I came into a public-house once in London, where there was a black
Mulatto-looking man sitting, talking very warmly among some gentlemen,
who I observed were listening very attentively to what he said; and I
sat myself down, and did the like; ’twas with great pleasure I heard him
discourse very handsomely on several weighty subjects; I found he was a
very good scholar, had been very handsomely bred, and that learning and
study was his delight; and more than that, some of the best of science
was at that time his employment: at length I took the freedom to ask
him, if he was born in England? He replied with a great deal of good
humour, but with an excess of resentment at his father, and with tears
in his eyes, “Yes, yes, sir, I am a true born Englishman, to my father’s
shame be it spoken; who, being an Englishman himself, could find in his
heart to join himself to a negro woman, though he must needs know, the
children he should beget, would curse the memory of such an action, and
abhor his very name for the sake of it. Yes, yes, (said he repeating it
again,) I am an Englishman, and born in lawful wedlock; happy it had
been for me, though my father had gone to the devil for wh----m, had he
lain with a cook-maid, or produced me from the meanest beggar in the
street. My father might do the duty of nature to his black wife; but,
God knows, he did no justice to his children. If it had not been for
this black face of mine, (says he, then smiling,) I had been bred to the
law, or brought up in the study of divinity: but my father gave me
learning to no manner of purpose; for he knew I should never be able to
rise by it to any thing but a _learned valet de chambre_. What he put me
to school for I cannot imagine; he spoiled a good tarpawling, when he
strove to make me a gentleman. When he had resolved to marry a slave,
and lie with a slave, he should have begot slaves, and let us have been
bred as we were born: but he has twice ruined me; first with getting me
a frightful face, and then going to paint a gentleman upon me.”--It was
a most affecting discourse indeed, and as such I record it; and I found
it ended in tears from the person, who was in himself the most
deserving, modest, and judicious man, that I ever met with, under a
negro countenance, in my life.
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