HOW I DISTINGUISHED MYSELF AT PORTSMOUTH. Ir was a nasty, drizzling, cold November evening as I sat in the coffee-room of the Fountain Inn at Portsmouth, with my feet on the fender, a pint of very fair port at my elbow, and the "Hampshire Telegraph" in my hand. Truly, I congratulated myself on being so well housed and so well taken care of, instead of being abroad in the moist, pea-soup atmosphere of this thoroughly British day. The waiter was very attentive-indeed I may say he was too attentive, for when he was not actually waiting on me, he kept bobbing about the room, as if he thought I must want something else; and now and then I caught him throwing most scrutinizing glances in my direction. I was the solitary occupant of the coffee-room, so that he had nothing to distract his attention from me and my wants, but the pertinacity with which he watched me was something beyond description. I have no doubt that the "Hampshire Telegraph" is a very able and well-conducted paper; that its "leaders" are written with vigour and ability, and that its agricultural and commercial, and every other kind of reports are as correct as the most scrupulous and exacting could desire. Still, I confess that I could not derive a sufficient stimulus from the contents of that respectable journal to prevent me from nodding and dozing, and apparently making abortive attempts to precipitate myself headlong into the fire before me. At about the fourth or fifth of these plunges, I would suddenly start bolt upright in my chair and try to persuade myself that I was not at all sleepy, gravely sipping another glass of port and giving the paper another twist-then slowly closing my eyes, going through my mandarin process again, and finally sinking back in my chair, and, I believe, snoring audibly. I dreamt all sorts of absurdities, as people generally do when they fall asleep after dinner in their chairs. I was travelling in a railwaycarriage with the Emperor of China, who was arguing the question of High or Low Church with Mr. Cobden. Then the expression of the Emperor's face changed and became like that of my pertinacious waiter, while Mr. Cobden vanished altogether, and I sat alone with his august majesty. Then the engine made a most extraordinary noise-the carriage shook—I screamed out, "a collision!" and received at the same moment a violent blow on the forehead which caused me to awake. I had fallen forward and brought my head into forcible contact with the chimney-piece, and as I drew back I caught sight of the pertinacious waiter and two or three other people of both sexes apparently peeping at me from the door at the end of the room. The moment I awoke they began to bustle away, while I, in the most dignified manner, tried to look as if nothing at all had happened, and gravely turned over the eternal columns of the "Hampshire Telegraph.' I rang the bell. "Waiter—is there anything going on to night? any theatre open? " "Yes, sir: Mr. Brooke in Othello, sir!" said the waiter, staring at me as hard as ever: "and a ball at the King's Rooms, sir, at Southsea." I determined to go to the theatre, though it must be confessed that the edifice which boasts that name in Portsmouth is one of the vilest HOW I DISTINGUISHED MYSELF AT PORTSMOUTH. 611 little holes in Christendom. How I wished I had been able to go on with Fred Walker to Town! We had started that afternoon from Southampton together-he to London and I to Portsmouth, whither a little matter of business took me, I envied Fred, certainly; and now I remembered that I had never even bid him good bye, for I was fast asleep when we parted at Bishopstoke. It was decidedly a somnolent day with me. I drew on my great-coat, planted my hat on my head, and turned to the mantel-piece to look in the glass; but the old-fashioned place did not possess that article of furniture, and so, being too lazy to go up stairs to my bed-room, I strolled forth, trusting that my personal appearance might be as attractive as usual—ahem ! "What a vile habit people have in this nasty town! I thought, as I paid my money to the man in the pigeon-hole, who fixed his eyes as intently on me as if I had given him a bad halfcrown-"they all stare at a stranger as if he were a wild beast. From the porters and the cabmen at the station down to this check-taker, everybody looks at me as if I were the Emperor of China that I was dreaming of half an hour ago." -- I entered the theatre and took a seat there was plenty of choice; for even Gustavus Brooke cannot draw a large audience to so nasty a place as the Theatre Royal, Portsmouth. I glanced around me, and it seemed to me that every one who was not entirely absorbed in the progress of the tragedy, fixed his eyes upon me in the most extraordinary way, and seemed disposed to laugh. I turned my head away in disgust and devoted my observations to the stage. Brooke was playing well, better I thought than such an audience deserved; but the rest of the actors were vile. Even they, too, seemed to look towards me a great deal more than was necessary, as if they knew I was a stranger, and were anxious to recollect my physiognomy. Brooke himself even appeared to make all his points with his eyes towards me; but that I attributed to his sense, as he might see that I followed him with intellectual delight, and was something above the herd of his audience. Still