from 
 the plantations, being weighed in one long hall by 
 negro women. The stuff was piled into monstrous 
 scales, like those used in their dealings with the 
 Indians who had furs to sell by the crafty traders in 
 old Manhattan — who laid down the axiom that a 
 Dutchman's foot weighed ten pounds, and popped 
 their foot into the scale accordingly. I know that I 
 subsequently saw tobacco in all stages of being 
 cleaned, and picked, and sorted, the finer leaves being 
 
88 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 reserved for the coverings or sheaths of the cigars, 
 the less choice being used to form what magazine 
 editors call 'padding,' and the Cubans themselves, 
 when speaking of cigars, 'las tripas' — a term not 
 quite translatable to genteel ears, but which I may 
 render, in a guarded manner, as 'insides.' If you of- 
 fer a Spaniard a cigar — not with a view that he should 
 smoke, but that he should criticise it — he will, after 
 expressing the preliminary wish that you may live a 
 thousand years, produce a sharp penknife and slice 
 the weed through diagonally. Then, with a strong 
 magnify ing-glass, he will scrutinise 'las tripas/ and 
 tell you, as confidently as any Loudon or Linna3us 
 could, the precise order of vegetation to which the 
 cigar belongs — whether it is of the superfine c vuelta 
 de abajo,' the Clos Yougeot of Nicotia, or of some in- 
 ferior growth, either from the island of Cuba itself, or 
 from Hayti, or Porto Eico, or Virginia, or Maryland, 
 or the Carolinas, or, haply, from the south and east of 
 Europe ; for vast quantities of Hungarian, Austrian, 
 Sardinian, and Bessarabian tobacco do find their way 
 to Cuba, and come back to us in the guise of prime 
 Havanas — that is certain. A minute investigation of 
 'las tripas' may also lead to the painful disclosure 
 that the cigar is not composed of tobacco at all. The 
 periodical reports of her Majesty's commissioners of 
 Inland Revenue point out, pretty plainly, what vile 
 stuff is sometimes foisted on the public as genuine 
 tobacco. 
 
HAVANA CIGARS. 89 
 
 You run no risk, of course, of having a sophisti- 
 cated cigar from the factory of the Hija de Cabana y 
 Carvajal. Their wares are of different qualities— just 
 as claret is, and the quality perhaps takes as wide a 
 range as Bordeaux takes between Medoc and Chateau 
 Lafitte. But a Cabana cigar — bought at Cabana's, 
 bien entendu, or at any reputable dealer's in London 
 (no foreign cigar merchant I ever met with could be 
 trusted even so far as I could see him) — is sure to be 
 made of genuine tobacco. You are quite safe, also, 
 with a cigar from the Partagas factory — and there 
 are many amateurs who prefer Partagas to Cabanas ; 
 you are equally safe with an Alvarez ; with a Cavar- 
 gas; with a Lopez; with a Cealdos (of the Guipuz- 
 coana manufactory), and especially with a Figaro. 
 Some persons imagine the name of ' Figaro' to be that 
 of a brand, or form of cigar, such as a 4 Henry Clay ' 
 or a 'Londres;' but it is really that of a factory. 
 I may mention our ' Lion' and ' Eomford' breweries 
 by way of analogy. I need not say that there are 
 scores more respectable traders in Havana who make 
 good and unadulterated cigars ; but the names I 
 have set down are those best known, and most 
 popular with smokers. 
 
 On the broadest principle of classification, the 
 cigars which are really brought from the Island of 
 Cuba to Europe may be divided into three great 
 groups. First, genuine Havanas, of various degrees 
 of fineness, but, from stem to stern, sheath and 4 tri- 
 
90 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 pas,' made of tobacco grown, cured, and rolled in the 
 Island of Cuba. Second, cigars composed inside of 
 United States, or of European tobacco, imported into 
 the island, but with an outside wrapper of Havana 
 leaf. Third and last, cigars brought ready made into 
 Havana, from Europe — mostly from Bremen and Swit- 
 zerland — passed through some export house unfair 
 enough to be an accomplice in such dealings, and re- 
 exported to Europe. You rarely meet with these 
 doubly sham cigars in England; but they form the 
 staple of the article retailed at extravagant prices to 
 travellers at continental hotels. They smoke so 
 abominably that the consumer usually jumps at the 
 conclusion that they are simply ' duffers,' with forged 
 brands and labels on the boxes; but, if he imparts 
 this assumption to the waiter, that functionary may 
 in his turn often assume an air of injured innocence 
 and virtuous indignation. He can tell the complain- 
 ant the name of the wholesale dealer from whom he 
 has purchased the cigars : nay, he is often enabled to 
 point out on the box the actual government stamp, 
 and the amount of duty paid on the contents as 
 foreign cigars. I have gone down with a waiter to a 
 custom-house and seen him clear from the ship and 
 pay duty upon the cigars he has sold me, and yet 
 have found them afterwards to be the merest rubbish. 
 It is unjust to make Cuba responsible for the preva- 
 lence of such trash. The rubbishing cigars hav r e been 
 to Havana, but were not made there. What is it the 
 
HAVANA CIGARS. 9 r 
 
 Bulbul, in the Persian poem, remarks relative to the 
 rose ? I think he observes that he is not that flower, 
 but that he has lived near her. So Bremen, which has 
 paid a flying visit to Havana, may be regarded as a 
 kind of rascally Bulbul. 
 
 This species of fraud is too clumsy and too slow 
 for the great English people. We, who are so very 
 hard on the Americans for their c smartness,' habit- 
 ually resort in trade to perhaps the most ingenious 
 swindles, the most impudent deceptions, and the 
 meanest and most detestable i dodges,' of any nation 
 in the world. We adulterate everything. We forge 
 everything. We would adulterate the mother earth 
 which is thrown on our coffins when we are buried, if 
 that fraud would pay. There is not a petty tobacco- 
 nist's shop in a London back street without a stock 
 of cigar boxes, whose brands, whose printed labels — 
 down to the bluntness of the Spanish type and the 
 poverty of the Spanish wood-engravings — are cool 
 and literal forgeries of the Spanish originals. These 
 brands and labels are forged quite as neatly as 
 bank-notes are forged; but this is a 'trick of 
 trade' which has not yet become felony. I have 
 seen with my own eyes, in a great English town, 
 and in a cigar factory employing three hundred 
 men, the brands ready for heating and stamping — - 
 a kind of chamber of horrors — where there were 
 no less than ninety different trade-marks purport- 
 ing to be those of leading houses in Havana, and 
 
92 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 all of which were false. The excuse of the people 
 who resort to these wretched artifices is, that they 
 vend the wares thus spuriously branded and labelled 
 as 'British/ and not as 'foreign' cigars. What's in 
 a name ? they ask ; and so they call a cabbage a Ca- 
 bana, just for the fun of the thing. But would it be 
 fair, 1 may ask, to stamp the little figure of the 
 ' perro,' or dog, which is the trade-mark of the real 
 Toledo blade, on the haft of a carving-knife made at 
 Liege, or to brand c Moet et Chandon' on the cork of 
 a bottle of cider ? There are, doubtless, numbers of 
 highly trustworthy cigar manufacturers in England, 
 who make their cigars of the very best foreign tobacco 
 that can be imported; but I must refer again to the 
 reports of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue for 
 some very ugly revelations made from time to time as 
 to fines inflicted on manufacturers who adulterate 
 their tobacco ; and, in any case, the practice of mark- 
 ing the boxes which contain home-made cigars, even 
 if they be of good tobacco, with the names and brands 
 of celebrated Havana houses, is unfair, untradesman- 
 like, and immoral. I daresay, however, that I am but 
 fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus in alluding to 
 such matters, and that I shall get but scratches for 
 my pains. Only, to unwary people who happen to be 
 young and wealthy I will say this: whenever you 
 have anything to do with cigars, or with sherry, or 
 with pictures, or with horses, look out. Some ad- 
 visers would include women and diamonds in their 
 
HAVANA CIGARS. 93 
 
 caveat; but I halt at horses. They may have a flaw 
 in them, but a woman is a woman, and a diamond a 
 diamond, and you can tell paste at once. 
 
 A visit to Cabana's manufactory, although it failed 
 in enabling me to describe with terseness, combined 
 with accuracy, the process of cigar-making, had at 
 least one beneficial result in disabusing hiy mind of a 
 variety of absurd stories which I, and I daresay a 
 good many of those who read this paper, had heard 
 regarding the process as pursued in the island of 
 Cuba. To believe these legends, cigar-making is one 
 of the nastiest, nay, the most revolting of handicrafts, 
 and the manner in which the tobacco is rolled and 
 shaped by imperfectly clad young ladies of the 
 African race, and in a state of servitude, is, to say the 
 least, shocking. There may be small manufacturers 
 at Havana who own but two or three slaves, or em- 
 ploy but two or three workwomen, and they may do 
 their work in a brutish and uncleanly manner ; but so 
 far as my own experience at the Hija de Cabanas y 
 Carvajal's renders me a trustworthy witness, I may 
 vouch for the scrupulous cleanliness and delicacy with 
 which every single stage in the process of cigar-mak- 
 ing is conducted. I have seen barley-sugar made, 
 and I have seen bread made, and I certainly consider 
 the manufacture of cigars to be a nicer transaction 
 than either bread or sweetstuff making. 
 
 Nothing can be more orderly, more symmetrical, 
 than the appearance of the cutting and shaping room. 
 
94 ' UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 The operators sit to their work, and make the cigars 
 with their fingers, but do not roll them into shape by 
 attrition on their sartorial muscles, as is popularly 
 supposed. Every operator, has his counter or desk, 
 his sharp cutting tools, and his pot of gum for fasten- 
 ing the tips, with his stock of assorted tobacco-leaf in 
 baskets by his side. It is a competitive vocation. The 
 best workmen are best off. Payment is by results. 
 Many of the hands employed are negro slaves, or 
 were so when I was in Havana ; but the finer cigars, 
 the prime Cabaiias, the Napoleones, the Excepci- 
 onales and Regalias are made exclusively by white 
 Creole Spaniards, who are paid according to the 
 number they can turn out a day, and many of whom 
 realise very handsome wages. 
 
 Good cigars are very dear in Havana. You may 
 get a weed for a penny or threehalfpence ; or some- 
 times, by industriously rooting among the small 
 manufacturers, you may pick up cigars very cheap 
 indeed, which, if you throw them into a drawer, and 
 allow them to season for six months, may turn out 
 to be tolerable ; but an approved and warranted cigar 
 from a first-rate house will always fetch its price, 
 and our heavy import duties notwithstanding, is not 
 much cheaper in Havana than it is in England. I have 
 appended in a foot-note (for fear of boring you)* the 
 
 * Napoleones di lujo, 300 dolls. ; Excepcionales, 255 dolls. ; Regalias, 
 flor fina, 130 dolls. ; Imperiales, 130 dolls. ; Embajadores, flor fina, 120 
 dolls. ; Esparteros, 100 dolls.; Regalias Chicas, 80 dolls.; Conchas, 80 dolls.; 
 
HAVANA CIGARS. ' 95 
 
 price-list of Cabaila cigars for the year 1864. Since 
 then the tariff has, I daresay, risen. I may add that 
 it is generally understood in the cigar trade that the 
 very finest and choicest qualities of Havana cigars go 
 to England simply because the largest prices can be 
 commanded there; yet I believe I am rather under 
 than above the mark in stating that there are not 
 thirty cigar dealers in London from whom fine and 
 choice Havanas can be procured. It has been com- 
 puted — although I have no official authority for the 
 statement — that of the cigars manufactured by the 
 Hija de Cabanas y Carvajal at least forty per cent go 
 to England, thirty per cent to the United States — 
 California taking the largest quantity — ten per cent 
 to Brazil, five to Russia, five to Erance, five to Spain, 
 two to Germany, two to Australia, leaving one per 
 
 Cilisedrados, 75 dolls. ; Aromaticos, 75 dolls. ; Comme-il-fauts, 70 dolls. ; 
 Cazadores, 65 dolls. ; Pigmeos, 45 dolls. ; Media Regalias, GO dolls. ; Lon- 
 clres flor fina, 55 dolls.; do. de calidad, 45 dolls. ; Biioas o Punsaclos, 55 
 dolls.; Panalclos Caballeros, 50 dolls.; Trabucos, 55 dolls.; Principes, 
 50 dolls. ; Cabana kings (one of the sweetest varieties of cigar extant), 
 35 dolls. ; Medianos; 50 dolls. — all per thousand and in gold currency. 
 Among miscellaneous cigars, the price of which per thousand may be com- 
 puted at about five-and-twenty per cent under Cabanas, I find in my 
 note-book, as to sizes, Trabucillos and Bajonetas, and as to brands and 
 makes, ' El Principe de Galles,' ' Lincoln,' ' H. Upmann,' ' Los dos Her- 
 manos' (the two brothers), ' Salvadores,' ' La Vida,' 'Jose Rodriguez,' 
 ' Flor Cubaiias las delicias,' ' Consuelos' (out of compliment to Madama 
 George Sand, I presume), El aquila Parisiana (Bismarck's particular, it 
 is to be imagined), Juan de Chinchuretta, Fleur de Marie, Florde Man- 
 rico (an odd combination of souvenirs of the Mysteries of Paris and the 
 Trovatore), Flores Tropicas, Yo soy un Angel (I am an angel, which is 
 modest), La Fragrancia, La Dignidad, La Aprobacion, and La Flor de 
 Eustaquio Barron. After pears, tulips, and race-horses, the nomencla- 
 ture of cigars is certainly the most copious in art-manufacture. 
 
96 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 cent for Italy and other fractional consumers of real 
 cigars; and yet the Italians are the most inveterate 
 smokers in Europe. They prefer, however, their own 
 home-made Cavours, which are a halfpenny apiece 
 and slowly poisonous, to the more wholesome but 
 more expensive Cabana. 
 
 I forgot to state that, before I left the Cabana 
 premises, I smoked and enjoyed very much a full- 
 flavoured regalia, for whose structure I had myself 
 selected the leaves, and which I saw rolled, shaped, 
 gummed, and pointed, with my own eyes. It was 
 like being at Joe's, in Finch-lane. 
 
HAVANA CIGAEITOS. 
 
 Whereabouts, I wonder, did those wonderful liter- 
 ary gentlemen of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries, who were in the habit of writing epic 
 poems, and more amazing still, who persuaded people 
 into reading them, keep the Muse whom they so 
 frequently invoked ? Did she stand at livery, with 
 Pegasus, and the bird of Jove, and Juno's peacocks, 
 and Phoebus' s fiery steeds, and other curiosities of 
 natural history, always ready to be trotted out when 
 it occurred to the literary gentlemen that a Some- 
 thingiad in Twelve Cantos would be precisely the 
 kind of thing to take the town, make the fortune of 
 Mr. Osborn or Mr. Tonson, or extract a score of gold 
 pieces from the Peer of the Kealm and Patron of the 
 Muses to whom the Somethingiad was to be dedi- 
 cated ? I want to know what that Muse did when 
 she wasn't under process of invocation. It is my 
 opinion that she was a lazy Muse ; for we frequently 
 find the literary gentlemen bidding her, with some 
 sharpness, Arise, or Awake, or Tell, or Say some- 
 thing which, according to their divination, she had to 
 communicate. She seems also to have been a Muse 
 
 H 
 
98 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 who had something to give, and was worth flatter- 
 ing ; since the literary gentlemen often addressed 
 her by such endearing epithets as Gentle, Heavenly, 
 Benign, and Discreet. But they never tojcl an} 7 body 
 where the Muse lived, or how she was to be 'got 
 at.' I fear she was to be heard of most frequently 
 in the neighbourhood of Grub-street, at the sign of 
 the Satchel, where the Greek translators lay three in 
 a bed, and the gentleman who did Pindaric odes 
 could only go out on Sundays through terror of the 
 bailiffs, and the watchful landlady kept the ladder 
 of the cockloft occupied by the Scholar and Divine 
 who did High Church polemics for Mr. Lintot for 
 half- a-cr own a sheet. We have been told a vast deal 
 within these latter days about the Curiosities, the 
 Pursuits, the Amenities, the Miseries, of literature ; 
 but the polite world has yet much to learn concern- 
 ing that Muse. Was her inspiration to be had for 
 the paying for, and did she give credit ? By the bye, 
 she was sometimes called Coy, and I have heard her 
 designated as Intrepid ; but that was in a birthday 
 ode about the battle of Dettingen. Her personal his- 
 tory, manners, and customs, are, however, shrouded 
 in mystery. The sum of what the literary gentle- 
 men have told us in her regard is this : that she 
 played upon a Lyre, and resided on a Mount. 
 
 It is a very painful and humiliating thing to be 
 fain to confess that, on the threshold of an article 
 which will not contain one line of poetry, but will 
 be of the very plainest prose on the very plainest of 
 
HAVANA CIGARITOS. 99 
 
 subjects, I would give my ears to find a Muse who, 
 for a reasonable consideration, would permit me to 
 invoke her, and would Inspire my Lay, and enable 
 me to get to the end of it without committing five 
 hundred blunders. Is there a Muse of Memory ? I 
 am afraid there is not : but it is a Muse of that kind 
 I wish to apostrophise. And if I addressed her as 
 Snuffy, or as Smoky, or even as Cloudy, I should 
 be deemed either stupid or irreverent. Still, I desire 
 no less than a Muse who is given to taking tobacco, 
 a Muse who smokes a pipe, a Muse who can twist a 
 cigarito ; but chiefly a Muse who will make me 
 remember things. It is my ardent wish to return 
 once more to the island of Cuba, and to relate as 
 much as I can call to mind about the famous cigars 
 of Havana. I mentioned recently that I was a tee- 
 totum. I have spun round most violently since 
 I last took that liberty. Dear me ! where is Havana 
 and all my lore about cigars ? My note-book is at 
 the bottom of the Lake of Garda ; and I know that 
 I began an article on cigars, one morning, at Trieste, 
 wrote the next paragraph at Milan, and cancelled 
 both, as too digressional, at Samaden, in the canton 
 of the Grisons. Just now, as I sit down despondingly, 
 and wish I had attended the lectures of the professor 
 who discourses on memory at the Royal Polytechnic 
 Institution, the bells of Santa Maria clella Salute at 
 Venice strike twelve at midnight, and my Muse, 
 hitherto coy to churlishness, appears, and grants me 
 all I wish. She is a nut-brown Muse — nay, darker 
 
ioo UNDER THE SUN 
 
 than the nut : as dark as chocolate. She is round, 
 and smooth, and graceful, and is deliciously fragrant. 
 I take her up very tenderly between my finger and 
 thumb, and pressing her to my lips, bite off her nose. 
 Then do I apply the flame of a waxen taper to her 
 feet, and I begin to smoke my Muse. Straightway, 
 in the spiral whirls of blue incense curling from my 
 last cigar, the inspiration which I needed glides softly 
 down upon me. Cuba comes back. The ghosts of 
 a hundred memories start up, and drum cheerfully 
 on the lids of rose-coloured coffins. Wars and 
 rumours of wars, camps, cities, seas, storms, and 
 sick-beds, all fade away, and here I am in the Calle 
 del Teniente Key at Havana, bargaining with a 
 volante- driver to take me and a companion to the 
 great tobacco-factory of La Honradez. 
 
 I remember it all. I went over the establish- 
 ment, say only yesterday. First, we found out a 
 dark counting-house in a darker street down town : 
 both made artificially sombre by screens and curtains 
 — for the sun was salamandering about with his 
 usual ferocity outside — and sought Don Domingo. 
 Most courteous of clerks in a Cuban banking-house 
 was he. A tawny man with a close-cropped head of 
 silver-gray, like an over-ripe orange slightly mil- 
 dewed at top, his thews and sinews all dried in the 
 sun, like South American dried beef, but given, like 
 that under the action of warm water, to become 
 quite soft and tender when you were admitted to his 
 intimacy. Don Domingo was intimately acquainted 
 
HAVANA CIGARITOS. 101 
 
 with the proprietors of La Honradez. To judge 
 from the very high-dried odour which continually 
 hung about him, he must have spent at La Hon- 
 radez, himself, a handsome annual income in snuff 
 and cigars. He gave us a Regalia apiece, to keep us 
 in good spirits until we reached the factory, and then 
 we picked our way through a maze of packing-cases 
 and strong boxes, and reaching La Calle del Te- 
 niente Rey, bargained, as I have said, with a volante- 
 driver, and were soon set down before the portal of 
 which we were in quest. 
 
 I think the place had been, prior to the suppres- 
 sion of the monastic orders, a convent. It was large 
 enough to have been that, or a barrack, or a peni- 
 tentiary. The walls were amazingly thick ; but the 
 windows, few as they were in number, were neither 
 so rare nor so thickly grated but that the odour of 
 fresh-chopped tobacco came gushing through them, 
 like telegraphic messages from the State of Virginia 
 and the Vuelta de Abajo. Have you ever driven 
 along the Paris Boulevards at very early morning ? 
 Have you ever noticed the fragrance issuing from 
 the cafes on your line of route — the smell of the 
 coffee roasting and grinding for the day's consump- 
 tion ? The gar 90ns bring their mills on to the pave- 
 ment, and from six to seven a.m. the Boulevards 
 smell like Mincing Lane. Substitute tobacco for 
 coffee, and you have the street savour of La Hon- 
 radez. Penetrating into the great courtyard, the 
 aroma became, perhaps, a trifle too forcible. It was 
 
102 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 as that, say, of the most delicate devil's dust thrown 
 up by the sweetest shoddy mills. It was as though 
 you were off some guano islands, the haunt only of 
 birds of paradise. It is nevertheless certain that the 
 air was laden with impalpable powder ; that a sirocco 
 of small-cut speedily filled your mouth, ears, and 
 nostrils, and the pores of your skin ; and that your first 
 salutation to La Honradez was a violent fit of sneez- 
 ing. The court-yard was full of broken boxes and 
 the banana-leaf or maize-straw wrappers of tobacco 
 bales, — tobacco long since minced, and twisted, and 
 smoked. There was an immense deal of litter and 
 rubbish about ; for, it must be owned, tidiness is not 
 a thing you must expect to find in the tropics. There 
 were also a number of the Sable Sons of Toil, and the 
 Hapless Children of Bondage, lying about in attitudes 
 suggestive to the artistic student of every conceiv- 
 able variety of foreshortening. They were asleep, 
 and dreaming, probably, of pumpkin. Slavery I 
 hold to be the dreariest and most detestable of 
 treadmills ; but in Cuba the thralls doonw i:o the 
 degrading discipline of the c stepper' seem to be 
 oftener off than on the wheel, and either exercise or 
 the want of it has a tendency towards making them 
 comfortably fat. As a rule, if at broad noonday you 
 see a negro awake, he is Free. If asleep, he is a 
 Slave. 
 
 At La Honradez only cigarettes, cigaritos, pape- 
 litos, or whatever else you choose to call the little 
 rolls of tissue paper containing finely chopped smok- 
 
HAVANA CIGARITOS 103 
 
 ing tobacco, are made. The process is very simple ; 
 and we took the place only as a whet or relish before 
 the more serious tobacco banquet which we were 
 subsequently to enjoy at the great cigar manufactory 
 of — Cabana. 
 
 We passed through numbers of barn-like rooms, 
 vast and dim, where, squatting on the floor in groups, 
 negro men, women, and children were sorting the 
 tobacco, stripping the leaves from the stalks, and 
 arranging them in baskets for the chopping-mills. 
 There exists a notion that any kind of tobacco is 
 good enough to make cigaritos with, and that, on the 
 principle said to be adopted in some sausage-making 
 establishments, anything that comes near enough to 
 the machine, be it beef, or pork, or a dog, or a cat, 
 or a man, is forthwith sucked into the vortex, and 
 converted into polonies or saveloys. This notion, so 
 far as it regards cigaritos, is, I am happy to believe, 
 groundless. 
 
 Very great care seemed to be taken in the assort- 
 ment of the leaves and the selection of the prime 
 parts ; and I was assured that the paper cigars of 
 La Honradez were made from the choicest Havana 
 tobacco obtainable. They are, certainly, very de- 
 licious to smoke. La Honradez is, itself, modestly 
 conscious of its own merits, and on the little chromo- 
 lithographed wrappers which surround each bundle 
 of twenty-five cigaritos you read this motto : i Mis 
 hechos mi justificaran' — c My works shall justify me.' 
 Other factories are more self-laudatory and less 
 
104 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 modest. ' Todos mi elogian' — ' All praise me,' says 
 one, on its wrappers. This may be true, only the 
 establishment ought not to say so. 'Mi fame per 
 l'orbe vuela' — 'My fame is world-wide,' exclaims a 
 third. This, again, is a little too self-asserting ; for 
 I would bet a reasonable number of gold ounces that 
 my present respected reader never heard of that 
 particular establishment for making cigaritos. 
 
 The paper cigars of Havana are not perfect 
 cylinders, closed at one end with a dexterous twist, 
 and provided at the other with a mouthpiece of 
 twisted cardboard and a morsel of cotton wool to 
 absorb the essential oil. Those are the famous Rus- 
 sian cigarettes, made at St. Petersburg or Moscow, 
 of Turkish, Syrian, and Bessarabian tobacco. The 
 Havana cigaritos consist mostly of so much finely- 
 chopped tobacco placed in the middle of a little 
 square of very thin paper, neatly rolled up into 
 batons about an inch and a half long and an 
 eighth of an inch thick, and closed at each end. 
 The art of making them lies in there being just 
 enough loose paper at the ends, but no more, to 
 make the required twist, and in there being a per- 
 fectly homogeneous consistency of tobacco through- 
 out the entire length. If the roll be too tight, or 
 if, on the other hand, the tobacco be not evenly 
 distributed, and it bulges in one part and is loose 
 in another, the cigarito is useless. Indeed, it must 
 be made with almost perfect nicety, to satisfy con- 
 sumers : for almost every Spaniard has in his own 
 
HAVANA CIGARITOS. 105 
 
 fingers an innate gift for twisting and rolling his 
 own cigaritos. We have grown quite familiar, 
 owing to the French c sans nom' paper which, 
 for a season or two, obtained immense vogue in 
 Paris, with the tiny blank books from which leaves 
 of tissue paper could be torn to serve as envelopes 
 for the tobacco. Neither the French nor the Ger- 
 mans, however, ever attained great proficiency in 
 this most difficult and delicate art. The Italians 
 abominate cigaritos, preferring to smoke the more 
 abominable cigars of native manufacture ; and I 
 think that the majority of Englishmen could more 
 easily learn to curl hair or play on the mandolin — 
 two arts in which they are never very likely to excel 
 — than to roll cigarettes. To the Spaniard the trick 
 comes naturally. He would roll up a papelito and 
 twist it faultlessly, in a third-class carriage in the 
 middle of the Box Tunnel. The old Spaniards, how- 
 ever, it must be owned, are the best hands, or rather 
 the best digits, at papelito making. The tropics l take 
 it out ' of a man, and the Creole Cuban is fain to allow 
 his slaves to manufacture his cigars for him. More- 
 over, in Cuba, cigarettes are but a pastime. His 
 real repast is in the Puros, or Havanas of the weed 
 itself; whereas in Old Spain, genuine Havanas are, 
 through the idiotic financial policy of the govern- 
 ment, so difficult to obtam, and cigars of native 
 manufacture are so execrable, that the Castilians 
 smoke cigaritos in self-defence. 
 
 Picking, sorting, and chopping tobacco, and pack- 
 
106 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 ing it up in the little squares of tissue paper, consti- 
 tute only one section of the art cultivated at La 
 Honraclez. Some hundreds of young women and 
 children, blacks, mulattoes, and quadroons, are em- 
 ployed in cutting and folding the paper, and in pack- 
 ing the cigarettes into bundles and gumming the 
 wrappers. These wrappers themselves necessitate 
 the maintenance of a very large chromo-lithographic 
 establishment; and in an airy studio — the sun's rays, 
 however, tempered by screens of white gauze — we 
 found a number of Creole Spaniards at work, busily 
 designing on stone the fantastic devices and pretty 
 little vignettes, enveloped in which the far-famed 
 cigaritos of La Honradez go forth to the world. The 
 workmen who print these designs in colours, and 
 manage a very elaborate steam lithographic press 
 (made, as I deciphered from a cast-iron inscription, 
 at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, United States), are a 
 very odd kind of people indeed. They are not 
 negroes, they are not mulattoes, they are not quad- 
 roons, still less are they criollos or Creole Cubans, 
 or Peninsulares, that is to say, European Spaniards. 
 They are not precisely Slaves ; yet they cannot ex- 
 actly be termed Free. There is one of these odd 
 workmen perched on a high stool by the side of the 
 machine, and intent on adjusting the pins to the due 
 and proper register of one of the coloured wrappers. 
 He is a limber-limbed young fellow, very thin, with 
 very long slender fingers, the which, with patient 
 deftness, he knows well how to use. His complexion 
 
HAVANA CIGARITOS. 107 
 
 is of uniform pale saffron, of the texture of parch- 
 ment, and he is perfectly beardless. He has very 
 long lustrous black hair falling over his shoulders. 
 In the centre of his countenance, which, in its yellow 
 smoothness, does not ill resemble a boiled batter- 
 pudding, show, like currants in the said pudding, a 
 pair of little sharp black eyes. His forehead is very 
 low, his cheek bones are very high, and about his 
 lips there lingers continually a scarcely definable yet 
 ineffable simper of complacent beatitude, due, per- 
 haps, to an inward consciousness of merit, or to 
 opium, or to sheer innate imbecility. 
 
 Where have you seen that parchment face, those 
 eyes, that upturned calmly conceited smirk, before ? On 
 a tea-tray ? On a tea-chest ? On a fan ? On a rice-paper 
 view of the Porcelain Pagoda at Nankin ? To whom, 
 in fine, should those features and that complexion be- 
 long, but to a Brother of the Sun and Moon, a native 
 of the Flowery Land, a native of the Celestial empire? 
 They appertain, indeed, here to a Chinese coolie. 
 "Where, you may ask, are his shaven poll and his pig- 
 tail? That question is easily answered. The coolies 
 in Havana let their hair grow, and are soon persua- 
 ded to discard their umbrella hats, nankeen knicker- 
 bockers, and bamboo shoes, for the ordinary white 
 linen habiliments of the West Indies. More than this, 
 and, strange enough to say, they do frequently submit 
 to be baptised, to change their Celestial designations 
 for names taken from the Christian hagiology, and so 
 become, to all outward appearance, very decent Ro- 
 
io8 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 man Catholics. Among Protestants, in California and 
 Australia, the Chinaman clings most tenaciously to 
 his native idolatry and his native customs, which are 
 very nasty. He sticks to his pigtail, he sets up his 
 joss-house, he burns perfumed paper to c the gods of 
 genteel morals,' he eats with chopsticks, and even im- 
 ports dried ducks, and other culinary offal, from Can- 
 ton or Chusan, to feed upon. But in Cuba, no sooner 
 does he submit his queue to the barber's shear, and 
 allow the priest to change his name from Kwang- 
 Lew-Fung to Jose Maria, than he becomes at least as 
 good a Christian as the negro : which is not saying 
 much. To the end of the chapter, however, he re- 
 mains essentially an odd fish. He is a capital work- 
 man, patient, cheerful, cunning, and industrious 
 enough when he chooses; but he does not always 
 choose, and is subject to capricious intervals of mon- 
 key-like laziness, and of a disposition to mutiny: 
 always in a restless, spiteful, monkey -like manner. It 
 is quite useless to reason with him, for he has his own 
 notions of logic and his own code of ethics. By the 
 law he cannot be flogged; but his masters sometimes 
 take the law into their own hands. If he be thrashed, 
 he goes out and commits suicide. He whose fore- 
 fathers may have been over-civilised some thousands of 
 years ago, and the negro, who seems never to have 
 been civilised at all since the world began, are about 
 the most hopelessly impracticable beings ever created 
 to be the curse and despair of philanthropists and mis- 
 sionaries. The more honour, perhaps, to the courage 
 
HAVANA CIGARITOS. 109 
 
 and devotion of the missionaries and philanthropists 
 who persist in trying to reclaim the irreclaimable, and 
 to wash the blackamoor white, and to take away the 
 spots from the leopard. Brave hearts ! May they go 
 on trying, and never say die ! 
 
 There are two hundred thousand of these coolies, 
 it is said, in Cuba. The vast majority of them are 
 4 up the country,' in the tobacco and sugar plantations. 
 They are the substitute for slavery, as electroware is 
 the substitute for silver. They are as difficult to keep 
 in good order, and as generally unsatisfactory, as sub- 
 stitutes for anything are generally found, on trial, to 
 be. In the towns they are employed to a considerable 
 extent as mechanics and as cooks ; in more than one 
 private house I have found Chinese footmen and body- 
 servants. They are said to be not unlike cats in their 
 characters : necessary, harmless — till they are crossed 
 — sharp, quiet, noiseless, contemplative, and very de- 
 ceitful. There is a kind of jail or market for coolies 
 at a place called El Corro, near Havana, and there 
 they are sold — I mean, there c contracts' can be made 
 with their £ trustees' for their labour for a stated term. 
 At El Corro you may see them in their native dress, 
 and with their crowns shaven, all but a tuft on the 
 top — the stumps of their departed tails. A coolie may 
 be purchased or 'contracted' for, at a price varying 
 between three and four hundred dollars. You are 
 bound to pay the Chinaman you have bought four 
 dollars per month, and to give him his victuals and 
 two suits of clothes per year. For this he is bound 
 
UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 to you for eight years. The contract is put in writing 
 before a juez cle paz, and two copies are made, one 
 in Chinese and the other in Spanish, to be kept re- 
 spectively by the seller and the sold. The strongest 
 guarantee for the Chinaman receiving decent treat- 
 ment at the hands of his master is the almost cer- 
 tainty of the former's committing suicide if he be 
 beaten. Why the Celestial, who, in his own country, 
 has been weaned on a course of bamboo, and has 
 'eaten stick,' as the Arabs say, every day of his life, 
 should so bitterly resent corporal punishment at the 
 hands of the stranger, I am unable to explain. This, 
 however, is the fact. 
 
 For my part, I thought the Chinaman had done 
 very well to change his name from Kwang-Lew- 
 Fung to Jose Maria, and let his hair grow, and sit on 
 a high stool printing coloured labels. Chromo-litho- 
 graphy is one of the prettiest pursuits imaginable; 
 and surely it was better to follow it here in peace, 
 and with something like a hire for one's labour, than 
 to be fishing for ducks from a barge on the Canton 
 river, or painting miniatures on the cofim of your 
 grandmother, against that respected person's decease, 
 or addressing hieroglyphic compliments in Indian ink 
 to 'the gods of genteel morals.' After all, the alcalde 
 is preferable to the local mandarin, with his incessant 
 bamboo. 
 
 We went to see the place where the coolie work- 
 men of the Honradez were lodged. The dormitories 
 were, for Cuba, wonderfully clean and airy ; and under 
 
HAVANA CIGARITOS. nr 
 
 proper discipline, I was told, the Chinaman could be 
 made to observe extraordinary neatness and propriety. 
 The beds, or bunks, were in tiers one above the other, 
 as in a passenger steamer ; but were much more 
 spacious. Every coolie had his locker for his clothes, 
 and a shelf for his platter, pannikin, and clrinking-mug. 
 Above every bunk was printed the name of its occu- 
 pant. I read a most orthodox catalogue of Jose 
 Marias, Andres, Augustins, Basilios, Benitos, Beltrans, 
 Cristobals, Manuels, Eustaquios, Gils, Enriques, Jaco- 
 bos, Pepes, Jaymes, Juans, Domingos, Lazaros, Mau- 
 ricios, Pablos, Filipes, Rafaels, Estebans, Tadeos, To- 
 mases, Vicentes, and Guillermos. There was one 
 Esquilo, or iEschylus, and one Napoleone, who — the 
 last — was described as the biggest rascal in the whole 
 gang : the which reminded me that names very sel- 
 dom suit their possessors, and that the only man I 
 ever knew who had been christened Virgil was a 
 most egregious donkey. 
 
 We were not allowed to leave La Honradez with- 
 out an 'obsequio' or complimentary offering, and, ac- 
 cording to the etiquette of Spanish politeness, this 
 backshish was administered in the most delicate and 
 artful manner. We were asked to sign our names and 
 addresses in the visitors' book, and then, on some pre- 
 text or another, we were taken to a remote apartment. 
 Just as we were quitting the establishment, and were 
 thanking the superintendent for the great kindness 
 and courtesy he had shown us, a coolie stepped for- 
 ward, and, with a low bow and an inimitable simper, 
 
ii2 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 presented each of our party with a packet of cigaritos, 
 on whose labels, flourishing in chromo-lithography, 
 were our Christian and surnames, printed at full 
 length. The operation had been effected in about six 
 minutes. It is certain that they have a very nice 
 way of doing things in the West Indies and Mexico. 
 Scarcely a day passed without somebody giving me 
 something, and I came back to New York with a 
 trunk full of ' obsequies/ 
 
A COURT- YARD IN HAVANA. 
 
 I left my unworthy self and worthier friends and 
 my trunks, so far as I can recollect, just discharged 
 from a bullock-dray at the Fonda called El Globo, in 
 the Calle del Obispo — let us say Bishopsgate- street — 
 Havana. Something like four months have elapsed 
 since I found that anchorage, and, glad enough to be 
 in any soundings, ordered breakfast. El Globo — not 
 that Cuban inn, but the real rotund habitable globe 
 — has gone round in the maddest of gyrations since I 
 began to talk of the Humours of Havana. I have been 
 much tossed about, and am brought very low. It was 
 at Berlin, in a house overlooking the bridge which has 
 the statues of Peace and Plenty, and over against the 
 great gilded dome of that Schloss which the Kings of 
 Prussia find so gloomy that they are afraid to live in 
 it, and have fled to a pleasant modern palace under 
 the Linden — it was there, beneath the darkling sha- 
 dow of the Prussian Eagle's wings, that I penned the 
 last paragraph of my last paper about the Queen of 
 the Antilles. Then the world began to roll, and the 
 teetotum to spin again. Just as I was stepping into 
 a train bound for St. Petersburg, a civil person in 
 uniform put into my hand a telegram containing these 
 
xi 4 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 simple words : ' Please go to Madrid. There is a Re- 
 volution in Spain.' The next night I was in Cologne ; 
 the morning after I was in Paris ; at night I supped 
 at Dijon; next morning I breakfasted at Bordeaux, 
 and lunched at Iran ; late in the evening a voice cried 
 4 Valladolid,' and I had some chocolate; and the next 
 dav, the fourth, being Sunday, I got to Madrid, and 
 (it being a great saint's day) was just in time to take 
 a ticket in a raffle for Saint Anthony's pig — el santo 
 cochinillo, as they call him. I must tell you about 
 that pig, some day. 
 
 I put it to you, most forbearing of readers, how 
 could I, being for the first time in my life in old Spain, 
 take up at once the thread of my reminiscences of 
 Spain the new ? Had I striven to do so, the result 
 would have been but a sadly tangled skein. My con- 
 science pricked me sometimes, I admit. Once I 
 had a most dolorous twinge ; it was in an old library 
 at Seville, and turning over a vellum-bound volume 
 — Marco Polo's Travels I think — I came upon some 
 marginal notes, written in Latin, and in a bold, 
 honest hand. The old canon, who was my guide, 
 reverently doffed his shovel-hat when the page full 
 of marginal notes lay bare. 'They are worth ten 
 thousand reals a letter,' quoth Don Basilio. ' Ten 
 thousand! they are priceless. They are by the 
 Great Admiral.' Yes, these were annotations to 
 Marco Polo by Christopher Columbus. Of the au- 
 thenticity of the autograph there was no doubt. The 
 old library I speak of belonged to the Admiral's son r 
 
A COURT-YARD IN HAVANA. 115 
 
 a learned, valorous, virtuous man, like his sire, and to 
 the chapter of Seville cathedral he bequeathed all his 
 books. I say my conscience smote me. How had I 
 lingered over the humours of that Havana which Co- 
 lumbus discovered ! There is a picture of the Admi- 
 ral hung up in the library; a picture painted by a 
 Frenchman, and presented to the chapter by Louis 
 Philippe, in exchange for a choice Murillo. Out of the 
 canvas the mild eyes seemed to look on me reproach- 
 fully. I fancied the grave resolute lips moving, and 
 that their speech ran : c What are you doing here ? 
 Why don't you go back to Havana?' But it was no 
 fault of mine. I was a teetotum ; and to wheel about 
 and turn about was my doom. 
 
 Coming out of that strange and fascinating land 
 — the most comfortless and the most charming in the 
 world — I sat down one day in the Frezzaria at Venice, 
 and said, ' I really must go back to Havana.' So, 
 taking hold of Old Spain, I cut its throat, and tied a 
 Chubb's patent fireproof safe to its neck, and a couple 
 of fifty-six pound shot to its legs, and, towing the 
 corse out to the Lido, sank it just under the lee of 
 the Armenian convent of St. Lazaro. It fell with a 
 plash, and sank at once. ' Back to St. Mark's,' I cried 
 to the gondolier; 'and lie there, Old Spain,' I con- 
 tinued, apostrophising two or three ripples which 
 played above the deed that I had done, as though 
 murder were a thing to laugh at — ' lie there ; and the 
 fishes may feed on you till I need your bones, and 
 dredge you up again.' Old bones have their uses. 
 
n6 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 Professor Liebig once stated that all Europe was ran- 
 sacked to supply England with bones. I have marked 
 the spot where my skeleton lies, full fathom five. 
 
 But I could not, somehow, go back to Havana. 
 Cuba was coy. She floated in the air ; she danced ; 
 she smiled at me, but she would not be embraced. 
 Like unto those strange apparitions which mock the 
 shepherd's sight on the Westmoreland fells, now 
 seeming as the form of one that spurs his steed mid- 
 way along a hill, desperate — now merging into a 
 gorgeous train of cavaliers, with glittering armour 
 and waving standards — and now fading into vaporous 
 nothingness, I could see, remote, intangible, the 
 Phantom of the Antilles; the burnished sun, the 
 coral glowing beneath the dark blue water ; the 
 smooth black sharks waiting about the bathing-places, 
 and raging at the walls of planks ; the waving palms, 
 the sanguinolent bananas, the orange and pine-apple 
 groves of the rich island. But she would not approach 
 me then. You cannot always make of your mind 
 an indexed ledger which you can open at will, and, 
 under the proper letter, at the proper page, and in 
 the proper column, find the matter you want, set 
 down with clerk-like accuracy, underruled with red, 
 and ticked off with blue ink. There are seasons 
 when you mislay the key of the ledger, or find the 
 leaves blotted, the index blurred, the entries effaced. 
 Sometimes the firm your transactions with which 
 you are desirous of recalling has gone bankrupt, and 
 the accounts are being unravelled by Messrs. Cole- 
 
A COURT-YARD IN HAVANA. 117 
 
 man, Turquand, and Young. Cuba, in short, would 
 not come at call, and it was not until I embarked on 
 the Adriatic, and went over to Trieste, whence, as 
 you know, there are steamers starting continually 
 for all parts of the world, that I began to feel a little 
 tropical again, and find my Memory. 
 
 The sea air did me good, and once more I began 
 to remember ocean voyages and hot climes. But out 
 upon that capricious memory and the skittish tricks 
 it served me ! Like Leigh Hunt's pig, it went down 
 'all manner of streets,' always excepting the very 
 one I wished it to enter. ' Softly now, old girl,' I 
 whispered coaxingly, and strove to tickle it towards 
 the Morro Castle. Would you believe it, the vicious 
 jade bolted right across the Mediterranean Sea, into 
 the port of Algiers, and took me to a cock-fight. 
 'Soho!' I said again, still trying soothing measures; 
 4 this way, Memory, a little to the left ; now to the 
 right; now straight on, and hey for the Gulf of 
 Mexico!' Alas! when I had got Memory in mid- 
 Atlantic, she turned to the north instead of the south, 
 bore me up the River St. Lawrence, and cast me on 
 the stony marge of Cuagnawagha. By dint of her- 
 culean efforts I got the brute back to Vienna, in 
 Austria; and, as luck would have it, hearing that a 
 contingent of Austrian volunteers, bound to Mexico, 
 was about to set sail, I hurried my Memory down to 
 the coast, intending to leave her at Havana en route 
 for Vera Cruz. At the eleventh hour a sharp note 
 from Mr. Seward to Mr. Motley put a stop to the 
 
n8 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 embarkation of the contingent destined to help Maxi- 
 milian, the imperial gentleman in difficulties; but 
 my Memory managed to get on board a transport 
 in despite of the American taboo; and after one of 
 the shortest passages on record, brought up safely 
 in the Fonda called El Globo, Bishopsgate - street, 
 Havana. 
 
 They gave us a double-bedded room. Double- 
 bedded! The apartment itself would have afforded 
 ample quarters to five-and-twenty dragoons, horses, 
 forage and all. It was very like a barn, and had an 
 open timber roof, very massive, but very primitive 
 in its framework. The beams, it is true, were of 
 cedar, and smelt deliciously. I had no means of 
 ascertaining the peculiar hue of the walls or of the 
 floor, for beyond a narrow parallelogram of sunshine 
 thrown on the latter, when the doors were open, the 
 apartment was quite dark. It was one of a series 
 surrounding the patio, or court-yard ; and the Cuban 
 architects hold that windows in rooms which do not 
 look upon the street are mere superfluities. Their 
 constant care, indeed,, is not to let the daylight in, 
 but to keep the sun out. The consequence is, that a 
 room in a Cuban house is very like a photographic 
 camera on a large scale. Magnify by twenty the 
 pretty fresco-painted little dens which open out of 
 the court-yard in the Pompeian house at the Crystal 
 Palace, and you will have some idea of our double- 
 bedded room at El Globo. By the bye, you must 
 forget to sweep it, and you must be rather liberal in 
 
A COURT-YARD IN HAVANA. 119 
 
 your allowance of fleas. What matter? I daresay 
 there were fleas in the house of the Tragic Poet, 
 notwithstanding all the fine frescoes, and that the 
 Poinpeian housemaids were none too tidy. 
 
 I was told afterwards that I might consider my- 
 self very lucky not to find in this double-bedded 
 room such additional trifles as a cow in one corner 
 and a wheeled carriage in another. Spaniards, old 
 or new, are but faintly averse from making a sleep- 
 ing apartment of a stable or a coach-house. I was 
 sIoav to believe this; and it was only lately, after 
 some wayside experiences in Andalusia, and having 
 shared a room with a pedlar's donkey, and being 
 awakened in the morning by the hard, dry, sardonic 
 see-saw of his horrible bray, that I realised to the 
 fullest extent the strangeness of the bedfellows with 
 which misery and the teetotum existence make us 
 acquainted. 
 
 Of the altitude of the folding-doors leading into 
 this cave there was no complaint possible. I came 
 to the conclusion that El Globo had formerly been a 
 menagerie, and our room the private apartment of 
 the giraffe, who, it is well known, is a very proud 
 animal, and will never submit to the humiliation of 
 stooping. The tallness of the doors, however, was 
 balanced by the shortness of the beds. My com- 
 panion was a long way over six feet in height, and 
 the ghost of the celebrated Procrustes might have 
 eyed him as his very long limbs lay on that very 
 short pallet, and longed to reform his tailor's bills 
 
UNDER THE SUN 
 
 by snipping off some superfluous inches of his an- 
 atomy. As to my bed, it was as the couch of Dryden's 
 Codrus — short, and hard, and miserable; the poet's 
 bed, in fact, and a fit preparation for the flagstone, 
 and the kennel, and the grave. 
 
 But the Procrustean eye couldn't have seen that 
 long-limbed captain overhanging the short bed. Why ? 
 Because, when the folding-doors were shut, all, save 
 a bright streak of sun or moonlight at their base, 
 was utter darkness; and as soon as we kindled our 
 wax-tapers at night the gnats or the moths, the bats 
 or the scorpions, came and flapped the lights out. I 
 don't know how the Cuban belles contrive to get 
 through their toilettes. I think they must hang up 
 screens of shawls in the patios, and come out into 
 the open to beautify themselves. A Cuban bedroom 
 is not a place whither you can retire to read or write 
 letters. You may just stumble into it, feel your 
 way to the bed, and, throwing yourself down, sleep 
 as well as you can for the mosquitoes. Besides, the 
 best part of your sleeping is done in Cuba out of 
 your bedroom — in a hammock slung between the 
 posts of a piazza, or on a mattress flung down any- 
 where in the shade, or in anybody's arm-chair, or in 
 the dark corner of any cafe, or anywhere else where 
 the sun is not, and you feel drowsy. In Algiers, the 
 top of the house, with a sheet spread between two 
 poles by way of awning, is still the favourite spot 
 for an afternoon nap, as it was in the time of the 
 Hebrew man of old; but in Havana the house-tops 
 
A COURT-YARD IN HAVANA. 
 
 slant, and are tiled, and so are left to their legitimate 
 occupants, the cats. 
 
 Our folding-doors proved but a feeble barrier 
 against the onslaughts of a horse belongino; to the 
 proprietor of El Globo, and whose proper stabling 
 was in a cool grot, with a vaulted roof — a kind of 
 compromise between an ice-house, a coal-hole, and 
 a wine-cellar. This noble animal, seemingly under 
 the impression that he lived at number five — our 
 number — made such terrific play with his hoofs 
 against our portals on the first night of our stay, * 
 that, remonstrating, we w r ere promoted to a room 
 up-stairs, windowless, of course, but the door of 
 which opened on the covered gallery surrounding the 
 patio. This dwelling, likewise, had the great ad- 
 vantage of not being plunged in Cimmerian darkness 
 directly the door was closed, for it boasted a kind 
 of hutch, or Judas-trap, in one of the panels, after 
 the fashion of the apertures in the doors of police- 
 cells, through which cautious inspectors periodically 
 peep, to make sure that female disorderlies have not 
 strangled themselves in their garters. You might 
 look from this hutch, too, if you chose, and present 
 to the outside spectator the counterpart of the in- 
 furiated old gentleman, presumably of usurious ten- 
 dencies, in Eembrandt's picture, who thrusts his head 
 through the casement^and grins at and exchanges 
 savage glances with the young cavalier who has called 
 to mention that he is unable to take up that little bill. 
 
 Never, in the course of my travels, did I light 
 
122 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 upon such a droll hotel as El Globo. You paid about 
 thirty shillings a day for accommodation which would 
 have been dear at half- a-cr own, but the balance was 
 amply made up to you in fan. I had been living 
 for months at the Bevoort House in New York, the 
 most luxurious hotel, perhaps, in the world, and the 
 change to almost complete barbarism was as amusing 
 as it was wholesome. Amusing, for long-continued 
 luxury is apt to become a very great bore — whole- 
 some, because the discomfort of the Cuban hotels 
 forms, after all, only an intermediate stage between 
 the splendour of the States and the unmitigated 
 savagery of Mexico and Spain. I was fated to go 
 farther and fare worse than at El Globo. Our quar- 
 ters there were slightly inferior to those to be found 
 for fourpence in a lodging-house in St. Giles's; but 
 I was destined to make subsequent acquaintance at 
 Cordova, at Orizaba, at Puebla in America, and in 
 Castile and in Andalusia in Europe, with other pig- 
 sties to which that Havana was palatial. 
 
 I am so glad that there was no room at Madame 
 Alme's, and that we did not try Legrand's. I should 
 have missed the sight of that patio at El Globo. It 
 was open to the sky, of course; that is to say, the 
 four white walls were canopied all day long by one 
 patch of vivid ultramarine. A cloud was so rare, that 
 when one came sailing over the expanse of blue, a 
 sportsman might have taken it for a bird and risked 
 a shot at it. I used often to think, leaning over the 
 balusters of the gallery, how intolerable that bright 
 
A COURT-YARD IN HAVANA. 123 
 
 blue patch would become at last to a man cooped up 
 between the four white walls of a southern prison ; for 
 suffering may be of all degrees, and anguish may wear 
 all aspects. There is a cold hell as well as a hot 
 one. I have seen the horrible coop under the leads 
 of the Doge's palace at Venice, in which Silvio Pellico 
 spent so many weary months. But he, at least, could 
 see the roofs of the houses through his dungeon bars, 
 and hear the gondoliers wrangling and jesting be- 
 tween the pillars, or uttering their weird cries of 
 warning as they turned the corners of the canals. 
 He could hear the splashing of the water as the 
 buckets were let down into the wells in the court- 
 yard by the Giant's Staircase, and sometimes, per- 
 haps, a few of the historical pigeons would come 
 wheeling up from the cornices of the Procuratie 
 Vecchie, and look at him in his cell, pityingly. But 
 only to gaze on four white burning walls, and a 
 great patch of ultramarine, and the chains eating 
 into your limbs all the while ! Think of that. How 
 the captive must long for the sky to be overcast, or 
 for rain to fall — and it falls but once a year; and 
 what a shriek of joy would come out of him were 
 he to see, high aloft in the ultramarine, a real live 
 balloon ! Such burning white walls, such an intoler- 
 able patch of intense blue, must a prisoner by name 
 Poerio have seen in Naples, in the old bad Bourbon 
 time. 
 
 There was nothing prison-like about our patio, 
 however. It was as full of life as our bedrooms were 
 
124 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 full of fleas. The oddest court-yard! — the most an- 
 tique — the most grotesque. I used to liken it to that 
 pound into which Captain Boldwig's keepers wheeled 
 Mr. Pickwick while he got into that sweet slumber 
 produced by too much milk- punch. It was strewn 
 with all manner of vegetable and pomicultural refuse, 
 great leaves of plantains, cocoa-nut shells, decayed 
 pine-apples, exhausted melons, and husks of Indian 
 corn. Havana is a great place for oysters, and the 
 four corners of the ' pound ' were heaped high with 
 votive offerings of shells. Nor to the pound was 
 there wanting the traditional donkey. He would come 
 strolling in three or four times a day, either bearing 
 a pile of Indian corn about the size of an average hay- 
 stack on his back, or with panniers full of oranges 
 slung on either side of him. Occasionally a Pepe or 
 a Jose, or some other criador, would come to unload 
 him. Oftener he would unload himself, by rolling 
 over on the ground, and tumbling his oranges about 
 in all directions ; then a fat negress would emerge 
 from the kitchen and belabour him about the head 
 with a ladle ; then he would slink away to the cool 
 grot where the horse lived, to confer with that animal 
 as to any provender there might be about, and com- 
 pare notes with him as to the growing depravity of 
 mankind in general and Cuban costermongers in par- 
 ticular. By this time his master would arrive with a 
 sharp stick, or else the big bloodhound that lived in 
 an empty sugar-cask, and so zealously licked all the 
 plates and dishes either immediately before or imme- 
 
A COURT-YARD IN HAVANA. 125 
 
 diately after they came from the table — I am not 
 certain which — would become alive to the fact of 
 there being a donkey in the camp, and i run him out' 
 incontinent. 
 
 How they managed to get rid of all those oranges 
 I really do not know. I had a dozen or so brought 
 me whenever I felt thirsty, and I daresay the other 
 guests at El Globo were as often thirsty and as fond 
 of oranges as I ; and there were a good many too cut 
 up in the course of the day for the purpose of making 
 sangaree and orange-toddy ; but even after these 
 draughts the residue must have been enormous. You 
 were never charged for oranges in the bill. They 
 were as plentiful as acorns in a forest, and you might 
 browse on them at will. In the streets, at every 
 corner and under every archway, sits a negress who 
 sells oranges, so they must have some monetary value, 
 however infinitesimal; but if you bestow on her the 
 smallest coin recognised by the Cuban currency you 
 may fill your hands, your pockets, and your hat too, 
 if you choose, with the golden fruit. When the Cuban 
 goes to the bull-fight, he takes with him a mighty 
 store of oranges tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, just 
 as we, when boys, used to buy a pound of gingerbread- 
 nuts, more as a precautionary measure than because 
 we were sweet-toothed, on entering the confines of 
 Greenwich Fair. Some of these oranges the amateur 
 of the bull-fight eats ; but the major part he uses as 
 missiles, and pitches into the ring, at a cowardly bull 
 or clumsy toreadores. There is positively a verb 
 
126 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 in the Spanish dictionary signifying to pelt with 
 oranges. 
 
