CHAPTER VIII.

1810.

PENINSULAR WAR-LISBON-CONVENT OF BATALHA-THE PORTUGUESE

ARMY-THOMAR.

THE 9th Regiment, on their return, appear again to have been quartered in Canterbury, and the winter of 1809-10 was passed by them in uncertainty as to whether they were to be sent to the East Indies or to the war in the Peninsula. In the beginning of March 1810, however, they were relieved of their anxiety, and were ordered to embark immediately for Spain.

'Lisbon: March 28, 1810.

'We entered the Tagus last night. We have had some blowing weather, but not more than is always the case at this season. To-morrow we land. We expect to remain in Lisbon a few days to prepare ourselves for marching to join the ariny about Coimbra or Vizeu. I hear they are in high spirits here; I have not been on shore yet.'

'Lisbon: March 29.

"We landed yesterday, and expect to halt here a week or ten days; then to proceed to join the army. I gave you a prospect of an improving season in my last letter; but I am sorry to find upon closer inquiry that, although nothing can be milder or more constant than the climate is at present, we have still an April of rain to look forward to; unless it is decreed that the knowing ones should be taken in this time, which we are all praying may be the case; otherwise, it may chance to persecute us en pleine marche, which is by no means. to be desired. Our horses, I am glad to tell you, are arrived. I have not yet seen them. We hear they are safe, but in point

of condition rather à la Rocinante, so that they must be pampered immediately. I have not yet had time to find Mr. Stuart. I have, however, ascertained that he is in town.

'I must not deceive you by telling you that Lisbon is improved in its appearance since I last left it. The French had been exercising a very strict discipline among them, and in no branch more pointedly than in that of keeping their town clean; and as we are told that every evil of necessity involves some good, the assertion is strongly supported in this instance; for these graceless fellows, in the midst of all their enormities, had nearly succeeded in reducing our good city of Lisbon to a sense of cleanliness when they handed them over to us. They at least made no scruple of pointing out to them the deformity of their manners, and this was reasonably the first step to be taken. We have since suffered them to relapse, and if I can trust my remembrance so far back as the time of my first visit among them, I should say decidedly that the disease, according to the old rule, is more virulent than it was before its progress was checked. It is a pity, because I do not think that our modern travellers or pamphleteers allow the national character to be such a patchwork of perfections that a charge of cleanliness should be suspected of passing for an incumbrance in the tout ensemble of the whole, as a learned friend of mine sometimes says. To be candid, however, I believe that in the relation in which we stand towards them we have a difficult card to play in this respect; and that it may be done with a better grace by the French than by us is clear, since it is one of the heaviest grievances they complained of, and an invasion of their dearest rights. I shall only add they are spoiled children now, and, to one who has just left Middelburg, the cleanest town in the world, very dirty dogs.

The last accounts from the frontier are encouraging. The French are said to be showing a disposition to retire in the north. It can only be from a want of provisions, and I think it is one very likely to exist among them. Cadiz, above all, is interesting at this moment; the same difficulties are said to be gaining ground among them. A division of Guards has

just passed on to its support. We have certainly managed exceedingly well in all this business.'

to me.

Lisbon April 5, 1810.

'I have had so little opportunity of seeing Lisbon hitherto that, although I am paying my third visit to it, it is almost new I have, therefore, all the advantages of a man who keeps his Saturday paper to read on Sunday. The first time I was here I did not care about it, and the second time I was forced to care about something else, for there was a great deal of fagging cut out about that time for the worthy Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General's Department. . . .

'I am trying hard at this moment to recollect all I had hitherto learnt of the Portuguese language, and to separate it from others that have popped in upon it.

'We had no sooner become familiar with the squeak of a Portuguese than we were led away to listen to the gargling tones of a Spaniard. This, however, was not so bad; but to add the grunting of a Dutch boor to both of these is monstrous; it out-Herods Herod.

