Having thus bespoken the indulgence of our guests, let us now produce the
particulars of our entertainment, and speedily conduct our adventurer
through the stage of infancy, which seldom teems with interesting
incidents.
As the occupations of his mother would not conveniently permit her to
suckle this her firstborn at her own breast, and those happy ages were
now no more, in which the charge of nursing a child might be left to the
next goat or she-wolf, she resolved to improve upon the ordinances of
nature, and foster him with a juice much more energetic than the milk of
goat, wolf, or woman; this was no other than that delicious nectar,
which, as we have already hinted, she so cordially distributed from a
small cask that hung before her, depending from her shoulders by a
leathern zone. Thus determined, ere he was yet twelve days old, she
enclosed him in a canvas knapsack, which being adjusted to her neck, fell
down upon her back, and balanced the cargo that rested on her bosom.
There are not wanting those who affirm, that, while her double charge was
carried about in this situation, her keg was furnished with a long and
slender flexible tube, which, when the child began to be clamorous, she
conveyed into his mouth, and straight he stilled himself with sucking;
but this we consider as an extravagant assertion of those who mix the
marvellous in all their narrations, because we cannot conceive how the
tender organs of an infant could digest such a fiery beverage, which
never fails to discompose the constitutions of the most hardy and robust.
We therefore conclude that the use of this potation was more restrained,
and that it was with simple element diluted into a composition adapted to
his taste and years. Be this as it will, he certainly was indulged in
the use of it to such a degree as would have effectually obstructed his
future fortune, had not he been happily cloyed with the repetition of the
same fare, for which he conceived the utmost detestation and abhorrence,
rejecting it with loathing and disgust, like those choice spirits, who,
having been crammed with religion in their childhood, renounce it in
their youth, among other absurd prejudices of education.
While he was thus dangled in a state of suspension, a German trooper was
transiently smit with the charms of his mother, who listened to his
honourable addresses, and once more received the silken bonds of
matrimony; the ceremony having been performed as usual at the drum-head.
The lady had no sooner taken possession of her new name, than she
bestowed it upon her son, who was thenceforward distinguished by the
appellation of Ferdinand de Fadom; nor was the husband offended at this
presumption in his wife, which he not only considered as a proof of her
affection and esteem, but also as a compliment, by which he might in time
acquire the credit of being the real father of such a hopeful child.
Notwithstanding this new engagement with a foreigner, our hero's mother
still exercised the virtues of her calling among the English troops, so
much was she biassed by that laudable partiality, which, as Horace
observes, the natale solum generally inspires. Indeed this inclination
was enforced by another reason, that did not fail to influence her
conduct in this particular; all her knowledge of the High Dutch language
consisted in some words of traffic absolutely necessary for the practice
of hex vocation, together with sundry oaths and terms of reproach, that
kept her customers in awe; so that, except among her own countrymen, she
could not indulge that propensity to conversation, for which she had been
remarkable from her earliest years. Nor did this instance of her
affection fail of turning to her account in the sequel. She was promoted
to the office of cook to a regimental mess of officers; and, before the
peace of Utrecht, was actually in possession of a suttling-tent, pitched
for the accommodation of the gentlemen in the army.
Meanwhile, Ferdinand improved apace in the accomplishments of infancy;
his beauty was conspicuous, and his vigour so uncommon, that he was
with justice likened unto Hercules in the cradle. The friends of his
father-in-law dandled him on their knees, while he played with their
whiskers, and, before he was thirteen months old, taught him to suck
brandy impregnated with gunpowder, through the touch-hole of a pistol.
At the same time, he was caressed by divers serjeants of the British
army, who severally and in secret contemplated his qualifications with a
father's pride, excited by the artful declaration with which the mother
had flattered each apart.
Soon as the war was (for her unhappily) concluded, she, as in duty bound,
followed her husband into Bohemia; and his regiment being sent into
garrison at Prague, she opened a cabaret in that city, which was
frequented by a good many guests of the Scotch and Irish nations, who
were devoted to the exercise of arms in the service of the Emperor. It
was by this communication that the English tongue became vernacular to
young Ferdinand, who, without such opportunity, would have been a
stranger to the language of his forefathers, in spite of all his mother's
loquacity and elocution; though it must be owned, for the credit of her
maternal care, that she let slip no occasion of making it familiar to his
ear and conception; for, even at those intervals in which she could find
no person to carry on the altercation, she used to hold forth in earnest
soliloquies upon the subject of her own situation, giving vent to many
opprobrious invectives against her husband's country, between which and
Old England she drew many odious comparisons; and prayed, without
ceasing, that Europe might speedily be involved in a general war, so as
that she might have some chance of re-enjoying the pleasures and
emoluments of a Flanders campaign.