 I mentioned the existence of a kitchen just now. 
 It was a hot and grimy den, not much bigger than the 
 stoke-hole of a locomotive ; and there was a charcoal 
 stove the»e, I presume ; but the real culinary business 
 was done in the patio. As to venture forth during the 
 noonday or afternoon heats is considered next door 
 to raving madness ; and as you necessarily spend much 
 time within doors ; and as you feel too lazy to read, 
 or write, or paint, or sew — what a blessing sewing- 
 machines must be in Cuba ! before their introduction 
 most of the needlework was done by Coolies — and as 
 you cannot be always smoking, or dozing, or sipping 
 sangaree ; and as billiards are out of the question, and 
 as gambling — the real recreation in all tropical climes 
 — is immoral, there are certain hours in the day when 
 time is apt to hang heavy on your hands, and you 
 don't know what the deuce to do with yourself. An 
 infallible pastime to me was to lean over the gallery 
 and watch the dinner being cooked in the patio. It 
 has been said chat a wise man should never enter his 
 wife's dressing-room, and it has been likewise re- 
 marked that if we entered the kitchen of the Trois 
 Freres half an hour before dinner, we should see such 
 sickening sights as would cause us to lose all our 
 appetite for the banquet served in the cabinet parti- 
 culier up-stairs. We must look at results, says the 
 sage, and not at the means employed to bring them 
 about. But these sententious warnings should not 
 
A COURT-YARD IN HAVANA. 127 
 
 apply, I think, to the cooking that is done in a 
 patio — in the open, and under the glorious sunshine. 
 There was a rollicking, zingaro-like freedom in thus 
 seeing your meals prepared in broad daylight. Why 
 did they cook in the court-yard ? Because the kitchen 
 itself was too small, or because the gory sun came to 
 the assistance of the charcoal embers and did half 
 the cooking himself. I was told lately, and gravely 
 too, at Seville — though the tale may be very likely 
 one of the nature ordinarily told to travellers — that 
 on the fourteenth day of July in every year there 
 takes place in La Ciudad de las Maravillas an ancient 
 and solemn ceremony in honour of Apollo — a kind of 
 sun-worship, as it were : a culinary person, white- 
 aproned and white-nightcapped, sets up a stall in La 
 Plaza de la Magdalena, and produces a frying-pan, a 
 cruse of oil, and a basket of eo-o-s. Two of the eggs 
 he breaks ; sluices their golden yolks with oil, and 
 then, with an invocation to the sun-god, holds the pan 
 towards the meridian blaze. In forty-five seconds the 
 eggs are fried. You must take these eo-gs, and the 
 story too, with a grain of salt; but I can only repeat 
 that Seville is a city of wonders, witness the two an- 
 gelic sisters who, no later than the year 1848, sat on 
 the weathercock of the Giralda, and spinning round 
 and round while Espartero was bombarding the city 7 
 warded off the iron storm from the sacred fane. 
 
 Now, the sun of Andalusia, though a scorcher 
 when considered from a European point of view, is a 
 mere refrigerator when compared with the great fiery 
 
128 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 furnace set up within the domains of the Southern 
 Cross. I am not prepared to deny that the prepara- 
 tion of some of the stews we had for dinner might 
 have been accelerated by the monstrous kitchen-range 
 overhead ; but I shrink from asserting as a positive 
 fact that the old negress, who used to belabour the 
 donkey with the ladle, fried her eggs in the sun. No, 
 I will grant at once that her pots and pans were set 
 upon little braziers full of hot ashes ; but still, with- 
 out the sun, I don't think her viands would have been 
 cooked to her or our liking. She evidently gloried in 
 the sun, and frizzled in it, bareheaded, while her eggs 
 and sausages frizzled in their own persons. Not till 
 her work was done would she bind her temples with 
 the yellow bandana, or the gorgeous turban of fla- 
 mingo hue, and, sitting down in a rocking-chair, fan 
 herself with a dignified air, as though she were the 
 Queen of Spain and had no legs. The oscillations of 
 the chair, however, proved the contrary. She had 
 legs which Mr. Daniel Lambert might have beheld, 
 not unenvious. Good old black cook ! She was like 
 Sterne's foolish fat scullion dipped in a vat of Bruns- 
 wick Black. She was gross and oily, and could ex- 
 hibit a terrible temper, especially towards trouble- 
 some piccaninnies and refractory fowls who showed 
 an ungrateful unreadiness in being caught and 
 strangled and plucked, and trussed and broiled, and 
 served hot with mushrooms, all under half an hour's 
 time ; but, her little irritation once over, she was — 
 until a roving donkey called for the ministrations of 
 
A COURT-YARD IN HAVANA. 129 
 
 the ladle — all grins and chuckles and broad guffaws 
 and humorous sayings. She would sing a fragment 
 of a song, too, from time to time — a wild song of 
 Congo sound, and which needed the accompaniment 
 of a banjo. The refrain had some resemblance to 
 the word ipecacuanha pronounced very rapidly and 
 with a strong guttural accent, and yet I daresay it 
 was all about love, and the home of her youth on 
 the burning banks of Niger. 
 
 Where did all those piccaninnies come from ? Who 
 owned them ? The landlord of El Globo was a bache- 
 lor ; the waiters did not look like married men ; and 
 yet, from the youthful brood strewn about the patio, 
 you might have fancied Brigham Young to be the 
 proprietor of the place. ' Strewn about' is the only 
 term to use with reference to the piccaninnies. Their 
 age averaged between twenty and thirty months. No- 
 body nursed them ; they were too small to stand ; and 
 so they sprawled, and crawled, and wriggled, and lay, 
 and squalled, and kicked, and basked in the sun like 
 little guinea-pigs. I have seen a piccaninny in a dish ; 
 I have seen a piccaninny in a wooden tray, like a leg 
 of pork just delivered by the butcher. They were of 
 all colours — blue-black, brown-black, chocolate, bistre, 
 burnt sienna, raw sienna, cadmium yellow, and pale 
 Creole white. I am afraid all these piccaninnies, save 
 those of the last-named hue, were Slaves, and the 
 children of Slaves. Not one of the least suggestive — 
 to some it may be one of the most painful — features 
 of bondage is that free white and black slave children 
 
i 3 o UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 grow up together in perfect amity and familiarity, 
 are playmates, and foster-brothers and sisters. The 
 great social gulf which is to yawn between them — so 
 fair and jewelled with flowers on one side, so dark 
 and hideous on the other — is in infancy quite bridged 
 over. The black piccaninnies sprawl about the ve- 
 randahs, and the court-yards, and the thresholds of 
 the rooms of their owners; and the white piccaninnies 
 sprawl in precisely the same manner. That fat old 
 cook, for instance, made no more distinction between 
 a white and a black urchin than between a black and 
 a white fowl. Before ever she could address herself 
 to the concoction of a dish, two ceremonies were gone 
 through. A piccaninny had to be fed, and another 
 piccaninny had to be c spanked.' For the purpose of 
 feeding, that invaluable ladle, dipped in a bowl of saf- 
 fron-coloured porridge, came into play; the 'spanking' 
 was done with her broad black hand. She was quite 
 impartial, and distributed the slaps and the spoonfuls 
 in strict accordance with the maxims of equity. Thus, 
 if a piccaninny yelped, it was fed ; but if it yelped 
 after it was fed, it was spanked. And subsequent to 
 both spooning and spanking, the fat old cook would 
 catch the child up in her arms and sing to it a snatch 
 of the famous song that ended with ipecacuanha. 
 
 So have I seen many dinners cooked. So I have 
 
 seen my made-dish running about the patio with 
 
 flapping wings and dismal ' grooping ' noise, to be at 
 
 * last caught and sacrificed to the culinary deities, and 
 
 to appear at the evening meal, grilled, with rich 
 
A COURT-YARD IN HAVANA. 13 r 
 
 brown sauce. And so at last the drama of the day 
 would be played out ; and coming home late, and 
 leaning once more over the rails of the gallery, I 
 would gaze then on the patio all flooded in moonlight 
 of emerald green : pots and pans and plates and crates 
 and baskets and braziers and vegetable rubbish, all 
 glinting and glancing as though some fairy 'property- 
 man' had tipped their edges with the green foil-paper 
 of the playhouse. 
 
THE VOLANTE. 
 
 Are there any of us so high and mighty and wise 
 and proud and philosophical as not to long for some- 
 thing ? Until I read a novel called Barchester 
 Towers, I never ventured to imagine that a being so 
 ineffable as an English bishop could long for any- 
 thing. Under the shovel-hat and silken apron, I 
 thought, must dwell supreme indifference to the toys 
 and gewgaws for which a grosser laity struggle and 
 intrigue. Yet, what a delicate touch of the lancet 
 between the under muscles of the human mind is 
 that with which Mr. Trollope shows us poor little 
 henpecked Dr. Proudie, in his grand palace at Bar- 
 chester, longing, not for the see of Canterbury, not 
 to be a second Wolsey or a new Ximenes, but merely 
 to be able to write his sermons and sip his negus in 
 a warm cosy large room above-stairs, from which he 
 has been banished by his imperious bishopess. Yes ; 
 a bishop may long. A bishop ! Who shall say that 
 his Holiness the Pope has not coveted, within these 
 latter years, the lot of one of his own flunkeys? It 
 was in the disguise of a postillion that the poor old 
 gentleman fled out of Rome in 1849. Quite feasible 
 is it to surmise that his memory has oft reverted to 
 
THE VOLANTE. 133 
 
 the day when he cracked his whip, and rose up and 
 down in his saddle, mechanical, on the dusty road 
 to Gaeta, and that, looking wearily on all his tiaras, 
 and copes, and stoles, and peacocks' feathers, he has 
 sighed, and thought that happiness might be found in 
 an obscure post, good wages, a jacket with sugar-loaf 
 buttons, and tight buckskin small-clothes. 
 
 We generally long for the thing which we are 
 least likely ever to possess. The ugly woman longs 
 for beauty. The drunkard, in his waking moments, 
 longs for the firm tread, clear eye, and assured 
 speech, of the temperate ; and I have often conjec- 
 tured that thieves are beset at times with a dreadful 
 longing to become honest men. I was born to go 
 afoot. When Fate condemned me to the footpath, 
 she also presented me with a pair of bad legs ; for 
 Fate seldom does things by halves. The consequence 
 is, that I have always been longing to ride in a 
 carriage of my own. Of my own, mind. Let that 
 you have be yours and nobody else's. I have longed 
 for my own carriage this many a year, and have 
 gazed so enviously intent on some of my acquaint- 
 ance riding high horses or careering along in the 
 chariots of the proud, that my toes have been 
 menaced by their chargers' hoofs, and my last car- 
 riage has promised to be a stretcher to convey me 
 to the hospital after being run over. My longings 
 vehiculary have been catholic, and perhaps a little 
 capricious. In childhood I longed for the lord 
 mayor's coach, so grand, so golden, so roomy. What 
 
J34 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 happiness was his who, with a fur porringer on his 
 head, and a sword held barton-wise, looked from that 
 coach- window like Punch from a glorified show ! 
 There was a story related to my detriment during 
 nonage, that I once expressed a longing for a mourn- 
 ing coach. I will own that the cumbrous sable 
 wagon, so repulsive to most persons, exercises over 
 me to this day a strange fascination, and that I have 
 some difficulty in refraining from stealing down the 
 stable-yards of funeral postmasters and peeping into 
 the stuffy cloth caverns, and seeking for strange 
 sights in the shining black panels, as the super- 
 stitious seek for apparitions in the drop of ink of the 
 Egyptian magician, and wondering at the uncouth 
 leather springs and braces, and watching the har- 
 nessing of the long- tailed round -barrelled Flemish 
 steeds, with their obsolete surcingles and chestbands. 
 The which leads me, with a blush, to admit that 
 there may be some truth in the report that in youth 
 'my sister Emmeline and I' — her name was not 
 Emmeline — were in the habit of performing funerals 
 in the nursery, and playing at Mr. Shillibeer. 
 
 But these, and the glorious mail-coach, with the 
 four thoroughbreds, and a guard and coachman in 
 blazing scarlet and gold, and the bran-new harness 
 and reins, which used to burst on our sight on the 
 evening of the king's birthday long bygone — these 
 were but childish longings, airy desires akin to that 
 which children show for the Eoyal Arms on a shop- 
 front, or the moon in a pail of water. Not until 
 
THE VOLANTE. 135 
 
 manhood did I feel that full fierce longing, the long- 
 ing which is mingled with discontent, and is own 
 brother to envy, malice, and all uncharitableness. 
 I have given the Drive in Hyde Park a wide berth, 
 and have gone out of my way to avoid Long-acre. 
 The sight of other people's carriages made me sick. 
 I never owned so much as a one-horse chaise. I 
 have not even a perambulator. 
 
 My longing has varied with the countries in 
 which it has been my lot to long. I have longed 
 for a droschky with a bearded Istvostchik in a braided 
 caftan and a long-maned alezan from the Ukraine 
 in the shafts. There is a droschky, I think, among 
 the specimens of wheeled carriages in the Crystal 
 Palace, but I never longed for an Istvostchik at Sy- 
 denham. I coveted the Russian vehicle only while 
 I was on Russian soil. When I went away, I began 
 to long for something else. Kor, I fear, shall I ever 
 possess a droschky of even the humblest kind, which 
 is nothing but a cloth-covered saddle, on which you 
 sit astride, with splash-boards to protect you from 
 the wheels ; for in the latest edition of Murray I 
 learn that droschkies are going out of fashion, and 
 that the Petersburg railway stations are now beset 
 by omnibuses and hack cabs. I never longed for 
 an Irish outside car, although 1 have seen some 
 pretty private ones ; and crinoline may be displayed 
 in its widest sense and to its greatest advantage on 
 a 'kyar,' say between two and five in the afternoon, 
 in Grafton-street, Dublin. My soul has often thirsted 
 
136 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 for a private Hansom. What luxury in the know- 
 ledge that those high wheels, that stiff and shiny 
 apron, all belong to you ! I think I would have a 
 looking-glass in the splash-board, in lieu of Mr. Map- 
 pin's proclamation of the goodness of his knives, and 
 I am sure I should be always pushing open that trap 
 in the roof and bidding the cabman drive faster. 
 And I have longed for a mail phaeton — not so much 
 for the sake of the two proud steppers and the trim 
 lamps with their silvered reflectors, as for the sake of 
 the two grooms who, in black tunics, cockaded hats, 
 white neckcloths, and pickle-jar boots, sit in the 
 dicky with their arms folded, like statues of Discipline 
 and Obedience. I knew a gentleman in the city of 
 Mexico, and he owned such a mail phaeton with two 
 such statuesque grooms as I have described. Little 
 did he reck, good hospitable man, that the guest he 
 was wont to drive out in the Paseo de la Vega envied 
 him, with a green and spotted jealousy, his mail 
 phaeton and his trim grooms. He had encountered 
 the most appalling difficulties before he could find 
 two human beings who, even after lon^ drilling and 
 for liberal wages, could be induced to sit in the dicky 
 — or is it the rumble ? — and fold their arms without 
 moving. The Mexicans are a very busy people ; but 
 neither the Spaniards, nor the half-castes, nor the 
 Indians, understand sitting behind a horse. They 
 prefer sitting across him. My friend sent to the 
 United States for grooms. They returned him word 
 that there were no grooms in the Union who would 
 
THE VOL ANTE. 137 
 
 fold their arms. A lawsuit took hini to New York, 
 and he had another mail phaeton built for the Cen- 
 tral Park ; but the grooms were still lacking. He 
 tried Irishmen, and he tried negroes. Tempted by 
 abundant dollars, they would consent to wear the 
 cockaded hats and the pickle-jar boots, but they 
 could not be brought to fold their arms. To attempt 
 to subject a native American citizen to this indignity 
 was, of course, out of the question. When I remark 
 that I have seen a citizen clad in a red shirt and 
 a white hat driving a hearse at a public funeral, you 
 will recognise the impossibility of any statuesque 
 arrangements in connection with mail phaetons in 
 the States. 
 
 For any native Yankee carriage I never longed. 
 I held the Noah's-ark cars on the street railways in 
 horror, and considered the Broadway stages as abo- 
 minations. As for a trotting c wagon ' — by which is 
 meant a hard shelf on an iron framework between two 
 immense wheels, to which a railway locomotive at 
 high pressure, but disguised as a horse, has been har- 
 nessed — I never could appreciate the pleasure of be- 
 ing whirled along at the rate of about eighteen miles 
 an hour, with the gravel thrown up by the wheels 
 flying about you, now bombarding your eyes, and 
 now peppering your cheeks. Thoroughly do I agree 
 with the general criticism passed on trotting wagons 
 by an old steamboat captain who had endured for 
 a couple of hours the agony of the iron shelf. c The 
 darned thing,' he remarked, 'has got no bulwarks.' 
 
138 UNDER THE SUN ' 
 
 There is rather a pretty American carriage called a 
 Eockaway — not from any peculiar oscillatory mo- 
 tion it possesses, but from a watering-place hight 
 Eockaway, where it was first brought into use. The 
 Eockaway is in appearance something between the 
 French panier a salade, in which the garcons de 
 bureau of the Bank of France speed on their bill- 
 collecting missions, and the spring cart of a fashion- 
 able London baker. Add to this a grinning negro 
 coachman, with a very large silver or black- velvet 
 band to a very tall hat, and the turn-out, you may 
 imagine, is spruce and sparkling. But I never longed 
 for a Eockaway. The American carriage-horses are 
 the prettiest creatures imaginable out of a circus, and 
 are as prettily harnessed. They are almost covered 
 in summer with a gracefully fantastic netting, which 
 keeps the flies from them. 
 
 Much less have I yearned for one of the Hun- 
 garian equipages, about which such a fuss is made 
 in the Prater at Vienna. An open double or triple 
 bodied rattle-trap, generally of a gaudy yellow, with 
 two or four ragged spiteful profligate -looking little 
 ponies, and the driver in a hybrid hussar costume — 
 a feather in his cap, sky-blue tunic and pantaloons, 
 much braiding, and Hessian boots with long tassels. 
 This is the crack Hungarian equipage, the Magyar 
 name of which I do not know, nor knowing could 
 pronounce. The Viennese hold this turn-out to be, 
 in the language of the mews, very ' down the road ;' 
 but it fails to excite my longing. Hungarian ponies 
 
THE VOL ANTE. 139 
 
 look wild and picturesque enough in Mr. Zeitter's 
 pictures ; but a gipsy's cart without the tilt is not 
 precisely the thing for Hyde Park ; and the ' proud 
 Hungarian' on the box-seat reminds me too forcibly 
 of the ; Every thingarian,' who in cosmopolitan saw- 
 dust continues the traditions of equitation handed 
 down by the late Andrew Ducrow. 
 
 When, in the days of Donna Isabella, I was looking 
 from a balcony, overhanging the Puerta del Sol, in 
 Madrid, and used to hear, at about three in the after- 
 noon, the clangour of trumpets from the guard-house, 
 at the Casa de la Gobernacion opposite, as the car- 
 riages of the royal family, with their glittering escort, 
 drove by to the Prado or the Retiro, I would question 
 myself as to whether I felt any longing for the absolute 
 possession of one of those stately equipages. I don't 
 think I did. They were too showy and garish for 
 my humble ambition. If a slight feeling of longing 
 came over me, it was for the coach which conveyed 
 the junior branches of the royal family. Imagine, if 
 you please, a spacious conveyance all ablaze with 
 heraldic achievements, and crammed to the roof with 
 little infantes and infantas ; Mr. Bumble on the 
 coach-box ; and the beadles of St. Clement's Danes, 
 the ward of Portsoken, and the Fishmongers' Com- 
 pany, hung on behind, abreast — for long laced coats 
 and huge laced cocked-hats are the only wear of 
 flunkeydom in Spain. Harnessed to this astounding* 
 caravan were six very sleek, very fat, and very super- 
 cilious-looking mules. To the beadles before and the 
 
Ho UNDER THE SUN 
 
 beadles behind must be added the beadle of the Bur- 
 lington Arcade, on the off-leader, as postillion. Yea, 
 more. The beadle of the Royal Exchange trotted on 
 an Andalusian barb as outrider. A squadron of 
 lancers followed, to take care that the infantes 
 and infantas were not naughty, or that the naughtier 
 Progresistas didn't run away with them. On the 
 whole, I don't think I longed much for this sump- 
 tuous equipage. There is another coach, in the 
 royal stables at Madrid, much more in my line — a 
 queer cumbrous, gloomy litter, with a boot as big as 
 a midshipman's chest. It is a very old coach — the 
 oldest, perhaps, extant, and nearly the first coach 
 ever built, being the one in which Crazy Jane, Queen 
 of Castile and Aragon, used to carry about the 
 coffined body of her husband, Charles of Anjou. 
 
 There is yet another coach in my line — the Shil- 
 libeer line, I mean — which may be hired for a franc 
 an hour at a certain city on the Adriatic sea, opposite 
 Trieste. There are about four thousand of those 
 coaches in the city — a very peculiar city, for the sea 
 is in its broad and its narrow streets, and the sea- 
 weed clings to the door-steps of its palaces. How I 
 have longed to have one of those coaches for my 
 own private riding ; say in the Surrey Canal or on 
 the Serpentine ! The Americans have got one in 
 the lake in their Central Park ; but the toy once 
 placed there has been forgotten, and it is dropping 
 to pieces. It is the only coach of which use is prac- 
 ticable in Venice. It is black, and shiny, and hearse- 
 
THE VOLANTE. 141 
 
 like, and its roof bristles with funereal tufts, and the 
 carving about its doors and panels is strictly of the 
 undertaker's order of decoration. It is called a 
 gondola. 
 
 But where would be the use of a gondola in 
 London? The Surrey Canal is not in a fashionable 
 district, and the Serpentine has no outlet. The chief 
 purpose of your own carriage, I presume, is to drive 
 about to the residences of your friends and acquaint- 
 ances, and strike despair into their souls by flashing 
 your liveries and appointments in their eyes. You 
 could scarcely put your gondoliers into buckskins 
 and pickle -jar boots, although, upon my word, I 
 remarked once, at Venice, that the Count of Cham- 
 bord, otherwise the Duke of Bordeaux, otherwise 
 Henry the Fifth, King of France and Navarre — who 
 lived, when he was not at Frohsdorff, at one of the 
 most beautiful palaces on the Grand Canal, and kept 
 half a dozen gondolas for his private recreation — had 
 been absurd enough to dress up his boatmen in tail 
 coats, gold-laced hats, plush breeches and gaiters. 
 Truly, the Bourbons have learnt nothing, and for- 
 gotten nothing. Incongruity of incongruities ! Ima- 
 gine Jeames de la Pluche on the Grand Canal. 
 
 As one could not drive down to Ascot in a gon- 
 dola, or take it to the Crystal Palace on a half-crown 
 day, or keep it waiting for an hour and a half at the 
 door of a Pall Mall club — and as the linkman at the 
 Royal Italian Opera would be slightly astonished at 
 having to proclaim that Mr. Anonymous's gondola 
 
142 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 stopped the way, I must abandon all hopes of pos- 
 sessing a marine Shillibeer until I can afford to take 
 a palace at Venice. 
 
 But, if my longings are not to be satisfied in 
 Europe, there is in the Spanish West Indies a carriage 
 to be longed for : ay, and the longing may be gratified 
 at a very moderate expenditure. In the city of Ha- 
 vana, and in Havana alone, is to be found this turn- 
 out. It is but a 4 one-hoss shay ;' but it is a chaise 
 fit for princes and potentates to ride in. It is the 
 queerest trap into which mortal ever mounted. It is 
 unique and all but inimitable. Those who have 
 visited Cuba will understand that I allude to the 
 famous conveyance called the volante. 
 
 The rooms looking on the street in Havana are 
 necessarily provided with windows, but these case- 
 ments are garnished with heavy ranges of iron bars, 
 behind which you sit and smoke, or eat, or drink, or 
 yawn, or flirt your fan, or transfix the male passers- 
 by with dreamy, yet deadly, glances, precisely as 
 your habits, or your sex, or the time of the day may 
 prompt you. Skinny hands are often thrust between 
 these bars ; and voices cry to you in Creole Spanish 
 to bestow alms for the sake of the Virgin and the 
 Saints. Sometimes rude boys make faces at yon 
 through the gratings, or rattle a bamboo cane in dis- 
 cordant gamut over the bars, till you grow irritable, 
 and begin to fancy that Havana is a zoological garden, 
 in which the insiders and outsiders have changed 
 places; that you have been shut up in the monkey- 
 
THE VOLANTE. 143 
 
 house; and that the baboons are grimacing at you 
 from the open. I was sitting at the grated window 
 of El Globo's restaurant after breakfast, dallying with 
 some preserved cocoa-nut, a most succulent ' goody,' 
 and which is not unlike one of the spun-glass wigs 
 they used to exhibit at the Soho Bazaar, dipped in 
 glutinous syrup, when, across the field of vision 
 bounded by the window-pane, there passed a negro, 
 mounted on horseback. The animal was caparisoned 
 in blinkers, and a collar, and many straps and bands, 
 thickly bedight with silver ornaments : which I 
 thought odd in the clothing of a saddle-horse. But it 
 might be un costumbre del pais, I reflected; just such 
 another custom as that of plaiting up the horse's tail 
 very tightly, adorning it with ribbons, and tying the 
 end to the saddle-bow. An absurd custom, and a 
 cruel custom; for in the tropics the horse's tail was 
 obviously given him for the purpose of whisking away 
 the flies, which sorely torment him. The black man 
 bestriding this tail-tied horse grinned at me as he 
 rode by, touched his hat, and made a gesture as 
 though of inquiry. That, also, I conjectured to be a 
 Cuban custom. Those big placable unreasoning 
 babies, called negroes, are always grinning and bow- 
 ing, and endeavouring to conciliate the white man, 
 whom they respect and fear, and love, too, after a 
 fashion. This was a stately black man — a fellow of 
 many inches, muscular, black as jet, and shiny. He 
 wore a straw hat with a bright ribbon, a jacket of 
 many colours, a scarlet vest, white breeches, very 
 
144 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 high jack-boots — so at least they seemed to me — with 
 long silver spurs, and large gold rings in his ears. 
 He carried a short stocked whip, with a very long 
 lash of many knots, and he rode in a high demi-peaked 
 saddle, with Moorish stirrups, profusely decorated, like 
 the harness, with silver. I could not quite make him 
 out. The Postillion of Longjumeau, a picador from 
 the bull-ring, Gambia in the Slave on horseback, 
 struggled for mastery in his guise. He moved slowly 
 across the window, and I saw him no more. I forgot 
 all about this splendid spectre on horseback, and re- 
 turned to my dalliance with the preserved cocoa-nut. 
 Time passed. It might have been an hour, it might 
 have been a minute, it might have been a couple of 
 seconds — for the march of time is only appreciable in 
 degree, and is dependent on circumstances — when, 
 looking up from the cocoa-nut, I saw the plane of vision 
 again darkened. Slowly, like the stag in a shooting- 
 gallery, there came bobbing along a very small gig 
 body, hung on yevy large C springs, and surmounted 
 by an enormous hood. Stretched between the apron 
 and the top of this hood, at an angle of forty-five de- 
 grees, was a kind of awning or tent of some sable 
 material. Glancing between the hood and the awning, 
 I saw a double pair of white-trousered legs, while at a 
 considerable altitude above, two spirals of smoke were 
 projected into the air. 'Surely/ I exclaimed, 'they 
 can never be so cruel as 'to make their negro slaves 
 draw carriages.' I rose from the table, and, standing 
 close to the bars, gained a view of the street pave- 
 
THE VOL ANTE. 145 
 
 ment. But no toil-worn negro was visible, and, 
 stranger to relate, no horse, only the gig body and a 
 pair of wheels big enough to turn a paper mill, and a 
 pair of long timber shafts, and a great gulf between. 
 Mystery ! Was it an automaton, or Hancock's steam- 
 coach come to life again? Had my field of view 
 been less confined, I might have discovered that 
 there was, indeed, a horse between the shafts, but 
 that he was a very long way off. He was the identi- 
 cal horse, in fact, ridden by the black postillion who 
 had grinned at me. I had seen a Yolante. 
 
 I became intimately acquainted with the volante 
 ere I left Havana, and I learned to long for it. I 
 have yet faint hopes of acclimatising it in Hyde 
 Park. Some slight difficulty may be experienced in 
 climbing into it, for the C springs are hung very high, 
 and are apt to wag about somewhat wildly when 
 the weight of one or two human bodies is pressed 
 upon them. I would recommend a few weeks' prac- 
 tice in climbing into a hammock ere the volante is 
 attempted; but the ascent is, after all, much more 
 facile than that to the knife-board of a London omni- 
 bus. Once in the curricle, you are at your ease, and 
 happy. You are rocked as in a cradle, and may 
 slumber as peacefully as a baby ; or, if you choose to 
 keep awake, you may catch glimpses, between the 
 canopy of the hood which screens the nape of your 
 neck and the crown of your head, and the black linen 
 awning which shelters your face and eyes from the 
 blinding rays of the sun, of strips of life and move- 
 
 L 
 
146 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 ment — foot-passengers, or riders in other volantes. 
 To keep a gig was declared on a certain well-known 
 occasion to be an undeniable proof of respectability. 
 But, to ride in a gig drawn by a horse with a plaited 
 tail and silver harness, and conducted by a postillion 
 in a many-coloured jerkin and jack-boots, I consider 
 to be the pinnacle of glory. 
 
 It behoves me to offer two brief explanations with 
 regard to the black postillions attire. When you 
 come narrowly to inspect him, you discover that he 
 is not entirely a man of truth. There is a spice of 
 imposture about him. Those breeches and those 
 boots are not wholly genuine. The first, you dis- 
 cover, are mere linen drawers, instead of leathers ; 
 indeed, to wear buckskins in the tropics would be a 
 torture, the hint of whose possibility would have 
 filled the hearts of the managing directors of the late 
 
 © © 
 
 Spanish Inquisition (unlimited) with gratitude. I 
 could readilv forgive the negro for his trifling fraud 
 
 j © © © 
 
 as regards the leathers, the exigencies of climate 
 
 © 7 © 
 
 covering a multitude of sins ; but what shall we say 
 of a postillion who pretends to wear jack-boots which 
 turn out to be nothing but stiff leather gaiters or 
 spatterdashes? These hypocritical boots are trun- 
 cated close to the ankle, even as was that boot con- 
 verted by Corporal Trim into a mortar for the siege 
 of Dendermond. At the ankle these boots do not 
 even diverge into decent bluchers or homely shoes. 
 The bare feet of the black man are visible ; and on 
 his bare heels and insteps are strapped the silver 
 
THE VOLANTE. 147 
 
 spurs with their monstrous rowels. Now a jack-boot, 
 I take it, is not a thing to be trifled with. It is 
 either a boot or no boot. This volante appendage is 
 a hybrid, and consequently abominable. The black 
 postillion may urge, it is true, several pleas in abate- 
 ment. First, nature has provided him with feet quite 
 as black, as shiny, and as tough, as the extremities 
 of any jack-boots that could be turned out by Mr. 
 Hoby, Mr. Eunciman, or any other purveyor to her 
 Majesty's Household Cavalry brigade. Next, the 
 Moorish stirrups into which he thrusts his feet are not 
 mere open arches of steel, but capacious foot-cases — 
 overshoes hung by straps to the saddle. Finally, 
 negroes are said to suffer more than white people 
 from the insidious attacks of a very noxious insect 
 common in Havana — a vile little wretch who marries 
 early, and digs a hole in the ball of your toe, in which 
 he and his wife reside. Mrs. Insect lays I know not 
 how many thousand eggs in the hole under your skin, 
 and inflammation, ulceration, and all the other ations 
 — even sometimes to mortification, the last ation of all 
 — ensue. Pending the advent of a nice fleshy great 
 toe, in which they can construct a habitation, the 
 young couple dwell, after the manner of the little 
 foxes, in any holes and corners that offer; and the 
 toe of a jack-boot would present a very comfortable 
 lodging until they moved. So the negro postillion 
 sensibly cuts off the foot of his boot, and his enemy 
 cannot lie perdu, awaiting him in a leathern cavern. 
 For this queer vehicle, the volante, I conceived a 
 
148 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 violent longing ; and one of these days I mean to have 
 a specimen curricle neatly packed in haybands and 
 brought to Southampton per West India mail steamer. 
 A black postillion I might obtain through the friendly 
 offices of the Freedman's Aid Society, and for money 
 you can have silver- adorned harness made to any 
 pattern in Long-acre. I am not quite certain whether 
 the metropolitan police would thoroughly appreciate 
 the inordinate length of the volante shafts, although 
 in the case of a block in Cheapside the space interven- 
 ing between the horse and the gig body would give 
 impatient foot-passengers an opportunity to duck 
 under and cross the street comfortably; and I don't 
 know whether I should get into trouble with the So- 
 ciety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, if I 
 plaited my horse's tail up tight, and tied it to the 
 saddle-bow, when summer heats were rife and flies 
 were plentiful. 
 
 The volante ! It is such a pretty name, too ; and, 
 Shakespeare's doubt notwithstanding, there is much 
 in a name. Southey and Coleridge and Wordsworth 
 were bent on establishing their Pantisocracy on the 
 banks of the Susquehanna — not because they knew 
 anything of the locality, but because Susquehanna 
 was such a pretty name. It is a very ugly river, 
 and, curiously enough, it is the home of a bird pos- 
 sessing at once the most delicious flavour and the 
 most grotesque name imaginable — the canvas-back 
 duck. 
 
 The Cubans have a genuine passion for the vo- 
 
THE VOLANTE. 149 
 
 lante. Volantes are the common hack cabs of Ha- 
 vana; but then the horse is often but a sorry jade, 
 and the negro postillion a ragged profligate 'cuss,' 
 the state of whose apparel would have shocked Miss 
 Tabitha Bramble, had she travelled so far as the An- 
 tilles. But the private volantes as far exceed the 
 public ones in number as they do in splendour. 
 Everybody who can afford it keeps a volante, and 
 many who cannot afford it keep a volante. It is the 
 one luxury, the one expense, which, next to a cigar 
 and a bull-fight, is dearest to the Spanish Creole 
 heart, and which, by fair means or foul, must be pro- 
 cured. I believe that the middle-class Cubans would 
 sooner live on beans and cold water, dress in rags, 
 and lie on straw like Margery Daw, than go without 
 a volante. Fortunately, Providence has been very 
 good to them. Their beautiful island runs over with 
 fertility. All the world are eager to buy what they 
 have to sell, and what almost exclusively they pro- 
 duce — sugar and tobacco. So they make huge piles 
 of dollars and gold ounces, and are enabled not only 
 to keep volantes in profusion, but to give capital din- 
 ners, and treat strangers with a generous hospitality 
 very rarely shown in starched and stuck-up Europe. 
 
 We have all heard of the fondness which the Be- 
 douin Arabs show for their horses. We know that 
 the Prophet Mahomet has written whole chapters of 
 the Koran on the breeding and rearing of colts. We 
 know that the young Arab foal is brought up in the 
 tent with the little girls and boys, and that when he 
 
150 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 grows up to be a horse he is petted and caressed. 
 The children hang about his neck and call him en- 
 dearing names ; the Arab mother strokes his nose and 
 pats his cheek, fetches him sweet herbs, makes his 
 bed, feeds him with bread and dates, and strips of 
 meat cured in the sun. Well, the affection which 
 the Arabs manifest for their horses the Cubans mani- 
 fest for their volantes. They can scarcely endure 
 that the beloved object should be out of their sight. 
 Make an evening call — all fashionable calls in Cuba 
 are made in the evening — and in a dim corner of the 
 reception-parlour you will probably see a great pyra- 
 mid covered up with brown holland. It is not a 
 harp, it is not a grand pianoforte ; it is a volante. I 
 must hint that Cuban reception rooms are immensely 
 large and lofty, and are always on the ground floor; 
 otherwise I might be supposed to be availing myself 
 too extensively of the traveller's privilege, in relating 
 that the drawing-room of a Cuban lady is not unfre- 
 quently a coach-house as well. 
 
A HAED KOAD TO TRAVEL. 
 
 It was part of the ineffable system of sweetness 
 and light known as the wisdom of onr ancestors, to 
 whip all the children on the morning of Innocents' 
 Day, c in order that the memorial of Herod's murder 
 might stick the closer.' The wisdom of our contem- 
 poraries, while it has discarded the brutal practice of 
 annually reacting the Massacre of the Innocents on a 
 secondary scale, still retains a trace of the disagree- 
 able mediaeval custom, in respect of 'the strict con- 
 nection maintained in many households between 
 Biblical study and afflictive punishment, and the 
 intimate alliance between chapters from Jeremiah 
 to be gotten by heart, and bread and water and 
 dark cupboards. Who the philanthropic discoverer 
 of child torture as a prelude to a church festival may 
 have been, is uncertain; perhaps he was a near re- 
 lative of the bright spirit who hit on the ingenious 
 devices — to which the puddling of iron and the glaz- 
 ing of pottery are but trifling puerilities — of con- 
 fining black beetles in walnut shells and binding 
 them over the eyes of infants ; or of that ardent 
 lover of his species — connected with the educational 
 profession — whose researches into the phenomena of 
 
152 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 physical pain led him to the inestimable discovery 
 that by boring a hole, or any number of holes, in a 
 piece of wood with which a child's hand is struck, a 
 corresponding number of blisters may be raised on 
 the smitten palm. 
 
 Our good ancestors — can we ever be sufficiently 
 grateful for the rack, or for the whirligig chair 
 framed by medical wisdom for the treatment of acute 
 mania! — blended the Innocents' Day custom with 
 many of the observances of social life. ■ If they were 
 wicked, these ancestors of ours, they were at least 
 waggish in their wickedness. If the boundaries of a 
 parish or the limits of an estate needed accurate 
 record, they laid down a boy on the ascertained 
 frontiers, and flogged him so soundly that he never 
 forgot where the parish of St. Verges ended, or 
 where that of St. Brooms began. Fifty years after- 
 wards, if he were summoned as a witness at Nisi 
 Prius, he would relate, quickened by the memory of 
 his stripes, every topographical condition of the limits 
 under discussion. The phantom of this sportive 
 mode of combining cruelty with land-surveying yet 
 survives in the annual outings of charity children 
 to 'beat the bounds.' Formerly the charity boys, 
 and not the bounds, were beaten; but now even the 
 long willow wands with which bricks and mortar are 
 castigated are falling into desuetude, and although 
 the ceremony is still kept up in some parishes — the 
 rector in his black gown and a chimney-pot hat, and 
 bearing a large nosegay in his hand, being a sight to 
 
A HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL. 153 
 
 see — it is feared that beating the bounds will, in a 
 few years, be wholly abolished, owing to the gradual 
 but sure extinction of Beadles, as a race. Another 
 vestige of what may be called Innocenticism lingered 
 until recently in certain pleasant municipal excur- 
 sions termed ' swanhoppings,' when some corpulent 
 gentlemen, with a considerable quantity of lobster 
 salad and champagne beneath their waistcoats, were 
 sportively seized upon by the watermen of the Lord 
 Mayor's barge, and 'bumped' on posts or rounded 
 blocks of stone. The solemn usage had some refer- 
 ence, it is to be presumed, to the liberties of the 
 City, as guaranteed by the charter given by William 
 the King to William the bishop, and Godfrey the 
 portreeve. Or it might obscurely have related to 
 the Conservancy of the Thames. Substantially, it 
 meant half-a-crown to the Lord Mayor's watermen. 
 
 In the south of France, there may be found 
 growing, all the year round, as fine a crop of ignor- 
 ance and fanaticism as the sturdiest Conservative 
 might wish to look upon. The populace of Toulouse 
 would hang the whole Calas family again to-morrow 
 if they had a chance. The present writer was all 
 but stoned once at Toulon for not going down on 
 his knees in the street, in honour of the passage of 
 an absurd little joss, preceded by a brass band, a 
 drum-major, a battalion of the line, and a whole 
 legion of priests. The country people still thrash 
 their children mercilessly whenever a gang of con- 
 victs go by on their way to the bagne, and especially 
 
154 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 on the morning of the execution of a criminal. And 
 it is a consolation to arrive at the conclusion, from 
 patent and visible facts, that wherever wisdom, in its 
 Ancestral form, triumphantly flourishes, there dirt, 
 sloth, ignorance, superstition, fever, pestilence, and 
 recurring famines, do most strongly flourish too. 
 
 It may seem strange to the reader that, after 
 venturing upon these uncomplimentary comments on 
 our forefathers' sagacity, the writer should candidly 
 proceed to own his belief that the human memory 
 may be materially strengthened as to facts and dates, 
 by the impressions of bodily anguish suffered con- 
 currently with a particular day, or a particular event. 
 Such, however, is the fact, although of course it can- 
 not be accepted as a plea in extenuation of the most 
 barbarous cruelty. For example, if the next time a 
 tramp sought hospitality at the Guildford union, the 
 guardians forthwith seized upon such tramp, and 
 caused him to be branded with a hot iron from head 
 to foot, and in Roman capitals, with the words, 'The 
 guardians of the Guildford union refuse to relieve 
 the Casual Poor,' the stigmatised vagrant would, to 
 the day of his death, remember that Guildford union 
 workhouse was not a place whereat bed and break- 
 fast should be asked for. Still there is no combating 
 the fact that the remembrances of agony are lasting. 
 I have a very indistinct recollection of things which 
 took place twenty, or even ten years ago; and I 
 often ask myself with amazement whether it is possi- 
 ble that I could ever have written such and such a 
 
A HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL. 155 
 
 letter, or known such a man or woman. Yet with 
 microscopic minuteness, I can recall a yellow hackney- 
 coach — the driver had a carbuncle on the left side of 
 his nose — which, once upon a time, conveyed my 
 nurse and myself to the residence of a fashionable 
 dentist in Old Cavendish-street, London. I can re- 
 member the black footman who opened the door, and 
 the fiendish manner in which he grinned, as though 
 to show that his molars needed no dentistry. I can 
 remember the dog's-eared copy of the Belle-Assemblee 
 on the waiting-room table; the widow lady with her 
 face tied up, moaning by the window; the choleric 
 old gentleman in nankeen trousers who swore ter- 
 rifically because he was kept waiting; the frayed and 
 threadbare edges of the green baize door leading to 
 the dentist's torture chamber; the strong smell of 
 cloves and spirits of wine and warm wax, about ; the 
 dentist himself — his white neckcloth and shining 
 bald head ; his horrible apparatus ; his more horrible 
 morocco- covered chair; the drip, drip of water at 
 the washstand ; the sympathising looks of my nurse ; 
 the deadly dew of terror that started from my pores 
 as the Monster seized me; and finally, that one ap- 
 palling circular wrench, as though some huge bear 
 with red hot jaws — he has favoured us all, in dreams 
 — were biting my head off, and found my cervical 
 vertebras troublesome: all these come back to me, 
 palpably. Yet I had that tooth out eight-and-thirty 
 years ago. 
 
 A hard road to travel ! I should have forgotten 
 
156 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 all about that road by this time but for the intoler- 
 able pain I endured when I was travelling upon it. 
 I have crossed Mont Cenis a dozen times, yet I 
 should be puzzled to point out the principal portions 
 of the landscape to a stranger. I could not repeat, 
 without book, the names of the Rhine castles between 
 Cologne and Mayence. I am sure I don't know how 
 many stations there are between London and Brigh- 
 ton. And I am not by any means 'letter' or 'figure 
 perfect' in the multiplication table, although the road 
 up to nine times eight was in my time about as hard 
 travelling as could be gone through by a boy with a 
 skin not quite so thick as that of a rhinoceros. But 
 every inch of the hard road I happened to travel in 
 the spring of 1864 — a road which stretches for some 
 three hundred miles from the city of Yera Cruz to 
 the city of Mexico — is indelibly impressed on my 
 memory. Since then I have journeyed many thou- 
 sands of miles over roads of more or less duresse ; 
 and in the Tyrol, in Venetia, in Spain, in Algeria, 
 I have often tested by sudden inward query the 
 tenacity remaining in the reminiscence of that road 
 in Mexico. You turn to the right from the great 
 quay of Vera Cruz, passing the castle of San Juan 
 de Ulloa. You drive to a wretched railway station, 
 and take the train (I am speaking of 1864) to a 
 place called La Soledad, some five-and-twenty miles 
 inland. There you sleep. Next morning at day- 
 break you start in a carriage along the great Spanish 
 highway, and by nightfall make Cordova. At four on 
 
A HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL. 157 
 
 the following morning you drive to Orizaba — you are 
 taking things quietly, mind, in consequence of the 
 road — and pass the day there. Again on the morrow 
 you start at four a.m. from Cordova for Sant' Augus- 
 tin del Palmar, where you dine and sleep. The next 
 day's journey brings you, by sunset, to Puebla. The 
 next day you make Rio Frio, in time for breakfast, and 
 at about iive in the afternoon you pass the Garita, or 
 customs-barrier, and are in the city of Montezuma, the 
 capital of Mexico. That is the road. I spent, going 
 up, six days on the journey ; but I was an inmate of 
 a private carriage. I came down again in a public 
 diligence, in three days; but, for reasons I shall 
 explain afterwards, the agony of the private travel- 
 ling carriage far surpassed that of the stage-coach. 
 
 Ostensibly I had no reason for grumbling. I was 
 the guest of a kind friend whose carriage had been 
 built in New York, with a special view to Mexican 
 highways, and who, being a great friend and patron 
 of the contractor for the Imperial Diligences — Mexico 
 was an empire in '64 — was certain of relays of mules 
 all the way from the sea-coast to the capital. We 
 had a good store of wine with us, and plenty of 
 Havana cigars ; and in the. way of edibles the com- 
 missariat of Mexico is as abundant as that of Old 
 Spain is meagre.* The route was singularly clear 
 
 * It is curious that in countries where wine is plentiful there should 
 be nothing procurable to eat, and that in non-wine-growing, but beer or 
 cider-producing, countries the traveller should always be sure of a good 
 dinner. Out of the beaten track in Italy, a tourist runs the risk of being 
 half starved. In Spain, he is starved habitually and altogether ; but he 
 
158 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 from highway robbers at that time; the French 
 being in force at Cordova, Orizaba, and Puebla, and 
 patrolling every league of the way, not only with 
 their own dragoons, but with local levies known as 
 contra-guerrilleros. Finally, we had taken the pre- 
 caution of leaving behind us in safe care at Vera 
 Cruz, our watches, gold ' onzas,' and other valuables, 
 keeping only a few loose dollars for the expenses of 
 the journey. I even left my clothes and servant on 
 the coast, and during the six weeks I remained in 
 Mexico city was not only boarded and lodged, but 
 washed and clothed by my generous host: even to 
 the articles of purple and fine linen, lapis-lazuli wrist- 
 buttons, a Mexican hat as broad as a brougham wheel, 
 and a pair of spurs with rowels as big as cheese- 
 plates. So, if we had been robbed on the way, the 
 guerillas would have found very little of which to 
 plunder us. The pain, the misery, the wretchedness 
 I endured, almost without intermission for six days 
 — at night you generally dreamed of your bumps, 
 and suffered all your distresses over again — were 
 entirely due to the abominable road upon which we 
 entered, for our sins, at La Soledad, and which we 
 did not leave until we came to the very custom-house 
 
 is sure of victuals in England, in America, and in Russia. Even in the 
 East, fowls, eggs, kids, and rice are generally obtainable in the most 
 out-of-the-way places ; but many a time have I been dismissed hungry 
 jErom a village hostelry in France with the cutting remark : ' Monsieur, 
 nous n'avons plus rien.' There is an exception to the rule in Germany 
 — I except Prussia — which bounteous land runs over with wine, beer, 
 beef, veal, black and white bread, potatoes, salad, and sauerkraut. 
 
A HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL. 159 
 
 barrier of Mexico. Sixteen years have passed since 
 I travelled on the Czar's Highway and found it bad. 
 I have waded through the Virginian mud since then; 
 have made acquaintance with muleback on the banks 
 of the Guadalquivir ; have tried a camel (for a very 
 short time) at Oram But I can conscientiously 
 declare that I never found so hard a road to travel 
 as that road between Yera Cruz and Mexico, and 
 I am confident that, were I to live to sixty years 
 of age (the Mexican railway by that time being com- 
 pleted and paying fifteen per cent on its stock, and 
 a beautifully Macadamised carriage road running be- 
 side it for three hundred miles) and I were questioned 
 as to what the Mexican highway was like in 1864, I 
 should, on the 'beating the bounds' principle, pre- 
 serve as lively a remembrance of its horrors as I 
 preserve of it now, a peaceable and contented daily 
 traveller on the Queen's Highway and the Metro- 
 politan Railway. 
 
 Had I not been somewhat obtuse, I might have 
 noticed on board the steamer which brought us from 
 Havana, that my friend was nervous, even to un- 
 easiness, as to the form my earliest impressions of 
 Mexican travelling might assume. I must, expect to 
 ' rough it ' a little, he remarked. I answered that I 
 had tried an American ambulance wagon, and a 
 M'Clellan saddle, and that I could not imagine any- 
 thing rougher than those aids to locomotion. ' Our 
 Toads are not quite up to the mark of Piccadilly,' he 
 would hint sometimes. ' You see, since the French 
 
160 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 came to attack Juarez, everything has been knocked 
 into a cocked hat.' However, he always wound up 
 his warnings by declaring that we shouldn't find a 
 single robber on the road, and that we should go up 
 to Mexico, ' like a fiddle.' If the state in which I 
 eventually reached Mexico bore any resemblance to 
 the musical instrument in question, it must have 
 been akin to that of the fiddle of the proprietor of 
 the bear in Hadibras, warped and untuned, with my 
 bow broken, a fracture in my stomach, another in 
 my back, and my strings flying all abroad. 
 
 I sincerely hope that I shall never see Vera Cruz 
 again : — the ill-omened, sweltering, sandy, black, 
 turkey -buzzard-haunted home of yellow fever ! I shall 
 not forget, however, that I was hospitably entertained 
 there, and especially I shall never lose consciousness 
 of a long telescope in the saloon overlooking the 
 roadstead, to which I am indebted for one of the 
 drollest scenes I ever saw in my life. There were 
 three or four French men-of-war stationed at Vera 
 Cruz at the time, but they could not lie in the har- 
 bour, which is not by any means landlocked, and has 
 but an insufficient breakwater in the castle of San 
 Juan de . Ulloa. The Spithead of Vera Cruz is off 
 Sacrificios, a place which owes its name to the hor- 
 rible human sacrifices perpetrated there up to the 
 time of Cortes' invasion. Sunday being the French- 
 man's day of joyous recreation all over the world, 
 leave had been granted, with some liberality, to the 
 crews of the war-ships in port; and from our window 
 
A HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL. 161 
 
 we had seen, during the morning and afternoon, 
 numerous parties of gallant French Jack-tars — they 
 are so picturesquely dandified in appearance, that 
 they more closely resemble patent blacking than 
 common tar — swaggering along the strand, peeping 
 under the mantillas of the women, kissing their 
 hands to tawny old Indian dames smoking their 
 papelitos in shadowy doorways, and occasionally 
 singing and skipping, through mere joyousness of 
 heart and exuberance of spirits. Many of the men- 
 o'-war's men were negroes from the Mauritius, and 
 it was very pleasant to remark that their colour did 
 not in the least interfere with their being hail-fellow- 
 well-met with the white seamen. But you would 
 very rarely see an American and a black foremast- 
 man arm-in-arm. These fine fellows of the Imperial 
 French navy had, I hope, attended service at the 
 cathedral in the morning ; but, as day wore on, they 
 had certainly patronised the aguardiente shops with 
 great assiduity; and spirituous intoxication, follow- 
 ing, perhaps, on a surfeit of melons, shaddocks, and 
 pineapples, in a tropical climate, is not very good for 
 the health. Touching at St. Thomas's once, I said 
 inquiringly to the captain of the mail steamer, ' And 
 this is the white man's grave, is it?' 4 No,' he ans- 
 wered, c that is ;' and he pointed to a brandy-bottle 
 on the cabin-table. 
 
 I don't think I ever saw so many tipsy tars as I 
 .did that Sunday at Vera Cruz. Portsmouth, with a 
 squadron just in from a long cruise, was a temperance 
 
 M 
 
162 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 hotel compared with this tropical town. It is diffi- 
 cult to repress a smile when one is told that French- 
 men never get tipsy. All that I have seen of French 
 soldiers and sailors on active service, leads me to the 
 persuasion that they will drink as much as they can 
 get; and in their cups they are inexpressibly mis- 
 chievous, and not unfrequently very savage. Yet, 
 although rowdy, insolent, and quarrelsome, they 
 rarely fall to fisticuffs, as our men do.* On this 
 particular Sunday they so frightened Vera Cruz 
 from its propriety — the inhabitants being mainly an 
 abstemious race, suffering from chronic lowness of 
 spirits, in consequence of civil war and the yellow 
 fever — that pickets of infantry were sent out from 
 the main guard to pick up inebriated mariners and 
 pack them off on board ship again. The French are 
 very quick at adapting themselves to the usages of 
 the country they visit, and, short as was the time 
 they had been in Mexico, they had learnt the use of 
 that wonderfully serviceable instrument, the lasso. 
 The pickets, wearing only their side-arms, went 
 
 * You will find, in Algeria, at the military penitentiaries, ' discipli- 
 nary battalions,' formed almost entirely of incorrigible drunkards. The 
 excesses committed by the French in Mexico, and which were generally 
 induced by libations of aguardiente or commissariat brandy, were 
 atrocious ; in fact, they bore out the reputation given them by the 
 Duke of Wellington in his evidence before the Royal Commission on 
 Military Punishments. See Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Mus- 
 ketry, in Household Words, 1851. Five out of ten soldiers who massa- 
 cred the citizens of Paris on the boulevards in the December of that 
 year were drunk. — (P.S.) I wrote these remarks in 1866. Since then 
 we have seen the war of 1870 and the insurrection of 1871, and a great 
 deal more of what the c temperate' French can do in the way of tippling. 
 
A HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL. 163 
 
 about lassoing tipsy sailors right and left, most 
 scientifically; and after they had caught their men 
 in running nooses, they l coralled them' — that is to 
 say, they would encircle a whole group of nautical 
 bacchanalians with a thin cord, which, beino- tio-ht- 
 ened, the whole body of revellers would be drawn 
 close together. Then, the pickets would, with mild 
 applications of their sheathed bayonets, astern, run 
 the captives down to the waterside, and tumble them 
 into the boats which were to convey them on board 
 their respective ships. 
 
 This afternoon's entertainment had continued for 
 some time ; and the last boat-load of topers having 
 been dispatched, Vera Cruz was once more left to 
 the blazing sunshine, and to the black scavenger 
 buzzards. My hosts were all in their hammocks 
 (slung in the corridor), enjoying their siesta. I 
 could not sleep, and bethought me of the long brass 
 telescope on a tripod in the balcony. I got the 
 lens adjusted to my sight at last, and made out 
 the castle of San Juan ; the tricoloured flag idly 
 drooping from the staff on the tower ; the shining 
 black muzzles of the cannon, looking out of the 
 embrasures of the bastions, like savage yet sleepy 
 mastiffs blinking from their kennels; the sentinel, 
 with a white turban round his shako, pacing up and 
 down; the bright bayonet on his rifle throwing off 
 sparkling rays. But beyond the castle, some two 
 miles distant, there was nothing to see. Sacrificios 
 and the squadron were 'round the corner,' so to 
 
1 64 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 speak, and out of my field of view. The native craft 
 were all moored in-shore; and Vera Cruz is not a 
 place where you go out pleasure-boating. There 
 was nothing visible beyond the arid, dusty foreshore, 
 but the* excruciatingly bright blue sky and the in- 
 tolerably bright blue sea: Jove raining down one 
 canopy of molten gold over the whole, as though he 
 thought that Danae was bathing somewhere in those 
 waters. I fell a musing over poor Alexander Smith's 
 
 ' All dark and barren as a rainy sea.' 
 
 The barrenness here was as intense; but it was 
 from brightness. You looked upon a liquid desert 
 of Sahara. Ah! what is that? A dark speck mid- 
 way between the shore and the horizon. The tiniest 
 imaginable speck. I shift the telescope, try again, 
 and again focus my speck. It grows, it intensifies, 
 it 25, with figures large as life, so it seems, finished 
 with Dutch minuteness, full of colour, light, and 
 shade, colour animation, a picture that gross Jan 
 Steen, that Hogarth, that C allot, might have painted. 
 A boat crammed full of tipsy sailors. There is one 
 man who feels very unwell, and who, grasping his 
 ribs with either hand, grimaces over the gunwale in 
 a most pitiable manner. Another is argumentatively 
 drunk, and is holding forth to a staid quartermaster, 
 who is steering. Another is harmoniously intoxi- 
 cated. Then there is a man who is in a lachrymose 
 state of liquor, and is probably bewailing La Belle 
 France and his Mother. Suddenly a negro, who is 
 
A HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL. 165 
 
 Mad Drunk, tries to jump overboard. Such a bustle, 
 such a commotion ! They get the obstreperous black 
 man down and lay him in the sheets, and he too 
 begins to sing. It is as though you were a deaf 
 man looking at the Apropos des buveurs,' in Rabelais. 
 And in the midst of all this the boat with its stolid 
 sober rowers goes pitching and bounding about the 
 field of the telescope, sometimes swerving quite out 
 of it, and leaving but a blank brightness ; then, com- 
 ing into full focus again, in all its wondrous detail of 
 Reality. 
 
