Produced by Gardner Buchanan
THE ATTACHE
or, SAM SLICK IN ENGLAND, Volume 2
By Thomas Chandler Haliburton
(Greek Text)--GREEK PROVERB.
Tell you what, report my speeches if you like, but if you put my talk
in, I’ll give you the mitten, as sure as you are born.--SLICKVILLE
TRANSLATION
London, July 3rd, 1843.
MY DEAR HOPKINSON,
I have spent so many agreeable hours at Edgeworth heretofore, that my
first visit on leaving London, will be to your hospitable mansion. In
the meantime, I beg leave to introduce to you my “Attache,” who will
precede me several days. His politics are similar to your own; I wish I
could say as much in favour of his humour. His eccentricities will stand
in need of your indulgence; but if you can overlook these, I am not
without hopes that his originality, quaint sayings, and queer views of
things in England, will afford you some amusement. At all events, I feel
assured you will receive him kindly; if not for his own merits, at least
for the sake of
Yours always,
THE AUTHOR.
To EDMUND HOPKINSON ESQ. Edgeworth, Gloucestershire.
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAPTER I. THE NOSE OF A SPY
CHAPTER II. THE PATRON; OR, THE COW’S TAIL
CHAPTER III. ASCOT RACES
CHAPTER IV. THE GANDER PULLING
CHAPTER V. THE BLACK STOLE
CHAPTER VI. THE PRINCE DE JOINVILLE’S HORSE
CHAPTER VII. LIFE IN THE COUNTRY
CHAPTER VIII. BUNKUM
CHAPTER IX. THROWING THE LAVENDER
CHAPTER X. AIMING HIGH
CHAPTER XI. A SWOI-REE
CHAPTER XII. TATTERSALL’S
CHAPTER XIII. LOOKING BACK
CHAPTER XIV. CROSSING THE BORDER
CHAPTER XV. THE IRISH PREFACE
THE ATTACHE; OR SAM SLICK IN ENGLAND.
THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAPTER I. THE NOSE OF A SPY
“Squire.” said Mr. Hopewell, “you know Sam well enough, I hope, to make
all due allowances for the exuberance of his fancy. The sketch he has
just given you of London society, like the novels of the present
day, though founded on fact, is very unlike the reality. There may be
assemblages of persons in this great city, and no doubt there are, quite
as insipid and absurd as the one he has just pourtrayed; but you must
not suppose it is at all a fair specimen of the society of this place.
My own experience is quite the reverse. I think it the most refined,
the most agreeable, and the most instructive in the world. Whatever
your favourite study or pursuit may be, here you are sure to find
well-informed and enthusiastic associates. If you have merit, it is
appreciated; and for an aristocratic country, that merit places you on
a level with your superiors in rank in a manner that is quite
incomprehensible to a republican. Money is the great leveller of
distinctions with us; here, it is talent. Fashion spreads many tables
here, but talent is always found seated at the best, if it thinks proper
to comply with certain usages, without which, even genius ceases to be
attractive.
“On some future occasion, I will enter more at large on this subject;
but now it is too late; I have already exceeded my usual hour for
retiring. ‘Excuse me, Sam,’ said he. ‘I know you will not be offended
with me, but Squire there are some subjects on which Sam may amuse, but
cannot instruct you, and one is, fashionable life in London. You must
judge for yourself, Sir. Good night, my children.’”
Mr. Slick rose, and opened the door for him, and as he passed, bowed and
held out his hand. “Remember me, your honour, no man opens the door in
this country without being paid for it. Remember me, Sir.”
“True, Sam,” said the Minister, “and it is unlucky that it does not
extend to opening the mouth, if it did, you would soon make your
fortune, for you can’t keep yours shut. Good night.”
The society to which I have subsequently had the good fortune to be
admitted, fully justifies the eulogium of Mr. Hopewell. Though many
persons can write well, few can talk well; but the number of those who
excel in conversation is much greater in certain circles in London, than
in any other place. By talking well, I do not mean talking wisely or
learnedly; but agreeably, for relaxation and pleasure, are the principal
objects of social assemblies. This can only be illustrated by instancing
some very remarkable persons, who are the pride and pleasure of every
table they honour and delight with their presence But this may not be.
