How he must have tormented the
watermen, beseeching them to let him crouch anywhere in the bows,
quiet as a log, so only that he might get floated down there among the
ships, and round and round the ships, and with the ships, and by the
ships, and under the ships, staring, and clambering;--these the only
quite beautiful things he can see in all the world, except the sky;
but these, when the sun is on their sails, filling or falling,
endlessly disordered by sway of tide and stress of anchorage,
beautiful unspeakably; which ships also are inhabited by glorious
creatures--red-faced sailors, with pipes, appearing over the gunwales,
true knights, over their castle parapets--the most angelic beings in
the whole compass of London world. And Trafalgar happening long before
we can draw ships, we, nevertheless, coax all current stories out of
the wounded sailors, do our best at present to show Nelson's funeral
streaming up the Thames; and vow that Trafalgar shall have its tribute
of memory some day. Which, accordingly, is accomplished--once, with
all our might, for its death; twice, with all our might, for its
victory; thrice, in pensive farewell to the old Temeraire, and, with
it, to that order of things.[123]
Now this fond companying with sailors must have divided his time, it
appears to me, pretty equally between Covent Garden and Wapping
(allowing for incidental excursions to Chelsea on one side, and
Greenwich on the other), which time he would spend pleasantly, but not
magnificently, being limited in pocket-money, and leading a kind of
"Poor-Jack" life on the river.
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