 After a night not entirely unembittered by the 
 society of mosquitoes, we rose ; took the conventional 
 cup of chocolate, crust of dry bread, and glass of 
 cold water ; and, bidding farewell to our entertainers, 
 drove to the railway terminus. I didn't expect much 
 from a railway point of view, and consequently was 
 not disappointed. We have all heard of things being 
 rough and ready. There was plenty of roughness 
 here, without the readiness. It was nearly noon, 
 and the industrial staff of the station, represented by 
 two Indians in striped blankets (serving them for 
 coat, vest, and pantaloons), and monstrous straw 
 hats, w^ere sleeping in two handbarrows. The sta- 
 tion-master, a creole Spaniard, had slung his grass 
 hammock in a shady nook behind the pay- place, and 
 was sleeping the sleep of the just. There was a 
 telegraph office, recently established by the French; 
 and the operator, with his face resting on his arms, 
 and those limbs resting on the bran-new mahogany 
 
1 66 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 instrument from Paris, snored peacefully. It was 
 the most primitive station imaginable. There was one 
 passenger waiting for the train, a half-caste Mexican 
 'greaser,' fast asleep at full length on the floor, and 
 with his face prone to it. He had a bag of Indian 
 corn with him, on which, for safety, he lay; and he 
 had brought a great demi-pique saddle too, which 
 rested on his body, the stirrup leathers knotted to- 
 gether over the pummel, and which looked like a 
 bridge over the river Lethe. Where was his horse? 
 I wondered. Did he own one, or had his gallant 
 steed been shot under him in battle, and was he on 
 his way to steal another? Altogether, this rickety 
 ruinous railway station, with the cacti growing close 
 to the platform, and with creepers twining about 
 every post and rafter, and bits of brick, and stray 
 scaffold-poles, and fragments of matting, and useless 
 potsherds, and coils of grass rope littered about in 
 the noontide glare, reminded me with equal force 
 of an Aztec building speculation overtaken by bank- 
 ruptcy, and of a tropical farmyard in which all the 
 live stock had died of yellow fever. 
 
 The time for the train to start had long expired ; 
 but there was no hurry ; so my travelling companion 
 lay down with his head on the half-caste's saddle and 
 took a little nap. I wandered on to the platform, 
 and there, to my pleasurable surprise, found one man 
 who was v awake. Who but a French gendarme ? 
 One of a picked detachment of that admirable force 
 sent out to Mexico to keep both invaders and in- 
 
A HARD ROAD TO TRA VEL. 167 
 
 vaded in order — combed, brushed, polished, waxed, 
 pomatumed, booted, spurred, sabred, belted, cocked- 
 hatted, gauntleted, medalled — a complete and per- 
 fect gendarme. He was affable, sententious, and 
 dogmatic. ' Mexico/ he observed, c was a country 
 without hope.' I have since inclined to the belief 
 that the gendarme did not dogmatise quite unreason- 
 ably on this particular head. He farther remarked 
 that discipline must be maintained, and that in view 
 of that necessity he had usually administered 'une 
 fameuse volee,' in the shape of blows with the flat of 
 his sword, to the station-master. He accepted a 
 cigar, to be reserved for the time of his relief from 
 duty; and not to be behindhand in politeness, he 
 favoured me with a pinch of snuff from a box bear- 
 ing on the lid the enamelled representation of a 
 young lady, in her shirt-sleeves and a pair of black- 
 velvet trousers, dancing a jig of a carnavalesque kind. 
 ' I adore the theatre,' said the gendarme. ' Monsieur 
 has no doubt seen La Belle Helene in Paris?' I 
 replied that I had witnessed the performance of that 
 famous extravaganza. ' Ah !' continued the gen- 
 darme, with something like a sigh. ' They essayed 
 it at Mauritius; but it obtained only a success of 
 esteem. Monsieur may figure to himself the effect 
 of a Belle Helene who was a mulatto. As for " Aga- 
 memnon," he did not advance at all. J'aurais bien 
 flanque trois jours de saile de police a ce gredin la? 
 I intend, Monsieur,' he concluded, 'to visit the 
 Bouffes, and to assist at a representation of the 
 
1 68 UNDER THE SUN . 
 
 work of M. Jacques Offenbach, when I reimpatriate 
 myself and enter the civil. 5 Honest gendarme! I 
 hope the Vomito spared him, and that he has r ex- 
 patriated himself by this time, and seen not only 
 La Belle Helene, but Orphee aux Enfers and La Grande 
 Duchesse de Gerolstein. 
 
 The station-master woke up about one o'clock, 
 and it appeared that he had sent a messenger down 
 into the town to ask my friend at what time he 
 would like to have the train ready. There was 
 no other passenger save the half-caste, who would 
 very cheerfully have waited until the day after next, 
 or the week after next, or the Greek Kalends. My 
 friend said he thought we might as well start at 
 once ; so half a dozen Indians were summoned from 
 outhouses where they had been dozing, and we pro- 
 ceeded to a shed, and picked out the most comfortable 
 carriage in the rolling stock, which was but limited. 
 We found a t car' at last, of the American pattern, 
 open at either end, but with cane -bottomed instead 
 of stuffed seats, and Venetian blinds to the windows. 
 The engine, also, presently came up puffing and 
 sweating to remind us of a fact which had, at least, 
 slipped my memory — that we were living in the 
 nineteenth and not in the ninth century ; — a locomo- 
 tive of the approved American model; blunderbuss 
 funnel; 'cow-catcher' in front; penthouse in rear 
 for the driver; warning bell over the boiler, and 
 4 Asa Hodge and Co., Pittsburg, Pa.' embossed on a 
 plate on the ' bogey' frame. Everything in this 
 
A HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL. 169 
 
 country which in mechanical appliances can remind 
 you of civilisation, comes from the United States. 
 New York is to Mexico as Paris is to Madrid. 
 
 The machine had an Indian stoker, and uncom- 
 monly like a gnome, or a kobold, or some other 
 variety of the demon kind did that Indian look, with 
 his coppery skin powdered black with charcoal dust, 
 and his grimy blanket girt around him with a frag- 
 ment of grass-rope. But the engine-driver was a 
 genuine Yankee — in a striped jacket and a well-worn 
 black-satin vest — a self-contained man, gaunt, spare, 
 mahogany-visaged, calm, collected, and expectoratory, 
 with that wonderful roving Down-East eye, which 
 always seems to be looking out for something to 
 patent, and make two hundred and fifty thousand 
 dollars by. But for the Mexican sombrero which he 
 had donned, and the revolver which he wore conspi- 
 cuously in his belt, you might have taken him for a 
 law-abiding manufacturer of patent clothes-wringers 
 or mowing-machines, from Hartford or Salem. He 
 ' passed the time of day' to us very civilly, and con- 
 firmed the good news that there were no guerrilleros 
 on the road. c The French have fixed up a whole 
 crowd of 'em about Puebla,' he said, ' and they don't 
 care .about being hung up by the score, like hams 
 round a stove pipe. I ain't been shot at for a month, 
 and I've loaned my Sharp's rifle to a man that's gone 
 gunning down to the Cameroons.' 
 
 The long car we had selected was attached to the 
 locomotive, and a luggage van coupled to that, in 
 
17 o UNDER THE SUN 
 
 which a fatigue party of French soldiers who had 
 just marched into the station placed a quantity of 
 commissariat stores for the detachment on duty at 
 La Soleclad. We got under weigh, but, the line 
 being single, were temporarily shunted on to a sid- 
 ing : the telegraph having announced the coming in 
 of a train from the interior. 
 
 A few minutes afterwards there rumbled into the 
 station a long string of cars, which disgorging their 
 contents, the platform became thronged with, at least, 
 five hundred men; stranger arrivals by an excursion 
 train I never saw. The strangers were mostly tall 
 athletic fellows, clean limbed, and with torsos like to 
 that of the Farnese Hercules. Noble specimens of 
 humanity : and every man of them as black as the 
 Ace of Spades. They were in slave-dealers' parlance 
 — -now, happily a dead language — 'full-grown buck- 
 niggers.' They were uniformly clad, in loose jerkins, 
 vests, and knickerbockers of spotless white linen; and 
 their ebony heads — many of them very noble and 
 commanding in expression, straight noses and well- 
 chiselled lips being far from uncommon — were bound 
 with snowy muslin turbans. These five hundred 
 men, shod with sandals of untanned hide, armed 
 with musket and bayonet, and the short heavy Roman 
 ' tuck' or stabbing sword, and carrying their cartouch- 
 boxes in front of them, formed a battalion of that 
 noted Nubian contingent, of whom there were three 
 regiments altogether, hired from the Viceroy of Egypt 
 by the French government for service in Mexico. 
 
A HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL. 171 
 
 They had come down from La Soledad to reinforce 
 the wasting garrison of Vera Cruz, of which the 
 European portion were dying of Vomito like sheep 
 of the rot. The sergeants and corporals were black ; 
 but the commissioned officers were Egyptian Arabs, 
 sallow, weazened, undersized creatures in braided 
 surtouts of blue camlet, and red fez caps. They 
 compared very disadvantageously with the athletic 
 and symmetrically-built negroes. 
 
 These Nubians, my friend the gendarme told me, 
 were good soldiers, so far as fighting went, but irre- 
 claimable scoundrels. They were horribly savage, 
 and jabbered some corrupted dialect with Arabic 
 for its base, but Mumbo Jumbo for its branches, and 
 which their own officers could scarcely understand. 
 The system by which discipline was preserved among 
 them had been beautifully simplified. If a Nubian 
 soldier didn't do what he was told, his officer, for the 
 first offence, fell to kicking him violently. If he 
 persisted in his disobedience, the officer drew his 
 sabre, and cut him down. 
 
 Think of a Mahometan Khedive letting out his two 
 thousand Pagan negroes to a Roman Catholic emperor, 
 in order that he might coerce the Spanish and Red 
 Indian population of an American republic into re- 
 cognising the supremacy of an Austrian archduke! 
 As the Enemy of Mankind is said to have remarked 
 on a memorable occasion, 'It's a queer lot, and the 
 cards want sorting.' 
 
THE DIVERSIONS OF LA SOLEDAD. 
 
 The Imperial Mexican railway, in the year 1864, was 
 in its infancy. The entire line of route had been 
 carefully surveyed, and beautifully mapped out ; all 
 engineering difficulties had been disposed of, on 
 paper, and vast numbers of labourers were employed 
 on cuttings and embankments ; but nine-tenths of the 
 line yet remained to be made. A considerable im- 
 petus had been given to all kinds of industry in the 
 normally distracted country just then. The unfor- 
 tunate Maximilian had accepted the crown from the 
 commission of Mexican ' notables 7 who waited on 
 him at Miramar ; and General Almonte had been 
 appointed president of a Council of Regency until 
 ' El Principe,' as the emperor elect was called, should 
 arrive. As for Don Benito Juarez, he was nobody, 
 and, in sporting parlance, might be said to be 'no- 
 where.' He was supposed to be hiding his dimin- 
 ished head in the neighbourhood of Brownsville, on 
 the frontier of Texas, and I have heard him spoken 
 of innumerable times by Mexican politicians (who 
 are, I daresay, very ardent Juarists by this time), 
 in the most contemptuous terms. The mildest epi- 
 
THE DIVERSIONS OF LA SO LED AD. 173 
 
 thet with which he was qualified was ' El Indio,' the 
 Indian : President Juarez having scarcely any Euro- 
 pean blood in his veins. More frequently he was 
 called 'the bandit/ or the 'banished despot.' 
 
 So everything looked very bright and hopeful in 
 Mexico ; a strong French force occupying the coun- 
 try; and the railway (which was already open for 
 traffic as far as La Soledad) was being pushed for- 
 ward towards Paso del Macho. We jogged along 
 pretty steadily in our omnibus car; but, until we 
 reached a place called Manga de Clavo, I thought 
 that Mexico must be the counterpart of the Egyptian 
 desert. For miles the line was skirted by sandhills. 
 There were more sandhills in the middle distance, 
 and the extreme horizon was bounded by sandhills ; 
 the whole of which, illumined by a persistently fero- 
 cious sunshine, offered the reverse of an encouraging 
 prospect. Luckily there was no sirocco, or the sand 
 would have invaded the carriage and choked us. 
 
 But with magical rapidity the scene changed, and 
 the desert bloomed into fruitfulhess amazing. The 
 train plunged into a densely wooded country. We 
 saw thick clumps of trees spangled with blossoms or 
 bending under the load of bright - hued tropical 
 fruits ; the foreground was literally one parterre of 
 variegated flowers, and the 'cow-catcher' of the 
 engine scattered roses as we marched. I began to 
 warm into enthusiasm. We hurried by palm trees, 
 cocoa-nut trees, lemon and orange groves, and forests 
 of the banana. That tree with its broad blood- 
 
174 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 stained leaves, and its body reft and bent by the last 
 hurricane and the last rainstorm, swaying and bulg- 
 ing, but abating not one jot of its ruby ruddiness, 
 should furnish a potent liquor ; but the fruit of the 
 banana is in reality very mild and suave ; conveying 
 to the mind, in its dulcet mawkishness, the idea of 
 sweet shaving paste. It is most tolerable when fried, 
 and served as a savoury dish. And here I may re- 
 mark that the majority of tropical fruits are pro- 
 ductive of most grievous disappointment when eaten. 
 From the shaddock downward, I don't think I met 
 any which caused me to think disparagingly of the 
 central avenue at Govent Garden in London, or of 
 the Marche St. Honore in Paris. Abnormal size is 
 the principal characteristic of tropical fruits. They 
 are intensely sweet ; but the saccharine matter has 
 an ugly propensity to turn acid on the stomach and 
 kill you. The flavour is generally flaccid and in- 
 sipid. From this general censure must be always 
 excepted the sweet lemon — not the lime — a most ex- 
 quisitely toothsome fruit. 
 
 Ever and anon, in the density of this new and 
 delicious landscape, there would occur an opening 
 revealing a little valley vividly green, studded with 
 flowers, and perchance with a few scattered wigwams 
 built of palm branches and thatched with palm 
 leaves. The Indian women in their simple costume 
 — almost invariably consisting of two articles, a che- 
 mise of coarse white cotton cloth called 'manta' and 
 a, narrow petticoat-skirt of red and black, or black 
 
THE DIVERSIONS OF LA SO LED AD. 175 
 
 and yellow striped stuff — looked, at a distance, pic- 
 turesque enough. Round about all the palm-branch 
 wigwams there were seen to be sprawling groups of 
 Indian ' papooses' or babies of the precise hue of roast 
 fowls well done. Their costume was even more simple 
 than that of their mammas. Mexican scenery, save 
 where the massive mountain passes intervene, is one 
 continuous alternation. Xow comes a belt so many 
 miles broad of wonderful fertility. Indian corn — 
 the stalks as tall as beadles' staves, the cobs as large 
 as cricket bats — oranges, lemons, bananas, sugar, 
 coffee, cotton, rice, cinnamon, nutmegs, and all man- 
 ner of spices. Then, for many more miles, you have 
 a belt of absolute barrenness, a mere sandy desert. 
 What I saw of Mexico reminded me of a tiger's skin 
 — dull yellow desert barred with rich dark brown 
 stripes of fertility. The land is like a Sahara diver- 
 sified by slices from the valley of Kashmir. 
 
 The sun was throwing very long blue shadows 
 indeed from the objects which skirted our track, 
 when Ave brought up at the straggling structure of 
 deal boards, palm branches, and galvanised tinned 
 iron, or zinc sheds, which did duty as the railway 
 terminus of La Soledad. We found a number of 
 very hospitable gentlemen waiting to receive us ; the 
 sleepy telegraphic operator at Vera Cruz having 
 apparently made himself sufficiently wide awake to 
 notify our coming. He had done us good service. 
 A cordial welcome and a good dinner awaited us. 
 Our hosts were the engineers and surveyors engaged 
 
176 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 on the works of the railway ; and the Engineer is 
 always well off for commissariat supplies. He is the 
 only foreigner, the only invader, on whom the rudest 
 and most superstitious races look without disfavour ; 
 for, from the lord of the neighbouring manor, to the 
 parish priest — nay, to the meanest day labourer — 
 everybody has a dim impression that the bridge, or 
 the aqueduct, or the railway, will do the country 
 good, and that every inhabitant of the district will, 
 sooner or later, ' get something out of it.' 
 
 Our friends of La Soledad were accomplished 
 gentlemen, full of the traditions of Great George- 
 street, Westminster ; pioneers from the Far West ; 
 rough Lancashire gangers and hard-handed Cornish- 
 men. They were banded together, by the responsi- 
 bilities of a common undertaking, and by the con- 
 sciousness of a common danger; for, until within the 
 last few weeks, every man had worked with his life 
 in his hand. The station of La Soledad had been 
 attacked by banditti, over and over again ; and it had 
 been a common practice with the guerrilleros to lie 
 in wait in the jungle, and 'pot' the passengers in 
 passing trains. Even now, the little group were 
 lamenting the loss of their managing engineer, who 
 had been shot while riding along an unfinished por- 
 tion of the line. ' The colonel lasted six days after 
 they'd hit him,' an American overseer of workmen 
 told me ; l and it was a desperate cruel thing, seeing 
 that he left a wife and three small children : but he'd 
 had a good time, I guess, the colonel had. "Brown," 
 
THE DIVERSIONS OF LA SO LED AD. 177 
 
 he ses, turning to me, and clasping my hand as he 
 lay on the mattress in that hut over yonder, "they've 
 done for me at last ; but I reckon I've shot eight of 
 'em since last fall." And so he had.' 
 
 There were two other points in which our rail- 
 way friends were cheerfully unanimous. They all 
 concurred in despising the Mexicans, and disliking 
 the French. 'As for the half-castes and Spaniards,' 
 the American overseer remarked, 'they're right down 
 scallywaggs. Hanging's too good for 'em ; and the 
 only thing that makes me bear the French is, that 
 when they catch a Mexican guerrillero, they cowhide 
 him first, and shoot him afterwards, and hang him 
 up as a climax. As for the Injuns, they're poor 
 weak-kneed creatures ; but there's no harm in 'em. 
 About a hundred will do the work of ten stout 
 Irishmen. I used to try licking of 'em at first, to 
 make 'em spry ; but, bless you ! they don't mind 
 licking. They just lie down on the turf like mules. 
 Well I recollected how the mayoral of a diligencia 
 makes his team to go when they're stubborn ; he 
 just gets down and walks behind, and he fills his 
 pocket with sharp little stones, and every now and 
 then he shies a stone which hits a mule behind the 
 ear, and he cries c Ha-i-a-youp !' and the mule he 
 shakes his head, and gallops along full split. When 
 I see my Indian peons shirking their work, I just sit 
 on a stone about fifty yards off, and every minute or 
 so I let one of 'em have a pebble underneath the left 
 ear. The crittur wriggles like an eel in a pump-log, 
 
 N 
 
178 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 and falls a working as though he was going to build 
 Babel before sundown.' 
 
 Why the French should have been so intensely 
 disliked I could not rightly determine. That the 
 Mexicans should have hated them was feasible 
 enough ; but I rarely found an Englishman or a 
 German in Mexico who would give the army of 
 occupation a good word. I have frequently ex- 
 pressed my opinion that a Frenchman in a black 
 coat, in light pantaloons, in straw-coloured kid 
 gloves, in a blouse and sabots, even, is a most agree- 
 able, friendly, light-hearted creature ; but make his 
 acquaintance when he is on active service, in a kepi 
 and scarlet pantaloons, and I fear you will find that 
 a more arrogant and a more rapacious swashbuckler 
 does not exist. That is the character, at least, which 
 the French warrior has gotten in Mexico, in Algeria, 
 in Germany, in Italy — his transient spell of popu- 
 larity in '59 excepted — and in Spain. 
 
 I remember that the ragged assemblage of maize, 
 and palm-straw, and mud, and wattle huts, which 
 forms the town of La Soledad, lay in the midst of a 
 broad valley, the sides shelving to a rocky base, 
 through which ran a shallow river. I came to this 
 place on the last day of February. There had been 
 heavy rains a few days previously, and there was 
 some water, but not much, in the bed of the river. 
 In the summer the rivers of Mexico are as dry as 
 the Paglione at Nice ; and the bridges seems as use- 
 less as spurs to the military gentlemen in garrison at 
 
THE DIVERSIONS OF LA SOLED AD. 179 
 
 1 
 
 Venice. There was a detachment of French infantry 
 at La Soledad, whose cheerful bugles were summon- 
 ing the wearers of about two hundred pairs of red 
 trousers to the evening repast, of which i ratatouille/ 
 a kind of gipsy stew, forms the staple ingredient. 
 This evening meal is called the ' ordinaire,' and is made 
 up of the leavings of the day's rations, and of such 
 odds and ends of victual as the soldiers have man- 
 aged to purchase or forage. There is no such even- 
 ing entertainment in the British army. Our men 
 eat their clumsily cooked rations in a hurry, and 
 often pass long hours of hunger between their ill- 
 arranged meals. The bugle- calls of the French 
 
 © © 
 
 brought from the shingly shores of the river numbers 
 of moustached warriors who had been washing their 
 shirts and gaiters — socks were not worn by the army 
 of occupation — in the stream. It was very pretty to 
 watch the red-legged figures winding along the paths 
 running upward through the valley, with boards 
 laden with white linen on their heads. There was 
 a grand background to the picture in a mountain 
 range, rising tier above tier : . not in blue delicate 
 peaks and crags, as in the Alps, but in solid, sullen, 
 dun-coloured masses. I can recall one now, with 
 ribbed flanks, and a great shelving head, that looked 
 like an old brown lion couchant. 
 
 The railway gentlemen resided at a little canton- 
 ment of timber and corrugated zinc huts, the last of 
 which, although weather-tight, and agreeably repellent 
 of various insects (which swarm in wooden structures), 
 
180 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 were, when the sun shone, intolerably hot. As the 
 sun so shone habitually, without mercy, from eight in 
 the morning until six in the evening, the corrugated 
 zinc huts became by sunset so many compact ovens, 
 suited either to baking, broiling, or stewing the in- 
 mates. However, life in Mexico amounts, in the long 
 run, only to a highly varied choice of evils ; and de- 
 vouring insects being somewhat more aggravating 
 than a warm room, the engineers had chosen that evil 
 which they deemed the lesser. I suffered so terribly, 
 however, during my sojourn in this highly rarified 
 country, from determination of blood to the head, 
 hat I entreated my hosts to be allowed to sleep under 
 a palm thatch in lieu of corrugated zinc. My wish was 
 acceded to — to my partial destruction. 
 
 We dined sumptuously on hot stews, made much 
 hotter with chiles and ■ peperos,' the effect of which 
 last condiment on the palate I can only compare to 
 that of a small shrapnel shell going off in your mouth. 
 We had plenty of sound claret, and, if I remember 
 right, a flask or so of that white-seal champagne which 
 at transatlantic tables is considered to be many degrees 
 preferable to Veuve Clicquot. A bottle of 'Sunny- 
 side' Madeira, warranted from a Charleston ' garret,' 
 was also produced. We were too recently from Ha- 
 vana to be unprovided with Sefior Anselmo del Valle's 
 fragrant merchandise; and let me whisper to the 
 wanderer, that he who spares no efforts to be provided 
 with good cigars in his baggage, will be at least en- 
 abled to make some slight return for the hospitality 
 
THE DIVERSIONS OF LA SOLEDAD. 181 
 
 he will receive. For, in these far- distant cantonments, 
 the stock of cigars is liable to run out, and can with 
 difficulty be renewed. 
 
 After dinner we talked Mexican politics — a con- 
 versation which generally resolved itself into three 
 conclusions. First, that when things come to the 
 worst they may mend. Second, that things had come 
 to the worst in Mexico. Third, that Maximilian and 
 his empire might last as long as the French occupation 
 continued, and as long as his own stock of gold ounces 
 and hard dollars held out. I can aver that on this last 
 head I never heard any more sanguine opinion ex- 
 pressed during the whole time I was in Mexico. Then 
 we played a hand at poker, and tried a rubber at 
 whist, then songs were sung, and then we went out 
 for a walk. The French tattoo had sounded, and most 
 of the moustached warriors had retired to their huts ; 
 but there were strong pickets patrolling the streets, 
 and double guards posted at every gate. When I 
 speak of the ' gates' of this place, I allude simply to 
 certain booms or logs of timber placed athwart blocks 
 of stone at intervals, and by the side of each of 
 which was a French guard hut. When I allude to 
 La Soledad's ' streets,' I mean simply that the palm- 
 branch and mud-and-wattle huts of the Indian and 
 half-caste population had been erected in two parallel 
 lines, with a few alleys of smaller hovels, with suc- 
 cursals of dunghills branching from them. Once upon 
 a time, I believe La Soledad had possessed a 'plaza,' 
 several stone houses, and two churches ; but all that 
 
182 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 kind of thing had been, to use the invariable Ameri- 
 can locution when speaking of the ravages of civil war, 
 i knocked into a cocked hat' by contending partisans. 
 In La Soledad, we lived in an easy fashion. We 
 dined without any table-cloth, and with a great many 
 more knives than forks. We occasionally carved a 
 fowl with a bowie-knife. Our claret had been drawn 
 direct from the wood into calabashes of potters' ware, 
 kneaded and fired on the spot, and the white-seal 
 champagne had been opened by the simple process of 
 knocking the neck off the bottles. It was very un- 
 conventional when we sallied forth on a stroll to see 
 the mats which served as doors to the Indian huts all 
 drawn on one side, and the inmates making their sim- 
 ple preparations for retiring for the night, such pre- 
 parations consisting chiefly in everybody taking off 
 what little he had on, and curling himself up in a ball 
 on the straw-littered ground. The family mule was 
 tethered to a post outside, and the background was 
 filled up by the family pigs and poultry. It was the 
 county of Tipperary with a dash of a Bedouin douar, 
 and a poetic tinge of the days of the Shepherd Kings 
 of Palestine. Everybody had, however, not gone to 
 bed. There was life at La Soledad ; life half of a de- 
 votional, half of a dissolute kind. The stone churches, 
 as I have said, had been ' knocked into a cocked hat/ 
 but Ave Maria was sounding on a little cracked bell 
 suspended between three scaffold poles, and a dusky 
 congregation — all Indians — were kneeling on the 
 threshold of a wigwam somewhat larger, but fully as 
 
THE DIVERSIONS OF LA SO LED AD. 183 
 
 rudely fashioned as its neighbours, where an Indian 
 priest was singing Vespers. There could not have 
 been a more unconventional church. The poor cele- 
 brant was desperately ragged and dirty, and his vest- 
 ments were stuck over with little spangles and tar- 
 nished scraps of foil paper ; but he had a full, sonor- 
 ous voice, which seemed to thrill his hearers strangely. 
 Two great twisted torches of yellow wax were placed 
 on the altar, which looked like a huge sea-chest. An- 
 other torch, of some resinous wood, flamed at the en- 
 trance of the hut, and threw the kneeling worshippers 
 into Rembrandt-like masses of light and shade. On 
 the altar were the usual paltry little dolls — not much 
 paltrier than you may see in the most superb fanes in 
 Italy or Spain — but there was one singularly unconven- 
 tional ornament. The poor cur a of the church, I was 
 told, had waited on the railway officials and begged 
 for something to adorn his fabric withal : something 
 4 European' the honest man wanted. They had given 
 him a few dollars, and a couple of those enormous 
 coloured lamps which at night are fixed in front of 
 locomotives. One of these, a red one, another a green 
 one, he had fixed on either side of his altar; and there 
 they were, glaring out of the wigwam like two un- 
 earthly eyes. Close to the church was a public gaming 
 house, to justify Defoe's 
 
 1 Wherever God erects a house of prayer, 
 The Devil always builds a chapel there.' 
 
 It was contemptuously tolerated by the French, on 
 condition that no soldier of their nation should be 
 
1 84 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 suffered to play in it, and that if any knives were 
 used on the disputed question of a turn-up card, the 
 proprietor should be liable to be hanged. But the 
 Mexicans are admirable gamesters, and very rarely 
 stab over their play. They prefer lying in wait for 
 you in the dark, and admonishing you, by a punc- 
 ture under the fifth rib, or a ball in the occiput, that 
 you had best not be so lucky at cards next time. 
 The gambling-house had nothing of the conventional 
 Frascati or German Kursaal aspect about it. It was 
 just a. long wigwam, open in front, and with some 
 rough planks on tressels running along its whole 
 length. It reminded me of a hastily improvised re- 
 freshment booth at a cricket match. There was no 
 'tapis vert,' ^unless the sward on which the tressels 
 rested could pass muster as a ' green carpet.' There 
 were no pure Indians present. Gambling, cheating, 
 and robbing] are the business of the Spanish half- 
 castes. These exemplary gentry lined the long 
 table, erect, statuesque in their striped blankets 
 and great coach-wheel hats, motionless, save when 
 they extended their long skinny hands to plant their 
 stakes, or to grasp their winnings. With the excep- 
 tion of an occasional hoarse cry of ' Tecoloti' — refer- 
 ing to a chance in the game — c Gano todo,' C I win all,' 
 or 'Pierde el Soto,' 'The knave loses,' there was 
 silence. The game was Monte, of which it is suffi- 
 cient to say that it bears a vague affinity to lansquenet 
 and to blind hookey, and is about one hundred times 
 more speculatively ruinous than vingt-un or un- 
 
THE DIVERSIONS OF LA SOLED AD. 185 
 
 limited loo. At La Soledad the stakes were dollars, 
 halves, and quarters, and even copper coins. I saw 
 one man win about five pounds on a turn-up. He 
 lost all and more within the next five minutes, and 
 stalked away apparently unconcerned: whether to 
 bed, or to hang himself, or to wait for a friend and 
 murder him, I had no means of ascertaining. Not 
 many days afterwards I had the honour of being 
 present at several entertainments, of which Monte 
 was the object, in the City of Mexico. There we 
 were quite conventional. We gathered in full even- 
 ing dress. We had wax lights, powdered footmen, 
 and cool beverages handed round on silver salvers. 
 In lieu of the poor little silver and copper stakes of 
 La Soledad, the piles of gold ounces and half doub- 
 loons rose to a monumental height ; but there was no 
 difference in the good breeding of the players. The 
 blanketed rapscallions of La Soledad were just as 
 phlegmatic over their Monte as the wealthiest dons 
 in Mexico. 
 
 We watched this small inferno for some time; 
 and I was much amused to observe that one of the 
 most sedulous of the punters was a gaunt half-caste 
 boy who, in a ragged shirt and raggeder drawers, 
 had waited on us at dinner. The young reprobate 
 must have risked a year's wages on every turn-up ; 
 but his employers did not seem to think that there 
 was anything objectionable in his having adjourned 
 from the dining-room to the gambling-table. 
 
 About ten o'clock the establishment was closed in 
 
1 86 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 a very summary manner by a French patrol, who 
 marched along the length of the booth, sweeping out 
 the noble sportsmen before them as though with a 
 broom that had a bayonet in it. And life at La 
 Soledad being terminated, we went to bed. For my 
 part I sincerely wish I had walked about all night, 
 or had laid down in front of the great fire by the 
 French guard-house. I must needs sleep in a wooden 
 hut with a palm thatch, and I was very nearly bitten 
 to death. There were mosquitoes, there were fleas, 
 there were cockroaches — unless they were scorpions 
 — and, finally, 0, unutterable horror ! there were 
 black ants. I sometimes fancy that a few of those 
 abominable little insects are burrowing beneath my 
 skin to this day. 
 
THE CITY OF THE ANGELS. 
 
 'They call it,' quoth the Canonigo, 'Puebla de los 
 Angelos; but, for my part,' he continued confiden- 
 tially, ' I don't think it Avould do this City of the 
 Angels much harm if the Yerdugo were to come 
 hither, and hang every man, woman, and child at 
 Puebla to a gallows forty feet high. Hombre !' went 
 on the Canonigo, c I think Puebla would be all the 
 better for it ; for, look you,' and here he sank his 
 voice to a whisper, ' everything that walks on two 
 legs in this city, and who is not a guerrillero — a 
 brigand — is either a gambler, or a receiver of stolen 
 goods.' 
 
 These were hard words, indeed, to ( hear from a 
 patriotic Mexican gentleman, and a dignified eccle- 
 siastic to boot, concerning a city so ancient and 
 illustrious as Puebla. But the Canonigo knew what 
 he was about. It was at the little village of Amo- 
 soque, a few miles from our destination, that our 
 clerical friend uttered the strictures, recorded above, 
 on the character of the Pueblanas. Now I knew no- 
 thing as yet of Puebla; but I should have been quite 
 prepared to agree with anybody who had told me 
 
188 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 that a little hanging — with perhaps a trifle of drawing 
 and quartering — would have done a world of good to 
 the people who congregated round our carriage win- 
 dow at Amosoque. 
 
 ' Mala gente ! mala gente !' murmured the Canon- 
 igo, looking at the Amosoquians who trooped up to 
 the coach window, and stared in at us with sad fierce 
 eyes mutely eloquent with this kind of discourse : ' I 
 should like a wheel ; I a horse ; I that stout man's 
 coat; I his hat; I his dollars; and I his blood.' 'Mala 
 gente !' cried the Canonigo, drawing his head in some- 
 what abruptly, as an Amosoquian of very hungry 
 aspect uttered the word ' Caridad !' in a tone which 
 far more resembled a curse than a request. 'Por 
 Dios, amigo,' quoth the Canonigo, 4 1 have nothing for 
 you. Mala gente !' he concluded, sinking back on the 
 cushions and taking a very vigorous puff at his cigar, 
 4 Mala gente' — which, being translated, may be ac- 
 cepted as signifying ' blackguards all : a bad lot.' 
 
 Whenever you halt in a town or village of Old 
 Spain your equipage will be surely surrounded by 
 silent, mooay men, wrapped in striped blankets or 
 tattered cloaks, and with shabby hats slouched over 
 their brows, who will regard you with glances that 
 are sad, but not fierce. But faded as is their aspect, 
 they have a quiet, resigned mien, not wholly destitute 
 of dignity. Yonder tatterdemalion of the Castiles 
 seems to say : 'lam destitute ; but still I am a Don. 
 Poverty is not a crime. I involve myself in my vir- 
 tue, and have puffed prosperity away. I am bankrupt, 
 
THE CITY OF THE ANGELS. 189 
 
 but it was through being security for a friend. I am 
 Don Dogberry, and have had losses. I held shares 
 in the Filibusters' Company (limited). The company 
 is being wound up, and another call on the contribu- 
 tories will be made the day after to-morrow. If you 
 like to give me half a peseta, you can.' 
 
 But New Spain ! But Amosoque ! That small, 
 wiry, leathery, sooty-looking fellow is a half caste. 
 Watch him scowling at you in his striped serape — 
 farther south called a poncho — his huge coach-wheel 
 hat like a cardinal's whitewashed, and minus the tas- 
 sels ; his loose linen drawers bulging through the 
 slashes in his leathern overalls. Salvator might have 
 painted him, but Salvator should have made some 
 preliminary sketches in a Seven Dials slum and a 
 Bowery whisky cellar, to get his hand in. The man 
 of Amosoque utters nothing articulate save an occa- 
 sional grunt of 'Caridad!' but his eyes are full of 
 speech. They say, ' Your throat is precisely the kind 
 of throat I should like to cut. I have cut many 
 throats in my time. I am a bankrupt, but a fraudu- 
 lent one. My father suffered the punishment of the 
 "garrote vil;" and my brother-in-law is a garrotter 
 in Orizaba. Give me a dollar, or by all the saints in 
 Puebla, I, and Juan, and Pepe, and Fernan here will 
 follow the coach and rob it.' 
 
 Amosoque is a great mart for spurs. The c E spue- 
 las de Amosoque' are renowned throughout Mexico, 
 and the spur makers, I conjecture, allow the beggars 
 to take the goods 'on sale or return.' They thrust 
 
190 
 
 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 them in, four or five pairs in each hand, arranged 
 starwise, at the windows, reminding you, in their 
 startling spikiness, of the hundred-bladed penknives 
 with which the Jew boys used to make such terrific 
 lunges at the omnibus passengers in the old days, at 
 the White Horse Cellar. These spurs of Amosoque 
 are remarkable for nothing but their length and 
 breadth — the rowels are not much smaller than cheese 
 plates ; but you can no more get clear of the place 
 without purchasing a pair of ' espuelas,' than you can 
 leave Montelimar in Provence without buying a packet 
 of i nougat.' I have forgotten the name of that village 
 in Old Spain where fifty women always fly at you 
 and force you to buy embroidered garters. A simi- 
 lar assault, though a silent one, is made on you at 
 Amosoque. 
 
 But our mules are hackled to, again, and the 
 mayoral has filled his jacket pocket with a fresh sup- 
 ply of pebbles to fling at their ears if they are lazy. 
 Bump, bump, thud, thud, up the middle and down 
 again. We are again travelling on the hard road. 
 This kind of thing has been going on for many days ; 
 and this kind of village we have halted at over and 
 over again. Ojo de Agua was very like Nopaluca ; 
 Nopaluca was very like Acagete ; and all these were 
 very like Amosoque. We are out of the dark defiles 
 of the Cumbres — horrifying mountain passes, gray, 
 lagged, arid, cataractless ; no sierra caliente has greeted 
 our eyesight since we left Orizaba. The open has 
 been mainly desert, intolerable dust and caked baked 
 
THE CITY OF THE ANGELS. 191 
 
 clod producing nothing but the nopal and the maguey, 
 the prickly pear and the cactus. The former is pic- 
 turesque enough, and besides, it yields the juice, 
 which, fermented, the Indians and half castes call 
 pulque, and on which they get swinishly intoxicated. 
 An adult maguey is very stately to look upon ; but 
 goodness keep all nervous ladies, and people given to 
 dreaming dreams, and young children, from the sight 
 of the Mexican prickly pear. The plant assumes the 
 most hideously grotesque forms. It is twisted, and 
 bent, and gnarled like metal scroll work which some 
 mad giant has crumpled up in his fingers, in a rage. 
 It is a tangle of knotty zigzags interspersed with the 
 prickly fruit, which can be compared to nothing but 
 the flattened faces of so many demon dwarfs, green 
 with bile and thickly sown with bristles. The prickly 
 pear, to me, is Bogey.* 
 
 Let me see, where was it, between Orizaba and 
 this evil place of Amosoque, bristling with spurs and 
 scoundrels, that we picked up the Canonigo ? Ah ! I 
 remember, it was at Sant' Augustin del Palmar. We 
 reached Sant' Augustin at about two o'clock in the 
 afternoon, just as the diligencia from Mexico had 
 drawn up at the door of the principal fonda, and pre- 
 cisely in time for the diligence dinner. Now I would 
 
 * It may be mentioned that the heraldic cognisance of the Mexican 
 nation bears intimate reference to the prickly pear. The legend runs 
 that Cortes the Conquistador, during Ms march to Mexico, descried an 
 eagle perched upon a nopal; and when the country achieved her inde- 
 pendence four centuries afterwards 'the bird and bush' became the 
 ' Mexican arms.' 
 
1 92 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 have you to understand that the chief dish at the 
 coach dinner in all regions Iberian, both on the hither 
 and thither side of the Atlantic, and even beyond 
 the Isthmus and under the southern cross, is the 
 Puchero :* print it in capitals, for it is a grand dish ; 
 and that the puchero is the only thing in Old or New 
 Spain concerning -which tolerable punctuality is ob- 
 served. You have heard, no doubt, of the olla- 
 podrida as the 'national' dish of Spain; but, so far 
 as my experience goes, it is a culinary preparation 
 which, like the rich uncle in a comedy, is more talked 
 about than seen. While I was in Mexico city my eye 
 lighted one day on a placard in the window of a 
 'bodegon' or eating-house, in the Calle del Espiritu 
 Santo, setting forth that on the ensuing Thursday at 
 noon 'una arrogante olla' would be read}^ for the 
 consumption of cavaliers. I saw this announcement 
 on Monday morning, and for three days I remained 
 on tenter hooks expecting to partake of this arro- 
 gant olla-podrida. I concc aled my intention from my 
 hospitable host. I was determined to do something 
 independent. I had travelled long in search of beef; 
 there might be, in the arrogant olla, a bovine element ; 
 and the efforts of long years might be crowned at 
 last with success. I went on Thursday ; but the 
 vinegar of disappointment came to dash my oil. 4 Hoy, 
 
 * The names of both the national dishes of Spain are derived from 
 the utensils in which they are served. A puchero is a pipkin, and an 
 olla an earthenware pot. Podrida means simply ' rotten' — observe the 
 singular corruption of sense in the French ' pot pourri,' a vase full of 
 dried roses and fragrant spices. 
 
THE CITY OF THE ANGELS. 193 
 
 no,' said the keeper of the bodegon, i maiiana se 
 abra.' There was to be no arrogant olla that day, 
 there would be the next. Maiiana means to-morrow ; 
 and to-morrow to a Spaniard means the Millen- 
 nium. I have never tasted an olla, arrogant or sub- 
 missive. 
 
 But of the puchero I preserve the pleasantest 
 remembrances. There is beef in it : boiled beef : the 
 French bouilli, in fact. There is bacon. There are 
 garbanzos (broad beans), and charming little black- 
 puddings, and cabbage, and delicate morsels of fried 
 banana. It is very wholesome and very filling ; and 
 there is no use in your complaining that an odour of 
 garlic pervades it; because the room and the table- 
 cloth and your next neighbour are all equally redolent 
 of the omnipresent 'ajo.' The puchero (poured from 
 its pipkin) is in a very big platter; and what you 
 have to do is to watch carefully for the dish as it is 
 passed from hand to hand ; to take care that it is not 
 diverted from you by a dexterous flank movement of 
 a cunning caballero manoeuvring behind your back, 
 or by the savage cavalry charge of the German bag- 
 man opposite. Seize the dish when you can, and hold 
 on to it like grim Death with one hand, till you have 
 filled your plate. Never mind if the lady next you 
 looks pleadingly, piteously, upon you. She is the 
 weaker vessel. Let her wait. Fill yourself with 
 puchero ; for you will get nothing else in the way of 
 refreshment, save chocolate and cigars, for the next 
 twelve hours. There is a proverb which justifies the 
 
 
 
194 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 most brutal selfishness in this regard, and which I 
 may translate thus : 
 
 ' He who lets puchero 
 Is either in love, or asleep, or an Ass.' 
 
 Clutch it, then, for when it has once glided away you 
 will never see it again. 
 
 For a wonder the puchero at the diligence dinner 
 
 at Sant' Augustin del Palmar was not punctual. We 
 
 had had soup; we had had frijoles (black beans fried 
 
 in oil), we had had a seethed kid; but no puchero 
 
 made its appearance. The traveller next to me, a 
 
 stout black- whiskered man, in a full suit of black 
 
 velveteen, enormous gold rings in his ears, and with a 
 
 particoloured silk sash round his waist, grew impatient. 
 
 ' Caballeros,' he cried, after another five minutes' 
 
 delay, ' I am a plain man. I am a Catalan. Juan 
 
 Estrellada is well known in Barcelona. But human 
 
 patience has its limits. I propose that if the puchero 
 
 is not at once brought in, that we rob this house and 
 
 throw the landlord out of window.' The proposal 
 
 was a startling one ; but the Catalan looked as if he 
 
 meant it; and I was much moved to remark that a 
 
 murmur, seemingly not of disapprobation, ran round 
 
 the table. A gentleman in a cloak, two guests off, 
 
 remarked gutturally, ' Es preciso :' which may be 
 
 taken as equivalent to ' Ditto to Mr. Burke,' and to 
 
 an opinion that robbing the establishment was the 
 
 right kind of thing to do. You are so continually 
 
 falling among thieves in Mexico that your moral 
 
 sense of honesty grows blunted ; and you feel inclined, 
 
THE CITY OF THE ANGELS. 195 
 
 when people come to you for wool, to send them away 
 shorn. Fortunately for the landlord, the majority of 
 the guests were philosophers, and had betaken them- 
 selves to smoking; and, fortunately for ourselves, just 
 as the Catalan seemed to be preparing to put his 
 resolution to the vote two gingerbread-skinned Indian 
 boys came staggering in with the charger of puchero 
 between them, and we fought for the meal like so 
 many wolves, and I didn't come off the worst, I can 
 assure you. 
 
 It was when I had secured, with great internal 
 joy and contentment, the last remaining black-pud- 
 ding in the dish, that I noticed that my right-hand 
 neighbour — the Catalan was on the left — had suffered 
 the puchero to pass. He told me that he ate but once 
 a day ; that he preferred to dine at six or seven ; and 
 that this was a fast day, too, and that he must keep 
 his c ayuno.' I had noticed him, when we alighted, 
 clad in a black cassock and a tremendous ' shovel' — 
 which brought the Barber of Seville and Basilio to 
 my mind at once, trotting up and down, saying his 
 breviary, and puffing at a very big cigar. This was 
 our Canonigo. The good old man! I can see his 
 happy, beaming face now, his smile calm as a moun- 
 tain pool environed by tall cliffs, his clear, bright, 
 trusting eyes. I can hear his frank, simple discourse : 
 not very erudite, certainly, often revealing a curious 
 inexperience of the world and its ways, but infinitely 
 full of candour, and modesty, and charity. He held 
 a prebendal stall in the cathedral of San Luis Potosi, 
 
196 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 to which he was now returning, via Puebla and 
 Mexico city, having journeyed down to Jalapa to see 
 a brother in high military command, who lay sick in 
 that unwholesome city. I call him ' our' Canonigo ; 
 for my friend and travelling companion, who had 
 been separated from me by stress of company at the 
 inn dinner-table, rejoining me, when we went into 
 the colonnade to smoke, recognised the prebendary of 
 San Luis Potosi as an old friend, and embraced him 
 affectionately. The old gentleman was travelling in 
 a rusty old berline of his own, but gave heartrending 
 accounts of the hardships of the road he had endured 
 since he left Jalapa. The post-houses were, indeed, 
 very short of mules, to begin with: some thousands 
 of those useful animals having been impressed by the 
 French commissariat and transport corps. We had 
 been tolerably successful in the way of mules, simply 
 because my friend, among his other attributes, was an 
 army contractor, and had most of the post-masters 
 under his thumb; but the poor Canonigo had been 
 frequently left for hours, destitute of cattle, at some 
 wayside venta. It is not at all pleasant, I assure 
 you, so to cool your heels and your coach wheels, 
 while the Indian hostess sits on the ground, tearing 
 her long black hair, and wringing her sinewy brown 
 hands, and crying out that the Mala gente — the brig- 
 ands — are in the neighbourhood, and will be down 
 in half an hour, to smite everybody, hip and thigh. 
 
 Nothing would suit my host but that the Canonigo 
 should take a seat in our carriage, and be of our party 
 
THE CITY OF THE ANGELS. 197 
 
 up to Mexico. The good priest was nothing loth, for 
 he owned that he was dreadfully frightened of the 
 brigands, who had been committing frightful atro- 
 cities lately on the Jalapa road. I might have men- 
 tioned to you, ere this, that we had brought with us 
 from La Soledad a sufficiently imposing escort, in the 
 shape of an entire company of French infantry, who 
 journeyed with us on the 'ride and tie' principle: 
 half of them crowded inside and outside a kind of 
 omnibus we had picked up in the post office at Ori- 
 zaba, and half of them hanging on to the wheels — the 
 omnibus often required pushing up hill or dragging 
 out of a rut — or riding on the mules, or trudging 
 through the sand or over the pebbles with their sha- 
 koes on the points of their bayonets, and their blue 
 cotton handkerchiefs tied under their chins, with, 
 perhaps, a damp plantain leaf superadded. These 
 were the merriest set of fellows I ever met with; and 
 they laughed and smoked and sang songs and capered 
 all the way up to Mexico. They never asked us for 
 drink -money, and were uniformly respectful, polite, 
 and cheerful. They had a little boy-soldier with 
 them — an 'enfant de troupe' in training to be a 
 drummer — who was their pet and plaything and darl- 
 ing ; and for whom, when he was tired of riding in or 
 outside the omnibus, they would rig a kind of litter, 
 made of knapsacks and ammunition blankets laid on 
 crossed muskets, and with a canopy above of pocket- 
 handkerchiefs tied together and held up by twigs. 
 And they would carry the little man along, the sol- 
 
UNDER THE SUN 
 
 diers singing and he joining in, with a ' Tra la, la! 
 Tra la, la !' and the rest of the company beating their 
 hands in applause from the top of the 'bus. There 
 were but two officers with the company — the captain, 
 who rode with us, and a sub-lieutenant, who preferred 
 occupying the box seat of the longer vehicle. The 
 captain was a pudgy little man, who, his stoutness 
 notwithstanding, wore stays. He had been in Algeria, 
 and, according to his showing, whenever he and Abd- 
 el-Kader met, there had been weeping in the Smala 
 and wailing in the Douar. He had been through the 
 Crimean campaign, and, not very obscurely, insinu- 
 ated that he, and not Marshal Pellisier, should, if the 
 right man had got his deserts, have been made Duke 
 of MalakofF. In fact, the fat little captain would have 
 bragged Major Longbow's head off. He overflowed 
 with good humour, however, and had a capital bari- 
 tone voice. The sub, on the other hand, was a moody 
 gaunt man, whose solitary epaulette seemed to have 
 made him at once low-spirited and lopsided. It was 
 as well, perhaps, that he did not form one of our 
 party; for he evidently hated his captain with great 
 fervour, and when they met, off duty, there was gene- 
 rally a squabble. ' I know my Duty, but I also know 
 my Rights/ the sub used to mutter, looking fixed 
 bayonets at his superior officer. He was scrupulously 
 attentive to his duties, however, and never missed 
 saluting his pudgy chief. I think the captain would 
 have been infinitely rejoiced had the omnibus toppled 
 over one of the yawning precipices in the Cumbrera, 
 
THE CITY OF THE ANGELS. 199 
 
 and had the dismal chasm comfortably engulfed that 
 cantankerous sub-lieutenant. 
 
 But the Canonigo had a berline. Well; that was 
 very soon got rid of. The post-master, who was also 
 landlord of the fonda where we dined — I remember 
 that he expressed a hyperbolical wish to kiss my 
 hands and feet at departing, and that he obliged us 
 with two bad five-franc pieces in change for the napo- 
 leon we tendered him — would have none of the canon- 
 ical equipage. ' Yale nada,' it is worth nothing, he 
 said contemptuously. He hoped that the Canonigo 
 would leave it ' until called for,' and that he would 
 never call for it. But he was not destined to profit 
 by the relinquishment of the vehicle. At first I sug- 
 gested that it should be devoted to the use of the can- 
 tankerous sub -lieutenant, and that fatigue parties of 
 light infantry should be harnessed to the pole, and 
 drag it; but this proposal did not meet with much 
 favour — especially among the light infantry — and the 
 sub himself vehemently protested against making his 
 entrance into Mexico, l before his chiefs,' in a carriage, 
 which he declared to be fit only for a quack doctor. 
 'There may be some,' he remarked, with a sardonic 
 glance at the baritone captain, 'who would like to 
 play Dulcamara, or imitate Mengin in a Roman hel- 
 met, selling pencils in the Place de la Concorde ; for 
 my part, I know my Duties, and I know my Rights/ 
 In this dilemma Pedro Hilo was sent for. Pedro, a 
 rather handsome half-caste, was the administrador or 
 steward to the lordly proprietor of a hacienda — a 
 
200 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 maguey plantation in the neighbourhood. He was 
 accustomed to buy everything, even, as my friend 
 hinted, to the portmanteaus, wearing apparel, and 
 other spoils of travellers who had been waited upon 
 in the stage coach by a select body of the Mala gente. 
 Pedro came, saw, and purchased. He was a man of 
 few words. ' Twenty dollars' — pesos fuertes — he said, 
 and he drew a gold ounce from his sash and spun it 
 into the air. 'Arriba!' cried Pedro Hilo, 'Heads. 
 Heads it was, and the administrador stuck to his text 
 of twenty dollars. A doubloon — scarcely four pounds 
 ' — is not much for a berime, albeit the thing was woe- 
 fully the worse for wear; but what was to be done 
 with it? The bargain was concluded, and the Canon- 
 igo pocketed the gold ounce. 
 
 As we were leaving Sant' Augustin del Palmar, 
 our omnibus escort making a brilliant show with 
 their scarlet pantaloons and bright guns and bayo- 
 nets, we passed the determined Catalan, who was 
 girding himself up to ascend the roof of the down- 
 ward-bound diligence. 'I wish we had a few soldiers 
 with us,' he remarked, as he took in another reef of 
 his particoloured sash. ' A prod from a bayonet now 
 and then might remind the postillion that it is his 
 duty to drive his mules, and not to go to sleep un- 
 der his monstrous millstone of a hat. Who ever saw 
 such a sombrero save on a picador in the bull-ring? 
 In Barcelona such hats would be put down by the 
 police. I have paid for my place in the interior/ he 
 continued, 'but the malpractices of the postillion and 
 
THE CITY OF THE ANGELS. 20 r 
 
 the mayoral — who, I am assured, is in league with 
 all the gangs of brigands between here and Cordova 
 — can no longer be tolerated. I intend to mount the 
 roof; and the first time that pig-headed driver goes 
 to sleep again, I propose to myself to blow out his 
 brains.' So he went away, significantly slapping a 
 pouch of untanned leather at his hip, and which I sur- 
 mised contained his Colt's revolver. A determined 
 fellow, this Juan Estrellada from Catalonia, and the 
 very man to be useful in a street pronunciamiento. 
 I fancy that he was somewhat nettled that no practi- 
 cal upshot should have followed his proposal to rob 
 the fonda and throw the landlord out of window, and 
 that he was anxious, before he reached Vera Cruz, to 
 do something, the memory of which posterity would 
 not willingly let die. 
 
 The Canonigo was excellent company, but his 
 excessive temperance somewhat alarmed me. His 
 'desayuno' — literally breakfast — would be taken at 
 about four o'clock in the morning ; for we always re- 
 commenced our journey at daybreak. Then he would 
 take a cup of chocolate — a brown aromatic gruel 
 mixed thick and slab — with one tiny loaf of Indian 
 corn bread. And nor bite nor sup would he take 
 again till sunset. The worst of it was that we were 
 not always sure of finding supper when we reached 
 the town or village where we had elected to stay the 
 night. The Canonigo, however, seemed totally in- 
 different to our lighting upon an Egypt without any 
 corn in it. His supper was always ready, and it 
 
202 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 seemed to serve him in lieu of dinner, and lunch, and 
 all besides. He produced his grass-woven cigar-case 
 and begun to smoke. .Not papelitos, mind. Every- 
 body in Mexico — man, woman, or child, Spaniard, 
 half-caste, or Indian — inhales the fumes of tobacco 
 wrapped in paper, all day long. But the Canonigo 
 was a smoker of puros, the biggest of Cabanas. They 
 didn't make him sallow, they didn't make him ner- 
 vous ; and he never complained of headache — at least 
 through smoking. On one occasion the worthy gen- 
 tleman made the confession, c Tengo mala cabeza' — 
 4 My head is bad.' It was on the night before we 
 arrived at Amosoque. We chanced to put up at a 
 venta kept by a Frenchman, whose wife was a capital 
 cook, and whose cellar was, moreover, stocked with 
 capital wine. He gave us an excellent supper, and we 
 subsequently ' cracked' — I believe that is the correctly 
 convivial expression — sundry bottles of that very 
 sound Burgundy wine called Moulin-a-vent. Well, we 
 were four to drink it, and the temperate Canon could 
 scarcely count as one. He had a thimbleful, however 
 — two thimblefuls, perhaps — nay, a bumper and a half 
 — and the cockles of his good old heart were warmed. 
 In his merriment he sang a wonderful song, setting 
 forth how a donkey, wandering in a field, once fell 
 upon a flute in which a shepherd had 'left' a tune. 
 The donkey tootled, and the tune ' came out;' where- 
 upon — 'Aha!' brays the conceited animal, 'who shall 
 say that donkeys cannot play the flute?' 
 
 Then the Canonigo, merging into another mood, 
 
THE CITY OF THE ANGELS. 
 
 like Alexander at his feast, began to tell us about the 
 saints — of the wonders worked by St. Lampsacus and 
 St. Hyacinth, St. Petronilla and St. Jago of Compos- 
 tella. And then he fell asleep, and I can't help 
 thinking that he woke up the next morning slightly 
 flustered about the ' cabeza,' and that the Moulin-a- 
 vent might have had something to do with the 
 severity with which he spoke about the inhabitants 
 of the City of the Angels. c However,' I said, as we 
 drove into Puebla, 'we shall see — we shall see.' 
 
