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Title: The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3
Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave
among the moors...
Author: George Augustus Sala
Release Date: September 19, 2008 [EBook #26667]
Language: English
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THE STRANGE ADVENTURES
OF
CAPTAIN DANGEROUS:
WHO WAS A SOLDIER, A SAILOR, A MERCHANT, A SPY, A SLAVE AMONG THE MOORS,
A BASHAW IN THE SERVICE OF THE GRAND TURK,
AND
=Died at last in his own House in Hanover Square.=
A NARRATIVE IN OLD-FASHIONED ENGLISH.
ATTEMPTED BY
GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND.
1863.
[_The right of Translation is reserved._]
LONDON:
SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS,
CHANDOS STREET.
TO
ALEXANDER MUNRO,
=Sculptor=,
THIS BOOK,
IN TOKEN OF SINCERE AND ADMIRING FRIENDSHIP, IS CORDIALLY INSCRIBED.
PREFACE.
IN the last century--and many centuries before the last; but it is about
the eighteenth that I am specially speaking--long before steamers and
railways, or even frigate-built ships and flying coaches were dreamt of,
when an Englishman went abroad, he stopped there. When he came back, if
at all, it was, as a rule, grizzled and sunburnt, his native habits all
unlearnt, and his native tongue more than half forgotten. Even the Grand
Tour, with all that money could purchase in the way of couriers and
post-horses, to expedite matters for my Lord, his chaplain, his courier,
and his dancing master, took as many years as it now does months to
accomplish. There were no young novelists in those days to make a
flying-trip to the Gaboon country, to ascertain whether the stories told
by former tourists about shooting gorillas were fibs or not. There were
no English engineers, fresh from Great George Street, Westminster,
writing home to the _Athenæum_ to say that they had just opened a branch
railway up to Ephesus, and that (by the way) they had discovered a
præ-Imperial temple of Juno the day before yesterday. Unprotected
females didn't venture in "unwhisperables" into the depths of Norwegian
forests; or, if they hazarded such undertakings their unprotectedness
led them often to fall into cruel hands, and they never returned. A
great fuss used to be made, before the days of steam, about the "Fair
Sophia," who undertook a journey from Turkey to discover her lover, Lord
Bateman; but how long and wearisome was her travail before she reached
his lordship's castle in Northumberland, and was informed by the "proud
young porter" that he was just then "taking of his young bride in"?
Madame Cottin's Elizabeth, when she walked from Tobolsk to St.
Petersburg to crave pardon for the exiles of Siberia; Sir Walter Scott's
Jeanie Deans, when she tramped from Edinburgh to London on her errand of
mercy, were justly regarded as heroines. But what were the achievements
of those valorous young women when compared with the Ladies who make
tours round Monte Rosa; nay, for the matter of that, "all round the
world"? _Il n'y a plus de Pyrénées._ Nay, there are no more Andes,
Himalayas, or Rocky Mountains. When the late Mr. Albert Smith wanted to
change the attractions of his show, he calmly took a trip from
Piccadilly to Hong Kong; it would have been better for him, poor dear
fellow, had he remained at home. When her Majesty wanted to show the
late Sultan of Turkey a slight act of civility, she sent Sir Charles
Young out to Constantinople to invest Abdul Medjid with the Order of
the Garter. Thirty years ago, it is possible the estimable King of Arms
might have thought a mail-coach journey to York a somewhat serious
expedition, yet he took the P. and O. Boat for Stamboul as blithely as
though he were bound for a water-party at Greenwich. If an Emperor is to
be crowned in Russia, or Prussia, or Crim Tartary, all the London
newspapers despatch special correspondents to the scene of the pageant.
Mr. Reuter will soon have completed his Overland Telegraph to China. At
Liverpool they call New York "over the way." The Prince of Wales's
travels in his nonage have made Telemachus a tortoise, and the young
Anacharsis a stay-at-home. Married couples spend their honeymoon
hippopotamus hunting in Abyssinia, or exploring the sources of the Nile.
And the Traveller's Club are obliged to blackball nine-tenths of the
candidates put up for election, because now-a-days almost every
tolerably educated Englishman has travelled more than six hundred miles
in a straight direction from the British Metropolis.
Bearing these facts in mind, the travels of Captain Dangerous, widely
extended as they were, may not appear to the present generation as very
uncommon or very surprising. But such travellers as my hero, formed, in
the last century, a class apart, and were, in most cases, very strange
men. Diplomatic agents belonging to the aristocracy rarely ventured
beyond the confines of Europe. The Ambassadors sent to eastern climes
were usually, although accredited from the English Court, maintained at
the charge of great commercial corporations, such as the Turkey and
Russia Companies, and were selected less on the score of their having
handles to their names, or being born Russells, Greys, and Elliots, than
because they had led roving and adventurous lives, and had fought in or
traded with the countries where they were appointed to reside. Beyond
these, the travelling class was made up of merchants, buccaneers,
spies, and, notably, of political adventurers, and English, Scotch, and
Irish Romanist Priests. The unhappy political dissensions which raged in
this country from the time of the Great Rebellion to the accession of
George the Third, and the infamous penal laws against the Roman
Catholics, periodically drove into banishment vast numbers of loyal
gentlemen and their families, and ecclesiastics of the ancient faith,
who expatriated themselves for conscience' sake, or through dread of the
bloody enactments levelled at those who worshipped God as their fathers
had done before them. The Irish and Scotch soldiers who took service
under continental sovereigns sprinkled the army lists of France, of
Spain, and of Austria with O's and Macs. There was scarcely a European
city without an Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic monastery or nunnery, and
scarcely a seaport without a colony of British exiles cast upon foreign
shores after the tempests of the Boyne, of Sheriffmuir, of Preston, or
of Culloden. When these refugees went abroad it was to remain for ten,
for twenty, for thirty years, or for life. The travelling of the present
century is spasmodic, that of the last century was chronic.
I do not know whether the "Adventures" I have ascribed to Captain
Dangerous will be readily recognised as "strange." To some they may
appear exaggerated and distorted, to others merely strained and dull. If
truth, however, be stranger than fiction, I may plead something in
abatement; for although I am responsible for the thread of the story and
the conduct of the narrative, there is not one Fact set down as having
marked the career of the Captain that has been drawn from imagination.
For the story of Arabella Greenville, for the sketch of the Unknown
Lady, for the exploits of the "Blacks" in Charlwood Chase, for the
history of Mother Drum, for the voyage round the world, for the details
of the executions of Lord Lovat and Damiens, for the description of the
state of a Christian captive among the Moors, I am indebted, not to a
lively fancy, but to books of travel, memoirs, Acts of Parliament, and
old newspapers and magazines. I can scarcely, however, hope that,
although the incidents and the language in this book are the result of
years of weary plodding and note-taking, through hundreds of dusty
tomes, they will succeed in interesting or amusing the public now that
they have undergone the process of condensation. The house need not be
elegant because the foundations have been laboriously laid. A solid
skeleton does not always imply a beautiful skin.
It is possible, nevertheless, that many persons may cry out that what I
have written of Captain Dangerous could not have occurred, with any
reasonable amount of probability, to any one man. Let me mention the
names of a score of men and women recently or still living, and let me
ask the reader whether anything in my hero's career was stranger than
the adventures which marked theirs? Here is a penful taken at
random,--Lord Dundonald, Lola Montes, Raousset-Boulbon, Richard Burton,
Garibaldi, Felice Orsini, Ida Pfeiffer, Edgar Poe, Mr. and Mrs. Atkinson
(the Siberian travellers), Marshal St. Arnaud, Paul du Chaillu, Joseph
Wolff, Dr. Livingstone, Gordon Cumming, William Howard Russell, Robert
Houdin, Constantine Simonides, Barnum, and Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. The
life of any one of these personages, truthfully written, would be a
thousand times stranger than anything that is set down to Dangerous's
account. Let me quote one little example more in point. Two years ago I
wrote a story called the "Seven Sons of Mammon," in which there was an
ideal character--that of a fair-haired-little swindler, and presumable
murderess, called Mrs. Armytage. The Press concurred in protesting that
the character in question was untrue to nature, and, indeed, wholly
impossible. Some details I had given of her violent conduct in prison
were specially objected to as grossly improbable. I said at the time
that I had drawn the woman from nature, and I was sneered at, and not
believed. I now again declare, upon my honour, that this Mrs. Armytage,
was a compound of two real people; that as regards her murdering
propensities, I was, for the matter and the manner thereof, beholden to
the French _Gazette des Tribunaux_ for the year 1839; and that as
respects her achievements in the way of lying, thieving, swindling,
forging, and fascinating, I had before me, as a model, a woman whose
misdeeds were partially exposed some ten years since in _Household
Words_, who, her term of punishment over, is, to the best of my belief,
alive at this moment, _and who was re-married less than a year
ago_:--the announcement of that fact being duly inserted in the _Times_
newspaper. The prison details had been gathered by me years before, in
visits to gaols and in conversations with the governors thereof; and
months after the publication of the "Seven Sons of Mammon," I found them
corroborated in their minutest characteristics in a remarkable work
called "Female Life in Prison."
It remains for me to say one word as to the language in which the
"Adventures of Captain Dangerous" are narrated. I had originally
intended to call it a "Narrative in plain English;" but I found, as I
proceeded, that the study of early eighteenth century literature--I mean
the ante-Johnsonian period--had led me into the use of very many now
obsolete words and phrases, which sounded like anything but plain
English. Let me, however, humbly represent that the style, such as it
is, was not adopted without a purpose, and that the English I have
called "old-fashioned," was not in the remotest degree intended to be
modelled upon the diction of Swift, or Pope, or Addison, or Steele, or
Dryden, or Defoe, or even Nash or Howel. Such a feat of elegant pedantry
has already been accomplished by Mr. Thackeray in his noble story of
_Esmond_; and I had no wish to follow up a dignified imitation by a
sorry caricature. I simply endeavoured to make Captain Dangerous express
himself as a man of ordinary intelligence and capacity would do who was
born in the reign of Queen Anne,--who received a scrambling education in
that of George the First,--who had passed the prime of his life abroad
and had picked up a good many bastard foreign words and
locutions,--whose reading had been confined to the ordinary newspapers
and chap-books of his time (with perhaps an occasional dip into the
pages of "Ned Ward" and "Tom Brown"),--and who in his old age had
preserved the pseudo-didactic of his youth. The "Adventures of Captain
Dangerous" have been, in every sense, an experiment, and not a very
gratifying one. I have earned by them a great many kicks, but a very
few halfpence. Should the toe of any friendly critic be quivering in his
boot just now, at the bare announcement of "Captain Dangerous'"
re-appearance, I would respectfully submit that there could not possibly
occur a better opportunity than the present for kicking me _de novo_, as
I have been for months very ill, and am weary, and broken.
GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.
BERNARD STREET, RUSSELL SQUARE,
_April, 1863._
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
PAGE
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
MINE OWN HOUSE 1
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
THE HISTORY OF AN UNKNOWN LADY, WHO CAME FROM
DOVER IN A COACH-AND-SIX 22
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
THE HISTORY OF MY GRANDMOTHER, WHO WAS A LADY
OF CONSEQUENCE IN THE WEST COUNTRY 40
CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
MY GRANDMOTHER DIES, AND I AM LEFT ALONE, WITHOUT
SO MUCH AS A NAME 85
CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
I AM BARBAROUSLY ABUSED BY THOSE WHO HAVE CHARGE
OF ME, AND FLYING INTO CHARLWOOD CHASE, JOIN
THE "BLACKS" 124
CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
THE HISTORY OF MY GRANDFATHER, WHO WAS SO LONG
KEPT A PRISONER IN ONE OF THE KING'S CASTLES
IN THE EAST COUNTRY 148
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
I AM BRED UP IN VERY BAD COMPANY, AND (TO MY
SHAME) HELP TO KILL THE KING'S DEER 181
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.
THE HISTORY OF MOTHER DRUM 220
CHAPTER THE NINTH.
THE END OF MY ADVENTURES AMONG THE BLACKS 247
CHAPTER THE TENTH.
I AM VERY NEAR BEING HANGED 283
THE STRANGE ADVENTURES
OF
CAPTAIN DANGEROUS.
A Narrative in Old Fashioned English.
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
MINE OWN HOUSE.
I, JOHN DANGEROUS, a faithful subject of his Majesty King George, whose
bread, God bless him! I have eaten, and whose battles I have fought, in
my poor way, am now in my sixty-eighth year, and live in My Own House in
Hanover Square. By virtue of several commissions, both English and
foreign, I have a right to call myself Captain; and if any man say that
I have no such right, he Lies, and deserves the Stab. It may be that
this narrative, now composed only for my own Pleasure, will, long after
my Death, see the light in Print, and that some copper Captain, or
counterfeit critic, or pitiful creature of that kidney, will question my
Rank, or otherwise despitefully use my Memory. Let such treachours and
clapper-dudgeons (albeit I value not their leasing a bagadine) venture
it at their peril. I have, alas, no heirs male; but to my Daughter's
husband, and to his descendants, or, failing them, to their executors,
administrators, and assigns, I solemnly commit the task of seeking out
such envious Rogues, and of kicking and firking them on the basest part
of their base bodies. The stab I forego; I wish not to cheat the hangman
of his due, or the Rev. Mr. Villette of a sermon. But let the knaves
discover, to the aching of their scald sides, that even the Ghost of
John Dangerous is not to be libelled.
There is a knot of these same cittern-headed simpletons who meet at a
coffee-house in Great Swallow Street, which I am sometimes minded to
frequent, and who imagine that they show their wit and parts by reviling
their Church and their King, and even by maligning the Honourable East
India Company,--a corporation to which I am beholden for many Favours.
"Fellow," I said, only last Saturday, to a whippersnapper from an Inn of
Court,--a Thing I would not trust to defend my Tom-Cat were he in peril
at the Old Bailey for birdslaughter, and who picks up a wretched
livelihood, I am told, by scribbling lampoons against his betters in a
weekly Review,--"Fellow," I said, "were I twenty years younger, and you
twenty years older, John Dangerous would vouchsafe to pink an
eyelet-hole in your waistcoat. Did I care to dabble in your polite
conversation or your _belles lettres_ (of which I knew much more than
ever you will know years before the Parish was at pains to fix your
begetting on some one), I would answer your scurrilities in Print; but
this I disdain, sirrah. Good stout Ash and good strong Cordovan leather
are the things fittest to meet your impertinences with;" and so I held
out my Foot, and shook my Staff at the titivilitium coxcomb; and he was
so civil to me during the rest of the evening as to allow me to pay his
clog-shot for him.
The chief delight I derive from ending my days in Hanover Square is the
knowledge that the house is Mine Own. I bought it with the fruit of mine
own earnings, mine own moneys--not gotten from grinding the faces and
squeezing the vitals of the Poor, but acquired by painful and skilful
Industry, and increased by the lawful spoil of War. For booty, as I have
heard a great commander say in Russia, is a Holy Thing. I have not
disdained to gather moderate riches by the buying and selling of lawful
Merchandize; albeit I always looked on mere Commerce and Barter as
having something of the peddling and huxtering savour in them. My notion
of a Merchant is that of a Bold Spirit who embarks on his own venture in
his own ship, and is his own supercargo, and has good store of guns and
Bold Spirits like himself on board, and sails to and fro on the High
Seas whithersoever he pleases. As to the colour of the flag he is under,
what matters it if it be of no colour at all, as old Robin Roughhead
used to say to me,--even Black, which is the Negation of all colour? So
I have traded in my way, and am the better by some thousands of pounds
for my trading, now. That much of my wealth has its origin in lawful
Plunder I scorn to deny. If you slay a Spanish Don in fair fight, and
the Don wears jewelled rings and carcanets on all his fingers, and
carries a great bag of moidores in his pocket, are you to leave him on
the field, prithee, or gently ease him of his valuables? Can the crows
eat his finery as well as his carcase? If I find a ship full of golden
doubloons and silver candlesticks destined for the chapel of St. Jago de
Compostella, am I to scuttle the ship and let her go down with all these
good things on board; or am I to convey them to mine own lockers, giving
to each of my Valiant Comrades his just and proper share? The governor
of Carthagena will never get the doubloons, St. Jago of Compostella will
never see his candlesticks; why should not I and my Brave Hearts enjoy
them instead of the fishes and the mermaids? They have Coral enough down
there, I trow, by the deep, nini; what do they want with Candlesticks?
If they lack further ornament, there are pearls enow to be had out of
the oysters--unless there be lawyers down below--ay, and pearls, too, in
dead men's skulls, and emerald and diamond gimmels on skeleton hands,
among the sea-weed, sand, and the many-coloured pebbles of the great
Ocean.
There are those who call me an old Pirate. Let them. I was never in
trouble with the Admiralty Court. I can pass Execution Dock without
turning pale. And no one can gainsay me when I aver that I have
faithfully served his Majesty King George, and was always a true friend
to the Protestant succession.
There has been a mighty talk, too, about my turning Turk. Why should not
I, if I could not Help it? Better to read the Koran, than to sing the
Black Sanctus. Better to serve Mahound than Bungy's dog. I never Turned
my Tippet, as some fine gentlemen who have never seen Constantinople
have done. I never changed my Principles, although I was a Bashaw with
three tails. Better to have three tails than to be a Rat with only one.
And, let me tell you, it is a mighty fine thing to be a Bashaw, and to
have as many purses full of Sequins and Aspers as there are days in the
year.
I should have been hanged long ago, should I--hanged for a Pirate, a
Spy, and a Renegade? Well, I have escaped the bow-string in a country
where hundreds die of Sore Throat every day, and I can afford to laugh
at any prospect of a wych round my weasand in mine old age. Sword of
Damocles, forsooth! why my life has been hanging on a cobweb any time
these fifty years; and here I am at Sixty-Eight safe and sound, with a
whole Liver and a stout Heart, and a bottle of wine to give a Friend,
and a house of mine own in Hanover Square.
I write this in the great Front Parlour, which I have converted into a
library, study, and counting-room. The year of our Lord is seventeen
hundred and eighty. His Majesty's subjects have lost eleven
days--through some Roguery in high places, you may be sure--since I was
a young man; and were I a cocksloch, I might grudge that snipping off of
the best part of a fortnight from an Old Man's life. It may be, indeed,
that Providence, which has always been good to me, will add eleven
days--yea, and twice eleven--to the dwindling span of poor old John
Dangerous. I have many Mercies to be thankful for; of sins likewise
without blin, and grievous ones, there may be a long list that I shall
have to account for; but I can say that I never killed a man in cold
blood, that I never wilfully wronged a woman, _so long as she was not
obstinate_, that I never spake an unkind word to a child, that I always
gave freely from that which I got freely, and never took from him who
had little, and that I was always civil to the clergy. Yet Doctor
Dubiety of St. George's tells me that I have been a signal sinner, and
bids me, now, to repent of my evil ways. Dr. Dubiety is in the right no
doubt;--how could a Doctor of Divinity be ever in the Wrong?--but I
can't see that I am so much worse than other folks. I should be in
better case, perhaps, if these eyes stood wider open. I confess that I
have killed many men with Powder and Lead, and the sharp sword; but,
then, had I not shot or stabbed them, they would surely have shot or
stabbed me. And are not his Majesty's fellow-subjects shooting and
stabbing one another at this instant moment[A] in the American
plantations? No; I always fought fair, and never refused Quarter when
mine enemy threw up his point; nor, unless a foeman's death were
required for Lawful Reprisals, did I ever deny moderate Ransom.
There may be some things belonging to my worldly store that trouble me a
little in the night season. Should I have given St. Jago de
Compostella's candlesticks to Westminster Abbey? Why, surely, the Dean
and Chapter are rich enough. But I declare that I had neither art not
part in fitting the thumbscrews to the Spanish captain, and putting the
boatswain and his mate to the ordeal of flogging and pickling. 'Twas not
I, but Matcham, who is Dead, that caused the carpenter to be
carbonadoed, and the Scotch purser to walk the Plank. Those were, I
grant, deeds worthy of Blackbeard; but I had naught to do with them.
John Dangerous had suffered too many tortures in the dungeons of the
Inquisition to think of afflicting his fellow-creatures when there was
no need for it. Then, as to what became of Doña Estella. I declare that
I did my best to save that unhappy lady. I entreated, I protested; but
in vain. None of that guilt lies at my door; and in the crime of him who
roasted the Bishop, and cut off the Franciscan Monk's great-toes I have
no share. Let every man answer for his own deeds. When I went the Middle
Passage, I tried to keep the slaves alive as long I could. I was never a
Mangoniser. When they died, what was there to do but to fling them
overboard? Should I not have done the same by white men? I was not one
of those cruel Guinea captains who kept the living and the dead chained
together. I defy any one to prove it.
And all this bald chat about sacking towns and gutting convents? War is
war all the world over; and if you take a town by Assault, why of course
you must Sack it. As to gutting convents, 'tis a mercy to let some pure
air into the close, stifling places; and, of a surety, an act of Charity
to let the poor captive nuns out for a Holiday. Reverend Superiors,
holy sisters, I never did ye any harm. You cannot torment me in the
night. Your pale faces and shadowy forms have no need to gather round
the bed of John Dangerous. Take, for Pity's sake, those Eyes away! But
no more! These thoughts drive me Mad.
I am not Alone in my house. My daughter, my beloved Lilias, my only and
most cherished child, the child of my old age, the legacy of the
departed Saint her mother, lives with me. Bless her! she believes not a
word of the Lies that are whispered of her old Father. If she were to be
told a tithe of them, she would grieve sorely; but she holds no converse
with Slanderers and those who wag their tongues and say so-and-so of
such-a-one. She knows that my life has been wild, and stormy, and
Dangerous as my name; but she knows that it has also been one of valour,
and honesty, and striving. St. Jago de Compostella's candlesticks never
went towards her schooling, pretty creature! My share from the gold in
the scuttled ship never helped to furnish forth her dowry. Lilias is my
joy, my comfort; my stay, my merciful consolation for the loss of that
good and perfect Woman her mother. Dear heart! she has never been
crossed in love, never known Love's sorrows, angers, disappointments,
and despair. She was married to the Man of her Choice; and I am
delighted to know that I never interfered, by word or by deed, with the
progress of her Wooing; that he to whom she is wedded is one of the
worthiest of youths; and that Heaven has blessed me with the means to
enable him to maintain the state and figure of a gentleman.
Thus, although Comfort and Quiet are the things I chiefly desire after
the bustle and turmoil of a tempest-tossed career, and the pleasure I
take in the gaieties of the Town is but small, it cheers me to see my
Son and Daughter enjoying themselves, as those who have youth and health
and an unclouded conscience are warranted in doing, and, indeed, called
upon to do. I like them on Sundays and Holidays to come to church at
St. George's, and sit under Doctor Dubiety, where I, as a little lad,
sat many and many a time, more than fifty years ago; but my house is no
Conventicle, and on all weekdays and Lawful Occasions my family is
privileged to partake to their heart's content of innocent and permitted
pastimes. I never set my face against a visit to the Playhouse or to the
Concert-room; although to me, who can remember the most famous players
and singers of Europe, the King's Theatre and the Pantheon, and even
Drury-Lane, are very tame places, filled with very foolish folk. But
they please the young people, and that is enough for me. Nor to an
occasional junketing at Vauxhall do I ever turn queasy. 'Tis true I have
seen Ranelagh and Marylebone Belsize, and Spring Gardens, and seen Folly
on the Thames--to say nothing of the chief Continental Tivolis, Spas,
Lustgartens, and other places of resort of the Great; but fiddlers are
fiddlers, and coloured lamps are coloured lamps, all the world over, I
apprehend; and my children have as much delight in gazing on these
spangled follies now as I had when I and the eighteenth century were
young. Only against Masquerades and Faro-tables, as likewise against the
pernicious game of E. O., post and pair, fayles, dust-point, do I
sternly set my face, deeming them as wholly wicked, carnal, and
unprofitable, and leading directly to perdition.
It rejoices me much that my son, or rather son-in-law,--but I love to
call him by the more affectionate name,--is in no wise addicted to
dicing, or horse-racing, or cock-fighting, or any of those sinful or
riotous courses to which so many of our genteel youth--even to those of
the first Quality--devote themselves. He is no Puritan; (for I did ever
hate your sanctimonious Banbury-men); but he has a Proper Sense of what
is due to the Honour and Figure of his family, and refrains from soiling
his hands with bales of dice and worse implements among the profligate
crew to be met with, not alone at Newmarket, or at the "Dog and Duck,"
or "Hockley Hole," but in Pall-Mall, and in the very ante-chambers of
St. James's, no cater-cousin of the Groom-Porter he. He rides his
hackney, as a gentleman should, nor have I prohibited him from
occasionally taking my Lilias an airing in a neat curricle; but he is no
Better on the Turf, no comrade of jockeys and stablemen, no patron of
bruisers and those that handle the backsword and are quick at finish
with the provant rapier, and agile in the use of the imbrocatto. I would
disinherit him were I to suspect him of such practices, or of an
over-fondness for the bottle, or of a passion for loose company. He
hunts sometimes, and fishes and goes a birding, and he has a pretty
fancy for the making of salmon-flies, in the which pursuit, I conclude,
there is much ingenuity, and no manner of harm, fish being given to us
for food, and the devising how best to snare the creatures entirely
Lawful.
Lilias Dangerous has been wedded to Edward Marriner these two years. It
was at first my design to buy the youth a Pair of Colours, and to let
him see the world and the usages of honourable warfare for a year or
two; but my Lilias could not bear the thought of her young Ensign's
coming home without an arm or a leg, or perchance being slain in some
desperate conflict with savage Indians, or scarcely less savage
Americans; and I did not press my plan of giving Edward for a time to
the service of the King. He, I am bound to say, was eager to take up a
Commission; but the tears and entreaties of my Daughter, who thinks War
the wickedest of crimes, and the shedding of human blood a wholly
Unpardonable Thing, prevailed. So they were Married, and are Happy; and
I am sure, now, that were I to lose either of them, it would break the
old man's heart.
My Lilias is tall and slender, her skin is very white, her hair a rich
brown, her eyes very large and clear and blue. But that I am too old to
be vain, I might be twitted with Conceit when I state that she holds
these advantages of person less from her Mother than from myself, her
loving Father. Not that I was so comely in my young days; but my
Grandmother before me was of the same fair Image that I so delight to
look upon in Lilias. She was tall, and white, and brown-haired, and
blue-eyed. She had Lilias's small and daintily-fashioned hands and feet,
or rather Lilias has hers. To me these features were only transmitted in
a meaner degree. I was a big-boned lusty lad, with flowing brown locks,
an unfreckled skin, and an open eye; but my Grandmother's Face and Form
have renewed themselves in my child. At twenty she is as beautiful as
her Great-grandmother must have been at that same sunny time, as I am
told and know that Lady was: albeit when I remember her she was nearly
Ninety years of age.
Yes; Lilias's eyes are very blue; but they are always soft and tender
and pitiful in their regard. Her Great-grandmother's had, when she was
moved, a Strange Wild look that awed and terrified the beholders. Only
once in the life of my Lilias, when she was very young, and on the
question of some toy or sweetmeat which my departed Saint had denied
her, did I notice that Terrible Look in her blue eyes. My wife, who,
albeit the most merciful soul alive, ever maintained strict discipline
in her household, would have corrected the child for what she set down
as flat mutiny and rebellion; but I stayed her chastening hand, and bade
the young girl walk awhile in the garden until her heat was abated; and
as she went away, her little breast heaving, her little hands clenched,
and the Terrible Look darting out on me through the silken tangles of
her dear hair, I shuddered, and said, "Wife of mine, our Lilias's look
is one she cannot help. It comes from Me, you may have seen it fiercer
and fiercer in mine own eyes; and She, whom of all women I loved and
venerated, looked thus when anger overcame her. And though I never knew
my own dear Mother, she, or I greatly mistake, must have had that look
in hers likewise."
I thank Heaven that those pure blue waters, limpid and bright, in my
Lilias's orbs were nevermore ruffled by that storm. As she grew up,
their expression became even softer and kinder, and she never ceased
from being in the likeness of an Angel. She looks like one now, and will
be one, I trust, some day, Above, where she can pray for her danger-worn
old sire.
My own wife (whose name was Lilias too) was a merry, plump,
ruddy-skinned little woman--a very baby in these strong arms of mine.
She had laughing black eyes, and coal-black tresses, and lips which were
always at vintage-time. Although her only child takes after me, not her,
in face and carriage, in all things else she resembles my Saint. She is
as merry, as light-hearted, as pure and good, as she was. She has the
same humble, pious Faith; the same strong, inflexible will of abiding by
Right; the same hearty, outspoken hatred of Wrong, abhorrence of Wrong.
She has the same patience, cheerfulness, and obedience in her behaviour
to those who are set in authority over her; and if I am by times
angered, or peevish, or moody, she bears with my infirmities in the same
meek, loving, and forgiving spirit. She has her Mother's grace, her
Mother's voice, her Mother's ringing voice. She has her Mother's
infinite care of and benevolence to the poor and needy. She has her
Mother's love for merry sports and innocent romps. Like my departed
Saint, she has an exquisitely neat and quick hand for making pastries
and marchpanes, possets and sugared tankards, and confeeding of
diapasms, pomanders, and other sweet essences, and cures for the
chilblains; and like her she plays excellent well on the harpsichords.
Thus, in a quiet comfort and competence, in the love of my children, and
in the King's peace, these my latter days are gliding away. I am
somewhat troubled with gout and twitching pains, scotomies in the head,
and fulness of humours, with other old men's ailments; and I do not
sleep well o' nights owing to vexatious Dreams and Visions, to abate
which I am sometimes let blood, and sometimes blistered behind the ears;
but beyond these cares--and who hath not his cares?--Captain John
Dangerous, of number One hundred Hanover Square, is a Happy Man.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] 1780.
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
THE HISTORY OF AN UNKNOWN LADY, WHO CAME FROM DOVER IN A COACH-AND-SIX.
IN the winter of the year 1720, died in her house in Hanover
Square,--the very one in which I am now finishing my life,--an Unknown
Lady nearly ninety years of age. The mansion was presumed to be her own,
and it was as much hers as it is mine now; but the reputed landlord was
one Doctor Vigors, a physician of the College in Warwick Lane, in whose
name the Lease ran, who was duly rated to the poor as tenant, and whose
patient the Unknown Lady was given out to be. But when Dr. Vigors came
to Hanover Square it was not as a Master, but as the humblest of
Servants; and no tradesman, constable, maid, or lacquey about the house
or neighbourhood would have ventured for his or her life to question
that, from cellar to roof, every inch of the mansion belonged to the
Unknown Lady. The vulgar held her in a kind of Awe, and spoke of her as
the Lady in Diamonds; for she always wore a number of those precious
gems, in rings, bracelets, stomachers, and the like. The gentlefolks, of
whom many waited upon her, from her first coming hither unto her death,
asked for "my Lady," and nothing more. It was in the year 1714 that she
first arrived in London, coming late at night from Dover, in a
coach-and-six, and bringing with her one Mr. Cadwallader, a person of a
spare habit and great gravity of countenance, as her steward; one
Mistress Nancy Talmash, as her waiting-woman; and a Foreign Person of a
dark and forbidding mien, who was said to be her chaplain. In the
following year, and during the unhappy troubles in Scotland arising out
of the treasons of the Earl of Mar, and other Scots Lords, one of his
Majesty's messengers came for the Foreign Person, and conveyed him in a
coach to the Cockpit at Whitehall; while another messenger took up his
abode in the house at Hanover Square, lying in the second best
bed-chamber, and having his table apart, for a whole week. From these
circumstances, it was rumoured that the Unknown Lady was a Papist and
Jacobite; that the seminary Priest, her confederate, was bound for
Newgate, and would doubtless make an end of it at Tyburn; and that the
Lady herself would be before many days clapt up in the Tower. But Signor
Casagiotti, the Venetian Envoy, as a subject of the seignory, claimed
the Foreign Person and obtained his release; and it was said that one of
the great Lords of the Council came himself to Hanover Square to take
the examination of the Unknown Lady, and was so well satisfied with the
speech he had with her as to discharge her then and there from
Custody,--if, indeed, she had ever been under any actual durance,--and
promise her the King and Minister's countenance for the future. The
Foreign Person was suffered to return, and thenceforward was addressed
as Father Ruddlestone, as though he had some licence bearing him
harmless from the penalties and præmunires which then weighed upon
recusant persons. And I am given to understand that, on the evening of
his enlargement, the same great Lord, being addressed in a jocular
manner at the coffee-house by a Person of Honour, and asked if he had
not caught the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender in petticoats and
diamonds, somewhere in St. George's parish, very gravely made answer,
that some degrees of Loyalty were like Gold, which were all the better
for being tried in the furnace, and that, although there had once been a
King James, and there was now a King George, the lady, of whom perhaps
that gentleman was minded to speak, had done a notable Thing before he
was born, which entitled her to the eternal gratitude of Kings.
Although so old on her first coming to Hanover Square, and dwelling in
it until her waiting-woman avowed that she was close on her Ninetieth
year, the Unknown Lady preserved her faculties in a surprising manner,
and till within a few days of her passing away went about her house,
took the air from time to time in her coach, or in a chair, and received
company. The very highest persons of Quality sought her, and appeared to
take pleasure in her conversation. To Court, indeed, she never went; but
she was visited more than once by an illustrious Prince; and many great
nobles likewise waited upon her in their Birthday suits. On Birthnights
there was Play in the great drawing-room, where nothing but gold was
permitted to be staked.
