PROBABLY the most important historical event of the year ’49 was the
discovery of gold in California, or rather, the great Western Exodus in
pursuit of it. A restless desire possessed me to see something of
America, especially of the Far West. I had an hereditary love of sport,
and had read and heard wonderful tales of bison, and grisly bears, and
wapitis. No books had so fascinated me, when a boy, as the
‘Deer-slayer,’ the ‘Pathfinder,’ and the beloved ‘Last of the Mohicans.’
Here then was a new field for adventure. I would go to California, and
hunt my way across the continent. Ruxton’s ‘Life in the Far West’
inspired a belief in self-reliance and independence only rivalled by
Robinson Crusoe. If I could not find a companion, I would go alone.
Little did I dream of the fortune which was in store for me, or how
nearly I missed carrying out the scheme so wildly contemplated, or
indeed, any scheme at all.
The only friend I could meet with both willing and able to join me was
the last Lord Durham. He could not undertake to go to California; but he
had been to New York during his father’s reign in Canada, and liked the
idea of revisiting the States. He proposed that we should spend the
winter in the West Indies, and after some buffalo-shooting on the plains,
return to England in the autumn.
The notion of the West Indies gave rise to an off-shoot. Both Durham and
I were members of the old Garrick, then but a small club in Covent
Garden. Amongst our mutual friends was Andrew Arcedeckne—pronounced
Archdeacon—a character to whom attaches a peculiar literary interest, of
which anon. Arcedeckne—Archy, as he was commonly called—was about a
couple of years older than we were. He was the owner of Glevering Hall,
Suffolk, and nephew of Lord Huntingfield. These particulars, as well as
those of his person, are note-worthy, as it will soon appear.
Archy—‘Merry Andrew,’ as I used to call him,—owned one of the finest
estates in Jamaica—Golden Grove. When he heard of our intended trip, he
at once volunteered to go with us. He had never seen Golden Grove, but
had often wished to visit it. Thus it came to pass that we three secured
our cabins in one of the West India mailers, and left England in December
1849.
To return to our little Suffolk squire. The description of his figure,
as before said, is all-important, though the world is familiar with it,
as drawn by the pencil of a master caricaturist. Arcedeckne was about
five feet three inches, round as a cask, with a small singularly round
face and head, closely cropped hair, and large soft eyes,—in a word, so
like a seal, that he was as often called ‘Phoca’ as Archy.
Do you recognise the portrait? Do you need the help of ‘Glevering Hall’
(how curious the suggestion!). And would you not like to hear him talk?
Here is a specimen in his best manner. Surely it must have been taken
down by a shorthand writer, or a phonograph:
_Mr. Harry Foker loquitur_: ‘He inquired for Rincer and the cold in his
nose, told Mrs. Rincer a riddle, asked Miss Rincer when she would be
prepared to marry him, and paid his compliments to Miss Brett, another
young lady in the bar, all in a minute of time, and with a liveliness and
facetiousness which set all these young ladies in a giggle. “Have a
drop, Pen: it’s recommended by the faculty, &c. Give the young one a
glass, R., and score it up to yours truly.”’
I fancy the great man who recorded these words was more afraid of Mr.
Harry _Phoca_ than of any other man in the Garrick Club—possibly for the
reason that honest Harry was not the least bit afraid of him. The shy,
the proud, the sensitive satirist would steal quietly into the room,
avoiding notice as though he wished himself invisible. Phoca would be
warming his back at the fire, and calling for a glass of ‘Foker’s own.’
Seeing the giant enter, he would advance a step or two, with a couple of
extended fingers, and exclaim, quite affably, ‘Ha! Mr. Thackry! litary
cove! Glad to see you, sir. How’s Major Dobbings?’ and likely enough
would turn to the waiter, and bid him, ‘Give this gent a glass of the
same, and score it up to yours truly!’ We have his biographer’s word for
it, that he would have winked at the Duke of Wellington, with just as
little scruple.
Yes, Andrew Arcedeckne was the original of Harry Foker; and, from the cut
of his clothes to his family connection, and to the comicality, the
simplicity, the sweetness of temper (though hardly doing justice to the
loveableness of the little man), the famous caricature fits him to a T.
The night before we left London we had a convivial dinner at the
Garrick—we three travellers, with Albert Smith, his brother, and John
Leech. It was a merry party, to which all contributed good fellowship
and innocent jokes. The latest arrival at the Zoo was the first
hippopotamus that had reached England,—a present from the Khedive.
Someone wondered how it had been caught. I suggested a trout-fly; which
so tickled John Leech’s fancy that he promised to draw it for next week’s
‘Punch.’ Albert Smith went with us to Southampton to see us off.
On our way to Jamaica we stopped a night at Barbadoes to coal. Here I
had the honour of making the acquaintance of the renowned Caroline
Lee!—Miss Car’line, as the negroes called her. She was so pleased at the
assurance that her friend Mr. Peter Simple had spread her fame all the
world over, that she made us a bowl of the most delicious iced sangaree;
and speedily got up a ‘dignity ball’ for our entertainment. She was
rather too much of an armful to dance with herself, but there was no lack
of dark beauties, (not a white woman or white man except ourselves in the
room.) We danced pretty nearly from daylight to daylight. The blending
of rigid propriety, of the severest ‘dignity,’ with the sudden guffaw and
outburst of wildest spirits and comic humour, is beyond description, and
is only to be met with amongst these ebullient children of the sun.