 We duly entered La Ciudad de los Angelos ; but 
 the Teetotum Laws forbid that I should proceed at 
 once to tell you what we saw there. The fingers of 
 Fate gave another twist to the Eoulette-wheel of 
 life. Round whirled the ball; round spun the tee- 
 totum, and down it came at last, with Afkica upper- 
 most. 
 
COCKPIT ROYAL. 
 
 4 Six days of the week they do nothing, and on Sun- 
 day they go to the bull-fight.' Such is the awful 
 charge I have heard brought against the inhabitants of 
 Madrid. But something, after all, may be urged in 
 favour of a bull-fight. It is a national, a royal amuse- 
 ment. Ferdinand the Seventh established a School 
 of Tauromachia at Seville. Bull-baiting, too, is one 
 of the oldest of English sports. Something approach- 
 ing it used to take place in the streets of London 
 every Monday morning, within very recent times, 
 and until, indeed, the cattle market was removed 
 from Smithfield to Islington, nay, even since the 
 aforesaid removal, I have occasionally seen much 
 sport got out of a lively young bullock between 
 Farringdon-street and the Old Bailey to the immi- 
 nent peril of Mr. Benson's shop windows. Perhaps 
 there may be also a trifle to be said in favour of 
 the bull-ring. You will not hear it said by me, 
 for I have gone through my course of tauromachia, 
 and hold a corrida de toros to be the most brutal, 
 cruel, and demoralising spectacle to be seen on this 
 lower earth, after the King of Dahomey's ' great cus- 
 tom.' Still there are people who like it. 
 
COCKPIT ROYAL. 205 
 
 So much for Bos ; but who dares to defend cock- 
 fighting? No one, I should hope. It is undeniably- 
 cruel, and as undeniably demoralising ; since it leads, in 
 England at least, to gambling and to the undue con- 
 sumption of alcoholic liquors. Again, a cock-fight 
 not unfrequently ends in a man-fight. That the 
 heinous, turpitude of the thing is deeply impressed 
 on the English mind is obvious from the proverbial 
 expression employed to denote anything unusually 
 and superlatively profligate and audacious — that 'it 
 beats cock-fighting.' Yery properly, this barbarous 
 sport has been put under the special ban of the Eng- 
 lish law. It is reached by the provisions of the act 
 for the prevention of cruelty to animals, commonly 
 known as ' Dick Martin's.' Lawyers, cunning of fence, 
 have sometimes striven to show, in appeal cases, that 
 the cock is not a domestic animal; but the judges all 
 ranged in Westminster Hall — a terrible show — have 
 decided that' Chanticleer is as much an animal as a 
 donkey ; and more than one amateur of the cockpit 
 royal has expiated his fondness for the gallinaceous 
 tournament in county jail. There was that poor 
 young Marquis, for instance, who indulged in the 
 luxury of a private cock-fight in his own grounds on 
 a Sunday morning. Soon did Nemesis, in the shape 
 of a Society's constable, overtake that sporting peer. 
 There was a terrible scandal. It is true that the 
 marquis was not sent to the treadmill; but the case 
 against him was proved, and his lordship, if I re- 
 member aright, was fined. That, at least, was some- 
 
206 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 tiling. I dwell the more particularly on this case, 
 as, the moment I found cock-fighting and Sunday 
 morning associated in the phrase I had penned, my 
 ears began to tingle, and my cheek to blush with re- 
 morseful shame. Ah! I should be the last wretch 
 in the world to moralise on the wickedness of cock- 
 fighting, for, not many years since, I deliberately 
 attended a cock-fight. It was on a Sunday morn- 
 ing, too. I may as well make a clean breast of it, 
 and allow the whole sad truth to be known. I 
 was born to be a 'frightful example' to the more 
 virtuously disposed of my species ; and I have little 
 doubt that all the misfortunes I have since under- 
 gone, or which I may be doomed to undergo, spring 
 directly from, or will spring from, that cock-fight. 
 The only thing I can plead in extenuation is, that 
 the combat I attended did not take place within the 
 London bills of mortality, or within the sound of 
 English church bells. The deed was done on the 
 shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and on the coast of 
 Africa. 
 
 I was at Algiers. I had just been reading in the 
 English papers how a whole bevy of noblemen and 
 gentlemen, disguised under the most plebeian aliases, 
 had been arrested at a sporting public-house — Jemmy 
 Somebody's — in London, and marched ignominiously 
 through the public street to the police-court, where 
 they were each fined five pounds : all for cock-fight- 
 ing. The case against them was clear. The plumed 
 bipeds, the metal spurs, the weights and scales, the 
 
COCKPIT ROYAL. 207 
 
 pit itself, had all been found, and duly produced in 
 court by inexorable inspectors. It was shown that a 
 great deal of money had been laid on the combat. 
 'Serve them right,' quoth a stern gentleman, to 
 whom I read the report of the case. ; I'd have sent 
 every man Jack of them to prison for six months, 
 with hard labour.' This downright opinion was 
 necessarily provocative of argument. Another gen- 
 tleman present, a mild and genial person, remarked 
 that he really did not see much harm in cock-fight- 
 ing. The birds, he added, evidently liked fighting ; 
 
 and so long as the natural spurs only were used 
 
 But the stern gentleman wouldn't hear anything in 
 palliation of that which he termed an abominable 
 and degrading exhibition of cruelty and ruffianism. 
 It had now grown to be about twelve at noon ; and it 
 so fell out that Abdallah, the guide attached to the 
 hotel, sent to ask, with his duty, what amusement 
 the gentlemen would like to have provided for them 
 that present Sunday : adding that a capital cock-fight 
 was to come off at two o'clock precisely at the Cafe 
 de 1'Ancienne Kiosque, on the road to Moustafa 
 Superieur. We had been arguing so long on the 
 pros and cons of cock-fighting, without arriving at 
 any satisfactory conclusion, that Abdallah' s proposi- 
 tion came upon us like the refreshing spray from a 
 hydropult on a dusty day. The Gordian knot was 
 severed. The stern gentleman and the mild gentle- 
 man, and your humble servant, were unanimous that 
 the best thing to be done was to proceed to the scene 
 
2o8 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 of action and compare notes on what we saw. So we 
 hired a carriage and went off to the Cafe de 1'Ancienne 
 Kiosque. I beg to repeat that all this took place in 
 Africa. In England we should not have dreamed of 
 doing such a thing ; nor, dreaming, should Ave have 
 dared. 
 
 But it was Sunday. Long years have passed 
 since, in pages precursors to those in which I now 
 write, I was permitted to discourse on the aspect of 
 Sunday in London, and on the different Sabbaths 
 which men, in. their pride, or their strict conscien- 
 tiousness, or their sheer indifference, had made to 
 themselves. I have spent five hundred Sundays in 
 twenty different lands since I first took pen in hand 
 and told how I had heard ' Sunday bands' playing in 
 the Parks, how I had heard English mechanics enjoying 
 their 'Sunday out' in suburban tea-gardens. And 
 am I, or are you, or is our patron Society any nearer, 
 now, the solution of the vexed question of how Sun- 
 days should best be spent, and which of our human 
 Sabbaths is most acceptable to the Divine Ordainer 
 of all things? That the seventh day, or the first 
 day — for we are scarcely agreed as to whether it 
 is properly number one or number seven — should 
 not be spent in cock-fighting seems clear enough; 
 but remember, again, that what I am telling of took 
 place in Africa, in a country governed by a Koman 
 Catholic power, numbering among its subjects Turks, 
 Jews, heretics, fire -worshippers, and Pagan negroes. 
 Man was made for the Sabbath, they tell you, grimly 
 
COCKPIT ROYAL. 209 
 
 scowling, north of the Tweed. The Sabbath was 
 made for man, they hold in latitudinarian France, 
 and even in Lutheran Germany. But how is a 
 government to impose a Sabbath upon so many races 
 of men, and of so many ways of thinking? Religious 
 politics run as high in Algeria as elsewhere. The 
 Mahometan Arabs call the Christians, dogs. The 
 orthodox Turks are continually expressing a desire 
 to defile the graves of the fathers and mothers of the 
 heterodox Moors, and both concur in hating the 
 schismatical Kabyles. The negroes are mere idola- 
 ters and Obeahmen. Turks, Moors, and negroes con- 
 cur in loathing and despising the Jews. The Gal- 
 licans in Algiers hint that the Catholicism of the 
 Spaniards who colonise Oran is tinged with strange 
 heresies and excessive Mariolatry; and the Maltese 
 sailors resolutely refuse to pray to the Saints in the 
 French calendar. The resident British community 
 import tracts ; try a little prosely tism without any ap- 
 parent results ; squabble among themselves, and make 
 no secret of their convictions that their neighbours 
 are going to Jehanum. As for the Jews, they look 
 upon Moslem and Nazarene alike, with the feelings, 
 harboured from time immemorial, but harboured in 
 an occult manner. And yet, amidst this confusion 
 of mosques, cathedrals, chapels, synagogues, and 
 Mumbojumbo houses, Trappish convents, and mara- 
 bout koubbas, nobody in Algiers, extraordinary to 
 relate, thinks of quarrelling or fighting about Sunday. 
 Everybody enjoys his Sabbath as seemeth him best. 
 
210 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 To what causes must the absence of dispute as to 
 the observance of the Algerine Sabbath be ascribed? 
 To the warmth of the climate ? To the indolence or 
 placability of the people ? To the tolerance of the 
 clergy? Scarcely, I conjecture. Hot as is the climate, 
 and lazy the people, there are enough activity and 
 energy about to make Sunday the noisiest day in the 
 week. The clergy are just as intolerant as the autho- 
 rities permit them to be ; and the priests of one sect, 
 not being allowed to burn or plunder those of another, 
 console themselves by preaching against and cursing 
 their neighbours. The real reason is, that a casting 
 vote in all matters, secular or ecclesiastical, is given 
 by the dominant power — by the eminently tolerant, 
 unprejudiced, and unbelieving French government. 
 I hope I am not libelling that government by hinting 
 that, theologically, it is a little more than sceptical. 
 Sunday is a clay when everybody is allowed, and, in- 
 deed, expected, to make merry ; and the Gaul being 
 at bottom a lighthearted and mercurial soul, he sees 
 nothing very wrong in the social organisation of a 
 colony in which there are three Sabbaths instead of one. 
 
 I will not say that I pursued precisely this train 
 of thought as the carriage bore us along the very 
 dusty road leading to the Cafe de l'Ancienne Kiosque, 
 and ultimately to Moustafa Superieur ; but the road- 
 side was fertile in materials on which future reflec- 
 tions might be founded. It was Sunday out on the 
 most extensive scale, and with the oddest combina- 
 tion of Oriental and European characteristics. Group 
 
COCKPIT ROYAL. 
 
 after group of French soldiers, military coveys of 
 red-legged partridges, were scattered along the broad 
 highway ; and in the keen zest in which they were evi- 
 dently enjoying their Sunday offered a very marked 
 contrast to the English warriors whom you meet 
 listlessly wandering about the streets of provincial 
 towns, and whose mental condition never seems to 
 me to extend beyond these stages : first, that of de- 
 spair at not having money enough to get drunk; 
 second, that of having it, and being drunk; third, 
 that of having got sober, and wanting to get drunk 
 again. The third s,tage is analogous to, but not iden- 
 tical with, the first. The British private, who has 
 tasted the sweets of the beer-shop, is in a position 
 more fully to appreciate the poetical reminder that 
 the sorrow's crown of sorrow is in the remembrance 
 of happiness. Ah ! if under some blessed fiscal dis- 
 pensation the English soldier could only be supplied 
 with cigars three for a penfty ! He would still visit 
 the canteen, I suppose; but I would lay any odds 
 that he would not get tipsy half so often ; that he 
 would not be half so brutal, so stupid, or so dis- 
 orderly ; and that he would not find time hang with 
 such awful ponderosity on his hands. Cigars three 
 a penny ! My panacea is a cheap one. I have but 
 one addition to suggest: a theatre for twopence, in 
 lieu of the filthy public-house and the blackguard 
 music-hall. WitlT cheap cigars and cheap theatrical 
 amusements you would soon find a sensible diminu- 
 tion in your number of courts-martial, in the in- 
 
212 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 mates of your barrack cells, and the number of your 
 punishment drills, your extra guards, your stoppages, 
 and your bloody stripes laid on the backs of poor 
 brave fellows who get into trouble because they do 
 not know what to do with themselves.* Cigars three 
 a penny, I say, and Box and Cox for twopence, in 
 preference to the 'Memoirs of Lieutenant Melchesi- 
 dec Bethel,' that sainted subaltern of foot, or the 
 'Beatified Baggage-wagon Woman,' price thirteen 
 shillings per thousand for distribution. 
 
 Cigars three a penny were very common in the 
 mouths of the French warriors on the road to Moustafa 
 Superieur. Scarcely a private but had his cheap roll 
 of tobacco ; nor did his officers seem to be too proud 
 to smoke cigars at the same price. Tobacconists in 
 Algiers will sell you so-called Londres and Kegalias at 
 as high a price as you are foolishly willing to give ; but 
 the prices are essentially ' fancy' ones, and the cigars 
 themselves but the sweepings of the French Regie. 
 
 Given a fine Sunday afternoon, and several hun- 
 dreds of military men swaggering or strolling along 
 hi the direction of a cafe where a cock-fight is about 
 to take place; the odds, in England, I opine, would 
 be laid on all those military men being intent on 
 witnessing the cock-fight in question. Did your 
 betting lay that way in Algeria, however, you would 
 lose. Every nationality here has its special and ex- 
 clusive Sunday amusement; but cock-fighting is not 
 one to which the French are addicted. c Comment!' 
 
 * Flogging, thanks to Mr. Otway, exists no longer in ou£ army. 
 
COCKPIT ROYAL. 
 
 they would cry. c Spend two hours in seeing two 
 miserable birds peck one another to pieces : mais c'est 
 une horreur!' The Frenchman's Sunday means a 
 long day of dawdling, of staring at shows and sights, 
 of ogling pretty girls, of sipping moderate and thin 
 potations, and of winding up at billiards or the play. 
 The French officers have an occasional bout at par- 
 tridge-shooting or pig-sticking, and, at outlying sta- 
 tions, can cultivate perilous laurels, if they choose, 
 in hunting the lion; but ideas of 'Le Sport,' as it is 
 understood in France, have not yet penetrated to 
 Cesarean Mauritania. Horse -racing languishes. Many 
 of the Mahometan gentlemen have magnificent studs 
 of thoroughbreds, but they decline to enter their 
 full-blooded Arabs for plates unless the French 
 owners of racehorses can exhibit a faultless pedigree 
 with each of the horses they enter. And a racer 
 must have a very long lineage to match with one 
 in the studbook of an Arab sheikh. The native 
 gentry, too, are great falconers; but the French 
 scarcely know a hawk from a hernshaw, and usually 
 regard a falcon as a kind of semi-fabulous bird, not 
 often seen out of heraldic scutcheons, and which 
 ladies used to wear on their wrists like bracelets 
 some time in the dark ages. The Arabs understand 
 cock-fighting, and among themselves can enjoy it 
 keenly ; but, on the whole, they prefer the contests 
 of quails, and even of pheasants — which are here 
 c game' to the backbone, and desperately pugnacious 
 — to those of cocks. Moreover, they never bet; and 
 
214 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 to Europeans a cock-fight without money won and 
 lost is as insipid as card-playing for 'love.' The 
 real amateurs, aficionados as they call themselves, 
 of cock-fighting are the Spaniards, of whom there 
 are some thousands domiciled in Algiers, either as 
 agriculturists, as mechanics, or as shopkeepers. They 
 wear their national costume ; speak very little French ; 
 scowl at the Arabs as though they were the self-same 
 Moriscos whom they were wont to persecute in Spain ; 
 and have their own church and their own priests. 
 
 The jewellers' shops in Algiers are full of rudely 
 fashioned representations in silver of human eyes, 
 noses, arms, legs, and ears ; and these I used to take 
 at first as being in some way connected with the 
 Mahometan superstition of the evil eye ; but in reality 
 they are votive offerings, and their chief purchasers 
 are Spaniards, who devoutly hang them up on the 
 altars of favourite Saints, in gratitude for their re- 
 covery from deafness, toothache, chilblains, ophthalmia, 
 or other wise, as the case may be. For the rest, these 
 Algerine Spaniards, usually emigrants from Cartha- 
 gena and Valencia, are peaceable citizens enough, 
 and give the government but little trouble. They 
 are honest, industrious, and eminently temperate — - 
 bread, garlic, tobacco, and cold water being their 
 principal articles of diet. They occasionally indulge 
 in stabbing affrays, when arrears of ill-feeling, arising 
 from bygone cock-fighting and card -playing disputes, 
 are cleared up ; but as a rule the use of the knife is 
 strictly confined to the family circle. Pepe has it 
 
COCKPIT ROYAL. 215 
 
 out with Jose, and then the thing is hushed up, and 
 the swarthy gentleman who is taken to the hospital 
 with a punctured wound beneath the fifth rib is 
 reported to have accidentally slipped down upon an 
 open knife as he was cutting the rind of a piece of 
 cheese. They don't run mucks, and they seldom 
 stab the gendarmes. They are inveterate gamblers 
 and finished cock-fighters. The Maltese sailors, of 
 whom there are usually a numerous tribe in Algiers, 
 belonging to the speronares in port, are likewise 
 enthusiastic admirers of the gallimachia ; but the 
 Spaniards, to cull a locution from the pit, l fight shy' 
 of the brown islanders. Your Maltese, not to mince 
 matters, is a drunken, quarrelsome dog, fearfully 
 vindictive, as lazy as a Duke's Hall Porter, and a 
 great rogue. Rows are rare at Algerian cock-fights ; 
 but if ever a difficulty occurs, and the sergents de 
 ville are called in, the Maltese are sure to be at the 
 bottom of it. 
 
 Cafes, breweries with gardens attached, and danc- 
 ing-saloons, are plentiful in the neighbourhood of 
 Algiers. As the road grows crowded and more 
 crowded with soldiers and sailors, with French work- 
 men in blouses, and French farm-labourers in striped 
 nightcaps and sabots; with German artisans with 
 their blonde beards, belted tunics, and meerschaums; 
 with little grisettes and Norman bonnes with their 
 high white caps ; with grave, dusky Spaniards in 
 their round jackets, bright sashes, pork -pie hats, 
 clubbed hair and earrings; with Greek and Italian 
 
216 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 sailors, and fishermen from the Balearic Isles, all 
 mingled pell-mell; with the Jews in their gorgeous 
 habiliments, clean white stockings, snowy turbans, 
 and shiny shoes; with the Jewish women with high 
 conical head-dresses of golden filigree, and long fall- 
 ing veils of lace, and jewelled breastplates, and robes 
 of velvet and rich brocade; with Arabs in white 
 burnouses and flapping slippers, who stalk grimly 
 onward, looking neither to the right nor to the left; 
 with Berbers and Kabyles swathed in the most 
 astonishing wrap -rascals of camel's hair, and goat's 
 hair, and cowskin; with fez-capped, bare-footed, and 
 more than half bare-backed Arab boys, shrieking out 
 scraps of broken French ; with Zouaves, so bronzed 
 and so barbaric m; appearance as to make one doubt 
 whether they have not turned Mussulmans for good 
 and all ; with sellers of fruit, and sherbet, and dates, 
 and sweetstufF, and cigars, and lucifer-matches, you 
 begin at last to wonder whether the days of the 
 Crusades have not returned, and whether this motley 
 crowd, belonging to all nations, and jabbering all 
 dialects, is not part of the enormous host whilom 
 encamped at Jaffa or Ascalon. Surely the Duke of 
 Bethlehem or the Marquis of Jericho must be some- 
 where hereabouts. Surely Richard of England must 
 have patched up a truce with the Sultan Saladin, 
 and the camp-followers of the Christian and the 
 Saracen army must be making merry together. No ; 
 this is only an ordinary Algerine Sunday. It is the 
 Christian Sunday, remember; but it is worthy of 
 
COCKPIT ROYAL. 217 
 
 remark that the Hebrews who had their Sabbath 
 yesterday, and the Mahometans who had theirs the 
 day before, do not evince the slightest disinclination 
 to take an extra holiday on the real or Nazarene one. 
 The Cafe de l'Ancienne Kiosque was rather a 
 tumbledown place of entertainment, and might have 
 been easily mistaken for one of the inferior guin- 
 guettes outside the barriers, whither, in olden times, 
 ere Paris, both outside and inside its barriers, had 
 grown to be the dearest city in the world, one used 
 to repair to drink petit bleu at eight sous the litre. 
 The different nationalities were enjoying themselves, 
 each after its peculiar fashion, at the Ancienne Ki- 
 osque*. The burnoused Arabs were gravely squatting 
 on the benches outside, paying a trifle, I suppose, to 
 the proprietor of the cafe for that privilege ; for they 
 brought their own tobacco, and partook of no other 
 refreshment. A noisy group of Frenchmen were 
 wrangling over a 'pyramid' game of billiards — the 
 once green cloth of the table tinted dun gray from 
 long use and many absinthe stains, and grown as full 
 of rents as poor Robin's jerkin. At the side-tables 
 some sailors were drinking drams. Sailors are cos- 
 mopolitans in that respect. The Germans had a back 
 yard to themselves, where they were playing nine- 
 pins and wallowing in drouthy draughts of biere de 
 Mars. The cockpit was at the extremity of a long 
 garden, originally laid out in the French or sham 
 classical style, but where the indigenous and spiky 
 cactus had long since had it all its own way, carrying 
 
218 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 things before it literally with a high hand, and driv- 
 ing out the modest plants of Europe with sticks, and 
 staves, and sharp-pointed knives. Next to the horse- 
 armoury at the Tower, a grove of cactus is about the 
 most formidable array of lethal- like weapons I know. 
 We paid a franc apiece, and were admitted into a 
 square barn-like apartment, the walls whitewashed, 
 and the roof supported by heavy beams. Within 
 this quadrangle had been constructed a theatre, pro- 
 perly so called, consisting of twenty rows of seats, 
 disposed one over the other in circles, and gradually 
 widening in diameter as they ascended. You entered 
 this theatre by means of ladders and trap- doors, of 
 which there might have been half a dozen in the 
 different grades of seats, and I may best explain my 
 meaning by saying that the outside of the structure 
 looked, from the floor of the barn, like a gigantic 
 wooden funnel. The neck of the funnel was the 
 cockpit itself. We climbed up to the highest range 
 of seats, and, getting as close as we could to the two 
 gendarmes who represented authority, looked curi- 
 ously around and beneath. There was little fear 
 of disturbance, however. The ' roughs' were not 
 present that Sunday morning ; indeed, we heard 
 subsequently that it was Saint Somebody's day — a 
 Maltese saint — and that the brown islanders were 
 protracting their devotions at their own church. The 
 Spaniards, who had all doubtless attended mass be- 
 fore eleven a.m., were the chief occupants of the 
 theatre ; and into it were crammed, tight as herrings 
 
COCKPIT ROYAL. 219 
 
 in a barrel, at least two hundred and fifty amateurs. 
 Turn where } r ou would, were visible the swarthy 
 faces, bright black eyes, closely chopped whiskers, 
 upper lips and chins blue from constant shaving, 
 ear-lobes decorated with rings of gold, hair in clubs, 
 in queues, in nets, and in bags, pork-pie or soft felt 
 hats with rosettes, round shaggy jackets, loose necker- 
 chiefs, and curiously- worked gaiters or embroidered 
 slippers, so distinctive of the children of sunny Spain. 
 They were all smoking. On such solemn occasions 
 as bull-fights and cock-fights, the papelito or paper 
 roll is accounted puerile and jejune, and the genuine 
 weed or puro enjoyed. Such puros as were in a 
 state of combustion here were probably not of the 
 Algerine or three-a-penny species. They were big, 
 black, odorous, and probably smuggled from the 
 Peninsula. The company had obviously taken a 
 good deal of garlic with their morning meal; and, 
 if you will again be pleased to recollect that the 
 month was May, and the country Africa, I need not 
 enter into any details concerning the somewhat 
 powerful aroma which issued from the two hundred 
 and fifty amateurs. But a better behaved, a quieter 
 audience I never saw. It is a pity they had not 
 something worthier than a cock-fight in which to 
 display their good behaviour. 
 
 I am so ignorant of the technology of cock-fight- 
 ing as to be unaware of the precise meaning of a 
 'main;' but we saw five different battles between 
 ^N^ brace of birds. They were, for the most part, 
 
220 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 as game as game could be. One only — it was the 
 third fight — a red long-legged fellow, ' El rubio,' as 
 he • was called in the betting, showed, figuratively 
 speaking, the white feather. He essayed to run 
 away from his adversary, and even to scale the walls 
 of the pit ; whereat there were dull murmurs among 
 the auditory, and cries of c Fuera ! — fuera el rubio' — 
 4 Out with him !' His owner very speedily put an 
 end to the growing discontent by jumping into the 
 pit, seizing the recreant gladiator, wringing his neck, 
 and stamping upon him. He then handed over a hand- 
 ful of dollars, his loss on the event, to the owner of 
 the opposition bird, and philosophically lighting a 
 fresh puro, regained his seat, and betted throughout 
 the next fight on a white bird with a gray gorget. 
 
 Cockpit Royal ! As I gazed on the fierce struggle, 
 I could not but recall the mild Wordsworth's melli- 
 fluous description of Chanticleer under pacific cir- 
 cumstance : 
 
 ' Sweetly ferocious round his native walks, 
 Pride of his sister-wives, the monarch stalks ; 
 Spur-clad his nervous feet, and firm his tread, 
 A crest of purple tips the warrior's head ; 
 Bright sparks his black and rolling eyeball hurls, 
 Afar his tail he closes and unfurls. 
 On tiptoe rear'cl, he strains Ms clarion throat, 
 Threaten'd by faintly answering forms remote. 
 Again with his shrill voice the mountain rings, 
 While, flapp'd with conscious pride, resound his wings.' 
 
 Are not the numbers melodious? Is not the descrip- 
 tion charming? Was there ever a prettier amplifica- 
 tion of cock-a-doodle-do-o-o-o ? But here he was — the 
 
COCKPIT ROYAL 
 
 h 
 
 ' monarch' ' sweetly ferocious' — with a vengeance. I 
 have heard ere now the t erm ' pitted against each 
 other,' and I know not what may have been formerly 
 the practice in cock-fighting England; but in this 
 Algerine pit there did not seem to be any need to 
 excite the combatants for the fray. The two owners 
 stepped into the arena, each with his bird in his hand. 
 Solemn declarations were made and written down as 
 to the ages and prior performances of the champions. 
 Weights and scales were then produced, and the 
 birds were duly weighed. The appointed judge sub- 
 jected them to a minute examination. Their spurs 
 and beaks were then rubbed with the half of a 
 lemon ; they were put down at opposite corners of 
 the pit; and the owners, bowing to each other, went 
 to their places. Not a cry, not a gesture, was used 
 to excite the birds to the attack. There was a quiet 
 walk round the pit ; then a few sidelong looks, a careful 
 mutual examination of the opposite party's general 
 build and make-up ; then a rush, a rise on the wings, 
 another, another ; then it seemed as though a small 
 feather-bed had been suddenly ripped up, and the 
 plumes scattered in all directions. Such a furious 
 clapperclawing, such a tooth and nail exhibition of 
 gameness ! But not a crow was heard. Not a cry, 
 not a gasp even of j)ain. The loudest sound audible 
 was the rustling of feathers. Then the rivals would 
 emerge from the downy cloud ; stalk round the pit 
 again ; and eye and take stock of each other as before. 
 Then would come rush number two, and another rise 
 
222 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 and another furious clapperclawing. And so on, round 
 after round for perhaps half an hour. 
 
 This volume not being Bell's Life in London, I 
 am absolved from chronicling the minutiae of the 
 various rounds. In the first fight, I may remark 
 that one of the birds, a black one, was defeated early. 
 Time was called; he could not come up to it; he 
 consequently lost the fight, and was put out of his 
 misery, but not contumeliously, by his owner. The 
 victor expired just as he was being handed over the 
 barrier to his triumphant proprietor. The next duel 
 was between a little gray fiend of a bird and a gaunt 
 white creature of most doleful mien. How handi- 
 capping is managed in the Algerian Cockpit Royal I 
 do not know; but there was evidently a great dis- 
 parity in bottom and bone between these two. The 
 pluck, however, of the gaunt white creature was in- 
 domitable. He grew rather wild after about eighteen 
 minutes' clapperclawing, and staggered rather than 
 walked round the pit : the little gray fiend strutting 
 by his side, and ever and anon whispering in his ear, 
 so it seemed, like an importunate bore ; but in reality 
 finding out fresh tender parts about the unhappy 
 creature's head wherein to progue him with his sharp 
 beak. It was very horrible to see this gaunt white 
 creature gradually turn first a streaky and then a 
 complete crimson, with the blood he lost. It was 
 more horrible when both his eyes were gone, and 
 blind and 'groggy,' but undismayed, he still went 
 reeling about, occasionally closing with his enemy, 
 
COCKPIT RO YAL. 223 
 
 and clawing him. At last, in the twentieth round, I 
 think, the little gray fiend coolly went up to the 
 luckless white knight; looked in his face as though 
 he were laughing in it; and with one trenchant blow 
 of his beak cut the poor wretch's throat. I am sure, 
 by the blood that spurted out, that the great artery 
 had been severed. The white cock balanced himself 
 for a moment on one leg, then threw back his head, 
 gave one smothered 'cluck,' and as sharply as a 
 human hand can be turned round from the position 
 of supination to that of pronation, fell over dead, 
 and turned his toes up. So may you have seen, in 
 the shambles, a bullock stricken by the slaughterer's 
 poleaxe. One stupid moment motionless he stands, 
 as though all unconscious that his skull is cleft in 
 twain, and that his brains lie bare. But anon the 
 quicksilver current of dissolution searches every vein, 
 and plumbs every nerve. The giant frame trembles ; 
 the legs give way ; and the great beast topples over 
 into so much beef. 
 
 Can any extenuation for the manifest cruelty of 
 this sport be found in the fact that the birds in 
 Spanish pits wear only their natural horny pedal 
 protuberances or spurs? This, like everything else, 
 is a moot point. The uninitiated generally jump at 
 the conclusion that a fight with steel or silver spurs 
 is much more barbarous than one without. These 
 sharpened glaives, they argue, inflict the most hideous 
 gashes. On the other side, it may be shown that 
 when spurs are used, the fight is over much sooner- 
 
224 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 and that spurs, besides, give an equality in weapons 
 to the combatants. A bird may be of the same weight 
 and age as his opponent, but much overmatched by 
 him in adroitness and endurance; yet it will often 
 happen that when apparently at the last gasp, the 
 bird who is getting the worst of it may turn the 
 tables by driving his spur into his enemy's brain. 
 
 To others I leave the task of drawing a moral 
 from the tale I have told. As I went to the cock- 
 fight, and it was Sunday, I am, so far as moralising 
 is concerned, out of court. 
 
CUAGNAWAGHA. 
 
 Cuagnawagha ! Cuagnawagha ! it is but a word. I 
 may plead, at least, that it is fertile in vowels, and has 
 not the spiky chevaux de frise appearance, when writ- 
 ten down, which Polish and Hungarian and others of 
 the Sclavonic family (those quadrilaterals of ortho- 
 graphy) present. To me, even Cuagnawagha looks 
 pretty in black and white. I have adopted the 
 spelling accepted by those who rule over Cuagna- 
 wagha, and are neighbours to it; but the Cuagna- 
 waghians themselves are not much given to reading 
 or writing. 
 
 Cuagnawagha ! Cuagnawagha ! will you agree in 
 the premiss that there are certain words — the names 
 of things and places, and sometimes, but very rarely, 
 of men — the bare sound of which will haunt you? 
 That they should do so is not always the result of the 
 associations they recall. Windermere is close to 
 Patter dale ; yet the first is a name that haunts you, 
 and is full of a soft and mysterious beauty. Patter- 
 dale is one of the loveliest spots in Europe, but its 
 sound is harsh, severe, and ugly. 
 
 In all human probability, I shall never more be- 
 hold Cuagnawagha — on this side the grave, at least. 
 
 Q 
 
226 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 On the other we may all see sights that shall astonish 
 us. I was never in Cuagnawagha but once in my 
 life ; I only passed fifty minutes within its confines ; 
 I was thoroughly disappointed in all that I had come 
 to see; yet Cuagnawagha, its name and itself, have 
 haunted me from the day on which I first beheld it 
 until this, and in my dreariest moments its dear name 
 sweeps like soft music o*ver the chords of my heart, and 
 lights up the dim old Vauxhall of my twilight with 
 thrice fifty thousand additional lamps. I do not know 
 why. I have seen the lions of the world, their manes 
 and their tails, and have heard them roar. I can gaze 
 upon the ocean without addressing it as Vast, and In- 
 terminable, and Blue, and without bidding it Roll on — 
 a request which, on my part 5 or any one else's, I hold 
 to be one of surplusage, if not grossly impertinent. I 
 have lost most of my enthusiasm about great rivers. 
 I wait for the Ganges and the Indus, the Euphrates and 
 the Amazon; but I have seen the Guadalquivir, the 
 Ebro, the Tagus, the Rhone, the Rhine, the Mincio, and 
 the Danube ; but I am of opinion that the Thames at 
 Ditton, in th^t priceless half hour between your order- 
 ing the stewed eels and the cutlets to follow and the ar- 
 rival of the banquet itself, is brighter and more shining 
 than any other river which I might have asked, again 
 impertinently, to ' flow on.' The lions and the rivers, 
 the cataract and the Alpine passes, are apt, indeed, to 
 pall upon you when they are seen, not from choice but 
 from necessity ; and goodness gracious ! how many 
 miles would I willingly travel, and with peas in my 
 
CUAGNAWAGHA. 227 
 
 shoes, to get out of the way of an Old Master, or a 
 connoisseur given to talking about oue ! I almost 
 blush to recall the irreverent terms in which I heard 
 one of her Majesty's Messengers allude, the other day, 
 to that sublime chain of mountains, the exploration of 
 which has been undertaken by an association of Climb- 
 ing-boys, and whose peaks, passes, and glaciers are so 
 fascinating to our landscape painters that they seem 
 to be quite unaware of the existence of any more sub- 
 lime mountain scenery in the world. The Queen's 
 Messenger called the sublime chain those ' something' 
 Alps. So might you, if you had to carry a bag across 
 them twenty times a year, in hail, rain, or sunshine. 
 But Cuagnawagha has not lost one iota of its prime- 
 val charms to me. My love for it is as fresh as — 
 what shall I say ? — as your love for the face you al- 
 ways love : for the face which, like that of Queen Vic- 
 toria on the postage-stamps, never grows older. As it 
 was in 1840, so is it in 1872, only younger, and fresher, 
 and prettier (to you) ; so was it when your life began, 
 so is it now you are a man, so may it be when you 
 grow old. And I am sure, had Wordsworth ever seen 
 Cuagnawagha, he would have written as melodiously 
 about it as he has written of Grasmere or Dungeon- 
 ghyll. 
 
 Cuagnawagha is only an unpretending little Indian 
 village on the bank of the River St. Lawrence, over 
 against the French village of La Chine, one of the ear- 
 liest settlements of the Jesuit missionaries in Canada 
 (and so called by them in affectionate reference to the 
 
228 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 labours of which the Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses are 
 a record). It is some six-miles drive from the thriving 
 and populous city of Montreal. 
 
 This is not, perhaps, the first time you have been 
 told that there are no more genial and hospitable folks 
 in British North America (where capital punishment 
 will never be abolished, so far as killing with kindness 
 is concerned), than the inhabitants of Montreal. The 
 Canadians generally labour under a notion — not an 
 entirely mistaken one, perhaps — that their brethren of 
 the Old Country do not hold them in sufficient estima- 
 tion ; that the glare and bustle and sensational whirli- 
 gig life of the United States offer greater attractions 
 to English tourists who cross the Atlantic than the 
 solid, steady, sober=sided existence of the British pro- 
 vinces. They have an idea that an Englishman tra- 
 velling in the States gets rid of Canada at an early 
 stage in his journey, or just looks in upon it at the 
 fag end thereof, and that the real centres of his curi- 
 osity are in the cities of the Atlantic seaboard. The 
 'Kenucks,' and the 'Blue noses,' and the other pro- 
 vincials, murmur at this, but always in a placable and 
 good-humoured manner. ' At least/ says Canada, 'the 
 better half of Niagara belongs to us. At least, the Falls 
 of Montmorency are equal to those of Gennessee ; at 
 least, the St. Lawrence is not inferior to the Ohio, and 
 the Thousand Islands beat Boston Harbour. There 
 is not on the whole North American continent a city 
 so picturesque as Quebec ; and if you are curious about 
 redskins, we can show you plenty of Indians — fat, 
 
CUA GNA WA GHA. 229 
 
 copper-coloured, prosperous, and happy, instead of the 
 gaunt, dwarfed, half-starved wretches who are being 
 "improved" off the face of the earth by the restless 
 Yankees.' These grievances, however, do not prevent 
 the Montrealese from pressing the heartiest of wel- 
 comes on every stranger who comes within their gates. 
 It is enough for them that he is a stranger, and they 
 immediately take him in. He is asked out, systemati- 
 cally and stubbornly, to dinner. If he pleads previous 
 engagements, he is asked whether Monday week or 
 Tuesday fortnight will suit him ; and the dinner comes 
 due, and must be met, like a bill. The Amphitryous 
 who cannot bag him for a dinner are fain to secure 
 him for breakfasts or suppers or lunches. Then they 
 drive him out in trotting-wagons in summer, and in 
 sleighs in winter ; they take him to the club and to the 
 c rink ;' they wrap him up, as in buffalo-robes, with 
 kind offices and generous deeds. When I say that my 
 experiences of Montreal hospitality, on the last occa- 
 sion of my visit to the Royal Town, included the gift of 
 a roll of Canada homespun sufficient to make a couple 
 of travelling suits, and the loan of a railway- car, com- 
 bining sitting-room, bedrooms, smoking-rooms, and 
 kitchen, in which I travelled at my ease many hun- 
 dreds of miles, you will be enabled to infer that the 
 people of Montreal are not in the habit of doing things 
 by halves, and that when they say they are glad to see 
 you, they mean it. 
 
 Hospitality has generally its price; and I have 
 known more than one country where the price exacted 
 
230 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 was slightly beyond the value of the article itself; 
 but the terms on which kindness is obtainable in Mon- 
 treal are not very onerous. You are not expected to 
 praise everything you see, to make flowing speeches, 
 or to write a book, declaring Lower Canada in gene- 
 ral, and Montreal in particular, to be the grandest and 
 most glorious country and city in the universe. Nor 
 are you absolutely required to furnish the album of 
 every young lady fresh from boarding-school, or at 
 boarding-school, with autographs and cartes-de-visite, 
 or to write scraps of poetry of your own composition 
 (not to exceed thirty lines) on little bits of particol- 
 oured silk, to be returned, post-paid, to localities a 
 thousand miles away, there to be sewn into patch- 
 work counterpanes. Nor are you asked for opinions 
 on the abstract questions of Woman's Rights, Moral 
 Suasion, or International Law. You are only expected 
 to eat a great deal ; to pass the bottle ; to go round 
 the Mountain ; to go through the Tube, and to visit 
 Cuagnawagha. There are always plenty of kind friends, 
 with knives, forks, bottles, carriages, and horses, to 
 enable you to accomplish the first two feats. For the 
 performance of the third, every assistance will be ren- 
 dered you by the courteous officials of the Grand Trunk 
 Railway of Canada ; and the Victoria-bridge at Mon- 
 treal is, in its way, quite as great a wonder of the world 
 as the Falls of Niagara. When you have dispatched 
 that tremendous piece of engineering — when you have 
 not only ridden through the tube on a locomotive, but 
 walked through it, and inspected the identical rivet 
 
CUAGNAWAGHA. 231 
 
 driven into the iron by the Prince of Wales, the last of 
 I know not how many millions — you have done all 
 that is required of you in Montreal, with the excep- 
 tion of visiting Cuagnawagha. The name strikes you 
 at once. What is it? where is it? you eagerly inquire. 
 It is an Indian village, you are told, easily accessible. 
 The best way is by road to La Chine, where you can 
 obtain a canoe and be ferried across to the village it- 
 self. The very word ' canoe' sets you all agog to go. 
 Sunday, your counsellors continue, is the best day for 
 a visit to Cuagnawagha. The squaws are then in their 
 best dresses, and the papooses or children are neat and 
 clean, for the inspection of visitors. It was on a Sat- 
 urday afternoon that I made an appointment with a 
 hospitable friend to start for Cuagnawagha at noon on 
 the morrow. All night I dreamt about it. A radiant 
 chaos filled my sleep of moccasins and wampum-belts, 
 of wigwams and medicine -men, of war-paint and calu- 
 mets, of tomahawks and scalps, of fire-water and un- 
 buried hatchets, of gallant braves and beauteous 
 squaws, of the Council Fire and the Happy Hunting- 
 grounds. 
 
 Sunday morning dawned. It was a Canadian sum- 
 mer Sunday, which is perhaps saying enough ; but our 
 open carriage had a hood, and the day, though warm, 
 was so beautiful that we felt it would have been a sin 
 to remain at home. Perforce, however, so fierce was 
 the glare of the sun, we lingered in the cool shades of 
 the St. Lawrence Hall Hotel until two in the after- 
 noon. To broil in Canada was with me a new sensa- 
 
23 2 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 tion, for on the occasion of my last visit to Montreal, 
 the thermometer had been at a whole flight of stairs 
 below zero, and my tour round the mountain accom- 
 plished in a sleigh, with such a jingling accompani- 
 ment of bells as might have been envied by the cele- 
 brated female traveller to Banbury Cross. But why 
 did she not attach the bells to the cockhorse instead of 
 to her toes? There are but two changes of the seasons 
 at Montreal ; but they are pantomimic in their sud- 
 denness. I could scarcely believe that the Mr. Hogan 
 who suggested iced sangaree, or a trifle in the w r ay of 
 a cobbler, ere we started for Cuagnawagha, was the 
 same obliging host who, the last time I started from 
 St. Lawrence Hall, had lent me the skin (seemingly) 
 of a megatherium to wrap myself in, with a mighty 
 fur cap, and a pair of sealskin gloves, like unto levi- 
 athan his paws, and had whispered that half way 
 round the mountain there were some excellent hot 
 ' whisky skins' to be obtained. 
 
 The drive to La Chine was not very interesting. 
 Few drives in North America, save where the scenery 
 is mountainous, can be said to possess much interest, 
 picturesquely speaking. The farming is all doubtless 
 in strict accordance with the precepts of Jethro Tull, 
 great-grandfather of Anglo-Saxon husbandry; but to 
 the European eye it looks shiftless and slovenly. The 
 fields are too large (which would scarcely be a fault 
 in the eye of a farmer) ; there are ugly posts and rails 
 in lieu of hedges, and the trees are few. Gentlemen's 
 houses, parks, and pleasaunces you never expect to 
 
CUAGNAWAGHA. 233 
 
 see. Add to this an all-pervading dust powdering 
 the vegetation with the monotonous livery of Midge 
 the miller, and those chronic Canadian nuisances, 
 abundant turnpike-gates. There were plenty of cattle 
 about, however, well bred and full of flesh, and the 
 cottages along the road, although mainly of wood, had 
 a substantial and satisfied appearance, as though they 
 belonged to country folks who ate meat every day. 
 I am inclined to think that meat twice, if not three 
 times a day, would be nearer the mark, as the habitual 
 dietary of the Canadian peasant or farmer, for they 
 are both one here. Given a country where the babes 
 and sucklings clamour for beefsteak at breakfast: — 
 should not that country be a happy one ? 
 
 There was the usual confusion of French and 
 English nomenclature, and of Protestant and Roman- 
 ist places of worship, and of people of Saxon and 
 Celtic race along the road; but, as seems happily the 
 case in Canada, the Gaul and the Saxon, the follower 
 of Peter and the disciple of Martin, seemed to get on 
 pretty well together. Fenianism was in an ugly em- 
 bryo state when I was in Canada. It had scarcely 
 got beyond its first foetal squalling in its cradle in 
 Chicago; and the Canadian Paddy, so far as I had 
 any experience of him, was a jovial, easy-going mortal, 
 civil to the Saxon, obedient to his rule, and passably 
 contented with plenty of work and high wages. I am 
 inclined to hope, and even to believe, that the out- 
 burst of Fenianism — now grown from a fretful wail 
 to a frantic howl notwithstanding — the kind of Paddy 
 
234 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 (the contented one) I have mentioned, is still in a majo- 
 rity in Lower Canada. What he may be in the West, I 
 am rather chary of opining. On this present Sunday 
 he was evidently, so far as his patronage of French 
 and English public-houses went, wholly free from pre- 
 judice. 'The Queen's Arms' and ' Les Armes d'An- 
 gleterre' were all one to him. I could not help 
 thinking, as we saw these hybrid taverns, that half- 
 and-half should properly be the only beverage sold 
 there ; and when I passed a knot of scarlet-coated 
 British Guardsmen issuing from a wayside hostel, I 
 fancied an international version of the old nursery 
 rhyme : 
 
 ' Qui est la ? 
 A grenadier. 
 Ou est votre argent ? 
 I forgot. • 
 Allez-vous en, ivrogne !' 
 
 Conversations closely resembling the above were cer- 
 tainly audible from time to time when the Guards 
 were in Canada. Happy was it when they were 
 content to demand a 4 pot of beer ' in lieu of the atro- 
 cious ' white eye,' and the abominable 'fixed bayonets' 
 — the cheap whisky, or cheap hell-fire of Canada. Not 
 that the Guardsman was given in any marked degree 
 to misbehave himself. He did not get tipsier, or with 
 greater frequency, than his cousin of the line does in 
 Gibraltar. He was much more sober in Canada than 
 he is, generally, in London. The Guards were de- 
 servedly popular with the people of Montreal, and 
 went home 'as fit as fiddles.' Many obtained their 
 
CUAGNAWAGHA. 235 
 
 discharge while in America, and married and settled 
 in the province. They must have been quick about 
 their sweethearting ; but next to a sailor's, is there 
 anything shorter than a soldier's courtship ? Three 
 Sundays might be given as a fair average. Let us 
 take a virtuously inclined corporal. A regiment, we 
 will say, disembarks on a Saturday night ; on the first 
 Sunday afternoon you will meet your virtuously in- 
 clined corporal walking down Notre-Dame-street with 
 a young lady in a three-dollar shawl and a two-dollar 
 bonnet. The next Sunday, if you happened to be 
 passing down Bonaventure-street, you might catch a 
 glimpse of the virtuously inclined corporal taking tea 
 with the entire family of his innamorata ; cutting the 
 bread-and-butter, carving the ham, nursing the mar- 
 ried sister's baby, or handing the old grand sire a light 
 for his pipe. And on Sunday number three, you 
 heard that Corporal Smith had got leave to be married 
 to a 'kenuck.' How do they manage it, these won- 
 derful military men? What inflammatory quality is 
 there in their scarlet coats to set maidens' hearts 
 ablaze so ? How many weary months, years perhaps, 
 did it take you to win the present Mrs. Benedict? 
 Mind, I can't help thinking, that if civilians would 
 adopt the short sharp mode of military courtship, the 
 girls would meet tbem halfway. I heard of a train 
 breaking down once on the Camden and Amboy Bail- 
 road, and before a fresh locomotive could be brought 
 to its assistance no less than three offers of marriage 
 were made and accepted among the passengers. And, 
 
236 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 did you ever hear of a courtship more expeditious 
 than that of the mystic William Blake, pictor ignotus ? 
 He had had some great trouble. ' I pity you, William,' 
 remarked a young lady. ' Then I am sure I love you 
 with all my heart,' quoth William Blake; and they 
 went off and got married at once. But if she had not 
 added the endearing ' William ' to the expression of 
 pity, that young lady might never have become Mrs. 
 Blake. 
 
 There was not much to remind one of the Celestial 
 Empire at the clean little village of La Chine. It 
 was nearly all French. The hotel, or tavern, was, as 
 usual, half and half. The little sanded parlour was 
 decorated with portraits of Queen Victoria and the 
 late Duke of Wellington, side by side with a Madonna 
 and Child, and his Grace the Archbishop of Quebec, 
 in full canonicals, and the Montreal Herald lay on 
 the table cheek by jowl with IS Echo du Canada. A 
 French servant-maid brought us some English beer ; 
 and on our expressing a desire to hire a canoe, the 
 Scotch landlord hailed two boatmen, one of whom 
 was an Indian and the other an Irishman, to 'pole' us 
 across to Cuagnawagha. It only wanted a raven, and 
 a cage, and the celebrated professor of Trafalgar- 
 square, to make the exhibition of the Happy Family 
 complete. 
 
 We crossed the magnificent river : at this point 
 far enough from the La Chine Rapids to be lying 
 calm in the sun, like one sheet of burnished gold. 
 There was no awning to the canoe, and a Venetian 
 
CUA GNA WA GHA. 23 7 
 
 gondola would perhaps have been preferable as a con- 
 veyance; but there was something after all in riding 
 lightly on the bosom of the famous St. Lawrence in 
 a real canoe of birch bark, with a real Eed Indian at 
 the stern. I will say nothing of the Irishman at the 
 prow, for he rather detracted from the romance of 
 the thing. A Canadian voyageur now, softly mur- 
 muring ' La Complainte de Cadieux,' or chanting in 
 lugubrious tones the fearful history of Marie Joseph 
 Corriveau and the iron cage of Quebec : such an 
 oarsman would have left nothing to be desired. You 
 must get on to the Ottawa river ere you can catch your 
 voyageur. The Irishman and the Indian did not at- 
 tempt the ' Eow, Brothers, Row/ or any other variety 
 of the Canadian boat-song. It was worth coming a 
 good many miles, however, to hear the Irishman en- 
 deavour to make himself understood in the French 
 tongue by the Eedskin, and that noble savage, not to 
 be behindhand in courtesy, endeavouring to talk Eng- 
 lish to the Irishman. I must not omit to mention 
 that the noble savage wore a pea-jacket and a billy- 
 cock hat, and informed us that, in addition to the skill 
 and dexterity with which he feathered his oar, or 
 rather his pole, he was 'one dam good pilot.' 
 
 As the opposite shore was approached, the navi- 
 gation became somewhat difficult, and the channel 
 rather a matter to be faintly hoped for than confidently 
 fixed upon. Several times we were, as I thought, 
 within an inch of being 'snagged' — the 'snags,' in 
 this case, not being trunks of trees, as on the Missis- 
 
238 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 sippi, but sharp-pointed fragments of rock. However, 
 the Indian successfully guided us through the watery 
 labyrinth, and in some degree justified his claim to 
 the title of i one dam good pilot.' There were more 
 rocky fragments on the bank ; indeed, the littoral of 
 the St. Lawrence, opposite La Chine, might remind 
 the Eastern traveller of the shores of Arabia Petrsea ; 
 and the quarter-of-a-mile walk or so, lying between 
 the river and the village, was, to one of the visitors to 
 Cuagnawagha, of a gouty constitution, and to another 
 with tight boots, and to a third with bunions and an 
 irritable temper, agonising. 
 
 We brought up at last in a long straggling 
 street, or rather lane, of hovels built of loose stones 
 and planks nailed together in apparently as loose a 
 fashion. Here and there, perhaps, a little mud had 
 been used to finish off the corners, or stick on the 
 chimney-pots; but looseness was the prevailing cha- 
 racteristic of the street architecture. When I call 
 these dwellings hovels, I use the word in no offensive 
 sense. They were hovels in construction, but exceed- 
 ingly clean, cxnd abundantly furnished. The doors 
 and windows were all wide open, and the domestic 
 arrangements of the inhabitants of Cuagnawagha 
 were almost as fully exposed to public gaze as those 
 of a doll's-house in Mr. Cremer's London shop-win- 
 dows. As the majority of the houses comprised only 
 one room, the publicity given to the domesticity of 
 the place may be more easily understood. They were, 
 as I have hinted, supplied with abundant chattels. 
 
CUAGNAWAGHA. 239 
 
 I saw more than one four-post bedstead, several easy- 
 chairs, and any number of profusely ornamented tea- 
 trays. Next to these, the most fertile product of 
 Cuagnawagha appeared to be babies. I could not at 
 first make out Avhat had become of the children of 
 medium growth, nor of the seven-year olds up to the 
 ten-year olds; but I learnt subsequently that the 
 elder ones were at church, and the younger at play in 
 the cemetery. In Cuagnawagha itself the babies ruled 
 the roast. They were very fat — of a rich oily fatness 
 indeed, and, in the ridiculous swaddling-bands in 
 which they were enveloped, looked not unlike very 
 little sucking-pigs seen through reddish-brown spec- 
 tacles. But all the babies I saw were, I am pleased 
 to say, immaculately clean. Those who had any hair, 
 had it of a lustrous raven hue, such as Horace Vernet 
 has put on the head of the baby Napoleon, in that 
 exquisite vignette where the hero is depicted, naked, 
 and one hour old, sprawling on a fragment of tapestry. 
 Their black eyes, too, had a merry twinkle ; and alto- 
 gether their coppery hue was not unpleasing, and 
 they were the nicest babies I had seen for many a 
 long month. In Cuagnawagha a baby is called a 'pa- 
 poose ;' and a solemn rite, the performance of which 
 is exacted from all strangers, is that the papooses 
 should be kissed. I had been warned in Montreal 
 that the maternal squaws of Cuagnawagha were some- 
 times actuated by mercenary motives in offering their 
 babes to the caresses of tourists ; and that the request, 
 4 Anglis, kiss papoose,' was not unfrequently followed 
 
240 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 by another, 'Give little quarter'— meaning twenty-five 
 cents. I took a provision of small money with me — 
 the newest and brightest I could procure ; but the 
 mothers of Cuagnawagha were that day in no merce- 
 nary mood. At least, they did not actually beg for 
 money. They clapped their hands for joy, and the 
 papoose crowed in unison whenever we did present 
 them with a backshish ; so that, on the whole, in this 
 lane full of copper-coloured babies we had our money's 
 worth and more. We would no sooner halt at an 
 open threshold than cheery voices, in an amazing jar- 
 gon of French and English, invited us to walk in. If 
 we hesitated about intruding, the inevitable papoose, 
 tightly swaddled and strapped on to a board, like 
 a diminutive Egyptian mummy, was handed to us 
 through the window. A gipsy woman of felonious 
 tendencies might have made a fortune in ten minutes' 
 perambulation of Cuagnawagha, by running off with 
 the papooses thus offered on trust ; only, as the gip- 
 sies are said to steal only Nazarene children, and the 
 Red Indians themselves are by some ethnologists 
 supposed to be of kin with the gipsies, those Zingarini 
 persons might not have cared, perhaps, about stealing 
 their own flesh and blood. 
 