Credible persons have described her to me as being, and supplemented
mine own memory--in the extremest sunset of her life, when the very fray
and pillings of her garment were come to, and no more stuff remained
wherewith to piece it,--a person of Signal Beauty. She was of commanding
stature, stooped very little, albeit she made use of a crutch-stick in
walking, and had a carriage full of graciousness, yet of somewhat
austere Dignity. No portion of her hair was visible under the thick
folds of muslin and point of Alençon which covered her head, and were
themselves half hidden by a hood of black Paduasoy; but in a glass-case
in her cabinet, among other relics of which I may have presently to
speak, she kept a quantity of the most beauteous chestnut tresses ever
beheld. "These were my Love-Locks, child," I remember her saying to me
once. I am ashamed to confess that, during my brief commerce with her,
the dress she wore, which was commonly of black velvet, and the diamonds
which glittered on her hands and arms and bosom impressed themselves far
more forcibly on my memory than her face, which I have since been told
was Beautiful. My informant bears witness that her eyes were Blue, and
of an exceeding brightness, sometimes quite terrible to look upon,
although tempered at most times by a Sweet Mildness; yet there were
seasons when this brightness, as that of the Sun in a wholly cloudless
sky, became Fierce, and burnt up him who beheld it. Time had been so
long a husbandman of her fair demesne, had reaped so many crops of
smiles and tears from that comely visage, that it were a baseness to
infer that no traces of his husbandry appeared on her once smooth and
silken flesh, for the adornment of which she had ever disdained the use
of essences and unguents. Yet I am told that her wrinkles and creases,
although manifold, were not harsh nor rugged; and that her face might be
likened rather to a billet of love written on fair white vellum, that
had been somewhat crumpled by the hand of him who hates Youth and Love,
than to some musty old conveyance or mortgage-deed scrabbled on yellow,
damp-stained, rat-gnawed parchment. Her hands and neck were to the last
of an amazing Whiteness. The former, as were also her feet, very small
and delicate. Her speech when moved was Quick, and she spoke as one
accustomed to be obeyed; but at most seasons her bearing towards her
domestics was infinitely kind and tender. Towards the Foreign Person,
her Director, she always bore herself with edifying meekness. She was
cheerful in company, full of ready wit, of great shrewdness, discretion,
and observation; could discourse to admiration of foreign cities and
persons of renown, even to Kings and Princes, whom she had seen and
known; and was well qualified to speak on public affairs, although she
seldom deigned to concern herself with the furious madness of Party.
Mere idle prattle of Operas, and Play-books, and Auctions, and the like,
was extremely distasteful to her; and although at that time a shameful
looseness of manners and conversation obtained even among the Greatest
persons in the land, she would never suffer any evil or immodest talk to
be held in her presence; and those who wished to learn aught of the
wickedness of the town and the scandals of High Life were fain to go
elsewhere for their gossip.
I have said that her dress was to me the chief point of notice, and is
that of which I retain the keenest remembrance. Her diamonds, indeed,
had over me that strange fascination which serpents are said to have
over birds; and I would sit with my little mouth all agape, and my eyes
fixed and staring, until they grew dazed, and I was frightened at the
solemn twinkling of those many gems. In my absurd child-way, it was to
my fancy as though the Lady were some great Altar or Herse of State in a
Church, and her Jewels so many Lamps kindled about her, and to be kept
alive for ever. She robed habitually, as I have said, in Black Velvet;
but on Birthnights, when more company than usual came, and there was
play in the great drawing-room, she would wear a sack of sad-coloured
satin; while, which was stranger still, on the thirtieth day of January
in every year, at least so long as I can keep it in mind, she wore her
sable dress; not her ordinary one, but a fuller garment, which had bows
of Crimson Ribbon down the front and at the sleeves, and a great
Crimson Scarf over the right shoulder, so as to come in saltire over her
Heart. And on the day she made this change she wore no Diamonds, but
Rubies in great number, and of great size. On that day, also, we kept an
almost entire fast, and from morning to night I had nothing but a little
cake and a glass of Red wine. From sunrise to sunset the Lady sat in her
cabinet among her Relics; and I was bidden to sit over against her on a
little stool. She would talk much, and, as it seemed to me wildly, in a
language which I could not understand, going towards her relics and
touching them in a strange manner. Then she would say to me, with a
sternness that chilled the marrow in my bones, "Child, Remember the Day:
Remember the Thirtieth of January." And she would often repeat that
word, "Remember," rocking herself to and fro. And more than once she
would say, "Blood for blood." Then Mistress Talmash would enter and
assay to Soothe her, telling her that what was past was past, and could
not be undone. Then she would take out a great Prayer-Book bound in Red
leather, and which had this strange device raised in an embosture of
gold, on either cover, and in a solemn voice read out long passages,
which I afterwards learned were from that service holden on the
anniversary of the martyrdom of King Charles the First. She would go on
to read the Ritual for the King's Touching for the Evil, now expunged
from our Liturgy; and then Mistress Talmash would pray her to read the
joyful prayers for the twenty-ninth of May, the date of the happy
restoration of King Charles the Second. But that she would seldom do,
murmuring, "I dare not, I dare not. Tell not Father Ruddlestone." All
these things were very strange to me; but I grew accustomed to them in
time. And there seems to a solitary child, an immensity of time passing
between his first beginning to remember and his coming to eight years of
age.
[Illustration]
There is one thing that I must mention before this Lady ceases to be
Unknown to the reader. She was afflicted with a continual trembling of
the entire Frame. She was no paralytic, for to the very end she could
take her food and medicine without assistance; but she shook always like
a very Aspen. It had to do with her nerves, I suppose; and it was
perhaps for that cause she was attended for so many years by Doctor
Vigors; but he never did her any good in that wise; and the whole
College of Warwick Lane would, I doubt not, have failed signally had
they attempted her cure. Often I asked Mistress Talmash why the
Lady--for until her death I knew of no other name whereby to call
her--shook so; but the waiting-woman would chide me, and say that if I
asked questions she would shake me. So that I forebore.
Ours was a strange and solemn household. All was stately and well
ordered, and--when company came--splendid; but the house always seemed
to me much gloomier than the great Parish-Church, whither I was taken
every Sunday morning on the shoulder of a tall footman, and shut up
alone in a great Pew lined with scarlet baize, and where I felt very
much like a little child that was lost in the midst of the Red Sea. Far
over my head hung a gallery full of the children of Lady Viellcastel's
charity-school; and these, both boys and girls, would make grimaces at
me while the Psalms were being sung, until I felt more frightened than
when I was on my little stool in the cabinet of relics, on the thirtieth
of January. Just over the ledge of my pew I could see the clergyman, in
his large white wig, leaning over the reading-desk, and talking at me,
as I thought, in a mighty angry manner; and when he, or another divine,
afterwards ascended the pulpit above, I used to fancy that it was only
the same parson grown taller, and with a bigger wig, and that he seemed
to lean forward, and be angrier with me than ever. The time of kneeling
was always one of sore trouble to me, for I had to feel with my foot for
the hassock, which seemed to lie as far beneath me as though it were,
indeed, sunk at the bottom of the Red Sea. Getting up again was quite as
difficult; and I don't think we ever attained the end of the Litany
without my dropping my great red Prayer-Book--not the thirtieth-of-January
one, but another affected to my especial use--with a Clang. On such
occasions the pew-door would open, and the Beadle enter. He always
picked up the book, and gave it me with a low bow; but he never omitted
to tell me, in a deadly whisper, that if I had been one of Lady
Viellcastel's boys, he'd skin me alive, he would.
The Unknown Lady did not attend the parish-church. She, and Mistress
Talmash, and the Foreign Person, held a service apart. I was called
"Little Master," and went with the footman. The fellow's name, I
remember, was Jeremy. He used to talk to me, going and coming, as I sat,
in my fine Laced Clothes, and my hat with a plume in it, and my little
rapier with the silver hilt, perched on his broad shoulder. He used to
tell me that he had been a soldier, and had fought under Colonel Kirk;
and that he had a wife, who washed bands and ruffles for the gentlemen
of the Life Guard, and drank strong waters till she found herself in the
Roundhouse. Always on a Sunday morning, as the church-bells began to
ring, the Unknown Lady would give me a Guinea to put into the plate
after service. I remember that the year before she died, when I was big
enough to walk with my hand in Jeremy's, instead of being carried, that
he told me on Easter-Sunday morning that his wife was dead, and that he
had two children in a cellar who had no bread to eat. He cried a good
deal; and before we reached the church, took me into a strange room in a
back-street, where there were a number of men and women shouting and
quarrelling, and another, without his wig and with a great gash in his
forehead, sprawling on the ground, and crying out "Lillibulero!" and two
more playing cards on a pair of bellows. And they were all drinking from
mugs and smoking tobacco. Here Jeremy had something to drink, too, from
a mug. He put the vessel to my lips, and I tasted something Hot, which
made me feel very faint and giddy. When we were in the open air again,
he cried worse than ever. What could I do but give him my guinea? On our
return, to Hanover Square, the Lady asked me, according to her custom,
what was the text, and whether I had put my money into the plate. She
was not strict about the first; for I was generally, from my tenderness
of years, unable to tell her more than that the gentleman in the wig
seemed very angry with me, and the Pope, and the Prince of Darkness;
but she alway taxed me smartly about the Guinea. This was before the
time that I had learned to Lie; and so I told her how I had given the
piece of gold to Jeremy, for that his wife was no more, and his children
were in a cellar with nothing to eat. She stayed a while looking at me
with those blue eyes, which had first their bright fierceness in them
and then their kind and sweet tenderness. It was the first time that I
marked her eyes more than her dress and her diamonds. She took me in her
lap, and printed her lips--which were very soft, but cold--upon my
forehead.
"Child," she said, "did I use thee as is the custom, thou shouldst be
Whipped, not Kissed, for thy folly and disobedience. But you knew not
what you did. Here are two guineas to put into the plate next Sunday;
and let no rogues cozen you out of it. As for Jeremy," she continued,
turning to Mistress Talmash, "see that the knave be stripped of his
livery, and turned out of the house this moment, for robbing my
Grandson, and taking him on a Sabbath morning to taverns, among grooms,
and porters, and fraplers, and bullies."
Yes; the Unknown Lady was my Grandmother. I purpose now to relate to you
her History, revealed to me many years after her death, in a manner to
be mentioned at the proper time.
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
THE HISTORY OF MY GRANDMOTHER, WHO WAS A LADY OF CONSEQUENCE IN THE WEST
COUNTRY.
MY Grandmother was born at Bristol, about the year 1630, and in the
reign of King Charles the First. She came of a family noted for their
long lives, and of whom there was, in good sooth, a proverb in the West
setting forth that "Bar Gallows, Glaive, and the Gout, every Greenville
would live to a hundred." Her maiden name was Greenville: she was
baptised Arabella; and she was the only daughter of Richard Greenville,
an Esquire of a fair estate between Bath and Bristol, where his
ancestors had held their land for three hundred years, on a Jocular
Tenure of presenting the king, whenever he came that way, with a
goose-pie, the legs sticking through the crust. It was Esquire
Greenville's misfortune to come to his patrimony just as those unhappy
troubles were fomenting which a few years after embroiled these kingdoms
in one great and dismal Quarrel. It was hard for a gentleman of
consequence in his own county, and one whose forefathers had served the
most considerable offices therein,--having been of the Quorum ever since
the reign of King Edward the Third,--to avoid mingling in some kind or
another in the dissensions with which our beloved country was then torn.
Mr. Greenville was indeed a person of a tranquil and placable humour, to
whom party janglings were thoroughly detestable; and although he leant
naturally, as beseemed his degree, towards the upholding of his
Majesty's Crown and Dignity, and the maintenance in proper Honour and
Splendour of the Church, he was too good a Christian and citizen not to
shrink from seeing his native land laid waste by the blind savageness
of a Civil War. And although, he paid Cess and Ship-money without
murmuring, and, on being chosen a Knight of the Shire, did zealously
speak up in the Commons House of Parliament on the King's side (refusing
nevertheless to make one of the lip-serving crowd of courtiers of
Whitehall), and although, when churchwarden in his parish, he ever
preserved the laudable custom of Whitsun and Martinmas ales for the good
of the poor, and persisted in having the Book of Sports read from the
pulpit,--he was averse from all high-handed measures of musketooning,
and calivering, and gambriling those of the meaner sort, or those of
better degree (as Mr. Hampden, Mr. Pym, and Another whom I shudder to
mention), who, for Conscience' sake, opposed themselves to the King's
Government. He was in this wise at issue with some of his hotter
Cavalier neighbours, as, for instance, Sir Basil Fauconberg, who,
whenever public matters were under question, began with "Neighbour, you
must first show me Pym, Hampden, Haslerigge, and the rest, swinging as
the Sign of the Rogue's Head, and then I will begin to chop Logic with
you." For a long time Mr. Greenville, my Great-grandfather (and my
enemies may see from this that I am of no Rascal Stock), cherished hopes
that affairs might be brought to a shape without any shedding of Blood;
but his hope proved a vain and deceiving one; ungovernable passions on
either side caused not alone the drawing of the Sword, but the flinging
away of the Scabbard; and my Grandmother was yet but a schoolmaid at
Madam Ribotte's academy for gentlewomen at Bristol when that dreadful
sinful war broke out which ended in the barbarous Murther of the Prince,
and the Undoing of these kingdoms.
Mr. Greenville had two children: a son, whose name, like his own, was
Richard, and who was born some five years before his sister Arabella.
Even as a child this last named person was exceedingly beautiful, very
gracious, fair, grave, and dignified of deportment, with abundant brown
hair, and large and lustrous blue eyes, which, when the transient
tempests of childhood passed over her, were ever remarked as having the
wild, fierce look, shared in sometimes by the males of her family. Her
mother, to her sorrow, died when she was quite a babe. The Esquire was
passionately fond of this his only daughter; but although it was torture
for him to part with her, and he retained her until she was thirteen
years of age in his mansion-house, where she was instructed in reading
and devotion, pickling and preserving (and the distilling of strong
waters), sampler work, and such maidenly parts of education, by the
housekeeper, and by a governante brought from London,--he had wisdom
enough to discern and to admit that his daughter's genius was of a
nature that required and demanded much higher culture than could be
given to her in an old Country Seat, and in the midst of talk about
dogs, and horses, and cattle, and gunning and ploughing, and the
continual disputes of hot-headed Cavaliers or bitter Parliamentarians,
who were trying who should best persuade my Great-grandfather to cast in
his lot with one or the other of the contending parties. His son Richard
had already made his election, and, it is feared, by taking up supplies
on post obit from usurious money-scriveners in Bristol and London, had
raised a troop of horse for the service of the King. Moreover, Arabella
Greenville was of a very proud stomach and unbending humour. She might
be Led, but would not be Driven. She adored her father, but laughed at
the commands of the governante, and the counsels of the housekeeper, who
knew not how either to lead or to rule her. It was thus determined to
send her to Madam Ribotte's academy at Bristol,--for even so early as
King Charles's time had outlandish and new-fangled names been found for
Schools; and thither she was accordingly sent, with instructions that
she was to learn all the polite arts and accomplishments proper to her
station, that she was to be kept under a strict regimen, and corrected
of her faults; but that she was not to be thwarted in her reasonable
desires. She was to have her pony, with John coachman on the skewball
sent to fetch her every Saturday and holiday; was not to be overweighted
with tedious and dragging studies; and was by no means to be subject to
those shameful chastisements of the Ferula and the Rod, which, even
within my own time, I blush to say had not been banished from schools
for young gentlewomen. To sum up, Miss Arabella Greenville went to
school with a pocketful of gold pieces, and a play-chest full of
sweet-cakes and preserved fruits, and with a virtual charter for
learning as little as she chose, and doing pretty well as much as she
liked.
Of course my Grandmother ran a fair chance of being wholly spoiled, and
growing up to one of those termagant, mammythrept romps we used to laugh
at in Mr. Colley Cibber's plays. The schoolmistress fawned upon her,
for, although untitled, Esquire Greenville (from whom my descent is
plain), and he was so much respected in the West, that the innkeepers
were used to beseech him to set up achievements of his arms at the
hotels where he baited on his journeys, was one of the most considerable
of the County Gentry; the teachers were glad when she would treat them
from her abundant store of play-money; and she was a kind of divinity
among the schoolmaids her companions, to whom she gave so many cakes and
sweetmeats that the apothecary had to be called in about once a week to
cure many of surfeit. But this fair young flower-bed was saved from
blight and choking weeds, first, by the innate rectitude and nobility of
her disposition, which (save only when that dangerous look was in her
eyes) taught her to keep a rein over her caprices, and subdue a too warm
and vigorous imagination; next, by the entire absence of Vanity and
Self-Conceit in her mind,--a happy state, which made her equally alive
to her own faults and to the excellences of others; and, last, by her
truly prodigious aptitude for polite learning. I have often been told
that but for adverse circumstances Mrs. Greenville must have proved one
of the most learned, as she was one of the wittiest and best-bred, women
of her Age and Country. In the languages, in all manner of fine
needlework, in singing and fingering instruments of music, in medicinal
botany and the knowledge of diseases, in the making of the most cunning
electuaries and syllabubs, and even in Arithmetic,--a science of which
young gentlewomen were then almost wholly deficient,--she became, before
she was sixteen years of age, a truly wonderful proficient. A Bristol
bookseller spoke of printing her book of recipes (containing some
excellent hints on cookery, physic, the casting of nativities, and
farriery); and some excellent short hymns she wrote are, I believe, sung
to this day in one of the Bristol free-schools. But the talent for which
she was most shiningly remarkable was in that difficult and laborious
art of Painting in Oils. Her early drawings, both in crayons and Chinese
ink, were very noble; and there are in this House now some miniatures of
her father, brother, and school-companions, limned by her in a most
delicate and lovely fashion; but 'twas in oils and in portraiture of the
size of life that she most surpassed. She speedily out-went all that the
best masters of this craft in Bristol could teach her; and her
pictures--especially one of her Father, in his buff coat and
breastplate, as a Colonel of the Militia--were the wonder, not only of
Bristol, but of all Somerset and the counties adjacent.
About this time those troubles in the West, with which the name of
Prince Rupert is so sadly allied, grew to be of such force and fury as
to decide Mr. Greenville on going to London, taking his daughter
Arabella with him, to make interest with the Parliament, so that peril
might be averted from his estate. For although his son was in arms for
King Charles, and he himself was a gentleman of approved loyalty, he had
done nothing of an overt kind to favour King or Parliament. He thus
hoped, having ever been a peaceable and law-worthy gentleman, to
preserve his lands from peril, and himself and family from prosecution;
and it is a great error to suppose that many honest gentlemen did not so
succeed in the very fiercest frenzy of the civil wars in keeping their
houses over their heads, and their heads upon their shoulders. Witness
worthy Mr. John Evelyn of Wotton and Sayes Court, and many other persons
of repute.
While the Esquire was intent on his business at Westminster, and
settling the terms of a Fine, without which it seemed even his peaceable
behaviour could not be compounded, he lay at the house of a friend, Sir
Fortunatus Geddings, a Turkey merchant, who had a fair house in the
street leading directly to St. Paul's Church, just without Ludgate. The
gate has been pulled down this many a day, and the place where he dwelt
is now called Ludgate Hill. As he had much going to and fro, and was
afraid that his daughter might come to hurt, both in the stoppage to her
schooling, and in the unquietness of the times, he placed her for a
while at a famous school at Hackney, under that notable governante Mrs.
Desaguiliers. And here Mrs. Greenville had not been for many weeks ere
the strangest adventure in the world--as strange as any one of my
own--befel her. The terrible battle of Naseby had by this time been
fought, and the King's cause was wholly ruined. Among other Cavaliers
fortunate enough to escape from that deadly fray, and who were in hiding
from the vengeance of the usurping government, was the Lord Francis
V----s, younger son to that hapless Duke of B----m who was slain at
Portsmouth by Captain F----n. It seems almost like a scene in a comedy
to tell; and, indeed, I am told that Tom D'Urfey did turn the only merry
portion of it into a play; but it appears that, among other shifts to
keep his disguise, the Lord Francis, who was highly skilled in all the
accomplishments of the age, was fain to enter Mrs. Desaguiliers' school
at Hackney in the habit of a dancing-master, and that as such he taught
corantoes and rounds and qyres to the young gentlewomen. Whether the
governante, who was herself a stanch royalist, winked at the deception,
I know not; but her having done so is not improbable. Stranger to
relate, the Lord Francis brought with him a Companion who was, forsooth,
to teach French and the cittern, and who was no other than Captain
Richard, son to the Esquire of the West country, and who was likewise
inveterately pursued by the Usurper. The brother recognised his
sister--to what joy and contentment on both their parts I need not say;
but ere the false Dancing-Master had played his part many days, he fell
madly in love with Arabella Greenville. To her sorrow and wretchedness,
my poor Grandmother returned his Flame. Not that the Lord Francis stands
convicted of any Base Designs upon her. I am afraid that he had been as
wild and as reckless as most of the young nobles of his day; but for
this young woman at least his love was pure and honourable. He made no
secret of it to his fast friend, Captain Richard (my Grand-uncle), who
would soon have crossed swords with the Spark had any villany been
afloat; and he made no more ado, as was the duty of a Brother jealous of
his sister's fair fame, but to write his father word of what had
chanced. The Esquire was half terrified and half flattered by the honour
done to his family by the Lord Francis. The poor young man was under the
very sternest of proscriptions, and it was openly known that if the
Parliament laid hold on him his death was certain. But, on the other
hand, the Esquire loved his daughter above all things; and one short
half-hour, passed with her alone at Hackney, persuaded him that he must
either let Arabella's love-passion have its vent, or break her heart for
ever. And, take my word for it, you foolish parents who would thwart
your children in this the most sacred moment of their lives,--thwart
them for no reasonable cause, but only to gratify your own pride of
purse, avarice, evil tempers, or love of meddling,--you are but
gathering up bunches of nettles wherewith to scourge your own shoulders,
and strewing your own beds with shards and pebbles. Take the advice of
old John Dangerous, who suffered his daughter to marry the man of her
choice, and is happy in the thought that she enjoys happiness; and I
should much wish to know if there be any Hatred in the world so dreadful
as that curdled love, as that reverence decayed, as that obedience in
ruins, you see in a proud haughty daughter married against her will to
one she holds in loathing, and who points her finger, and says within
herself, "My father and mother made me marry that man, and I am
Miserable."
It was agreed amongst those who had most right to come to an agreement
in the matter, that as a first step the Lord Francis V----s should
betake himself to some other place of hiding, as more in keeping with
Mrs. Greenville's honour; but that, with the consent of her father and
brother, he should be solemnly betrothed to her; and that, so soon as
the troubles were over, or that the price which was upon his head were
taken off, he should become her husband. And there was even a saving
clause added, that if the national disturbances unhappily continued,
Mrs. Greenville should be privately conveyed abroad, and that the Lord
Francis should marry her so soon after a certain lapse of time as he
could conveniently get beyond sea. My Lord Duke of B----m had nothing to
say against the match, loving his brother, as he did, very dearly; and
so, in the very roughest of times, this truest of true loves seemed to
bid fair to have a smooth course.
But alas the day! My Grandmother's passion for the young Lord was a very
madness. On his part, he idolised her, calling her by names and writing
her letters that are nonsensical enough in common life, but which are
not held to be foolish pleas in Love's Chancery. When the boy and
girl--for they were scarcely more--parted, she gave him one of her rich
brown tresses; he gave her one of his own dainty love-locks. They broke
a broad piece in halves between them; each hung the fragment by a ribbon
next the heart. They swore eternal fidelity, devotion. Naught but Death
should part them, they said. Foolish things to say and do, no doubt; but
I look at my grizzled old head in the glass, and remember that I have
said and done things quite as foolish forty--fifty years ago.
Nothing but Death was to part them; and nothing but Death so parted
them. The Esquire Greenville, his business being brought to a pleasant
termination, having paid his Fine and gotten his Safe-Conduct and his
Redemption from Sequestration, betook himself once more to the West. His
daughter went with him, nourishing her love and fondling it, and
dwelling, syllable by syllable, on the letters which the Lord Francis
sent her from time to time. He was in hopes, he said, to get away to
Holland.
Then came that wicked business of the King's Murder. Mr. Greenville, as
became a loyal gentleman, was utterly dismayed at that horrid crime; but
to Arabella the news was as of the intelligence of the death of some
loved and revered friend. She wept, she sobbed, she called on Heaven to
shower down vengeance on the Murderers of her gracious Prince. She had
not heard from her betrothed for many days, and those who loved and
watched her had marked a strange wild way with her.
It was on the fourth of February that the dreadful news of the Whitehall
tragedy came to her father's house. She was walking on the next day very
moodily in the garden, when the figure of one booted and spurred, and
with the stains of many days' travel on his dress, stood across her
path. He was but a clown, a mere boor; he had been a ploughboy on her
father's lands, and had run away to join Captain Richard, who had made
him a trumpeter in his troop. What he had to say was told in clumsy
speech, in hasty broken accents, with sighs and stammerings and
blubberings; but he told his tale too well.
The Lord Francis V----s and Captain Richard Greenville--Arabella's
lover, Arabella's brother--were both Dead. On the eve of the fatal
thirtieth of January they had been taken captives in a tilt-boat on the
Thames, in which they were endeavouring to escape down the river. They
had at once been tried by a court-martial of rebel officers; and on the
thirtieth day of that black month, by express order sent from the Lord
General Cromwell in London, these two gallant and unfortunate gentlemen
had been shot to death by a file of musketeers in the courtyard of
Hampton Court Palace. The trumpeter had by a marvel escaped, and lurked
about Hampton till the dreadful deed was over. He had sought out the
sergeant of the firing party, and questioned him as to the last moments
of the condemned. The sergeant said that they died as Malignants, and
without showing any sign of Penitence; but he could not gainsay that
their bearing was soldier-like.
Arabella heard this tale without moving.
"Did the Captain--did my brother--say aught before they slew him?" she
asked.
"Nowt but this, my lady: 'God forgive us all!'"
"And the Lord Francis, said he aught?"
"Ay; but I dunno loike to tell."
"Say on."
"'Twas t' Sergeant tould un. A' blessed the King, and woud hev' t'
souldiers drink 's health, but they wouldno'. And a' wouldno' let un
bandage uns eyes; an' jest befwoar t' red cwoats foired, a' touk a long
lock o' leddy's hair from 's pocket and kissed un, and cried out 'Bloud
for Bloud!' and then a' died all straight along."
Mrs. Arabella Greenville drew from her bosom a long wavy lock of silken
hair,--his hair, poor boy!--and kissed it, and crying out "Blood for
Blood!" she fell down in the garden-path in a dead faint.
She did not Die, however, being spared for many Purposes, some of them
Terrible, until she was nearly ninety years of age. But her first state
was worse than death; she lying for many days in a kind of trance or
lethargy, and then waking up to raving madness. For the best part of
that year, she was a perfect maniac, from whom nothing could be got but
gibberings and plungings, and ceaseless cries of "Blood for Blood!" The
heir-at-law to the estate, now that the Esquire's son was dead, watched
her madness with a cautelous avaricious desire. He was a sour Parliament
man, who had pinned his faith to the Commonwealth, and done many
Awakening things against the Cavaliers, and he thought now that he
should have his reward, and Inherit.
It was so destined, however, that my Grandmother should recover from
that Malady. On her beauty it left surprisingly few traces. You could
only tell the change that had taken place in her by the deathly paleness
of her visage, by her never smiling, and by that Fierce Expression in
her eyes being now an abiding instead of a passing one. Beyond these,
she was herself again; and after a little while went to her domestic
concerns, and chiefly to the cultivation of that pleasing art of
Painting in Oils in which she had of old time given such fair promise of
excellence. Her father would have had several most ingenious examples of
History and Scripture pieces by the Italian and Flemish masters bought
for her to study by,--such copies being then very plentiful, by reason
of the dispersing of the collections of many noblemen and gentlemen on
the King's side; but this she would not suffer, saying that it were
waste of time and money, and, with astonishing zeal, applied herself to
the branch of portraiture. From a little miniature portrait of her
dead Lord, drawn by Mr. Cooper, she painted in large many fair and noble
presentments, varying them according to her humour,--now showing the
Lord Francis in his panoply as a man of war, now in a court habit, now
in an embroidered night-gown and Turkish cap, now leaning on the
shoulder of her brother, the Captain, deceased. And anon she would make
a ghastly image of him lying all along in the courtyard at Hampton
Court, with the purple bullet-marks on his white forehead, and a great
crimson stain on his bosom, just below his bands. This was the one she
most loved to look upon, although her father sorely pressed her to put
it by, and not dwell on so uncivil a theme, the more so as, in Crimson
Characters, on the background she had painted the words "Blood for
Blood," But whatever she did was now taken little account of, for all
thought her to be distraught.
By and by she fell to quite a new order in her painting. She seemed to
take infinite pleasure in making portraitures of OLIVER CROMWELL, who
had by this time become Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. She had
never seen that Bold Bad Man (the splendour of whose mighty achievements
must for ever remain tarnished by his blood-guiltiness in the matter of
the King's Murther); but from descriptions of his person, for which she
eagerly sought, and from bustos, pictures, and prints cut in brass,
which she obtained from Bristol and elsewhere, she produced some
surprising resemblances of him who was now the Greatest Man in England.
She painted him at full and at half length--in full-face, profile, and
three-quarter; but although she would show her work to her intimates,
and ask eagerly "Is it like--is it like him?" she would never part with
one copy (and there were good store of time-servers ready to buy the
Protector's picture at that time), nor could any tell how she disposed
of them.
This went on until the summer of the year 1657, when her father gently
put it to her that she had worn the willow long enough, and would have
had her ally herself with some gentleman of worth and parts in that part
of the country. For the poor Esquire desired that she should be his
heiress, and that a man-child should be born to the Greenville estate,
and thus the heir-at-law, who was a wretched attorney at Bristol, and
more bitter against kings than ever, should not inherit. She was not to
be moved, however, towards marriage; saying softly that she was already
wedded to her Frank in heaven,--for so she spoke of the Lord Francis
V----s,--and that her union had been blessed by her brother Dick, who
was in Heaven too, with King Charles and all the Blessed Army of
Martyrs. And I have heard, indeed, that the unhappy business of the
King's death was the means of so crazing, or casting into a Sad Celibacy
and Devouring Melancholy, multitudes of comely young women who were born
for love and delights, and to be the smiling mothers of many children.
So, seeing that he could do nothing with her, and loth to use any
unhandsome pressure towards one whom he loved as the Apple of his Eye,
the Esquire began to think it might divert her mind to more cheerful
thoughts if she quitted for a season that part of the country (for it
was at Home that she had received the dreadful news of her misfortune);
and, Sir Fortunatus Geddings and his family being extremely willing to
receive her, and do her honour, he despatched Arabella to London, under
protection of Mr. Landrail, his steward, a neighbour of his, Sir
Hardress Eustis, lending his Coach for the journey.
Being now come to London, every means which art could devise, or
kindness could imagine, were made use of by Sir Fortunatus, his wife,
and daughter, to make Arabella's life happier. But I should tell you a
strange thing that came about at her father's house the day after she
left it for the Town. Mr. Greenville chanced to go in a certain long
building (by the side of his pleasure-pond) that was used as a
boat-house, when, to his amazement, he sees, piled up against the wall,
a number of pictures, some completed, some but half finished, but all
representing the Lord Protector Cromwell. But the strangest thing about
them was, that in every picture the canvas about the head was pricked
through and through in scores of places with very fine clean holes, and,
looking around in his marvel, he found an arbalist or cross-bow, with
some very sharp bolts, and was so led to conjecture that some one had
been setting these heads of the Protector up as a target, and shooting
bolts at them. He was at first minded to send an express after his
daughter to London to question her if she knew aught of the matter; but
on second thoughts he desisted, remembering that in the Message, almost,
(as the times stood) there was Treason, and concluding that, after all,
it might be but some idle fancy of Arabella, and part of the Demi-Craze
under which she laboured. For there could be no manner of doubt that
the Pictures, if not the Holes in them, were of her handiwork.
Meanwhile Arabella was being entertained in the stateliest manner by Sir
Fortunatus Geddings, who stood in great favour with the government, and
had, during the troubles, assisted the Houses with large sums of money.
There were then not many sports or amusements wherewith a sorrowing
maiden could be diverted; for the temper of England's Rulers was against
vain pastimes and junketings. The Maypoles had been pulled down; the
players whipped and banished; the bear and bull baitings, and even the
mere harmless minstrelsy and ballad-singing of the streets, all
rigorously pulled down. But whatever the worthy Turkey merchant and his
household could do in the way of carrying Arabella about to suppers,
christenings, country gatherings, and so forth, was cheerfully and
courteously done. Sir Fortunatus maintained a coach (for he was one of
the richest merchants in the City of London), and in this conveyance
Arabella was ofttimes taken to drive in Hyde Park, or towards the
Uxbridge Road. 'Twas on one of these occasions that she first saw the
Protector, who likewise was in his coach, drawn by eight Holstein mares,
and attended by a troop of Horse, very gallantly appointed, with scarlet
livery coats, bright gorgets and back-pieces, and red plumes in their
hats.
"He is very like, very like," she murmured, looking long and earnestly
at the grand cavalcade.
"Like unto Whom, my dear?" asked Mrs. Nancy Geddings, the youngest
daughter of Sir Fortunatus, who was her companion in the coach that day.
"Very like unto him who is at Home in the West yonder," she made answer.
"Now take me back to Ludgate, Nancy sweet, for I am Sick."
She was to be humoured in everything, and she was taken back as she
desired. It chanced, a few days after this, that word came that his
Highness the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England (for to such
State had Oliver grown) designed to visit the City, to dine with the
citizens at Guildhall. There was to be a great Pageant. He was to be met
at Temple Bar by the Mayor and Aldermen, and to be escorted towards
Cheapside by those city Trainbands which had done such execution on the
Parliament side during the wars, and by the Companies with their Livery
banners. Foreign Ambassadors were to bear him company; for Oliver was
then at the height of his power, and had made the name of England
dreaded, and even his own prowess respected, by all nations that were
beyond sea. He was to hear a sermon at Bow Church at noon, and at two
o'clock--for the preacher was to be Mr. Hugh Peters, who always gave his
congregation a double turn of the hour-glass--he was to dine at the
Guildhall, where I know not how many geese, bustards, capons, pheasants,
ruffs and reeves, sirloins, shoulders of veal, pasties, sweet puddings,
jellies, and custards, with good store of Rhenish and Buckrack and
Canary, and Bordelais and Gascoin wines, were provided to furnish a
banquet worthy of the day. For although the Protectorate was a stern sad
period, and Oliver was (or had schooled himself to be) a temperate man,
the citizens had not quite forgotten their love of good cheer; and the
Protector himself was not averse from the keeping up some state and
splendour, Whitehall being now well-nigh as splendid as in the late
King's time, and his Highness sitting with his Make-Believe Lords around
him (Lisle, Whitelocke, and the rest), and eating his meat to tuckets
upon Trumpets, and being otherwise puffed up with Vanity.
