Produced by Gardner Buchanan
THE ATTACHE
or, SAM SLICK IN ENGLAND, Volume 1
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 FIRST VOLUME.
CHAPTER I. UNCORKING A BOTTLE
CHAPTER II. A JUICY DAY IN THE COUNTRY
CHAPTER III. TYING A NIGHT-CAP
CHAPTER IV. HOME AND THE SEA
CHAPTER V. T’OTHER EEND OF THE GUN
CHAPTER VI. SMALL POTATOES AND FEW IN A HILL
CHAPTER VII. A GENTLEMAN AT LARGE
CHAPTER VIII. SEEING LIVERPOOL
CHAPTER IX. CHANGING A NAME
CHAPTER X. THE NELSON MONUMENT
CHAPTER XI. COTTAGES
CHAPTER XII. STEALING THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE
CHAPTER XIII. NATUR’
CHAPTER XIV. THE SOCDOLAGER
CHAPTER XV. DINING OUT
THE ATTACHE; OR SAM SLICK IN ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I. UNCORKING A BOTTLE.
We left New York in the afternoon of -- day of May, 184-, and embarked
on board of the good Packet ship “Tyler” for England. Our party
consisted of the Reverend Mr. Hopewell, Samuel Slick, Esq., myself, and
Jube Japan, a black servant of the Attache.
I love brevity--I am a man of few words, and, therefore,
constitutionally economical of them; but brevity is apt to degenerate
into obscurity. Writing a book, however, and book-making, are two very
different things: “spinning a yarn” is mechanical, and book-making
savours of trade, and is the employment of a manufacturer. The author
by profession, weaves his web by the piece, and as there is much
competition in this branch of trade, extends it over the greatest
possible surface, so as to make the most of his raw material. Hence
every work of fancy is made to reach to three volumes, otherwise it will
not pay, and a manufacture that does not requite the cost of production,
invariably and inevitably terminates in bankruptcy. A thought,
therefore, like a pound of cotton, must be well spun out to be valuable.
It is very contemptuous to say of a man, that he has but one idea, but
it is the highest meed of praise that can be bestowed on a book. A man,
who writes thus, can write for ever.
Now, it is not only not my intention to write for ever, or as Mr. Slick
would say “for everlastinly;” but to make my bow and retire very soon
from the press altogether. I might assign many reasons for this modest
course, all of them plausible, and some of them indeed quite dignified.
I like dignity: any man who has lived the greater part of his life in
a colony is so accustomed to it, that he becomes quite enamoured of it,
and wrapping himself up in it as a cloak, stalks abroad the “observed of
all observers.” I could undervalue this species of writing if I
thought proper, affect a contempt for idiomatic humour, or hint at the
employment being inconsistent with the grave discharge of important
official duties, which are so distressingly onerous, as not to leave
me a moment for recreation; but these airs, though dignified, will
unfortunately not avail me. I shall put my dignity into my pocket,
therefore, and disclose the real cause of this diffidence.
In the year one thousand eight hundred and fourteen, I embarked at
Halifax on board the Buffalo store-ship for England. She was a noble
teak built ship of twelve or thirteen hundred tons burden, had excellent
accommodation, and carried over to merry old England, a very merry party
of passengers, _quorum parva pars fui_, a youngster just emerged from
college.
On the banks of Newfoundland we were becalmed, and the passengers amused
themselves by throwing overboard a bottle, and shooting at it with ball.
The guns used for this occasion, were the King’s muskets, taken from the
arm-chest on the quarter-deck. The shooting was execrable. It was hard
to say which were worse marksmen, the officers of the ship, or the
passengers. Not a bottle was hit: many reasons were offered for this
failure, but the two principal ones were, that the muskets were bad, and
that it required great skill to overcome the difficulty occasioned by
both, the vessel and the bottle being in motion at the same time, and
that motion dissimilar.
I lost my patience. I had never practised shooting with ball; I had
frightened a few snipe, and wounded a few partridges, but that was
the extent of my experience. I knew, however, that I could not by any
possibility shoot worse than every body else had done, and might by
accident shoot better.
“Give me a gun, Captain,” said I, “and I will shew you how to uncork
that bottle.”
I took the musket, but its weight was beyond my strength of arm. I was
afraid that I could not hold it out steadily, even for a moment, it was
so very heavy--I threw it up with a desperate effort and fired. The neck
of the bottle flew up in the air a full yard, and then disappeared. I
was amazed myself at my success. Every body was surprised, but as every
body attributed it to long practice, they were not so much astonished as
I was, who knew it was wholly owing to chance. It was a lucky hit, and I
made the most of it; success made me arrogant, and boy-like, I became a
boaster.