 I was given to understand afterwards that these 
 Indians of Cuagnawagha were a very industrious and 
 well-to-do community. The men hunted and fished, 
 and were boatmen and river pilots ; the women stayed 
 at home, took care of the papooses, and filled up their 
 time by making baskets and creels, and embroidering 
 
CUA GNA WA GHA. 241 
 
 those exquisite moccasins, slippers, pouches, fans, 
 wampam belts, and other articles of bead and feather 
 work which are so much in request in the fancy ba- 
 zaars of Montreal and Quebec, and for which the re- 
 tail dealers charge such exorbitant prices. The 
 squaws of Cuagnawagha have certain market days for 
 the disposal of their manufactures. On these occa- 
 sions they are conveyed by their lords in canoes of 
 birch bark across the river, and may be seen, with 
 their black hair abundantly oiled, and their persons 
 spruced up in infinite Indian finery, gliding from shop 
 to shop in the most frequented streets of Montreal, in 
 strange contrast to the European costumes around 
 them. I did not hear that the Indians of Cua<ma- 
 wagha, male or female, were much given to the con- 
 sumption of fire-water, or to quarrelling or pilfering, 
 or to the other generic weaknesses of the noble sa- 
 vage when in a state of free nobility and nastiness. I 
 did not see any liquor-shop in the place. The do- 
 mestic affairs of the village are administered by a 
 chief — John or Peter, or Big Bellows or Bear's 
 Paw, was, I think, his name— but it does not matter 
 now — who was reported to have done uncommonly 
 well in the fur trade, and to be worth many dol- 
 lars. I had the honour of an interview with this 
 Sachem, who was sitting, after the manner of his 
 subjects, at his open door, in a Windsor chair, and 
 smoking the calumet of peace— an ordinary tobacco- 
 pipe, containing, as I was led to infer from the odour, 
 birdseye. He was old, and immensely fat, but very 
 
 K 
 
242 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 affable. He showed me a pair of the most beautifully- 
 embroidered moccasins I had ever beheld. Not to 
 mince the matter, they served as coverings to his own 
 stout legs and feet; but nothing could exceed the 
 courteous manner in which he cocked up his bead- 
 worked limbs on the window-sill, and allowed me 
 narrowly to inspect, and even to smooth and pat 
 them. The Sachem's house was so full of chattels 
 that it looked like a broker's shop; and the name of 
 his tea-trays was legion. He wore on his breast, and 
 was evidently exceedingly proud of, a silver medal, 
 bearing the effigy of King George the Fourth, and 
 had, so far as I could make out, served at some re- 
 mote period in the local militia. He had the usual 
 twin engravings over his mantelpiece — the Madonna 
 and the Queen of England, and was a stanch Conser- 
 vative and a devout Roman Catholic. So I left him, 
 never to behold him more, in this semi-ignored corner 
 of the world, so close to civilisation, and yet so far 
 from it. He was sitting under his own vine and his 
 own fig-tree ; and who was there to make him afraid ? 
 Not the British Government, surely, whose rule over 
 these honest folks is mild, and equitable, and protec- 
 tive; not the Pope of Koine, assuredly. In Lower 
 Canada, the Roman Catholic religion seems to have 
 lost the terrifying character which it is apt to assume 
 elsewhere. The priest neither bullies, nor teases, nor 
 grinds the faces of his parishioners. He is their mas- 
 ter; for he is lawyer, arbitrator, journalist, school- 
 master, letter-writer, match-maker, guide, philoso- 
 
CUAGNAWAGHA. 243 
 
 pher, and friend, all in one ; but his spiriting seems to 
 be done with infinite gentleness, and he is certainly 
 beloved by a population who, but for his quietly pa- 
 ternal despotism, would very likely be drunken, and 
 savage, and profligate, and not peaceable, and affec- 
 tionate, and docile. 
 
 At one extremity of the village street there was a 
 church, a bare structure of considerable antiquity, 
 highly whitewashed. The irregular area before this 
 edifice seemed to be the general try sting-place of the 
 young squaws and the young braves of Cuagnawagha, 
 who were sweethearting after the manner of young 
 squaws and young braves the whole world over. The 
 braves, I am sorry to say, had repudiated the slightest 
 approach to Indian costume, and in the round blue 
 jackets and glazed hats which they mostly affected, 
 had somewhat of a sailor-like appearance. They were 
 pure redskins, however, and half-castes were rare. 
 Now a Red Indian in a blue jacket and a round 
 glazed hat sounds rather anomalous and incongruous. 
 Where were the feathers, and the war-paint, and the 
 tattooing ? Not at Cuagnawagha, certainly. You must 
 go much farther west if you wish to see the noble 
 savage in his full native splendour and squalor ; and 
 even in the wildest districts the Indian rarely fails to 
 supply himself with a European outfit whenever he 
 has an opportunity to do so. I remember a hard- 
 hearted, but withal very amusing speculator from 
 down East, telling me of a gambling transaction he 
 had had with an Indian somewhere in the territory of 
 
244 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 Colorado. ' The cuss,' tie observed, 4 had been tradin' 
 hosses, and bought a lot of store clothes. There he 
 was, in a stove-pipe hat, a satin vest and a coat and 
 pants most handsome. We took drinks ; and I kinder 
 froze to him till I had him comfortable over draw- 
 poker in the verandah of the Cummin's House. Sir, 
 in the course of three hours and three quarters I won 
 of that Ingin all the money he'd got from tradin' 
 hosses, and all his clothes, from the crown of his hat 
 to the soles of his boots. Sir, it was very hot ; and, 
 lawful sakes ! it was a sight to see that Ingin, a child 
 of Adam, and as bare as a Robin, a walking away 
 solemn, perspirin' with rage in the rays of the setting 
 sun, and looking like a hot roast turkey. 1 The hot 
 roast turkeys of Cuagnawagha had not yet been 
 plucked of their feathers by speculators from down 
 East, direct lineal descendants of the cunning man 
 of Pyquag who questioned Anthony Van Corlcar the 
 trumpeter out of his horse. 
 
 But ! the squaws of Cuagnawagha. The elder 
 squaws were unutterably hideous ; so they prudently 
 stayed at home, and minded the papooses. The 
 younger squaws were here, philandering. Such mel- 
 low brunettes did I see, with nature's pure carmine 
 mantling upon their dusky cheeks. Such lustrous 
 blue-black tresses. Such liquid, lingering, longing 
 eyes. If their foreheads had not been quite so low, 
 and the chiselling of their mouths not quite so square, 
 many of these girls would have been positively beau- 
 tiful. Their figures, in early youth, are very shapely 
 
CUAGNAWAGHA. 245 
 
 and graceful, and their gait a strictly 'gliding' mo- 
 tion, as I noted above. A lady of our party admitted 
 that they walked prettily, but that they turned their 
 toes in. Another critic discovered that they walked 
 on tiptoe, in consequence of the wretched condition of 
 the pavement. I could only notice that they glided ; 
 that their ankles were faultless, and that they were 
 exquisitely shod. Moccasins they may have worn 
 on week-days; this Sabbath their pretty feet were 
 arrayed in brodequins and bottines of varnished 
 and bronzed leather, of soft kid, and even of bright- 
 coloured silk and satin. Otherwise, there was little 
 European in their costume. Crinoline had not yet 
 invaded Cuagnawagha. There was an upper garment, 
 which was the inner garment — the innermost gar- 
 ment, in fact — snowy white, leaving the arms bare, 
 but very maidenly and modest. This was all they 
 had for bib, or tucker, or bodice. Then came a pet- 
 ticoat falling in straight heavy folds, and decorated 
 round the bottom with three or four rows of ribbons, 
 the whole offering a close resemblance to the garment 
 known in operatic wardrobes as the c Amina skirt.' 
 Over all, and covering the head, was a long mantle, 
 in shape somewhat like a priest's cope — a square of 
 fine broadcloth, of yellow, of red, or of black, and 
 adorned with curious patchwork embroidery. The 
 lady critic above mentioned complained that they 
 went about with drawing-room table-covers over their 
 heads; but what will not lady critics say? Such 
 were the squaws of Cuagnawagha. Their necklaces 
 
246 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 and armlets of beads, ' their ribbons, chains, and 
 ouches,' I need not dwell upon. As for their manner 
 of receiving the addresses of the young braves, it was 
 remarkably like that which, on previous occasions, I 
 have observed in Kensington Gardens, in many pri- 
 vate parlours, and on some staircases. 
 
 We were turning our faces towards the shore 
 again, wlien there issued from one of the hovels a pro- 
 cession which we could not choose but follow. It was 
 the funeral train of a little child. As at a Turkish 
 funeral, the assistants came along at the double quick, 
 but not jostling and hallooing as the Turks, or at least 
 the Arabs, do. The men were first, absolutely run- 
 ning, but with that grave concentrated expression in 
 their faces, of which only Indians and Breton pea- 
 sants seem masters. Then came a squad of squaws; 
 and then, alone, the mother of the dead child, bearing 
 in her own arms — whose could be better ? — the tiny 
 corpse, which was in a species of wicker pie-dish, 
 adorned with innumerable streamers of rainbow-hued 
 ribbon, and strips of cloth. A bevy of dusky chil- 
 dren, capering but silent, brought up the rear. We 
 followed this curious train into the church, and I 
 went up into a rickety gallery, and looked down on 
 the coffin of the poor little papoose stranded in the 
 midst of a big bier in the chancel, like a pincushion 
 in a brewer's vat. The priest came, with his cross- 
 bearer, and his acolytes and tapers and holy water, 
 and the service for the dead was chanted ; but in the 
 midst of a timid quavering of the 'Dies Irse,' there 
 
CUA GNA WA GHA. 247 
 
 burst from the hitherto silent assemblage a prolonged 
 and harrowing wail. It rings in my ears even now; 
 and I can see the Indian women on their knees on the 
 church pavement, rocking themselves to and fro, and 
 howling dismally. It was savagery asserting itself. 
 It was as the voice of the wild animal in the depths 
 of the forest, mourning for her cubs. 
 
 We followed the train again, away from the church 
 and to the cemetery, and saw the papoose comfortably 
 stowed away, gay-ribboned pall and all, in a quiet 
 corner where the grass grew tall. Sleep soundly, 
 papoose; thou art well out of a troublous world. 
 Then we came back to the shore, and took boat and 
 sped across the great river, and saw the last of Cuag- 
 nawagha. And many and many a time, in far distant 
 lands, have I recalled the rocky shore, the fat old 
 chief, the gliding squaws, and the dead papoose with 
 its rainbow pall. 
 
LITTLE OLD MEN. 
 
 Error and I may be twin brothers ; but still I can- 
 not help fancying that the age in which we live 
 exhibits a sensible decline in the average number of 
 Little Old Men, walking and talking in their ap- 
 pointed time and their allotted section of infinite 
 space. 
 
 You, I, all the world, must remember how plenti- 
 ful little old men used, or at least seemed, to be 
 when we were young. Almost all of us must have 
 had little old grandfathers, little old uncles, and 
 especially little old godfathers, w T ho were in the 
 pleasant habit of presenting us with guineas on our 
 birthday, or pot-bellied silver watches, and of treat- 
 ing us to the play at Covent Garden Theatre. ' No 
 play for you co-night ;' that was a dire threat indeed 
 in the golden age of the Rejected Addresses, when 
 we, perchance, imperilled our prospect of dramatic 
 entertainment by thrusting our little sister's doll 
 between the bars and melting off half her nose. It 
 appears to me that the children of the present age, 
 when they go to the play at all, take their parents 
 and guardians instead of being taken ; and as for 
 little old godfathers and their birthday presents, it 
 
LITTLE OLD MEN. 
 
 249 
 
 is in the first place patent that the sponsor, as a 
 philanthropist, is all but extinct, that when you meet 
 your godfather he usually crosses to the other side 
 of the street to avert the possibility of being com- 
 pelled to ask you to dinner, and that the only notice 
 your godmamma ever takes of you is to beg auto- 
 graphs and cartes-de-visite, or to solicit your 'well- 
 known extensive influence' in procuring a nice little 
 Indian appointment, or something of that kind, for 
 her son Ulric, aged twenty-seven, and a born fool. 
 
 Presents ! When you are grown up, they want 
 gifts from you ; when you are small, and they must 
 perforce give you something, it is generally something 
 cheap from the Lowther Arcade, or else a two-shilling 
 book bound in pink calico with Dutch-metal binding, 
 setting forth how happy Frank and Willy and Her- 
 bert were at Concord House, or Euphuism Academy, 
 with an Alexandre harmonium to perform upon, and 
 a vivarium to amuse them out of school, under the 
 benevolent auspices of Dr. Wise, the schoolmaster, 
 and Mr. Loveboy, his assistant (who eventually goes 
 into the church, and becomes Bishop of Bungaree, 
 Central Africa). Xothing is ever said about Dr. 
 Muff, or Mr. Canechild, or Professor Screwboy, or 
 Mr. Swindleparent, B.A. These books are generally 
 written by schoolmasters for the purpose of puffing 
 (often in the most undisguised manner) middle-class 
 schools. There were books about schools and school- 
 boys, too, in the little old godfather days, but they 
 were lifelike and true. Dr. Prosody was a kind 
 
250 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 pedagogue, and patted Harry on his flaxen head 
 when he gave his pocket-money to the blind fiddler, 
 or behaved so nobly in not betraying his playfellows 
 in that matter of the rifled orchard ; but what a 
 tremendous flossing he administered to the traitor 
 Philip, who should have confessed his share in the 
 apple robbery, but allowed Harry to be brought 
 within an inch of the 'horse 7 for his (Philip's) mis- 
 deeds ! I say that godfathers and godmothers have 
 degenerated into mere simulacra. They accept an 
 awful responsibility with as much alacrity — and, as 
 a rule, with as much sincerity — as the gentlemen 
 who were wont to pervade Westminster Hall with 
 straws in their shoes, and were ready to go bail for 
 anybody, and to any extent, for half-a-crown. When 
 we were young our sponsors made much of us, and 
 left us fat legacies. I was blessed with one — a very 
 little old gentleman who used to come from Finchley 
 to Paddington once a month for the express purpose 
 of hearing me my catechism. What has become of 
 the conscientious people who used to renounce Satan 
 and all his works, and the pomps and vanities of this 
 wicked world, for you ? 
 
 I walk down Chancery-lane, and dive into the 
 mouldy yards of the Inns of Court ; I peep up stair- 
 cases fretting with the dry rot ; I lift the musty 
 curtains at the portals of the Great Hall of Pleas, 
 and wander from the King's Bench to the Exche- 
 quer, from the Common Pleas to the Lords Justices ; 
 but I can discern no sign of the little old lawyer 
 
LITTLE OLD MEN. 251 
 
 once so familiar to me. What has become of him ? 
 Was he esteemed an intrinsic part and parcel of 
 Mesne Process, and so swept away by my Lord 
 Brougham ? Did he fade away and die of grief when 
 the Petty Bag, the Pipe, the Pells, and the Palace 
 Court were abolished ? By the little old lawyer, of 
 course, I mean the practitioner who is either attor- 
 ney or solicitor. The barrister is, and has always 
 been, in nine cases out of ten, a big man, addicted to 
 profuse whiskerage. Xow and then you see a little 
 counsel at the Chancery Bar, but you can discern at 
 a glance that he is not strong enough for Common 
 Law, and that at the Old Bailey the jury — who like 
 quantity, not quality, in counsel — would make light 
 of him. He is only fit to descant, in a thin piping 
 voice, on the infringement of a patent right in the 
 matter of a fishtail-burner, and to quote precedents 
 out of books well-nigh as big as himself. There is 
 a play by Massinger, called the Little French Law- 
 yer ; and the hero, who is almost a dwarf, is an 
 advocate ; but then you must remember his nation- 
 ality, and that in his days the line of demarcation 
 between barristers and attorneys was not very 
 strongly drawn. His name, La Writ, shows this. 
 
 The little old lawyer I knew was never at the 
 bar. He lived in Lincoln's-inn-fields, or dwelt over 
 his offices in Bedford-row. He wore hair-powder, a 
 large bunch of seals at his fob, and was frequently 
 given to knee-shorts. He delighted in a neatly- 
 plaited shirt -frill, and a petrified -looking brooch^ 
 
252 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 that might have been a fossil oyster, secured in some 
 bygone lawsuit (plaintiff and defendant got the 
 shells), or the desiccated heart of a client. His blue 
 bag was of immense size. He knew what old port 
 wine was, and kept plenty of it in the cellars under 
 the clerks' office ; nay, frequently, some was to be 
 found of the right sort, with a bag of biscuits from 
 Moxhay's, in one of the tin office boxes, labelled B — 
 and Co. He never discounted bills, but lent money 
 in the good old-fashioned way, on bond. He thought 
 the Lord Chancellor the greatest of living beings, 
 and ranked next to him, perhaps, his lordship's train- 
 bearer. 
 
 Sometimes he was a country lawyer, and then 
 you may be sure that he lived in that comfortable 
 red-brick house — the best, next to the rectory, in 
 the village — with the flaming brass plate, like a 
 brazen capias, on the door. He wore drab cords 
 then, and gaiters, and was generally admired as a 
 hard rider cross country. When he came to town, 
 he stopped at the Gray's-inn Coffee-house; and was 
 fond of seeing the Gamester, at Drury-lane. The 
 little old lawyer, in town as well as country, has al- 
 most disappeared. If your fancy, however, leads you 
 to the cultivation of funerals, like poor crazy Lord 
 Portsmouth, who was so fond of 'black jobs,' you 
 may sometimes see the little old lawyer's frosted poll 
 peering from the windows of a mourning coach, when 
 a great lord or a rich dowager is going to the grave. 
 Perhaps in one out of a hundred lawsuits which 
 
LITTLE OLD MEN. 253 
 
 chances to be conducted with something like honour 
 and gentlemanly feeling on either side, you may find 
 the little old lawyer concerned for one or the other 
 party. But he is growing very rare. In vain may 
 you sweep the attorneys' table in the law courts, in 
 the hope of lighting on his trim sable figure, his 
 powdered head, and his gold-rimmed spectacles, his 
 shrewd spirit looking through his clean withered face 
 and many-puckered wrinkles, 'with eyes of helpful 
 intelligence, almost of benevolence.' In his stead 
 what do you behold ? Big fat lawyers with hoarse 
 voices, who evidently sit in no awe of the judge, and 
 patronise counsel in the most overbearing manner. 
 Flash attorneys, who drive dog-carts, and bet, posi- 
 tively bet. Worse than all of these, the dandy young 
 attorneys, with hair parted down the middle, pioneers' 
 beards, eye-glasses, turn-down collars, guard-chains 
 with lockets and trinkets attached, peg-top trousers, 
 and shiny boots. Woe for the day when the Avvocati 
 del Diavolo, when the proteges of St. Nicholas, take 
 to varnishing their boots and scenting their pocket- 
 handkerchiefs ! I have seen some of these degenerate 
 youths — not articled clerks, mind, but full-blown 
 attorneys — walking down to Westminster with a bun- 
 dle of papers in one hand, and a cigar in the other. 
 The melancholy change that has come over a once 
 solemn and demure profession, cannot be better 
 summed up than in remarking that nothing is more 
 common now than to see lawyers at the Opera and 
 in the ranks of the Volunteers. 
 
254 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 When I had chambers in Deadman's-inn, there 
 was a real little old lawyer, who had his offices at 
 Number Nine. He arrived every morning punctually 
 at ten, in a yellow fly — not a brougham, be it under- 
 stood — from Balham, the locality of his country-house. 
 It was my great delight to watch for his arrival, and 
 see him alight from the yellow fly. It was all there : 
 hair-powder, watch-fob and seals, knee-shorts — no, as 
 I live, pantaloons and hessians! big blue bag, shirt 
 frill, petrified brooch, large diamond ring on his fore- 
 finger (presented to him a.d. 1818, in the condemned 
 cell, Newgate, by Mr. Montmorency Fluke, the cele- 
 brated forger, for whom he was concerned), and 
 beaver hat, turned up just at the slightest angle of 
 flection at the brim. c This is a man,' I used to say, 
 with great respect, to myself, 'who can remember 
 forty shilling arrests, thirty years' long Chancery 
 suits, and Monday hanging mornings, with a dozen 
 victims. The Fleet and the Rules of the Bench, the 
 seventy Commissioners in Bankruptcy, and the Court 
 of Pie Powder ; John Doe and Richard Roe, John 
 a'Nokes and John a' Styles, sticks and staves, and 
 justification of sham bail; — he has been familiar with 
 all these mysteries now gone into irrevocable limbo.' 
 And as I looked upon the little old lawyer I sighed ; 
 for, alas ! he was very, very old, and came clown to 
 the office more by habit and for peaceful recreation 
 than anything else. The suing and selling-up is now 
 done by his sons and partners, one of whom is six 
 feet high, and as hirsute as Julia Pastrana, while the 
 
LITTLE OLD MEN. 255 
 
 other is poetical and plays the flute. I have chambers 
 in Drybones'-inn now, and have not as yet found one 
 little old lawyer. 
 
 There was much that was good about another 
 little old man — the schoolmaster. It is true that, as 
 an educational means, he thought a birch the very 
 best thing in the world, and next to that a cane, and 
 next to that a strap; but he was not without some 
 capacity for teaching, and some faculty of under- 
 standing, his boys; he struck, but he heard. Some 
 modern preceptors are so much in the habit of talking 
 about themselves, that it is with difficulty the scholar 
 gets a word in. There is a charming figure of the lit- 
 tle old schoolmaster, in as charming a picture by Mr. 
 Mulready, in the Sheepshanks' Collection — a spare, 
 pale, thoughtful pedagogue, severe you may be sure, 
 but just, and willing to hear both sides. He has 
 made his appearance at the close of a fiercely con- 
 tested bout at fisticuffs, and is solemnly tweaking the 
 boy who has been denounced by his schoolfellows as 
 bully and aggressor in the fray, by the ear. That 
 boy's defence, if he can make any, will be listened to, 
 but I will wager that ere the sun goes down — and it 
 is declining — he will be led off to the little old school- 
 master's study and scourged. Now and then, in re- 
 mote country places, you may still come upon the 
 little old schoolmaster, in rusty black, and sometimes 
 with a red nose, who officiates as parish clerk, sings 
 a capital comic song, has written a satire upon the 
 squire, and indites love-letters for the village maidens. 
 
256 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 But he is rapidly ceding to the influence of the trained 
 schoolmaster, with all kinds of uncomfortable certi- 
 ficates, and the bloom of Privy Council patronage 
 upon him. 
 
 And the little old doctor. Ah! there is corn in 
 Egypt. All is not barren. The diminutive veteran 
 of medical science still flourishes. I am myself one 
 of the most prejudiced of mankind, and I confess 
 that I don't like my doctors when young or large. 
 If the former, I ask querulously what they know 
 about my stomach ? They are not old enough, to 
 have a stomach, of their own. If the latter — if they 
 run large, and are muscular and good-looking — I 
 fancy they are too much occupied in boating, or 
 cricketing, or spouting, or riding, or flirting, to devote 
 the proper quota of time to study and experiment. I 
 have known many doctors who were expert photo- 
 graphers. In my captious way, I always contended 
 they would have been much better employed in dis- 
 secting frogs. We want a doctor to know all about 
 the inside of things, not their exterior. May he not 
 take a turn at his camera during his leisure time ? it 
 may be asked. A doctor has no right to any leisure. 
 When fatigued with study, let him seek out a brother 
 medico and amicably converse upon the arrangement 
 of nuclei, or the different processes of the central la- 
 mella of the ethmoid bone. Let him descant upon 
 frigorific mixtures or compound mercurial liniments. 
 Had John Hunter any leisure ? Had Astley Cooper, 
 had Abernethy, had Bichat, had Esquirol? Look at 
 
LITTLE OLD MEN. 257 
 
 that wonderful Monsieur Majendie, who, in his odd 
 moments, vivisected cats, dogs, and rabbits — pour se 
 distraire. 
 
 Again, large doctors make a noise in the sick-room, 
 handle you roughly, and talk loud. Give me a little 
 old man for a physician. I don't care if he be old 
 enough to have killed my grandmother. I say, when 
 I am sick, ' This withered bright-eyed little old Sage 
 has brought hundreds of children into the world, has 
 seen hundreds of strong men die, has saved hundreds 
 of others who were in worse case than I. Let him 
 work his will with me. He is not a fool. He must 
 have seen much, learnt much, and must know more.' 
 In matters of surgery I admit that I don't stand out 
 for age and size. When amputation be unavoidable, 
 the Colossus of Rhodes may as well cut off your leg 
 as a pigmy. 
 
 So great a change has come emphatically over 
 the face of English society since the momentous 
 question, ' Why shave ? ' was mooted some years 
 since in Household Words, that very nearly all the 
 ancient landmarks and types of outward character 
 are as lost as the books of Livy. When I state that 
 the porter of the Strand Union Workhouse in Lon- 
 don wears a luxuriant beard, that pawnbrokers, rail- 
 way guards, and linendrapers' assistants have burst 
 out in moustaches, and that my bootmaker called 
 upon me the other morning with a 'goatee,' the ex- 
 tent to which abundant hairiness has changed the 
 aspect of polite society will be readily understood. 
 
258 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 Orson is everywhere, Valentine nowhere. Love levels 
 ranks ; but beards give to modern English humanity 
 as uniform a facial cast as maybe seen in that famous 
 regiment of the Russian guards twelve hundred strong, 
 all the privates of which have snub noses, and the 
 field -officers alone are permitted to be nasally Roman. 
 The little old gentlemen one meets in easy life have, 
 as a rule, abandoned themselves to the beard mania, 
 and to me are little old gentlemen no more. When 
 I see grizzled beards wagging beneath their little noses 
 and spectacles, my thoughts revert with anything but 
 favourable impressions to the gardens of the Zoological 
 Society, and the inmates of certain cages I have seen 
 there. Upon my word, I saw a little old Reverend, 
 Fellow of his College too, with a beard, but three 
 weeks since. No wonder that Essays and Reviews 
 run through so many editions, and that heterodoxy 
 is rife in the land! 
 
 By little old men I do not mean dwarfs. There is 
 the usual number of those afflicted persons to be seen 
 about; and an elderly dwarf is the usual merry 
 sprightly mupical little fellow, or else the (nearly as 
 usual) spiteful malevolent snapping and snarling little 
 nuisance. No, no ; the little old men I seek and so 
 rarely find are the dapper, symmetrical, clean-limbed 
 personages who, for grinning and bowing, for smirking 
 and simpering, for fetching ladies' cloaks and putting 
 on their own goloshes, for slapping giants on the back 
 even if they stand on tiptoe to do it, for poking people 
 in the ribs, and seeing the hardest drinkers out at a 
 
LITTLE OLD MEN. 259 
 
 carouse, were inimitable and unequalled. They were 
 almost always valiant little men, too, choleric, peppery, 
 tremendous fire-eaters, often lugging'about huge cases 
 of duelling-pistols. How they snapped off the noses 
 of tavern waiters ! How they put their arms akimbo 
 and beat hackney-coachmen off their own ground 
 bv slanging them down ! In argument'it was difficult 
 to find a match for the little old men. It was no use 
 taunting them with c the infirmities of age,' or call- 
 ing them dotards and fogies. They weren't infirm; 
 they didn't dote; they hadn't a touch of fogeyism 
 about them. But where does one find the active, 
 jaunty, sarcastic little old man nowadays? Large, 
 limp, purse-mouthed old men fill the bow-windows of 
 clubs, wheezing forth platitudes to other old men. 
 Sad old boys maunder in drawing-rooms or grumble 
 at dinner - tables. Dreary old peers, six feet bent 
 double, rise from the back benches of their Lord- 
 ships' House, and deny the fact of the sun having 
 risen that morning. It would be libellous, perhaps, 
 to hint that — well, our vestries — -are governed by 
 knots of doddering old men ; but it is undeniable, I 
 think, that many really clever little old men were 
 formerly to be found in the Commons' House of Par- 
 liament. Those that now remain are few, and are 
 growing a feeble folk. 
 
 Little old men seemed to have acquired their vi- 
 vacity, as old port wine its crust and flavour, by long 
 keeping and careful cellarage. There is, as a rule, 
 nothing more remarkable in a little young man than 
 
260 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 his conceit. As for little middle-aged men, they fre- 
 quently keep their diminutive size a secret altogether. 
 It is astonishing how many middle-aged men are not 
 more than four foot nothing, and the world, even to 
 the wives of their bosoms, are not in the least aware 
 of the fact. Louis le Grand masqueraded it through 
 life on high-heeled shoes and in a towering periwig; 
 and it was only when he died that the undertaker first, 
 and Europe afterwards, discovered that he was a little 
 man. Voltaire, again, was not half so tall as he gave 
 himself out, and the world supposed him to be. It 
 is better, perhaps, that these things should be kept 
 secrets of state, even from ourselves. It is not good 
 to find out too much about great men — about man 
 altogether it may be. Are we anything the better 
 for the information imparted to us, with a diabolic 
 sneer, by Swift, that 4 man is only a forked straddling 
 animal with bandy legs' ? 
 
 It is curious to contrast the images handed down 
 to us of the illustrious dead who were of no great sta- 
 ture, with what might have been their semblance had 
 they become old. Alexander the Great, for all Apelles' 
 flattery, was a little man. Imagine the conqueror of 
 Darius as both little and old ! Or, more suggestive 
 still, picture to yourself Napoleon the First, had he 
 survived Sir Hudson Lowe — who, by the way, did 
 live to be old, and of no great stature — as a little 
 old man — brisk, alert, snuffy, and with a scratch 
 wig! Not that little old kings and emperors have 
 been, or are rarities. Sovereigns, as a rule, run 
 
LITTLE OLD MEN. 
 
 small. No doubt continual preoccupation in devis- 
 ing beneficial measures for their subjects dries theni 
 up. They are so good that they lose flesh. The 
 weight of a crown contracts their joints. The odour 
 of incense — like the gin given to the poor little chil- 
 dren of acrobats — stops their growth. Turn over the 
 Almanack de Gotha, and interleave it with cartes-de- 
 visite, and you will find the majority of European so- 
 vereigns to be below the average size. That long 
 Prince Oscar of Sweden was a phenomenon to rank 
 in a museum by the side of the Emperor of Russia's 
 colossal drum-major, and O'Brien the Irish giant. 
 Besides, was not his Swedish highness' s grandfather 
 Bernadotte the grenadier? 
 
 The mention of continental potentates reminds me 
 that France is to this clay the country of little old men. 
 Still at the Cafe de Foy, and other good old pigtail 
 establishments, where smoking is not permitted, and 
 the poisonous absinthe emits no vapid odour — still in 
 Luxembourg and Tuileries gardens ; in salons of the 
 Faubourg St. Germain; in cabinets de lecture hard 
 by the Odeon, do you meet the little old Frenchman, 
 with his cheerful dried chimpanzee face, his thatch of 
 white stubble, his snowy neckerchief, the red ribbon 
 at his button-hole, and the never-failing snuff-box in 
 his hand, ready to be offered to all acquaintances. 
 In his youth he was a Merveilleux, a Muscadin, an 
 Incroyable. He remembers the first Empire, the two 
 Restorations, the Hundred Days. He was a page to 
 the Reine Hortense, perhaps ; an officer in Charles the 
 
262 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 Tenth's Royal Guards probably. He ceased to trouble 
 himself with politics after the 27th of July 1830. At 
 the monarchies, republics, and empires which have 
 succeeded that^convulsion, he shrugs his little shoul- 
 ders with philosophic indifference. ' C'est comme 9a/ 
 he says. He speaks of all the kings, dictators, mar- 
 shals, ministers since 1830, as ' ces Messieurs!' Let 
 us lift the hat to this little old Frenchman with his 
 weazen countenance and thin legs, his agile courteous 
 ways. Pie, too, is fading out. A little old Frenchman 
 of the stock once gravely accounted to me for the un- 
 deniable ugliness and boorishness of the modern Pa- 
 risian or c Mossoo,' by asserting that he was the un- 
 conscious offspring of the Cossacks who formed part 
 of the army of occupation in 1815. It is a wise child 
 that knows his own father. Be it as it may, it is in- 
 dubitable that the graceful and polite little old French- 
 man — perfectly well known in English society forty 
 years ago as the emigrant chevalier who taught danc- 
 ing and the languages in ladies' boarding-schools, 
 who was as gallant as Dunois, and as chivalrous as 
 Bayard, and lived contentedly on twopence-halfpenny 
 a day, is on the wane. 
 
 Your little old men abroad live, when they are to 
 be found extant at all, to a prodigious age. They seem 
 to be subject to the same mummifying influences as 
 the bodies of the old monks in Sicily. They grow 
 very yellow, very withered, their bones seem to crack 
 as they walk, but they don't die. Take my friend Es- 
 tremadura, for instance. I have known Seilor Ramon 
 
LITTLE OLD MEN. 263 
 
 de Estremadura ever since I can remember the know- 
 ledge of anything. That Hidalgo knew my papa, and 
 lie has been dead nearly forty years. Estremadura 
 was so old when I was a child, that the nurses used to 
 frighten me with him. I have met him, off and on, 
 in almost every capital in Europe. Only this summer, 
 drinking tea with certain friends, there came a brisk 
 though tremulous little double knock at the door. 
 'Ecoutez,' cried the lady of the house; 'that surely is 
 Estremadura's knock.' Estremadura ! There was a cry 
 of derisive amazement. Everybody agreed that he had 
 been dead ten years. Somebody had seen an account 
 of his funeral in the newspapers. But the door opened, 
 and Estremadura made his appearance. He was the 
 same as ever. The same yellow face, black bead-like 
 eyes, innumerable wrinkles, fixed grin: the same 
 straw hat, grass-green coat, white trousers, and big 
 stick — his unvarying costume ever since I had known 
 him. ' How do you do?' was his salutation to me. 
 ' Ver well since I saw you lasse?' I had not seen him 
 for fifteen years. He chatted and talked, and drank 
 tea. He was asked whence he had come ? Erom Rome. 
 "VVhither he was going ? To Stockholm. He was charm- 
 ing ; yet we could not help feeling, all of us, as though 
 we were sitting in the presence of a facetious phan- 
 tom, of a jocular ghost. It was rather a relief when 
 he skipped away, and was seen no more. I wonder 
 whether he will ever turn up again. It is clear that 
 Estremadura is ninety, if he be a day old ; yet I dare- 
 say he will read the account of my death, if anybody 
 
264 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 takes the trouble to advertise that fact in the news- 
 papers, and say, ' Aha! and so he die. Eh ! I knew his 
 good papa ver well.' 
 
 Surely we should be careful in keeping up the 
 breed of little old men at home as well as abroad. 
 To me they are infinitely more agreeable than big 
 men, young or old. But they are dwindling away, 
 they are vanishing fast. The little old ticket-porters, 
 with their white aprons, are being superseded by burly 
 middle-aged messengers, or else by bearded commis- 
 sionnaires. Artists get into the Academy before they 
 are forty ; and the little old painter who remembers 
 Northcote, and to whom the Princess Amelia sat for 
 her portrait, is a rara avis. Among the City com- 
 panies you sometimes light upon wardens and mem- 
 bers of the court of assistants, who are little old men 
 of the true stamp. But their numbers are waxing 
 small, and it must be written of them, c Here lie.' 
 
 I own there is one class of little old men whom I 
 could well spare from the stage of existence. I mean 
 the half-palsied, shrivelled, wobegone little gray ato- 
 mies in blue smocks and corduroy shorts, and ribbed 
 stockings on their shrunken shanks, whom the metro- 
 politan boards of guardians send out to sweep the 
 streets. They are always in imminent danger of being 
 run over. They always sweep the refuse the wrong 
 way. It is terrible to look at their poor old faces and 
 bleary eyes, full of drowsy woe, blank misery, inane 
 despair. * No Hope, and there never has been any 
 these seventy years;' these words seem legibly in- 
 
LITTLE OLD MEN. 265 
 
 scribed on the bands round their oilskin hats. These 
 little old men are a fear and a wonder to me, and 
 in decency and mercy I think they should not be al- 
 lowed to drift about in the great river of London 
 street life. 
 
NOBODY ABEOAD. 
 
 Yeey early in this present century, that is to say, 
 in the month of October 1801, it occurred to Mr. 
 Nobody to visit the famous city of Paris. Accord- 
 ing to the Republican calendar, which then obtained 
 among our neighbours, the month was not October, 
 and the year was not 1801. The month was Bru- 
 maire, and the year was Ten of the Republic one and 
 indivisible. But Mr. Nobody behig an Englishman, 
 the non-republican computation of time and season 
 may be adopted. I call my traveller Mr. Nobody 
 because I have not the slightest idea who he was, 
 whence he came, or whither — when he returned from 
 his Parisian tour — he went. He was certainly not 
 Tom Paine, but I am not prepared to assert that he 
 might not ha^e been the author of Junius, taking 
 a shady and secretive holiday, according to his in- 
 scrutable wont. He wrote a book about his travels, 
 entitled A Bough Sketch of Modern Paris, and he 
 caused it to be published anonymously, in a thin 
 octavo, by a bookseller in St. Paul's-churchyard. He 
 did not even favour the public with his initials, or 
 with three asterisks, or with a Greek or Roman 
 pseudonym. At the end of four pages of preface 
 
NOBODY ABROAD. 267 
 
 he signs himself ' The Author,' which, in default of 
 any other explanation, is, to say the least, baffling. 
 To increase the bewilderment of posterity, the work 
 of this occult traveller takes the form of a series of 
 letters, addressed to a friend, who is qualified as 
 'My Dear Sir;' but who 'My Dear Sir' was is un- 
 known to Everybody — except Nobody. At the con- 
 clusion of each of his letters Mr. Nobody observes, 
 6 As soon as I have anything to communicate, I shall 
 write again. In the mean time I take my leave, and 
 am, (fee' What are you to do with an author who 
 persists in saying that he is et cetera ? 
 
 Mr. Nobody, however, is not to be neglected, for 
 two reasons: the first, that he has drawn a very 
 curious and interesting picture of Paris, as it ap- 
 peared to an Englishman during the brief peace, or 
 rather truce, of Amiens ; the second that, his obstinate 
 anonymity notwithstanding, Mr. Nobody's pages are 
 fruitful of internal evidence that he must have been 
 Somebody, and somebody of note, too. He had a 
 wife who shared his pleasures and his hardships. He 
 was on visiting terms with his Britannic Majesty's 
 ambassador in Paris, and was presented at the Tuil- 
 eries. Mrs. Nobody even dined there. Finally, he 
 took his own carriage abroad with him, and his letters 
 of credit on his bankers were illimitable. 
 
 On the twenty-sixth of October he left the York 
 House at Dover, and embarked on board a neutral 
 vessel, which he was compelled to hire, no English 
 packet-boat being yet permitted to enter a French 
 
268 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 port. After a smooth and pleasant passage of four 
 hours, Mr. Nobody found himself at Calais. As soon 
 as the vessel entered the port, two Custom-house 
 officers in military uniform came on board, and took 
 down the names of the passengers. One of them 
 retired, to make his report to the municipality of 
 Calais, while the other remained on board to prevent 
 any of the passengers from landing. While the 
 French douanier was on shore, Calais pier was 
 crowded by spectators, the greater part of whom 
 were military men. They seemed to derive great 
 gratification from staring at the English ladies, and 
 from examining the body of Mr. Nobody's carriage, 
 which was hung on the deck of the ship ; while Mr. 
 N. himself was equally entertained with the great 
 moustaches — the italics are his own — of the grena- 
 diers, the wooden shoes of the peasants, and the close 
 caps of the grisettes. 
 
 The douanier returning on board, Mr. Nobody 
 and suite were permitted to touch the territory of 
 the republic, and, escorted by a guard of bourgeois, 
 desperately ragged as to uniform, were marched from 
 the quay to the Custom-house, from the Custom-house 
 to the mayor, and from the mayor to the Commissary 
 of Police. At each of these offices, examinations- 
 oral, impedimental, and personal — were made. Mr. 
 Nobody was fain not only to surrender his passport, 
 but also his pocket-book and letters. The last-named 
 were returned on the following day. These little 
 police amenities coming to an end about seven p.m.. 
 
NOBODY ABROAD. 269 
 
 Mr. Nobody was then free to sit down to an excellent 
 dinner at the celebrated hotel formerly kept by Des- 
 sein, now succeeded by his nephew Quillacq — a very 
 respectable man, who met Mr. N. at landing, and, 
 with the utmost civility and attention, took care of 
 his carriage and baggage. The Unknown wished to 
 set out on the following morning for Paris, but, 
 according to respectable M. Quillacq, that was a 
 simple impossibility ; for, although the Unmentioned 
 had brought with him a passport in due form from 
 M. de Talleyrand, countersigned by M. Otto, the 
 French minister in London, and backed by his Bri- 
 tannic Majesty's own gracious license to travel in 
 foreign parts, it was necessary to have all these 
 documents exchanged for a laissez-passer from the 
 mayor of Paris. 
 
 Mr. N. accordingly passed the whole of the next 
 day in Calais, and on Wednesday morning, accom- 
 panied by 'Mrs. ,' he left Calais, with post-horses. 
 
 Why won't he call her his Araminta, or his Sophon- 
 isba? Betsy Jane, even, would be preferable to this 
 
 colourless c Mrs. : The roads were very bad, 
 
 particularly near Boulogne ; the posting charges were 
 moderate — six livres, or five shillings, a stage of five 
 miles ; say a shilling a mile. How much is first-class 
 fare by the Great Northern of France? About 
 twopence-halfpenny. 
 
 Montreuil, where the travellers were to sleep, was 
 not reached until sunset. Here was found excellent 
 accommodation l at the inn celebrated by Sterne.' 
 
270 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 The Reverend Mr. Yorick seems to have been the 
 Murray of the eighteenth century and the beginning 
 of the present one, and it is astonishing that his 
 publishers did not put forth an advertising edition 
 of the Sentimental Journey. At Montreuil, Mr. N. 
 (the rogue!), in true Yorick-like spirit, noticed c the 
 smiling attention of two very pretty girls who acted 
 
 as waiters.' He omits to state whether Mrs. 
 
 noticed their smiling attention. The next day, 
 through a fine country and bad roads, Amiens was 
 reached. The cultivation by the wayside was good ; 
 the peasants were well clad ; the beggars were numer- 
 ous. The waiters, postboys, and landlords were 
 everywhere remarkably civil, and expressed their 
 joy at seeing c Milords Anglais' once more among 
 them. Can Mr. Nobody have been a Nobleman, and 
 
 Mrs. only a shallow delusion veiling an actual 
 
 Ladyship? His Lordship — I mean his Nonentity — 
 remarked that the lower classes were more respectful 
 than before the revolution. The reason appeared to 
 him obvious. The old nobility treated their inferiors 
 w r ith jocular familiarity — the familiarity which, it 
 may be, bordered on contempt — and the inferiors, 
 mere thralls and bondsmen as they were, took trif- 
 ling verbal liberties with their lords. Did not some- 
 thing akin to this prevail in Scotland during the last 
 century, and is it not very well illustrated in Dean 
 Ramsay's story of the Scotch lord who picks up a 
 farthing in the sight of a beggar? 'Earl!' cries out 
 the gaberlunzie man, c gie us the siller.' ' Na, na,' 
 
NO BOD Y ABROAD . 27 r 
 
 replies his lordship, pocketing the coin, i fin' a baubee 
 for yoursel', puir bodie.' When the social gulf be- 
 tween classes is unfathomable, do we not sometimes 
 affect to shake hands across it? But when we stand 
 foot to foot — £ mensch zu mensch,' as Schiller has it 
 — on the same earth, do we not often feel inclined to 
 shake our fists in each other's faces? ' The loss of 
 their rank,' observes Mr. Nobody, £ has compelled the 
 higher classes to command respect by a distance of 
 manner, which has, of course, produced a similar 
 course of conduct in the persons beneath them.' But 
 for that merciless date — 1801 — one would think 
 that Mr. JSTobody had travelled in the State of Vir- 
 ginia since the abolition of slavery. The planters are 
 no longer hail fellow well met with their serfs, and 
 enfranchised Sambo no longer addresses the white 
 man as ' Mas'r,' but as ' Sa.' Liberty is a wonderful 
 teacher of etiquette. 
 
 At Amiens the Unknown drove to the Hotel 
 dAngleterre, where he was magnificently and miser- 
 ably lodged. The windows and doors declined to 
 keep out the wind and rain ; the fires were bad, and 
 the supper was worse; nor was the final touch of 
 extravagant charges wanting. The journey was re- 
 sumed on Friday morning ; the beauty of the country 
 and the badness of the roads increasing at every step. 
 At length the weary travellers clattered into Chan- 
 tilly, found a comfortable bed, and, on Saturday 
 morning, visited the ' magnificent ruins' of the Palace 
 of Chantilly. The superb edifice of the stables only 
 
272 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 remained intact. The government of the First Con- 
 sul had forbidden the sale of these buildings, and the 
 mistress of the inn told Mr. Nobody, with tears in 
 her eyes, that had Napoleon been at the head of 
 affairs only six months sooner, the palace also would 
 have been rescued from destruction. 
 
 A little way out of Chantilly, a fine paved road 
 commenced, extending to Paris, which city Mr. No- 
 body reached at two p.m. on Saturday. He had been 
 three and a half days and three nights on the road. 
 At the Paris barrier, passports were asked for, but 
 were at once and civilly returned. ' Carriages,' Mr. 
 N. adds, ' are no longer stopped, as formerly, in every 
 town, to be searched for contraband goods ; but turn- 
 pikes are numerous and expensive/ On entering 
 Paris, the travellers drove to several hotels before 
 they could procure accommodation, and such as they 
 at last found was wretched. Many of the hotels had 
 been stripped during the revolution, and had not 
 been refurnished; and the few remaining in proper 
 gear were crowded by foreigners, who, since the peace, 
 had flocked hither in vast numbers from every country 
 in the world. Mr. Nobody very strongly advises per- 
 sons intending to visit Paris to write some days be- 
 forehand to their correspondents, if they desire to 
 be comfortably lodged on their arrival. The Mys- 
 terious Man was not, however, disheartened by the 
 badness of the inn. So soon as he had changed his 
 attire, he hastened to call on M. Perregaux, his 
 banker, who, notwithstanding his recent promotion 
 
NOBOD Y ABROAD. 273 
 
 to the rank of senator, was as civil and obliging as 
 ever. Mr. Nobody must have been Somebody. See 
 how civil everybody was to him ! 
 
 I have been an unconscionable time bringing this 
 shadowy friend of mine from Calais to Paris ; but I 
 hold this record of his experiences to be somewhat 
 of the nature of a Text, on which a lay sermon might 
 be preached to the great edification of modern, fret- 
 ful, and grumbling travellers. l Young sir,' I would 
 say, were it my business to preach, the which, happily, 
 it is not, c modern young British tourist, take account 
 of the four days' sufferings of Mr. Nobody and Mrs. 
 Dash, and learn patience and contentment. Some 
 eighty hours did they pass in hideous discomfort, on 
 dolorous roads, or in unseemly hostelries. Much 
 were they baited anent passports: much were they 
 exercised in consequence of the stiff-neckedness of 
 that proud man the mayor of Calais. How many 
 times, for aught we know, may not their linchpins 
 have disappeared, their traces snapped, their axles 
 parted? Who shall say but that their postillions, 
 although civil, smelt fearfully of garlic, and (especi- 
 ally during the stages between Beauvais and St. 
 Denis) became partially overcome by brandy? St. 
 Denis has always been notorious for the worst brandy 
 in Europe. And the dust! And the beggars! But 
 for the " smiling attentions" of those two pretty waiter 
 girls at Montreuil, I tremble to think upon what might 
 have been the temper of Mr. Nobody when he found 
 himself, at last, in Paris. Thus he of 1801. This 
 
 T 
 
274 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 is how your grandpapa, your uncle William, went to 
 Paris ; but how fares it with you, my young friend ? 
 You designed, say on Friday afternoon last, to take 
 three days' holiday. You would have a " run over 
 to Paris," you said. You dined at six p.m. on Friday 
 at the Junior Juvenal Club, Pall-mall. You smoked 
 your habitual cigar; you played your usual game of 
 billiards after dinner. It was many minutes after 
 eight when you found yourself, with a single dressing- 
 bag, for luggage, at Charing-cross Terminus. You 
 took a "first-class return" for Paris; for which you 
 paid, probably, much less than Mr. Nobody disbursed 
 for the passage of himself and his high -hung carriage 
 (to say nothing of Mrs. Dash) from Dover to Calais. 
 A couple of hours of the express train's fury brought 
 you, that Friday night, to Dover — brought you to 
 the Admiralty pier, to the very verge and brink of 
 the much -sounding sea, and bundling you, so to 
 speak, down some slippery steps, sent you staggering 
 on board a taut little steamer, which, having gorged 
 certain mail-bags, proceeded to fight her way through 
 the biggest waves. In two hours afterwards you were 
 at Calais. No passports, no botheration with muni- 
 cipalities, commissaires, or stiff-necked mayors awaited 
 you. Another express train waited for you, giving 
 you time to dispatch a comfortable supper ; and by 
 seven o'clock on Saturday morning you were in Paris. 
 You went to the Porte St. Martin on Saturday night, 
 and to Mabille afterwards. On Sunday I hope you 
 went to church, and perhaps you went to Versailles. 
 
NO BOD Y ABROAD. 275 
 
 On Monday you had a good deal of boulevard shop- 
 ping to get through, for your sisters, or for the Mrs. 
 Dash of the future; and, after a comfortable five 
 o'clock dinner at the Cafe Eiche in the afternoon, 
 you found yourself shortly after seven p.m. at the 
 Chemin de Fer du Nord, and, by six o'clock on 
 Tuesday morning, you were back again at Charing- 
 cross or at Victoria. Arrived there, you had yet a 
 florin and a fifty centime piece left of the change for 
 a ten-pound note. And yet you murmur and grumble. 
 You have spoken heresy against the harbour-master 
 of Dover. You have hurled bitter words at the di- 
 rectors of the South-Eastern Eailway Company, and 
 have made mock of the London, Chatham, and Dover. 
 Thrice have you threatened to write to the Times. 
 Once did you propose to " punch" the hoad of an ob- 
 noxious waiter at the Calais buffet.' To this purport 
 I could say a great deal if I preached sermons. 
 
 My esteemed friend Mr. Nobody abode in Paris 
 for full six months ; but the amount of sight- seeing 
 he went through was so vast, and his account thereof 
 is so minute, that, for reasons of space, I do not dare 
 to follow him from each Parisian pillar to its corre- 
 sponding post. I can only briefly note that he at- 
 tended a sitting of the legislative body in the ci-devant 
 Palais Bourbon, and that he paid five francs for 
 admission to the gallery. Drums and fifes announced 
 the approach of the legislators, and a guard of hon- 
 our, consisting of an entire regiment, escorted them. 
 The president having taken the chair, more drums 
 
276 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 and fifes proclaimed the arrival of three counsellors 
 of state, bearing a message from the government. 
 These high republican functionaries were preceded 
 by ushers wearing Spanish hats with tricoloured 
 plumes; the counsellors themselves were dressed in 
 scarlet cloth, richly embroidered. They ascended 
 the tribune, read their message, and made three sepa- 
 rate speeches on the subject of honour, glory, and 
 France; whereafter the legislative body, with loud 
 cries of 'Vive le Premier Consul!' c Yive Madame 
 Bonaparte!' separated. It was the last day of the 
 session. Abating the scarlet coats and the Spanish 
 hats of the huissiers, the break up of a parliamentary 
 session in 1801 must have very closely resembled 
 that which we see in the French Corps Legislatif, in 
 1869. Mr. Nobody went away much pleased, espe- 
 cially with the admiration bestowed by his neigh- 
 bours in the gallery on Lord Cornwallis, who was 
 present among the corps diplomatique, and for whom 
 Mr. Nobody seems himself to have entertained an 
 affection bordering on adoration. 'Yes, yes,' cried an 
 enthusiastic republican near him, 'that tall man is 
 Milord Cornwallis. He has a fine figure. He looks 
 like a military man. He has served in the army. Is 
 it not true, sir? Look at that little man near him. 
 What a difference ! What a mean appearance !' 
 
 Mr. Nobody was in one aspect an exceptional 
 Englishman. He appears to have been imbued with 
 a sincere admiration for the talents of Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, and even to have had some liking for the 
 
NOBOD Y ABROAD. 277 
 
 personal character of that individual. ' My dear sir/ 
 he writes to that Nameless friend of his on the sixth 
 of December, ' my curiosity is at length gratified. I 
 have seen Bonaparte. You will readily conceive 
 how much pleasure I felt to-day in beholding, for the 
 first time, this extraordinary man, on whose exer- 
 tions the fate of France, and in many respects that of 
 Europe, may be said to depend.' Mr. N. was fortu- 
 nate enough to obtain places in the apartments of 
 Duroc, governor of the Tuileries, from which he wit- 
 nessed a review in the Carrousel. The Consular, 
 soon to become the Imperial, Guard were inspected 
 by the Master of France, then in the thirty-third 
 year of his age. He was mounted on a white charger. 
 As he passed several times before Mr. Nobody's 
 window, that Impalpability had ample leisure to ob- 
 serve him ; and it appears to me that the portrait he 
 has drawn of the First Consul, then in the full flush 
 of his fame, undarkened by D'Enghien's murder, 
 Pichegru's imputed end, and Josephine's divorce, is 
 sufficient to rescue Mr. Nobody's notes from oblivion. 
 ' His complexion,' writes the Unknown, £ is remark- 
 ably sallow: his countenance expressive, but stern; 
 his figure lithe, but well made ; and his whole person, 
 like the mind which it contains, singular and remark- 
 able. If I were compelled to compare him to any 
 one, I should name Kemble the actor. Though 
 Bonaparte is less in size, and less handsome than that 
 respectable performer, yet, in the construction of the 
 features and the general expression, there is a strong 
 
278 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 resemblance. The picture of Bonaparte at the re- 
 view, exhibited some time back in Piccadilly,* and 
 the bust in Sevres china, which is very common in 
 Paris, and has probably become equally so in Lon- 
 don' (it was soon to be superseded by Gillray's mon- 
 strous caricatures of the Corsican Ogre), 'are the 
 best likenesses I have seen. As to his dress, he wore 
 the grand costume of his office, that is to say, a scar- 
 let velvet coat, profusely embroidered with gold. To 
 this he had added leather breeches, jockey boots, and 
 a little plain cocked-hat, the only ornament to which 
 was a national cockade. His hair, unpowdered, was 
 cut close to his neck.' Now this (excuse the an- 
 achronism) is a perfect photograph, and might serve 
 as a guide to any English artist desirous of emulating, 
 as a Napoleographer, the achievements of Meisson- 
 nier or Gerome. We have had, from English pain- 
 ters, Napoleon in blue, in green, in a gray greatcoat, 
 in his purple coronation robes, even in the striped 
 nankeen suit of his exile on the Rock. But the great 
 enemy of England in scarlet ! the vanquished of 
 "Waterloo in a red coat ! But for Mr. Nobody's testi- 
 mony I should just as soon have imagined George 
 the Third with a Phrygian cap over his wig, or the 
 Right Honourable William Pitt weathering the storm 
 as a sans culotte. 
 
 * This picture was by Carle Vernet, the father of Horace, and was 
 exhibited at Fores's — ancestor of the present well-known print-seller. 
 At Fores's, jnst eight years previously, had been on view an engraving 
 of the execution of Louis the Sixteenth, by Isaac Cruikshank (father of 
 our George), and a ' working model' of the guillotine. 
 
NO BOD Y ABROAD. 2 7 9 
 
 Again did Mr. Nobody see the Corsican, and at 
 his own house — in the audience hall of the Tuile- 
 ries. Mr. Jackson was minister plenipotentiary from 
 England prior to Lord Whitworth's coming ; and to 
 Mr. Jackson did Mr. Nobody apply to obtain pre- 
 sentation at the court of the First Consul. His name 
 — wliat was his name? — being accordingly sent in 
 to Citizen Talleyrand, three years afterwards to be 
 Prince of Bene ventum, minister of foreign affairs, Mr. 
 N. drove to the Tuileries at three o'clock in the after- 
 noon, and was ushered into a small apartment on the 
 ground-floor, called the Saloon of the Ambassadors, 
 where the foreign ministers and their respective 
 countrymen waited until Napoleon was ready to 
 receive them. Chocolate, sherbert, and liqueurs in 
 abundance having been handed around- -a hint for 
 St. James's Palace — the doors, after an hour's in- 
 terval, were thrown open, and the guests ascended 
 the grand staircase, which was lined by grenadiers 
 with their arms grounded. Passing through four or 
 five rooms, in each of which was an officer's guard, 
 who saluted the strangers, the cortege came into the 
 presence chamber. Here stood Bonaparte, between 
 Cambaceres, the second, and Lebrun, the third con- 
 sul. The triumvirs were all in full fig of scarlet vel- 
 vet and gold. The generals, senators, and counsellors 
 of state who surrounded Napoleon made way for the 
 foreigners, and a circle was immediately formed, the 
 nationalities ranging themselves behind their proper 
 ministers. The Austrian ambassador stood on the 
 
2 8o UNDER THE SUN 
 
 right of the First Consul ; next to him Mr. Jackson ; 
 then Count Lucchesini, the Prussian minister; and 
 next to him the Hereditary Prince of Orange, who 
 was to be presented that day, and who was not to 
 meet Napoleon again until Waterloo. In compliment 
 to the Dutch prince, Napoleon, contrary to his prac- 
 tice, began the audience on his side the circle. He 
 spoke some time to the son of the deposed Stadtholder, 
 and seemed anxious to make his awkward and extra- 
 ordinary situation as little painful to him as possible. 
 According to Mr. Nobody, the Napoleonic blandish- 
 ments were lost on his Batavian highness, who was 
 sulky and silent. In passing each foreign minister, 
 the First Consul received the individuals of each re- 
 spective nation with the greatest ease and dignity. 
 Where had he learnt all this ease and dignity, this 
 young soldier of thirty-two? From the goatherds of 
 Corsica? From the snuffy old priests who were his 
 tutors at Brienne? From the bombardiers at Tou- 
 lon? In the camps of Italy? From the Sphinx in 
 Egypt? From Talma the actor, who, when the con- 
 queror was poor, had often given him the dinner he 
 lacked? When it came to Mr. Jackson's turn, six- 
 teen English were presented. After he had spoken 
 to five or six of their number, Napoleon remarked, 
 4 with a smile which is peculiarly his own, and which 
 changes a countenance usually stern into one of great 
 mildness: "I am delighted to see here so many Eng- 
 lish. I hope our union may be of long continuance. 
 We are the two most powerful and most civilised 
 
NOB OB Y ABROAD. 
 
 nations in Europe. We should unite to cultivate the 
 arts, and sciences, and letters; in short, to improve 
 the happiness of human nature." ' In about two 
 years after this interview, Englishmen and French- 
 men were cultivating the arts and sciences, and doing 
 their best to improve the happiness of human nature, 
 by cutting each other's throats in very considerable 
 numbers. Did Napoleon really mean what he said? 
 Was he really anxious to be our friend, if we would 
 only let him ? Or was he then, and all times, a Pro- 
 digious Humbug? 
 