The good folks with whom Arabella was sojourning thought it might help
to cure her of her sad moping ways if she saw the grand pageant go by,
and mingled in the merriment and feasting which the ladies of Sir
Fortunatus's family--the Knight himself being bidden to the
Guildhall--proposed to give their neighbours on the day when Oliver came
into the City. To this intent, the windows of their house without
Ludgate were all taken out of their frames, and the casements themselves
hung with rich cloths and tapestries, and decked with banners. And an
open house was kept, literally; meats and wines and sweets being set out
in every room, even to the bed-chambers, and all of the Turkey
merchant's acquaintance being bidden to come in and help themselves, and
take a squeeze at the windows to see his Highness go by. Only one window
on the first floor was set apart, and here sat the Ladies of the family,
with Mistress Deborah Clay, the Remembrancer's lady, and one that was
sister to a Judge of Commonwealth's Bench, and Arabella Greenville, who
was, for a wonder, quite cheerful and sprightly that morning, and who
had for her neighbour one Lady Lisle, the wife of John Lisle, one of
Cromwell's Chief Councillors and Commissioners of the Great Seal.[B]
The time that passed between their taking seats and the coming of the
pageant was passed pleasantly enough; not in drinking of healths, which
practice was then considered as closely akin to an unlawful thing, but
in laughing and quaffing, and whispering of merry jests. For I have
usually found that, be the Rule of Church and State ever so sour and
stern, folks _will_ laugh and quaff and jest on the sly, and be merry in
the green tree, if they are forced to be sad in the dry.
There was a gentleman standing behind Arabella, a Counsellor of
Lincoln's Inn I think, who was telling a droll story of Lord President
Bradshaw to his friend from the Temple. Not greatly a person of whom to
relate merry tales, I should think, that terrible Bencher, who sat at
the head of the High Commission, clothed in his scarlet robe, and passed
judgment upon his lord the King. But still these gentlemen laughed loud
and long, as one told the other how the President lay very sick, sick
almost to death, at his country house; and how, he being one that was in
the Commission of the Chancellorship, had taken them away with him, and
would by no means surrender them, keeping them under his pillow, night
and day; wherefore one of his brother commissioners was fain to seek him
out, and press him hard to give up the seals, saying that the business
of the nation was at a Standstill, for they could neither seal patents
nor pardons. But all in vain, Bradshaw crying out in a voice that,
though weak, was still terrible, that he would never give them up, but
would carry them with him into the next world; whereat quoth the other
commissioner, "_By ----, My Lord President, they will certainly melt if
you do._" And at this tale the gentleman from Lincoln's Inn and he from
the Temple both laughed so, that Arabella, who had been listening
without eavesdropping, burst into a fit of laughter too; only my Lady
Lisle (who had likewise heard the Story) regarded her with a very grim
and dissatisfied countenance, and murmured that she thought a little
trailing up before the Council, and committing to the Gate-house, would
do some popinjays some good, and cure them of telling tales as
treasonable as they were scurrilous.
But now came a great noise of trumpets and hautboys and drums, and the
great pageant came streaming up towards Ludgate, a troop of Oliver's own
Body-guard on iron-grey chargers clearing the way, which they did with
scant respect for the lives and limbs of the crowd, and with very
little scruple either in bruising the Trainbands with their horses'
hoofs and the flat of their broadswords. As Arabella leant forward to
see the show approach, something hard, and it would seem of metal, that
she carried beneath her mantle, struck against the arm of my Lady Lisle,
who, being a woman of somewhat quick temper, cried out,
"Methinks that you carry a pocket-flask with you, Mistress Greenville,
instead of a vial of essences. That which you have must hold a pint at
least."
"I do carry such a flask," answered Arabella, "and please God, there are
those here to-day who shall drink of it even to the Dregs."
This speech was afterwards remembered against her as a proof of her
Intent.
All, however, were speedily too busy with watching the Show go by to
take much heed of any word passage between the two women. Now it was
Mistress Deborah Clay pointing out the Remembrancer to her gossip; now
the flaunting banners of the Companies, now the velvet robes of the
Lords of the Council were looked upon; now a Great Cry arose that his
Highness was coming.
He came in his coach drawn by the eight Holstein mares, one of his lords
by his side, and his two chaplains, with a gentleman of the bed-chamber
sitting over against. He wore a rich suit of brown velvet purfled with
white satin, a bright gorget of silver,--men said that he wore mail
beneath his clothes,--startups and gauntlets of yellow Spanish, a great
baldric of cloth-of-gold, and in his hat a buckle of diamonds and a red
feather. Yet, bravely as he was attired, those who knew him declared
that they had never seen Oliver look so careworn and so miserable as he
did that day.
By a kind of Fate, he turned his glance upwards as he passed the house
of the Turkey merchant, and those Cruel Eyes met the fierce gaze of
Arabella Greenville.
"Blood for Blood!" she cried out in a loud clear voice; and she drew a
Pistol from the folds of her mantle, and fired downwards, and with good
aim, at the Protector's head.
My Lady Lisle saw the deed done. "Jezebel!" she shrieked, striking the
weapon from Arabella's hand.
Oliver escaped unharmed, but by an almost miracle. The bullet had struck
him as it was aimed, directly in the centre of his forehead, he wearing
his hat much slouched over his brow; but it had struck--not his skull,
but the diamond buckle, and glancing off from that hard mass, sped out
of the coach-window again, on what errand none could tell, for it was
heard of no more. I have often wondered what became of all the bullets I
have let fly.
The stoppage of the coach; the Protector half stunned; the chaplain
paralysed with fear; the Trainbands in a frenzy--half of terror, half of
strong drink--firing off their pieces hap-hazard at the windows, and
shouting out that this was a plot of the Papists or the Malignants; the
crowd surging, the Body-Guard galloping to and fro; the poor
standard-bearers tripping themselves up with their own poles,--all this
made a mad turmoil in the street without Ludgate. But the Protector had
speedily found all his senses, and had whispered a word or two to a
certain Sergeant in whom he placed great trust, and pointed his finger
to a certain window. Then the Sergeant being gone away, orders were
given for the pageant to move on; and through Ludgate, and by Paul's,
and up Chepe, and to Bow Church, it moved accordingly. Mr. Hugh Peters
preached for two hours as though nothing had happened. Being doubtless
under instructions, he made not the slightest allusion to the late
tragic Attempt; and at the banquet afterwards at the Guildhall, there
were only a few trifling rumours that his Highness had been shot at by a
mad woman from a window in Fleet Street; denial, however, being
speedily given to this by persons in Authority, who declared that the
disturbance without Ludgate had arisen simply from a drunken soldier of
the Trainbands firing his musketoon into the air for Joy.
But the Sergeant, with some soldiers of the Protector's own, walked
tranquilly into the house of Sir Fortunatus Geddings, and into the upper
chamber, where the would-be Avenger of Blood was surrounded by a throng
of men and women gazing upon her, half in horror, and half in
admiration. The Sergeant beckoned to her, and she arose without a
murmur, and went with him and the soldiers, two only being left as
sentinels, to see that no one stirred from the house till orders came.
By this time, from Ludgate to Blackfriars all was soldiers, the crowd
being thrust away east and west; and, between a lane of pikemen,
Arabella was brought into the street, hurried through the narrow lanes
behind Apothecaries' Hall, and so through the alleys to Blackfriars
Stairs, where a barge was in waiting, which bore her swiftly away to
Whitehall.
"You have flown at High Game, mistress," was the only remark made to her
by the Sergeant.
She was locked up for many hours in an inner chamber, the windows being
closed, and a lamp set on the table. They bound her, but, mindful of her
sex and youth, not in fetters, or even with ropes, contenting themselves
with fastening her arms tightly behind her with the Sergeant's silken
sash. For the Sergeant was of Cromwell's own guard, and was of great
authority.
At about nine at night the Sergeant and two soldiers came for her, and
so brought her, through many lobbies, to Cromwell's own closet, where
she found him still with his hat and baldric on, sitting at a table
covered with green velvet.
"What prompted thee to seek my Life?" he asked, without anger, but in a
slow, cold, searching voice.
"Blood for Blood!" she answered, with undaunted mien.
"What evil have I done thee, that thou shouldst seek my blood?"
"What evil--what evil, Beelzebub?--all! Thou hast slain the King my Lord
and master. Thou hast slain the Dear Brother who was my playmate, and my
father's hope and pride. Thou hast slain the Sweet and Gallant Youth who
was to have been my husband."
"Thou are that Arabella Greenville, then, the daughter of the wavering
half-hearted Esquire of the West."
"I am the daughter of a Gentleman of Long Descent. I am Arabella
Greenville, an English Maid of Somerset; and I cry for vengeance for the
blood of Charles Stuart, for the blood of Richard Greenville, for the
blood of FRANCIS VILLIERS. Blood for Blood!"
That terrible gleam of Madness leapt out of her blue eyes, and, all
bound as she was, she rushed towards the Protector, as though in her
fury she would have spurned him with her foot, or torn him with her
teeth. The Sergeant for his part made as though he would have drawn his
sword upon her; but Oliver laid his hand on the arm of his officer, and
bade him forbear.
"Leave the maiden alone with me," he said calmly; "wait within call. She
can do no harm." Then, when the soldiers had withdrawn, he walked to and
fro in the room for many minutes, ever and anon turning his head and
gazing fixedly on the prisoner, who stood erect, her head high, her
hands, for all their bonds, clenched in defiance.
"Thou knowest," he said, "that thy Life is forfeit."
"I care not. The sooner the better. I ask but one Mercy: that you send
me not to Tyburn, but to Hampton Court; there to be shot to death in
the courtyard by a file of musketeers."
"Wherefore to Hampton?"
"Because it was there you murdered my Lover and my Brother."
"I remember," the Protector said, bowing his head. "They were rare
Malignants, both. I remember; it was on the same thirtieth of January
that Charles Stuart died the death. But shouldst thou not, too, bear in
mind that Vengeance is not thine, but the Lord's?"
"Blood for Blood!"
"Thou art a maiden of a stern Resolve and a strong Will," said the
Protector, musingly. "If thou art pardoned, wilt thou promise repentance
and amendment?"
"Blood for Blood!"
"Poor distraught creature," this Once cruel man made answer, "I will
have no blood of thine. I have had enough," he continued, with a dark
look and a deep sigh; "I am weary; and Blood will have Blood. But that
my life was in Mercy saved for the weal of these kingdoms, thou mightst
have done with me, Arabella Greenville, according to thy desires."
He paused, as though for some expression of sorrow; but she was silent.
"Thou art hardened," he resumed; "it may be that there are things that
_cannot_ be forgiven."
"There are," she said, firmly.
"I spare thy life," the Lord Protector continued; "but, Arabella
Greenville, thou must go into Captivity. Until I am Dead, we two cannot
be at large together. But I will not doom thee to a solitary prison.
Thou shalt have a companion in durance. Yes," he ended, speaking between
his teeth, and more to himself than to her, "she shall join Him yonder
in his lifelong prison. Blood for Blood; the Slayer and the Avenger
shall be together."
She was taken back to her place of confinement, where meat and drink
were placed before her, and a tiring-woman attended her with a change of
garments. And at day-break the next morning she was taken away in a
litter towards Colchester in Essex.[C]
FOOTNOTES:
[B] This Lady Lisle was a very virulent partisan woman, and, according
to my Grandmother's showing, was so bitter against the Crown that, being
taken, when a young woman, to witness the execution of King Charles, and
seeing one who pressed to the scaffold after the blow to dip her
kerchief in the Martyr's blood, she cried out "that she needed no such
relic; but that she would willingly drink the Tyrant's blood." This is
the same Alice Lisle who afterwards, in King James's time, suffered at
Winchester for harbouring two of the Western Rebels.
[C] Those desirous of learning fuller particulars of my Grandmother's
History, or anxious to satisfy themselves that I have not Lied, should
consult a book called _The Travels of Edward Brown, Esquire_, that is
now in the Great Library at Montague House. Mr. Brown is in most things
curiously exact; but he errs in stating that Mrs. Greenville's name was
Letitia,--it was Arabella.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
MY GRANDMOTHER DIES, AND I AM LEFT ALONE, WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A NAME.
I HAVE sat over against Death unnumbered times in the course of a long
and perilous life, and he has appeared to me in almost every shape; but
I shall never forget that Thirtieth of January in the year '20, when my
Grandmother died. I have seen men all gashed and cloven about--a very
mire of blood and wounds,--and heads lying about on the floor like
ninepins, among the Turks, where a man's life is as cheap as the
Halfpenny Hatch. I was with that famous Commander Baron Trenck[D] when
his Pandours--of whom I was one--broke into Mutiny. He drew a pistol
from his belt, and said, "I shall decimate you." And he began to count
Ten, "one, two, three, four," and so on, till he came to the tenth man,
whom he shot Dead. And then he took to counting again, until he was
arrived at the second Tenth. That man's brains he also blew out. I was
the tenth of the third batch, but I never blenched. Trenck happily held
his hand before he came to Me. The Pandours cried out that they would
submit, although I never spoke a word; he forgave us; and I had a flask
of Tokay with him in his tent that very after-dinner. I have seen a man
keel-hauled at sea, and brought up on the other side, his face all
larded with barnacles like a Shrove-tide capon. Thrice I have stood
beneath the yardarm with the rope round my neck (owing to a king's ship
mistaking the character of my vessel).[E] I have seen men scourged till
the muscles of their backs were laid bare as in a Theatre of Anatomy; I
have watched women's limbs crackle and frizzle in the flames at an Act
of Faith, with the King and Court--ay, and the court-ladies too--looking
on. I stood by when that poor mad wretch Damiens was pulled to pieces by
horses in the Grève. I have seen what the plague could do in the galleys
at Marseilles. Death and I have been boon companions and bedfellows. He
has danced a jig with me on a plank, and ridden bodkin, and gone snacks
with me for a lump of horse-flesh in a beleaguered town; but no man can
say that John Dangerous had aught but a bold face to show that Phantom
who frights nursemaids and rich idle people so.
And yet, now, I can recall the cold shudder that passed through my young
veins when my Grandmother died. Of all days, too, that the Thirtieth of
January should have been ordered for her passing away! It was
mid-winter, and the streets were white with Innocent Snow when she was
taken ill. She had not been one of those trifling and trivanting
gentlewomen that pull diseases on to their pates with drums and routs,
and late hours, and hot rooms, and carding, and distilled waters. She
had ever been of a most sober conversation and temperate habit; so that
the prodigious age she reached became less of a wonder, and the
tranquillity with which her spirit left this darksome house of clay
seemed mercifully natural. They had noticed, so early as the autumn of
'19, that she was decaying; yet had the roots of life stricken so
strongly into earth as to defy that Woodman who pins his faith to
shaking blasts at first, but when he finds that windfalls will not serve
his turn, and that although leaves decay, and branches are swept away,
and the very bark is stripped off, the tree dies not, takes heart of
grace, and lays about him with his Axe. Then one blow with the sharp
suffices. So for many months Death seemed to let her be, as though he
sat down quietly by her side, nursing his bony chin, and saying, "She is
very old and weak; yet a little, and she must surely be mine." Mistress
Talmash appeared to me, in the fantastic imagination of a solitary
childhood, to take such a part, and play it to the Very Death; and there
were sidelong glances from her eyes, and pressures of her lips, and a
thrusting forth of her hands when the cordial or the potion was to be
given, that seemed to murmur, "Still does she Tarry, and still do I
Wait." This gentlewoman was never hard or impatient with my Grandmother;
but towards the closing scene, for all the outward deference she
observed towards her, 'twas she who commanded, and the Unknown Lady who
obeyed. Nor did I fail to mark that her bearing was towards me fuller of
a kind of stern authority than she had of aforetime presumed to show,
and that she seemed to be waiting for me too, that she might work her
will upon me.
The ecclesiastic Father Ruddlestone was daily, and for many hours,
closeted with my kinswoman and benefactress; and I often, when admitted
to her presence after one of these parleys, found her much dejected, and
in Tears. He had always maintained a ghostly sway over her, and was in
these latter days stern with her almost to harshness. And although I
have ever disdained eavesdropping and couching in covert places to hear
the foregatherings of my betters (which some honourable persons in the
world's reckoning scorn not to do), it was by Chance, and not by Design,
that, playing one wintry day in the Withdrawing-room adjoining the
closet where my Grandmother still sat among her relics, I heard high
words--high, at least, as they affected one person, for the lady's rose
not above a mild complaint; and Father Ruddlestone coming out, said in
an angry tone:
"My uncle saved the King's life when he was in the Oak, and his soul
when he was at Whitehall; and I will do his bidding by you now."
"The Lord's will be done, not mine," my Grandmother said meekly.
Then Father Ruddlestone passed into the Withdrawing-room, and seeing me
on a footstool, playing it is true at the Battle of Hochstedt with some
leaden soldiers, and two wooden puppets for the Duke and Prince Eugene,
but still all agape at the strange words that had hit my sense, he
catches me a buffet on the ear, bidding me mind my play, and not listen,
else I should hear no good of myself, or of what an osier wand might
haply do to me. And that a change was coming was manifest even in this
rude speech; for my Grandmother, albeit of the wise King's mind on the
proper ordering of children, and showing that she did not hate me when I
needed chastening, would never suffer her Domestics, even to the
highest, to lay a finger upon me.
It was after these things, and while I was crying out, more in anger
than with the smart of the blow, that she called me into her closet and
soothed me, giving me to eat of that much-prized sweetmeat she said was
once such a favourite solace with Queen Mary of Modena, consort of the
late King James, and which she only produced on rare occasions. And then
she bewailed my hurt, but bade me not vex her Director, who was a man of
much holiness, full, when we were contrite, of healing and quieting
words; but then, of a sudden, nipping me pretty sharply by the arm, she
said:
"Child, I charge thee that thou abandon that fair false race, and trust
no man whose name is Stuart, and abide not by their fatal creed." In
remembrance of which, although I am by descent a Cavalier, and bound by
many bonds to the old Noble House,--and surely there was never a Prince
that carried about him more of the far-bearing blaze of Majesty than the
Chevalier de St. G----, and bears it still, all broken as he is, in his
Italian retreat,--I have ever upheld the illustrious House of Brunswick
and the Protestant Succession as by Law Established. And as the barking
of a dog do I contemn those scurril flouts and obloquies which have of
old times tossed me upon tongues, and said of me that I should play fast
and loose with Jacobites and Hanoverians, drinking the King over the
Water on my knees at night, and going down to the Cock-pit to pour news
of Jacobites and recusants and other suspected persons into the ears of
Mr. Secretary in the morning. Treason is Death by the Law, and legal
testimony is not to be gainsaid; but I abhor those Iscariot-minded
wretches, with faces like those who Torture the Saints in old Hangings,
who cry, aha! against the sanctuaries, and trot about to bear false
witness.[F]
There were no more quarrels between my Grandmother and her Director.
Thenceforth Father Ruddlestone ruled over her; and one proof of his
supremacy was, that she forewent the use of that Common Prayer-Book of
our Anglican Church which had been her constant companion. From which I
conjecture that, after long wavering and temporizing, even to the length
of having the Father in her household, she had at length returned to or
adopted the ancient faith. But although the Substance of our Ritual was
now denied her, she was permitted to retain its Shadow; and for hours
would sit gazing upon the torn-off cover of the book, with its device of
the crown and crossed axes, in sad memory of K. C. 1st.
A most mournful Christmas found her still growing whiter and weaker, and
nearer her End. At this ordinarily joyful season of the year, it was her
commendable custom to give great alms away to the poor,--among whom at
all times she was a very Dorcas,--bestowing not only gifts of money to
the clergy for division among the needy, but sending also a dole of a
hundred shillings to the poor prisoners in the Marshalsea, as many to
Ludgate, and the Gatehouse, and the Fleet,--surely prisons for debt were
as plentiful as blackberries when I was young!--and giving away besides
large store of bread, meat, and blankets at her own door in Hanover
Square: a custom then pleasantly common among people of quality, but
now--when your parish Overseer, forsooth, eats up the very marrow of the
poor--fallen sadly into disuse. They are for ever striking Poor's Rates
against householders, and will not take clipped money; whereas in my day
Private Charity, and a King's Letter in aid from the pulpit now and
then, were enough; and, for my part, I would sooner see a poor rogue
soundly firked at the post, and then comforted with a bellyful of bread
and cheese and beer by the constable, and so passed on to his
belongings, than that he should be clapped up in a workhouse, to pick
oakum and suck his paws like a bear, while Master Overseer gets
tun-stomached over shoulder of veal and burnt brandy at vestry-dinners.
For it is well-known, to the shame of Authority, that these things all
come out of the Poor Rate.
Ere my Grandmother was brought so low, she would sit in state on
almsgiving morning, which was the day after Christmas; and the more
decent of her bedesmen and bedeswomen would be admitted to her presence
to pay their duty, and drink her health in a cup of warm ale on the
staircase. Also the little children from Lady Viellcastel's
charity-school would be brought to her by their governante to have cakes
and new groats given to them, and to sing one of those sweet tender
Christmas hymns which surely fall upon a man's heart like sweet-scented
balsam on a wound. And the beadle of St. George's would bring a great
bowpot of such hues as Christmas would lend itself to, and have a bottle
of wine and a bright broad guinea for his fee; while his Reverence the
rector would attend with a suitable present,--such as a satin work-bag
or a Good Book, the cover broidered by his daughters,--and, when he sat
at meat, find a bank-bill under his platter, which was always of silver.
And I warrant you his Reverence's eyes twinkled as much at the bill as
at the plum-porridge, and that he feigned not to see Father Ruddlestone,
if perchance he met that foreign person on the staircase, or in the
store-office where Mistress Nancy Talmash kept many a toothsome cordial
and heart-warming strong water.
This dismal Christmas none of these pleasant things were done. My Lady
gave one Sum to her steward, Mr. Cadwallader, and bade him dispose of it
according to his best judgment among the afflicted, bearing not their
creed or politics or parish in mind, but their necessities. And I was
bereft of a joyful day; for in ordinary she would be pleased that I
should be her little almoner, and hand the purses with the groats in
them to the poor almsfolk. What has become, I wonder, of those good old
customs of giving away things at Christmas-tides? Where is the Lord
Mayor's dole of beef-pies to the vagrant people that lurk in St.
Martin's-le-Grand, that new Alsatia? Where is the Queen's gift of an
hundred pounds to the distressed people who took up quarters in Somerset
House? Where are the thousand guineas which the Majesty of England was
used to send every New-Year's morning to the High Bailiff of Westminster
to be parted among the poor of the Liberty? Nothing seems to be given
nowadays. 'Tis more caning than cakes that is gotten by the charity
children; and Master Collector, the Jackanapes, is for ever knocking at
my door for Poor's Rates.
In the middle of January my Grandmother was yet weaker. Straw was laid
before her door, and daily prayers--for of course the Rector knew
nothing about Father Ruddlestone--were put up for her at St. George's.
And I think also she was not forgotten in the orisons of those who
attended the chapel of the Venetian Envoy, and in that permitted to the
use of the French Ambassador. Doctor Vigors was now daily in attendance,
with many other learned physicians, who almost fought in the
antechambers on the treatment to be observed towards this sick person.
One was for cataplasms of bran and Venice turpentine, another for
putting live pigeons to her feet, another for a portion of hot wine
strained through gold-leaf and mingled with hellebore and chips of
mandrake. Warwick Lane suggested mint-tea, and Pall Mall was all for
bleeding. This Pall Mall physician was about the most passionate little
man, with the biggest ruffles and the tallest gold-headed cane I ever
saw. His name was Toobey.
"Blood, sir! there's nothing like blood!" he would cry to Doctor Vigors;
and he cried out for "blood, sir," till you might fancy that he was a
butcher or a herald-at-arms, or a housewife making black puddings.
Says Doctor Vigors in a Rage, "You are nothing but a barber-surgeon,
brother, and learnt shaving on a sheep's head, and phlebotomy on a cow
that had the falling fever."
"Mountebank and quacksalver!" answers my passionate gentleman, "you
bought your diploma from one that forges seamen's certificates in Sopar
Lane. Go to, metamorphosed and two-legged ass! Where is your worship's
stage in the Stocks Market, with pills to purge the vapours, and powders
to make my lady in love with her footman, and a lying proclamation on
every post, and a black boy behind you to beat on the cymbals when you
draw out teeth with the kitchen pliers."
"Rogue!" screams Dr. Toobey, "but for the worshipful house we are in, I
would batoon you to a mummy."
"Mummy forsooth!" the other retorts; "Mummy with a murrain! Why, you dug
up your grandmother, and pounded her up with conserve of myrrh, and
called the stuff King Pharaoh, that was sovereign to cure the
strangury."
"Better to do that," quoth Toobey, calming down into mere give and
take--for he had, in truth, done some droll things in mummy
medicaments,--"than to have been a Fleet parson, that was forced to sell
ale and couple beggars for a living, and turned doctor when he had cured
a bad leg for one that had lain too long in the bilboes."
This was too much for Doctor Vigors, who had once been in orders, and
was still a Nonjuror, winked at, for his skill's sake, by Authority. He
was for rushing on the Pall-Mall mummy-doctor and tousling of his wig,
when Mistress Talmash came out of her lady's closet, and told them that
she was fainting. This was the way that doctors disagreed when I was
young, and I fancy that they don't agree much better now.
She lingered on, however, still resolutely refusing to take to her bed,
and seeing me, if only for a moment, every day, for yet another
fortnight. On the Twentieth of January, it was her humour to receive the
visit of a certain great nobleman. Very many of the quality had daily
waited upon her, or had sent their gentlemen to inquire after her; but
for many weeks she had seen none but her own household. The nobleman I
speak of had lately come down from the Bath, where he had been taking
the waters; for he was full of years, and of Glory, and of infirmities.
A message went to his grand house in Pall Mall, and he presently waited
on my Grandmother. He was closeted with her for an hour, when the tap of
my Grandmother's cane against the wainscot summoned Mistress Talmash,
and she, doing her errand, brought me into the presence.
"My Lord," whispered my Grandmother, as she drew me towards her, and
gave me a kiss that was almost of a whisper too, so feebly gentle was
it,--"My Lord Duke, will you be pleased to lay your hand on the boy's
head and give him your blessing, and it will make him Brave."
He smiled sadly at her fancy, but did as she entreated. He laid a hand
that was all covered with jewelled rings, and that shook almost as much
as my Grandmother's, on my locks, and prattled out to me something about
being a good boy and not playing cards. He, too, was almost gone. He had
a mighty wig, and velvet clothes all covered with gold-lace, a diamond
star, and broad blue ribbon; but his poor swollen legs were swathed in
flannel, and he was so feeble that he had to be helped down-stairs by
two lacqueys. I too ran down-stairs unchecked, and saw him helped,
tottering, into his chair, a company of the Foot-guards surrounding it;
for he was much misliked by the mobile at that time, and few cried, God
bless him! Indeed, as the company moved away, I heard a ragged fellow
(who should have been laid by the heels for it) cry, "There goes
Starvation Jack, that fed his soldiers on boiled bricks and baked
mortar."
"He is a Whig now," said my Grandmother to me, when I rejoined her; "but
he was of the bravest among men, and in the old days loved the true King
dearly."
When this man was young and poor, the mobile used to call him "Handsome
Jack." When he was rich and old and famous, he was "Starvation Jack" to
them. And of such are the caprices of a vain, precipitate age. But I am
glad I saw him, Whig and pinchpenny as he was. I am proud of having seen
this Great Captain and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. The King of
Prussia, the Duke of Cumberland, my Lord George Sackville, Marshal
Biron, Duke Richelieu, and many of the chiefest among the Turkish
bashaws, have I known and conversed with; but I still feel that Man's
trembling hand on my head; my blood is still fired, as at the sound of a
trumpet, by the remembrance of his voice; I still rejoice at my fortune
in having set eyes, if only for a moment, on John Churchill, Duke of
Marlborough.
It was on the Twenty-ninth of January (o.s.) that our servants, who had
declared to having heard the death-watch ticking for days, asserted that
those ominous sounds grew faster and faster, resolving themselves at
length into those five distinct taps, with a break between, which are
foolishly held by the vulgar to spell out the word DEATH. And although
the noise came probably from some harmless insect, or from a rat
nibbling at the wainscot, that sound never meets my ear--and I have
heard it on board ship many a time, and in gaol, and in my tent in the
desert--without a lump of ice sliding down my back. As for Ghosts, John
Dangerous has seen too many of them to be frightened.[G]
That night I slept none. It was always my lot in that huge house to be
put, little fellow as I was, in the hugest of places. My bed was as
spacious as a Turkish divan. Its yellow silken quilt, lined with
eiderdown, and embroidered with crimson flowers, was like a great waving
field of ripe corn with poppies in it. When I lay down, great weltering
waves of Bed came and rolled over me; and my bolster alone was as big as
the cook's hammock at sea, who has always double bedding, being swollen
with other men's rations. This bed had posts tall and thick enough to
have been Gerard the Giant's lancing-pole, that used to stand in the
midst of the bakehouse in Basing Lane; and its curtains of yellow
taffety hung in folds so thick that I always used to think birds nestled
among them. That night I dreamt that the bed was changed into our great
red pew at St. George's, only that it was hung with dark velvet instead
of scarlet baize, and that the clergyman in the pulpit overhead, with a
voice angrier than ever, was reading that service for the martyrdom of
K. C. 1st, which I had heard so often. And then methought my dream
changed, and two Great Giants with heading-axes came striding over the
bed, so that I could feel their heavy feet on my breast; but their heads
were lost in the black sky of the bed's canopy. Horror! they stooped
down, and lo, they were headless, and from their sheared shoulders and
their great hatchets dripped, dripped, for ever dripped, great gouts of
something hot that came into my mouth and tasted salt! And I woke up
with my hair all in a dabble with the nightdews, with my Grandmother's
voice ringing in my ears, "Remember the Thirtieth of January!" Mercy on
me! I had that dream again last night; and the Giants with their axes
came striding over these old bones--then they changed to a headless
Spaniard and a bleeding Nun; but the voice that cried, "Remember!" spake
not in the English tongue, and was not my Grandmother's. And the hair of
my flesh stood up, as Job's did.
In the morning, when the clouds of night broke up from the pale winter's
sky, and went trooping away like so many funeral coach-horses to their
stable, they told me that my Grandmother was Dead; that she had passed
away when the first cock crew, softly sighing "Remember." It was a
dreadful thing for me that I could not, for many hours, weep; and that
for this lack of tears I was reproached for a hardened ingrate by those
who were now to be my most cruel governors. But I could not cry. The
grief within me baked my tears, and I could only stare all round at the
great desert of woe and solitude that seemed to have suddenly grown up
around me. That morning, for the first time, I was left to dress myself;
and when I crept down to the parlour, I found no breakfast laid out for
me--no silver tankard of new milk with a clove in it, no manchet of
sweet diet bread, no egg on a trencher in a little heap of salt. I asked
for my breakfast, and was told, for a young cub, that I might get it in
the kitchen. It would have gone hard with me if, in my Grandmother's
time, I had entered that place to her knowledge; but all things were
changed to me now, and when I entered the kitchen, the cook, nay, the
very scullion-wench, never moved for me. John Footman sat on the dresser
drinking a mug of purl that one of the maids had made for him. The cook
leered at me, while another saucy slut handed me a great lump of dry
bread, and a black-jack with some dregs of the smallest beer at the
bottom. What had I done to merit such uncivil treatment?
By and by comes Mr. Cadwallader with a sour face, and orders me to my
chamber, and get a chapter out of Deuteronomy by heart by dinner-time,
"Or you keep double fast for Martyrdom-day, my young master," he says,
looking most evilly at me.
"Young master, indeed," Mrs. Nancy repeated; "young master and be saved
to us. A parish brat rather. No man's child but his that to hit you must
throw a stone over Bridewell Wall. Up to your chamber, little varlet,
and learn thy chapter. There are to be no more counting of beads or
mumblings over hallowed beans in this house. Up with you; times are
changed."
Why should this woman have been my foe? She had been a cockering,
fawning nurse to me not so many months ago. Months!--yesterday. Why
should the steward, who was used to flatter and caress me, now frown and
threaten like some harsh taskmaster of a Clink, where wantons are sent
to be whipped and beat hemp. I slunk away scared and cowed, and tried to
learn a chapter out of Deuteronomy; but the letters all danced up and
down before my eyes, and the one word "Remember," in great scarlet
characters, seemed stamped on every page.
It should have been told that between my seventh and my eighth year I
had been sent, not only to church, but to school; but my grandmother
deeming me too tender for the besom discipline of a schoolmaster,--from
which even the Quality were not at that time spared,--I was put under
the government of a discreet matron, who taught not only reading and
writing, but also brocaded waistcoats for gentlemen, and was great
caudle-maker at christenings. It was the merriest and gentlest school in
the town. We were some twenty little boys and girls together, and all we
did was to eat sweetmeats, and listen to our dame while she told us
stories about Cock Robin, Jack the Giant-Killer, and the Golden
Gardener. Now and then, to be sure, some roguish boy would put pepper in
her snuff-box, or some saucy girl hide her spectacles; but she never
laid hands on us, and called us her lambs, her sweethearts, and the like
endearing expressions. She was the widow of an Irish colonel who
suffered in the year '96, for his share in Sir John Fenwick's
conspiracy; and I think she had been at one time a tiring-woman to my
Grandmother, whom she held in the utmost awe and reverence. I often pass
Mrs. Triplet's old school-house in what is now called Major Foubert's
Passage, and recall the merry old days when I went to a schoolmistress
who could teach her scholars nothing but to love her dearly. It was to
my Grandmother, a kind but strict woman, to whom I owed what scant
reading and writing ken I had at eight years of age.