On our arrival at Golden Grove, there was a great turn-out of the natives
to welcome their young lord and ‘massa.’ Archy was touched and amused by
their frantic loyalty. But their mode of exhibiting it was not so
entirely to his taste. Not only the young, but the old women wanted to
hug him. ‘Eigh! Dat you, Massa? Dat you, sar? Me no believe him. Out
o’ de way, you trash! Eigh! me too much pleased like devil.’ The one
constant and spontaneous ejaculation was, ‘Yah! Massa too muchy handsome!
Garamighty! Buckra berry fat!’ The latter attribute was the source of
genuine admiration; but the object of it hardly appreciated its
recognition, and waved off his subjects with a mixture of impatience and
alarm.
We had scarcely been a week at Golden Grove, when my two companions and
Durham’s servant were down with yellow fever. Being ‘salted,’ perhaps, I
escaped scot-free, so helped Archy’s valet and Mr. Forbes, his factor, to
nurse and to carry out professional orders. As we were thirty miles from
Kingston the doctor could only come every other day. The responsibility,
therefore, of attending three patients smitten with so deadly a disease
was no light matter. The factor seemed to think discretion the better
part of valour, and that Jamaica rum was the best specific for keeping
his up. All physicians were _Sangrados_ in those days, and when the
Kingston doctor decided upon bleeding, the hysterical state of the darky
girls (we had no men in the bungalow except Durham’s and Archy’s
servants) rendered them worse than useless. It fell to me, therefore, to
hold the basin while Archy’s man was attending to his master.
Durham, who had nerves of steel, bore his lot with the grim stoicism
which marked his character. But at one time the doctor considered his
state so serious that he thought his lordship’s family should be informed
of it. Accordingly I wrote to the last Lord Grey, his uncle and
guardian, stating that there was little hope of his recovery. Poor Phoca
was at once tragic and comic. His medicine had to be administered every,
two hours. Each time, he begged and prayed in lacrymose tones to be let
off. It was doing him no good. He might as well be allowed to die in
peace. If we would only spare him the beastliness this once, on his
honour he would take it next time ‘like a man.’ We were inexorable, of
course, and treated him exactly as one treats a child.
At last the crisis was over. Wonderful to relate, all three began to
recover. During their convalescence, I amused myself by shooting
alligators in the mangrove swamps at Holland Bay, which was within half
an hour’s ride of the bungalow. It was curious sport. The great
saurians would lie motionless in the pools amidst the snake-like tangle
of mangrove roots. They would float with just their eyes and noses out
of water, but so still that, without a glass, (which I had not,) it was
difficult to distinguish their heads from the countless roots and rotten
logs around them. If one fired by mistake, the sport was spoiled for an
hour to come.
I used to sit watching patiently for one of them to show itself, or for
something to disturb the glassy surface of the dark waters. Overhead the
foliage was so dense that the heat was not oppressive. All Nature seemed
asleep. The deathlike stillness was rarely broken by the faintest
sound,—though unseen life, amidst the heat and moisture, was teeming
everywhere; life feeding upon life. For what purpose? To what end? Is
this a primary law of Nature? Does cannibalism prevail in Mars?
Sometimes a mocking-bird would pipe its weird notes, deepening silence by
the contrast. But besides pestilent mosquitos, the only living things in
sight were humming-birds of every hue, some no bigger than a butterfly,
fluttering over the blossoms of the orchids, or darting from flower to
flower like flashes of prismatic rays.
I killed several alligators; but one day, while stalking what seemed to
be an unusual monster, narrowly escaped an accident. Under the
excitement, my eye was so intently fixed upon the object, that I rather
felt than saw my way. Presently over I went, just managed to save my
rifle, and, to my amazement, found I had set my foot on a sleeping
reptile. Fortunately the brute was as much astonished as I was, and
plunged with a splash into the adjacent pool.
A Cambridge friend, Mr. Walter Shirley, owned an estate at Trelawny, on
the other side of Jamaica; while the invalids were recovering, I paid him
a visit; and was initiated into the mysteries of cane-growing and
sugar-making. As the great split between the Northern and Southern
States on the question of slavery was pending, the life, condition, and
treatment of the negro was of the greatest interest. Mr. Shirley was a
gentleman of exceptional ability, and full of valuable information on
these subjects. He passed me on to other plantations; and I made the
complete round of the island before returning to my comrades at Golden
Grove. A few weeks afterwards I stayed with a Spanish gentleman, the
Marquis d’Iznaga, who owned six large sugar plantations in Cuba; and rode
with his son from Casilda to Cienfuegos, from which port I got a steamer
to the Havana. The ride afforded abundant opportunities of comparing the
slave with the free negro. But, as I have written on the subject
elsewhere, I will pass to matters more entertaining.