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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 _Athenaeum_ to say that they had just opened a branch
railway up to Ephesus, and that (by the way) they had discovered a
prae-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 Pyrenees._ 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 Dona 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 praemunires 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 Alencon 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.