Rudely and disdainfully treated as I now was, my governors thought it
fit, for the world's sake, that I should be put into decent mourning;
for my grandmother's death could not be kept from the Quality, and there
was to be a grand funeral. She lay in State in her great bedchamber;
tapers in silver sconces all around her, an Achievement of arms in a
lozenge at her head, the walls all hung with fine black cloth edged with
orris, and pieced with her escocheon, properly blazoned; and she
herself, white and sharp as waxwork in her face and hands, arrayed in
her black dress, with crimson ribbons and crimson scarf, and a locket of
gold on her breast. They would not bury her with her rubies, but these,
too, were laid upon her bier, which was of black velvet, and with a fair
Holland sheet over all.
Not alone the chamber itself, but the anterooms and staircase were hung
from cornice to skirting with black. The undertaker's men were ever in
the house: they ate and drank whole mountains of beef and bread, whole
seas of ale and punch (thus to qualify their voracity) in the servants'
hall. They say my Grandmother's funeral cost a thousand pounds, which
Cadwallader and Mrs. Talmash would really have grudged, but that it was
the will of the executors, who were persons of condition, and more
powerful than a steward and a waiting-woman. In her own testament my
Grandmother said nothing about the ordering of her obsequies; but her
executors took upon them to provide her with such rites as beseemed her
degree. In those days the Quality were very rich in their deaths; and,
for my part, I dissent from the starveling and nipcheese performances of
modern funerals. It is most true that a hole in the sand, or a
coral-reef, full fathom five, has been at many times my likeliest
Grave; but I have left it nevertheless in my Will--which let those who
come after me dispute if they dare--that I may be buried as a Gentleman
of long descent, with all due Blacks, and Plumes, and Lights, and a
supper for my friends, and mourning cloaks for six poor men.
Why the doctors should have remained in the house jangling and glozing
in the very lobby of Death, and eating of cold meats and drinking of
sweet wine in the parlour, after the breath was out of the body of their
patient and patroness, it passes me to say; as well should a player
tarry upon the Stage long after the epilogue has been spoken, the
curtain lowered, and the lights all put out. Yet were Pall Mall and
Warwick Lane faithful, not only unto the death, but beyond it, to
Hanover Square. A coachful of these grave gentlemen were bidden to the
burial, although it was probable that words would run so high among them
as for wigs to be tossed out of the windows. And although it is but ill
fighting and base fence to draw upon a foe in a coach, I think (so
bitter are our Physicians against one another) that they would make but
little ado in breaking their blades in halves and stabbing at one
another crosswise as they sat, with their handkerchiefs for hilts.
It was on the eighth night after her demise, and at half-past nine of
the clock, that my Grandmother was Buried. I was dressed early in the
afternoon in a suit of black, full trimmed, falling bands of white
cambric, edged, and a little mourning sword with a crape knot, and
slings of black velvet. Then Mrs. Talmash knotted round my neck a
mourning-cloak that was about eight-times too large for me, and with no
gentle hand flattened on my head a hat bordered by heavy sable plumes.
On the left shoulder of my cloak there was embroidered in gold and
coloured silks a little escocheon of arms; and with this, in my
child-like way, my fingers hankered to play; but with threats that to me
were dreadful, and not without sundry nips and pinches, and sly clouts,
I was bidden to be still, and stir not from a certain stool apportioned
to me in the great Withdrawing-room. Not on this side of the tomb shall
I forget the weary, dreary sense of desolation that came over me when,
thus equipped, or rather swaddled and hampered in garments strange to
me, and of which I scarcely knew the meaning, I was left alone for many
hours in a dismal room, whose ancient splendour was now all under the
eclipse wrought by the undertakers. And I pray that few children may so
cruelly and suddenly have their happiness taken away from them, and from
pampered darlings become all at once despised and friendless outcasts.
By and by the house began to fill with company; and one that was acting
as Groom of the Chambers, and marshalling the guests to their places, I
heard whisper to the Harbinger, who first called out the names at the
Stair-head, that Clarencieux king-at-arms (who was then wont to attend
the funerals of the Quality, and to be gratified with heavy fees for
his office; although in our days 'tis only public noblemen, generals,
ambassadors, and the like, who are so honoured at their interment, only
undertaker's pageantry being permitted to the private sort)--that
Clarencieux himself might have attended to marshal the following, and
proclaim the Style of the Departed; but that it was ordered by authority
that, as in her life her name and honours had been kept secret, so
likewise in her death she was to remain an Unknown Lady. How such a
reticence was found to jump with the dictates of the law, which required
a registry of all dead persons in the parish-books, I know not; but in
that time there were many things suffered to the Great which to the
meaner kind would have been sternly denied; and, indeed, I have since
heard tell that sufferance even went beyond the concealment of her Name,
and that she was not even buried in woollen,--a thing then very strictly
insisted upon, in order to encourage the staple manufactures of
Lancashire and the North,--and that, either by a Faculty from the
Arches Court, or a winking and conniving of Authority, she was placed in
her coffin in the same garb in which she had lain in state. Of such
sorry mocks and sneers as to the velvet of her funeral coffer being
nearer Purple than Crimson in its hue, and of my mourning cloak being
edged with a narrow strip of a Violet tinge,--as though to hint in some
wise that my Grandmother was foregathered, either by descent or by
marital alliance, with Royalty,--I take little account. 'Tis not every
one who is sprung from the loins of a King who cares to publish the
particulars of his lineage, and John Dangerous may perchance be one of
such discreet men.
The doctors had been so long in the house that their names and their
faces were familiar to me, not indeed as friends, but as that kind of
acquaintance one may see every day for twenty years, and be not very
grieved some morning if news comes that they are dead. Such an
eye-acquaintance passes my windows every morning. I know his face, his
form, his hat and coat, the very tie of his wig and the fashion of his
shoe-buckle; but he is no more to me than I am haply to him, and there
would be scant weeping, I opine, between us if either of us were to die.
So I knew these doctors and regarded them little, wondering only why
they ate and drank so much, and could so ill conceal their hatred as to
be calling foul names, and well-nigh threatening fisticuffs, while the
corpse of my Grandmother was in the house. But of the body of those who
were bidden to this sad ceremony, I had no knowledge whatsoever. For
aught I knew, they might have been players or bullies and Piccadilly
captains, or mere undertaker's men dressed up in fine clothes; yet,
believe me, it is no foolish pride, or a dead vanity, that prompts me to
surmise that there were those who came to my Grandmother's funeral who
had a Claim to be reckoned amongst the very noblest and proudest in the
land. Beneath the great mourning cloaks and scarves, I could see
diamond stars glistening, and the brave sheen of green and crimson
ribbons. I desire in this particularity to confine myself strictly to
the Truth, and therefore make no vain boast of a Blue Ribbon being seen
there, thus denoting the presence of a Knight of the most noble Order of
the Garter. I leave it to mine enemies to lie, and to cowardly Jacks to
boast of their own exploits. This brave gathering was not void of women;
but they were closely veiled and impenetrably shrouded in their mourning
weeds, so that of their faces and their figures I am not qualified to
speak; and if you would ask me that which I remember chiefly of the
noble gentlemen who were present, I can say with conscience, that beyond
their stars and ribbons, I was only stricken by their monstrous and
portentous Periwigs, which towered in the candle-light like so many
great tufts of plumage atop of the Pope's Baldaquin, which I have seen
so many times staggering through the great aisles of St. Peter's at
Rome.
Your humble servant, and truly humble and forlorn he was that night, was
placed at the coffin's head; it being part of that black night's sport
to hold me as chief mourner; and, indeed, poor wretch, I had much to
mourn for. The great plumed hat they had put upon me flapped and swaled
over my eyes so as almost to blind me. My foot was for ever catching in
my great mourning cloak, and I on the verge of tripping myself up; and
there was a hot smoke sweltering from the tapers, and a dreadful smell
of new black cloth and sawdust and beeswax, that was like to have
suffocated me. Infinite was the relief when two of the ladies attired in
black, who had sat on either side of me, as though to guard me from
running away, lifted me gently each under an armpit, and held me up so
that I could see the writing on the coffin-plate, which was of embossed
silver and very brave to view.
"Can you read it out, my little man?" a deep rich voice as of a lady
sounded in mine ears.
I said, with much trembling, "that I thought I could spell out the
words, if time and patience were accorded me."
"There is little need, child," the voice resumed. "I will read it to
thee;" and a black-gloved hand came from beneath her robe, and she took
my hand, and holding my forefinger not ungently made me trace the
writing on the silver. But I declare that I can remember little of that
Legend now, although I am impressed with the belief that my kinswoman's
married name was not mentioned. That it was merely set forth that she
was the Lady D----, whose maiden name was A. G., and that she died in
London in the 90th year of her age, King George I. being king of
England. And then the smoke of the tapers, the smell of the cloth and
the wax, and the remembrance of my Desolation, were too much for me, and
I broke out into a loud wail, and was so carried fainting from the
room; being speedily, however, sufficiently recovered to take my place
in the coach that was to bear us Eastward.
We rode in sorrowful solemnity till nigh three o'clock that morning; but
where my Grandmother was buried I never knew. From some odd hints that I
afterwards treasured up, it seems to me that the coaches parted company
with the Hearse somewhere on the road to Harwich; but of this, as I have
averred, I have no certain knowledge. In sheer fatigue I fell asleep,
and woke in broad daylight in the great state-bed at Hanover Square.
FOOTNOTES:
[D] The Austrian, not the Prussian Trenck.--ED.
[E] This does not precisely tally with the Captain's disclaimer of
feeling any apprehension when passing Execution Dock.--ED.
[F] I do not find it in the memoirs of his adventures, but in an old
volume of the _Annual Register_ I find that, in the year 1778, one
Captain Dangerous gave important evidence for the crown against poor Mr.
Tremenheere, who suffered at Tyburn, for fetching and carrying between
the French King and some malcontents in this country, notably for giving
information as to the condition of our dockyards.--ED.
[G] Captain Dangerous was, unconsciously, of the same mind with Samuel
Taylor Coleridge.--ED.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
I AM BARBAROUSLY ABUSED BY THOSE WHO HAVE CHARGE OF ME, AND FLYING INTO
CHARLWOOD CHASE, JOIN THE "BLACKS."
IN the morning, the wicked people into whose power I was now delivered,
came and dragged me from my bed with fierce thumps, and giving me coarse
and rude apparel, forced me to dress myself like a beggar boy. I had a
wretched little frock and breeches of grey frieze, ribbed woollen hose
and clouted shoes, and a cap that was fitter for a chimney-sweep than a
young gentleman of quality. I was to go away in the Wagon, they told me,
forthwith to School; for my Grandmother--if I was indeed any body's
Grandson--had left me nothing, not even a name. Henceforth, I was to be
little Scrub, little Ragamuffin, little boy Jack. All the unknown Lady's
property, they said, was left to Charities and to deserving Servants.
There was not a penny for me, not even to pay for my schooling; but, in
Christian mercy, Mrs. Talmash was about to have me taught some things
suitable for my new degree, and in due time have me apprenticed to some
rough Trade, in which I might haply--if I were not hanged, as she hinted
pretty plainly, and more than once--earn an honest livelihood. Meanwhile
I was to be taken away in the Wagon, as though I were a Malefactor going
in a Cart to Tyburn.
I was taken down-stairs, arrayed in my new garments of poverty and
disgrace, and drank in a last long look at my dear and old and splendid
Home. How little did I think that I should ever come to look upon it
again, and that it would be my own House--mine, a prosperous and
honoured old man! The undertaker's men were busied in taking down the
rich hangings, and guzzling and gorging, as was their wont, on what
fragments remained of the banquetings and carousals of Death, which had
lasted for eight whole days. All wretched as I was, I should--so easily
are the griefs of childhood assuaged by cates and dainties--have been
grateful for the wing of a chicken or a glass of Canary: but this was
not to be. John a'Nokes or John a'Styles were now more considered than I
was, and I was pushed and bandied about by fustian knaves and base
mechanics, and made to wait for full half an hour in the hall, as though
I had been the by-blow of a Running Footman promoted into carrying of a
link.
'Twas Dick the Groom that took me to the Wagon. Many a time he had
walked by the side of my little pony, trotting up the Oxford Road. He
was a gross unlettered churl, but not unkind; and I think remembered
with something like compunction the many pieces of silver he had had
from his Little Master.
"It's mortal hard," he said, as he took my hand, and began lugging me
along, "that your grandam should have died and left you nothing. 'Tis
all clear as Bexley ale in a yard-glass. Lawyers ha' been reading the
will to the gentlefolks, and there's nothing for thee, poor castaway."
I began to cry, not because my Grandmother had disinherited me, but
because this common horse-lout called me a "castaway," and because I
knew myself to be one.
"Don't fret," the groom continued; "there'll be greet enough for thee
when thou'rt older; for thou'lt have a hard time on't, or my name's not
Dick Snaffle."
We had a long way to reach the Wagon, which started from a Tavern called
the "Pillars of Hercules," right on the other side of Hyde Park. I was
desperately tired when we came thither, and craved leave to sit on a
bench before the door, between the Sign-post and the Horse-trough. So
low was I fallen. A beggar came alongside of me, and as I dozed tried to
pick my pocket. There was nothing in it--not even a crust; and he hit me
a savage blow over the mouth because I had nothing to be robbed of. Anon
comes Dick Snaffle, who, telling me that the Saddler of Bawtry was
hanged for leaving his liquor, and that he had no mind for a halter
while good ale was to be drunk, had been comforting himself within the
tavern; and he finding me all blubbered with grief at the blow I had
gotten from the beggar, fetches him a sound kick; and so the two fell to
fighting, till out comes the tapster, raving at Tom Ostler to duck the
cutpurse cadger in the Horse-trough. There was much more sport out of
doors in my young days than now.
At last the Wagon, for which we had another good hour to wait, came
lumbering up to the Pillars of Hercules; and after the Wagoner had
fought with a Grenadier, who wanted to go to Brentford for fourpence,
and would have stabbed the man with his bayonet had not his hand been
stayed, the Groom took me up, and put me on the straw inside. He paid
the Wagoner some money for me, and also gave into his keeping a little
bundle, containing, I suppose, some change of raiment for me, saying
that more would be sent after me when needed; and so, handing him too a
letter, he bade me Godd'en, and went on his way with the Grenadier, a
Sweep, and a Gipsy woman, who was importunate that he should cross her
hand with silver, in order that he might know all about the great
Fortune that he was to wed, as Tom Philbrick did in the ballad. And this
was the way in which the Servants of the Quality spent their forenoons
when I was young.
As the great rumbling chariot creaked away westward, there came across
my child-heart a kind of consciousness that I had been Wronged, and
Cheated out of my inheritance. Why was I all clad in laces and velvet
but yesterday, and to-day apparelled like a tramping pedlar's
foster-brat? Why was I, who was used to ride in coaches, and on
ponyback, and on the shoulder of my own body-servant, and was called
"Little Master," and made much of, to be carted away in a vile dray like
this? But what is a child of eight years old to do? and how is he to
make head against those who are older and wickeder than he? I knew
nothing about lawyers, or wills, or the Rogueries of domestics. I only
knew that I had been foully and shamefully Abused since my dear
Grandparent's death; and in that wagon, I think, as I lay tumbling and
sobbing on that straw, were first planted in me those seeds of a Wild,
and sometimes Savage, disposition that have not made my name to be
called "Dangerous" in vain.
We were a small and not a very merry company under the wagon tilt. There
was a Tinker, with all his accoutrements of pots and kettles about him,
who was lazy, as most Tinkers are when not at hard work, and lay on his
back chewing straw, and cursing me fiercely whenever I moved. There was
a Welsh gentleman, very ragged and dirty, with a wife raggeder and
dirtier than he. He was addressed as Captain, and was bound, he said,
for Bristol, to raise soldiers for the King's Service. He beat his wife
now and then, before we came to Hounslow. There was the tinker's dog, a
great terror to me; for although he feigned to sleep, and to snore as
much as a Dog can snore, he always kept one little red eye fixed upon
me, and gave a growl and made a Snap whenever I turned on the straw.
There was the Wagoner's child that was sickly, and continually cried for
its mammy; and lastly there was a buxom servant-maid, with a little
straw hat and cherry ribbons over a Luton lace mob, and a pretty
flowered gown pulled through the placket-holes, and a quilted petticoat,
and silver buckles in her shoes, and black mits, who was going home to
see her Grandmother at Stoke Pogis,--so she told me, and made me
bitterly remember that I had now no Grandmother,--and was as clean and
bright and smiling as a new pin, or the milkmaids on May morning dancing
round the brave Garlands that they have gotten from the silversmiths in
Cranbourn Alley. She sat prettily crouched up on her box in a corner;
and so, with the Tinker among his pots and kettles, the Welsh Captain
and his lady on sundry bundles of rags, the sickly child in a basket,
the Tinker's dog curled up in his Master's hat, I tossing on the straw,
and a great rout of crates of crockery, rolls of cloth, tea and sugar,
and other London merchandize, which the wagoner was taking down West, as
a return cargo for the eggs, poultry, butcher's meat, and green stuff
that he had brought up, made altogether such a higgledypiggledy that you
do not often see in these days, when Servant-maids come up by Coach--my
service to them!--and disdain the Wagon, and his Worship the Captain
wears a fine laced coat and a cockade in his hat,--who but he!--and
travels post.
The maid who was bound on a visit to her Grandmother was, I rejoice to
admit, most tenderly kind to me. She combed my hair, and wiped away the
tears that besmirched my face. When the Wagon halted at the King's Arms,
Kensington, she tripped down and brought me a flagon of new milk with
some peppermint in it; and she told me stories all the way to Hounslow,
and bade me mind my book, and be a good child, and that Angels would
love me. Likewise that she was being courted by a Pewterer in Panyer
Alley, who had parted a bright sixpence with her--she showed me her
token, drawn from her modest bodice, and who had passed his word to Wed,
if he had to take to the Road for the price of the Ring--but that was
only his funning, she said,--or if she were forced even to run away from
her Mistress, and make a Fleet Match of it. It was little, in good
sooth, that I knew about courtships or Love-tokens or Fleet Matches; but
I believe that a woman, for want of a better gossip, would open her
Love-budget to a Baby or a Blind Puppy, and I listened so well that she
kissed me ere we parted, and gave me a pocketful of cheese-cakes.
It was quite night, and far beyond Hounslow, when I was dozing off into
happy sleep again, that the Wagon came to a dead stop, and I awoke in
great fright at the sound of a harsh voice asking if the Boy Jack was
there. I was the "Boy Jack:" and the Wagoner, coming to the after-part
of the tilt with his lantern, pulled me from among the straw with far
less ado than if I had been the Tinker's dog.
I was set down on the ground before a tall man with a long face and an
ugly little scratch wig, who had large boots with straps over his thighs
like a Farmer, and swayed about him with a long whip.
"Oh, this is the boy, is it?" said the long man. "A rare lump to lick
into shape, upon my word."
I was too frightened to say aught; but the Wagoner muttered something in
the long man's ear, and gave him my bundle and money and the letter;
and then I was clapped up on a pillion behind the long man, who had
clomb up to the saddle of a vicious horse that went sideways; and he,
bidding me hold on tight to his belt, for a mangy young whelp as I was,
began jolting me to the dreadful place of Torture and Infernal cruelty
which for six intolerable months was to be my home.
This man's name was Gnawbit, and he was my Schoolmaster. I was delivered
over to him, bound hand and foot, as it were, by those hard-hearted folk
(who should have been most tender to me, a desolate orphan) in Hanover
Square. His name was Gnawbit, and he lived hard by West Drayton.
We are told in Good Books about the Devil and his Angels; but sure I
think that the Devil must come to earth sometimes, and marry and have
children: whence the Gnawbit race. I don't believe that the man had one
Spark of Human Feeling in him. I don't believe that any tale of Man or
Woman's Woe would ever have wrung one tear from that cold eye, or drawn
a pang from that hard heart. I believe that he was a perfectly
senseless, pitiless Brute and Beast, suffered, for some unknown purpose,
to dwell here above, instead of being everlastingly kept down below, for
the purpose of Tormenting. I was always a Dangerous, but I was never a
Revengeful man. I have given mine enemy to eat when he was a-hungered,
and to drink when he was athirst. I have returned Good for Evil very
many times in this Troubled Life of mine, exposed as it has been always
to the very sorest of temptations; but I honestly aver, that were I to
meet this Tyrant of mine, now, on a solitary island, I would mash his
Hands with a Club or with my Feet, if he strove to grub up roots; that
were I Alone with him, wrecked, in a shallop, and there were one Keg of
Fresh Water between us, I would stave it, and let the Stream of Life
waste itself in the gunwales while I held his head down into the Sea,
and forced him to swallow the brine that should drive him Raving Mad.
But this is unchristian, and I must go consult Doctor Dubiety.
Flesh and Blood! Have you never thought upon the Wrongs your Pedagogue
has wrought upon you, and longed to meet that Wretch, and wheal his
flesh with the same instrument with which he whealed you, and make the
Ruffian howl for mercy? Mercy, quotha! did he ever show you any? A
pretty equal match it was, surely! You a poor, weak starveling of a
child shivering in your shoes, and ill-nurtured by the coarse food he
gave you, and he a great, hulking, muscular villain, tall and
long-limbed, and all-powerful in his wretched Empire; while you were so
ignorant as not to know that the Law, were he discovered (but who was to
denounce him?), might trounce him for his barbarity. Ah! brother
Gnawbit, if I had ever caught you on board a good ship of mine! Aha!
knave, if John Dangerous would not have dubbed himself the sheerest of
asses, had he not made your back acquainted with nine good tails of
three-strand cord, with triple knots in each, and the brine-tub
afterwards. I will find out this Gnawbit yet, and cudgel him to the
death. But, alas, I rave. He must have been full five-and-forty-years
old when I first knew him, and that is nigh sixty years agone. And at a
hundred and five the cruellest Tyrant is past cudgelling.
This man had one of the prettiest houses that was to be seen in the
prettiest part of England. The place was all draped in ivy, and roses,
and eglantine, with a blooming flower-garden in front, and a luscious
orchard behind. He had a wife too who was Fair to see,--a mild little
woman, with blue eyes, who used to sit in a corner of her parlour, and
shudder as she heard the boys shrieking in the schoolroom. There was an
old infirm Gentleman that lodged with them, that had been a Captain
under the renowned Sir Cloudesley Shovel and Admiral Russell, and could
even, so it was said, remember, as a sea-boy, the Dutch being in the
Medway, in King Charles's time. This Old Gentleman seemed the only
person that Gnawbit was afraid of. He never interfered to dissuade him
from his brutalities, nay, seemed rather to encourage him therein,
crying out as the sounds of torture reached him, "Bear it! bear it! Good
again! Make 'em holloa! Make 'em dance! Cross the cuts! Dig it in! Rub
in the brine! Oho! Bear it, brave boys; there's nothing like it!" Yet
was there something jeering and sarcastic in his voice that made Gnawbit
prefer to torture his unhappy scholars when the Old Gentleman was
asleep,--and even then he would sometimes wake up and cry out, "Bear
it!" from the attic, or when he was being wheeled about the
neighbourhood in a sick man's chair.
The first morning I saw the Old Gentleman he shook his crutch at me, and
cried, "Aha! another of 'em! Another morsel for Gnawbit. More meat for
his market. Is he plump? is he tender? Will he bear it? Will he dance?
Oho! King Solomon for ever." And then he burst into such a fit of
wheezing laughter that Mrs. Gnawbit had to come and pat him on the back
and bring him cordials; and my Master, looking very discomposed, sternly
bade me betake myself to the schoolroom.
After that, the Old Gentleman never saw me without shaking his crutch
and asking me if I liked it, if I could bear it, and if Gnawbit made my
flesh quiver. Of a truth he did.
Why should I record the sickening experience of six months' daily
suffering. That I was beaten every day was to be expected in an Age when
blows and stripes were the only means thought of for instilling
knowledge into the minds of youth. But I was alone, I was friendless, I
was poor. My master received, I have reason to believe, but a slender
Stipend with me, and he balanced accounts by using me with greater
barbarity than he employed towards his better paying scholars. I had no
Surname, I was only "Boy Jack;" and my schoolfellows put me down, I
fancy, as some base-born child, and accordingly despised me. I had no
pocket-money. I was not allowed to share in the school-games. I was
bidden to stand aside when a cake was to be cut up. God help me! I was
the most forlorn of little children. Mrs. Gnawbit was as kind to me as
she dared be, but she never showed me the slightest favour without its
bringing me (if her husband came to hear of it) an additionally cruel
Punishment.
There was a Pond behind the orchard called Tibb's hole, because, as our
schoolboy legend ran, a boy called Tibb had once cast himself thereinto,
and was drowned, through dread of being tortured by this Monster. I grew
to be very fond of standing alone by the bank of this Pond, and of
looking at my pale face in its cool blue-black depth. It seemed to me
that the Pond was my friend, and that within its bosom I should find
rest.
I was musing in this manner by the bank one day when I felt myself
touched on the shoulder. It was the crutch of the Old Gentleman, who
had been wheeled hither, as was his custom, by one of the boys.
"You go into the orchard and steal a juicy pear," said the Old Gentleman
to his attendant. "Gnawbit's out, and I won't tell him. Leave me with
Boy Jack for five minutes, and then come back.--Boy Jack," he continued,
when we were alone, "how do you like it?"
"Like what, sir?" I asked humbly.
"All of it, to be sure:--the birch, the cane, the thong, the ferula, the
rope's-end,--all Gnawbit's little toys?"
I told him, weeping, that I was very, very unhappy, and that I would
like to drown myself.
"That's wrong, that's wicked," observed the Old Gentleman with a
chuckle; "you mustn't drown yourself, because then you'd lose your
chance of being hanged. Gregory has as much right to live as other
folks."[H]
I did not in the least understand what he meant, but went on sobbing.
"I tell you what it is," pursued the Old Gentleman; "you mustn't stop
here, because Gnawbit will skin you alive if you do. He's bound to do
it; he's sworn to do it. He half-skinned Tibb; and was going to take off
the other half, when Tibb drowned himself like a fool in this hole here.
He was a fool, and should have followed my advice and run away. 'Tibb,'
I said, 'you'll be skinned. Bear it, but run away. Here's a guinea.
Run!' He was afraid that Gnawbit would catch him; and where is he now?
Skinned, and drowned into the bargain. Don't you be a Fool. You Run
while there's some skin left. Gnawbit's sworn to have it all, if you
don't. Here's a guinea, and run away as fast as ever your legs can carry
you."
He gave me a bright piece of gold and waved me off, as though I were to
run away that very moment. I submissively said that I would run away
after school was over, but asked him where I should run to.
"I'm sure I don't know," the Old Gentleman said somewhat peevishly.
"That's not my business. A boy that has got legs with skin on 'em, and
doesn't know where to run to, is a jackass.--Stop!" he continued, as if
a bright idea had just struck him; "did you ever hear of the Blacks?"
"No sir," I answered.
"Stupid oaf! Do you know where Charlwood Chase is?"
"Yes, sir; my schoolfellows have been nutting there, and I have heard
them speak of it."
"Then you make the best of your way to Charlwood Chase, and go a-nutting
there till you find the Blacks; you can't miss them; they're everywhere.
Run, you little Imp. See! the time's up, and here comes the boy who
stole the juicy pear." And the boy coming up, munching the remains of
one of Gnawbit's juiciest pears, my patron was wheeled away, and I have
never seen him from that day to this.
That very night I ran away from Gnawbit's, and made my way towards
Charlwood Chase to join the "Blacks," although who those "Blacks" were,
and whereabouts in the Chase they lived, and what they did when they
were there, I had no more definite idea than who the Emperor Prester
John or the Man in the Moon might be.
FOOTNOTE:
[H] In my youth ancient persons as frequently spoke of the hangman as
"Gregory"--and he was so named at the trial of the Regicides in
1660-61--as by his later title of "Jack Ketch."--J. D.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
THE HISTORY OF MY GRANDFATHER, WHO WAS SO LONG KEPT A PRISONER IN ONE OF
THE KING'S CASTLES IN THE EAST COUNTRY.
AT the time when his Majesty Charles II. was so happily restored to the
throne of these kingdoms, there was, and had been, confined for upwards
of ten years, in one of his Majesty's Castles in the eastern part of
this kingdom, a certain Prisoner. His Name was known to none, not even
to the guards who kept watch over him, so to speak, night and day,--not
even to the gaoler, who had been told that he must answer with his Head
for his safe custody, who had him always in a spying, fretful
overlooking, and who slept every night with the keys of the Captive's
cell under his pillow. The Castle where he lay in hold has been long
since levelled to the earth, if, indeed, it ever had any earth to rest
upon, and was not rather stayed upon some jutting fragment of Rock
washed away at last by the ever-encroaching sea. Nay, of its exact
situation I am not qualified to tell. I never saw the place, and my
knowledge of it is confined to a bald hearsay, albeit of the Deeds that
were done within its walls I can affirm the certitude with Truth. From
such shadowy accounts as I have collected, the edifice would seem to
have consisted but of a single tower or donjon-keep very strong and
thick, and defying the lashings of the waves, almost as though it were
some Pharos or other guide to mariners. It was surrounded by a low stone
wall of prodigious weight of masonry, and was approached from the
mainland by a drawbridge and barbican. But for many months of the year
there was no mainland within half a mile of it, and the King's Castle
could only be reached by boats. Men said that the Sun never shone there
but for ten minutes before and ten minutes after a storm, and there were
almost always storms lowering over or departing from that dismal place.
The Castle was at least two miles from any human habitation; for the few
fishermen's cabins, made of rotten boats, hogsheads nailed together, and
the like, which had pitifully nestled under the lee of the Castle in old
time, had been rigorously demolished to their last crazy timber when the
Prisoner was brought there. At a respectful distance only, far in, and
yet but a damp little islet in the midst of the fens, was permitted to
linger on, in despised obscurity, a poor swamp of some twenty houses
that might, half in derision and half in civility, be called a Village.
It had a church without a steeple, but with a poor Stump like the
blunted wreck of some tall ship's mainmast. The priest's wages were less
than those of a London coal-porter. The poor man could get no tithes,
for there were no tithes to give him. Three parts of his glebe were
always under water, and he was forced to keep a little school for his
maintenance, of which the scholars could pay him but scant fees, seeing
that it was always a chance whether their parents were dead of the Ague,
or Drowned. Yet there was a tavern in the village, where these poor,
shrinking, feverish creatures met and drank and smoked, and sang their
songs, contriving now and again to smuggle a few kegs of spirits from
Holland, and baffle the riding-officers in a scamper through the fens.
They were a simple folk, fond of telling Ghost-Stories, and with a firm
belief in charms to cure them from the Ague. And, with an awe whose
intensity was renewed each time the tale was told, they whispered among
themselves as to that Prisoner of Fate up at the Castle yonder. What
this man's Crime had been, none could tell. His misdeed was not, it was
whispered, stated in the King's Warrant. The Governor was simply told
to receive a certain Prisoner, who would be delivered to him by a
certain Officer, and that, at the peril of his life, he was to answer
for his safe custody. The Governor, whose name was Ferdinando Glover,
had been a Captain of Horse in the late Protector Oliver's time; but, to
the surprise of all men, he was not dismissed at his Majesty's
Restoration, but was continued in his command, and indeed, received
preferment, having the grade of a Colonel on the Irish establishment.
But they did not fail to tell him, and with fresh instances of severity,
that he would answer with his head for the safe keeping of his Prisoner.
Of this strange Person it behoves me now to speak. In the year 1660, he
appeared to be about seven-and-thirty years of age, tall, shapely,
well-knit in his limbs, which captivity had rather tended to make full
of flesh than to waste away; for there were no yards, nor spacious
outlying walls to this Castle; and but for a narrow ledge that ran
along the surrounding border, and where he was but rarely suffered to
walk, there was no means for him to take any exercise whatever. He wore
his own hair in full dark locks, which Time and Sorrow had alike agreed
to grizzle. Strong lines marked his face, but age had not brought them
there. His eye was dim, but more with watching and study than with the
natural failing of vital forces.
So he had been in this grim place going on for twelve years, without a
day's respite, without an hour's enlargement. True, he wore no fetters,
and was treated with a grave and stately Consideration; but his bonds
were not less galling, and the iron had not the less entered into his
soul. The Order was, that he was to be held as a Gentleman, and to be
subjected to no grovelling indignities or base usage. But the Order was
(for a long time, and until another Prisoner, hereafter to be named,
received a meed of Enlargement) likewise as strict that, save his
keepers, he should see no living soul. "And it is useless," wrote a
Great Lord to the Governor once, when it was humbly submitted to him
that the Prisoner might need spiritual consolation, and have solace to
his soul by conferring with poor Parson Webfoot yonder,--"it is
useless," said that nobleman, "for your charge to see any black gown,
under pretext that he would Repent; for, albeit though I know not his
crime more than the babe unborn, I have it from his Majesty's own
gracious word of mouth, that what he has done cannot be repented of;
therefore you are again commanded to keep him close, and to let him have
speech neither of parson nor of peasant." Which was duly done. But
Colonel Glover, not untouched by that curiosity inherent to mankind, as
well as womankind, took pains to cast about whether this was not one who
had a hand in compassing the death of King Charles I.; and this coming,
in some strange manner (through inquiries he had made in London), to the
ears of Authority, he was distinctly told that his prisoner was not one
of those bold bad men who, misled by Oliver Cromwell, had signed that
fatal Warrant:--the names and doom of the Regicides being now all well
known, as having suffered or fled from Justice, or being in hold, as Mr.