 Mrs. Dash was to have her share in the hospitali- 
 ties of the Tuileries. Returning home from viewing 
 the sights one afternoon at half-past four o'clock, Mr. 
 N. found a messenger who was the bearer of an invi- 
 tation to Mrs. Dash, asking her to dinner that very 
 day at five. The lady dressed in haste, and drove to 
 the palace. She returned enraptured. The enter- 
 tainment was elegant; the sight superb. More than 
 two hundred persons sat down to dinner in a splendid 
 apartment, The company consisted, besides Napo- 
 leon's family, of the ministers, the ambassadors, 
 several generals, senators, and other constituted au- 
 thorities. There were only fifteen ladies present. 
 All the English ladies who had been presented to 
 Madame Bonaparte were asked; but only two of 
 their number remained in Paris. The dinner was 
 served entirely on gold and silver plate, and Sevres 
 china : the latter bearing the letter B on every dish ; 
 the central plateau was covered with moss, out of 
 
282 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 which arose innumerable natural flowers, the odour 
 of which perfumed the whole room. The First Con- 
 sul and Madame Bonaparte conversed very affably 
 with those around them. The servants were nu- 
 merous, splendidly dressed, and highly attentive, and 
 the dinner lasted more than two hours. Seven years 
 ago, the lord of this sumptuous feast had been glad 
 to pick up the crumbs from an actor's table, and 
 vegetated in a garret in Paris, had haunted the ante- 
 chambers of the War Minister in vain, had revolved 
 plans of offering his sword to the Grand Turk if he 
 could only procure a new pair of boots wherein to 
 make his voyage to Constantinople. the ups and 
 downs of fortune ! The First Consul was fated to in- 
 vite few more Englishmen to dinner. But he was 
 doomed to dine with us, not as a host, but as an un- 
 willing guest. I can picture him in the cabin of the 
 Northumberland, rising wearily from heavy joints 
 to avoid heavier drinking, and the admiral and his 
 officers scowling at him because he wouldn't stop and 
 take t'other bottle. ■ ' The General,' pointedly re- 
 marked Sir George Cockburn, once when his captive 
 rose from table, and fled from port and sherry, ' has 
 evidently not studied politeness in the school of Lord 
 Chesterfield.' The poor temperate Italian, to whose 
 pale cheek a single glass of champagne would bring a 
 flush! Yet Mr. Nobody thought him dignity and 
 politeness itself; and my private opinion is that Mr. 
 Nobody knew what was what. 
 
SHOCKING ! 
 
 The other day, being at Seville, at the inn dinner of 
 the Fonda de Paris, I saw an English lady thrown 
 into great perturbation by the conduct of a French- 
 man, her neighbour, who having finished his plate of 
 soup, and the puchero being somewhat tardy in mak- 
 ing its ajDpearance, drew forth a leathern case and a 
 box of wax matches, and, having bitten the end off a 
 very big and bad cigar, proceeded to light and smoke 
 it. I do not think a Spaniard of any class, to the 
 lowest, would have done this thing. Although smok- 
 ing is common enough at Spanish dinner-tables, when 
 only men or natives are present, the innate good 
 breeding of a cabalero would at once cause him to 
 respect the presence of a lady and a stranger ; and he 
 would as soon think of kindling, unbidden, a weed 
 before her, as of omitting to cast himself (metaphori- 
 cally) at her feet when he took his leave. Moreover, 
 the Frenchman was wrong even in his manner of 
 smoking. To consume a cigar at meal-times is not 
 even un costumbre del pais — a custom of the coun- 
 try. It is, the rather, a stupid solecism. Be- 
 tween soup and puchero, or fish and roast, you 
 may just venture on a cigarito — a dainty roll of to- 
 bacco and tissue paper. Any other form of fumiga- 
 
284 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 tion, ere the repast be over, is ill mannered. The 
 Gaul, however, thought, no doubt, that to puff at one 
 of the hideous lettuce-leaf sausages of the Regio Im- 
 periale at dinner-time was precisely the thing to do in 
 Spain. He smoked at Seville, just as on a hot day, 
 in an English coffee-room, he would have ordered 
 turtle-soup, a beefsteak 'well bleeding,' and a pot of 
 porter-beer. I only wonder that he did not come 
 down to dinner at the Fonda de Paris in full bull- 
 fighter's costume — green satin breeches, pink silk 
 stockings, and his hair in a net, or strumming a 
 guitar, or clacking a pair of castanets. Indeed, he 
 grinned complacently as he pulled at the abominable 
 brand, and looked round ih^ table, as though for ap- 
 proval. The Spaniards preserved a very grave as- 
 pect; and Don Sandero M'Gillicuddy, late of Buenos 
 Ayres, my neighbour, whispered to me that he 
 thought the Frenchman 'vara rude.' As for the 
 English lad}^, she was furious. She gathered up her 
 skirts, grated away her chair, turned her left scapula 
 full on the offending Frenchman, and I have no doubt 
 wrote by the next post to Mr. John Murray of Albe- 
 marle-street, indignantly to ask why English readers 
 of the Handbook were not warned against the preva- 
 lence of this atrocious practice at Spanish dinner- 
 tables. In fact, she did everything but quit the hos- 
 pitable board. In remaining, she showed wisdom ; for 
 Spain is not a country where you can afford to trifle 
 with your meals. You had best gather your rose- 
 buds while you may, and help yourself to the puchero 
 
SHOCKING! 285 
 
 whenever you have a chance. Ages may pass ere 
 you get anything to eat again. 
 
 The Frenchman was not abashed by this palpable 
 expression of distaste on the part ' of his fair neigh- 
 bour. I had an over-the-way acquaintance with him, 
 and, glancing in my direction, he simply gave a de- 
 precatory shrug, and murmured, 'Ah! c'est comme 
 9a.' Shocking! It never entered the honest fellow's 
 head that he had been wanting in courtesy to the 
 entire company, but he jumped at the conclusion that 
 the demoiselle Anglaise was a faultless monster of 
 prudery, and that the inhalation of tobacco-smoke at 
 dinner-time, the employment of a fork as a toothpick, 
 the exhibition of ten thousand photographed ' legs of 
 the ballet' in the shop windows, and frequent refer- 
 ence to the anonymous or Bois de Boulogne world in 
 conversation, were, to her and her sex and nation 
 generally, things abhorrent, criminal, and ' shocking/ 
 
 The French, who never get hold of an apt notion 
 or a true expression without wearing it threadbare 
 and worrying it to death, and have even traditional 
 jests against this country, which are transmitted from 
 caricaturist to caricaturist, and from father to son, 
 have built up the ' faultless monster' to which I al- 
 luded above, and persist in believing that it is the 
 ordinary type of the travelling Englishwoman. Oddly 
 enough, while their ladies — and all other continental 
 ladies — have borrowed from ours the quaint and be- 
 coming hat, the coloured petticoats and stockings, 
 and the high-heeled boots which of late years have 
 
286 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 made feminine juvenility so coquettish and so fasci- 
 nating, no French draughtsman, no French word- 
 painter, ever depicts the English young lady save as 
 a tall, rigid, and angular female — comely of face if you 
 will, but standing bolt upright as a lifeguardsman, 
 with her arms pendent, and her eyes demurely cast 
 down. She always wears a straw bonnet of the coal- 
 scuttle form, or an enormous flap hat with a green 
 veil. Her hands, incased in beaver gloves, and her 
 feet, which are in sandalled shoes, are very large. 
 She usually carries a capacious reticule in variegated 
 straw, of a bold chessboard pattern. She seldom 
 wears any crinoline, and her hair is arranged in long 
 ringlets most deliciously drooping. She seldom opens 
 her mouth but to ejaculate i Shocking !' It is abso- 
 lutely astounding to find so accurate an observer and 
 so graphic a narrator as Monsieur Theophile Gautier 
 falling into this dull and false conventionalism in his 
 charming book on Spain. He is describing Gibraltar, 
 and is very particular in the portrayal of such a Mees 
 Anglaise as I have sketched above. The fidelity of 
 the portrait will of course be fully appreciated by all 
 British officers who have mounted guard over the 
 Pillars of Hercules. The ladies of the garrison at 
 Gibraltar are not, it is true, so numerous as they 
 might be. Calpe is not a popular station with mili- 
 tary females. There is no native society beyond the 
 families of the l Rock scorpions,' who are usually 
 dealers in mixed pickles and Allsopp's pale ale, and a 
 few Spaniards who earn a remunerative but immoral 
 
SHOCKING! 287 
 
 livelihood by coining bad dollars and smuggling 
 Manchester cottons and Bremen cigars through San 
 Roque; and unfortunately, to ladies of a theological 
 turn, one of the chief charms of a sojourn in a foreign 
 garrison is here lacking. There is nobody to convert 
 in Gibraltar but the Jews; and as it takes about a 
 thousand pounds sterling to turn a Hebrew into a 
 Christian — and a very indifferent Christian at that, 
 for you have to set him up in business and provide 
 for his relations to the third and fourth generation — ■ 
 missionary enterprise, to say the least, languishes. 
 With all these drawbacks, I am told that English fe- 
 male society at the Rock is charming ; that their cos- 
 tume, their features, and their manners are alike 
 sprightly and vivacious, and that the i girls of Gib,' 
 as regards that rapidity and entrain which are so 
 pleasingly characteristic of modern life, are only 
 second to the far-famed merry maidens of Montreal, 
 whose scarlet knickerbockers and twinkling feet, dis- 
 porting on the glassy surface of the Victoria i Rink, 
 have led captive so many old British grenadiers. 
 When a maiden of Montreal is unusually rapid — what 
 is termed ' fast' in this country — they say she is c two 
 forty on a plank road,' two minutes and forty seconds 
 being the time in which a Canadian trotter will be 
 backed to get over a mile of deal-boarded track. 
 
 Now, whatever could Monsieur Gautier have been 
 thinking of so to libel the ladies of Gibraltar ? They 
 slow ! They angular ! They ' avec la dimarche d'un 
 grenadier' ! They addicted to the national ejaculation 
 
UNDER THE SUN 
 
 of ' Shocking !' That old oak, however, of prejudice 
 is so very firmly rooted, that generations, perhaps, 
 will pass away ere foreigners begin to perceive that 
 the stiff, reserved, puritanical Englishman or English- 
 woman, if they still indeed exist, and travel on the 
 Continent, have for sons and daughters ingenious 
 youths, who in volatile vivacity are not disposed to 
 yield the palm to young France, and gaily- attired 
 maidens, frolicsome, not to say frisky, in their de- 
 meanour. It is curious that the French, ordinarily so 
 keen of perception and so shrewd in social dissection, 
 should not, by this time, have discovered some other 
 and really existent types of English tourists, male 
 and female, to supply the place of the obsolete and 
 well-nigh mythical c Mees,' with her long ringlets, her 
 green veil, her large hands and feet, and her figure 
 full of awkward and ungainly angles. And may not 
 the British Baronet, with his top-boots, and his bull- 
 dog, and his hoarse cries for his servant c Jhon,' and 
 his perpetual thirst for 'grogs,' be reckoned among 
 the extinct animals ? I was reading only yesterday, 
 in the Chronique of one of the minor Parisian jour- 
 nals, a couple of anecdotes most eloquent of the false 
 medium through which we are still viewed by the 
 lively Gaul. In the first, the scene is laid at the 
 Grand Hotel. An Englishman is reading the Times 
 and smoking a cigar. It is a step in advance, per- 
 haps, that the Briton should have come to a cabana 
 instead of pulling at a prodigiously long pipe. The 
 Englishman happens to drop some hot ashes on the 
 
SHOCKING! 
 
 skirt of his coat. ' Monsieur, monsieur!' cries a 
 Frenchman sitting by, 'take care, you are on fire!' 
 
 * Well, sir,' replies the Briton, indignant at being ad- 
 dressed by a person to whom he has not been formally 
 introduced, ' what is that to you ? You have been on 
 fire twenty minutes, and 1 never mentioned the fact.' 
 I refrain from giving the wonderful Anglo-French 
 jargon in which the Englishman's reply is framed. 
 The second anecdote is equally choice. An English 
 nobleman is 'enjoying his villeggiatura at Naples' — 
 by which, I suppose, is meant that he is betting on 
 the chances of a proximate eruption of Mount Vesu- 
 vius — when his faithful steward, Williams Johnson, 
 arrives in hot haste from England. ' Well, Williams,' 
 asks the nobleman, 'what is the matter?' ' If you 
 please, milor, your carriage-horses have dropped down 
 dead.' ' Of what did they die?' ' Of fatigue. They 
 had to carry so much water to help put out the fire.' 
 ' What fire ?' ' That of your lordship's country-house, 
 which was burnt down on the day of the funeral.' 
 
 * Whose funeral ?' ' That of your lordship's mother, 
 who died of grief on hearing that the lawsuit on 
 which your lordship's fortune depended had been de- 
 cided against you.' Charming anecdotes are these, 
 are they not? The gentleman who popped them into 
 his column of chit-chat, gave them as being of perfect 
 authenticity and quite recent occurrence, and signed 
 his name at the bottom ; and yet I think I have read 
 two stories very closely resembling them in the ad- 
 mired collection of Monsieur Joseph Miller. 
 
 u 
 
290 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 The Englishman who is the hero of cock-and-bull 
 stories, and the English lady who is always veiling 
 her face with her fan, and exclaiming, ' Shocking V 
 are so dear to the French and the general continental 
 heart, that we must look for at least another half 
 century of railways, telegraphs, illustrated news- 
 papers, and international colleges, before the mythical 
 period passes away and the reign of substantial real- 
 ism begins. I remember at the sumptuous Opera 
 House at Genoa seeing a ballet called the Grateful 
 Baboon, in which there was an English general who 
 wore a swallow-tail coat with lapels, Hessian boots 
 with tassels, a pigtail, colossal bell-pull epaulettes, and 
 a shirt-frill like unto that of Mr. Boatswain Chucks. 
 The audience accepted him quite as a matter of 
 course, as the ordinary and recognised type of an 
 English military officer of high rank ; and then I re- 
 membered that during our great war with France, 
 Genoa had been once occupied by an English force 
 under Lord William Bentinck, and that his lordship 
 had probably passed bodily into the album of cos- 
 tumes of the Teatro Carlo Felice, and remained there 
 unchangeable for fifty years. In like manner the 
 Americans, irritated, many years since, by the stric- 
 tures of Mrs. Trollope, and stung to the quick by her 
 sneers at the national peculiarities of ' calculating' and 
 spitting, thought they could throw the taunt back in 
 our teeth by assuming that we were a nation of cock- 
 neys, hopelessly given to misplacing our Hs. I had 
 no sooner put down the lively Chronique containing 
 
SHOCKING! 291 
 
 the Joe Millerisms than I took up a copy of the New 
 York Times, a paper of very high character and re- 
 spectability, and whose editor, Mr. Henry Raymond, 
 one of the most distinguished of living American poli- 
 ticians, is doing good service to the republic by striv- 
 ing — almost alone, unhappily — to stem the tide of the 
 intolerance and tyranny of the dominant faction. In 
 a leading article of the New York Times I read, that 
 when the British Lion was reproached with his block- 
 ade-running sins, and other violations of neutrality 
 during the war, the hypocritical beast turned up his 
 4 cotton-coloured eyes' and whimpered, c Thou cannot 
 say Hi did it.' The gentleman who wrote the leader 
 doubtless thought he had hit us hard with that 4 Hi.' 
 He would have shot nearer the bull's-eye had he 
 asked why Lord Russell is always 'oblegecV instead 
 of obliged, and why the noble proprietor of Knowsley 
 is Lord 'Derby' to one set of politicians and Lord 
 4 Darby' to another. But these little niceties of criti- 
 cism seem to escape our neighbours. The imputation 
 of cockneyism is a bit of mud that will stick. The 
 Americans have made up their minds that we are 
 'halways waunting the walour of hour harms,' and 
 1 hexulting hover hour appiness hunder the ouse of 
 anover.' No disclaimers on our part will cause them 
 to abandon their position. Nor in this case, nor in 
 that of c Shocking,' do we lie open, I venture to 
 think, to accusations of a tu quoque nature. We cari- 
 cature our neighbours more closely and observantly 
 than they do us. We have found out long since that 
 
292 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 the Yankee is not invariably a sallow man in a broad- 
 brimmed straw hat, and a suit of striped nankeen, 
 who sits all day in a rocking-chair with his feet on 
 the mantelpiece, sucking mint julep through a straw. 
 We know the circumstances under which he will put 
 his feet up, and the seasons most favourable to the 
 consumption of juleps. We have even ceased to 
 draw him as he really was frequently visible, some 
 twenty years since, as a cadaverous straight-haired 
 individual, clean shaved, in a black tail-coat and pan- 
 taloons, a black satin waistcoat, and a fluffy hat stuck 
 on the back of his head, and the integument of his left 
 cheek much distended by a plug of tobacco. 
 
 The English painter of manners takes the modern 
 American as he finds him: a tremendous dandy, 
 rather 'loud' in make-up, fiercely moustached and 
 bearded, ringed and chained to the eyes, and, on the 
 continent of Europe at least, quoting Rafaelles and 
 Titians, Canovas and Thorwaldsens, as confidently as 
 he would discourse of quartz or petroleum in Wall- 
 street. We know that he has long since ceased to 
 'calculate' or 'reckon,' and that it is much, now, if he 
 ' guesses' or ' expects.' Not long ago, at Venice, an 
 old English traveller was telling me of an American 
 family with whom he had travelled from Florence to 
 Bologna. One of the young ladies of the party, it 
 seems, did not approve of the railway accommodation, 
 and addressed the Italian guard in this wise : ' My 
 Christian friend, is this a first-class kyar, or a cattle - 
 wagon?' At a subsequent stage of the journey the 
 
SHOCKING! 293 
 
 eldest gentleman of the group had remarked: ' Say, if 
 any of you gals bought frames at Florence, I can sup- 
 ply you with a lot o' picturs I got at Rome, cheap.' 
 c They were model Yankees,' the old English traveller 
 chuckled, as he told me the story. ' Not at all,' I made 
 bold to answer; 'they were very exceptional Yankees 
 indeed. They were, probably, shoddy people of the 
 lowest class, rapidly enriched, and who had rushed off 
 to Europe to air their new jewelry and their vulgarity.' 
 Nine-tenths of the Americans one meets travelling 
 abroad nowadays are well-informed and intelligent 
 persons, often more fully appreciative of the beauties 
 of art than middle-class English tourists. The Ameri- 
 can's ambition extends to everything, in the heavens 
 above and on the earth beneath, and in the waters 
 under the earth. If he doesn't appreciate Italian pic- 
 tures, his wife and daughters will, so that at least 
 there shall be a decent amount of connoisseurship in 
 the family; whereas to the middle- class English for- 
 eign picture galleries are usually an intolerable bore ; 
 and Paterfamilias very probably labours, besides, un- 
 der a vague and secretly uneasy feeling that it does 
 not become a man with less than twenty thousand a 
 year and a handle to his name to talk of Rafaelles and 
 Titians. There may be vulgar pretenders among the 
 Americans whom one meets roving through the 
 churches and galleries of the Continent — among what 
 nation are vulgarity and pretence not to be found? — 
 but take them for all in all, the love and appreciation 
 for high art, although its very elements are of yester- 
 
294 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 day's introduction, are more generally discriminated 
 in the United States than in England. The amazing 
 development of photography, and the consequent cir- 
 culation of the noblest examples of art at very cheap 
 rates, together with the American mania for travel- 
 ling, are the leading causes of their precocious pro- 
 ficiency in studies in which our middle classes are, 
 as yet, but timid and bungling beginners. 
 
 It is true that they have not yet learnt to discrim- 
 inate between Englishmen whose speech is that of 
 educated gentlemen, and those who put their Hs in 
 the wrong place. Perhaps their ears are at fault. There 
 are none so deaf as those who will not hear. But I 
 adhere to my position, that we are able to jot down 
 their little changes of manners more accurately than 
 they are able to do ours. We do not wear our jokes 
 against them threadbare, or worry their foibles to 
 death after the French fashion. Pennsylvania repu- 
 diation was a good jest in its day, made all the more 
 bitter by being almost wholly destitute of foundation 
 in truth ; but no one could help laughing at Sydney 
 Smith's denunciations of the c men in drab,' and his 
 comically vindictive wish to cut up a Quaker, and ap- 
 portion him, buttonless coat, broad-brimmed hat and 
 all, among the defrauded bondholders. When it was 
 discovered that Pennsylvania paid her obligations, the 
 jokes about pails of whitewash grew stale, and we 
 abandoned them for good. So it was with the great 
 sea-serpent. For years the English newspapers used 
 to have their weekly quota of examples of American 
 
SHOCKING! 295 
 
 exaggeration and longbowism. We used to read about 
 the cow which, being left out on a frosty night, never 
 afterwards gave anything but ice-creams ; about the 
 man who was so tall that he had to climb up a ladder 
 to take his hat off; about the discontented clock down 
 east, which struck work instead of the hours. These 
 jokes, too, have now become stale, and barely suffice 
 to gain a giggle from the sixpenny seats when emitted 
 by the comic singer at a music-hall. Sarcasms anent 
 American brag and bunkum have not quite died out 
 from English conversation and English journalism; 
 for, unfortunately, the newest file of American papers 
 are full of evidence that bunkum and brag are, on the 
 other side of the Atlantic, as current as ever. 
 
 How is it that, when foreigners wish to quiz us, 
 however good humouredly, they always date their 
 witticisms from the morrow of the battle of Waterloo? 
 The English began to be habitual travellers in the 
 autumn of 1815. To us who know, or fancy that we 
 know ourselves, the changes which have taken place 
 in our manners and customs since that period are mar- 
 vellous ; but to foreigners we seem to be precisely the 
 same people who came rushing to Paris when the 
 allies were in the Palais Royal, and have since over- 
 run every nook and corner of Europe. AVe know 
 what we were like in '15; we had been bereft for 
 twelve years of the Erench fashions. It was only once 
 in some months or so that a Paris bonnet, or the de- 
 sign for a Paris dress, was furtively conveyed to us 
 from Nantes or Hamburg in a smuggling lugger. Of 
 
296 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 the French language and of French literature we were 
 almost entirely ignorant. To be a fluent French 
 scholar was to be put down either as a diplomatist or 
 a spy ; and not all diplomatists could speak French. 
 We had not learned to waltz ; and foreigners invited 
 to the houses of English residents in Paris used to 
 turn up their eyes at our barbarous country dances 
 and hoidenish Sir Roger de Coverley. We knew no 
 soup but turtle and pea; no made dishes but Irish 
 stew and liver -and- bacon ; no wines but port and 
 sherry ; claret gave us the cholic ; champagne was only 
 found at the tables of princes. We used to drink hot 
 brandy-and-water in the morning. We used to get 
 drunk after dinner. We had no soda-water. We had 
 no cigars, and smoking a pipe was an amusement in 
 winter few persons besides ship captains, hackney- 
 coachmen, and the Reverend Dr. Parr, indulged. Our 
 girls were bread-and-butter romps; our boys were 
 coarse and often profligate hobbledehoys, whose idea 
 of 'life' was to drink punch at the Finish, and beat the 
 watch. Our fathers and mothers were staid and prim, 
 and somewhat sulky, and carried with them every- 
 where a bigoted hatred of popery, and a withering 
 contempt of foreigners. This is what we were like in 
 1815; and, in '15, I can easily understand that the 
 angular young woman in the coal-scuttle bonnet and 
 the green veil, who was always crying i Shocking !' 
 was as possible a personage as the baronet in top- 
 boots who continually swore at 'Jhon,' his jockey, and 
 roared for fresh grogs. 
 
SHOCKING! 297 
 
 But can it be that we have not changed since the 
 morrow of Waterloo ? If we are to believe our critics, 
 we are the self-same folk. It seems to me that we 
 have let our beards and moustaches grow, and have 
 become the most hirsute people in Europe; but a 
 Charivari Englishman, or a Gustave Dore English- 
 man, or a Bouffes Parisiennes Englishman, is always 
 the same simpering creature, with smooth upper and 
 under lip, and bushy whiskers. Types must be pre- 
 served, you may argue. As a simpering and whis- 
 kered creature, the Englishman is best known abroad, 
 and foreigners have as much right to preserve him 
 intact as we have to preserve our traditional John 
 Bull. But may I be allowed to point out that a type 
 may become so worn and blunted as to be no longer 
 worth printing from? For instance, there is the 
 Frenchman in a cocked-hat and a pigtail and high- 
 heeled shoes, and with a little fiddle protruding from 
 his hinder pocket. That- Frenchman's name was 
 Johnny Crapaud. His diet was frogs. His profes- 
 sion was to teach dancing. One Englishman could 
 always thrash three Johnny Crapauds. We have 
 broken up that type for old metal; and it has been 
 melted again, and recast into something more nearly 
 approaching the actual Crapaud. Let me see; how 
 many years is it since the lamented John Leech drew 
 that droll cartoon in Punch entitled Foreign Affairs? 
 It must be a quarter of a century, at least. He de- 
 lineated the Frenchman of his day to the life : the 
 Frenchman of the old Quadrant and Fricourt's and 
 
UNDER THE SUN 
 
 Dubourg's, and the stuffy little passport- office in 
 Poland- street. That Frenchman — long haired, dirty, 
 smouchy, greasy — has passed away. Before he died, 
 Mr. Leech found out the new types ; the fat yet dap- 
 per 'Mossoos,' with the large shirt-fronts and the 
 dwarfed hats, who engage a barouche and a valet de 
 place at Pagliano's, and go for c a promenade to Rich- 
 mond.' And had Mr. Leech's life been prolonged, 
 he would have discovered the still later type of 
 Frenchman — the Parisian of the Lower Empire, the 
 Frenchman of the Jockey Club and the Courses de 
 Vincennes — the Frenchman who has his clothes made 
 by Mr. Poole, or by the most renowned Parisian 
 imitator of the artist of Saville-row, who reads Le 
 Sport and goes upon le Tourff, and rides in his 
 4 bromm' and eats his 'laounch,' and, if he could 
 only be cured of the habit of riding like a miller's 
 sack and sitting outside a cafe on the Boulevards, 
 would pass muster very well for a twin-brother of 
 our exquisites of the Raleigh and Gatt's. 
 
 It is all of no use, however, I fear. ' For good old 
 true-blue Toryism, and a determined hatred to new- 
 fangled ways, socially speaking, you must go abroad, 
 and especially to France. In prose and verse, in 
 books and newspapers, in lithographs, and etchings, 
 .and terra-cotta statuettes, the traditional Englishman 
 &nd the traditional Englishwoman will continue to ap- 
 pear as something quite different from that which they 
 really are. In the halcyon day when it is discovered 
 that we are no more 'perfidious' than our neigh- 
 
SHOCKING! 299 
 
 bours, and that, in the way of greedy rapacity for the 
 petty profits of trade, the French are ten times more 
 of a nation of shopkeepers than we are — then, but not 
 till then, it may be acknowledged that the English 
 female's anatomy is not made up exclusively of right 
 angles, and that the first word in an Englishwoman's 
 vocabulary is not always c Shocking !' 
 
KING PIPPIN'S PALACE. 
 
 I deeply regret that it should be my duty to sound 
 the alarm; but I am constrained to state my fears 
 that there is something the matter with our old and, 
 generally, esteemed friend the Dwarf. I don't meet 
 him in society, that is to say, at the fairs as I was 
 wont to do ; and although I do not overlook the fact 
 that I have ceased to attend fairs, and that, indeed, 
 there are very few fairs of the old kind left to fre- 
 quent, it is difficult to avoid the unpleasant convic- 
 tion that dwarfs, as a race, are dying out. Very re- 
 cently, in his strange, eloquent romance, TJ Homme 
 qui rit, M. Yictor Hugo has told us that the pigmy, 
 preferably monstrous and deformed, whose pictured 
 semblance is to be found in so many works of the old 
 Italian and German masters, was, to most intents and 
 purposes, a manufactured article. That mysterious 
 association of the c Comprachicos,' of whom M. Hugo 
 has told us so many strange things, pursued, among 
 their varied branches of industry, the art of fabri- 
 cating hunchbacked, abdominous, hydrocephalus, 
 and spindle-shanked dwarfs for the European market : 
 the purchasers being the princes, potentates, and 
 wealthy nobles of the continent. The Comprachicos 
 
KING PIPPIN'S PALACE. 301 
 
 would seem to have borrowed the mystery of dwarf- 
 making from the Chinese, who had an agreeable way 
 of putting a young child into a pot of arbitrary form, 
 from which the top and bottom had been knocked 
 out, and in the sides of which were two holes, through 
 which the juvenile patient's arms protruded. The 
 merry consequence was that young masters body, if 
 he did not die during the process, grew to be of the 
 shape of the pot, and, so far as the torso went, the 
 order of amateurs for a spherical dwarf, or an oval 
 dwarf, or a hexagonal dwarf, or a dwarf with knobs 
 on his chest, or an ' egg-and- tongue' pattern on his 
 shoulders, could be executed with promptitude and 
 dispatch.* 
 
 But we have another informant, of perhaps greater 
 weight and authority, who has told us in wh.it manner 
 dwarfs, and bandy, and rickety, and crooked-spin ed 
 
 * Setting M. Hugo's wild myth of the Comprachicos entirely on one 
 side, most students of the social history of England are aware that the 
 custom of kidnapping children (generally to be sold as slaves in the 
 West Indies or the American plantations) was frightfully prevalent in 
 this country in the seventeenth, and during the early part of the eight- 
 eenth century, and that Bristol was dishonourably distinguished as the 
 port whence the greater number of the hapless victims were dispatched 
 beyond sea. And it is a very curious circumstance, winch appears to 
 have been overlooked by Lord Macaulay in Ins notice of Jeffries, that 
 the infamous judge, shortly before the Bloody Assize, went down to 
 Bristol, and delivered to the grand jury at the assizes a most eloquent 
 and indignant charge, overflowing with sentiments of humanity, bearing 
 on the practice of kidnapping children for the plantations — a practice 
 winch his lordship roundly accused the corporation of Bristol of actively 
 aiding and abetting for their own advantage and gain. Jeffries' charge 
 is preserved in the library of the British Museum, and is as edifying to 
 read as the sentimental ballad ' What is Love ?' by Mr. Thomas Paine, 
 or as would be an Essay upon Cruelty to Animals, with proposals for 
 the suppression thereof, by the late Emperor Nero. 
 
302 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 children can be manufactured without the aid either 
 of the Comprachicos or of the Chinese potters. The 
 learned and amiable Cheselden has dwelt minutely in 
 his Anatomy on the wickedly cruel and barbarous 
 folly which marked the system of nursing babies in 
 his time, and has shown how the practice of tightly 
 swaddling ^and unskilfully carrying infants was calcu- 
 lated to cripple and deform their limbs, and to stunt 
 their growth. We have grown wonderfully wiser 
 since Cheselden's time, although I have heard some 
 cynics mutter that the custom of growing children 
 in pipkins could not have been more detrimental to 
 health or to the symmetry of the human form than is 
 the modern fashion of tight-lacing. 
 
 Be all this as it may, I still hold that the dwarf — 
 well, the kind of dwarf who can be seen for a penny 
 at a fair — continues, as the French say, 'to make 
 himself desired.' Surely his falling off must be due 
 to the surcease of the manufacture. Old manufac- 
 tured dwarfs are as difficult to light upon as Mort- 
 lake tapestry or Chelsea china, simply, I suppose, be- 
 cause tapestry is no longer woven at Mortlake, and 
 Chelsea produces no more porcelain ware. To an 
 amateur of dwarfs it is positively distressing to read 
 the numerous detailed accounts which the historians 
 have left us of bygone troglodytes. Passing by such 
 world-famous manikins as Sir Jeffery Hudson and 
 Count Borulawski, where can one hope, in this de- 
 generate age, to light on a Madame Teresia, better 
 known by the designation of the Corsican Fairy, who 
 
KING PIPPIN'S PALACE. 303 
 
 came to London in 1773, being then thirty years of 
 age, thirty-four inches high, and weighing twenty-six 
 pounds? c She possessed much vivacity and spirit 7 
 could speak Italian and French with fluency, and 
 gave the most inquisitive mind an agreeable enter- 
 tainment.' England has produced a rival to Madame 
 Teresia in Miss Anne Shepherd, who was three feet 
 ten inches in height, and was married, in Charles the 
 First's time, to Richard Gibson, Esq., page of the 
 backstairs to his majesty, and a distinguished mini- 
 ature painter. Mr. Gibson was just forty-six inches 
 high, and he and his bride were painted 'in whole 
 length' by Sir Peter Lely. The little couple are 
 said to have had nine children, who all attained the 
 usual standard of mankind ; and three of the boys, 
 according to the chronicles of the backstairs, enlisted 
 in the Life Guards. 
 
 But what are even your Hudsons and your Gib- 
 sons, your Corsican Fairies and your Anne Shep- 
 herds, to the dwarfs of antiquity? Where am I to 
 look for a parallel to the homunculus who flourished 
 in Egypt in the time of the Emperor Theodosius, and 
 who was so small of body that he resembled a par- 
 tridge, yet had all the functions of a man, and would 
 sing tunably ? Mark Antony is said to have owned 
 a dwarf called Sisyphus, who was not of the full 
 height of two feet, and was yet of a lively wit. Had 
 this Sisyphus been doomed to roll a stone it must 
 surely have been no bigger than a schoolboy's marble. 
 Ravisius — who was Ravisius ? — narrates that Au- 
 
304 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 gustus Caesar exhibited in his plays one Lucius, a 
 young man born of honest parents, who was twenty- 
 three inches high, and weighed seventeen pounds ; yet 
 had he a strong voice. In the time of Jamblichus, 
 also, lived Alypius of Alexandria, a most excellent 
 logician, and a famous philosopher, but so small in 
 body that he hardly exceeded a cubit, or one foot five 
 inches and a half in height. And, finally, Carden tells 
 us — but who believes Carden? — that he saw a man 
 of full age in Italy, not above a cubit high, and who 
 was carried about in a parrot's cage. * This,' re- 
 marks Wanley, in his Wonders of the Little World, 
 ' would have passed my belief had I not been told 
 by a gentleman of a clear reputation, that he saw a 
 man at Sienna, about two years since, not exceeding 
 the same stature. A Frenchman he was, of the county 
 of Limosin, with a formal beard, who was likewise 
 shown in a cage for money, at the end whereof was 
 a little hatch into which he retired, and when the as- 
 sembly was full came forth and played on an instru- 
 ment.' The very thing we have all seen at the fairs, 
 substituting the simulacrum of a three-storied house 
 for a cage, and not forgetting the modern improve- 
 ments of the diminutive inmate ringing a bell, and 
 firing a pistol out of the first-floor window ! 
 
 And after banqueting on these bygone dwarfs, 
 who were scholars and gentlemen, as well as mon- 
 strosities, for was not Alypius, cited above, a famous 
 logician and philosopher? and did not Eichard Gib- 
 son, Esq., teach Queen Anne the art of drawing, and 
 
KING PIPPIN'S PALACE. 305 
 
 proceed on a special mission to Holland to impart 
 artistic instruction to the Princess of Orange ? after 
 dwelling on the dwarfs who formed part of the retinue 
 of William of Normandy when he invaded England, 
 and who held the bridle of the Emperor Otho's horse; 
 after remembering the dwarfs whom Dominichino 
 and Rafaelle, Velasquez and Paul Veronese have in- 
 troduced in their pictures ; after this rich enjoyment 
 of dwarfish record I am thrown back on General Tom 
 Thumb. I grant the General, and the Commodore, 
 and their ladykind a decent meed of acknowledg- 
 ment. I confess them calm, self-possessed, well-bred, 
 and innocuous ; but I have no heart to attend their 
 1 levees.' Nutt, in the caricature of a naval uniform, 
 does not speak to my heart ; I have no ambition to 
 see Thumb travestied as the late Emperor Napoleon 
 — that conqueror could, on occasion, cause himself to 
 appear even smaller than Thumb — nor am I desirous 
 of purchasing photographic cartes de visite of Minnie 
 Warren. My dwarf is the gorgeously-attired little 
 pagod of the middle ages ; the dwarf who pops out 
 of a pie at a court banquet ; the dwarf who runs be- 
 tween the court-jester's legs and trips him up; the 
 dwarf of the king of Brobdingnag, who is jealous of 
 Gulliver, and souses his rival in a bowl of cream, and 
 gets soundly whipped for his pains. Or, in default 
 of this pigmy, give me back the dwarf of my youth 
 in his sham three-storied house, with his tinkling bell 
 and sounding pistol. 
 
 It is not to be, I presume. These many years 
 
 x 
 
306 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 past I have moodily disbursed in divers parts of the 
 world sundry francs, lire, guilders, florins, thalers, 
 reals, dollars, piastres, and mark-banco for the sight 
 of dwarfs; but they (Thumb and his company in- 
 cluded) have failed to come up to my standard of 
 dwarfish excellence. Did you ever meet with any- 
 thing or anybody that could come up to that same 
 standard? Man never is, but always to be blest; 
 still, although my dreams of dwarfs have not as yet 
 been fully realised, I have been able to enjoy the 
 next best thing to fulfilment. I call to mind per- 
 haps the wonderfullest dwarf's house existing on the 
 surface of this crazy globe. It is a house in the con- 
 struction and the furniture of which many thousands 
 of pounds were expended; and it was built by a king 
 for his son. It is for this reason that I have called 
 the diminutive mansion ' The Palace of King Pippin. 7 
 King Pippin's Palace is in Spain, and has been 
 shamefully neglected by English tourists in that in- 
 teresting country. For my part I think that it would 
 be a great advantage to picturesque literature if the 
 Alhambra and the Alcazar, the Bay of Cadiz and the 
 Rock of Gibraltar, the Sierra Morena and the Mez- 
 quita of Cordova, the Cathedral of Burgos and the 
 Bridge of Toledo, could be eliminated altogether 
 from Spanish topography. By these means travellers 
 in Spain would have a little more leisure to attend 
 to a number of ' cosas de Espaiia' which are at pre- 
 sent passed by almost without notice. Among them 
 is this incomparable dwarf's house of mine. You will 
 
KING PIPPIN'S PALACE. 307 
 
 observe that I have excluded the Escorial from the 
 catalogue of places which English sight-seers in the 
 Peninsula might do well, for a time, to forget. The 
 Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo must needs be 
 visited, for King Pippin's Palace is a de}3endency 
 of that extraordinary pile. Few tourists have the 
 courage to admit, in print at least, that this palace- 
 monastery or monastery-palace of the Escorial is a 
 gigantic bore. When it was my lot to visit it, my 
 weariness began even before I had entered its halls ; 
 for in the railway carriage which conveyed our party 
 from Madrid to the 4 Gridiron station' there was a 
 fidgety little Andalusian, a maker of guitar-strings, 
 I think he was, at Utrera, who was continually re- 
 bounding on the cushions like a parched pea in a 
 fire-shovel, and crying out to us, c El edificio, cabal- 
 leros, clonde esta el edificio?' It was his first visit to 
 the northern provinces of his native country, and he 
 was burning to see the 'edificio.' To him, evidently, 
 there was but one edifice in the world, and that was 
 the Escorial. When at last he caught sight of its 
 sullen facades, its stunted dome and blue-slate roofs, 
 the little Andalusian fell into a kind of ecstasy, and 
 protruded so much of his body out of the carriage- 
 window, that I expected him every moment to disap- 
 pear altogether. To my surprise, however, when the 
 train drew up at the station he did not alight, but 
 murmuring the conventional ' Pues, sefiores, echemos 
 un cigar ito,' 'Well, gentlemen, let us make a little 
 cigar,' calmly rolled up a tube of paper with tobacco^ 
 
308 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 lit it, and adding, 4 Vamos al Norte/ subsided into 
 sleep, and, the train aiding, pursued his journey to 
 the Pyrenees, or Paris, or the North Pole, or where- 
 soever else he was bound. He was clearly a philo- 
 sopher. He had seen c el edificio' from afar off. Was 
 not that enough? I daresay when he went back to 
 Utrera he talked guide-book by the page to his 
 friends, and minutely described all the marvels of 
 the interior of the palace. I rarely think of the little 
 Andalusian without recalling Sheridan's remark to 
 his son Tom, about the coal-pits: 'Can't you say 
 youVe been down?' 
 
 The 4 edifice' itself is really and without exag- 
 geration a bore. The good pictures have all been 
 taken away to swell the attractions of the Eeal Museo 
 at Madrid; the jolly monks have been driven out, 
 and replaced by a few meagre, atrabilious-looking, 
 shovel-hatted seminarists (even these, since the last 
 political earthquake in Spain, may have disappeared) ; 
 and it is with extreme difficulty that you can per- 
 suade the custodes to show you the embroidered 
 vestments in the sacristy, or the illuminated manu- 
 scripts in the library. The guardians of every public 
 building in Spain have a settled conviction that all 
 foreign travellers are Frenchmen, who, following the 
 notable example of Marshals Soult and Victor in the 
 Peninsular War, are bent on stealing something. 
 Moreover, the inspection of embroidered copes, dal- 
 matics, and chasubles, soon palls on sight-seers who 
 are not crazy on the subject of Ritualism; and as for 
 
KING PIPPIN'S PALACE. 309 
 
 being trotted through a vast library when you have 
 no time to read the books, all I can say is, that in 
 this respect I prefer a bookstall in Gray's-inn-lane, 
 with free access to the 4 twopenny box,' to the library 
 of the Escorial, to the Bibliotheque (ex-)Imperiale, 
 the Bodleian, Sion College, and the library of St. 
 Mark to boot. The exterior of the Escorial, again, 
 is absolutely hideous ; its grim granite walls, pierced 
 with innumerable eyelet-holes, with green shutters, 
 remind the spectator of the Wellington Barracks, 
 Colney-Hatch Lunatic-Asylum, and the Xrreat North- 
 ern Hotel at King's-Cross. The internal decorations 
 principally consist of huge, sprawling, wall-and- 
 ceiling frescoes by Luca Giordano, surnamed c Luca 
 fa Presto,' or Luke in a Hurry. This Luke the 
 Labourer has stuck innumerable saints, seraphs, 
 and other celestial personages upon the plaster. He 
 executed his apotheoses by the yard, for which he 
 was paid according to a fixed tariff — a reduction, I 
 suppose, being made for clouds ; and the result of his 
 work is about as interesting as that of Sir James 
 Thornhill in the Painted Hall of Greenwich Hospital. 
 Almost an entire day must be spent if you wish to 
 see the Escorial thoroughly, and you grow, at last, 
 fretful and peevish wellnigh to distraction at the 
 jargon of the guides, with their monotonous statistics 
 of the eleven thousand windows of the place, the two 
 thousand and two feet of its area, the sixty-three 
 fountains, the twelve cloisters, the sixteen ' patios' or 
 courtyards, the eighty staircases, and so forth. As 
 
310 UNDER THE S'UN. 
 
 for the relics preserved of that nasty old man Philip 
 the Second, his greasy hat, his walking-stick, his 
 shabby elbow-chair, the board he used to rest .his 
 gouty leg on, they never moved me. There is some- 
 thing beautifully and pathetically interesting in the 
 minutest trifle which remains to remind us of Mary 
 Queen of Scots. Did you ever see her watch, in the 
 shape of a death's-head, the works in the brain-pan, 
 and the dial enamelled on the base of the jaw? But 
 who would care about a personal memento of Bloody 
 Queen Mary? She was our countrywoman, but 
 most of us wish to forget her bad individuality 
 utterly. Should we care anything more about her 
 Spanish husband? 
 
 To complete the lugubrious impressions which 
 gather round you in this museum of cruelty, super- 
 stition, and madness, you are taken to an appalling 
 sepulchre underground : a circular vault, called, ab- 
 surdly enough, the c Pantheon,' where, on ranges of 
 marble shelves, are sarcophagi containing the ashes 
 of all the kings and queens who have afflicted Spain 
 since the time of Charles the Fifth. The bonehouse 
 is rendered all the more hideous by the fact of its 
 being ornamented in the most garishly theatrical 
 manner with porphyry and verde antique, with green 
 and yellow jasper, with bronze gilt bas-reliefs, and 
 carvings in variegated marble, and other gimcracks. 
 There is an old English locution which laughs at the 
 man who would put a brass knocker on a pigsty- 
 door. Is such an architect worthier of ridicule than 
 
KING PIPPINS PALACE. 311 
 
 he who paints and gilds and tricks -up a charnel- 
 house to the similitude of a playhouse ? As, with a 
 guttering wax- taper in your hand, you ascend the 
 staircase leading from the Pantheon into daylight 
 and the world again, your guide whispers to you 
 that to the right is another and ghastlier Golgotha, 
 where the junior scions of Spanish royalty are buried, 
 or rather where their coffins lie huddled together 
 pell-mell. The polite name for this place, which 
 might excite the indignation of ; graveyard ' "Walker 
 (he put a stop to intramural interments hi England, 
 and got no thanks for his pains), is the 4 Pantheon of 
 the Infantes.' The common people call it, with much 
 more brevity and infinitely more eloquence, i El Pu- 
 dridero,' the 'rotting -place.' The best guide-book 
 you can take with you to this portion of the Escorial 
 is Jeremy Taylor's sermon on Death. 
 
 Once out of the Escorial, ' Luke's iron crown' — I 
 mean the crown of Luca fa Presto's ponderous heroes 
 — is at once removed from your brow, on which it 
 has been pressing with the deadest of weights. Once 
 rid of the Pantheon, and the stone staircases, and the 
 slimy cloisters, and you feel inclined to chirrup, al- 
 most. The gardens are handsome, although shock- 
 ingly out of repair ; but bleak as is the site, swept by 
 the almost ceaseless mountain blasts of the Guadar- 
 rama range, it is something to be of rid Luca fa Presto, 
 and Philip the Second, and St. Lawrence and his 
 gridiron, and all their gloomy company. You breathe 
 again ; and down in the village yonder there is a not 
 
3 i2 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 bad inn, called the Biscaina, where they cook very 
 decent omelettes, and where the wine is drinkable. 
 But before you think of dining, you must see King 
 Pippin's Palace. 
 
 This is the ' Casita del Principe de abajo,' the 
 'little house of the prince on the heights,' and was 
 built by Juan de Villanueva for Charles the Fourth, 
 when heir-apparent. The only circumstances, per- 
 haps, under which a king of Spain can be contem- 
 plated with complacency are those of childhood. In 
 Madrid I used always to have a sneaking kindness 
 for the infantes and infantas — ' los ninos de Espafia, 
 — who, Avith their nurses and governesses, and their 
 escort of dragoons and lancers, used to be driven 
 every afternoon, in their gilt coaches drawn by fat 
 mules, through the Puerta del Sol to the Retiro. The 
 guard at the Palace of the Gobernacion would turn 
 out, the trumpets would be flourished bravely as 'los 
 ninos' went by. Poor little urchins ! In the pictures 
 of Don Diego Velasquez, the ' ninos,' in their little 
 ruffs, and kirtles, and farthingales, or their little 
 starched doublets and trunk-hose, with their chubby 
 peachy cheeks, their ruddy lips, and great melting 
 black eyes, look irresistibly fascinating. Ah ! my in- 
 fantes and infantas of Don Diego, why did you not 
 remain for aye at the toddlekins' stage ? why did you 
 grow up to be tyrants, and madmen, and bigots, and 
 imbeciles, and no better than you should have been? 
 This Carlos the Fourth, for instance, for whom King 
 Pippin's Palace was built, made an exceedingly bad 
 
KING PIPPIN'S PALACE. 313 
 
 end of it. He was the king who was led by the nose 
 by a worthless wife, and a more worthless favourite, 
 Godoy, who was called ' Prince of the Peace/ and 
 who lived to be quite forgotten, and to die in a garret 
 in Paris. Carlos the Fourth was the idiot who al- 
 lowed Napoleon to kidnap him. He was the father of 
 the execrable Ferdinand the Seventh, the betrayer of 
 his country, the restorer of the Inquisition, and the 
 embroiderer of petticoats for the Yirgin. 
 
 King, or rather Prince Pippin, Charles the Third's 
 son, is represented in a very curious style of portrai- 
 ture, in one of the apartments of the Escorial itself, a 
 suite fitted up by his father in anti-monastic style 
 that is to say, in the worst kind of Louis Quinze ro- 
 coco. The king employed the famous Goya to make 
 a series of designs to be afterwards woven on a large 
 scale in tapestry; and Goya consequently produced 
 some cartoons which, with their reproductions in 
 loom-work, may be regarded as the burlesque anti- 
 podes to the immortal patterns which Eafaelle set 
 the weavers of Arras. In one of the Goya hangings 
 you see the juvenile members of the royal family at 
 their sports, attended by a select number of young 
 scions of the sangre azul. At what do you think they 
 are playing? at bull-fighting: a game very popular 
 among the blackguard little street-boys of Madrid 
 to this day. One boy plays Bos. He has merely to 
 pop a cloth over his head, holding two sticks passing 
 through holes in the cloth at obtuse angles to his 
 head, to represent the horns of the animal. The 
 
314 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 1 picadores' are children pickaback, who, with canes 
 for lances, tilt at the bull. The ' chulos' trail their 
 jackets, the ' bandarilleros' fling wreathed hoops ticks 
 for darts, in admirable caricature of the real blood- 
 thirsty game you see in the bull-ring. Prince Pippin 
 of course is the ' matador/ the shiyer. He stands 
 alone, superb and magnanimous, intrepidity in his 
 mien, fire in his eye, and a real little Toledo rapier in 
 his hand. Will the bull dare to run at the heir-ap- 
 parent of the throne of Spain and the Indies ? Quien 
 sabe ? Train up a child in the way he should go ; 
 and a youth of bull-fighting is a fit preparative for a 
 manhood of cruelty and an old age of bigoted super- 
 stition. 
 
 It is somewhat difficult to give an idea of the pre- 
 cise size of Pippin's Palace. Mr. Ford, who speaks of 
 the entire structure with ineffable contempt, says that 
 it is c just too small to live in, and too large to wear 
 on a watch-chain f but I maintain that the Casita del 
 Principe is quite big enough to be the country resid- 
 ence of Thumb, or Nutt, or Miss Warren, or Gibson, 
 or Hudson, or Ann Shepherd, or Madame Teresia, or 
 Wybrand Lolkes the Dutch dwarf; a wonderful little 
 fellow with a head like a dolphin's, no perceptible 
 trunk, and two little spindle-shanks like the legs of a 
 skeleton clock. There should properly be a statue 
 oast from the Manneken at Brussels in the vestibule of 
 the Casita; but, if I recollect aright, the only object 
 of sculpture in the hall is a life-size cast of the Apollo 
 Belvedere, whose head of course touches the palatial 
 
KING PIPPINS PALACE. 315 
 
 ceiling. Could that inanimate effigy stand on tiptoe, 
 he would assuredly send the first floor flying; and 
 could he perform but one vertical leap, he would have 
 the roof off the palace in the twinkling of a bedpost. 
 There is a tiny grand staircase, which (from dolorous 
 experience) I know to be somewhat of a tight fit for 
 a stout tourist; and to increase the exquisite grotes- 
 queness of the whole affair, the walls are panelled in 
 green and yellow jasper and porphyry, and there are 
 verde-antique columns and scagliola pilasters, and 
 bas-reliefs in gilt bronze on every side, just as there 
 are in the horrible tomb-house hard by. There are 
 dozens of rooms in King Pippin's Palace : dining- 
 rooms, audience - chambers, council -chambers, bed- 
 rooms, libraries, ante-chambers, boudoirs, guard- 
 rooms, and ball-rooms, the dimensions of which vary 
 between those of so many store-cupboards, and so 
 many midshipmen's sea-chests. But the pearl, the 
 cream, the consummation of the crack-brained joke is, 
 that the furniture does not in any way harmonise with 
 the proportions of the building. The house is a baby 
 one, but the furniture is grown up. The chairs and 
 tables are suited for the accommodation of adults of 
 full growth. The walls are hung with life-size por- 
 traits of the Spanish Bourbons. The busts, statuettes, 
 French clocks, chandeliers, China gimcracks, and 
 ivory baubles, are precisely such as* you might see in 
 a palace inhabited by grown-up kings and princes. 
 The whole place is a pippin into which a crazy king 
 has endeavoured to cram the contents of a pumpkin ; 
 
316 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 and, but for the high sense I entertain of the obliga- 
 tions of decorum, and the indelicacy of wounding the 
 susceptibilities of foreigners, I might, had the proper 
 appliances been at hand, have wound up my inspec- 
 tion of the Palace of King Pippin, by ringing a shrill 
 peal on a hand-bell, or firing a pistol out of the first- 
 floor window. 
 
STALLS. 
 
 It may not have occurred to you, amsene reader, to 
 trouble yourself much concerning the Philosophy of 
 Stalls ; if, haply, you have ever thought it worth your 
 while to inquire whether there was anything philoso- 
 phical connected with a stall, at all. To my mind there 
 is, and much. To me a stall typifies, in an intense 
 degree, the quality of selfishness. I draw a direct 
 alliance between a stall and celibacy. I hold the 
 possession of a stall to be linked with the ideas of in- 
 dependence, of isolation from, and superiority to, the 
 rest of mankind. In a stall, properly so termed, you 
 cannot put two people. The stalled ox is alone, and 
 may look with infinite contempt on the poor sheep 
 huddled together in a fold ; the cobbler who lived in 
 his stall, which served him for kitchen and parlour 
 and all, was, I will go bail, a bachelor. Robinson 
 Crusoe, for a very long time, occupied a stall, and 
 was monarch of all he surveyed. When Man Friday 
 came, the recluse began to yearn to mingle with the 
 world again. Diogenes in his tub perfectly fulfils 
 the idea of an installed egotist. From his tub-stall he 
 could witness at leisure the entire grand opera of 
 Corinth. I have heard of a roval duke — one of the 
 past generation of royal dukes; burly, bluff princes 
 
318 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 in blue coats and brass buttons, who said everything 
 twice over, drank hard, swore a good deal, and were 
 immensely popular at the Crown and Anchor and the 
 Thatched House Taverns — who, being in Windsor 
 one Sunday afternoon, thought he would like to at- 
 tend divine service in St. George's Chapel. Of course 
 he was a Knight of the Garter, and had his stall in 
 the old gothic fane, with his casque and banner above, 
 and a brass plate let in to the oaken carving, record- 
 ing what a high, mighty, and puissant prince he was. 
 The chapel happened to be very crowded, and as 
 H.R.H. essayed to pass through the throng towards 
 his niche in the choir, a verger whispered him defer- 
 entially, that a distinguished foreign visitor, his De- 
 crepitude the Grand Duke of Pfenningwurst-Schin- 
 kenbraten, had been popped into the place of the 
 English Duke. c Don't care a rush — a rush,' quoth 
 H.R.H., poking his walking-cane into the spine of a 
 plebeian in front of him. ' Want to get to my stall 
 — my stall.' And from it, I suppose, he eventually 
 succeeded in ousting the intruder from Germany. Was 
 not H.E.H. in the right? His stall was his vine and 
 his fig-tree, and who was there to make him afraid? 
 
 So much for stalls in the abstract. Practically, 
 a stall may be defined as a place of occupation, in 
 relative degrees, of a canon, a chorister, a cow, a 
 cobbler, or a connoisseur. To study stalls most pro- 
 fitably in their ecclesiastical or monastic aspect, you 
 should go to Flanders or to Spain. In the grand old 
 cathedrals in those countries, the traveller has always 
 
STALLS, 319 
 
 free access to the choir, and can take his surfeit of 
 contemplation of the stalls. They will be found, to 
 the observant mind, replete with human interest. 
 They may be peopled with priests. Pursy preben- 
 daries, dozing the doze of the just, and dreaming- 
 placidly, perchance, of good fat capon and clotted 
 cream, while the brawny choirmen at the lecterns are 
 thundering from huge oak-bound and brass-clamped 
 folios, on the parchment pages of which corpulent 
 minims and breves flounder over crimson lines; pale, 
 preoccupied priests, fretfully crimping the folds of 
 their surplices, and enviously eyeing my Lord Arch- 
 bishop yonder, awfully enthroned, with his great 
 mitre on his head, and his emerald ring glancing on 
 the plump white hand which he complacently spreads- 
 over the carved arm of his chair of state. Will they 
 ever come to sit in that chair? those pale, preoccupied 
 men may be thinking. Will they ever wear a mitre, 
 and hold out their hands for an obedient flock to kiss ? 
 Or will dignity and power and wealth fall to the lot 
 of those drowsy prebendaries ? 
 