'As I am satisfied that nothing tends so much to conciliate the affections of a people towards you as the conforming to their manners and customs, it is worth the attention of any one who comes among them to waste a little study upon this; and I am certain that no sacrifice will be apt to win them sooner than the practice of talking their language.

'I attend all the public places I can get admission to, and have a great deal to say to the orange-women, particularly the old ones. You have no idea of their loquacity in this country; they beat you all out-and-out after they arrive at a certain age. They are like Shakespeare's Caliban-eloquent, though not handsome. To speak more to the point, they are hideously ugly when they become old. The climate provides them with a tawny, walnut complexion, and most of those I have seen might pass at a masquerade for the Tisiphone of the ancients, or the Hecate of more modern times, without owing anything to colouring or dress whatever beyond their daily wearing. I have thought it necessary to say so much in their behalf, because you must

allow that it is most excellent practice for me, and no danger of getting into a scrape, here at least. Eloquence, I allow, under any other combination, might give you more alarm, and I therefore do not risk a tête-à-tête with anything under seventy. 'I saw Mr. Stuart on Sunday; he invited me to dine with him the same day. He recollects having met H. when he was retreating with the Junta from Madrid upon Badajos.

'I dare say you recollect Henry's story about the coach and six. He inquired much after him, and frequently after aunt and yourself. He likewise talked to me about Countess Brühl, and expressed himself very handsomely for the attention he recollects having received from her while at Berlin. As his house is the grand emporium of news, I could not help learning some from him.

'I am afraid we shall march earlier than we expected; I certainly wish to remain here till the Semaine Sainte is over.

When I have anything very important to say, I must contrive to write to General Benson and Sir Howard; but I shall be in high luck if I contrive to get off on these occasions without being charged with idleness by one party or the other; for it is not always recollected that it is at these times we are least at liberty to do as we wish.

7th.—It is raining all this day. Those who are determined to look upon the fair side of the picture content themselves that there is the less to come. I wish it may be just so. We shall certainly march in the course of a very few days. We received an order to equip for the field yesterday.'

'Lisbon April 12, 1810.

They are still suffering us to loll on the lap of ease, and give us reason to hope we shall yet remain here long enough to have our curiosity gratified. However, I am sufficiently practised in my profession to be on my guard against treachery in this instance, and have therefore been busily employed since I last wrote to you in providing myself with a mule for the conveyance of my lumber. I have succeeded wonderfully well, if Tom's judgment is oracular;; for he says he is sure the

mule will carry my establishment with pleasure. I shall not answer for so much as Tom has ventured to do, but think he will do so with tolerable ease to himself. And considering that the animal is naturally stubborn and perverse, this is all we can reasonably expect.

'Saturday, 14th.

A mail arrived this morning from the army; it brings no order whatever respecting our moving. The French appear to have withdrawn a corps they had pushed forward towards Almeida, and threaten nothing very tremendous at present.

'I shall give you an account of our next busy week, if we are allowed to pass it here.' 'Lisbon April 21, 1810.

I am just returned from hearing the "Hallelujah" sung in the abbey church at Belem.

In one of the squares before I reached the church, which is about three miles from my house, I observed a large concourse of the lower orders assembled, and I was in hopes I had fallen in with a procession of one of the orders of monks which I have been in vain endeavouring to waylay through the whole week; but upon closer inspection I was disappointed to find the attention was taken up with two figures of men in effigy, dangling from something like a gibbet; and the people were taking unusual interest in offering them all sorts of indignities. These were Jews. I was on the point of learning more of the ceremony when suddenly up went the Jews on the wings of a firebrand, to the no small surprise of myself and the utter disconcerting of my poor horse, who made a spring as if he meant to be after the Jews, and leave me behind. However, he was not so well equipped for the flight as these gentlemen were, for I learnt afterwards that the managers of the exhibition had lodged a certain number of sky-rockets and other combustibles within the victims; so that by setting fire to a certain train, which they were about when I arrived, an instant conflagration and explosion took place, and the shoutings of the people crowned the catastrophe. They asked me