it must be confessed, that I did not feel altogether comfortable, and more than once I examined my dress to see if there was anything amiss about it; but I could discover no flaw or omission. I was not sorry when the curtain fell on the third act, for though I had not been above a quarter of an hour in the theatre, I determined to leave it. But before I had time to rise, I observed that I was the centre of attraction to a hundred eyes; some of the audience were smiling, some laughing outright, some looking puzzled, and some alternately giggling and whispering to their friends. stout man near me I could endure this no longer; somebody must answer for these insults, or I should choke with rage. I fixed my eyes fiercely on a he burst out laughing I knocked him down. Before he could rise, two others that rushed to the rescue were sent sprawling by his side; my blood was up, and I am a strong man. I was seized by one arm, and turned to annihilate the offender, when I was pinioned by the other arm also, and found myself in the gripe of two policemen. "Turn him out,-throw him over,-break his neck, &c." Suet were the shouts that rose on all sides. The whole house was in con motion; everybody was jumping on the benches or rushing along the corridors to get a sight of me, so that in the confusion and the din, my expostulations and protestations against the injustice I was suffering were unheard or unavailing. "Come along, will you, we seed the 'sault ourselves," said the policemen, as they dragged me away. A crowd followed us down the High-street, and dark as it was, people ran out of their houses to look at me, and little boys shouted "Make way for the King of the Cannibals." Of a truth, thought I, the people of Portsmouth are all stark, staring mad. We reached the police station. The serjeant grinned in my face as he asked my name and took down the charge. Without further parley, for I was too sulky now to ask a question, I was put into the night cell, and left there in company with a gentleman, who had been detected with his hand in another gentleman's pocket without leave. "What's your case-prigging?" inquired this worthy, when I entered. I was too disgusted to answer. "Well you needn't be so precious proud just because I s'pose you've 'ad a edication, and are in for forgery or summat o' that sort; I dare say its more 'nobby' than priggin', but you see I can't write myself, and every man to his trade, say I." So saying, he sat down sulkily on the bench. There was but a solitary miserable lamp in the cell which served for little more than to make darkness visible. But as I strutted about the little cell in a towering passion, I perceived that my delectable companion was staring at me very hard. "Well, you 're a rum un to look at, any ways," said he. "What do you mean by that?" I roared out fiercely. "I'll break your neck if you insult me." "Holloa there," cried a policeman, "less noise, or I'll clap the handcuffs on." How I foamed with impotent rage as I flung myself down in a corner of the cell! "You needn't 'a been in a rage," went on my 'prigging' comrade. "I on'y meant that I thought it was in Afriky and New Zealand, or somewheres there, that people streaked their faces like that 'ere." "Like what?" I exclaimed, jumping up suddenly. Why, like your'n to be sure," said he. A sudden suspicion shot across my mind. I begged the "prig" to describe the real appearance of my face; and also I soon perceived that I had been made the victim of a vile practical joke by that infernal Fred Walker, who had taken advantage of my somnolency in the railway carriage, to draw lines on my face with his sketching chalks, and had made me look a most hideous monster, though so cleverly had he done it, that it appeared to have been designedly done by myself. All that had occurred was now explained to me clearly enough, but I foresaw that the evil effects were not over. Next morning I was taken before the magistrates, and, in spite of my explanations and apologies, I was fined one sovereign for each assaultthree altogether-and was described next day in the "Hampshire Telegraph," as a ruffianly fellow in the garb of a gentleman, &c." Fred Walker has eluded my vengeance, hitherto, but I live wreak it. to THE LIFE OF AN ARCHITECT. LONDON AS I FOUND IT, AND AS IT WAS SOME SIXTY WHAT London now is, in this year, 1852, may be fully and most cheaply learned from Mr. Weale's admirable set of ten richly illustrated pamphlets, at "only one shilling each," forming, in short, a comprehensive manual of every thing to be "seen, heard, or discoursed of" in the city of cities, which, at the hour of this writing, numbers its inhabitants at two and a quarter millions. What London was about a century back, appears in a work (which I recently picked up at an old book shop) printed by Dodsley in six octavo volumes, and dated 1761. During the preceding century the metropolis had made, in respect to its churches, a great advance, but otherwise it possessed little modern Italian architecture to boast of, except two or three specimens by Inigo Jones, the bridge of Westminster, and several elegant Palladian mansions highly honourable to the nobility and aristocracy. The map of London of 1761, shows very little building north of Oxfordstreet and "Tyburn-road ;" and a line drawn from the back of the British Museum to Shoreditch