 More absorbing, even, in interest than the stalls in 
 the choir of a cathedral are those in a convent chapel. 
 The reason is, I suppose, that a monk has always been 
 to me a Mystery. A nun I can more easily under- 
 stand, for the monastic state, in its best and purest 
 acceptation, is a dream or an ecstasy; and there are 
 vast numbers of women who pass their whole lives 
 in a dreamy and ecstatic frame of mind, and in a 
 species of unobtrusive hysterics. But the monk, with 
 
320 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 his manhood, and his great strong frame, and the fire 
 of ambition lambent in his eye, and his lips firm-set 
 in volition, always puzzles me. Continental physicians 
 will tell you that in every monastery there will be 
 found a certain proportion of mad monks : — friars who 
 have strange lunes, and hear Voices while they are 
 sweeping out the chapel or extinguishing the altar- 
 candles, and to whom the saints and angels in the 
 pictures on the walls are living and breathing person- 
 ages. I remember a dwarfish Cappuccino at Rome 
 once executing a kind of holy hornpipe before Guido's 
 famous painting of the Archangel vanquishing the 
 Demon, and, as he jigged, taunting the fiend on the 
 canvas on the low estate to which he had fallen, and 
 derisively bidding him to use his claws and fangs. 
 Nor do I think that I was ever more terrified in my 
 life than by the behaviour of a gaunt young friar in 
 the Catacombs of San Sebastiano, who, opposite the 
 empty tomb of a renowned martyr, suddenly took to 
 waving his taper above his head, and to abusing the 
 Twelve Cassars. He was our guide, and I feared 
 the candle would go out, and trembled to think what 
 would become of us, lost in Necropolis. But mad 
 monks, or dreamy or ecstatic monks, are sufficiently 
 rare, it is to be surmised. Most of the wearers of the 
 cowl and sandals with whom I have made acquaint- 
 ance, seemed to be perfectly well aware of what they 
 were about ; and a spirit of shrewd and pungent 
 humour and drollery is not by any means an un- 
 common characteristic of male inmates of the cloister. 
 
STALLS. 321 
 
 As for a Knight of the Garter in his stall, I regard 
 him simply as an Awful Being. Understand that, to 
 strike one with sufficient awe, he should be, not in 
 plain dress, but in the ' full fig' of his most noble 
 order: a costume more imposing than the full uni- 
 form of the captain of a man-o'-war ; and that, backed 
 by the man-o'-war herself in the offing, can be war- 
 ranted to send any black king on the west coast of 
 Africa into fits. But a K.G., with his garter on, with 
 his sweeping velvet robe, with his collar and his 
 George, with his tassels and badges and bows of 
 ribbons, next to Solomon in all his glory is the most 
 sumptuous sight I can conceive. The very stall he 
 sits in is historical ; a knight of his own name oc- 
 cupied it three hundred years ago. It bears brazen 
 chronicle of the doughtiest barons that ever lived. 
 What should one do to get made a K.G., and to earn 
 the privilege of sitting in such a stall ? Would the 
 genius of Shakespeare or Dante, would the learning 
 of Boyle or Milton, would the imagination of a Tenny- 
 son, the graphic powers of a Millais, the researches 
 of a Faraday — would even the giant intellect of a 
 Brougham, help a man in the climbing upward to 
 that stall? Not much, I fancy. Its occupancy is to 
 be obtained only by one process, ridiculously simple, 
 yet to be mastered only by very few children of hu- 
 manity. ' Yous vous etes donne la peine de naitre,' 
 says Figaro to Count Almaviva, in the play. To be 
 K.G.'d, you must take the trouble to be born of the 
 E.G. caste. 
 
322 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 But envy, avaunt ! Social fate is not without its 
 compensations, and there are stalls and stalls. Lend 
 me a guinea, and for a whole evening, from eight to 
 nearly midnight, I can sit supreme in a stall, solitary, 
 grand, absolute ; for who shall dare to turn me out ? 
 The stall is mine, to have and to hold corporeally 
 until the curtain has fallen on the last tableau of the 
 ballet, and (in imagination at least) I can hang my 
 banner and my casque over my stall, and deem my- 
 self a high, mighty, and puissant prince. As the 
 process, put into practice, might interfere with the 
 comfort of the patrons of the Eoyal Italian Opera, 
 I content myself with hanging my overcoat over the 
 back of my stall, and placing my collapsible Gibus 
 beneath it. I notice a large party of beautiful dames 
 and damsels in a box on the pit tier, who, I am vain 
 enough to think, are intently inspecting me through 
 their opera-glasses. I plume myself. I pull down 
 my wristbands, I smooth my shirt-front, and caress 
 the bows of my cravat. I turn the favourite facet 
 of my diamond ring well on to the box on the pit 
 tier. If you are the sun, shall you not shine ? I 
 am taken, I fondly hope, for one of the Upper Ten. 
 I am aware, from eyesight acquaintance with the 
 aristocracy, that my neighbour on the right, with 
 the purple wig, the varnished pumps, and the ear- 
 trump, is Field Marshal Lord Viscount Dumdum, 
 that great Indian hero; and that the yellow-faced 
 little man on my left, with the yellow ribbon at his 
 button-hole, is the Troglodyte ambassador. Behind 
 
STALLS. 323 
 
 me is Sir Hercules Hoof, of the Second Life-Guards. 
 In front of me is the broad back — I wish, in re- 
 spect to the back, that it wasn't quite so broad — of 
 Mr. Bargebeam, Q.C. How are that family in the 
 pit tier to know that I am not a nobleman, a diplo- 
 matist, a guardsman, or a queen's counsel? I am 
 clean. I had my hair dyed the day before yester- 
 day. My boots are polished ; my neckcloth is starched 
 stiff: my stall is as big as anybody else's. How is 
 beauty in the boxes to tell that I came in (failing 
 to borrow one-pound-one) with an order ? 
 
 The playhouse stall is a thoroughly modern inno- 
 vation ; and even the pit of the Italian theatres of the 
 Eenaissance was destitute of seats. When Sterne first 
 visited the opera in Paris, the groundlings stood to 
 witness the performance, and sentinels with fixed 
 bayonets were posted to appease tumults, as in the 
 well-known case quoted in .the i Sentimental Journey/ 
 when the irate dwarf threatened to cut off the pigtail 
 of the tall German. I am old enough to remember 
 when the pittites in the Scala at Milan stood. You 
 paid, I think, an Austrian florin — one and eightpence 
 — for bare admission to the house, and then you 
 took your chance of lighting upon some lady who 
 would invite you to a seat in her box; or some 
 bachelor acquaintance who, having had enough of 
 the performance, would surrender to you his re- 
 served seat, near the orchestra, for the rest of the 
 evening. Seated pits have always been common in 
 our English theatres, owing to the strong determi- 
 
324 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 nation of the people to make themselves comfortable 
 whenever it was possible to do so ; and these reserved 
 seats of the Scala were the beginning of the ex- 
 clusive seats we call stalls. They are not older 
 than the era of the dominion of the Austrians in 
 Lombardy, after the downfall of Napoleon the First. 
 There were many Milanese nobles not wealthy 
 enough to take boxes for the season, and too proud 
 to spunge on their friends every evening for a back 
 seat in a 'palco,' and too patriotic to mingle in 
 the standing-up area with the Austrian officers, who, 
 according to garrison regulations, were admitted to 
 the Scala at the reduced price of ninepence half- 
 penny. So the manager of the Scala hit upon the 
 crafty device of dividing the rows of benches near 
 the orchestra into compartments, each wide enough 
 to accommodate a single person, and the seats of which 
 could be turned up as in the choir of a cathedral. 
 Moreover, these seats were neatly fitted with hasps 
 and padlocks, so that the subscriber could lock up 
 his seat when, between the acts, he strolled into the 
 cafFe for refreshment. Perhaps he was absent from 
 Milan during the whole operatic season; and, if he 
 did not choose to lend the key of his stall to a friend 
 of the right political way of thinking, the seat re- 
 mained inexorably closed. The system had a triple 
 charm: First, the subscriber could revel to the 
 fullest extent in the indulgence of that dog-in-the 
 manger -like selfishness, which I have held to be 
 inseparably connected with stall - holding ; next, he 
 
STALLS. 325 
 
 could baffle the knavish boxkeepers, with whom in 
 an Italian theatre you can always drive an immoral 
 bargain, and by a trifling bribe secure a better seat 
 than that for which you have originally paid ; finally, 
 he could obviate the possibility of his stall being con- 
 taminated by the sedentary presence of any Austrian 
 general of high rank who happened to be an amateur 
 of legs. High-handed as were the proceedings of the 
 Tedeschi in Italy, they were wisely reluctant to in- 
 terfere with the social habits of the people. 
 
 Just before the great French Revolution, it be- 
 came the fashion to place arm-chairs close to the 
 orchestra of the Academy of Music for the use of 
 noble visitors, who came down from their boxes to 
 take a closer survey of the coryphees ; but these were 
 fauteuils at large; they were few in number, and 
 could be shifted from place to place at will. Verit- 
 able stalls are those which, albeit they are fitted with 
 arm-rests, are still immovably screwed to the floor; 
 and such stalls, old playgoers will bear me out, are 
 things of very recent introduction in our theatres. 
 The pit of Her Majesty's Theatre was once the resort 
 of the grandest dandies in London. Going over the 
 new structure the other day, I observed that the pit 
 proper had been almost entirely suppressed, and that 
 stalls monopolised seven-tenths of the sitting-room 
 of the ground area. In English theatres a similar 
 monopoly has been from year to year gradually gain- 
 ing strength. The most rubbishing little houses have 
 now numerous rows of stalls, from which bonnets are 
 
326 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 of course banished; and the pit is being quietly 
 elbowed out of existence. ' The third row of the 
 pit' was once a kind of bench of judgment — I don't 
 say of justice — on which those tremendous dispensers 
 of dramatic fame and fortune, the critics, sat. Our 
 papas and mammas did not despise the pit of old 
 Drury ; and I have heard tell of a lady of title who 
 paid to the pit to see Master Betty, and who took 
 with her a bag of sandwiches, and some sherry in a 
 bottle. I think I heard tell that she lost her shoe in 
 the crowd before the doors were opened. 
 
 Should this remarkable extension of the stall sys- 
 tem be considered as a blessing or an evil? Has 
 it not tended to the vast increase of selfishness, super- 
 ciliousness, and the pride of place ? Dear sir, if I 
 were a Professor of Paradoxes, I might tell you that 
 the more selfish, the more supercilious, and the 
 prouder of our places we are, the likelier will be 
 the attainment of universal happiness. I might whis- 
 per to you that virtue is only selfishness in a sublime 
 degree. But I am a professor of nothing; and I 
 dread paradoxes — having had a relative once who 
 was afflicted with them, and died. So I go back to 
 stalls. 
 
 The stalled ox, and the stalled cows in the byres 
 of Brock, in Holland, with their tails tied up to rings 
 in the rafters, I leave to their devices, for my talk is 
 of men and not of beasts. But lovingly do I glance 
 at the cobbler in his stall — a merry man with twink- 
 ling eyes, a blue-black mazzard, and somewhat of a 
 
STALLS. 327 
 
 copper nose, for ever cuddling his lapstone, smooth- 
 ing his leather with sounding thwacks, drawing out 
 his waxed string, working and singing, and bandying 
 repartee with the butchers' boys and the fishwives 
 passing his hutch. I would Mr. Longfellow had 
 sung of that cobbler; for as many tuneful things 
 could be said about Crispin, as about the Tillage 
 Blacksmith. That he has been left unsung, I mourn 
 sincerely; for times change, and types of humanity 
 vanish, and I am beginning to miss that cobbler. 
 Metropolitan improvements are unfavourable to him ; 
 our pride and vanity militate against him ; for some- 
 how we don't care about seeing our boots mended in 
 public, nowadays. In old times the cobbler's stall 
 was permitted to nestle in the basement of mansions 
 almost aristocratic in their respectability; but, at 
 present, no architect would dream of building a new 
 cobbler's stall in a new house, and the old ones are 
 fast disappearing. Crispin has risen in the world. 
 He has taken a shop, and ' repairs ladies' and gentle- 
 men's boots and shoes with punctuality and dispatch. 7 
 The term ' stall,' as applied to the board on tres- 
 tles, or supported perchance by a decayed washing- 
 tub, laid out with apples, sweetstuff, or oysters, and 
 presided over by an old Irishwoman with a stringless 
 black bonnet flattened down on a mob-cap, I consider 
 & misnomer. It lacks the idea of exclusive possession 
 which should attach to a stall. The apple, or sweet- 
 stuff, or oyster woman is but a tenant at will. She 
 has no fee simple. She may be harried by the police, 
 
328 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 and petitioned against by churlish shopkeeping neigh- 
 bours, jealous of her poor outdoor traffic. Drunken 
 roysterers may overturn her frail structure ; a reck- 
 less hansom-cab driver may bring her to irretrievable 
 crash and ruin; rival apple -women may compete 
 with her at the opposite street corners ; and passing 
 costermongers, with strong -wheeled barrows, may 
 gird at her, and disparage her wares. 'Tis not a 
 stall, at which she sits, but a stand, a mere thing of 
 tolerance and sufferance: here to-day, and gone to- 
 morrow, if the Proud Man chooses despite fully to 
 use poor Biddy. But once give me sitting-room in 
 a cathedral stall, and, by cock and pye, I will not 
 budge! You may threaten to disestablish and dis- 
 endow me, but I will carry my stall about with me, 
 as old gentlemen at the sea-side carry their camp- 
 stools. And if at last, by means of a measure forced 
 on an Unwilling Nation by ministers more abandoned 
 in their principles, Sir, than Sejanus, Empson, Dud- 
 ley, Polignac, Peyronnet, or the late Sir Eobert Wal- 
 pole, you declare that my Stall must be abolished, you 
 shall Compensate me for its loss at a rate as rich as 
 though I had always had it clamped with gold, and 
 stuffed with bank notes. 
 
WRETCHED VILLE. 
 
 Dunks took to drinking; and as for his matrimonial 
 affairs, the late Sir Cresswell Cresswell was fain to 
 take them in hand; and a pretty case was Dunks 
 versus Dunks, I promise you. Having sold or mort- 
 gaged every ' carcass' he possessed, and undermined 
 his own with strong liquors, Dunks went into the 
 Bankruptcy Court, and soon afterwards died, of a 
 severe attack of rum- and- water, and trade-assignee, 
 on the brain — a wholly ruined and still uncertificated 
 trader. It was a sad end for a man who had once 
 served the office of churchwarden, and driven his 
 own chaise-cart — who had banked with the London 
 and County — and whose brother-in-law's uncle was 
 reputed to be the proprietor of a New-River share; 
 but the mills of the gods grind small, and Dunks, to 
 my thinking, only met in his decadence with his de- 
 serts. When I spoke of c carcasses' just now, I did not 
 intend to imply that Dunks was a wholesale butcher. 
 His carcasses were of bricks and mortar, and of his 
 own making. Dunks was a builder. He took the 
 contract once for the Doleful-hill Lunatic Asylum, 
 by which he did so well — notwithstanding the com- 
 plaints of the architect in respect to the bricks — that 
 
330 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 he was enabled to build a large number of semi- 
 detached villas, and a still larger quantity of c car- 
 casses,' as a speculation of his own. Had he been 
 prudent — had common sense or even common decency 
 been his guide — he might have made a fortune, and 
 be living at this day in his own house at South Ken- 
 sington, six storeys high, and with a belvedere at 
 one end, like the Eddystone lighthouse. His wife 
 might have had a box at the opera in lieu of that sad 
 witness-box at the Divorce Court ; and his sons might 
 be enjoying a college education instead of being (as 
 I know is the case with Tom) a waiter at a chop- 
 house in Pope's-Head-alley, or suffering every kind 
 of hardship and privation (which I am afraid is Phil's 
 mournful lot) as cabin-boy to that well-known dis- 
 ciplinarian, Captain Roper, of the ship Anne and 
 Sarah Cobbum of Great Grimsby. This misguided 
 Dunks might have become rich, respected, and a 
 member of the Metropolitan Board of Works. In- 
 stead of this — flying in the face of his reason and 
 experience, of which he should have had a fair share, 
 seeing that he weighed nearly seventeen stone — he 
 went and built Wretchedville. And then, forsooth, 
 the man wondered that he was Ruined. 
 
 The ground, to begin with, was the very worst 
 in the whole county. It was an ugly, polygonal 
 plot, shelving down from the higher road that leads 
 from Sobbington to Doleful-hill : a clay soil, of course, 
 but in very bad repute for the making of bricks. 
 Indeed the clay did not seem to be fit for anything, 
 
WRETCHEDVILLE. 331 
 
 save to stick to the boot-soles of people who were 
 incautious enough to walk over it. When any rain 
 fell, it remained here for about seven days after the 
 adjoining ground had dried up. Then the clay re- 
 solved itself into a solution of a dark-red colour, and 
 the spot assumed the aspect of a field of gore. When 
 it was not clayey, it was marshy ; and the neighbours 
 had long since christened the place 4 Ague Hole.' 
 Dunks in his frenzy, and with the Yale of Health 
 at Hampstead in his eye, wanted to call it c Pleasant 
 Hollow;' but the ground landlord, or rather landlady, 
 Miss Goole (she went melancholy mad, left half her 
 fortune to the Doleful-hill Asylum, and the will is 
 still the subject of a nice little litigation in Chancery) 
 —Miss Goole, I say, who granted Dunks his building- 
 lease, insisted that the group of tenements he in- 
 tended to erect should be called Wretchedville. Her 
 aunt had been a Miss Wretched, of Ashby-de-la- 
 Zouch. 
 
 And Wretchedville the place remains to this day. 
 Dunks did his best, or rather his worst with it. He 
 proposed to drain the ground; the result of which 
 was, that water made its appearance in places where 
 it had not appeared before. He laid out a declivitous 
 road branching downwards from the highway, and 
 leading nowhere save to the reservoir of the West 
 Howlington Gasworks; and a nice terminus to the 
 vista did this monstrous iron tub make. He spent 
 all his own money, and as much of other people's 
 as he could possibly borrow, on Wretchedville, and 
 
332 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 then, as I have hinted, Bacchus and he became in- 
 separable companions, and he continued to c wreathe 
 the rosy bowl' and c quaff the maddening wine-cup, ? 
 the two ordinarily assuming the guise of rum-and- 
 water, cold, till he woke up one morning in the 
 Messenger's Office in Basinghall- street, waiting for 
 his protection. Swamper, the great buyer -up of 
 carcasses, was a secured creditor, and came into pos- 
 session of Wretchedville ; but Swamper is the world- 
 known contractor, whose dealings with the Bucharest 
 Improvements, and the Herzegovina Baths and Wash- 
 houses Company, have been made lately the subject 
 of such lively public comment. He is generally 
 oscillating between his offices in Great George-street 
 Westminster and the Danubian provinces, and has 
 had little time to attend to Wretchedville. He has 
 been heard to express an opinion that the place — the 
 confounded hole he calls it — will ' turn up trumps' 
 some day; and, indeed, plans for a new county 
 prison, on a remarkably eligible site between Dole- 
 ful-hill and Sobbington, have been hanging up for 
 some time, neatly framed and glazed, in his office. 
 Meanwhile the Wretchedville rents are receivable by 
 Messrs. Flimsy and Quinsy, auctioneers, valuers, and 
 estate agents, of Chancery-lane ; and Swamper's affairs 
 being, as I am given to understand, in somewhat evil 
 trim, it is not unlikely that Wretchedville, ere long, 
 will fall into fresh hands. And I don't envy the man 
 into whose hands it falls. 
 
 How I came to be acquainted with Wretchedville 
 
WRETCHEDVILLE. 333 
 
 was in this wise. I was in quest, last autumn, of a 
 nice quiet place within a convenient distance of town, 
 where I could finish an epic poem — or, stay, was 
 it a five - act drama? — on which I had been long 
 engaged, and where I could be secure from the 
 annoyance of organ-grinders, and of reverend gentle- 
 men leaving little subscription -books one day, and 
 calling for them the next — I should like to know 
 what difference there is between them and the people 
 who leave the packets of steel pens, and the patent 
 lamp-globe protector, and Bullinger's History of the 
 Inquisition, under the special patronage of the Arch- 
 bishop of Tobago, to be continued in monthly parts — 
 together with the people who want your autograph, 
 and others who want money, and things of that kind. 
 I pined for a place where one could be very snug, 
 and where one's friends didn't drop in 'just to look 
 you up, old fellow;' and where the post didn't come 
 in too often. So I packed up a bag of needments, 
 and availing myself of a mid-day train, on the Great 
 Domdaniel Railway, alighted haphazard at a station. 
 It turned out to be Sobbington. I saw at a 
 glance that Sobbington was too fashionable, not to 
 say stuck-up, for me. The Waltz from Faust was 
 pianofortetically audible from at least half-a-dozen 
 semi-detached windows; and this, combined with 
 some painful variations on c Take, then, the Sabre,' 
 and a cursory glance into a stationer's shop and 
 fancy warehouse, where two stern mammas, of low- 
 church aspect, were purchasing the back numbers of 
 
334 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 the New Pugwell-square Pulpit, and three young 
 ladies were telegraphically inquiring, behind their 
 parent's backs, of the young person at the counter, 
 whether any letters had been left for them, sufficed 
 to accelerate my departure from Sobbington. The 
 next station on the road, I was told, was Doleful- 
 hill, and then came Deadwood Junction. I thought 
 I would take a little walk, and see what the open 
 and what the covert yielded. I left my bag with a 
 moody porter at the Sobbington station, and trudged 
 along the road which had been indicated to me as 
 leading to Doleful-hill. It happened to be a very 
 splendid afternoon. There were patches of golden 
 and of purple gorse skirting those parts of the road 
 in which the semi-detached villa eruption had not 
 yet broken out; the distant hills were delicately 
 blue, and the mellow sun was distilling his rays into 
 diamonds and rubies on the roof of a wondrous 
 Palace of Glass, which does duty in these parts, as 
 Vesuvius does duty in Naples, as a Pervading Pre- 
 sence. At Pcrtici and at Torre del Greco, at Sob- 
 bington or at Doleful -hill, turn whithersoever you 
 will, the Mountain seems close upon you always. 
 
 It is true that I was a little dashed, when I en- 
 countered an organ - grinder lugubriously winding 
 4 Slap bang, here we are again!' off his brazen reel, 
 and looking anything but a jolly dog. Organ-grind- 
 ing was contrary to the code I had laid down to 
 govern my retirement. But the autumnal sun shone 
 very genially on this child of the sunny South — who 
 
WRETCHED VILLE. 335 
 
 had possibly come from the bleakest part of Pied- 
 mont — his smile was of the sunniest likewise, and 
 there "was a roguish twinkle in his black eyes, and 
 though his cheeks were brown, his teeth were of the 
 whitest. So, as I gave him pence, I determined in- 
 wardly, that I would tolerate at least one organ- 
 grinder, if he came near where I lived. It is true 
 that I had not the remotest idea of where I was 
 going to live. 
 
 I walked onwards and onwards, admiring the 
 pied cows in the far-off pastures — cows, the white 
 specks on whose hides occurred so artistically, that 
 one might have thought that the scenic arrangement 
 of the landscape had been intrusted to Mr. Birket 
 Foster. 
 
 Anon I saw coming towards me a butcher-boy in 
 his cart, drawn by a fast -trotting pony. It was a 
 light high spring -cart, very natty and shiny, with 
 the names and addresses of the proprietors, Messrs. 
 Hock, butchers to the royal family, West Deadwood 
 — which of the princes or princesses resided at West 
 Deadwood, I wonder? — emblazoned on the panels. 
 The butcher -boy shone, too, with a suety sheen. 
 The joints which formed his cargo were of the hue 
 of which an English girl's cheeks should be — pure 
 red and white. And the good sun shone upon all. 
 The equipage came rattling along at a high trot, the 
 butcher squaring his arms and whistling — I could see 
 him whistle from afar off. I asked him when he 
 neared me, how far it might be to Doleful-hill. 
 
336 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 4 Good two mile/ quoth the butcher-boy, pulling 
 up. 4 Steady, you warmint !' This was to the trotting 
 pony. 'But,' he continued, ' you'll have to pass 
 Wretchedville first. Lays in a 'ole a little to the 
 left, arf a mile on.' 
 
 4 Wretchedville,' thought I; what an odd name! 
 1 What sort of a place is it ?' I inquired. 
 
 'W^ell,' replied the butcher -boy; ' it's a lively 
 place, a werry lively place. I should say it was 
 lively enough to make a cricket burst himself for 
 spite : it's so uncommon lively.' And with this enig- 
 matical deliverance the butcher -boy relapsed into a 
 whistle of the utmost shrillness, and rattled away 
 towards Sobbington. 
 
 I wish that it had not been quite so golden an 
 afternoon. A little dulness, a few clouds in the sky, 
 might have acted as a caveat against Wretchedville. 
 But I plodded on and on, finding all things looking 
 beautiful in that autumn glow. I came positively on 
 a gipsy encampment; blanket tent; donkey tethered 
 to a cart-wheel; brown man in a wideawake, ham- 
 mering at a tin pot; brown woman with a yellow 
 kerchief, sitting crossed-legged, mending brown man's 
 pantaloons; brown little brats of Egypt swarming 
 across the road, and holding out their burnt-sienna 
 hands for largesse, and the regular gipsy's kettle 
 swinging from the crossed sticks over a fire of stolen 
 furze. Farmer Somebody's poultry simmering in the 
 pot, no doubt. Family linen — somebody else's linen 
 yesterday — drying on an adjacent bush. Who says 
 
WRETCHEDVILLE. 337 
 
 that the picturesque is dead? The days of Sir Roger 
 de Coverley had come again. So I went on and on ad- 
 miring, and down the declivitous road into Wretched- 
 ville, and to Destruction. 
 
 Were there any apartments l to let' ? Of course 
 there were. The very first house I came to was, as 
 regards the parlour-window, nearly blocked up by 
 a placard treating of Apartments Furnished. Am I 
 right in describing it as the parlo ur- window ? I 
 scarcely know; for the front door, with which it was 
 on a level, was approached by such a very steep flight 
 of steps, that when you stood on the topmost grade it 
 seemed as though, with a very slight effort, you could 
 have peeped in at the bedroom window, or touched 
 one of the chimney-pots ; while as concerns the base- 
 ment, the front kitchen — I beg pardon, the breakfast 
 parlour — appeared to be a good way above the level 
 of the street. The space in the first-floor window not 
 occupied by the placard, was filled by a monstrous 
 group of wax fruit, the lemons as big as pumpkins, and 
 the leaves of an unnaturally vivid green. The window 
 below — it was a single-windowed front — served merely 
 as a frame for the half-length portrait of a lady in a 
 cap, ringlets, and a colossal cameo brooch. The Eyes 
 of this portrait were fixed upon me; and before, al- 
 most, I had lifted a very small, light knocker, deco- 
 rated, so far as I could make out, with the cast-iron 
 efligy of a desponding ape, and had struck this 
 against a door which, to judge from the amount of 
 percussion produced, was composed of bristol-board 
 
338 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 highly varnished, the portal itself flew open, and the 
 portrait of the basement appeared in the flesh. In- 
 deed, it was the same portrait. Downstairs it had 
 been Mrs. Primpris looking out into the Wretched- 
 ville road for lodgers. Upstairs it was Mrs. Primpris 
 letting her lodgings, and glorying in the act. 
 
 She didn't ask for any references. She didn't 
 hasten to inform me that there were no children, or 
 any other lodgers. She didn't look doubtful, when I 
 told her that the whole of my luggage consisted of a 
 black bag, which I had left at the Sobbington station. 
 She seemed rather pleased than otherwise at the idea 
 of the bag, and said that her Alfred should step round 
 for it. She didn't object to smoking; and she at once 
 invested me with the Order of the Latch-key — a 
 latch-key at Wretchedville, ha ! ha ! She farther held 
 me with her glittering eye, and I listened like a two- 
 years child, while she let me the lodgings for a fort- 
 night certain. Perhaps it was less her eye that dazed 
 me than her cameo, on which there was, in high relief, 
 and on a ground of the hue of a pig's liver, the effigy 
 of a young woman with a straight nose and a round 
 chin, and a quantity of snakes in her hair. I don't 
 think that cameo came from Eome. I think it came 
 from Tottenham-court-road. 
 
 She had converted me into a single gentleman 
 lodger, of quiet and retired habits — or was I a 
 widower of independent means seeking a home in 
 a cheerful family? — so suddenly, that I beheld all 
 things as in a dream. Thinking, perchance, that the 
 
WRETCHED VILLE. 3 3 9 
 
 first stone of that monumental edifice, the Bill, could 
 not be laid too quickly, she immediately provided me 
 with Tea, There was a little cottage-loaf, so hard, 
 round, shiny, and compact, that I experienced a well- 
 nigh uncontrollable desire to fling it up to the ceiling, 
 to ascertain whether it would chip off any portion of 
 a preposterous rosette in stucco in the centre, repre- 
 senting a sunflower, surrounded by cabbage-leaves. 
 This terrible ornament was, by the way, one* of the 
 chief sources of my misery at Wretchedville. I was 
 continually apprehensive that it would tumble down 
 bodily on to the table. In addition to the cottage- 
 loaf, there was a pretentious teapot, which, had it been 
 of sterling silver, would have been worth fifty guineas, 
 but which, in its ghastly gleaming, said plainly c Shef- 
 field' and c imposture.' There was a piece of butter in 
 a fi shape,' like a diminutive haystack, and with a cow 
 sprawling on the top in unctuous plasticity. It was a 
 pallid kind of butter, from which with difficulty you 
 shaved off adipocerous scales, which would not be per- 
 suaded to adhere to the bread, but flew off at tangents, 
 and went rolling about an intolerably large teatray, on 
 whose papier-mache surface was depicted the death of 
 Captain Hedley Yicars. The Crimean sky was inlaid 
 with mother-of-pearl, and the gallant captain's face was 
 highly enriched with blue-and-crimson foil-paper. As 
 for the tea, I don't think I ever tasted such a peculiar 
 mixture. Did you ever sip warm catsup sweetened with 
 borax ? That might have been something like it. And 
 what was that sediment, strongly resembling the sand 
 
340 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 at Great Yarmouth, at the bottom of the cup? 1 sat 
 down to my meal, however, and made as much play 
 with the cottage-loaf as I could. Had the loaf been 
 varnished? It smelt and looked as though it had un- 
 dergone that process. Everything in the house smelt 
 of varnish. I was uncomfortably conscious, too, 
 during my repast — one side of the room being all 
 window — that I was performing the part of a ' Por- 
 trait of the Gentleman in the first floor,' and that 
 as such I was c sitting' to Mrs. Lucknow at Number 
 Twelve, opposite — I know her name was Lucknow, 
 for a brass plate on the door said so — whose own half- 
 length effigy was visible in her breakfast - parlour 
 window, glowering at me reproachfully because I had 
 not taken her first floor, in the window of which was, 
 not a group of wax fruit, but a sham alabaster vase 
 full of artificial flowers. Every window in "Wretched- 
 ville exhibited one or other of these ornaments, 
 and it was from their contemplation that I began to 
 understand, how it was that the 'fancy-goods' trade 
 in the Minories and Houndsditch throve so well. 
 They made things there to be purchased by the 
 housekeepers of Wretchedville. The presence of Mrs. 
 Lucknow at the glass case over the way was becoming 
 unbearable, when the unpleasant vision was shut out 
 by the appearance of Mrs. Primpris's Alfred, who, 
 with his sister Selina, had been sent to Sobbington 
 for my bag. Alfred was a boy with a taste for art. 
 In the daytime he was continually copying the head 
 of a Greek person (sex uncertain) in a helmet, who 
 
WRETCHEDVILLE. 341 
 
 reminded you equally of a hairdresser's dummy in 
 plaster, and of a fireman of the Fire Brigade. He 
 used to bring studies of this person, in white, red, and 
 black chalk, to me, and expect that I would reward 
 him for his proficiency with threepenny-pieces 'to buy 
 india-rubber ;' and then Mrs. Primpris would be sure 
 to be lurking outside the door, and audibly express- 
 ing her wish that some good, kind, gentleman would 
 get Alfred into the Blue-Coat School, which she ap- 
 peared to look upon as a kind of eleemosynary insti- 
 tution in connection with the Royal Academy of Arts. 
 I can't help suspecting, from sundry private conversa- 
 tions I had with Alfred, that he entertained a pro- 
 found detestation for the plaster person in the helmet, 
 and for the Fine Arts generally ; but, as he logically 
 observed, he was c kep at it,' and c it was no use hol- 
 ler in'.' As for his sister Selina, all T can remember of 
 her is that one leg of her tucked calico trousers was 
 always two inches and a half longer than the other, 
 and that for a girl of thirteen she had the most alarm- 
 ingly sharp shoulder-blades I ever saw. I always 
 used to think when I saw these osseous angularities, 
 oscillating like the beams of a marine engine, that 
 the next time her piston-rod-like arms moved, the 
 scapula? must come through her frock. Mrs. Prim- 
 pris was a disciplinarian ; and whenever I heard Se- 
 lina plaintively yelping in the kitchen, I felt tolerably 
 certain that Mrs. Primpris was correcting her on her 
 shoulder-blades with a shoe. 
 
 The shades of evening fell, and Mrs. Primpris 
 
342 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 brought me in a monstrous paraffin lamp, the flame 
 of which wouldn't do anything but lick the glass 
 chimney, till it had smoked it to the hue proper to ob- 
 serve eclipses by, and then splutter into extinction, emit- 
 ting a charnel-house-like odour. After that we tried 
 a couple of composites (six to the pound) in green- 
 glass candlesticks. I asked Mrs. Primpris if she could 
 send me up a book to read ; and she favoured me, per 
 Alfred and Selina, with her whole library, consist- 
 ing of the Asylum Press Almanac for 1860, two odd 
 volumes of the Calcutta Directory; the Brewer and 
 Distiller's Assistant ; Julia de Crespigny, or a Winter 
 in London; Dunoyer's French Idioms ; and the Reve- 
 rend Mr. Huntington's Bank of Faith. I took out my 
 cigar-case after this, and began to smoke ; and then I 
 heard Mrs. Primpris coughing, and a number of doors 
 being thrown wide open. Upon this I concluded that 
 I would go to bed. My sleeping apartment — the first 
 floor back — was a perfect cube. One side was win- 
 dow, overlooking a strip of clay soil hemmed in be- 
 tween brick Avails. There were no tombstones yet, 
 but if it wasn't a cemetery, why, when I opened the 
 window to get rid of the odour of the varnish, did it 
 smell like one ? The opposite side of the cube was 
 composed of a chest of drawers. I am not imperti- 
 nently curious by nature, but, as I was the first-floor 
 lodger, I thought myself entitled to open the top long 
 drawer, with a view to the bestowal therein of the 
 contents of my black bag. The drawer was not 
 empty ; but that which it held made me very nervous. 
 
WRETCHEDVILLE. 343 
 
 I suppose the weird figure I saw stretched out there, 
 with pink arms and legs sprouting from a shroud of 
 silver paper, a quantity of ghastly auburn curls, and 
 two blue glass eyes unnaturally gleaming in the midst 
 of a mask of salmon-coloured wax, was Selina's best 
 doll; the present, perhaps, of her uncle, who was, 
 haply, a Calcutta director, or an Asylum Press Al- 
 manac maker, or a brewer and distiller, or a cashier 
 in the Bank of Faith. I shut the drawer again hur- 
 riedly, and that doll in its silver paper cerecloth 
 haunted me all night. 
 
 The third side of my bedroom consisted of chim- 
 ney — the coldest, hardest, brightest -looking fireplace 
 I ever saw out of Hampton Court Palace guard- 
 room. The fourth side was door. I forget into 
 which corner was hitched a washhand stand. The 
 ceiling was mainly stucco rosette, of the pattern of 
 the one in my sitting-room. Among the crazes which 
 came over me at this time was one, to the effect that 
 this bedroom was a cabin on board ship, and that if 
 the ship should happen to lurch, or roll in the trough 
 of the sea, I must infallibly tumble out of the door, 
 or the window, or into the drawer where the doll was 
 - — unless the drawer and the doll came out to me 
 — or up the chimney. I think that I murmured 
 ' Steady,' as I clomb into bed. My couch — an ' Ara- 
 bian' one Mrs. Primpris said proudly — seemingly 
 consisted of the Logan, or celebrated rocking-stone 
 of Cornwall, loosely covered with bleached canvas, 
 under which was certain loose foreign matter, but 
 
344 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 whether composed of flocculi of wool, or of the halves 
 of kidney potatoes I am not in a position to state. 
 At all events I awoke in the morning veined all 
 over like a scagliola column. I never knew, too, be- 
 fore, that any blankets were ever manufactured in 
 Yorkshire, or elsewhere, so remarkably small and 
 thin as the two seeming flannel pocket-handkerchiefs 
 with blue-and- crimson edging, which formed part of 
 Mrs. Prmxpris's Arabian bed-furniture. Nor had I 
 hitherto been aware, as I was when I lay with that 
 window at my feet, that the Moon was so very large. 
 The orb of night seemed to tumble on me, flat, until 
 I felt as though I were lying in a cold frying-pan. 
 It was a 'watery moon,' I have reason to think; for 
 when I awoke the next morning, much battered with 
 visionary conflicts with the doll, I found that it was 
 raining cats and dogs. ' 
 
 ' The rain,' the poet tells us, ' it raineth every 
 day.' It rained most prosaically all that day at 
 "Wretchedville, and the next, and from Monday morn- 
 ing till Saturday night, and then until the middle of 
 the next week. Dear me ! dear me ! how wretched 
 I was ! I hasten to declare that I have no kind of 
 complaint to make against Mrs. Primpris. Not a flea 
 was felt in her house. The cleanliness of the villa 
 was so scrupulous as to be distressing. It smelt of 
 soap and scrubbing-brush, like a Refuge. Mrs. Prim- 
 pris was strictly'honest, even to the extent of inquir- 
 ing what I would like to have done with the fat of 
 cold mutton-chops, and sending me up antediluvian 
 
WRETCHEDVILLE. 345 
 
 crusts, the remnants of last week's cottage - loaves, 
 with, which I would play moodily at knock-'em- 
 downs, using the pepper-caster as a pin. I have 
 nothing to say against Alfred's fondness for art. 
 India-rubber, to be sure, is apter to smear than to 
 obliterate drawings in chalk ; but a threepenny piece 
 is not much ; and you cannot too early encourage the 
 imitative faculties. And again, if Selina did require 
 correction, I am not prepared to deny that a shoe 
 may be the best implement, and the bladebones the 
 most fitting portion of the human anatomy, for such 
 an exercitation. I merely say that I was wretched 
 at Wretchedville, and that Mrs. Primpris's apart- 
 ments very much aggravated my misery. The usual 
 objections taken to a lodging-house are to the effect 
 that the furniture is dingy, the cooking execrable, 
 the servant a slattern, and the landlady either a cro- 
 codile or a tigress. Now my indictment against my 
 Wretchedville apartments simply amounts to this: 
 that everything was too new. Never were there such 
 staring paper-hangings, such gaudily-printed drug- 
 gets for carpets, such blazing hearthrugs — one repre- 
 senting the Dog of Montargis seizing the murderer 
 of the Forest of Bondy — such gleaming fire-irons, 
 and such remarkably shiny looking-glasses, with gilt 
 halters for frames. The crockery was new, and the 
 glue in the chairs and tables was scarcely dry. The 
 new veneer peeled off the new chiffonier. The rol- 
 ler-blinds to the windows were so new that they 
 wouldn't work. The new stair- carpeting used to 
 
346 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 dazzle my eyes so, that I was always tripping myself 
 up; the new oil- cloth in the hall smelt like the 
 Trinity House repository for new buoys ; and Mrs. 
 Primpris was always full-dressed, cameo brooch and 
 all, by nine o'clock in the morning. She confessed, 
 once or twice during my stay, that her house was 
 not quite ' seasoned.' It was not even seasoned to 
 sound. Every time the kitchen-fire was poked, you 
 heard the sound in the sitting-room. As to per- 
 fumes, whenever the lid of the copper in the wash- 
 house was raised, the first-floor lodger was aware of 
 the fact. I knew, by the simple evidence of my 
 olfactory organs, what Mrs. Primpris had for dinner 
 every day. Pork, accompanied by some green escu- 
 lent, boiled, predominated. 
 
 When my fortnight's tenancy had expired — I 
 never went outside the house until I left it for good 
 — and my epic poem, or whatever it was, had more 
 or less been completed, I returned to London, and 
 had a rare bilious attack. The doctor said it was 
 Painter's Colic ; I said at the time that it was disap- 
 pointed ambition, for the booksellers had looked very 
 ooldly on my poetical proposals; and the managers, 
 to a man, had refused to read my play ; but at this 
 present writing, I believe the sole cause of my malady 
 to have been Wretcheclville. I hope they will pull 
 down the villas, and build the jail there, soon, and 
 that the rascal convicts will be as wretched as I was. 
 
THE HOTEL CHAOS. 
 
 To say that Chaos is come again is a tolerably com- 
 mon locution for expressing an excessive amount of 
 confusion; but there need not be the slightest fear 
 of the return of the Hotel Chaos. It can never come 
 again. It was too rich of its kind, too peculiar, too 
 overwhelming in its characteristics, to bear repetition. 
 Among chaotic things it was unique, and, on the 
 whole, it may be esteemed a matter for congratula- 
 tion that there never could have been by any possi- 
 bility but one Hotel Chaos, and that in all human 
 probability there never will be another. There are 
 limits even to disorder, and the acutest ravings ot 
 mania must have their turn. The Hotel Chaos was 
 the maddest hostelry ever known, or ever dreamt 
 of. It did its work; it reached its consummation; 
 it Burst ; and it can be no more restored to its pris- 
 tine shape than can one of those paper bags which 
 schoolboys innate with their breath until the bags are 
 as plump as a balloon ready to start, and then, with 
 smart concussion from the palms of their hands, rend 
 into irremediable fragments. 
 
 I never enjoyed the felicity of a bed at the Hotel 
 Chaos : which, to have been consistent, should have 
 
348 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 been fitted up, in the way of sleeping accommodation, 
 with padded rooms, frequented by laundresses bring- 
 ing home nothing but strait- waistcoats as clean linen 
 from the wash. A room at the Hotel Chaos ! Bless 
 you, such a thing was an infinity of cuts above me, 
 and was meat for my masters — marshals of France, 
 grand provosts, and similar grandees. I don't think 
 they took in anybody lower in rank than a deputy- 
 assistant commissary -general, and it is not probable 
 that I shall ever attain a grade so exalted. There 
 had been, to be sure, a few modest civilians, despic- 
 able creatures, with not so much as a solitary ribbon 
 of the Legion of Honour among them, who had been 
 fortunate enough to obtain apartments at the Chaos, 
 before the hotel went hopelessly and stark- star ingly 
 mad; and as these contemptible creatures (who were 
 mainly Englishmen) were content topay about seventy- 
 five per cent more for their board and lodging than 
 the grandees were willing to disburse, the landlord— 
 a covetous rogue with but scant patriotism in him — 
 was naturally reluctant to turn these ignoble, but 
 lucrative, customers into the street. Ere long, how- 
 ever, a dashing member of the staff of Field-Marshal 
 Bombastes Furioso was heard to ask the proprietor 
 how long it would be before he put i tout ce tas de 
 pekins a la porte' — before he expelled all those cads 
 of civilians ; and so shortly afterwards the proprietor 
 — really much against the grain, I am willing to be- 
 lieve — began to grow insolent to the civilian cads, 
 and to hint that their rooms were required for ; Mes- 
 
THE HOTEL CHAOS. 349 
 
 sieurs les Militaires ;' that General Fusbos couldn't 
 wait any longer, that Colonel Grosventre must really 
 be accommodated, and that Milord Smith, Count 
 Thompson, and Sir Brown must find lodgings else- 
 where. Smith, Brown, and Thompson, quiet souls, 
 well aware that in war time the toga must cede to 
 the tunic, meekly withdrew from the foul and wretched 
 garrets where for sums varying from ten to fifteen 
 francs a day they had been suffered to hide their 
 degraded heads ; but, although ostracised from the 
 upper rooms, they were by no means free, financially, 
 from the exaction of the Hotel Chaos. It was one of 
 the myriad humours of this bedlamite establishment 
 that your bill, if you didn't stop in the house, had a 
 tendency to grow longer than had been its custom 
 when you did stop. But how was a bill possible at 
 all, you may ask. Thus. The Hotel Chaos was the 
 only place in the maniacal city of Moriah where you 
 could get a decent breakfast or dinner, and where 
 tolerable coffee, liquors, and cigars could be obtained. 
 Moreover, as the chief madmen of Moriah were al- 
 ways congregated at the Chaos, and as, in its salle a 
 manger and its court-yard, all that was notable and 
 worth studying in the way of hallucination, foaming 
 at the mouth, homicidal mania, epilepsy, demoniacal 
 possession, hysteria, melancholia, kleptomania, hypo- 
 chondriasis, dipsomania, and midsummer madness, 
 was sure to be visible and audible at all hours of the 
 day and night; as, within its walls, there was a per- 
 petual narration of tales told by idiots, full of sound 
 
350 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 and fury, signifying nothing; of visions so wild and 
 fantastic, that Ossian read tamely, and Emmanuel 
 'Swedenborg flatly afterwards; and of lies so gran- 
 diose and so impudent that Marco Polo or Sir John 
 Mandeville might have sickened with envy to hear 
 them — you were perforce impelled to make of the 
 Hotel Chaos a common news-room, exchange, and 
 lounge. You breakfasted and dined at the table- 
 d'hote; you smoked and took your demi-tasse, or 
 your seltzer-and-something, on the terrace overlook- 
 ing the court-yard — shaking sometimes in your shoes, 
 miserable civilian cads as you were, at the knowledge 
 of the close propinquity of Marshal Bombastes and 
 General Fusbos, and sometimes of a plumed and em- 
 broidered aide-de-camp of the great Emperor Artax- 
 omines himself. Thus, you i used' the Hotel Chaos, 
 although you had no bed there, and you were always 
 heavily in debt to the waiter. If you wanted to pay 
 him for your dinner, he had no change; and when 
 you had no change — -and nothing to change, per- 
 chance, for ready money was apt to run wofully short 
 in the mad city of Moriah — he was sure to present a 
 bill exhibiting a fabulous back score of breakfasts, 
 dinners, demi-tasses, and petits verres, and impetu- 
 ously demanded payment. If you demurred, he 
 threatened you with the grand provost. He knew 
 you to be a miserable cad of a civilian, only fed upon 
 sufferance, incessantly watched and followed about 
 by the gendarmerie and by police-agents in plain 
 clothes, and he also knew that the propriety of your 
 
THE HOTEL CHAOS. 35 r 
 
 expulsion altogether from Mori ah was debated every 
 day by some of the grandees in cocked hats and 
 epaulettes. The best thing to do was to conciliate 
 the waiter with humble and obsequious phrases, and, 
 giving him silver money for himself, promise to pay 
 the bill — usually a mere schedule of fictitious items — 
 that afternoon. Under those circumstances you were 
 tolerably safe ; for in five minutes the head-waiter 
 usually forgot all about you. He had dunned some- 
 body else successfully, or the still small voice of con- 
 science had deterred him from making another attempt 
 to fleece you ; or — which is the likeliest hypothesis of 
 all — his intermittent fit of madness had come on, and 
 he had gone up-stairs to tear his hair, and claw his 
 flesh, and gnaw the bedclothes, and howl till he was 
 hoarse, according to the afternoon custom of the men 
 of Moriah. 
 
 Moriah, I may take occasion to observe, lest I 
 should get benighted in the maze of allegory, was, in 
 sane parlance, the fortified city of Metz, the head- 
 quarters, at the end of the month of July 1870, of the 
 Army of the Ehine, of the Imperial Guard of France, 
 and of the Emperor Napoleon the Third, who, with 
 his young son, the Prince Imperial, his cousin, Prince 
 Napoleon, a brilliant staff, and a sumptuous follow- 
 ing, were lodged at the Hotel of the Prefecture. 
 Marshals Le Bceuf and Bazaine, General de Saint 
 Sauveur (the grand provost), General Soleil, com- 
 manding the artillery of the Guards, and a glitter- 
 ing mob of generals, colonels, and aides-de-camp of 
 
352 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 the Guards, the staff, and the line, were at the Hotel 
 Chaos. 
 
 But, be it borne in mind that, when I speak of the 
 Chaotic Inn, my statement must be taken with a slight 
 reservation or allowance. You may be horror-stricken 
 at the confession that there were two Hotels Chaos in 
 Metz, and that, to this day, I cannot remember with 
 exactitude which was which. They were in the same 
 street, the Grande Eue Colneyhatchi, I think, exactly 
 opposite one another: each with a court-yard, each 
 with a terrace, each with head- waiters, who presented 
 you with extortionate bills, each full of marshals, 
 generals, colonels, and aides-de-camp : in fact, as like 
 unto one another as two peas, or the two Dromios, 
 or Hippocrates' Twins. One, I am inclined to think 
 — but Reason totters on her throne — was called the 
 Grand Hotel de Metz. The other — -but my brain 
 burns with volcanic fierceness when I strive to recall 
 it — was known as the Grand Hotel de 1' Europe. It 
 is my firm conviction that, for the major portion of 
 the edibles and potables I consumed at the Grand 
 Hotel de Metz, I paid the waiter at the Grand Hotel 
 de l'Europe, and vice versa. It did not matter much, 
 then, for there was a solidarity of insanity between 
 them, and both were integral parts — if any integrity 
 could be in that which was normally and essentially 
 disintegration — of the Hotel Chaos. It matters less 
 now; since, for aught we know, both hotels have 
 been burnt to the ground, or shattered by bomb- 
 shells, and nothing remains within the huge earth- 
 
THE HOTEL CHAOS. 353 
 
 works of Metz but charred beams and crumbling 
 brickwork, and dust and ashes. Perhaps the head- 
 waiters at the two caravansaries — I have heard that 
 a fierce mutual hatred existed between them— have 
 eaten one another. 
 
 Let me strive to embody some fleeting memories 
 of that demented time. There is breakfast. We that 
 were English in Metz, a feeble folk, continuously- 
 snubbed by the military authorities, and harassed by 
 the police, and pursuing an arduous vocation under 
 all manner of slights, discouragement, and obstacles, 
 usually made a rendezvous to breakfast together at 
 the same time — about half-past ten. There was canny 
 Mr. M'Inkhorn, from the Land o' Cakes, special cor- 
 respondent of the ' Bannockburn Journal and Peck 
 o' Maut Advertiser/ who, in the performance of his 
 duties as a war-scribe, was chronically perturbed in 
 mind by the thought that he had left unfinished in 
 North Britain a series of statistical articles on the 
 Sanitary Condition of Glen M'Whisky. There was 
 Mr. Mercutio, once gallant and gay, now elderly and 
 portly, who was called Philosopher Mercutio in early 
 life, and wrote that celebrated work on the Rationale 
 of the Categorical Imperative as correlative to the 
 Everlasting Afiirmation of Negation, and who now 
 laughed, and gossiped, and drank kirschwasser all 
 day long, and wrote war-letters to a High Tory even- 
 ing paper all night. He had brought his son with 
 him, an ingenuous youth, in a gray tweed suit, who 
 was his sire's guide, philosopher, and friend; con- 
 
 AA 
 
354 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 trolled him gently in the matter of kirschwasser, was 
 the profoundest cynic and the shrewdest observer for 
 his age I ever met with, and who otherwise, from 
 sunrise to sunset, did nothing with an assiduity which 
 was perfectly astonishing. There was mild-eyed Mr. 
 Sumph, of Balliol, who indited those fiery letters from 
 Abyssinia during the campaign, and had a special 
 faculty while in Metz for getting arrested as a Prus- 
 sian spy. There were a brace of quiet, harmless, 
 industrious artists belonging to English illustrated 
 newspapers, pilgrims of the pencil, who had wandered, 
 in discharge of their functions, to the Crimea, to Italy, 
 to India, to China, to the Isthmus of Suez, and to the 
 banks of the Chickahominy, and who were now, in 
 fear and trembling, making notes in their sketch-books 
 of the most salient madnesses of Metz susceptible of 
 pictorial treatment. And especially there was Mr. 
 O'Goggerdan of the 'Avalanche,' a small man, but of 
 a most heroic stomach, and of venturesomeness as- 
 tounding. He had been, they said, a colonel of Ame- 
 rican Federal cavalry, a Confederate bushwhacker, a 
 Mexican guerillero, a Spanish contrabandista, a Gari- 
 baldino, one of the Milia di Marsala of course, a Fenian 
 centre, and a Pontifical Zouave. He was Dugald 
 Dalgetty combined with Luca Fa Presto ; doubling 
 the rapier of the practised swordsman with the pen 
 of the ready-writer. A wind blowing from Fleet- 
 street, London, had brought these strangely-assorted 
 people together: the philosopher the elder, the Ox- 
 ford fellow, the painter, the soldier of fortune, were 
 
THE HOTEL CHAOS. 355 
 
 all bent on achieving the same task, and^were all oc- 
 casionally partakers of that misery which makes us 
 acquainted with such very strange bedfellows. 
 
 When the customary salutations of the morning 
 were over, when we had inquired whether any of our 
 number had been arrested as spies during the pre- 
 ceding evening, and when we had striven to ascertain 
 whether there were any news from the front — it was 
 just after Saarbrtick — and when we had, as usual, 
 been baffled in our attempt, we fell to discussing a 
 very substantial breakfast a la fonrchette, to which 
 dropped in, between eleven and noon, group after 
 group of artists in the great drama, of which the first 
 scene had, as yet, been but ill played. It is possible 
 that I may be rather understating than overstating 
 the fact, when I assume that three-fourths of the 
 French people we used to meet every morning at 
 breakfast, and who, as a rule, treated us with infinite 
 scorn and contumely — it is true that as civilian cads 
 we had no business there, and should have been hid- 
 ing our heads in squalid auberges suited to our degree 
 — are by this time dead and buried, or scattered to 
 the four winds of heaven ; in exile, in captivity, or in 
 other ruinous and irremediable dispersion.* Of the 
 mere bald aspects and trite humours of a French gar- 
 rison town, with which most of us who have made 
 even a week's trip to the Continent must be familiar, 
 I should be ashamed to treat ; and Metz in ordinary 
 times had been, I doubt it not, as dull and trite a 
 
 * This paper was written in November 1870. 
 