For obvious reasons, I could not do it if I would; and most assuredly,
I would not do it if I could. No more certain mode could be devised
of destroying conversation, than by showing, that when the citadel is
unguarded, the approach of a friend is as unsafe as that of an enemy.
Alas! poor Hook! who can read the unkind notice of thee in a late
periodical, and not feel, that on some occasions you must have admitted
to your confidence men who were as unworthy of that distinction as, they
were incapable of appreciating it, and that they who will disregard the
privileges of a table, will not hesitate to violate even the sanctity
of the tomb. Cant may talk of your “_inter pocula_” errors with pious
horror; and pretension, now that its indulgence is safe, may affect to
disclaim your acquaintance; but kinder, and better, and truer men than
those who furnished your biographer with his facts will not fail to
recollect your talents with pride, and your wit and your humour with
wonder and delight.
We do not require such flagrant examples as these to teach us our duty,
but they are not without their use in increasing our caution.
When Mr. Hopewell withdrew, Mr. Slick observed:
“Ain’t that ere old man a trump? He is always in the right place.
Whenever you want to find him, jist go and look for him where he
ought to be, and there you will find him as sure as there is snakes in
Varginy. He is a brick, that’s a fact. Still, for all that, he ain’t
jist altogether a citizen of this world nother. He fishes in deep water,
with a sinker to his hook. He can’t throw a fly as I can, reel out his
line, run down stream, and then wind up, wind up, wind up, and let out,
and wind up again, till he lands his fish, as I do. He looks deep into
things, is a better religionist, polititioner, and bookster than I be:
but then that’s all he does know. If you want to find your way about, or
read a man, come to me, that’s all; for I’m the boy that jist can do
it. If I can’t walk into a man, I can dodge round him; and if he is too
nimble for that, I can jump over him; and if he is too tall for that,
although I don’t like the play, yet I can whip him.
“Now, Squire, I have been a good deal to England, and crossed this big
pond here the matter of seven times, and know a good deal about it, more
than a great many folks that have writtin’ books on it, p’raps. Mind
what I tell you, the English ain’t what they was. I’m not speakin’ in
jeest now, or in prejudice. I hante a grain of prejudice in me. I’ve
see’d too much of the world for that I reckon. I call myself a candid
man, and I tell you the English are no more like what the English used
to be, when pigs were swine, and Turkey chewed tobacky, than they are
like the Picts or Scots, or Norman, French, or Saxons, or nothin’.”
“Not what they used to be?” I said. “Pray, what do you mean?”
“I mean,” said he, “jist what I say. They ain’t the same people no
more. They are as proud, and overbearin’, and concaited, and haughty
to foreigners as ever; but, then they ain’t so manly, open-hearted, and
noble as they used to be, once upon a time. They have the Spy System
now, in full operation here; so jist take my advice, and mind your
potatoe-trap, or you will be in trouble afore you are ten days older,
see if you ain’t.”
“The Spy System!” I replied. “Good Heavens, Mr. Slick, how can you talk
such nonsense, and yet have the modesty to say you have no prejudice?”
“Yes, the Spy System,” said he, “and I’ll prove it. You know Dr.
Mc’Dougall to Nova Scotia; well, he knows all about mineralogy, and
geology, and astrology, and every thing a’most, except what he ought to
know, and that is dollar-ology. For he ain’t over and above half well
off, that’s a fact. Well, a critter of the name of Oatmeal, down to
Pictou, said to another Scotchman there one day, ‘The great nateralist
Dr. Mc’Dougall is come to town.’
“‘Who?’ says Sawney.
“‘Dr. Mc’Dougall, the nateralist,’ says Oatmeal.
“‘Hout, mon,’ says Sawney, ‘he is nae nateral, that chiel; he kens mair
than maist men; he is nae that fool you take him to be.’