Church and Bethnal-green, incloses all the streets, &c. which lay north of Holborn and the City, on to Whitechapel. Much of this, too, appears to have been but thinly occupied. Southwark was a straggling suburb, chiefly extending between points opposite St. Paul's and the Tower. Paddington, Marylebone, Tottenham Court, Islington, St. Pancras, Kensington, Chelsea, Vauxhall, Lambeth, Newington, and other places in the same great circle, were then "villages," approachable from the metropolis along dusty turnpike roads, or through walks across green fields; and myriads of birds were then singing in trees and hedges, where pianofortes and peripatetic street criers now make infinitely more noise, if much less melody. Ranelagh and Vauxhall were far south, out of the map; the Foundling Hospital was far north; and Queen-square, near Great Ormond-street, had only three sides to it, that its north opening might leave uninterrupted the view of Highgate and Hampstead! Of Tyburn, once a village, nothing remained, at the time of which I write, save only the gallows, which, like the Upas tree, seems to have blighted and laid bare the neighbourhood around. The architectural character of London in 1761 may be thus described. It had no street which we should now recognize as a fine one. It then boasted of Great George-street, Westminster, and the Adelphi streets as "noble." It had not yet Portland-place. The Grosvenor-square buildings were deemed "magnificent ;" and it was thought no mean praise to say the windows were all "sashed!" The Palladian fronts in Cavendish, Hanover, and other squares, were exhibitions of "classic splendour" or "simple grandeur." The piazzas of Covent-garden were deemed "grand VOL. XXXI. Y Y of and noble." The Royal Palaces were admitted to be mean in the last degree; the Royal Stables at Charing-cross being the only structure worthy of royalty. But the metropolis was in some measure redeemed by the palaces of the nobility, especially those of the Lords Northumber land, Burlington, and Spencer. The Houses of Parliament were such "premises" as a modern mechanic's institute would hire for temporary occupation until a fitter building should be erected; and the Government buildings generally were, as national works, contemptible; the only exceptions being the Treasury and Horse-guards in St. James's Park. The grandest things, next to St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, Hall, and Bridge, were the Banqueting-house, Whitehall, the Mansion-house, the Monument, and the churches of Wren and his successors, several of which are still deservedly and greatly admired; but all this was insuffi cient to redeem London, as a city, in the eyes of beholders who traversed its great thoroughfares, hopeless in their dull and tedious monotony brick. The "picturesque" of the olden time had for the most part given place to formal regularity of the most insipid kind, though nine or ten of the old city gates were still remaining, and Temple-bar yet bore above its summit the skulls of several traitors. London-bridge had just been relieved of its houses, and, as a rival to that of Westminster, Blackfriarsbridge was being prospectively talked of, in connexion with the desirable measure of filling up Fleet-ditch. The prisons were miserable enough; but the hospitals were comparatively handsome; and the superannuated soldiers and sailors lived in their palaces at Chelsea and Greenwich, while the King and Queen had no fitting homes, save at Windsor and Hampton Court. The city trades and commercial companies had buildings of comparative handsomeness. The Royal Exchange was a wonder -for its time. Gog and Magog gave " gigantic" merit to the Guildhall; but, as the lions were then confined to the Tower, Exeter Change was only a thing of shops below, and an auction-room above. The marketplaces were rather places for markets than market-buildings. The old Churches had little but their age to recommend them; and the five Ambassadors' Chapels were found quite enough for the then depressed and apparently hopeless condition of the papal cause in London. The Inns of Court and Chancery were as gloomy as the worst hopes of a litigant; though the church of the Temple was a redeeming feature. The grand "small armoury" of the Tower was housed in a mere loft, and the riches of the British Museum were contained in a quaint old house of the Montagues. The theatres worthy of note were only three without any external pretensions to architecture. St. James's Park had "well its straight canal and formal avenues; but Hyde Park was stocked with deer," and exhibited really, a "Serpentine" river. There was also some talk of converting St. George's Fields into a South London New Park; and a spirit of general improvement seemed to inform the thinking few. Even the grand scheme of Rowland Hill's general Penny Postage was pre-figured in the local Penny Post of David Murray and William Dockwra. St. Bride's had still the well which gave name to the first Bridewell; and the "Seven Dials" were then on the "handsome pillar," from which radiated the seven streets so named. Such was London during the childhood of my maternal great grandfather, who wrote a History of England," a "History of Commerce," and "Every Man his own Broker." If these suggest not his name, it is not for me to proclaim it. With becoming humility let me |