356 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 place as its hundred and one congeners among French 
 garrisons. A great deal of drumming and a great 
 deal of bugling ; much swaggering about streets and 
 leering under feminine bonnets on the part of portly 
 captains and wasp-waisted lieutenants, and of shift- 
 lessly dawdling and futile pavement beating on the 
 part of gaby-faced soldiers, not over clean, and with 
 an inch and a half of coarse cotton shirt visible between 
 the hem of their undress jackets and the waistband 
 of their red pantaloons ; much moustache twisting, 
 tin-canful of soup carrying, absinthe tippling, and 
 halfpenny cigar smoking : these were the most salient 
 features of French military life, and they were as well 
 known to the majority of educated Englishmen as 
 the manners and customs of the metropolitan police. 
 But when Metz went mad with the war fever early in 
 August 1870, her military guise underwent a devel- 
 opment so extensive and so exceptional, that the 
 spectator of many strange scenes in many strange 
 countries may be warranted in sketching the things 
 he saw without being open to the charge of telling a 
 thrice-told tale. To our breakfast-table at the Hotel 
 Chaos came officers — few of them below ihe rank of 
 captain — from every branch of the French military 
 service. The Imperial Guard were the most numer- 
 ously represented; for at Metz were the imperial 
 head-quarters, and the Cent Gardes mounted sentry 
 at the Prefecture. Their lieutenant did not conde- 
 scend to breakfast with us ; but he frequently deigned 
 to take coffee and kirsch on the terrace. I see him 
 
THE HOTEL CHAOS. 357 
 
 now, a sky-blue giant — I mean that his tunic was sky- 
 blue — with a fat, foolish face. For the rest he was 
 all epaulettes, and jack -boots, and buckskins, and 
 aiguillettes, and buttons, and sword and sash, and 
 splendour generally. I used to reckon him up, and 
 calculate that at the lowest valuation he could not be 
 bought, as he stood, for less than a hundred and fifty 
 pounds. His boots alone must have been worth three 
 pounds ten. I used, I own, to envy him. To what 
 surprising stroke of good luck did he owe his com- 
 mission in the cream of the Praetorians; in the Golden 
 Guard of Caesar ? Had he been born to greatness ? 
 had he achieved it ? or had greatness been thrust 
 upon him in consequence of his breadth of chest and 
 length of limb ? What a position ! Here was a fortu- 
 nate youth, obviously not more than five-and-twenty 
 years of age, who was privileged to mount guard on 
 Caesar's staircase, and before the curtains of the al- 
 coves of the empress. He had been at all the grand 
 Tuileries balls, at the state ceremonies in the Great 
 Hall of the Louvre, at the imperial hunts at Fontaine- 
 bleau and Compiegne. The faces of half the kings in 
 Europe must have been familiar to him ; and as for 
 princes, princesses, senators, members of the Institute 
 and Grands Croix of the Legion of Honour, they must 
 have been to his sated vision the smallest of small deer. 
 Yet here was this ambrosial creature — this happy 
 combination of the Apollo Belvedere and Shaw the 
 Life Guardsman— for I am sure that he was as brave 
 as he was beautiful — sipping his coffee and kirsch, 
 
358 UNDER THE SUX. 
 
 and smoking his cigar, as though he had been an or- 
 dinary mortal. And — no ; my olfactory nerves did 
 not deceive me : the cigar was a halfpenny one, a 
 veritable Petit Bordeaux of the Kegie. What has 
 become of that gay and gallant Colossus by this time? 
 It is some satisfaction to have the conviction that his 
 corpse is not entombed in some dreadful trench in 
 the blood-drenched fields of Alsace or Lorraine, for 
 the Cent Gardes did not fight. After Sedan, the 
 corps being abolished by a hard-hearted republican 
 government, these sumptuous but expensive Jani- 
 saries retired into private life. By the way, what 
 became of the real Turkish Janisaries ? They were 
 not all massacred by the Sultan Mahmoud ; some few 
 escaped. What became of those Mamelukes who were 
 not cut to pieces by the troops of Mehemet Ali ? 
 What would become of our Beefeaters, if a cruel 
 House of Commons declined to vote the miscellaneous 
 estimate necessary for their support? What becomes 
 of the supernumeraries when the Italian Opera-house 
 closes — the men with the large flat faces, sphinx-like 
 in their impassibility, the large hands, the larger feet, 
 and the legs on which the c tights' are always in loose 
 wrinkles, and which are frequently bandy ? There is 
 a strange faculty of absorption and ingulfment in 
 life. There are whole races of people who seem to 
 4 duck under,' as it were, and remain quietly and com- 
 fortably submarine, while the great ocean overhead 
 moans and struggles, or is lashed to frenzy in infinite 
 surges. Some of these days, perchance, I sball meet a 
 
THE HOTEL CHAOS. 359 
 
 marker at billiards, or a c putter-up' in a bowling alley, 
 an assistant at a hairdresser's, or a model in a life 
 school, who may casually mention the fact that once 
 upon a time he was a Cent Garde. Why not ? I met 
 a Knight of Malta in Spain, who was travelling in 
 dry sherries ; and I have heard of an ex-Dominican 
 monk who at present follows the lively profession of 
 clown to a circus. I have been aware of a baronet 
 who earned his living as a photographer, and an un- 
 frocked archdeacon who sold corn and coals on com- 
 mission. 
 
 They say that in the Prussian army every com- 
 missioned officer below the rank of major is bound 
 to perform every day, in addition to his military 
 duties, and ere ever he can think of recreation, a 
 given task of serious study, precisely as though he 
 w T ere a schoolboy. He must draw some map, plan, 
 or elevation, solve some problem in military mathe- 
 matics, make an abridgment or an analysis of a por- 
 tion of some technical work, or write some c theme ' 
 upon a given subject — say the causes of the Seven 
 Years' War, the commissariat system of the Tenth 
 Legion, or the amount of historical truth in the 
 story of the battle of the Lake Kegillus, To the 
 enforcement of such an unbending course of mental 
 as well as physical discipline the Prussian army may 
 owe no inconsiderable portion of the success which 
 has lately attended its operations in the field. Look- 
 ing back upon the Hotel Chaos, and the huge camp 
 of which it was the centre, I cannot help thinking 
 
360 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 that a little daily schooling after the Prussian manner 
 would have done the paladins of Gaul an immensity 
 of good. An hour's history, an hour's geography, 
 an hour's mathematics a day would have been scarcely 
 felt by the multitude of officers who, their slight 
 regimental duties at an end, were privileged, or 
 rather condemned, for the remainder of the twenty- 
 four hours, to do nothing but eat, drink, smoke, 
 dawdle about the courtyard and the streets, and 
 babble. Of female society, to refine or to amuse 
 them, there was none, for the burgesses of Metz, a 
 prudent race, so soon as ever the vanguard of the 
 Grand Army appeared in sight, had locked up all 
 their daughters, and seemingly sent all their pretty 
 servant-maids home to their mothers. With a bright 
 exception or two, the womanhood of Metz were about 
 as engaging in aspect as Sycorax, mother of Caliban. 
 There was a large and handsome theatre; but the 
 company had been dispersed, and old ladies and little 
 schoolgirls sat in the stalls and on the stage all day 
 long scraping lint. The two billiard- tables in the 
 place had speedily collapsed. Of one, the Third 
 Chasseurs cut the cloth with their cues, and de- 
 clining to pay for the damage, the proprietor closed 
 the entire concern in a huff. I think some of the 
 tables must have been let out as beds ; at all events, 
 the sound of the clicking of balls grew fainter every 
 day, while that of babbling grew louder. It was the 
 babbling that drove the Grand Army mad. It was 
 the infinite babble that brought about Chaos. Of 
 
THE HOTEL CHAOS. 361 
 
 golden silence there was none ; of silvery speech lit- 
 tle. It was the age of bronze and brass swagger and 
 braggadocio, mouthed by copper captains and smock- 
 faced sous-lieutenants, who, but a fortnight before, 
 had been schoolboys at St. Cyr. It would have been 
 better for them to be at school . still. Poor lads, I 
 see them now, with their brand-new uniforms, which 
 they were never tired of admiring when they could 
 get near a mirror ; the fresh lace glittering on collar 
 and cuffs; the buttons scarce freed from the tissue- 
 paper in which they had been wrapped; the first 
 sheen upon the sword- scabbard ; the varnish hardly 
 dry on the belts, and in their bright boyish eyes the 
 first exultation born of independence, of the con- 
 sciousness of being men — of the rapture of the com- 
 ing strife. Poor lads ! poor lads ! I hear their loose 
 and idle talk, their vain boastings, their complacent 
 disparagement of the Prussians, ' mangeurs de chou- 
 croute,' forsooth, whom they were going to c eat' 
 without pepper or salt. One might have fancied 
 Maffio Orsini and the rest gaily defying Donna 
 Lucrezia at Venice. But what said that Borgia 
 woman in the end? ' You gave me a ball at Venice; 
 I return it by a supper at Ferrara;' and then the 
 lugubrious chant arose, Nisi Dominus aedificat Do- 
 mum, and the seven monks with the seven coffins 
 appeared in the doorway of the brilliant banqueting- 
 chamber. The answer to the defiance at Metz was 
 at Wissembourg, at Woerth, and in the bloody 
 shambles below Sedan. When I think upon these 
 
362 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 lads now, it is as though I had been down to a 
 charnel-house, and lived among corpses; and were I 
 to meet one of the babblers of the Hotel Chaos in 
 the street, I should take him for a ghost. 
 
 Babbling, continual babbling, made the warriors 
 dry ; and it is not libellous, I trust, to hint that the 
 army at Metz, ere the first tidings of discomfiture 
 came, had grown to be — for Frenchmen, who in old 
 times had a repute for temperance — a drunken army. 
 Absinthe, kirsch, and cognac tippling went on all day 
 and nearly all night at the Chaos, and the dissipation 
 engendered by sheer idleness among the officers was 
 not slow to spread among the rank and file, who, in 
 their cups, not only babbled, but brawled. For the 
 rest, there was Chaos outside as well as inside the 
 hotels. The tradespeople of the town were doing a 
 roaring business. Wholesale traders could sell as 
 much meat, flower, wine, and forage to the govern- 
 ment as ever they could supply; and retail vendors 
 could scarcely keep pace with the demand for flannel 
 shirts, potted meats, sardines, sausages, razors, and 
 other cutlery ; railway - rugs, mattresses, canteens, 
 pipes, cigar-cases, and other camp luxuries and cam- 
 paigning comforts. The officers had all received 
 their 4 entree en campagne' — a donation of so many 
 hundred francs, allotted at the commencement of war 
 — and were never tired of shopping. They bought 
 everything, except books. The courtyard of the 
 Chaos used to be littered with packing-cases, kegs, 
 sacks, packages, and tin cans, the private stores of 
 
THE HOTEL CHAOS. 363 
 
 the Grand Arm}'. Vividly do I remember a most 
 dashing turn-out belonging to General Soleil, of the 
 artillery — a break, with the general's name and titles 
 conspicuously painted on it, and which was as hand- 
 some as ever paint and varnish, wheels of a bright scar- 
 let, electro-silvered lamps and fittings, could make it. 
 Every afternoon the general, with a select party of 
 epauletted and decorated friends, used to take a 
 drive about the town in this imposing vehicle, to 
 which were attached four splendid gray Percheron 
 horses, with harness of untanned leather. And then, 
 a change of head-quarters being imminent, the break 
 took in cargo for active service. Truffled goose-liver 
 pies from Strasbourg, andouillettes from Troyes, pigs' 
 feet from Sainte Menehould, green chartreuse and 
 dry curagoa, fine champagne cognac, Huntley and 
 Palmer's biscuits, Allsopp's pale ale — the capacity of 
 the break had stomach for all these goodies, to say 
 nothing of boxes of cigars in such numbers, that, as 
 you passed the break, you caught ambrosial whiffs, 
 reminding you equally of the cedars of Lebanon and 
 Mr. Carrera's tobacco-shop. I wonder who ate and 
 drank all these dainties? Prince Frederick Charles, 
 Bismark the omnivorous, or Hans Gobbell, full piivate 
 in the Uhlans ? 
 
 And so they went on in their madness, growing* 
 madder every day, and doing scarcely anything, as 
 it subsequently turned out, to put the Grand Army 
 in real fighting trim. The noise and hubbub, the 
 babbling and boasting of the Chaos, became at last 
 
364 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 so intolerable, that I was fain to wander away, far 
 from the revellers, far from the great Carnival of 
 Insanity — down by the river banks, anywhere out of 
 Bedlam, where there was some stillness and peace. 
 Very often, late at night, I have crossed the bridge, 
 and paced the broad esplanade before the Prefecture. 
 A great silken banner floated over the roof; two vol- 
 tigeurs of the guard stood sentry by the gateway. 
 From time to time dusty couriers would gallop up 
 to the portals. Dragoon horses were picketed to the 
 railings ; and officers and orderlies would emerge, and 
 mount, and spur away in hottest haste. Caesar was 
 there, Caesar and the chiefs of the legions. Mine eyes 
 were wont to sweep the long lines of windows, and 
 wonder which of the brilliantly-lit rooms could be his. 
 That upper chamber, perhaps, where the light burned 
 so steadily and so late. There, I thought, at least 
 were sanity, sagacity, foresight, and a wise prescience 
 of possible disaster. In that upper chamber was the 
 cold, calm, long-headed, imperturbable man who, 
 nineteen years before, on the night when he made 
 that coup d'etat which gave him an empire, had sat 
 with his feet on the fender in his room at the Elysee, 
 slowly puffing his cigarette, and to all the remon- 
 strances and the objections of the timid and the half- 
 hearted, gave for answer, c Let my orders be exe- 
 cuted!' Nineteen years ago! It seemed but yester- 
 day since I had stood in the Faubourg St. Honore, 
 looking at the brightly illumined windows of the 
 Elysee, and wondering which was the room of Louis 
 
THE HOTEL CHAOS. 365 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte. He was the same man, no 
 doubt, now, at Metz, as in the days when he put 
 down liberty, equality, and fraternity by means of 
 musketry — the same cold, calm, resolute Thinker and 
 Doer, who wanted only his 'orders executed.' I had 
 seen him twice at the railway- station, and in the 
 cathedral of Metz. He was not, they said, in very 
 good health, and walked feebly. But he had always* 
 been somewhat shaky as regards the lower limbs. 
 The mind was still of crystal, the will of iron, no 
 doubt. 
 
 Error, delusion; and that which may be termed 
 the deadest of sells generally! There must have been 
 ten thousand times more Chaos, more hallucination, 
 delusion, and delirium in that room at the Prefecture 
 in August 1870 than at the Hotel Chaos itself. Now 
 the Prussians have got into Metz, I may pay another 
 visit to the mad city and the madder hotels. But I 
 shall go in disguise, with green spectacles and a false 
 nose ; for Metz must be in a frightful state of im- 
 pecuniosity by this time, and, pricked by the javelins 
 of scarcity, the waiters may make such fearful de- 
 mands on me for bygone — and fictitious — scores, 
 that a life's earnings might not suffice to discharge 
 the prodigious bill. They would expect me to pay 
 the debts of the dead ; and how many of the lunatics 
 who babbled in the courtyard must be by this time 
 cold and silent ! 
 
THE IDLE LAKE. 
 
 He who is acquainted with the Idle Lake should be 
 thoroughly versed in the topography of mythical 
 localities — should be familiar with the Bower of Bliss, 
 the House of Fame, and the Cave of Despair ; with 
 Doubting Castle, Vanity Fair, and the Valley of the 
 Shadow; with the Debatable Land and the Islands 
 of the Blest ; with Armida's Garden, and that fear- 
 fully beautiful Arbour of Proserpine, where nothing 
 but that which was noxious grew. All these legen- 
 dary regions should strengthen in the beholder the 
 love and wonderment which, as a confirmed lotus- 
 eater, an inveterate truant, and an incomgible slug- 
 gard, he should feel for the Idle Lake. 
 
 It is situated — anywhere ; and why not in Fairy- 
 land ? Why should I not chronicle its bearings thus ? 
 Once upon a time, a certain Sir Cymochles, a mailed 
 knight certainly, who had the privilege of the entree 
 .at Arthur's Court on levee days, whatever the privi- 
 lege of the entree mav mean, but otherwise of no 
 
 'O 
 
 may 
 
 very bright repute, was wandering up and down 
 ' miscellaneously' (a common practice in Faery), ac- 
 companied by one Atin, a person of unquestionably 
 bad character, and in quest of another chivalrous 
 
THE IDLE LAKE. 367 
 
 person. Light Sir Guyon, with, the wicked intent 
 him to kill and slay. Sir Cymochles, on this feloni- 
 ous errand bent, chanced to come to a river, and, 
 moored by the bank thereof, what should he discern 
 but a little c gondelay,' or gondola, spick and span, 
 shining like a new pin, and so trimly bedecked with 
 boughs and cunningly woven arbours, that the tiny 
 cabin at the stern looked like a floating forest. In 
 this delightful wherry there sat a lady fair to see, 
 gaily dressed, and with a quantity of wild flowers in 
 her hair. She was seemingly of a frivolous and irre- 
 verent temperament, and (the legends say) sat in 
 the gondola grinning like a Cheshire cat. When she 
 ceased to grin, she giggled, or hummed a refrain from 
 some idle ditty. Now Sir Cymochles was desirous 
 of passing to the other side of the river, and he asked 
 the giggling lady if she would give him a cast across. 
 Said the lady tittering, 4 As welcome, Sir Knight, as 
 the flowers in May;' but she was not so ready to 
 oblige Atin : stoutly, indeed, refusing him boat-room. 
 Possibly she doubted his capacity to trim the boat 
 properly; or haply she thought that he could not 
 pay the ferry fee. So Atin was, like Lord Ullin in 
 the ballad, ' left lamenting' on the shore, and Sir 
 Cymochles, with the grinning lady, went on a rare 
 cruise. Away slid the shallow ship, ' more swift 
 than swallows skim the liquid sky ;' but the behaviour 
 of the merry mariner on the voyage was, I regret to 
 say, most improper. She possessed a whole store- 
 house of droll anecdotes, and while she told them she 
 
3 68 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 laughed till the tears rolled clown her pretty naughty 
 face. It is certain that she ' chaffed' Sir Cymochies, 
 and I am very much afraid that she tickled him; 
 but he was rather pleased than otherwise with 4 her 
 light behaviour and loose dalliance. ' Her name, she 
 said, was Phaedria. The inland sea, from which the 
 river ran, and on whose bosom the gondelay was 
 floating, was named, she remarked, the Idle Lake. 
 
 How the pair came at last to an island, waste and 
 void, that floated in the midst of that great lake ; 
 how the laughing lady conducted the bemused knight 
 to a chosen plot of fertile land, c amongst wide oases 
 set, like a little nest ;' how in that painted oasis there 
 was c no tree whose branches did not bravely spring, 
 no branch on which a fine bird did not sit;' how she 
 fed his eyes and senses with false delights ; how she 
 led him to a shady vale, and laid him down on a 
 grassy plain ;^how he — 0, idiotic knight! — took off 
 his helmet, and laid his disarmed head in her lap; 
 how she, as he sunk into slumber, lulled him with a 
 wondrously beautiful love lay, in which she sang of 
 ' the lily, lady of the flow ring field,' and of ' the fleur 
 de lys, her lovely paramour ;' how, subsequently, 
 steeping with strong narcotics the eyelids of that 
 bamboozled knight, she left him snoring, and hied 
 her to her gondelay again: and how eventually she, 
 plying at the Wapping Old Stairs of Faery, like a 
 jolly, wicked young water- woman as she was, picked 
 up Sir Guyon, and him inveigled to the Idle Island 
 in that Idle Lake; and how there was a terrific 
 
THE IDLE LAKE. 369 
 
 broadsword combat of two about that ' ladye debon- 
 naire' — are not all these things written in the chro- 
 nicle of the land which never was — in the Faerie 
 Queene of Edmund Spenser ? If you be wise, you 
 will take the marvellous poem with you as your only 
 travelling companion the next time you journey to 
 the Idle Lake. 
 
 I am not habitually idle. I cannot afford it. 
 Highly as 1 appreciate the delight of doing nothing, 
 of lying in bed and being fed with a spoon, or of 
 eating peaches from the wall with my hands in my 
 pockets, like Thomson, I am yet constrained, as a 
 rule, to work for a certain number of hours in the 
 course of every day or night, in order to obtain a 
 certain quantity of household bread. I have been 
 wandering these many years past in a wilderness of 
 work, not unrelieved, however, by occasional oases. 
 I remember them all, and dwell on the remembrance 
 of them with infinite delight; even as that stolid 
 wretch in hodden gray, tramping the treadmill's in- 
 tolerable stairs, may dwell upon that soft and happy 
 Sybarite time he passed after he was so lucky as to 
 find the gentleman's gold watch and chain in the 
 gentleman's pocket, and before he was c wanted' by 
 the myrmidons of a justice which would take no 
 denial, and stigmatised his treasure trove as plunder, 
 and his lucky find as an act of larceny. A jovial 
 time he had: all tripe and dominoes, and shag to- 
 bacco, and warm ale. It was an oasis in his desert 
 life of walking about in search of something to steal ; 
 
 BB 
 
37 o UNDER THE SUN 
 
 and although there are poets and philosophers who 
 maintain that the memory of happier days is a sor- 
 row's crown of sorrow, I have always been of a con- 
 trary opinion ; holding that, as hope springs eternal 
 in the human breast, a man is seldom so miserable 
 but that, if he has been already happy, he cherishes 
 the aspiration of being happy again. He may be con- 
 juring up visions of future tripe and warm ale, more 
 succulent and more stimulating than ' ever : that 
 tramping man in hodden gray. 
 
 I am mindful of an oasis in Hampshire, and of one 
 in Surrey ; of a lotus-garden (where I over-ate myself 
 once) in an island in the Adriatic, and of a Valley of 
 Poppies in North Africa. I know a bank in Anda- 
 lusia on which I have reclined, pleasantly yawning, 
 and drawing idle diagrams with my walking-stick in 
 the sands of time at my feet. I know a cascade, far, 
 far up in the mountains of Mexico, among the silver 
 mines, the silvery plashing of whose down-come rings 
 in the ear of my soul now, drowning the actual and 
 prosaic lapping of the water 'coming in' at Number 
 Nine, next door. I am braced up tight between the 
 shafts, blinkers block my eyes, and a cruel bit chafes 
 my mouth, while those tearing wheels behind me seem 
 pressing on my heels, and ever and anon the smack- 
 ing whip of the driver scathes my sides ; but do you 
 think I forget the paddock in which I kicked up my 
 heels, or resting my nose on the top of the fence, 
 calmly contemplated the hacks on the highway, 
 bridled and bitted, pursued by wheels, and quivering 
 
THE IDLE LAKE. 371 
 
 under the whipcord ? Do you think that I forget the 
 Idle Lake? 
 
 I had been to the wars when I came upon it. It 
 was an ugly war in which I was concerned, a desul- 
 tory, unsatisfactory, semi-guerilla warfare, in the 
 Italian Tyrol. Our commander was a famous Hero, 
 but his troops were, to use the American expression, 
 'a little mixed,' and I am afraid that in several of the 
 encounters in which we were engaged we ran away. 
 We got scarcely anything to eat, and we slept more 
 frequently in the open air than under a roof. It was 
 a campaign performed by snatches, and interspersed 
 with armistices; and now and again I used to come 
 down out of the mountains, ragged, dirty, hungry, 
 demoralised, and ' exceeding fierce,' and journey to 
 Milan for letters, money, and clean linen, to have a 
 warm bath, and enjoy a little civilisation. I am afraid 
 that the guests at the Hotel Cavour, in the capital of 
 Lombarcly, formed anything but a favourable opinion 
 of my manners; still, if I did nearly swallow my 
 spoon as well as my soup, and occasionally seize a 
 mutton cutlet by the shank, and gnaw it wolfishly, 
 where was the harm? It was so Ions: since I had 
 had a decent dinner ; nor did I know, when I got 
 back to the mountains, when I might get another. 
 
 It was on one of these expeditions to Milan that 
 Eugenius Mildman and I struck up a friendship. He 
 was as mild as his name ; a beaming, pious, gush- 
 ing, amiable creature, as innocent as a lamb, as brave 
 as a lion — I marked his conduct once in a battle, from 
 
372 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 which, with the prudence of a non-combatant camp- 
 follower, I timeously retreated — and as affectionate 
 as a young gazelle. I wish they would keep such 
 exemplary Englishmen as Mildman's race in Eng- 
 land ; but the good fellows have a strange fancy for 
 wasting their sweetness on the desert air of foreign 
 countries ; they do good at Florence, and blush to 
 find it fame at Malaga ; they act the part of the Man 
 of Ross in Norway, and their right hand knoweth not 
 what their left hand doeth at Smyrna ; they enrich 
 Thebes and beautify Tadmor in the Wilderness ; and, 
 with deplorable frequency, and in the prime of life, 
 they die of low fever at Damascus. Mildman was just 
 the kind of charitable soul to die at Damascus, uni- 
 versally regretted, yet with a life wasted, somehow, in 
 good deeds, done at the wrong time, in the wrong 
 place, for the benefit of the wrong kind of people. He 
 was beautifully purposeless when I met him ; was un- 
 decided as to whether he should publish a series of 
 translations from the Sarmatian anthology, in aid of 
 the Polish emigration, or raise a loan in furtherance 
 of public (denominational) education in the republic 
 of Guatimozin. Meanwhile he had been fighting a 
 little with Garibaldi. I need scarcely add that he 
 was a spiritualist and a homceopathist, and that he 
 occasionally spoke, not in the strongest terms of cen- 
 sure, of the community of Oneida Creek, the Aga- 
 pemone, the followers of Johanna Southcote, and the 
 Unknown Tongues. It was a toss up, I used to warn 
 Mildman, between La Trappe and Colney Hatch for 
 
THE IDLE LAKE. 373 
 
 him. 'Do something practical,' I used to say to 
 Mildman. 'Pay a premium to a stockbroker, and 
 spend a year in his office. Article yourself to a 
 sharp solicitor. Enlist in the Sappers and Miners. 
 You have plenty of money : take chambers in St. 
 James's, and discount bills at sixty per cent. Make 
 a voyage to Pernambuco before the mast. Go in for 
 the realities.' But he wouldn't ; and I am afraid 
 that he will die at Damascus, universally regretted, 
 and that his courier will run away with his dressing- 
 case and his circular notes. 
 
 I shall be ever grateful to Eugenius Mildman, for 
 he made me acquainted with the Idle Lake. It was 
 during one of my expeditions to Milan, and broiling 
 summer weather. The Scala was closed ; and at the 
 Canobbiana (the operatic succursal to the grander 
 theatre) the tenor had a wooden leg, the 'prima 
 donna assoluta was fifty-three years of age, and the 
 c prima ballerina' was slightly humped in the back, 
 and was endowed with but a single eye ; so, as you 
 may imagine, the Canobbiana entertainments did not 
 draw very crowded audiences. The garden of the 
 usually pleasant Caffe Cova, where we dined (chiefly 
 on macaroni and fried intestines) c al fresco,' had 
 become a nuisance, owing to the continual presence 
 of noisy patriots, smoking bad ' Cavours,' and screech- 
 ing about the incapacity of General de la Marmora, 
 and the shameful tergiversation of the Emperor Na- 
 poleon the Third in the matter of the Dominio Yeneto. 
 The caricatures in the Spirito Folletto were wofully 
 
374 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 stupid, and altogether Milan had become socially un- 
 inhabitable. Mildman and I determined to start on 
 a ramble. We got to Chiavenna, and so, by Vieo 
 Soprano, to St. Moritz. Thence, hiring a little ' cal- 
 escino,' a picturesque kind of one-horse chaise, we 
 made Samaden, and for three weeks or so dodged in 
 and out of the minor Alpine passes — the Bernina, the 
 Tonale, and so forth — taking to mule-back when the 
 roads were impracticable for the c calescino,' and com- 
 ing out into the Tyrol at last somewhere near Storo, 
 where we rejoined our famous Hero and his red- 
 shirted army. After another skirmish or so — we 
 called them battles — there was another armistice, 
 and back I came to Milan, but this time alone. I 
 shook hands with Mildman, and the last I saw of 
 him was his slender figure bestriding a mule in a 
 mountain gorge, and in the setting sun. He was de- 
 parting in quest of windmills to charge, or forlorn 
 Dulcineas to rescue ; he was bound for Damascus, or 
 the 'ewigkeit.' What do I know about it? Fare- 
 well, excellent Quixotic man. 
 
 But I went back to Mediolanum ; and for the 
 next eight weeks I was continually running back- 
 wards and forwards to the Idle Lake. I had grown 
 to love it. I loved even the quaint old Lombard 
 town from which the lake derives, not its sobriquet, 
 but its real name. There are two of the dirtiest and 
 clearest hotels in Northern Italy in that town ; yet I 
 was fond of them both. There are as many evil 
 smells in the town as in Cologne ; yet the imperfect 
 
THE IDLE LAKE. 
 
 375 
 
 drainage, and the too apparent presence of decaying 
 animal and vegetable matter in the market-place, did 
 not affect me. Was I not on the shore of the great, 
 calm, blue lake, with the blue sky above, and the 
 blue mountains in the distance, and the whole glo- 
 rious landscape shot with threads of gold by the 
 much embroidering sun? I had made the acquaint- 
 ance of a Milanese banker who had a charming villa 
 on the opposite side of the lake, say at Silva Selvag- 
 gia. He had a pretty yacht, in which many a time 
 we made voyages on the idle expanse, voyages which 
 reminded me of the cruise of Sir Cymochles. My 
 host was an enthusiastic fresh-water sailor, so much 
 so that the lake boatman used to call him, ' II Signore 
 della Vela.' He was perpetually splicing his main- 
 brace, and reefing his topsail. Sail ! we did nothing 
 but sail : that is to say when we were not breakfast- 
 ing, or dining, or smoking, or drinking l asti spu- 
 mante,' or dozing, or playing with a large French 
 poodle that was rated on the books of the yacht, and 
 I think did more work than any of the crew (one 
 man, very like Fra Diavolo in a check shirt, and 
 without shoes and stockings, and a boy who played 
 the guitar), for he was incessantly racing from the 
 bow to the stern, and barking at the passing boats. 
 We spent at least eight hours out of the twenty -four 
 on the water ; and when there was a dead calm we 
 lay to and went to sleep. At breakfast time the Per- 
 severanza, the chief journal of Lombardy, came to 
 hand, and our hostess would read out the telegrams 
 
376 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 for our edification. After that we bade the Perseve- 
 ranza go hang, and strolled down towards the yacht. 
 I never read anything, I never wrote anything, I 
 never thought of anything, while I was floating on 
 the Idle Lake, save of what a capital thing it would 
 be to be idle for ever. 
 
 In our boating excursions we frequently landed 
 at different points on the lake, and called upon people. 
 They were always glad to see us, and to entertain us 
 with fruit, wine, cigars, sonatas on the pianoforte (if 
 there were ladies present), and perfectly idle conver- 
 sation. I never yet learnt the 'nice conduct of a 
 clouded cane ;' but I think that I acquired, during 
 my sojourn on the Idle Lake, the art of twirling a 
 fan, and of cutting paper. Had I stayed long enough 
 I might have learned to whistle : that grand accom- 
 plishment of the perfect idler. By degrees I became 
 conscious that my visiting acquaintance was extend- 
 ing among a very remarkable set of people ; and that 
 nearly everybody occupying the dainty palazzi and 
 trim little villas nestling among the vines and oranges 
 and olives of the Idle Lake was Somebody. It will be 
 no violation of confidence, I hope, and no ungrateful 
 requital of hospitality, to hint that at Bella Riviera 
 to the north-east was situated the charming country 
 house of Madame la Princesse Hatzoff, the consort, 
 indeed, of the well-known General Adjutant and 
 Grand Chamberlain to his Imperial Majesty the Tsar 
 of All the Russias. M. le Prince resides on his exten- 
 sive estates in the government of Tamboff. Some say 
 
THE IDLE LAKE. 377 
 
 that he is sojourning in a yet remoter government, 
 that of Tobolsk in Siberia, where he is occupied in 
 mining pursuits, in the way of rolling quartz stone in 
 the wheelbarrow to which he, as a life convict, is 
 chained. The Princess Hatzoff passes her winters 
 either in Paris or Florence, her springs in England, 
 her autumns at Homburg or Baden, and her summers 
 on the Idle Lake. She is enormously rich, although 
 M. le Prince, during their brief wedded life, did his 
 best to squander the splendid fortune she brought 
 him. She is growing old now ; her clustering ring- 
 lets — she was renowned for her ringlets — are silvery 
 white ; her shoulders are arched, and her hands 
 tremble ominously as she holds her cards at piquet ; 
 but her complexion is still exquisitely clear, and she 
 is not indebted to art for the roses on her cheeks. 
 Her feet are deliciously small and shapely, and she is 
 fond of exhibiting them, in their open-worked silk 
 stockings, and their coquettish little slippers with the 
 high heels and the pink rosettes. Forty years ago 
 you used to see waxen models, coloured to the life, 
 of those feet (with the adjoining ankles), ay, and of 
 those half-paralysed hands, in the shops of the Palais 
 Royal and Regent-street, and the Great Moskaia at 
 Petersburg. Forty years ago her portraits, in half a 
 hundred costumes and a whole hundred attitudes, 
 were to be found in every printseller's window in 
 Europe. Forty years ago she was not Madame la 
 Princesse Hatzoff, but Mademoiselle Marie Fragioli, 
 the most famous opera-dancer of her age. The world 
 
378 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 has quite forgotten her, but I doubt whether she has 
 as completely forgotten the world : nay, I fancy that 
 in her sumptuous retreat she sometimes rages, and is 
 wretched at the thought that age, decrepitude, and 
 her exalted rank compel her to wear long clothes, 
 and that in the airiest of draperies she can no longer 
 spring forward to the footlights, night after night, to 
 be deafened by applause, and pelted with bouquets, 
 and to find afterwards at the stage-door more bou- 
 quets, with diamond bracelets for holders, and reams 
 of billet-doux on pink note-paper. Those triumphs, 
 for her, are all over. They are enjoyed by sylphs as 
 fair, as nimble, and as caressed as she has been ; and 
 when she reads of their successes in the newspapers 
 a bitter sickness comes across her. What artificer 
 likes to reflect upon his loss of competency in his art ? 
 Are retired ambassadors, are generals hopelessly on 
 half-pay, are superannuated statesmen, or the head- 
 masters of public schools, who have retired on hand- 
 some pensions, so very happy, think you? Not so, 
 perchance. Ambition survives capacity very often. 
 The diplomatist clings to his despatch-bag, the soldier 
 to his baton of command, the minister to his red box, 
 the pedant to his rod, the actor to his sock and bus- 
 kin or his comic mask, long after the verdict of su- 
 perfluity has been delivered ; long after the dread 
 fiat of inefficiency has gone forth — the fiat proclaim- 
 ing that the bellows are burned, that the lead is con- 
 sumed of the fire, and that the founder worketh in 
 vain. 
 
THE IDLE LAKE. 379 
 
 All round the coasts of the Idle Lake there were 
 retired celebrities. The district was a kind of pro- 
 sperous Patmos, a St. Helena tenanted by voluntary 
 exiles, a jovial Cave of Adullani. Here vegetated an. 
 enriched director of promenade concerts ; there en- 
 joyed his sumptuous 'otium' the ex-proprietor of 
 dwarfs and giants, of learned pigs and industrious 
 fleas ; and in yonder Swiss chalet lived a hon-tamer, 
 much famed on the Idle Lake for his proficiency in 
 breeding rabbits. Millionnaire patentees of cough 
 lozenges, bronchitic wafers, anti-asthmatical cigar- 
 ettes, universal pills, and Good Samaritan ointments, 
 abounded on the Lake ; together with a group of 
 wealthy veteran tenors, baritones, and bassi, several 
 Parisian restaurateurs and cafe keepers who had real- 
 ised large fortunes ; a contractor of one of the Rhine 
 watering-place gambling tables ; many affluent linen- 
 drapers and court milliners, and an English ex-butcher 
 from Bond-street, as rich as Croesus. All who were 
 out of debt, and had nothing to grumble at, seemed 
 to have gathered themselves together on these shores, 
 leading a tranquil, dozy, dawdling kind of existence, 
 so that you might have imagined them to be partakers 
 before their time of the delights of some Eastern Ely- 
 sium, and to be absorbed in the perpetual contempla- 
 tion of Buddha. 
 
 But my days of relaxation on the banks of the 
 Idle Lake came, with that autumn, to an end; and 
 away I went into the 'ewigkeit/ always into the 
 'ewigkeit/ to be tossed about in more wars and 
 
380 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 rumours of wars, and rebellions and revolutions. 
 For years I have not set eyes upon the Idle Lake; 
 but I often dream of it, and puzzle myself to de- 
 termine whether it is situated somewhere between 
 the Lake of Garda and the Lake of Como. But that 
 there is such a Lake, and that it is gloriously Idle, I 
 am very certain. 
 
POSTE RESTANTE. 
 
 There are sermons in stones; but how many in 
 letters ! It matters little what may be within them. 
 I have a whole batch now before me, which I do not 
 intend ever to open; and one, I know by the post- 
 mark, is fifteen years old. There is quite enough 
 interest for me in their envelopes and their super- 
 scriptions, in their crests and stamps, in the blots 
 and the scratches they have picked up on their way. 
 For a letter can, no more than a man, get through 
 the world without some rubs, often of the hardest. 
 Here is a dainty little pink thing of an envelope, 
 longer than it is broad — a flimsy brick from the 
 temple of love, shot away as rubbish long ago. It is 
 directed in the beautifulest little Italian hand — so 
 small that the effigy of her most gracious Majesty 
 on the stamp might be, by comparison, the portrait 
 of the sovereign of Brobdingnag. But, woe is me, 
 that careless postman ! The little letter, ere ever it 
 reached me, tumbled into the mud. Dun brown 
 splashes deface its fair outside. The mud is dry as 
 dust now, but not dustier or drier than the memories 
 which the envelope awakens. 
 
 Those droll dogs of friends you knew once were 
 
382 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 addicted to sending you 'comic' envelopes through 
 the post — monstrous caricatures of yourself, or them- 
 selves, sketched in pen and ink — waggish quatrains 
 in the corner addressed to the postman, or to Mary 
 the housemaid who took the letters in. They fondly 
 hoped, the facetious ones, that the letter-carrier would 
 crack his sides, that Mary would grin her broadest 
 grin, at the sight of their funny letters. But Mary 
 and the postman did nothing of the kind. Once in 
 a way, perhaps, the hardworked servant of the G.P.O. 
 who handed in the 4 comic' missive would observe, 
 4 He must be a rum un as sent this ; but the remark 
 was made more in grim disparagement than in hu- 
 morous appreciation. As for Mary, she would still 
 farther turn up that nasal organ for which nature 
 had already done a good deal in the way of elevation, 
 and would remark, i /wonder people isn't above such 
 trumperies.' Mary knew and revered the sanctity 
 of the post. Did you ever study the outsides of 
 servants' letters? When the housemaid has a mili- 
 tary sweetheart, he is generally in the pedestrian 
 branch of the service, and his hand being as yet more 
 accustomed to the plough than to the pen, he induces 
 a smart sergeant to address his letters for him. The 
 non-commissioned officer's stiff, up-and-down, orderly- 
 room hand is not to be mistaken. He is very gallant 
 to the housemaid. He always calls her ' Miss' Mary 
 Hobbs ; but, on the other hand, he never omits to 
 add a due recognition of yourself in the ' At William 
 Penn's, Esq.' I have even known a sergeant ascend 
 
POSTE RESTANTE. 383 
 
 to the regions of 'Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera/ and 
 a flourish. Mary's old father, the ex-butcher, does 
 not waste any vain compliments upon her or upon 
 you. l Mary Hobbs, housemaid at Mr. Perm's.' He 
 is a courteous old gentleman, nevertheless: and if 
 Mary shows you her letter, which she does sometimes 
 in pardonable pride at the proficiency of her papa, 
 who, c although he was never no schollard and. going 
 on for seventy-three, is as upright as a Maypole,' you 
 will rarely fail to discover, in the postscript, that he 
 has sent his ' duty' to you. 
 
 But, I repeat, I have had enough in my time of 
 the insides of letters, and I intend to write no more 
 letters, and to read as few as ever I possibly can. 
 With the aid of a poker, a good wide fireplace, and 
 a box of matches, I got rid recently of a huge mass 
 of old letters. It was the brightest of blazes, and 
 you would have been astonished by the diminutive- 
 ness of the pile of sooty ashes which remained in the 
 grate after that bonfire. Yet have you not seen in 
 the little frescoed pigeon-holes of the Roman Colum- 
 baria, that a vase not much bigger than a gallipot 
 will hold all that is mortal of one who was once 
 senator, pro-consul, prsetor — what you please? The 
 ashes of a lifetime's letters will not more than fill a 
 dustpan. 
 
 Dismissing the letters themselves, relegating them 
 all to fiery death behind those bars, I linger over the 
 envelopes ; I dwell upon the postmarks, I long to be 
 in the distant lands to which those marks refer. 
 
384 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 There is vast room for speculation in the address of 
 a letter, for, in the mass of handwritings you have 
 seen, many have been forgotten. In the letter itself 
 your curiosity is at once appeased, for you turn to 
 the signature mechanically, and ten to one, if the 
 letter be an old one, to read it gives you a sharp 
 pang. Burn the letters, then; keep to the envelopes. 
 Especially scan those which have been directed to 
 you at hotels abroad. In very rare instances does 
 the memory of a foreign hotel remind you of aught 
 but pleasant things. You lived your life. The bills 
 were heavy, but they were paid. You enjoyed. 
 How good the pickled herrings were at the Oude- 
 Doelen at the Hague! What a famous four-poster 
 they put you into at the Old Bible in Amsterdam ! 
 Could anything be better than the table -d'hote at 
 the Hotel d'Angleterre at Berlin — save, perhaps, that 
 at the Hotel de Russie, close by, and that other Russie 
 at Frankfort ? That Drei Mohren at Augsburg was 
 a good house too. What a cellar! what imperial 
 tokay ! ? Tis true that the waiter at Basle swindled 
 you in the matter of the Bremen cigars, which he 
 declared to be Havanas ; but was not that little mis- 
 hap amply atoned for at the Schweizer Hof, Lucerne, 
 six hours afterwards? The Schweizer Hof! Dear 
 me ! how happy you were, idling about all day long, 
 peering at Mount Pilate, or watching, with never- 
 ending interest, the tiny boats on the bosom of the 
 great blue lake! Here is an envelope directed to 
 you at Cernobbio; another at the Villa d'Este; an- 
 
POSTE RESTANTE. 385 
 
 other at Bellaggio, on the Lake of Como. Here come 
 Salo and Desenzano, on the Lake of Garda. Ah ! a 
 villanous hostelry the last; but with what exultation 
 you hurried back through Brescia to the clean and 
 comfortable Hotel Cavour at Milan ! You were 
 rather short of money, perhaps, when you arrived in 
 the capital of Lombardy. Your stock of circular 
 notes was growing small. No cash awaited you at 
 the Albergo Cavour — nay, nor letters either. But 
 there would be letters for you, it was certain, at the 
 Poste Restante. Quick, Portiere, l un broum' — Mil- 
 anese for brougham, and not very wide of the mark. 
 You hasten to the Poste Restante. There the let- 
 ters await you ; there is the stack of circular notes. 
 Yes, and here among your envelopes at home is the 
 banker's letter of advice, enumerating a hundred 
 cities where he has agents who will gladly cash your 
 notes at the current rate of exchange, deducting 
 neither agio nor discount. 
 
 The postage and the reception of a letter in 
 foreign countries — notably the less civilised — are 
 events accompanied by circumstances generally curi- 
 ous and occasionally terrifying. I never saw a Chinese 
 postman, but I can picture him as a kind of embodied 
 bamboo, who presents you with your packet of cor- 
 respondence with some preposterous ceremonial, or 
 uses some outrageously hyperbolical locution to in- 
 form you that your letter is insufficiently stamped. 
 As for the Russian Empire, I can vouch personally 
 for the whole postal system of that tremendous do- 
 
 cc 
 
386 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 minion being, sixteen years ago, environed with a 
 network of strange observances. The prepayment 
 of a letter from St. Petersburg to England involved 
 the attendance at at least three separate departments 
 of the imperial post-office, and the administration of 
 at least one bribe to a clingy official with a stand-up 
 collar to his napless tail-coat, and the symbolical 
 buttons of the c Tchinn' on the band of his cap. As 
 those who have ever made acquaintance with the 
 stage doorkeepers of theatres in any part of the world 
 are aware that those functionaries are generally eat- 
 ing something from a basin (preferably yellow), so 
 those who have ever been constrained to do business 
 with a Russian government clerk of the lower grades 
 will remember that, conspicuous by the side of the 
 blotting-pad (under which you slipped the rouble notes 
 when you bribed him), there was always a soddened 
 blue pocket-handkerchief, the which, rolled up into 
 a ball, or twisted into a thong, or waved wide like a 
 piratical flag, served him alternately as a sign of con- 
 tent, a gesture of refusal, or an emblem of defiance. 
 You couldn't prepay your letter without this azure 
 semaphore being put through the whole of its paces ; 
 unless, indeed, previous to attending the post-office, 
 you took the precaution of requesting some mercan- 
 tile friend to affix the stamp of his firm to your 
 envelope. Then the official pocket-handkerchief as- 
 sumed permanently the spherical or satisfied stage, 
 and you had, moreover, the satisfaction of knowing 
 that the stamp of the firm might stand you in good 
 
POSTE RESTANTE. 387 
 
 stead as an Eastern firman, and that in all probability 
 your letter would not be opened and read as a pre- 
 liminary to its being dispatched to its destination. 
 
 So much for sending a letter, on which you seldom 
 failed (purely through official oversight, of course) 
 to be overcharged. There were two ways of receiv- 
 ing a letter, both equally remarkable. I used to live 
 in a thoroughfare called the Cadetten-Linie, in the 
 island of Wassili-Ostrow. It was about three times 
 longer than that Upper Wigmore-street to which Syd- 
 ney Smith declared that there was no end. When 
 any English friend had sufficiently mastered the mys- 
 teries of Russian topographology as to write Cadetten- 
 Linie and Wassili-Ostrow correctly, I got my letter. 
 This was but seldom. It was delivered at the hotel 
 where I resided in a manner which reminded me 
 vaguely but persistently of the spectacle of Timour 
 the Tartar, and of the Hetman Platoff leading a pulk 
 of Cossacks over the boundless steppes of the Ukraine. 
 The postman was one of the fiercest little men, with one 
 of the fiercest and largest cocked-hats, I ever saw. His 
 face was yellow in the bony and livid in the fleshy 
 parts; and the huge moustache lying on his upper 
 lip looked like a leech bound to suck away at him for 
 evermore for some misdeeds of the Promethean kind. 
 
 This Russian postman : don't let me forget his 
 sword, with its rusty leather scabbard and its brazen 
 hilt, which seemed designed, like Hudibras's, to hold 
 bread and cheese; and not omitting, again, the half 
 dozen little tin-pot crosses and medals attached by 
 
UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 dirty scraps of particoloured ribbon to his breast; 
 for this brave had i served/ and had only failed to 
 obtain a commission because he was not c born.' This 
 attache of St. Sergius-le- Grand, if that highly -re- 
 spectable saint can be accepted as a Muscovite equiv- 
 alent for our St. Martin of Aldersgate, used to come 
 clattering down the Cadetten-Linie on a shaggy little 
 pony, scattering the pigeons, and confounding the 
 vagrant curs. You know the tremendous stir at a 
 review, when a chief, for no earthly purpose that I 
 know of, save to display his horsemanship and to put 
 himself and his charger out of breath, sets off, at a 
 tearing gallop, from one extremity of the line to the 
 other : the cock feathers in the hats of his staff flying 
 out behind them like foam from the driving waters. 
 Well : the furious charge of a general on Plumstead 
 Marshes was something like the pace of the Russian 
 postman. If he had had many letters to deliver on 
 his way, he would have been compelled to modify the 
 ardour of his wild career; but it always seemed to 
 me that nineteen-twentieths of the Cadetten-Linie 
 were taken up by dead walls, painted a glaring yellow, 
 and that the remaining twentieth was occupied by 
 the house where I resided. It was a very impressive 
 spectacle to see him bring up the little pony short 
 before the gate of the hotel, dismount, look proudly 
 around, caress the ever- sucking leech on his lip — as 
 for twisting the ends of it, the vampire would never 
 have permitted such a liberty — and beckon to some 
 passing Ivan Ivanovitch, with a ragged beard and 
 
POSTE REST ANTE. 389 
 
 caftan, to hold his steed, or in default of any prowl- 
 ing Ivan being in the way, attach his pony's bridle 
 to the palisades. It was a grand sound to hear 
 him thundering — he was a little man, but he did 
 thunder — up the stone stairs, the brass tip of his 
 sword-scabbard bumping against his spurs, and his 
 spurs clanking against the stones, and the gloves 
 hanging from a steel ring in his belt, playing rub-a- 
 dub-dub on the leather pouch which held his letters 
 for delivery — my letters, my newspapers, when they 
 hadn't been confiscated — with all the interesting par- 
 agraphs neatly daubed out with black paint by the 
 censor. And when this martial postman handed you 
 a letter, you treated him to liquor, and gave him 
 copecks. All this kind of thing is altered, I suppose, 
 by this time in Russia. I have seen the lowest order 
 of police functionary — and the martial postman was 
 first cousin to a polizei — seize Ivan Ivanovitch, if he 
 offended him, by his ragged head, and beat him with 
 his sword-belt about the mouth until he made it bleed. 
 Whereas, in these degenerate days, I am told, a Rus- 
 sian gentleman who wears epaulettes, or a sword, is 
 not allowed so much as to pull a droschky-driver's 
 ears, or kick him in the small of the back, if he turn 
 to the left instead of the right. Decidedly, the times 
 are as much out of joint as a broken marionette. 
 
 I have no doubt, either, that the transaction of 
 prepaying a letter has been very much simplified 
 since the period in which I visited Russia. The Poste 
 Restante also has, of course, been sweepingly re- 
 
390 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 formed. Brooms were not used in Russia in my time, 
 save for the purpose of thrashing Ivan Ivanovitch. 
 The St. Petersburg Poste Restante in 1856 was one 
 of the oddest institutions imaginable. It was a pru- 
 dent course to take your landlord, or some Russian 
 friend, with you, to vouch for your respectability. In 
 any case, you were bound to produce your passport, 
 or rather your ' permission to sojourn,' which had 
 been granted to you — on your paying for it — when 
 the police at Count OrlofFs had sequestrated your 
 Foreign Office passport. When divers functionaries — 
 all of the type of him with the blotting-pad and the 
 blue pocket-handkerchief — were quite satisfied that 
 you were not a forger of rouble notes, or an incen- 
 diary, or an agent for the sale of M. Herzen's Kolo- 
 Jcol, their suspicions gave way to the most unbounded 
 confidence. You were ushered into a large room ; a 
 sack of letters from every quarter of the globe was 
 bundled out upon the table ; and you were politely 
 invited to try if you could make out anything that 
 looked as though it belonged to you. I am afraid 
 that, as a rule, I did not obtain the property to which 
 I was entitled, and somebody else had helped himself 
 to that which belonged to me. I wonder who got 
 my letters, and read them, or are they still moulder- 
 ing in the Petropolitan Poste Restante ? 
 
 Poste Restante ! Poste Restante ! I scan envelope 
 after envelope. I know the Poste Restante in New 
 York, with its struggling, striving crowd of German 
 and Irish emigrants, craving for news from the dear 
 
POSTE REST ANTE. 391 
 
 ones at home. In connection with this department 
 of the American postal service, I may mention, that 
 in the great Atlantic cities they have an admirable 
 practice of issuing periodically alphabetical lists of 
 persons for whom letters have arrived by the Eu- 
 ropean mails i to be left till called for,' or whose 
 addresses cannot be discovered. The latter cases are 
 very numerous ; letters addressed, c Franz Hermann, 
 Xew York,' or ' My Cousin Biddy in Amerikey,' not- 
 being uncommon. 
 
 I roam from pillar to post, always c Restante ;' and 
 ten years slip away, and I come upon an envelope 
 inscribed 'Poste Restante, Madrid.' There is ano- 
 ther name for this traveller's convenience in Spanish, 
 but I have forgotten it. Otherwise l Poste Restante' 
 belongs to the universal language. Everybody knows 
 what it means. The Madrilena Poste Restante is, 
 like most other things of Spain, a marvel and a mys- 
 tery. You reach the post-office itself by a dirty little 
 street called, if I remember aright, the Calle de las 
 Carretas, one of the thoroughfares branching from 
 that Castilian Seven Dials, the Puerta del Sol. The 
 entrance to the office is in a dingy little alley, lined 
 with those agreeable blackened stone walls, relieved 
 by dungeon-like barred windows, common in the cities 
 of northern Spain. Opposite the post-office door cower 
 a few little book-stalls, where you may buy cheap sta- 
 tionery ' % and there, in a little hutch, in aspect between 
 a sentry-box and a cobbler's- stall, used to sit a public 
 scribe, who, for the consideration of a few reals, would 
 
392 UNDER THE SUN. 
 
 indite petitions for such supplicants as deemed that 
 their prayers would be more readily listened to by 
 authority if they were couched in words of four syl- 
 lables, and written in fat round characters, with flour- 
 ishes or 4 parafos' to all the terminals. The scribe 
 also would write love-letters for lovelorn swains of 
 either sex, whose education had been neglected. 
 
 I don't think I ever knew such a black, dirty, and 
 decayed staircase as that of the Madrid post-office, 
 save perhaps that of the Mont de Piete, Paris. You 
 ascended, so it seemed, several flights, meeting on 
 the way male and female phantoms, shrouded in 
 cloaks or in mantillas. The mingled odour of tobacco 
 smoke, of garlic, and of Spain — for Spain has its pe- 
 culiar though indescribable odour — was wonderful. 
 The odds were rather against you, when you visited 
 the Poste Restante, that the occasion might be a feast 
 or a fast day of moment. In either case the office 
 opened late, and closed early ; and the hour selected 
 for your own application was usually the wrong- 
 one. If the postal machine were in gear, you pushed 
 aside a green baize door and entered a long low 
 apartment, with a vaulted roof of stone. Stuck against 
 the whitewashed walls were huge placards covered 
 with names more or less illegible. Knots of soldiers 
 in undress stood calmly contemplating those lists. I 
 don't think a tithe of the starers expected any letters; 
 it was only another way of passing the time. A 
 group of shovel-hatted priests would be gravely scan- 
 ning another list ; a party of black-hooded women 
 
POSTE RESTANTE. 393 
 
 would be gossiping before a third; and everybody 
 would be smoking. 
 
 You wandered into another vaulted room, and 
 there you found your own series of lists — those of the 
 4 estrangeros.' In the way of reading those lists 
 madness lay. The schedules belonging to several 
 months hung side by side. There were names re- 
 peated thrice over, names written in different co- 
 loured inks, names crossed out, names blotted, names 
 altered, names jobbed at with a penknife so as to be 
 indecipherable, by some contemplative spirit in a 
 sportive mood. The arrangement of names was al- 
 phabetical, but arbitrary. Sometimes the alphabet 
 began at A, and sometimes at T. The system of 
 indexing was equally mysterious. I will suppose 
 your name to be Septimus Terminus Optimus Penn. 
 To this patronymic and prefixes your correspondent 
 in England has foolishly added the complimentary Es- 
 quire. Under those circumstances the best thing you 
 could do was to look for yourself under the head of 
 'Esquire.' Failing in unearthing yourself, then you 
 might try Optimus and Terminus, and so up to Penn. 
 When you found yourself a number was affixed to you. 
 At one extremity of the apartment was a grating, and 
 behind that grating sat an old gentleman in a striped 
 dressing-gown and a black velvet skull-cap. If you 
 can imagine a very tame and sleepy tiger at the Zoo- 
 logical Gardens, smoking a cigarito, and with bundles 
 of letters and newspapers, in lieu of shin bones of 
 beef, to eat, you may realise the idea of that old gen- 
 
394 UNDER THE SUN 
 
 tleman in his cage at the Poste Eestante behind the 
 Puerta del Sol. You spake him kindly, and called 
 him c Caballero.' He bowed profoundly and returned 
 your compliment. Then you told him your number, 
 and handed your passport through the bars. He 
 looked at the number and he looked at the passport. 
 Then he kindled another cigarito ; then, in a preoccu- 
 pied manner, he began the perusal of a leading article 
 in the Epoca of that morning. Then after a season, 
 remembering you, he arose, offered you a thousand 
 apologies, and went away out of the cage altogether, 
 retiring into some back den — whether to look for your 
 letters, or to drink his chocolate, or to offer his orisons 
 to San Jago de Compostella, is uncertain. By this 
 time there were generally two or three free and inde- 
 pendent Britons clamouring at the bars — the Briton 
 who threatened to write to the Times; the Briton who 
 declared that he should place the whole matter in the 
 hands of the British ambassador; and the persistent 
 Briton who simply clung to the grate, or battered at 
 the doortrap with an umbrella, crying, ' Hi ! Mossoo ! 
 Donnez-moi mon letter. Larrup, Milk-street, Cheap- 
 side, a Londres. Donnez-moi. Look alive, will you !' 
 At last the old gentleman returned, lighted another 
 cigarito, and began to look for your letters. For 
 whose letters is he looking now, I wonder, and where ? 
 Poste Eestante! Poste Restante! It has rested 
 for me close to the Roman Pantheon, and under the 
 shadow of that blood-stained sacrificial stone by the 
 great Cathedral of Mexico. Poste Restante ! How 
 
POSTE RESTANTE. 395 
 
 many times have I journeyed towards it with flutter- 
 ing pulse and a sinking in my throat — how many 
 times have I come from it with my pocket full of 
 dollars, or my eyes full of tears; tears that were 
 sometimes of joy, and sometimes — but not often — of 
 sorrow! The Poste Restante has been to me, these 
 many years, a smooth and a kind post, on the whole. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 LONDON : 
 BOBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, TANCRAS ROAD, N.W. 
 
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