“Now, I am not such a fool as you take _me_ to be, Squire. Whenever I
did a sum to, school, Minister used to say, ‘Prove it, Sam, and if it
won’t prove, do it over agin, till it will; a sum ain’t right when it
won’t prove.’ Now, I say the English have the Spy System, and I’ll prove
it; nay, more than that, they have the nastiest, dirtiest, meanest,
sneakenest system in the world. It is ten times as bad as the French
plan. In France they have bar-keepers, waiters, chamber galls, guides,
quotillions,--”
“Postilions, you mean,” I said.
“Well, postilions then, for the French have queer names for people,
that’s a fact; disbanded sodgers, and such trash, for spies. In England
they have airls and countesses, Parliament men, and them that call
themselves gentlemen and ladies, for spies.”
“How very absurd!” I said.
“Oh yes, very absurd,” said Mr. Slick; “whenever I say anythin’ agin
England, it’s very absurd, it’s all prejudice. Nothin’ is strange,
though, when it is said of us, and the absurder it is, the truer it is.
I can bam as well as any man when bam is the word, but when fact is the
play, I am right up and down, and true as a trivet. I won’t deceive you;
I’ll prove it.
“There was a Kurnel Dun--dun--plague take his name, I can’t recollect
it, but it makes no odds--I know _he_ is Dun for, though, that’s a fact.
Well, he was a British kurnel, that was out to Halifax when I was there.
I know’d him by sight, I didn’t know him by talk, for I didn’t fill then
the dignified situation I now do, of Attache. I was only a clockmaker
then, and I suppose he wouldn’t have dirtied the tip eend of his white
glove with me then, any more than I would sile mine with him now, and
very expensive and troublesome things them white gloves be too; there is
no keepin’ of them clean. For my part, I don’t see why a man can’t make
his own skin as clean as a kid’s, any time; and if a feller can’t be let
shake hands with a gall except he has a glove on, why ain’t he made to
cover his lips, and kiss thro’ kid skin too.
“But to get back to the kurnel, and it’s a pity he hadn’t had a glove
over his mouth, that’s a fact. Well, he went home to England with his
regiment, and one night when he was dinin’ among some first chop men,
nobles and so on, they sot up considerable late over their claret; and
poor thin cold stuff it is too, is claret. A man _may_ get drowned in
it, but how the plague he can get drunk with it is dark to me. It’s like
every thing else French, it has no substance in it; it’s nothin’ but red
ink, that’s a fact. Well, how it was I don’t know, but so it eventuated,
that about daylight he was mops and brooms, and began to talk somethin’
or another he hadn’t ought to; somethin’ he didn’t know himself, and
somethin’ he didn’t mean, and didn’t remember.
“Faith, next mornin’ he was booked; and the first thing he see’d when he
waked was another man a tryin’ on of his shoes, to see how they’d fit to
march to the head of his regiment with. Fact, I assure you, and a fact
too that shows what Englishmen has come to; I despise ‘em, I hate ‘em, I
scorn such critters as I do oncarcumcised niggers.”
“What a strange perversion of facts,” I replied.
But he would admit of no explanation. “Oh yes, quite parvarted; not a
word of truth in it; there never is when England is consarned. There is
no beam in an Englishman’s eye; no not a smell of one; he has pulled it
out long ago; that’s the reason he can see the mote in other folks’s
so plain. Oh, of course it ain’t true; it’s a Yankee invention; it’s a
hickory ham and a wooden nutmeg.
“Well, then, there was another feller got bagged t’other day, as
innocent as could be, for givin’ his opinion when folks was a talkin’
about matters and things in gineral, and this here one in partikilar. I
can’t tell the words, for I don’t know ‘em, nor care about ‘em; and if I
did, I couldn’t carry ‘em about so long; but it was for sayin’ it
hadn’t ought to have been taken notice of, considerin’ it jist popt out
permiscuous like with the bottle-cork. If he hadn’t a had the clear
grit in him, and showed teeth and claws, they’d a nullified him so, you
wouldn’t have see’d a grease spot of him no more. What do you call that,
now? Do you call that liberty? Do you call that old English? Do you call
it pretty, say now? Thank God, it tante Yankee.”
“I see you have no prejudice, Mr. Slick,” I replied.