Martyn was. So Colonel Glover, being well assured that what was done was
for the King's honour, and for the well-being of his Estates, and that
any other further searching or prying might cost him his place, if they
did not draw him within the meshes of the law against Misprision of
Treason, forbore to vex himself or Authority further on matters that
concerned him not, and was so content to guard his Prisoner with greater
care than ever. The Castle was garrisoned by but twelve men, and of
these six were invalids and matrosses; but the other six were tall and
sturdy veterans, who had been indeed of Oliver's Life-guard, and were
now confirmed in their places, and with the pay, not of common soldiers,
but of private gentlemen, by the King's own order. Their life was
dreary enough, for they could hold but little comradeship with the
invalids, whom they dubbed "greybeards, drivellers, and kill-joys." But
they had a guard-room to themselves, where they diced and drank, and
told their ruffian stories, and sang their knavish catches, as is the
manner, I suppose, for all soldiers to do in all countries, whether in
camps or in cities. But their duty was withal of the severest. The
invalids went snugly to bed at nine of the clock, or thereabouts, but
the veritable men-of-war kept watch and ward all night, turn and turn
about, and even when they slept took their repose on a bench, which was
placed right across the Prisoner's door.
This much-enduring man--for surely no lot could be harder than his--to
be thus, and in the very prime and vigour of manhood, cooped up in a
worse than gaol, wherein for a long time he was even denied the company
of captives as wretched as he,--this slave to some Mightier Will and
Sterner Fate than, it would seem, mortal knowledge could wot of, bore
his great Distress with an unvarying meekness and calm dignity. With
him, indeed, they did as they listed, using him as one that was as Clay
in the hands of the Potter; but, not to the extent of one tetchy word or
froward movement, did he ever show that he thought his imprisonment
unjust, or the bearing of those who were set over him cruel. And this
was not an abject stupor or dull indifference, such as I have marked in
rogues confined for life in the Bagnios of the Levant, who knew that
they must needs pull so many strokes and get so many stripes every day,
and so gave up battling with the World, and grinned contumely at their
gaolers or the visitors who came sometimes to point at them and fling
them copper money. In the King's Prisoner there was a philosophic
reserve and quietness that almost approached content; and his
resignation under suffering was of that kind that a Just Man may feel
who knows that he is upon the ground, and that, howsoever his enemies
push at him, he cannot fall far. He never sought to evade the conditions
of his captivity or to plead for its being lightened. The courtesies
that were offered to him, in so far as the Governor was warranted in
offering such civilities, he took as his due; but he never craved a
greater indulgence or went one step in word or in deed to obtain a
surcease from his harsh and cruel lot.
He would rise at six of the clock both in winter and summer, and apply
himself with great ardour to his private devotions and to good studies
until eight, when his breakfast, a tankard of furmety and a small
measure of wine, was brought him. And from nine until noon he would
again be at his studies, and then have dinner of such meats as were in
season. From one to three he was privileged to walk either on the narrow
strip of masonry that encompassed his prison-house, and with a soldier
with his firelock on hip following his every step, or else to wander up
and down in the various chambers of the Castle, still followed by a
guard. Now he would tarry awhile in the guard-room, and stand over
against the soldier's table, his head resting very sadly against the
chimney, and listen to their wild talk, which was, however, somewhat
hushed and shaped to decency so long as he abided there. And anon he
would come into the Governor's apartment, and hold Colonel Glover for
some moments in grave discourse on matters of history, and the lives of
Worthy Captains, and sometimes upon points and passages of Scripture,
but never upon anything that concerned the present day. For, beyond the
bounds of the place in which he was immured, what should he know of
things of instant moment, or of the way the world was wagging? By
permission, the Colonel had told him that Oliver was no more, and that
Richard, his son, was made Protector in his stead. Then, at the close of
that weak and vain shadow of a Reign, and after the politic act of my
Lord Duke of Albemarle (Gen. Monk), who made his own and the country's
fortune, and Nan Clarges'[I] to boot, at one stroke, the Prisoner was
given to know that schism was at an end, and that the King had come to
his own again. Colonel Glover must needs tell him; for he was bidden to
fire a salvo from the five pieces of artillery he had mounted, three on
his outer wall, and two at the top of his donjon-keep, to say nothing of
hoisting the Royal Standard, which now streamed from the pole where erst
had floated the rag that bore the arms of the Commonwealth of
England.[J]
"I am glad," the Prisoner said, when they told him. "I hope this young
man will make England happier than did his father before him." But this
was after he was in hopes of getting some company in his solitude, and
when he was cheerfuller.
It was about midway in his imprisonment when another Captive was brought
to the King's Castle; but it was not until close upon the Restoration of
King Charles II. that the two prisoners were permitted to come together.
The second guest in this most dolorous place was a Woman, and that Woman
was my Grandmother, Arabella Greenville.
There is no use in disguising the fact that, for many months after the
failure of her attack on the Protector, the poor Lady had been as
entirely distraught as was her fate after the death of the Lord Francis,
and that to write her Life during this period would be merely penning
the chronicle of a continued Frenzy. It were merciful to draw a veil
over so sad and mortifying a scene--so well brought up as she had been,
and respected by all the Quality,--but in pursuit of the determination
with which I set out, to tell the Truth, and all the Truth, I am forced
to confess that my Grandmother's Ravings were of the most violent, and
that of her thoroughly demented state there could be no doubt. So far,
indeed, did the unhappy creature's Abandonment extend, that those who
were about her could with difficulty persuade her to keep any Garments
upon her body, and were forced with Stripes and Revilings to force to a
decorous carriage the gentle Lady who had once been the very soul and
mirror of Modesty. But in process of time these dreadful furies and
rages left her, and she became calm. She was still beautiful, albeit her
comeliness was now of a chastened and saddened order, and, save her eye,
there was no light or sparkle in her face.
When her health and mind were healed, so far as earthly skill could heal
them,--it being given out, I am told, to her kindred that she had died
mad in the Spinning House at Cambridge: but she had never been further
than the house of one Dr Empson at Colchester, who had tended her
during her distraction,--my Grandmother was brought to the King's Castle
in the East, and for a long time lay incarcerate in a lower chamber of
the Keep, being not allowed even that scant exercise which was permitted
to the Prisoner above, and being waited upon and watched night and day
by the Governor's Daughter, Mistress Ruth Glover, who at nights slept in
a little closet adjoining my Grandmother's chamber. The girl had a
tongue, I suppose, like the rest of her sex,--and of our sex too,
brother,--and she would not have been eighteen, of a lively Disposition,
and continually in the society of a Lady of Birth and accomplishments,
not more than ten years her senior, without gossiping to her concerning
all that she knew of the sorry little world round about her. It was not,
however, much, or of any great moment, that Ruth had to tell my
Grandmother. She could but hold her in discourse of how the Invalid
Matrosses had the rheumatism and the ague; how the Life-guard men in
their room diced and drank and quarrelled, both over their dice and
their drink; how the rumour ran that the poverty-stricken habitants of
the adjoining village had, from long dwelling among the fens, become as
web-footed as the wild-fowl they hunted; and how her Father, who had
been for many years a widower, was harsh and stern with her, and would
not suffer her to read the romances and play-books, some half-dozen of
which the Sergeant of the Guard had with him. She may have had a little
also to say about the Prisoner in the upper story of the Keep--how his
chamber was all filled with folios and papers; how he studied and wrote
and prayed; and during his two hours' daily liberty wandered sadly and
in a silent manner about the Castle. For this was all Mistress Ruth had
to tell, and of the Prisoner's name, or of his Crime, she was, perforce,
mum.
These two Women nevertheless shaped all kinds of feverish Romances and
wild conjectures respecting this unknown man above stairs. Arabella had
told her own sad story to the girl who--though little better than a
waiting-woman--she had made, for want of a better bower-maiden, her
Confidante. I need not say that oceans of Sympathy, or the accepted
Tokens thereof, I mean Tears, ran out from the eyes of the Governor's
Daughter when she heard the History of the Lord Francis, of the words he
spoke just before the musketeers fired their pieces at him, and of
another noble speech he made two hours before he Suffered, when the
Officer in command, compassionating his youth and parts, told him that
if he had any suit, short of life, to prefer to the Lord General, he
would take upon himself to say that it should be granted without
question; whereon quoth my Lord Francis, "I will not die with any suit
in my mouth, save to the King of kings." On this, and on the story of
the Locket, and of his first becoming acquainted with Arabella, of his
sprightly disguise as a Teacher, with the young squire at Madam
Desaguilier's school at Hackney, of his Beauty and Virtues and fine
manners and extraordinary proficiency in Arts and Letters and the
Exercises of Chivalry,--of these and a thousand kindred things the two
women were never tired of talking. And, indeed, if one calls to mind
what vast Eloquence and wealth of words two loving hearts can distil
from a Bit of Ribbon or a Torn Letter, it is not to be wondered at that
Arabella and Ruth should find their Theme inexhaustible--so good and
brave as had been its Object, now dead and cold in the bloody trench at
Hampton yonder, and convert it into a perpetually welling spring of
Mournful Remembrances.
Arabella had taken to her old trick of Painting again, and in the first
and second year of her removal to the Castle executed some very
creditable performances. But she never attempted either the effigies of
her Lover or of the Protector, and confined herself to portraitures of
the late martyred King, and of the Princes now unjustly kept from their
inheritance.
It was during the Protectorate of Richard Cromwell (that mere
puppet-play of Power) that the watch kept on the prisoners in the King's
Castle grew for a time much less severe and even lax. Arabella was
suffered to go out of her chamber, even at the very hours that the
Prisoner above was wandering to and fro. The guards did not hinder their
meeting; and, says Colonel Ferdinando Glover, one day to his daughter,
"I should not wonder if, some of these days, Orders were to come down
for me to set both my birds free from their cage. That which Mrs.
Greenville has done, you and I know full well, and I am almost sorry
that she did not succeed."
"Oh, father!" cries Mistress Ruth, who was of a very soft and tender
nature, and abhorred the very idea of bloodshed; so that, loving
Arabella as she did with all her heart, she could not help regarding her
with a kind of Terror when she remembered the deed for which she was
confined.
"Tush, girl," the Colonel makes answer, "'tis no Treason now to name
such a thing. Oliver's dead, and will eat no more bread; and I misliked
him much at the end, for it is certain that he betrayed the Good Old
Cause, and hankered after an earthly crown. As for this young Popinjay,
he will have more need to protect himself than these Kingdoms. And I
think that if your father is to live on the King's wages, it had better
be on the real King's than the false one."
"And do you think, father, that King Charles will come to his own
again?" asks Ruth, in a flutter of delight; for Arabella had made her a
very Royalist at heart.
"I think what I think," replies the Colonel, with his stern look; "but
whatever happens, it is not likely, it seems me, that we shall have our
prisoners here much longer. That is to say:--Mrs. Greenville, for what
she hath done can scarcely be distasteful to those who loved not
Oliver. But for my other bird,--who can tell? He may have raised the
very Devil for aught I know."
"Do you think that he also tried to kill the Protector?" Ruth asks
timidly, and just hazarding a Surmise that had oft been mooted betwixt
Arabella and herself.
"Get thee to thy chamber, and about thy business, wench," the Colonel
says, quite storming. "Away, or I will lay my willow wand about thy
shoulders. Is there nothing but killing of Protectors, forsooth, for thy
silly head to be filled with?" And yet I incline to think that Mr.
Governor was not of a very different mind to his daughter; for away he
hies to his chamber, and falls to reading Colonel Titus' famous book,
_Killing no Murder_, and, looking anon on his Prisoner coming wandering
down a winding staircase, says softly to himself, "He looks like one,
for all his studious guise, who could do a Bold Deed at a pinch."
This Person, I should have said, wore, winter and summer, a plain black
shag gown untrimmed, with camlet netherstocks, and a smooth band. And
his Right Hand was always covered with a glove of Black Velvet.
By and by came, as I have related, the news of his Majesty's Restoration
and fresh Strict Orders for the keeping of the Prisoner. But though he
was not to see a clergyman,--and for all that prohibition he saw more
than one before he came out of Captivity,--a certain Indulgence was now
granted him. He was permitted to have free access to Mrs. Arabella
Greenville, and to converse freely with her at all proper times and
seasons.
But that I know the very noble nature of my Grandmother, and am
prepared, old as I am, to defend her fame even to taking the heart's
blood of the villain that maligned her, I might blush at having to
record a fact which must needs be set down here. Ere six months had
passed, there grew up between Mrs. Greenville and the Prisoner a very
warm and close friendship, which in time ripened into the tenderest of
attachments. That her love for her dear Frank ever wavered, or that she
ever swerved for one moment in her reverence for his memory, I cannot
and I will not believe; but she nevertheless looked with an exceeding
favour upon the imprisoned man, and made no scruple of avowing her Flame
to Ruth. This young person did in time confide the same to her father,
who was much concerned thereat, he not knowing how far the allowance of
any love-passages between two such strangely assorted suitors might
tally with his duty towards the King and Government. Nor could he shut
his eyes to the fact that the Prisoner regarded Mrs. Greenville first
with a tender compassion (such as a father might have towards his
child), next with an ardent sympathy, and finally--and that very
speedily too--with a Feeling that had all the Signs and Portents of
Love. These two unfortunate People were so shut out from the world, and
so spiritually wedded by a common Misery and discomfort, that their
mere earthly coming together could not be looked upon but as natural and
reasonable; for Mrs. Greenville was the only woman upon whom the
Prisoner could be expected to look,--he being, beyond doubt, one of
Gentle Degree, if not of Great and Noble Station, and therefore beyond
aught but the caresses of a Patron with such a simple maid as Ruth
Glover, whose father, although of some military rank, was, like most of
the Captains who had served under the Commonwealth (witness Ireton,
Harrison, Hacker, and many more) of exceeding mean extraction.
That love-vows were interchanged between this Bride and Bridegroom of
Sorrow and a Dark Dungeon almost, I know not; but their liking for each
other's society--he imparting to her some of his studies, and she
playing music, with implements of which she was well provided, to him of
an afternoon--had become so apparent both to the soldiers on guard and
servants, even to the poor Invalid Matrosses wheezing and shivering in
their buff-coats, that Colonel Glover, in a very flurry of uncertainty,
sent post haste to Whitehall to know what he was to do--whether to
chamber up Mrs. Greenville in her chamber, as of aforetime, or confine
the Prisoner in one of the lower vaults in the body of the rock, with so
many pounds weight of iron on his legs. For Colonel Glover was a man
accustomed to use strong measures, whether with his family or with those
he had custody over.
No answer came for many days; and the Governor had almost begun to think
his message to be forgotten, when one summer evening (A.D. 1661) a troop
of horse were seen galloping from the Village towards the Castle. The
Drawbridge, which was on the ordinary kept slung, was now lowered; and
the captain of the troop passing up to the barbican, gave Colonel Glover
a sealed packet, and told him that he and his men would bivack at the
bridge-foot (for the fens were passable at this season) until one who
was expected at nightfall should come. Meat and drink were sent for, and
the soldiers, dismounting, began to take tobacco and rail against the
Castle in their brutal fashion--shame on them!--as an old mangy
rat-trap.
Colonel Glover went up into his chamber in extreme disturbance. He had
opened the packet and conned its contents; and having his daughter to
him presently, and charging her, by her filial duty, to use discretion
in all things that he should confide to her, tells her that his Majesty
the King of England, France, and Ireland was coming to the Castle in a
strictly Disguised habit that very evening.
There was barely time to make the slightest of preparations for this
Glorious Guest; but what there was, and of the best of Meat, and Wine,
and Plate, and hangings, and candles in sconces, was set out in the
Governor's chamber, and ordered as handsomely as might be for his
Majesty's coming. About eight o'clock--the villagers being given to
understand that only some noble commander is coming to pass the soldiers
in the Castle in review--arrived two lackeys, with panniers and
saddle-bags, and a French varlet, who said he was, forsooth, a cook, and
carried about with him a whole elaboratory of stove-furnaces, pots and
pans, and jars of sauces and condiments. Monsieur was quickly at work in
the kitchen, turning all things topsy-turvy, and nearly frightening
Margery, the old cook, who had been a baggage-wagon sutler at Naseby in
the Great Wars, into fits. About half-past ten a trumpet was heard to
wind at the bridge-foot, and a couple of horses came tramping over the
planks, making the chains rattle even to the barbican, where their
riders dismounted.
The King, for it is useless to make any further disguise about
him--although the Governor deferred falling on his knees and kissing his
hand until he had conducted him to his own chamber--was habited in
strict incognito, with an uncurled wig, a flap-hat, and a horseman's
coat over all. He had not so much as a hanger by his side, carrying only
a stout oak walking-staff. With him came a great lord, of an impudent
countenance, and with a rich dress beneath his cloak, who, when his
Master was out of the room, sometimes joked with, and sometimes swore
at, poor little Ruth, as, I grieve to say, was the uncivil custom among
the Quality in those wild days. The King supped very copiously, drinking
many beakers of wine, and singing French songs, to which the impudent
Lord beat time, and sometimes presumed to join in chorus. But this
Prince was ever of an easy manner and affable complexion, which so well
explains the Love his people bore him. All this while the Governor and
Ruth waited at table, serving the dishes and wine on their knees; for
they would suffer no mean hirelings to wait upon their guests.
As the King drank--and he was a great taker of wine--he asked a
multitude of questions concerning the Prisoner and Mrs. Greenville, to
all of which Colonel Glover made answer in as plain a manner as was
consistent with his deep loyalty and reverence. Soon, however, Colonel
Glover found that his Majesty was paying far more attention to the
bottle than to his conversation, and, about one in the morning, was
conducted, with much reverence, to the Governor's own sleeping-chamber,
which had been hastily prepared. His Majesty was quite Affable, but
Haggard visibly. The impudent Lord was bestowed in the chamber which had
been Ruth's, before she came to sleep so near Mrs. Greenville; and it is
well he knew not what a pretty tenant the room had had, else would he
have doubtless passed some villanous pleasantries thereupon.
The King, who was always an early riser, was up betimes in the morning;
and on Colonel Glover representing to him his sorrow for the mean manner
in which he had of necessity been lodged, answered airily that he was
better off there than in the Oak, or in Holland, without a styver in
his pocket; "Although, oddsfish!" quoth his Majesty, "this Castle of
mine seems fitter to harbour wild-ducks than Christians." And then
nothing would suit his Majesty but to be introduced to Mrs. Greenville,
with whom he was closeted two whole hours.
He came forth from her chamber with his dark, saturnine face all
flushed. "A brave woman!--a bold woman!" he kept saying. "An awful
service she was like to have done me; and all to think that it was for
love of poor Frank." For this Prince had known the Lord Francis well,
and had shown him many favours.
"And now, good Master Governor," the King continued, but with quite
another expression on his countenance, "we will see your Man Captive, if
it shall so please you." And the two went upstairs.
This is all I am permitted to tell in this place of what passed between
King Charles the Second and the Prisoner in the upper chamber:--
"You know me!" the King said, sitting over against him at the table, and
scanning his face with dark earnestness.
"You are Charles Stuart, second of the name on the throne of England."
"You know I am in the possession of your secret--of the King's Secret;
for of those dead it was known but to Oliver, as of those living it is
now only known to yourself and to me."
"And the young Man, Richard?"
"He never knew it. His father never trusted him so far. He had doubts
and suspicions, that was all."
"Thank God!" said the prisoner.
"What was Oliver's enmity towards you, that he should immure you here
all these years?"
"I had served him too well. He feared lest the Shedder of Blood should
become the Avenger of Blood."
"Are you sorry?"
"Sorry!" cried the Prisoner, with a kind of scream. "Had he a thousand
lives, had I a thousand hands, I would do the same deed to-morrow." And
he struck the right hand that was covered with the velvet glove with
cruel violence on to the oaken table.
FOOTNOTES:
[I] A woman of very mean belongings, whose parents lived, I have heard,
somewhere about the Maypole in the Strand, and who was promoted to high
station, being Monk's Duchess, but to her death of a coarse and brutish
carriage, and shamefully given to the drinking of strong waters.--J. D.
[J] A very glorious rag nevertheless.--ED.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
I AM BRED UP IN VERY BAD COMPANY, AND (TO MY SHAME) HELP TO KILL THE
KING'S DEER.
I LAY all that night in a little Hole by the side of a Bank, just as
though I had been a Fox-cub. I was not in much better case than that
Vermin, and I only marvel that my Schoolmaster did not come out next day
to Hunt me with horses and hounds. Hounds!--the Black Fever to him!--he
had used me like a Hound any time for Six Months past; and often had I
given tongue under his Double Thonging. Happily the weather was warm,
and I got no hurt by sleeping in the Hole. 'Tis strange, too, what
Hardships and Hazards of Climate and Excess we can bear in our Youth,
whereas in middle life an extra Slice gives us a Surfeit, and another
cup turns our Liver to Touchwood; whilst in age (as I know to my sorrow)
we dare scarcely venture our shoe in a Puddle for fear of the Chills and
Sciatica. In the morning I laved my face in a Brook that hurtled hard
by; but waited very fearfully until Noon ere I dared venture forth from
my covert. I had filled my pockets with Fruit and Bread (which I am
afraid I did not come very honestly by, and indeed admit that Gnawbit's
Larder and Orchard found me in Provender), and was so able to break my
fast. And my Guinea, I remembered, was still unchanged. I had a dim kind
of impression that I was bound to Charlwood Chase, to join the Blacks of
whom the Old Gentleman had spoken, but I was not in any Hurry to get to
my Goal. I was Free, albeit a Runaway, and felt all the delights of
Independence. You whose pleasures lie in Bowers, and Beds, and Cards,
and Wine, can little judge of the Ease felt by him who is indeed a
Beggar and pursued, but is at Liberty. I remember being in hiding once
with a Gentleman Robber, who had, by the aid of a File and a Friend,
contrived to give the Galleys leg-bail, and who for days afterwards was
never tired of patting and smoothing his ankles, and saying, "'Twas
there the shackles galled me so." Poor rogue! he was soon afterwards
laid by the heels and swung; for there is no Neck Verse in France to
save a Gentleman from the Gallows.
Towards evening my gall began to grate somewhat with the sense of mine
own utter loneliness; and for a moment I Wavered between the resolve to
go Forward, and a slavish prompting to return to my Tyrant, and suffer
all the torments his cruelty could visit me with. Then, as a middle
course, I thought I would creep back to my kennel and die there; but I
was happily dissuaded from such a mean surrender to Fortune's Spites
through the all-unknowing agency of a Bull, that, spying me from afar
off where he was feeding, came thundering across two fields and through
a shallow stream, routed me up from my refuge, and chased me into the
open. I have often since been thankful to this ungovernable Beast (that
would have Tossed, and perchance Gored me sorely, had he got at me), and
seldom, in later life, when I have felt weak and wavering in the pursuit
of a profitable purpose, have I failed to remember the Bull, and how he
chased me out of Distempered Idleness into Activity.
The Sun had begun to welk in the west by the time I had mustered up
enough courage to come into the High Road, which I had an uncertain idea
stretched away from Gnawbit's house, and towards Reading. But suddenly
recalling the Danger of travelling by the Highway, where I might be met
by Horsemen or Labouring persons sent in quest of me,--for it did not
enter my mind that I was too worthless a scholar to be Pursued, and that
Gnawbit was, 'tis likely enough, more Pleased than sorry to be Rid of
me,--I branched off from the main to the left; so walking, as it seemed
to me, many miles, I grew grievously hungry. No more Bread or Apples
remained in my pouch; but I still had my Guinea, so I deemed, and
resolved that if I came upon any House of Entertainment, I would sup.
For indeed, while all Nature round me seemed to be taking some kind of
Sustenance, it was hard that I, a Christian, should go to bed (or into
another Fox-hole, for bed I had none, and yet had slept in my time in a
grand chamber in Hanover Square) with an empty belly. The Earth was
beginning to drink up the dews, like an insatiate toper as she is. I
passed a flock of sheep biting their hasty supper from the grass; and
each one with a little cloud of gnats buzzing around it, that with
feeble stings, poor insects, were trying for their supper too. And 'tis
effect we have upon another. The birds had taken home their worm-cheer
to the little ones in the nests, and were singing their after-supper
songs, very sweetly but drowsily. 'Twas too late in the year for the
Nightingale,--that I knew,--but the jolly Blackbird was in full feather
and voice; and presently there swept by me a great Owl, going home to
feast, I will be bound, in his hollow tree, and with nothing less than a
Field Mouse for his supper, the rascal. 'Twas a wicked imagining, but I
could not help thinking, as I heard the birds carolling so merrily,--and
how they keep so plump upon so little to eat is always to me a marvel,
until I remember with what loving care Heaven daily spreads their table
from Nature's infinite ordinary,--how choice a Refection a dish of
birds' eggs, so often idly stolen and blown hollow by us boys, would
make. The feathered creatures are a forgiving folk; and 'tis not
unlikely that the Children in the Wood had often gone birds'-nesting:
but when they were dead, the kindly Red Jerkins forgave all their little
maraudings, and covered them with leaves, as though the children had
strewn them crumbs or brought them worms from January to December.
Gnawbit was a wretch who used to kill the Robins, and for that, if for
naught else, he will surely howl.
By and by, when darkness was coming down like a playhouse curtain, and
the Northern wagoner up yonder--how often have I watched him at
sea!--was yoking his seven cart-mares to the steadfast star, I came upon
a Man--the first I had seen since the Old Gentleman bade me begone with
my Guinea, and join the Blacks. This Man was not walking or running, nay
nor sitting nor lying as Lazars do in hedges. But he tumbled out of the
quicket as it were, and came to me with short leaps, making as though he
would Devour me. We schoolboys had talked often enough about Claude
Duval and the Golden Farmer, and I set this Dreadful Being down at once
as a Highwayman; so down I went Plump on my knees and Roared for mercy,
as I was wont to do to Gnawbit, till I learnt that no Roaring would make
him desist from his brutish purpose. It was darkish now, and I well-nigh
fancied the Man was indeed my wicked Master, for he had an uplifted
weapon in his hand; but when he came nearer to me, I found that it was
not a cane nor a thong, but a Great Flail, which he whirled over his
head, and then brought down on the ground with a Thwack, making the
Night Flies dance.
"You Imp of mischief," said the man as he seized me by the collar and
shook me roughly, "what are you doing here, spying on honest folks?
Speak, or I'll brain you with this Flail."
I thought it best to tell this terrible man the Truth.
"If you please, sir," I answered, trembling, "I've run away."
"Run away from where, you egg?"
"From Gnawbit's, sir."
"And who the pest is Gnawbit, you hempen babe?"
"My schoolmaster, sir."
"Ha! that's good," the Man replied, loosening his hold somewhat on my
collar. "And what did you run away for?"
I told him in broken sentences my short Story--of my Sufferings at
School, at least, but never saying a word about my being a little
Gentleman, and the son of a Lady of Quality in Hanover Square.
"And where are you going?" the Man asked, when I had finished.
I told him that I was on my way to Charlwood Chase to join the Blacks.
And then he asked me whether I had any Money, whereto I answered that I
had a Guinea; and little doubting in my Quaking Heart but that he would
presently Wrench it from me, if haply he were not minded to have Meal as
well as Malt, and brain me as he had threatened. But he forbore to offer
me violence, and, quite releasing his hold, said--
"I suppose you'd like some supper."
I said that I had not broken my fast for many hours, and was dead
a-hungered.
"And wouldn't mind supping with the Blacks in Charlwood Chase, eh?" he
continued.
I rather gave him to understand that such was not only my Wish but my
Ambition.
"Come along to the Blacks, then," said the Man. "_I'm one of 'em._"
He drew a Lantern from under his garments as he spoke, and letting out
the Light from the slide, passed it over, and up and down, his Face and
Figure. Then did I see with Horror and Amazement that both his
Countenance and his Raiment were all smirched and bewrayed with dabs and
patches of what seemed soot or blackened grease. It was a once white
Smock or Gaberdine that made the chief part of his apparel; and this,
with the black patches on it, gave him a Pied appearance fearful to
behold. There was on his head what looked like a great bundle of black
rags; and tufts of hair that might have been pulled out of the mane of a
wild horse grew out from either side of his face, and wreathed its lower
half.
"Come along," repeated the Man; "we'll blacken you bravely in time my
Chicken-skin."
And so he grasped my hand in his,--and when I came to look at it
afterwards, I found it smeared with sable, and with great black
finger-marks upon it,--and led me away. We journeyed on in the Dark--for
he had put up his Lantern--for another good half-hour, he singing to
himself from time to time some hoarse catches of song having reference
to some "Billy Boys" that I conjectured were his companions. And so we
struck from by-lane into by-lane, and presently into a Plantation, and
then through a gap in a Hedge, and through a Ditch full of Brambles,
which galled my legs sorely. I was half asleep by this time, and was
only brought to full wakefulness by the deep baying as of a Dog some few
yards, as it seemed, from us.
The Lantern's light gleamed forth again; and in the circle of Clear it
made I could see we were surrounded by tall Trees that with their long
crooked Arms looked as though they would entwine me in deadly embraces.
"Hist!" the man said very low. "That's surely Black Towzer's tongue."
And to my huge dismay he set up a sad responsive Howl, very like unto
that of a Dog, but not at all akin to the voice of a Man.
The answer to this was a whistle, and human speech, saying--
"Black Jowler!"
"Black Towzer, for a spade Guinea!" my companion made answer; and in
another moment there came bounding towards us another fellow in the same
blackened masquerade as he, and with another Lantern. He had with him,
besides, a shaggy hound that smelt me suspiciously and prowled round me,
growling low, I shivering the whiles.
"What have we here?" asked the Second Black; for I made no doubt now but
that my Company were of that Confederacy.
"Kid loose," replied he who was to take me to supper. "Given the keepers
the slip, and run down by Billy Boys' park. Aha!" and he whispered to
his comrade ruffian.
Out went the Lanterns again, and he who answered to the name of Jowler
tightened his grasp, and bade me for a young Tyburn Token quicken my
pace. So we walked and walked again, poor I as sore as a pilgrim
tramping up the Hill to Louth--which I have many times seen in those
parts--with Shards in his shoes. Then it must come, forsooth, to more
whistling; and the same Play being over, we had one more Lantern to our
Band, and one more Scurvy Companion as Black as a Flag,[K] who in their
kennel Tongue was Mungo. And by and by we were joined by Surly, and
Black Tom, and Grumps; and so with these five Men, who were pleased to
be called as the Beasts are, I stumbled along, tired, and drowsy, and
famishing, and thinking my journey would never come to an end.
Surely it must have been long past midnight when we made a halt; and all
the five lanterns being lit, and making so many dancing wheels of
yellow, I found that we were still encircled by those tall trees with
the twining arms. And Jowler--for it is useless to speak of my conductor
according to Human Rule--gave me a rough pat on the shoulder, and bade
me cheer up, for that I should have my supper very soon now. All five
then joined in a whistle so sharp, so clear, and so well sustained, that
it sounded well-nigh melodious; and to this there came, after the lapse
of a few seconds, the noise as of a little peevish Terrier barking.
"True as Touchwood," cried Black Jowler. "In, Billy Boys, and hey for
fat and flagons."
With this he takes me by the shoulders, telling me to fear naught, and
spend my money like a gentleman, and bundles me before him till we came
to something hard as board. This I presently found was a door; and in
an instant I was in the midst of a kind of Tavern parlour, all lighted
up with great candles stuck into lumps of clay, and face to face with
the Fattest Woman I ever saw in my life.
"Mother Moll Drum," quoth my conductor, "save you, and give me a quart
of three threads, or I faint. Body o' me, was ever green plover so
pulled as I was?"
The Fat Woman he called Mother Moll Drum was to all seeming in no very
blessed temper; for she bade Jowler go hang for a lean polecat, and be
cursed meanwhile, and that she would draw him naught.
"Come, come, Mother," Jowler said, making as though to appease her,
"what be these tantrums? Come, draw; for I'm as thirsty as an
hour-glass, poor wretch, that has felt sand run through his gullet any
time these twenty years."
"Draw for yourself, rogue," says Mother Drum; "there's naught I'll serve
you with, unless, indeed, I were bar-woman at St. Giles's Pound, and had
to froth you your last quart, as you went up the Heavy Hill to Tyburn."
"We shall all go there in time--good time," breaks in a deep solemn
voice, drawn somehow through the nose, and coming from the Man-Dog they
called Grumps; "meanwhile, O greasy woman, let the beverage our brother
asked for be drawn, and I, even Grumps, will partake thereof, and ask a
blessing."
"Woman yourself!" cries Moll Drum, in a rage. "Woman yourself, and T----
in your teeth, and woman to the mother that bore you, and sat in the
stocks for Lightness! Who are you, quotha, old reverend smock with the
splay foot? Come up, now, prithee, Bridewell Bird! You will drink, will
you? I saw no dust or cobwebs come out of your mouth. Go hang, you
moon-calf, false faucet, you roaring horse-courser, you ranger of
Turnbull, you dull malt-house with a mouth of a peck and the sign of the
swallow above."
By this time Mother Drum was well-nigh out of breath, and panted, and
looked so hot, that they might have put her up by Temple Bar on Queen
Bess's birthnight for a Bonfire, and so saved Tar Barrels. And as she
spoke she brandished a large Frying Pan, from which great drops of hot
grease--smelling very savoury by the way--dropped on to the sanded
floor. The other Blacks seemed in nowise disturbed by this Dispute, but
were rather amused thereby, and gathered in a ring round Jowler and
Grumps and the Fat Woman, laughing.
"Never mind, Mother Drum," quoth one; "she was a pig-woman once in
Bartlemy Fair, and lost her temper through the heat of a coal-fire
roasting porkers. Was't not hot, Mother Drum? was not Tophet a kind of
cool cellar to it?"
It was Surly who spoke, and Mother Drum turns on him in a rage.
"You lie, you pannierman's by-blow!" she cried; "you bony muckfowl, with
the bony back sticking out like the ace of spades on the point of a
small-sword! you lie, Bobchin, Changeling, Horseleech! 'Slid, you
Shrovetide Cutpurse, I'll scald your hide with gravy, I will!"
"Ware the pan, ware the pan!" all the Blacks cried out; for the Good
Woman made a flourish as though she would have carried out her threat;
whereupon my Man-Dog, Jowler, thought it was time to interpose, and
spoke.
"There's no harm in Mother Drum, but that her temper's as hot as her
pan, and we are late to supper. Come, Mother, Draw for us, and save you
still. I'll treat you to burnt brandy afterwards."
"What did he call me Pig-Woman for?" she grumbled, but still half
mollified. "What if I did waste my youth and prime in cooking of porkers
in a booth; I am no cutpurse. I, I never shoved the tumbler for
tail-drawing or poll-snatching on a levee-day.[L] But I will draw for
you, and welcome my guests of the game."
"And Supper, good Moll, Supper," added Jowler.
"An you had not hindered me, it would have been ready upstairs. There
are more upstairs besides you that hunger after the fat and the lean.
But can you sup without a cook? Will venison run off the spit ready
roasted, think you, like the pigs in Lubberland, that jump down your
throat, and cry _wee wee_?"
She began to bustle about, and summoned, by the name of Cicely
Grip--adding thereto the epithet of "faggot"--a stout serving-lass, who
might have been comely enough, but whose face and hands were very nearly
as black as those of the Man-Dog's. This wench brought a number of brown
jugs full of beer, and the Blacks took to drinking with much zest. Then
Jowler, who seemed a kind of lieutenant, in some authority over them,
gave the word of command to "Peel;" and they hastened to leave the room,
which was but a mean sort of barn-like chamber, with bare walls, a
wattled roof, and a number of rough wooden tables and settles, all
littered with jugs and Tobacco pipes. So I and the Fat Woman and Jowler,
Cicely Grip having betaken herself to the kitchen, were left together.
"Cicely will dish up, Mother Drum," he says; "you have fried collops
enow for us, I trow; and if more are wanted for the Billy Boys, you can
to your pan again. You began your brandy pottage too early tonight,
Mother. Let us have no more of your vapours 'twixt this and day-break,
prithee. What would Captain Night say?"
"Captain Night be hanged!"
"He will be hanged, as our brother Surly has it, in good time, I doubt
it not. Meanwhile, order must be kept at the Stag o' Tyne. Get you and
draw the dram I promised you; and, Mother, wash me this little lad's
face and hands, that he may sit down to meat with us in a seemly
manner."
"Who the Clink is he?" asked Mother Drum, eyeing me with no very Great
Favour.
"He says he is little Boy Jack," answered Mr. Jowler, gravely. "We will
give him another name before we have done with him. Meantime he has a
guinea in his pocket to pay his shot, and that's enough for the fat old
Alewife of the Stag o' Tyne."
"Fat again!" muttered Mother Drum. "Is it a 'Sizes matter to be full of
flesh? I be fat indeed," she answered, with a sigh, "and must have a
chair let out o' the sides for me, that these poor old hips may have
play. And I, that was of so buxom a figure."
"Never mind your Figure, Mother," remarked my Conductor, "but do my
bidding. I'll e'en go and peel too;" and without more ado he leaves us.
Madam Drum went into her kitchen and fetched forth a Tin Bowl full of
hot suds, and with these she washed me as she had been directed. I bore
it all unresistingly--likewise a scrubbing with a rough towel. Then,
when my hair was kempt with an old Felting comb, almost toothless, I
felt refreshed and hungrier than ever. But Mother Drum never ceased to
complain of having been called fat.
"Time was, my smooth-faced Coney," she said, "that I was as lithe and
limber as you are, and was called Jaunty Peg. And now poor old Moll
cooks collops for those that are born to dance jigs in chains for the
north-east wind to play the fiddle to. Time was when a whole army
followed me, when I beat the drum before the great Duke."
"What Duke?" I asked, looking up at her great red face.
"What Duke, milksop! Why, who should I mean but the Duke that won
Hochstedt and Ramilies:--the Ace of Trumps, my dear, that saved the
Queen of Hearts, the good Queen Anne, so bravely. What Duke should I
mean but John o' Marlborough."
"I have seen _him_," I said, with childish gravity.
"Seen him! when and where, loblolly-boy? You're too young to have been a
drummer."
"I saw him," I answered, blushing and stammering; "I saw him when--when
I was a little Gentleman."
"Lord save us!" cries Mother Drum, bursting into a jolly laugh. "A
Gentleman! since when, your Lordship, I pray? But we're all Gentlefolks
here, I trow; and Captain Night's the Marquis of Aylesbury Jail. A
Gentleman! oho!"
Hereupon, and which, to my great relief, quitted me of the perturbation
brought on by a Rash Admission, there came three knocks from above, and
Mother Drum said hurriedly, "Supper, supper;" and opening a side-door,
pushes me on to a staircase, and tells me to mount, and pull a reverence
to the company I found at table.
Twenty steps brought me to another door I found on the jar, and I passed
into a great room with a roof of wooden joists, and a vast table in the
middle set out with supper. There was no table-cloth; but there were
plenty of meats smoking hot in great pewter dishes. I never saw, either,
so many bottles and glasses on one board in my life; and besides these,
there was good store of great shining Flagons, carved and chased, which
I afterwards knew to be of Solid Silver.
Round this table were gathered at least Twenty Men; and but for their
voices I should never have known that five among them were my companions
of just now. For all were attired in a very brave Manner, wore wigs and
powder and embroidered waistcoats; although, what I thought strange,
each man dined in boots, with a gold-laced hat on his head, and his
Hanger by his side, and a brace of Pistols on the table beside him. Yet
I must make two exceptions to this rule. He whom they called Surly, had
on a full frizzed wig and a cassock and bands, that, but for his rascal
face, would have put me in mind of the Parson at St. George's, Hanover
Square, who always seemed to be so angry with me. Surly was Chaplain,
and said Grace, and ate and drank more than any one there. Lastly, at
the table's head, sat a thin, pale, proper kind of a man, wearing his
own hair long, in a silken club, dressed in the pink of Fashion, as
though he were bidden to a birthday, with a dandy rapier at his side,
and instead of Pistols, a Black Velvet Visor laid by the side of his
plate. He had very large blue eyes and very fair hair. He might have
been some thirty-five years old, and the guests, who treated him with
much deference, addressed him as Captain Night.
Mr. Jowler, whose hat had as brave a cock as any there, made me sit by
him; and, with three more knocks and the Parson's Grace, we all fell to
supper. They helped me plentifully, and I ate my fill. Then my friend
gave me a silver porringer full of wine-and-water. It was all very good;
but I knew not what viands I was eating, and made bold to ask Jowler.
"'Tis venison, boy, that was never shot by the King's keeper," he
answered. "But, if you would be free of Charlwood Chase, and wish to get
out yet with a whole skin, I should advise you to eat your meat and ask
no questions."
I was very much frightened at this, and said no more until the end of
Supper. When they had finished, they fell to drinking of Healths, great
bowls of Punch being brought to them for that purpose. The first toast
was the King, and that fell to Jowler.
"The King!" says he, rising.
"Over the water?" they ask.
"No," answers Jowler. "The King everywhere. King James, and God bless
him."
"I won't drink _that_," objects the Chaplain. "You know I am a King
George man."
"Drink the Foul Fiend, an' you will," retorts the Proposer. "You'd be
stanch and true either way. Now, Billy Boys, the King!"
And they fell to tumbling down on their knees, and drinking His Majesty
in brimming bumpers. I joined in the ceremony perforce, although I knew
nothing about King James, save that Monarch my Grandmother used to Speak
about, who Withdrew himself from these kingdoms in the year 1688; and at
Church 'twas King George they were wont to pray for, and not King James.
And little did I ween that, in drinking this Great Person on my knees, I
was disobeying the Precept of my dear dead Kinswoman.
"I have a bad foot," quoth Captain Night, "and cannot stir from my
chair; but I drink all healths that come from loyal hearts."
Many more Healths followed. The Chaplain gave the Church, "and confusion
to Old Rapine, that goes about robbing chancels of their chalices, and
parsons of their dues, and the very poor-box of alms." And then they
drank, "Vert and Venison," and then, "A black face, a white smock, and a
red hand." And then they betook themselves to Roaring choruses, and
Smoking and Drinking galore, until I fell fast asleep in my chair.
I woke up not much before Noon the next day, in a neat little chamber
very cleanly appointed; but found to my surprise that, in addition to my
own clothes, there was laid by my bedside a little Smock or Gaberdine of
coarse linen, and a bowl full of some sooty stuff that made me shudder
to look at. And my Surprise was heightened into amazed astonishment
when, having donned my own garments, and while curiously turning over
the Gaberdine, there came a knock, and anon stepped into the room the
same comely Servant-maid that had ridden with us in the Wagon six months
since, on that sad journey to school, and that had been so kind to me in
the way of new milk and cheesecakes.
She was very smartly dressed, with a gay flowered apron, and a flycap
all over glass-beads, like so many Blue-bottles. And she had a gold
brooch in her stomacher, and fine thread hose, and red Heels to her
shoes.
She was as kind to me as ever, and told me that I was among those who
would treat me well, and stand my friends, if I obeyed their commands.
And I, who, I confess, had by this time begun to look on the Blacks and
their Ways with a kind of Schoolboy glee, rose, nothing loth, and donned
the Strange Accoutrements my entertainers provided for me. The girl
helped me to dress, smiling and giggling mightily the while; but, as I
dressed, I could not help calling her by the name she had given me in
the Wagon, and asking how she had come into that strange Place.
"Hush, hush!" says she. "I'm Marian now, Maid Marian, that lives with
Mother Drum, and serves the Gentlemen Blacks, and brings Captain Night
his morning Draught. None of us are called by our real names at the Stag
o' Tyne, my dear. We all are in No-man's-land."
"But where is No-man's-land, and what is the Stag o' Tyne?" I asked, as
she slipped the Gaberdine over my head.
"No-man's-land is just in the left-hand top Corner of Charlwood Chase,
after you have turned to the left, and gone as far forward as you can by
taking two steps backward for every one straight on," answers the saucy
hussy. "And the Stag o' Tyne's even a Christian House of Entertainment
that Mother Drum keeps."
"And who is Mother Drum?" I resumed, my eyes opening wider than ever.
"A decent Alewife, much given to grease, and that cooks the King's
Venison for Captain Night and his Gentlemen Blacks."
"And Captain Night,--who is he?"
"Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies," she makes reply.
"Captain Night is a Gentleman every inch of him, and as sure as Tom o'
Ten Thousand."
"And the Gentlemen Blacks?"
"Your mighty particular," quoth she, regarding me with a comical look.
"Well, my dear, since you are to be a Black yourself, and a Gentleman to
boot, I don't mind telling you. The Gentlemen Blacks are all Bold
Hearts, that like to kill the King's Venison without a Ranger's Warrant,
and to eat of it without paying Fee nor Royalty, and that drink of the
very best--"
"And that have Dog-whips to lay about the shoulders of tattling minxes
and curious urchins," cries, to my dismay, a voice behind us, and so to
us--by his voice at least--Captain Night, but in his body no longer the
same gay spark that I had seen the night before, or rather that morning
early. He was as Black, and Hairy, and Savage-looking as any--as Jowler,
or any one of that Dark Gang; and in no way differed from them, save
that on the middle finger of his Right Hand there glittered from out all
his Grease and Soot, a Great Diamond Ring.
"Come," he cries, "Mistress Nimble Tongue, will you be giving your Red
Rag a gallop yet, and Billy Boys waiting to break their Fast? Despatch,
and set out the boy, as I bade you."
"I am no kitchen-wench, I," answers the Maid of the Wagon, tossing her
head. "Cicely o' the Cinders yonder will bring you to your umble-pie,
and a Jack of small-beer to cool you, I trow. Was it live Charcoal or
Seacoal embers that you swallowed last night, Captain, makes you so dry
this morning?"
"Never mind, Goody Slack Jaw," says Captain Night. "I shall be thirstier
anon from listening to your prate. Will you hurry now, Gadfly, or is the
sun to sink before we get hounds in leash?"
Thus admonished, the girl takes me by the arm, and, without more ado,
dips a rag in the pot of black pigment, and begins to smear all my
hands, and face, and throat, with dabs of disguising shade. And, as she
bade me do the same to my Garment, and never spare Soot, I fell to work
too, making myself into the likeness of a Chimney-boy, till they might
have taken me into a nursery to Frighten naughty children.
Captain Night sat by himself on the side of the bed, idly clicking a
pistol-lock till such time as he proceeded to load it, the which threw
me into a cold tremor, not knowing but that it might be the Custom among
the Gentlemen Blacks to blow out the brains in the morning of those they
had feasted over-night. Yet, as there never was Schoolboy, I suppose,
but delighted in Soiling of his raiment, and making himself as Black as
any sweep in Whetstone Park, so did I begin to feel something like a
Pleasure in being masqueraded up to this Disguise, and began to wish for
a Pistol such as Captain Night had in his Hand, and such a Diamond Ring
as he wore on his finger.
"There!" cries the Maid of the Wagon, when I was well Blacked, surveying
me approvingly. "You're a real imp of Charlwood Chase now. Ugh! thou
young Rig! I'll kiss you when the Captain brings you home, and good soap
and water takes off those mourning weeds before supper-time."
She had clapped a great Deerskin cap on my head, and giving me a
friendly pat, was going off, when I could not help asking her in a sly
whisper what had become of the Pewterer of Pannier Alley.
"What! you remember him, do you?" she returned, with a half-smile and a
half-sigh. "Well, the Pewterer's here, and as black as you are."
"But I thought you were to wed," I remarked.
"Well!" she went on, almost fiercely, "cannot one wed at the Stag o'
Tyne? We have a brave Chaplain down-stairs,--as good as a Fleet Parson
any day, I wuss."
"But the Pewterer?" I persisted.
"I'll hang the Pewterer round thy neck!" she exclaimed in a pet. "The
Pewterer was unfortunate in his business, and so took to the Road; and
thus we have all come together in Charlwood Chase. But ask me no more
questions, or Captain Night will be deadly angry. Look, he fumes
already."
She tripped away saying this, and in Time, I think; for indeed the
Captain was beginning to show signs of impatience. She being gone, he
took me on his knee, all Black as I was, and in a voice kind enough, but
full of authority, bade me tell him all my History and the bare truth,
else would he have me tied neck and heels and thrown to the fishes.
So I told this strange Man all:--of Hanover Square, and my earliest
childhood. Of the Unknown Lady, and her Behaviour and conversation, even
to her Death. Of her Funeral, and the harsh bearing of Mistress Talmash
and the Steward Cadwallader unto me in my Helplessness and Loneliness.
Of my being smuggled away in a Wagon and sent to school to Gnawbit, and
of the Barbarous cruelty with which I had been treated by that Monster.
And finally, of the old Gentleman that used to cry, "Bear it! Bear it!"
and of his giving me a Guinea, and bidding me run away.
He listened to all I had to say, and then putting me down,
"A strange story," he thoughtfully remarks, "and not learnt out of the
storybooks either, or I sorely err. You have not a Lying Face, my man.
Wait a while, and you'll wear a Mask thicker than all that screen of
soot you have upon you now." But in this he was mistaken; for John
Dangerous ever scorned deception, and through life has always acted
fair and above-board.
"And that Guinea," he continued. "Hast it still?"
I answered that I had, producing it as I spoke, and that I was ready to
pay my Reckoning, and to treat him and the others, in which, meseems,
there spoke less of the little Runaway Schoolboy that had turned Sweep,
than of the Little Gentleman that was wont to be a Patron to his
Grandmother's lacqueys in Hanover Square.
"Keep thy piece of Gold," he answers, with a smile. "Thou shalt pay thy
footing soon enough. Or wilt thou go forth with thy Guinea and spend it,
and be taken by thy Schoolmaster to be whipped, perchance to death?"
I replied that I had the much rather stay with him, and the Gentlemen.
"The less said of the 'Gentlemen' the better. However, 'tis all one: we
are all Gentlemen at the Stag o' Tyne. Even thou art a Gentleman, little
Ragamuff."
"I am a Gentleman of long descent; and my fathers have fought and bled
for the True King; and Norman blood's better than German puddle-mud," I
replied, repeating well-nigh Mechanically that which my dear Kinswoman
had said to me, and Instilled into me many and many a time. In my
degraded Slavery, I had _well_-nigh forgotten the proud old words; but
only once it chanced that they had risen up unbidden, when I was flouted
and jeered at as Little Boy Jack by my schoolmates. Heaven help us, how
villanously cruel are children to those who are of their own age and
Poor and Friendless! What is it that makes young hearts so Hard? The
boys Derided and mocked me more than ever for that I said I was a
Gentleman; and by and by comes Gnawbit, and beats me black and blue--ay,
and gory too--with a furze-stub, for telling of Lies, as he falsely
said, the Ruffian.
"Well," resumed Captain Night, "thou shalt stay with us, young
Gentleman. But weigh it soberly, boy," he continued. "Thou art old
enough to know black from white, and brass from gold. Be advised; know
what we Blacks are. We are only Thieves that go about stealing the
King's Deer in Charlwood Chase."
I told him that I would abide by him and his Company; and with a grim
smile he clapped me on the shoulder, and told me that now indeed I was a
Gentleman Black, and Forest Free.
FOOTNOTES:
[K] "_My_ Flag" in the original MS.; but I put it down as a slip of the
pen, and altered it--G. A. S.
[L] Madam Drum, so far as I can make out the _argot_ of the day, here
insinuated that her opponent had been corrected at the cart's tail for
stealing swords out of the scabbards, and conveying wigs from the heads
of their owners, two crimes which have become obsolete since the Quality
have ceased to wear swords and periwigs.--G. A. S.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.
THE HISTORY OF MOTHER DRUM.
DURING the long nights I remained at the Stag o' Tyne ere I was thought
Worthy to join the Blacks in their nocturnal adventures, or was, by my
Hardihood and powers of Endurance--poor little mite that I was--adjudged
to be Forest Free, I remained under the charge of Ciceley of the
Cindery, and of the corpulent Tapstress whom the Blacks called Mother
Drum. These two women were very fond of gossiping with me; and
especially did Mother Drum love to converse with me upon her own Career,
which had been of the most Chequered, not to say Amazing nature. I have
already hinted that at one time this Remarkable Woman had professed the
Military Profession, in which she had shone with almost a Manly
Brilliance; and from her various confidences--all delivered to me as
they were in shreds and patches, and imparted at the oddest times and
seasons--I was enabled to shape her (to me) diverting history into
something like the following shape.
"I was born, I think," quoth Mother Drum, "in the year 1660, being that
of his happy Restoration to the throne of these Realms of his late
Sacred Majesty King Charles the Second. My father was a small farmer,
who fed his pigs and tended his potato gardens at the foot of the
Wicklow Mountains, about twelve miles from the famous city of Dublin.
His name was O' something, which it concerns you not to know, youngster,
and he had the misfortune to be a Papist. I say the misfortune; for in
those days, O well-a-day, as in these too, and more's the shame, to be a
Papist meant being a poor, unfortunate creature continually Hunted up
and down, Harassed and Harried far worse than any leathern-skinned Beast
of Venery that the Gentlemen Blacks pursue in Charlwood Chase. He had
suffered much under the iron rule" (these were not exactly Mother Drum's
words, for her language was anything, as a rule, but well chosen; but I
have polished up her style a little,) "of the cruel Usurper, Oliver
Cromwell; that is to say the Redcoated Ironsides of that Bad Man had on
three several occasions burnt his Shelling to the ground, stolen his
Pigs, and grubbed up his potato ground. Once had they ran away with his
wife, (my dear Mother), twice had they half-hanged him to a tree-branch,
and at divers intervals had they tortured him by tying lighted matches
between his fingers. When, however, His Sacred Majesty was happily
restored there were hopes that the poor Romanists would enjoy a little
Comfort and Tranquillity; but these Fond aspirations were speedily and
cruelly dashed to the ground; for the Anglican Bishops and Clergy being
put into possession of the Sees and Benefices of which they had been so
long deprived, occupied themselves much more with Hounding Down those
who did not live by the Thirty-nine Articles and the Liturgy, than in
preaching Peace and Goodwill among all men. So the Papists had a worse
time of it than ever. My Father, honest man, tried to temporise between
the two parties, but was ever in danger of being shot by his own friends
as a Traitor, even if he escaped half-hanging at the hands of the
Protestants as a Recusant. Well, after all, Jack high or Jack low, the
days must come to an end, and Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter must
follow upon one another, and boys and girls were born to my father, and
the pigs littered, and were sold at market, and the potatoes grew and
were eaten whether Oliver Cromwell, or his son Dickon, or Charles
Stuart--I beg pardon, His Sacred Majesty--was uppermost. Thus it was I
came into the world in the Restoration year.
"I was a bold, strapping, fearless kind of a girl, much fonder of
Romping and Horse-play of the Tomboy order than of the Pursuits and
Pastimes of my own sex. The difference was more remarkable, as you know
the Irish girls are distinguished above all other Maidens in creation by
an extreme Delicacy and Coyness, not to say Prudishness of Demeanour.
But Betty--I was christened Elizabeth--was always gammocking and
tousling with the Lads instead of holding by her Mother's apron, or
demurely sitting by her spinning-wheel, or singing plaintive ballads to
herself to the music of the Irish Harp, which, in my time, almost every
Farmer's Daughter could Play. Before I was seven years old I could feed
the pigs and dig up the potato ground. Before I was ten, I could catch a
colt and ride him, barebacked and without bridle, holding on by his
mane, round the green in front of my Father's Homestead. Before I was
twelve, I was a match for any Boy of my own age at a bout of fisticuffs,
ay, and at swinging a blackthorn so as to bring it down with a thwack
on the softest part of a gossoon's crown. I knew little of spinning, or
playing, or harping; but I could land a trout, and make good play with a
pike. I could brew a jug of Punch, and at a jig could dance down the
lithest gambriler of those parts, Dan Meagher, the Blind Piper of
Swords. Those who knew me used to call me 'Brimstone Betty;' and in my
own family I went by the name of the 'Bold Dragoon,' much to the
miscontentment of my father, who tried hard to bring me to a more
feminine habit of Body and frame of mind, both by affectionate
expostulation, and by assiduous larruping with a stirrup leather. But
'twas all of no use. At sixteen I was the greatest Tearcoat of the
Country side; and Father Macanasser, the village priest, gave it as his
opinion that I must either be married, or sent to Dublin into decent
service, or go to Ruination.
"It chanced that one fine summer day, I was gammocking in a hayfield
with another lass, a friend of mine, whom I had made almost as bold as
myself. We had a cudgel apiece, and were playing at single-stick, in our
mad-cap fashion, laughing and screaming like Bedlamites, meanwhile. Only
a hedge separated us from the high-road to Dublin, which ran up hill,
and by and by came toiling up the hill, sticking every other minute in a
rut, or jolting into a hole--for the roads were in infamous condition
about here, as, indeed, all over the kingdom of Ireland--a grand coach,
all over painting and gilding, drawn by six grey horses, with flowing
manes and tails. The two leading pair had postilions in liveries of blue
and silver, and great badges of coats-of-arms, and the equipage was
further attended by a couple of outriders or yeomen-prickers in the same
rich livery, but with cutlasses at their sides, petronels in their
holsters, and blunderbusses on their hips, to guard against Tories and
Rapparees, who then infested the land, and cared little whether it was
Daylight or Moonlight--whether it was in the Green tree or the Dry that
they went about their thievish business. The personage to whom this
grand coach belonged was a stout, Majestic old Gentleman with a
monstrous black periwig, a bright star on his breast, and a broad blue
ribbon crossing his plum-coloured velvet doublet. He had dismounted from
his heavy coach, while the horses were fagging up hill, and by the help
of a great crutch-staff of ebony, ornamented with silver, was toiling
after them. Hearing our prattling and laughing, he looked over the hedge
and saw us in the very thick of our mimic Combat. This seemed to divert
him exceedingly; and although we, seeing so grand a gentleman looking at
us, were for suspending our Tomfoolery, and stood, to say the truth,
rather shamefaced than otherwise among the haycocks, he bade us with
cheery and encouraging words to proceed, and laughed to see us so
sparring at one another, till his sides shook again. But all the fire
was taken out of our combat, by the presence of so unwonted a
Spectator, and after a brief lapse we dropped cudgels, and stood staring
and blushing, quite dashed and confused. Then he beckoned us towards him
in a most affable manner, and we came awkwardly and timorously, yet
still with great curiosity to know what was to follow, through a gap in
the hedge, and so stood before him in the road. And then cries out one
of the Yeomen-Prickers--'Wenches! drop your best curtsey to his Grace
the Duke of O----.' It was, indeed, that famous nobleman, lately Lord
Lieutenant, and still one of the highest, mightiest, and most puissant
Princes in the Kingdom of Ireland. To be brief, he put a variety of
questions to us, respecting our belongings, and at my answers seemed
most condescendingly pleased, and at those of my playmate (whose name
was Molly O'Flaherty, and who had red hair, and a cast in her eye), but
moderately pleased. On her, therefore, he bestowed a gold piece, and so
dismissed her; telling her to take care of what her Tom Boy pranks
might lead her to. But to me, while conferring the like present, he was
good enough to say that I was a spirited lass fit for better things, and
that if my Father and Mother would bring me shortly to his House in
Dublin, he would see what could be done, to the end of bettering my
condition in life. Whereupon he was assisted to his seat by one of four
running footmen that tramped by his side, and away he went in his coach
and six, leaving me in great joy and contentment. In only a few minutes
came after him, not toiling, but bursting up the hill, a whole plump of
gallant cavaliers in buff coats, bright corslets, and embroidered
bandoliers over them, wearing green plumes in their hats, and
flourishing their broadswords in the sunshine. These were the gentlemen
of his bodyguard. They questioned me as to my converse with his Grace,
and when I told them, laughed and said that I was in luck.
"The Duke of O---- meant me no harm, and I am sure did me none; and yet,
my dear, I must date all my misfortunes from the time I was introduced
to his Grace. You see that these gentlefolks have so much to think of,
and are not in the habit of troubling their heads much as to what
becomes of a poor peasant girl, after the whim which may have led them
to patronize her has once passed over. My mother made me a new linsey
woolsey petticoat, and a snood of scarlet frieze, and I was as fine as
ninepence, with the first pair of stockings on that ever I had worn in
my life, when I was taken to Dublin to a grand house by the Quay side,
to be presented to his Grace. He had almost forgotten who I was, when
his Groom of the Chamber procured us an audience. Then he remembered how
he had laughed at my gambols with Molly O'Flaherty in the hayfield, and
how they amused him, and how he thought my Romping ways might divert My
Lady Duchess his Consort, who was a pining, puling, melancholic
Temperament, and much afflicted with the Vapours, for want of something
to do. So he was pleased to smile upon me again, and to give my mother
five pounds, and to promise that I should be well bestowed in his
household as a waiting-woman, or Bower-maiden, or some such like
capacity; and then he made me a present, as though I were a puppy-dog,
to Her Grace the Duchess, and having affairs of state to attend to,
thought no more about 'Brimstone Betty.' My sprightly ways and random
talk amused her Grace for awhile; but she had too many gewgaws and
playthings, and I found, after not many days, that my popularity was on
the wane, and that I could not hope to maintain it against the
attractions of a French waiting-maid, a monkey, a parrot, a poodle, and
a little Dwarfish boy-attendant that was half fiddler and half buffoon.
So my consequence faded and faded, and I was sneered at and flouted as a
young Savage and a young Irish by the English lacqueys about the House,
and I sank from my Lady's keeping-room to the antechamber, and thence
to the servant's hall, and thence, after a very brief lapse, to the
kitchen, where I was very little better than a Scullish and
Plate-washer, and not half so well entreated as Cicely of the Cinders is
here. I pined and fretted; but time went on, and to my misfortune I was
growing taller and shapelier. I had a very clear skin, and very black
hair and eyes, and, though I say it that shouldn't, as neat a leg and
foot as you would wish to see in a summer's day, and the men folk told
me that I was comely. They only told me so, the false perfidious hounds,
for my destruction.
"Well, child, you are too young to understand these things; and I hope
that when you grow up, you will not do to poor forlorn girls as I was
done by. A dicing soldier fellow that was a hanger-on at my Lord Duke's
house, and was called Captain, ran away with me. Of course I was at once
discarded from the Great House as a good-for-nothing Light o' love, and
was told that if ever I presumed to show my face on the Quay-side again
I should be sent to the Spinning House, and whipped. They had better
have taken care of me while I was with them. The Captain dressed me up
in fine clothes for a month or so, and gave me paint and patches, and
took me to the Playhouse with a mask on, and then he got stabbed in a
broil after some gambling bout at a China House in Smock Alley, and I
was left in the wide world with two satin sacques, a box of cosmetiques,
a broken fan, two spade guineas, and little else besides what I stood
upright in. Return to my Father and Mother I dared not; for I knew that
the tidings of my misconduct had already been conveyed to them, and had
half broken their hearts, and my offence was one that is unpardonable in
the children of the poorest and humblest of the Irishry. There was
Bitter Bread before me, if I chose to follow, as thousands of poor,
cozened, betrayed creatures before me had done, a Naughty Life; but
this, with unutterable Loathing and Scorn, I cast away from me; and
having, from my Dare-devil Temper, a kind of Pride and High Stomach made
me determine to earn my livelihood in a bold and original manner. They
had taught me to read at the Great House (though I knew not great A from
a bowl's foot when I came into it) and so one of the first things I had
spelt out was a chap-book ballad of Mary Ambree, the female soldier,
that was at the siege of Ghent, and went through all the wars in
Flanders in Queen Bess's time. 'What woman has done, woman can do,'
cries I to myself, surveying my bold and masculine lineaments, my
flashing black eyes, and ruddy tint, my straight, stout limbs, and
frank, dashing gait. Ah! I was very different to the fat, pursy, old
ale-wife who discourses with you now--in the glass. Without more ado I
cut off my long black hair close to my head, stained my hands with
walnut juice, (for they had grown white and soft and plump from idling
about in the Great House), and went off to a Crimp in the Liberty that
was enlisting men (against the law, but here many things are done
against both Law and Prophets), for the King of France's service.
"This was in the year '80, and I was twenty years of age. King Louis had
then no especial Brigade of Irish Troops--that famous corps not being
formed until after the Revolution--and his Scotch Guards, a pinchbeck,
purse-proud set of beggarly cavaliers, would not have any Irishry among
them. I scorned to deny my lineage, and indeed my tongue would have soon
betrayed me, had I done so; and the name I listed under was that of
James Moriarty. One name is as good as another when you are going to the
wars; and no name is, perchance, the best of any. As James Moriarty,
after perfecting myself in musket-drill, and the pike-exercise, in our
winter quarters at Dunkirk, I was entered in the Gardes Français, a
portion of the renowned Maison du Roy, or Household Troops, and as such
went through the second Rhenish campaign, taking my share, and a liberal
one too, in killing my fellow-Christians, burning villages, and
stealing poultry. Nay, through excessive precaution, lest my sex should
be discovered, I made more pretensions than the rest of my Comrades to
be considered a lady-killer, and the Captain of my Company, Monsieur de
la Ribaldiere, did me the honour to say that no Farmer's Daughter was
safe from 'Le Bel Irlandais,' or Handsome Irishman, as they called me.
Heaven help us! From whom are the Farmer's daughters, or the Farmers
themselves safe in war time?
"When peace was declared, I found that I had risen to the dignity of
Sergeant, and carried my Halberd with an assured strut and swagger,
nobody dreaming that I was a wild Irish girl from the Wicklow Mountains.
I might have risen, in time, to a commission and the Cross of St. Louis;
but the piping times of peace turned all such brave grapes sour. I was
glad enough, when the alternative was given me, of accompanying my
Captain, Monsieur de la Ribaldiere, to Paris, as his Valet de Chambre,
or of mouldering away, without hope of Promotion, in some country
barrack, to choose the former, and led, for a year or two, a gay, easy
life enough in the French Capital. But, alas! that which I had hidden
from a whole army in the field, I could not keep a secret from one
rubbishing, penniless, popinjay of a Captain in the Gardes Françaises. I
told this miscreant, de la Ribaldiere, that I was a woman; for I was mad
and vain enough to Love him. These are matters again, child, that you
cannot understand; but I have said enough when I declare that if ever
there was power in the Curse of Cromwell to blight a Wicked Man, that
curse ought to light upon Henri de la Ribaldiere.
"I took a disgust to the male attire after this; but being yet in the
prime of my womanhood, and as fond as ever of athletic diversions, I
engaged myself to a French mountebank posture-master to dance Corantoes
on the Tight and Slack Rope, accompanying myself meanwhile by reveilles
on the Drum, an instrument in which I had become a proficient. The
Posture Master, finding out afterwards that I was agile and Valiant, not
only at Dancing but at Fighting, must needs have me wield the broadsword
and the quarterstaff against all comers on a public platform; and, as
the Irish Amazon, I achieved great success, and had my Employer not been
a thief, should have gained much money. He was in the habit, not only of
robbing his woman-performers, but of beating them; but I promise you the
first time the villain offered to slash at me with his dog-whip, I had
him under the jaw with my fist in the handsomest manner, and then
tripping up his heels, and hurling him down on his own stage, and
(having a right piece of ashplant in my grip) I did so curry his hide in
sight of a full audience, that he howled for mercy, and the groundlings,
who thought it part of the show, clapped their hands till they were sore
and shouted till they were hoarse. Our engagement came to an end after
this, and in a somewhat disagreeable manner for me; for the
Posture-Master happened to be the by-blow of a Doctor of the Sorbonne,
who was brother to an Abbé, who was brother to an opera-dancer, who had
interest with a cardinal, who was uncle to a gentleman of the Chamber,
who was one of Père la Chaise's pet penitents; and this Reverend Father,
having the King's ear, denounced me to his Majesty as a Spy, a Heretic,
a Jansenist, a _Coureuse_, and all sorts of things; and by a _lettre de
Cachet_, as they call their warrants, I was sent off to the prison of
the Madelonettes, there to diet on bread and water, to be herded with
the vilest of my sex, to card wool, and to receive, morning and evening,
the Discipline (as they call it) of Leathern thongs, ten to a handful,
and three blood-knots in each. I grew sick of being tawed for offences I
had never committed, and so made bold one morning to try and strangle
the Mother of the Workroom, who sat over us with a rattan, while we
carded wool. Upon which I was bound to a post, and received more
stripes, my lad, in an hour than ever your Schoolmaster gave you in a
week. That same night I tried to burn the prison down; and then they put
me in the dark dungeon called La Grande Force, with six inches of water
in it and any number of rats. I was threatened with prosecution at their
old Bailey, or Chatelet, with the Question (that is, the torture)
ordinary and extraordinary, with the galleys for life as a wind-up, even
if I escaped the gibbet in the place de Grève. Luckily for me, at this
time the Gentleman of the Chamber fell into disgrace with Father la
Chaise for eating a Chicken Sausage in Lent; and to spite him and the
Minister, and the Cardinal and the Opera Dancer, and the Abbé and the
Doctor of the Sorbonne, and the Posture Master all together, His
Reverence, having his Majesty's ear, moves the Most Christian King to
Clemency, and a Royal warrant comes down to the Madelonettes, and I was
sent about my business with strict injunctions not to show myself again
in Paris, under penalty of the Pillory, branding on the cheek with a
red-hot iron, and the galleys in perpetuity.