“Not one mite or morsel,” he replied. “Tho’ I was born in Connecticut, I
have travelled all over the thirteen united univarsal worlds of ourn and
am a citizen at large. No, I have no prejudice. You say I am mistaken;
p’raps I am, I hope I be, and a stranger may get hold of the wrong eend
of a thing sometimes, that’s a fact. But I don’t think I be wrong, or
else the papers don’t tell the truth; and I read it in all the jarnals;
I did, upon my soul. Why man, it’s history now, if such nasty mean doins
is worth puttin’ into a book.
“What makes this Spy System to England wuss, is that these
eaves-droppers are obliged to hear all that’s said, or lose what
commission they hold; at least so folks tell me. I recollect when I was
there last, for it’s some years since Government first sot up the Spy
System; there was a great feed given to a Mr. Robe, or Robie, or some
such name, an out and out Tory. Well, sunthin’ or another was said over
their cups, that might as well have been let alone, I do suppose, tho’
dear me, what is the use of wine but to onloosen the tongue, and what
is the use of the tongue, but to talk. Oh, cuss ‘em, I have no patience
with them. Well, there was an officer of a marchin’ regiment there, who
it seems ought to have took down the words and sent ‘em up to the head
Gineral, but he was a knowin’ coon, was officer, and _didn’t hear it_.
No sooner said than done; some one else did the dirty work for him; but
you can’t have a substitute for this, you must sarve in person, so the
old Gineral hawls him right up for it.
“‘Why the plague, didn’t you make a fuss?’ sais the General, ‘why didn’t
you get right up, and break up the party?’
“‘I didn’t hear it,’ sais he.
“‘You didn’t hear it!’ sais Old Sword-belt, ‘then you had ought to have
heerd it; and for two pins, I’d sharpen your hearin’ for you, so that a
snore of a fly would wake you up, as if a byler had bust.’
“Oh, how it has lowered the English in the eyes of foreigners! How
sneakin’ it makes ‘em look! They seem for all the world like scared
dogs; and a dog when he slopes off with his head down, his tail atween
his legs, and his back so mean it won’t bristle, is a caution to
sinners. Lord. I wish I was Queen!”
“What, of such a degraded race as you say the English are, of such a
mean-spirited, sneaking nation?”
“Well, they warn’t always so,” he replied. “I will say that, for I
have no prejudice. By natur, there is sunthin’ noble and manly in a
Britisher, and always was, till this cussed Spy System got into fashion.
They tell me it was the Liberals first brought it into vogue. How that
is. I don’t know; but I shouldn’t wonder if it was them, for I know
this, if a feller talks _very_ liberal in politics, put him into office,
and see what a tyrant he’ll make. If he talks very liberal in religion,
it’s because he hante got none at all. If he talks very liberal to the
poor, talk is all the poor will ever get out of him. If he talks liberal
about corn law, it tante to feed the hungry, but to lower wages, and
so on in every thing a most. None is so liberal as those as hante got
nothin’. The most liberal feller I know on is “Old Scratch himself.” If
ever the liberals come in, they should make him Prime Minister. He is
very liberal in religion and would jine them in excludin’ the Bible from
common schools I know. He is very liberal about the criminal code, for
he can’t bear to see criminals punished. He is very liberal in politics,
for he don’t approbate restraint, and likes to let every critter ‘go
to the devil’ his own way. Oh, he should be Head Spy and Prime Minister
that feller.
“But without jokin’ tho’, if I was Queen, the fust time any o’ my
ministers came to me to report what the spies had said, I’d jist up and
say, ‘Minister,’ I’d say, ‘it is a cussed oninglish, onmanly, niggerly
business, is this of pumpin’, and spyin’, and tattlin’. I don’t like it
a bit. I’ll have neither art nor part in it; I wash my hands clear of
it. It will jist break the spirit of my people. So, minister look here.
The next report that is brought to me of a spy, I’ll whip his tongue out
and whop your ear off, or my name ain’t Queen. So jist mind what I say;
first spy pokes his nose into your office, chop it off and clap it up
over Temple Bar, where they puts the heads of traitors and write these
words over, with your own fist, that they may know the handwritin’, and
not mistake the meanin’, _This is the nose of a Spy_.”