"I had been nearly ten years abroad, and having, by the charity of some
Ladies of the Irish Convent in Paris, found means to quit France, landed
one morning in the year '90 at Wapping, below London. I had never been
in England before, and mighty little I thought of it when I became
acquainted with that proud, belly-god country. I found that there was
little enough to be done to make a poor Irishwoman able to earn her own
living; and that there was besides a prejudice against natives of
Ireland, both on account of their Extraction and their Religion, which
made the high and mighty English unwilling to employ them, either as
day-labourers or as domestic servants. For awhile, getting into loose
company, I went about the country to wakes and Fairs, picking up a
livelihood by Rope-dancing, back and broadsword fighting, and now and
then sword swallowing and fire eating; but since my misadventure with
the Posture Master I had taken a dislike to the Mountebank life, and
could not settle down to it again. My old love for soldiering revived
again, and being at Plymouth where a Recruiting Party was beating up for
King William's service in his Irish wars, took a convenient opportunity
of quitting my female apparel, resuming that of a man, and listing in
Lord Millwood's Regiment of Foot as a private Fusilier. As I knew my
drill, and made no secret of my having served in the Maison du Roy, I
was looked upon rather as a good prize, for in war time 'tis Soldiers
and Soldiers only that are of real value, and they may have served the
very Devil himself so that they can trail a pike and cast a grenade:
'tis all one to the Recruiting Captain. He wants men--not loblolly
boys--and so long as he gets them he cares not a doit where they come
from.
"I suppose I fought as bravely as my neighbours throughout that last
Irish Campaign, in which the unhappy King James made so desperate an
effort to regain his crown. When King William and the Marshal Duke of
Schomberg had made an end of him, and the poor dethroned Monarch had
gotten away to St. Germains-en-Laye, there to eke out the remains of his
days as a kind of Monk, Millwood's Foot was sent back to England, and
put upon the Peace Establishment. That is to say the officers got half
pay, and the private men were told that for the next eighteen months
they should have sixpence a day, and that after that, unless another war
came, they must shift for themselves. I preferred shifting for myself at
once to having any of their measly doles after valiant and faithful
service; and so, having gathered a very pretty penny out of Plunder
while with King William's army, I became a woman again, and opened a
Coffee House and Spirit Shop at Chelsea. My curious adventures had by
this time come to be pretty well known; and setting up at the sign of
the Amazon's Head, with a picture of myself, in full fighting dress
splitting an Irish Rapparee with my bayonet, I grew into some renown.
The Quality much frequented my house, and some of the book-making
gentlemen about Grub Street were good enough to dish up my exploits in a
shilling pamphlet, called 'The Life of Elizabeth O----, _alias_ James
Moriarty, the new Mary Ambree, or the Grenadier.' At Chelsea I remained
until the year 1704, but lost much by trusting the Quality, and bad
debts among the Gentlemen of the Army. Besides this, I was foolish
enough to get married to a worthless, drunken fellow, my own countryman,
who had been Fence Master in the Life-Guards, and he very speedily ate
me out of House and Home, giving me continual Black Eyes, besides.
"Thus, when the Great War of the Succession broke out, and the English
army, commanded by the Great Duke of Marlborough, being allied with the
Imperialists under Prince Eugene, and the forces of their High
Mightinesses the Dutchmen, went at it Hammer and Tongs about the Spanish
succession with King Lewis of France, I, who had always been fond of the
army, resolved to give up pot-walloping and take another turn under
canvas. It was, however, too late in the day for me to think of again
taking the part of a bold Grenadier. I had become somewhat of a
Character, and (my old proficiency with the Sticks remaining by me) had
earned among the Gentlemen of the Army the cant name of Mother
Drum--that by which, to my sorrow, I am now known. And as Mother Drum,
suttler and baggage-wagon woman in the train of the great John
Churchill, I drank and swore, and sold aquavitæ, and plundered when I
could, and was flogged when I was taken in the fact (for the
Provost-Marshal is no respecter of sex), at Blenheim and Ramilies, and
Malplaquet and Oudenarde, and throughout those glorious Campaigns of
which I could talk to you till doomsday. I came back to England at the
Peace of Utrecht, and set up another Tavern, and married another
husband, more worthless and more drunken than the first one, and then
went bankrupt and turned washerwoman, and then got into trouble about a
gentleman's silver-hilted Rapier, for which I lay long in hold, and was
sent for five years to the Plantations; and at last here I am, old and
fat and good for nothing, but to throw to the crows as carrion--Mother
Drum, God save us all! as bold as brass, and as tough as leather, and
'the miserablest old 'oman that ever stepped.'"
This last part of her adventures I have not polished up, and they are
Mother Drum's own.
CHAPTER THE NINTH.
THE END OF MY ADVENTURES AMONG THE BLACKS.
WERE I to give vent to that Garrulity which grows upon us Veterans with
Gout and the Gravel, and the kindred Ailments of Age, this Account of my
Life would never reach beyond the record of Boyhood. For from the first
Flower of my freshest childhood to the time that I became toward the
more serious Business of the World, I think I could set down Day by Day,
and well-nigh Hour by Hour, all the things that have occurred to me. How
is it that I preserve so keen a Remembrance of a little lad's joys and
sorrows, when I can scarcely recall how many times I have suffered
Shipwreck in later age, or tell how many Sansfoy Miscreants, caring
neither for Heaven or man a Point, I have slain? Nay, from what cause
does it proceed that I, upon whom the broken reliques of my
Schoolmaster's former Cruelty are yet Green, and who can conjure up all
the events that bore upon my Running away into Charlwood Chase, even to
the doggish names of the Blacks, their ribald talk, and the fleering of
the Women they had about them, find it sore travail to remember what I
had for dinner yesterday, what friends I conversed with, what Tavern I
supped at, what news I read in the Gazette? But 'tis the knowledge of
that overweening Craving to count up the trivial Things of my Youth that
warns me to use despatch, even if the chronicle of my after doings be
but a short summary or sketch of so many Perils by Land and Sea. And for
this manner of the remotest things being the more distinct and dilated
upon, let me put it to a Man of keen vision, if whirling along a High
Road in a rapid carriage, he has not marked, first, that the Palings
and Milestones close by have passed beneath him in a confused and
jarring swiftness; next, that the Trees, Hedges, &c., of the middle-plan
(as the limners call it) have moved slower and with more Deliberation,
yet somewhat Fitfully, and encroaching on each other's outlines; whereas
the extreme distance in Clouds, Mountains, far-off Hillsides, and the
like, have seemed remote, indeed, but stationary, clear, and
unchangeable; so that you could count the fissures in the hoar rocks,
and the very sheep still feeding on the smooth slopes, even as they fed
fifty years ago? And who (let his later life have been ever so
fortunate) does not preferably dwell on that sharp prospect so clearly
yet so light looming through the Long Avenue of years?
It was not, I will frankly admit, a very righteous beginning to a young
life to be hail-fellow well-met with a Gang of Deerstealers, and to go
careering about the King's Forest in quest of Venison which belonged to
the Crown. Often have I felt remorseful for so having wronged his
Majesty (whom Heaven preserve for the safety of these distraught
kingdoms); but what was I, an' it please you, to do? Little Boy Jack was
just Little Boy Beggar; and for want of proper Training he became Little
Boy Thief. Not that I ever pilfered aught. I was no Candle-snuffer
filcher, and, save in the matter of Fat Bucks, the rest of our gang
were, indeed, passing honest. Part of the Venison we killed (mostly with
a larger kind of Bird-Bolt, or Arbalist Crossbow, for through fear of
the keepers we used as little powder and ball as possible) we ate for
our Sustenance; for rogues must eat and drink as well as other folks.
The greater portion, however, was discreetly conveyed, in carts covered
over with garden-stuff, to the market-towns of Uxbridge, Windsor, and
Reading, and sold, under the coat-tail as we called it, to Higglers who
were in our secret. Sometimes our Merchandise was taken right into
London, where we found a good Market with the Fishmongers dwelling about
Lincoln's Inn, and who, as they did considerable traffic with the
Nobility and Gentry, of whom they took Park Venison, giving them Fish in
exchange, were not likely to be suspected of unlawful dealings, or at
least were able to make a colourable pretext of Honest Trade to such
Constables and Market Conners who had a right to question them about
their barterings. From the Fishmongers we took sometimes money and
sometimes rich apparel--the cast-off clothes, indeed, of the Nobility,
birthday suits or the like, which were not good enough for the Players
of Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn, forsooth, to strut about in on their
tragedy-boards, and which they had therefore bestowed upon their
domestics to sell. For our Blacks loved to quit their bewrayed apparel
at supper-time, and to dress themselves as bravely as when I first
tasted their ill-gotten meat at the Stag o' Tyne. From the Higglers too,
we would as willingly take Wine, Strong Waters, and Tobacco, in exchange
for our fat and lean, as money; for the Currency of the Realm was then
most wofully clipped and defaced, and our Brethren had a wholesome
avoidance of meddling with Bank Bills. When, from time to time, one of
us ventured to a Market-town, well made-up as a decent Yeoman or
Merchant's Rider, 'twas always payment on the Nail and in sounding money
for the reckoning. We ran no scores, and paid in no paper.
It was long ere I found out that the Wagon in which I had travelled from
the Hercules' Pillars, to be delivered over to Gnawbit, was conducted by
one of the most trusted Confederates of our Company; that he took
Venison to town for them, and brought them back the Account in specie or
needments as they required. And although I am loth to think that the
pretty Servant Maid was altogether deceiving me when she told me she was
going to see her Grandmother, I fancy that she knew Charlwood Chase, and
the gentry that inhabited it, as well as she knew the Pewterer in Panyer
Alley. He went a-pewtering no more, if ever he had been 'prentice or
done journeywork for that trade, but was neither more nor less than one
of the Blacks, and Mistress Slyboots, his Flame, kept him company.
Although I hope, I am sure, that they were Married by the Chaplain; for,
rough as I am, I had ever a Hatred of Unlawful Passions, and when I am
summoned on a Jury, always listen to the King's Proclamation against
Vice and Immorality with much gusto and savour.
I stayed with the Blacks in Charlwood Chase until I grew to be a sturdy
lad of twelve years of age. I went out with them and followed their
naughty courses, and have stricken down many a fat Buck in my time. Ours
was the most jovial but the most perilous of lives. The Keepers were
always on our track; and sometimes the Sheriff would call out the Posse
Comitatis, and he and half the beef-fed tenant-farmers of the
country-side would come horsing and hoofing it about the glades to catch
us. For weeks together in each year we dared not keep our rendezvous at
the Stag, but were fain to hide in Brakes and Hollow Trees, listening to
the pursuit as it grew hot and heavy around us; and often with no better
Victuals than Pig's-meat and Ditch-water. But then the search would
begin to lag; and two or three of the great Squires round about being
well terrified by letters written in a liquid designed to counterfeit
Blood, with a great Skull and Cross-bones scrawled at the bottom, the
whole signed "Captain Night," and telling them that if they dared to
meddle with the Blacks their Lives should pay for it, we were left quiet
for a season, and could return to our Haunt, there to feast and carouse
according to custom. Nor am I slow to believe that some of the tolerance
we met with was due to our being known to the County Gentry as stanch
Tories, and as stanch detesters of the House of Hanover (I speak, of
course, of my companions, for I was of years too tender to have any
politics). We never killed a Deer but on the nearest tree some one of us
out with his Jack-knife and carved on the bark of it, "Slain by King
James's order;" or, if there were no time for so long a legend, or the
Beast was stricken in the Open, a simple K. J. (which the Hanover Rats
understood well enough, whether cut in the trunk or the turf) sufficed.
The Country Gentlemen were then of a very furious way of thinking
concerning the rights of the present Illustrious House to the Throne;
but Times do alter, and so likewise do Men's Thoughts and Opinions, and
I dare swear there is no Brunswicker or Church of England man more leal
at this present writing than John Dangerous.
Captain Night, to whom I was a kind of Page or Henchman, used me with
much tenderness. Whenever at supper the tongues grew too loosened, and
wild talk, and of the wickedese, began to jingle among the bottles and
glasses, he would bid me Withdraw, and go keep company for a time with
Mistress Slyboots. Captain Night was a man of parts and even of letters;
and I often wondered why he, who seemed so well fitted to Shine even
among the Great, should pass his time among Rogues, and take the thing
that was not his. He was often absent from us for many days, sometimes
for nigh a month; and would return sunburnt and travel-stained, as
though he had been journeying in Foreign Parts. He was always very
thoughtful and reserved after these Gaddings about; and Mistress
Slyboots, the Maid, used to say that he was in Love, and had been
playing the gallant to some fine Madam. But I thought otherwise: for at
this season it was his custom to bring back a Valise full to the very
brim of letters and papers, the which he would take Days to read and
re-read, noting and seemingly copying some, but burning the greater
portion. At this season he would refrain from joining the Gang, and
honourably forswore his share of their plunder, always giving Mother
Drum a broad piece for each night's Supper, Bottle, and Bed. But when
his pressing business was over, no man was keener in the chase, or
brought down the quarry so skilfully as Captain Night. He loved to have
me with him, to talk to and Question me; and it was one day, after I had
told him that the Initial letter D was the only clue to my Grandmother's
name, which I had seen graven on her Coffin-plate, he must needs tell me
that if she were Madam (or rather Lady) D----, I must needs, as a
Kinsman, be D---- too, and that he would piece out the name, and call me
Dangerous. So that I was Little Boy Jack no more, and John Dangerous I
have been from that day to this. Not but what my Ancestry and Belongings
might warrant me in assuming another title, than which--so far as
lineage counts--Bourbon or Nassau could not rank much higher. But the
name of Dangerous has pleased me alway; it has stood me in stead in many
a hard pass, and I am content to abide by it now that my locks are gray,
and the walls of this my battered old tenement are crumbling into
decay.
'Twas I alone that was privileged to stay with Captain Night when he was
doing Secretary's work among his papers; for, save when Mistress
Slyboots came up to him--discreetly tapping at the door first, you may
be sure--with a cup of ale and a toast, he would abide no other company.
And on such days I wore not my Black Disguisement, but the better
clothes he had provided for me,--a little Riding Suit of red drugget,
silver-laced, and a cock to my hat like a Military Officer,--and felt
myself as grand as you please. I never dared speak to him until he spoke
to me; but used to sit quietly enough sharpening bolts or twisting
bowstrings, or cleaning his Pistols, or furbishing up his Hanger and
Belt, or suchlike boyish pastime-labour. He was careful to burn every
paper that he Discarded after taking it from the Valise; but once, and
once only, a scrap remained unconsumed on the hearth, the which, with my
ape-like curiosity of half-a-score summers, I must needs spell over,
although I got small good therefrom. 'Twas but the top of a letter, and
all the writing I could make out ran,
"St. Germains, August the twelfth.
"MY DEAR" ...
and here it broke off, and baffled me.
Whenever Captain Night went a hunting, I attended upon him; but when he
was away, I was confided to the care of Jowler, who, albeit much given
to babble in his liquor, was about the most discreet (the Chaplain
always excepted) among the Gang. In the dead season, when Venison was
not to be had, or was nothing worth for the Market if it had been
killed, we lived mostly on dried meats and cured salmon; the first
prepared by Mother Drum and her maid, the last furnished us by our good
friends and Chapmen the Fishmongers about Lincoln's Inn. And during this
same Dead Season, I am glad to say that my Master did not suffer me to
remain idle; but, besides taking some pains in tutoring me himself,
moved our Chaplain, all of whose humane letters had not been washed out
by burnt Brandy or fumed out by Tobacco (to the use of which he was
immoderately given), to put me through a course of daily instruction. I
had had some Latin beaten into me by Gnawbit, when he had nothing of
more moment to bestir himself about, and had attained a decent
proficiency in reading and writing. Under the Chaplain of the Blacks,
who swore at me grievously, but never, under the direst forbidding, laid
finger on me, I became a current scholar enough of my own tongue, with
just such a little smattering of the Latin as helped me at a pinch in
some of the Secret Dealings of my later career. But Salt Water has done
its work upon my Lily's Grammar; and although I yield to no man in the
Faculty of saying what I mean, ay, and of writing it down in good plain
English ('tis true that of your nominatives and genitives and stuff, I
know nothing), I question if I could tell you the Latin for a pair of
riding-boots.
There was a paltry parcel of books at the Stag o' Tyne, and these I read
over and over again at my leisure. There was a History of the
Persecutions undergone by the Quakers, and Bishop Sprat's Narrative of
the Conspiracy of Blackhead and the others against him. There was Foxe's
Martyrs, and God's Revenge against Murder (a very grim tome), and Mr.
Daniel Defoe's Life of Moll Flanders, and Colonel Jack. These, with two
or three Play-books, and a Novel of Mrs. Aphra Behn (very scurrilous), a
few Ballads, and some ridiculous Chap-books about Knights and Fairies
and Dragons, made up the tattered and torn library of our house in
Charlwood Chase. 'Twas good enough, you may say, for a nest of
Deerstealers. Well, there might have been a worse one; but these, I can
aver, with English and Foreign newspapers and letters, and my Bible in
later life, have been all the reading that John Dangerous can boast of.
Which makes me so mad against your fine Scholars and Scribblers, who,
because they can turn verse and make Te-to-tum into Greek, must needs
sneer at me at the Coffee House, and make a butt of an honest man who
has been from one end of the world to the other, and has fought his way
through it to Fortune and Honour.
I was in the twelfth year of my age, when a great change overtook me in
my career. Moved, as it would seem, to exceeding Anger and implacable
Disgust by the carryings-on of Captain Night and his merry men in
Charlwood Chase, the King's Ministers put forth a Proclamation against
us, promising heavy Blood Money to any who would deliver us, or any one
member of the Gang, into the hands of Authority. This Proclamation came
at first to little. There was no sending a troop of horse into the
Chase, and the husbandmen of the country-side were too good Friends of
ours to play the Judas. We were not Highway Robbers. Not one of our band
had ever taken to or been taken from the Road. Rascals of the Cartouche
and Macheath kidney we Disdained. We were neither Foot-pads nor
Cut-purses, nay, nor Smugglers nor Rick-burners. We were only
Unfortunate Gentlemen, who much did need, and who had suffered much for
our politics and our religion, and had no other means of earning a
livelihood than by killing the King's Deer. Those peasants whom we came
across Feared us, indeed, as they would the very Fiend, but bore us no
malice; for we always treated them with civility, and not rarely gave
them the Umbles and other inferior parts of the Deer, against their poor
Christenings and Lyings-in. And through these means, and some small
money presents our Captain would make to their wives and callow brats,
it came to pass that Mother Drum had seldom cause to brew aught but the
smallest beer, for morning Drinking; for though we had to pay for our
Wine and Ardent Drinks, the cellar of the Stag o' Tyne was always
handsomely furnished with barrels of strong ale, which Lobbin Clout or
Colin Mayfly, the Hind or the Plough-churl, would bring us secretly by
night in their Wains for gratitude. I know not where they got the malt
from, but there was narrow a fault to find with the Brew. I recollect
its savour now with a sweet tooth, condemned as I am to the inky
Hog's-wash which the Londoners call Porter; and indeed it is fit for
Porters to drink, but not for Gentlemen. These Peasants used to tremble
all over with terror when they came to the Stag o' Tyne; but they were
always hospitably made welcome, and sent away with full gizzards, ay,
and with full heads too, and by potions to which the louts were but
little used.
We had no fear of treachery from these Chawbacons, but we had Enemies in
the Chase nevertheless. Here dwelt a vagabond tribe of Bastard Verderers
and Charcoal-burners, savage, ignorant, brutish Wretches, as
superstitious as the Manilla Creoles. They were one-half gipsies, and
one half, or perhaps a quarter, trade-fallen whippers-in and keepers
that had been stripped of their livery. They picked up their sorry crust
by burning of charcoal, and carting of dead wood to farmers for to
consume in their ingles. Now and again, when any of the Quality came to
hunt in the Chase, the Head Keeper would make use of a score or so of
them as beaters and rabble-prickers of the game; but nine months out of
the twelve they rather starved than lived. These Charcoal-burners hated
us Blacks, first, because in our sable disguise we rather imitated their
own Beastly appearance--for the varlets never washed from Candlemas to
Shrovetide; next, because we were Gentlemen; and lastly, because we
would not suffer them to catch Deer for themselves in pitfalls and
springes. Nay, a True Gentleman Black meeting a "Coaley," as we called
the charcoal fellows, with so much as a hare, a rabbit, or a pheasant
with him, let alone venison, would ofttimes give him a sackful of sore
bones to carry as well as a game-bag. No "Coaley" was ever let to slake
his thirst at the Stag o' Tyne. The poor wretches had a miserable hovel
of an inn to their own part on the western outskirts of the Chase, a
place by the sign of the Hand and Hatchet, where they ate their
rye-bread and drank their sour Clink, when they could muster coppers
enough for a twopenny carouse.
This Proclamation, of which at first we made light, was speedily
followed by a real live Act of Parliament, which is yet, I have been
told, Law, and is known as the "Black Act."[M] The most dreadful
punishments were denounced against us by the Houses of Lords and
Commons, and the Blood Money was doubled. One of the most noted
Thief-takers of that day--almost as great a one as Jonathan Wild--comes
down post, and sets up his Standard at Reading, as though he had been
King William on the banks of the Boyne. With him he brings a mangy Rout
of Constables and Bailiff's Followers, and other kennel-ranging
vagabonds; and now nothing must serve him but to beg of the Commanding
Officer at Windsor (my Lord Treherne) for a loan of two companies of the
Foot Guards, who, nothing loth for field-sport and extra pay, were
placed, with their captain and all--more shame for a Gentleman to mix in
such Hangman's work!--under Mr. Thief-taker's orders. He and his
Bandogs, ay, and his Grenadiers, might have hunted us through Charlwood
Chase until Doomsday but for the treachery of the "Coaleys." 'Twas one
of their number,--named, or rather nicknamed, "the Beau," because he
washed his face on Sunday, and was therefore held to be of the first
fashion,--who earned eighty pounds by revealing the hour when the whole
Gang of Blacks might be pounced upon at the Stag o' Tyne. The infamous
wretch goes to Aylesbury,--for our part of the Chase was in the county
of Bucks,--and my Thief-taking gentleman from Reading meets him--a
pretty couple; and he makes oath before Mr. Justice Cribfee (who should
have set him in the Stocks, or delivered him over to the Beadle for a
vagrant); and after a fine to-do of Sheriff's business and swearing in
of special constables, the end of it was, that a whole Rout of them,
Sheriff, Javelin-men, and Headboroughs and all, with the Grenadiers at
their back, came upon us unawares one moonlight night as we were merrily
supping at the Stag.
'Twas no use showing Fight perhaps, for we were undermanned, some of us
being away on the scent, for we suspected some foul play. The constables
and other clod-hopping Alguazils were all armed to the teeth with Bills
and Blunderbusses, Pistols and Hangers; but had they worn all the
weapons in the Horse Armoury in the Tower, it would not have saved them
from shivering in their shoes when "Hard and sharp" was the word, and
an encounter with the terrible Blacks had to be endured. We should have
made mince-meat of them all, and perhaps hanged up one or two of them
outside the inn as an extra signpost. But we were not only unarmed, we
were overmatched, my hearties. There were the Redcoats, burn them! How
many times in my life have I been foiled and baffled by those miscreated
men-machines in scarlet blanketing! No use in a stout Heart, no use in a
strong Hand, no use in a sharp Sword, or a pair of barkers with teeth
that never fail, when you have to do with a Soldier. Do! What are you to
do with him? There he is, with his shaven face and his hair powdered, as
if he were going to a fourpenny fandango at Bagnigge Wells. There he is,
as obstinate as a Pig, and as firm as a Rock, with his confounded bright
firelock, bayonet, and crossbelts. There he is, immoveable and
unconquerable, defying the boldest of Smugglers, the bravest of
Gentlemen Rovers, and, by the Lord Harry, _he eats you up_. Always give
the Redcoats a wide berth, my dear, and the Grenadiers more than all.
Unequal as were the odds, with all these Roaring Dragons in scarlet
baize on our trail, we had still a most desperate fight for it. While
the mob of Constables kept cowering in the bar-room down-stairs, crying
out to us to surrender in the King's name,--I believe that one poor
creature, the Justice of Peace, after getting himself well walled up in
a corner with chairs and tables, began to quaver out the King's
Proclamation against the Blacks,--the plaguy Soldiers came blundering up
both pair of stairs, and fell upon us Billy Boys tooth and nail. 'Slid!
my blood simmers when I think of it. Over went the tables and settles!
Smash went trenchers and cups and glasses! Clink-a-clink went
sword-blades and bayonets! "And don't fire, my lads!" cries out the
Soldier-officer to his Grannies. "We want all these rogues to hang up at
Aylesbury Gaol."
"Rogue yourself, and back to your Mother!" cries Captain Night, very
pale; but I never saw him look Bolder or Handsomer. "Rogue in your
Tripes, you Hanover Rat!" and he shortens his sword and rushes on the
Soldier-officer.
The Grenadier Captain was brave enough, but he was but a smockfaced lad
fresh from the Mall and St. James's Guard-room, and he had no chance
against a steady practised Swordsman and Forest Blood, as Captain Night
was. We all thought he would make short work of the Soldier-officer. He
had him in a corner, and the Chaplain, a-top of whom was a Grenadier
trying to throttle or capture him, or both, exclaims, "Give him the
grace-blow, my dear; give it him under the fifth rib!" when Captain
Night cries, "Go home to your mother, Milksop!" and he catches his own
sword by the hilt, hits his Enemy a blow on the right wrist enough to
numb it for a month, twists his fingers in his cravat, flings him on one
side, and right into the middle of a punch-bowl, and then, upon my word,
he himself jumps out of Window, shouting out, "Follow me, little Jack
Dangerous!"
I wished for nothing better, and had already my leg on the sill, when
two great hulking Grenadiers seized hold of me. 'Twas then, for the
first time, that I earned a just claim and title to the name of
Dangerous; for a little dirk I was armed with being wrested from me by
Soldier number one, who eggs on his comrade to collar the young Fox-cub,
as he calls me, I seize a heavy Stone Demijohn fall of brandy, and smash
it goes on the head of Soldier number two. He falls with a dismal groan,
the blood and brandy running in equal measure from his head, and the
first Soldier runs his bayonet through me.
Luckily, 'twas but a flesh-wound in the flank, and no vital part was
touched. It was enough for me, however, poor Urchin,--enough to make me
tumble down in a dead faint; and when I came to myself, I found that I
had been removed to the bar-room down-stairs, where I made one of
nineteen Blacks, all prisoners to the King for stealing his Deer, and
all bound hand and foot with Ropes.
"Never mind their hurting your wrists, young Hempseed," chuckled one of
the scaldpated constable rogues who was guarding us. "You'll have enough
to tighten your gullet after 'Sizes, as sure as eggs is eggs."
"Nay, brother Grimstock, the elf's too young to be hanged," puts in
another constable, with somewhat of a charitable visage.
"Too young!" echoes he addressed as Grimstock. "'Twas bred in the bone
in him, the varmint, and the Gallows Fever will come out in the flesh.
Too young! he was weaned on rue, and rode between his Father's legs
(that swung) i' the cart to Tyburn, and never sailed a cockboat but in
Execution Dock. My tobacco-box to a tester an' he dance not on nothing
if he comes to holding up his hand before Judge Blackcap, that never
spared but one in the Calendar, and then 'twas by Mistake."
These were not very comfortable news for me, poor manacled wretch; and
with a great bayonet-wound in my side to boot, that had been but
clumsily dressed by a village Leech, who was, I suspect, a Farrier and
Cow Doctor as well. But I have always found, in this life's whirligig,
that when your Case is at the worst (unless a Man indeed Dies, when
there is nothing more to be done), it is pretty sure to mend, if you lie
quiet and let things take their chance. I could not be much worse off
than I was, wounded and friendless, and a captive; and so I held my
tongue, and let them use me as they would. Some scant comfort was it,
however, to find, when the battle-field was gone over, that, besides the
Grenadier whose crown I had cracked, another had been pistolled by
Jowler, and and lay mortally wounded, and Groaning Dismally. Poor Jowler
himself would never pistol Foe more. He was dead; for the Men of War,
furious at our desperate Resistance, at the worsting of their
fine-feathered officer (who was mumbling of his bruised hand as a
down-trodden Hound would its paw, and cursing meanwhile, which Dogs use
not to do), and driven to Mad Rage by the escape of Captain Night, had
fired pell-mell into a Group of which Jowler made one, and so killed
him. A bullet through his brain set him clean quit of all indictments
under the Black Act, before our Sovereign Lord the King. Likewise was it
a matter of rejoicing for our party that, after long seeking the Traitor
Coaley, the wretched "Beau" was found duly strangled, and completely a
corpse on the staircase. There was something curious about the manner of
justice coming to this villain. The Deed had been done with no weapon
more Lethal than an old Stocking; yet so tightly was it tied round his
false neck, that it had to be cut off piecemeal, and even then the ribs
of the worsted were found to be Imbedded, and to have made Furrows in
his flesh. Now it is certain that we Blacks had not laid about us with
old Wives' hose, any more than we had lunged at our enemies with
knitting-needles. There, however, was Monsieur Judas, as dead as a
Dolphin two hours on deck. Lord, what an ugly countenance had the losel
when they came to wash the charcoal off him! As to who had forestalled
the Hangman in his office, no certain testimony could be given. I have
always found at Sea, when any doubts arise as to the why and the
wherefore of a gentleman's death, that the best way to settle accounts
is to fling him overboard; but on dry land your plaguy Dead Body is a
sore Stumbling Block, and Impediment, always turning up when it is not
Wanted, and bringing other Gentlemen into all kinds of trouble.
Crowner's Quest was held on the "Beau;" and I only wonder that they did
not bring it in murder against Me. The jury sat a long time without
making up their minds, till the Parish constable ordered them in a bowl
of Flip, upon which they proceeded to bring in a verdict of Wilful
Murder against some person or persons unknown. I can scarcely, to this
day, bring myself to suspect my pretty maid, that should have married
the Pewterer, of such a bold Act, and the rather believe that it was the
girl Grip and her Mistress that worked off the Spy and Traitor between
them. Not that Mother Drum would have needed any assistance in the mere
doing of the thing. She was a Mutton-fisted woman, and as strong in the
forearm as a Bridewell correctioner.
Oh, the dreary journey we made that morning to Aylesbury! The Men Blacks
were tied back to back, and thrown into such carts as could be pressed
into the service from the farmsteads on the skirts of the Chase. One of
the constables must needs offer, the Scoundrel, to take horse and go
borrow a cartload of fetters from the gaoler at Reading; but he was
overruled, and Ropes were thought strong enough to confine us. There was
no chance, alas! of any rescue; for those of our comrades who had been
fortunate enough through absence to avoid capture, had doubtless by this
time scent of the Soldiers, and there was no kicking against those
bright Firelocks and Bayonets. Yet had there been another escape. Cicely
Grip and Mother Drum were taken, but the pretty maid I loved so for her
kindness to me when I was Forlorn had shown a clean pair of heels, and
was nowhere to be found. Good luck to her, I thought. Perchance she has
met with Captain Night, and they are Safe and Sound by this time, and
off to Foreign Parts. For in all this I declare I saw nothing Wrong, and
held, in my baby logic, that we Blacks had all been very harshly
entreated by the Constables and Redcoats, and that it was a shame to use
us so. Mother Drum, the Wench, and my poor wounded Self, were put into
one cart together, and through Humanity, a Sergeant (for the Constables
would not have done it) bade his men litter down some straw for us to
lie upon. There was a ragged Tilt too over the cart; and thinks I, in a
Gruesome manner, "The first time you rode on straw under a Tilt, Jack,
you were going to school, and now, 'ifegs, you are going to be Hanged."
For it was settled on all sides, and even he with the Charitable
Countenance came to be of that mind at last, that my fate was to die by
the Cord.
"Why," says one, "you've half-brained Corporal Foss with the Demijohn;
never did liquor get into a pretty man's head so soon and so deep.
They'll stretch your neck for this, my poult,--they will."
The Sergeant interposing, said that perhaps, if interest were made for
me, I might be spared an Indictment, and let to go and serve the King as
a Drummer till I was old enough to carry a firelock. But at this the
soldiers shook their heads; for Captain Poppingjay, their officer, was,
it seems, still in a towering rage at having had his fine-lady's hand so
wofully mauled by Captain Night, and vowed vengeance against the whole
crew of poachers and their whelp, as he must needs be Polite enough to
call me.
This Fine Gentleman had been provided with a Horse by the Sheriff, and,
as he rode by the cart where I and Drum and the Girl were jogging on, he
spies me under the Tilt, and in his cruel manner makes a cut at me with
his riding wand, calling me a young spawn of Thievery and Rebellion.
"You coward," I cried in a passion; "you daren't a' done that if my
hands were loose, and I hadn't this baggonet-wound in me."
"Shame to hit the boy," growled the charitable Constable, who was on
horseback too.
The Soldier-officer turned round quickly to see who had spoken; but the
Sergeant, who watched him, pointed with his halbert to the Constable,
and he returned the Captain's glance with a sturdy mien. So my Fine
Gentleman reins in his beast and lets us pass, eyeing his hand, which
was all wrapped up in Bandages, and muttering that it was well none of
his own fellows had given him this sauciness.
The day was a dreadful one. How many times our train halted to bait I
know not; but this I know, that I fainted often from Agony of my wound
and the uneasy motion of my carriage. It is a wonder that I ever came to
my journey's end alive, and in all likelihood never should, but for the
unceasing care and solicitude of the two poor women who were with me,
Prisoners like myself, but full of merciful kindness for one who was in
a sorer strait than they. By earnest pleading did Mother Drum persuade
the Head Constable--who, the nearer we got to gaol the more authority he
took, and the less he seemed to think of our soldier escort--to allow
her hands to be unbound that she might minister unto me; and also did
she obtain so much grace as for some of the Money belonging unto her,
and which had been seized at the Stag o' Tyne, to be spent in buying of
a bottle of brandy at one of our halting-places, with which she not only
comforted herself and her afflicted Maid, but, mingling it with water,
cooled my parched tongue and bathed my forehead.
Brandy was the only medicament this good soul knew; and more lives she
averred, had been saved by Right Nantz than lost by bad B. W.; but still
brandy was not precisely the kind of physic to give a Patient who before
Sundown was in a Raging Fever. But 'twas all one to the Law; and coming
at last to my journey's end, we were all, the wounded and the whole,
flung into Gaol to answer for it at the 'Sizes.
FOOTNOTE:
[M] See the Statutes at Large. The Black Act was repealed mainly
through the exertions of Sir James Macintosh, early in the present
century. Under its clauses the going about "disguised or blackened in
pursuit of game" was made felony without benefit of clergy; the
punishment thereof death.--ED.
CHAPTER THE TENTH.
I AM VERY NEAR BEING HANGED.
OUR prison was surely the most loathsome hole that Human beings were
ever immured in. It was a Horrible and Shameful Place, conspicuous for
such even in those days, when every prison was a place of Horror and
Shame. 'Twas one of the King's Prisons,--one of His Majesty's
Gaols,--the county had nothing to do with it; and the Keeper thereof was
a Woman. Say a Tigress rather; but Mrs. Macphilader wore a hoop and
lappets and gold ear-rings, and was dubbed "Madam" by her Underlings.
Here you might at any time have seen poor Wretches chained to the floor
of reeking dungeons, their arms, legs, necks even, laden with irons,
themselves abused, beaten, jeered at, drenched with pailfuls of foul
water, and more than three-quarter starved, merely for not being able to
pay Garnish to the Gaoleress, or comply with other her exorbitant
demands. Fetters, indeed, were common and Fashionable Wear in the Gaol.
'Twas pleaded that the walls of the prison were so rotten through age,
and the means of guarding the prisoners--for they could not be always
calling in the Grenadiers--so limited, that they must needs put the poor
creatures in the bilboes, or run the chance of their escaping every day
in the week. Thus it came to pass, even, that they were tried in
Fetters, and sometimes could not hold up their hands (weakened besides
by the Gaol Distemper), at the bidding of the Clerk of the Arraigns, for
the weight of the Manacles that were upon them. And it is to the famous
and admirable Mr. John Howard that we owe the putting down of this last
Abomination.
We lay so long in this dreadful place before a Gaol Delivery was made,
that my wound, bad as it was, had ample time to heal, leaving only a
great indented cicatrix, as though some Giant had forced his finger into
my flesh, and of which I shall never be rid. Two more of our gang died
of the Gaol Fever before Assize time; one was so fortunate as to break
prison, file the irons off his legs, and get clear away; and another
(who was always of a Melancholy turn) hanged himself one morning, in a
halter made from strips of his blanket knotted together. The rest of us
were knocked about by the Turnkeys, or abused by the Gaoleress, Mrs.
Macphilader, pretty much as they liked. We were, however, not so badly
off as some of the poor prisoners--sheep-stealers, footpads, vagrom men
and women, and the like, or even as some of the poor Debtors--many of
whom lay here incarcerate years after they had discharged the Demands of
their Creditors against them, and only because they could not pay their
Fees. We Blacks were always well supplied with money; and money could
purchase almost any thing in a prison in those days. Roast meats, and
wine and beer and punch, pipes and tobacco, and playing cards and
song-books,--all these were to be had by Gentlemen Prisoners; the
Gaoleress taking a heavy toll, and making a mighty profit from all these
luxurious things. But there was one thing that money could not buy,
namely, cleanly lodging; for the State Room, a hole of a place, very
meanly furnished, where your great Smugglers or ruffling Highwaymen were
sometimes lodged, at a guinea a day for their accommodation, was only so
much better from the common room in so far as the prisoner had bed and
board to himself; but for nastiness and creeping things--which I wonder,
so numerous were they, did not crawl away with the whole prison bodily:
but 'tis hard to find those that are unanimous, even vermin.--For all
that made the Gaol most thoroughly hateful and dreadful, there was not a
pin to choose between the State Room, the Common Side, and the Rat's
Larder, Clink, or Dark Dungeon, where the Poor were confined in
wantonness, and the Stubborn were kept sometimes for punishment; for
Madam Gaoleress had a will of her own, and would brook no incivilities
from her Lodgers; so sure is it, that falling out one day on the
disputed Question of a bottle of Aquavitæ on which toll had not been
paid, she calls one of the Turnkeys and bids him clap Mother Drum into
the Stocks (that stood in the Prison Yard) for an hour or two, for the
cooling of her temper. But this had just the contrary effect; for the
whilom Hostess of the Stag o' Tyne, enraged at the Indignity offered to
her, did so bemaul and bewray Madam Macphilader with her tongue, shaking
her fist at her meanwhile, that the Gaoleress in a fury clawed at least
two handfuls of M. Drum's hair from her head, not without getting some
smart clapperclawing in the face; whereupon she cries out "Murther" and
"Mutiny" and "Prisonrupt," and sends post-haste for Justice Palmworm,
her gossip indeed, and one of those trading magistrates that so
disgraced our bench before Mr. Henry Fielding the writer stirred up
Authority to put some order therein. The Justice comes; and he and the
Gaoleress, after cracking a bottle of mulled port between them, poor
Mother Drum was brought up before his Worship for mutinous conduct. The
Justice would willingly have compounded the case, for Lucre was his only
love; but 'twas vengeance the Gaoleress hankered after; and the end of
it was that poor Mother Drum was triced up at the post that was by the
Stocks, and had a dozen and a half from a cat with indeed but three
tails, but that, I warrant, hurt pretty nigh as sharply as nine would
have done in weaker hands; for 'twas the Gaoleress that played the
Beadle and laid on the Scourge.
At length, when I was quite tired out, and, knowing nothing of the
course of Law, began to think that we were doomed to perpetual
Imprisonment, His Majesty's Judges of Assize came upon their circuit,
and those whom the Fever and Want and the Duresse of their Keeper had
spared were put upon their trial. By this time I was thought well
enough, though as gaunt as a Hound, to be put in the same Gaol-bird's
trim as my companions; so a pair of Woman's fetters--ay, my friends, the
women wore fetters in those days--were put upon me; and the whole of us,
all shackled as we were, found ourselves, one fine Monday morning, in
the Dock, having been driven thereinto very much after the fashion of a
flock of sheep. The Court was crowded, for the case against the Blacks
had made a prodigious stir; and the King's Attorney, the most furious
Person for talking a Fellow-creature's Life away that ever I remember to
have seen or heard, came down especially from London to prosecute us.
Neither he nor His Lordship the Judge, in his charge to the Grand Jury,
had any but the worst of words to give us; and folks began to say that
this would be another Bloody Assize; that the Shire Hall had need to be
hung with scarlet, as when Jeffreys was on the bench; and that as short
work would be made of us as of the Rebels in the West. And I did not
much care, for I was sick of lying in hold, amidst Evil Odours, and with
a green wound. It came even to whispering that one of us at least would
be made a Gibbeting-in-chains example for killing the Grenadier, if that
Act could be fixed on any particular Black. And half in jest, half in
earnest, the Woman-Keeper told me on the morning of the Assizes that,
young as I was (not yet twelve years of age), my bones might rattle in a
birdcage in the midst of Charlwood Chase; for if I could brain one
Grenadier, I could kill another. But yet, being so weary of the Life, I
did not much Care.
It was still somewhat of a Relief to me to come into the Dock, and look
upon State and Rich Clothes (in which I have always taken a
Gentleman-like pleasure), in the stead of all the dirt and squalor which
for so long had been my surrounding. There were the Judges all ranged, a
Terrible show, in their brave Scarlet Robes and Fur Tippets, with great
monstrous Wigs, and the King's Arms behind them under a Canopy, done in
Carver's work, gilt. They frowned on us dreadfully when we came trooping
into the Dock, bringing all manner of Deadly pestilential Fumes with us
from the Gaol yonder, and which not all the rue, rosemary, and marjoram
strewn on the Dock-ledge, nor the hot vinegar sprinkled about the Court,
could mitigate. The middle Judge, who was old, and had a split lip and a
fang protruding from it, shook his head at me, and put on such an Awful
face, that for a moment my scared thoughts went back to the Clergyman at
St. George's, Hanover Square, that was wont to be so angry with me in
his Sermons. Ah, how different was the lamentable Hole in the which I
now found myself cheek by jowl with Felons and Caravats, to the great
red-baize Pew in which I had sat so often a Little Gentleman! He to the
right of the middle Judge was a very sleepy gentleman, and scarcely ever
woke up during the proceedings, save once towards one of the clock,
when he turned to his Lordship (whom I had at once set down as Mr.
Justice Blackcap, and was in truth that Dread Functionary), saying,
"Brother, is it dinner-time?" But his Lordship to the left, who had an
old white face like a sheep, and his wig all awry, was of a more
placable demeanour, and looked at me, poor luckless Outcast, with some
interest. I saw him turn his head and whisper to the gentleman they told
me was the High Sheriff, and who sat on the Bench alongside the Judges,
very fine, in a robe and gold chain, and with a great sheathed sword
behind him, resting on a silver goblet. Then the High Sheriff took to
reading over the Calendar, and shrugged his shoulders, whereupon I
indulged in some Hope. Then he leans over to Mr. Clerk of the Arraigns,
pointing me out, and seemingly asking him some question about me; but
that gentleman hands him up a couple of parchments, and my quick Ear
(for the Court was but small) caught the words, "There are two
Indictments against him, Sir John." Whereupon they looked at me no more,
save with a Stern and Sorrowful Gravity; and the Hope I had nourished
for a moment departed from me. Yet then, as afterwards, and as now, I
found (although then too babyish to reason about it), that, bad as we
say the World is, it is difficult to come upon Three Men together in it
but that one is Good and Merciful.
I feel that my disclaimer notwithstanding the Bark of my Narrative is
running down the stream of a Garrulous talkativeness; but I shall be
more brief anon. And what would you have? If there be any circumstances
which should entitle a man to give chapter and verse, they must surely
be those under which he was Tried for his Life.
The first day we only held up our hands, and heard the Indictment
against us read. Some of us who were Moneyed had retained Counsellors
from London to cross-question the witnesses; for to speak to the Jury
in aid of Prisoners, who could not often speak for themselves, the
Gentlemen of the Law were not then permitted. And this I have ever held
to be a crying Injustice. There was no one, however, not so much as a
Pettifogger, to lift tongue, or pen, or finger, to save little Jack
Dangerous from the Rope. My Protector, Captain Night, was at large;
Jowler, my first friend among the Blacks, was dead; and, as Misery is
apt to make men Selfish, the rest of my companions had entirely
forgotten how friendless and deserted I was. But, just as we were going
back to Gaol, up comes to the spikes of the Dock a gentleman with a red
face, and a vast bushy powdered wig, like a cauliflower in curls. He
wore a silk cassock and sash, and was the Ordinary; but he had
forgotten, I think, to come into the Prison and read prayers to us. He
kept those ministrations against such time as the Cart was ready, and
the Tree decked with its hempen garland. This gentlemen beckons me, and
asks if I have any Counsellor. I told him, No; and that I had no
Friends ayont Mother Drum, and she was laid up, sick of a pair of sore
shoulders. He goes back to the Bench and confers with the Gentlemen, and
by and by the Clerk of the Arraigns calls out that, through the Humanity
of the Sheriff, the prisoner John Dangerous was to have Counsel Assigned
to him. But it would have been more Humane, I think, to have let the
Court and the World know that I was a poor neglected Castaway, knowing
scarcely my right Hand from my left, and that all I had done had been in
that Blindfoldedness of Ignorance which can scarcely, I trust, be called
Sin.
Back, however, we went to Gaol, and a great Rout there was made that
night by Mrs. Macphilader for the payment of all arrears of Fees and
Garnish to her; for, you see, being a prudent Woman, she feared lest
some of the prisoners should be Acquitted, or Discharged on
proclamation. And our Gang of Blacks, for whose aid their friends in
ambush--and they had friends in all kinds of holes and corners, as I
afterwards discovered to my surprise--had mostly bountifully come
forward, did not trouble themselves much about the peril they were in,
but bestowed themselves of making a Roaring Night. And hindered by none
in Authority,--for the Gaolers and Turnkeys in those days were not above
drinking, and smoking, and singing, and dicing with their charges,--they
did keep it up so merrily and so roaringly, that the best part of the
night was spent before drowsiness came over Aylesbury Gaol.
Then the next day to Court, and there the Judges as before, and Sir John
the High Sheriff, and the Counsel for the Crown and for us, and twelve
honest gentlemen in a box by themselves, that were of the Petty Jury, to
try us; and, I am ashamed to say, a great store of Ladies, all in
ribbons and patches and laces and fine clothes, that sate some on the
Bench beside the Judges, and others in the body of the Court among the
Counsel, and stared at us miserable objects in the Dock as though we had
been a Galantee Show. It is some years now since I have entered a Court
of Criminal Justice, and I do hope that this Indecent and Uncivil
Behaviour of well-bred Women coming to gaze on Criminals for their
diversion has utterly given way before the Benevolence and good taste of
a polite Age.
When, at the last, I was told to plead, and at the bidding of an Officer
of the Court, who stood underneath me, had pleaded Not Guilty, and had
been asked how I would be tried, and had answered, likewise at his
bidding, "By God and my Country," and when after that the Clerk of the
Arraigns had prayed Heaven--and I am sure I needed it, and thanked him
heartily at the time, kind Gentleman, thinking that he meant it, and not
knowing that it was a mere Legal Form--to send me a good
Deliverance,--the Judge bids me, to my great surprise, to Stand By. I
thought at first that they were going to have Mercy on me, and would
have down on my knees in gratitude to them. But it was not so; and the
sleepy old Judge, suddenly waking up, told me that there were two
Indictments against me, and that I should have the honour of being tried
separately. Goodness save us! I was looked upon as one of the most
desperate of the Gang, and was to be tried, not only under the Black
Act, but that, not having the fear of God before my eyes, but being
moved by the instigation of the Devil, I had, against the peace of our
Sovereign Lord the King, attempted feloniously to kill, slay, and murder
one John Foss, a Corporal in his Majesty's Regiment of Grenadier
Footguards, by striking him, the said John Foss, over the back, breast,
hips, loins, shoulders, thighs, legs, feet, arms, and fingers, with a
certain deadly and lethal weapon, to wit, with a demijohn of Brandy.
I was put back and kept all day in the prison. At evening came in my
comrades, and from them I learnt that the case had gone dead against
them from the beginning, that the Jury had found them guilty under the
Statute without leaving the box; and that, as the felony was one without
the benefit of Clergy, Judge Blackcap had put on a wig as black as his
name, and sentenced every man Jack of them to be hanged on the Monday
week next following.
So then it came to my turn to be tried. The ordeal on the first
Indictment was very short; for, at the Judge's bidding, the Jury
acquitted me of trying to murder Corporal Foss before I had been ten
minutes in the dock. I did not understand the proceedings in the least
at that time; but I was told afterwards that the clever legal gentleman
who had drawn up the Indictment against me, while very particularly
setting down the parts of the body on which I might have struck Corporal
Foss, omitted to specify the one place, namely, his head, on which I did
hit him. Counsel for the Crown endeavoured, indeed, to prove that a
splinter from the broken demijohn had grazed the corporal's finger, but
the evidence for this fell dead. And, again, it coming out that I was
arraigned as John Danger, whereas I had given the name of John
Dangerous, to which I had perhaps no more right than to that of the Pope
of Rome, the Judge roundly tells the Jury that the Indictment is bad in
law, and I was forthwith acquitted as aforesaid.
But I was not scot-free. There was that other Indictment under the Black
Act; and in that, alas, there was no flaw. The Solemn Court freed
itself, to be sure, of the Mockery of finding a child under twelve years
Guilty of the attempted murder of a Grenadier six feet high; but no less
did the witnesses swear, and the Judge sum up, and Counsel for the Crown
insist, and my Counsel feebly deny, and the Jury at last fatally find
against me, that I had gone about armed and Disguised by night, and
wandered up and down in the King's Forests, and stolen his Deer, and
Goodness can tell what besides; and so, being found guilty, the middle
Judge puts on his black cap again, and tells me that I am to be hanged
on Monday week by the neck.
He did not say any thing about my youth, or about my utter loneliness,
or about the evil examples which had brought me to this Pass. Perhaps it
was not his Duty, but that of the Ordinary, to tell me so. The Hanging
was his department, the praying belonged to his Reverence. They led me
back to prison, feeling rather hot and sick after the words I had
listened to about being "hanged by the neck until I was dead," but still
not caring much; for I could not rightly understand why all these fine
gentlemen should be at the pains of Butchering me merely because I had
run away from school (being so cruelly entreated by Gnawbit), and, to
save myself from starvation, had joined the Blacks.
Being to Die, it seemed for the first time to occur to them that I was
not as the rest of the poor souls that were doomed to death, and that
it behoved them to treat me rather as a lamb that is doomed for the
slaughter than as a great overgrown Bullock to be knocked down by the
Butcher's Pole-axe. So they put me away from the rest of my companions,
and bestowed me in a sorry little chamber, where I had a truckle-bed to
myself. Dear old Mother Drum, being still under disgrace, was not
suffered to come near me. Her trial, with that of Cicely Grip, for
harbouring armed and disguised men, under the Black Act, which was
likewise a felony, was not to come on till the next session. I believe
that the Great Gentlemen at Whitehall were, for a long time after my
conviction, in a mind for Hanging me. 'Twas thought a small matter then
to stretch the neck of a Boy of Twelve, and children even smaller than I
had worn the white Nightcap, and smelt the Nosegay in the Cart. Indeed,
I think the Ordinary wanted me to be Finished according to Law, that he
might preach a Sermon on it, and liken me to one of the Children that
mocked the Prophet, and was so eaten up by the She-Bears that came out
of a Wood. When I think on the Reverend and Pious Persons who now attend
our Criminals in their last unhappy Moments, and strive to bring them to
a Sense of their Sins, it gives me the Goose-flesh to remember the
Profane and Riotous Parsons who, for a Mean Stipend, did the contemned
work of Gaol Chaplains in the days I speak of. Even while the Hangman
was getting into proper Trim, and fashioning his tools for the
slaughter, these callous Clergymen would be smoking and drinking with
the keepers in the Lodge, talking now of a Main at Cocks and now of him
who was to suffer on the Morrow, fleering and jesting, with the Church
Service in one sleeve of their cassock and a Bottle Screw or a Pack of
Cards in the other. And the Condemned persons, too, did not take the
matter in a much more serious light. They had their Brandy and Tobacco
even in their Dismal Hold, and thought much less of Mercy and
Forgiveness than of the ease they would have from their Irons being
stricken off, or the comfort they would gain from a last bellyful of
Meat. I have not come to be sixty-eight years of age without observing
somewhat of the Things that have passed around me; and one of the best
signs of the Times in which I live (and due in great part to the Humane
and Benignant complexion of his Majesty) is the falling off in
bloodthirsty and cruel Punishments. If a Dozen or so are hanged after
each Gaol Delivery at the Old Baily, and a score or more whipped or
burnt in the Hand, what are such workings of justice compared with the
Waste of Life that was used to be practised under the two last monarchs?
At home 'twas all pressing to death those who would not plead, hanging,
drawing, and quartering (how often have I sickened to see the
pitch-seethed members of my Fellow-creatures on the spikes of Temple Bar
and London Bridge!), taking out the entrails of those convict of Treason
(as witness Colonel Towneley, Mr. Dawson, and many more unfortunate
gentlemen on Kennington Common), to say nothing of the burning alive of
women for petty treason,--and to kill a husband or coin a groat were
alike Treasonable,--the Scourging of the same wretched creatures in
Public till the blood ran from their shoulders and soaked the knots of
the Beadle's lash; the cartings, brandings, and dolorous Imprisonments
which were then inflicted for the slightest of offences. Why, I have
seen a man stand in the Pillory in the Seven Dials (to be certain, he
was a secure scoundrel), and the Mob, not satisfied, must take him out,
strip him to the buff, stone him, cast him down, root up the pillory,
and trample him under foot, till, being Rescued by the constables, he
has been taken back to Newgate, and has died in the Hackney Coach
conveying him thither. Oh, 'tis woe to think of the Horrors that were
then done in the name of the Law and Justice, not only in this country
but in Foreign Parts,--with their Breakings on the Wheel, Questions
Ordinary and Extraordinary, Bastinadoes, Carcans, Wooden horses, Burning
alive too (for vending of Irreligious Books), and the like Barbarities.
Let me tell you likewise, that, for all the evil name gotten by the
Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions,--for which I entertain, as a
Protestant, due Detestation and Abhorrence,--the darkest deeds ever done
by the so called Holy Office in their Torture Chambers were not half so
cruel as those performed with the full cognisance and approbation of
authority, in open places, and in pursuance of the sentence of the Civil
Judges. But a term has come to these wickednesses. The admirable Mr.
Howard before named (whom I have often met in my travels, as he, good
man, with nothing but a Biscuit and a few Raisins in his pocket, went up
and down Europe Doing Good, smiling at Fever and tapping Pestilence on
the cheek),--this Blessed Worthy has lightened the captive's fetters,
and cleansed his dungeon, and given him Light and Air. Then I hear at
the Coffee House that the great Judge, Sir William Blackstone, has given
his caveat against the Frequency of Capital Punishment for small
offences; and as His Majesty is notoriously averse from signing more
than six Death Warrants at once (the old King used to say at council, in
his German English, "Vere is de Dyin' speech man dat hang de Rogue for
me?" meaning the Recorder with his Report, and seeming, in a sort, eager
to despatch that awful Business, of which the present Prince is so
Tender), I think that we have every cause to Bless the Times and Reign
we live in. For surely 'tis but affected Softness of Heart, and Mock,
Sickly Sentiment, to maintain that Highwaymen, Horse-stealers, and other
hardened villains, do not deserve the Tree, and do not righteously
Suffer for their misdeeds; or that wanton women do not deserve bodily
correction, so long as it be done within Bridewell Walls, and not in
front of the Sessions House, for the ribald Populace to stare at. Truly
our present code is a merciful one, although I do not hold that the
Extreme Penalty of the law should be exacted for such offences as
cutting down growing trees, forging hat-stamps, or stealing above the
value of a Shilling, or even of forty; nevertheless crime must be kept
under, that is certain.[N]
At all events, they didn't hang John Dangerous. For a time, as I have
said, the Great Gentlemen at Whitehall hesitated. I have heard that
Justice Blackcap, being asked to intercede for me, did, with a scurril
jest, tell Mr. Secretary that I was a young Imp of the Evil One, and
that a little Hanging would do me no harm. Five, indeed, of my miserable
companions were put to death, at different points on the borders of
Charlwood Chase, and one, the unlucky Chaplain, met his fate before the
door of the Stag o' Tyne. The rest of the Blacks, of whom, to my joy, I
shall have no further occasion to speak, were sent to be Slaves in the
American Plantations.
I had lain in Gaol more than a month after my Sentence, when Mr.
Shapcott, a good Quaker Gentleman of the place (who had suffered much
for Conscience' sake, and was very Pitifully inclined to all those who
were in Affliction), began to take some interest in my unhappy Self;
calling me a strayed Lamb, a brand to be snatched from the burning, and
the like. And he, by the humane connivance of the Mayor and other
Justices, was now permitted to have access unto me, and to conciliate
the Keeper, Mrs. Macphilader, by money-presents, to treat me with some
kindness. Also he brought me many Good Books, in thin paper covers; the
which, although I could understand but very little of their Saving
Truths, yet caused me to shed many Tears, more Sweet than Bitter, and to
acknowledge, when taxed with it in a Soothing way, that my former Manner
of Life had been most Wicked. But I should do this good man foul
injustice, were I to let it stand that his benevolence to me was
confined to books. He and (ever remembered) Mistress Shapcott, his Meek
and Pious Partner, and his daughter, Wingrace Shapcott (a tall and
straight young woman, as Beautiful as an Angel), were continually
bringing me Comforts and Needments, both in Raiment and Food. It churns
my Old Heart now to think of that Beautiful Girl, sitting beside me in
my dank Prison Room, the tears streaming from her mild eyes, calling me
by Endearing names, and ever and anon taking my hand in hers, and
sinking on her knees to the sodden floor (with no thought of soiling her
kirtle), while with profound Fervour she prayed for the conversion of
errant Me. Sure there are Hearts of Gold among those Broadbrims and
their fair strait-laced Daughters. Many a Merchant's Money-bags I have
spared for the sake of Mr. Barzillai Shapcott (late of Aylesbury). Many
a Fair Woman have I intermitted from my Furious Will in remembrance of
the good that was shown me, in the old time, by that pale, strait-gowned
Wingrace yonder, with her meek Face and welling Eyes. Of my deep and
grievous Sins they told me enow, but they forbore to Terrify me with
Frightful Images of Unforgiving Wrath; speaking to me of Forgiveness
alway, rather than of Torment. And once, when I had gotten, through
favour of the Keeper, Mr. Dredlincourt his book on Death (and had half
frightened myself into fits by reading the Apparition of Mrs. Veal),
these good people must needs take it from me, telling me that such
strong meat was not fit for Babes, and gave me in its place a pretty
little chap-book, called "Joy for Friendly Friends." But that I am old
and battered, and black as a Guinea Negro with sins, I would go join
the Quakers now. Never mind their broad-brims, and theeing and thouing.
I tell you, man, that they have hearts as soft as toast-and-butter, and
that they do more good in a day than my Lord Bishop (with his
coach-horses, forsooth!) does in a year. And oh, the pleasure of
devalising one of these Proud Prelates, as I--that is some of my
Friends--have done scores of times!
Nothing would suit the good Shapcotts but that I should write in mine
own hand a Petition to the King's Majesty. The Magistrates, who now
began to take some interest in me, were for having it drawn up by their
Town Clerk, and me only to put my Mark to it; for they would not give a
poor little Hangdog of a Black any credit of Clergy. But being told that
I could both read and write, after a Fashion, it was agreed that I was
to have myself the scrivening of the Document; they giving me some Forms
and Hints for beginning and ending, and bidding me con my Bible, and
choose such texts as I thought bore on my Unhappy Condition. And after
Great Endeavours and many painful days, and calling all my little
Scholarship under my Grandmother, the kind old schoolmistress of
Foubert's Passage, Gnawbit (burn him!), and Captain Night, I succeeded
in producing the following. I give it word for word as I wrote it,
having kept a copy; but I need not say that, as a Gentleman of Fortune,
my Style and Spelling are not now so Barbarous and Uncouth.
This was my Petition to His Majesty:
"The Humble Pettyshon of Jon Dangerous now a prisinner
under centense off Deth in His Maggesty's Gayle at
Alesbury to his Maggesty Gorge by the grease of God
King of Grate Briton Frans and Eyearland Deffender
off the Fathe Showeth That yore Petetioner which I
am Unfortunate enuff to be mixed up in this
business Me and the others wich have suffered was
Cast by the Jewry and Justis Blackcapp he ses that
as a Warming and Eggsample i am to be Hanged by the
Nek till you are Ded and the Lord have Mercy upon
his Soul Great Sur your Maggesty the Book ses that
wen the wicked man turneth away from his Wickedness
wich he have committed and doeth that wich is
Lawful and Rite he shall save his Sole alive
Therefore deer Great Sur wich a repreive would fall
like Thunder upon a Contrite Hart and am most
sorrowful under the Black Act wich it is true I
took the deere but was led to it Deere Sur wich
Mungo and others was repreeved at the Tree and sent
to the Plantations but am not twelve yeeres old And
have always been a Prottestant Great Sur i shall be
happy to serve his Maggesty by see or land and if
the Grannydeere he had not Vexed me but had no
other way being in a Korner and all Fiting and so i
up with the demmyjon which i hoap he is better And
your Petishioner will ever pray your Maggesty's
loving Subject and Servant
JON DANGEROUS.
My Granmother was a Lady of Quality and lived in
her own House in Hannover Squair and was used after
her Deth very cruelly by one Mistress Tallmash and
Kadwallader which was the Stoard and was sent in a
Waggin like a Beggar Deere Sur Mr. Gnawbit he used
me shameful wich I was Blak and Blue and the Old
Gentleman he ses you Run away ses he into Charwood
chaise and join the Blaks Deere Sur this is All
which Captain Nite would sware but as eloped I am
now lying here many weekes Deere Sur I shood like
to be hanged in Wite for I am Innocent leastways of
meaning to kill the Grannydeere."
This was a Curious kind of Schoolboy letter. Different I take it from
those one gets from a Brother, asking for a Crown, a Pony, or a
Plumcake. But my Schools had been of the hardest, and this was _my_
Holiday letter.
When the Mayor read it, he burst out a-laughing, and says that no such
Thieves' Flash must be sent to the Foot of the Throne. But Mr. Shapcott
told him that he would not have one word altered; that he would not even
strike out the paragraph where I had been irreverent enough to quote a
Text (and spell it badly); and that what I had written, and naught else,
should go to the King. He took it to London himself, and his Majesty
being much elated by some successes in Germany, and the Discovery of a
Jacobite Plot, and moved moreover by the intercession of a Foreign Lady,
that was his favourite, and who vowed that the little Deer-Stealer's
Petition was Monstrous Droll, and almost as good as a Play,--His Majesty
was graciously pleased to remit my Sentence, on condition of my
transporting myself for life to His Majesty's Plantations in North
America.
As to my transporting "myself," that was a Fiction. I was henceforth as
much a Slave to my own Countrymen as I was in after days to the Moors.
The Shapcotts would willingly have provided me with the means of going
to the uttermost ends of the World, but that was not the way the thing
was to be done. Flesh and Blood were bought and sold in those days, and
it did not much matter about the colour. By that strange Laxity which
then tempered the severity of the Laws, I was permitted, for many days
after my Fate was settled, to remain in a kind of semi-Enlargement. I
suppose that Mr. Shapcott gave bail for me; but I was taken into his
Family, and treated with the most Loving Kindness, till the fearful
intelligence came that I, with two hundred other Convicts, had been
"Taken up" for Transportation by Sir Basil Hopwood, a rich Merchant and
Alderman of London, who paid a certain Sum a head for us to the King's
Government for taking us to America, where he might make what profit he
pleased, by selling our wretched Carcasses to be Slaves to the Planters.
Oh, the terrible Parting! but there was no other Way, and it had to be
Endured. My kind friends made me up a packet of Necessaries for the
Voyage, and with a Heavy Heart I bade them farewell. These good people
are all Dead; but their woman-servant, Ruth, a pure soul, of great
Serenity of Countenance, still lives; and every Christmas does the
Carrier convey for me to Aylesbury a Hamper full of the Good Things of
this Life, and Ten Golden Guineas. And I know that this Good and
Faithful Servant (who has been well provided for) just touches the
Kissing-crust of one of the Pies my Lilias has made for her, and that
she goes straight with the rest, Money and Cates, to the Gaol, and
therewith relieves the Debtors (whom Heaven deliver out of their
Captivity!). And it is more seemly that she rather than I should do
this thing, seeing that there are those who will not believe that after
a Hard Life a man can keep a fleshy heart, and who would be apt to dub
me Hypocrite if these Doles came from me directly.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
FOOTNOTE:
[N] Captain Dangerous, it will be seen, was, in regard to our criminal
code, somewhat in advance of the ideas of his age, but he was scarcely
on a level with those of our own, and, I think, would have perused with
some surprise the speeches of Mr. Ewart and the _Vacation Thoughts on
Capital Punishments_ of the late Mr. Commissioner Phillips.--ED.
MESSRS. TINSLEY BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS.
* * * * *
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In the Press, in 2 vols., 8vo,
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By CAPTAIN RICHARD F. BURTON,
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* * * * *
In the Press, in 2 vols.
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By JOHN SAUNDERS,
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* * * * *
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FROM LIVERPOOL TO FERNANDO PO.
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By the Author of "The World's Furniture."
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* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page xix, "85" changed to "87"
Page xix, "124" changed to "126"
Page 10, "ha" changed to "had" (Dangerous had suffered)
Page 10, "nee" changed to "need" (was no need)
Page 11, "le" changed to "let" (a mercy to let)
Page 48, "inkeepers" changed to "innkeepers" (the innkeepers were used)
Page 48, "achievments" changed to "achievements" (achievements of his
arms)
Page 121, "corse" changed to "corpse" (corpse of my)
Page 144, "wont" changed to "won't" (I won't tell him)
Page 193, word "to" inserted into text. (he whispered to his)
Page 221, "bring" changed to "being" (being a poor)
Page 247, "recal" changed to "recall" (can scarcely recall)
Page 295, "Beneh" changed to "Bench" (Bench and confers)
Varied hyphenation was retained. antechambers, ante-chambers; atop,
a-top; cheesecakes, cheese-cakes; Cockpit, Cock-pit; Footguards,
Foot-guards; Gatehouse, Gate-house; nowadays, now-a-days; Shrovetide,
Shrove-tide.
The text also uses servants' hall and servant's hall.
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Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3, by George Augustus Sala
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