“Ah,” said I coolly, “you must be born with a rifle in your hand,
Captain, to shoot well. Every body shoots well in America. I do not call
myself a good shot. I have not had the requisite experience; but there
are those who can take out the eye of a squirrel at a hundred yards.”
“Can you see the eye of a squirrel at that distance?” said the Captain,
with a knowing wink of his own little ferret eye.
That question, which raised a general laugh at my expense, was a
puzzler. The absurdity of the story, which I had heard a thousand times,
never struck me so forcibly. But I was not to be pat down so easily.
“See it!” said I, “why not? Try it and you will find your sight improve
with your shooting. Now, I can’t boast of being a good marksman myself;
my studies” (and here I looked big, for I doubted if he could even read,
much less construe a chapter in the Greek Testament) “did not leave me
much time. A squirrel is too small an object for all but an experienced
man, but a “_large_” mark like a quart bottle can easily be hit at a
hundred yards--that is nothing.”
“I will take you a bet,” said he, “of a doubloon, you do not do it
again?”
“Thank you,” I replied with great indifference: “I never bet, and
besides, that gun has so injured my shoulder, that I could not, if I
would.”
By that accidental shot, I obtained a great name as a marksman, and by
prudence I retained it all the voyage. This is precisely my case now,
gentle reader. I made an accidental hit with the Clockmaker: when he
ceases to speak, I shall cease to write. The little reputation I then
acquired, I do not intend to jeopardize by trying too many experiments.
I know that it was chance--many people think it was skill. If they
choose to think so, they have a right to their opinion, and that opinion
is fame. I value this reputation too highly not to take care of it.
As I do not intend then to write often, I shall not wire-draw my
subjects, for the mere purpose of filling my pages. Still a book should
be perfect within itself, and intelligible without reference to other
books. Authors are vain people, and vanity as well as dignity is
indigenous to a colony. Like a pastry-cook’s apprentice, I see so much
of both their sweet things around me daily, that I have no appetite for
either of them.
I might perhaps be pardoned, if I took it for granted, that the
dramatis personae of this work were sufficiently known, not to require
a particular introduction. Dickens assumed the fact that his book on
America would travel wherever the English language was spoken, and,
therefore, called it “Notes for General Circulation.” Even Colonists
say, that this was too bad, and if they say so, it must be so. I shall,
therefore, briefly state, who and what the persons are that composed our
travelling party, as if they were wholly unknown to fame, and then leave
them to speak for themselves.
The Reverend Mr. Hopewell is a very aged clergyman of the Church of
England, and was educated at Cambridge College, in Massachusetts.
Previously to the revolution, he was appointed rector of a small parish
in Connecticut. When the colonies obtained their independence, he
remained with his little flock in his native land, and continued to
minister to their spiritual wants until within a few years, when his
parishioners becoming Unitarians, gave him his dismissal. Affable in
his manners and simple in his habits, with a mind well stored with human
lore, and a heart full of kindness for his fellow-creatures, he was at
once an agreeable and an instructive companion. Born and educated in the
United States, when they were British dependencies, and possessed of
a thorough knowledge of the causes which led to the rebellion, and the
means used to hasten the crisis, he was at home on all colonial
topics; while his great experience of both monarchical and democratical
governments, derived from a long residence in both, made him a most
valuable authority on politics generally.
Mr. Samuel Slick is a native of the same parish, and received his
education from Mr. Hopewell. I first became acquainted with him while
travelling in Nova Scotia. He was then a manufacturer and vendor of
wooden clocks. My first impression of him was by no means favourable. He
forced himself most unceremoniously into my company and conversation. I
was disposed to shake him off, but could not. Talk he would, and as his
talk was of that kind, which did not require much reply on my part, he
took my silence for acquiescence, and talked on. I soon found that he
was a character; and, as he knew every part of the lower colonies, and
every body in them, I employed him as my guide.
I have made at different times three several tours with him, the results
of which I have given in three several series of a work, entitled the
“Clockmaker, or the Sayings and Doings of Mr. Samuel Slick.” Our last
tour terminated at New York, where, in consequence of the celebrity he
obtained from these “Sayings and Doings” he received the appointment of
Attache to the American Legation at the Court of St. James’s. The
object of this work is to continue the record of his observations and
proceedings in England.
The third person of the party, gentle reader, is your humble servant,
Thomas Poker, Esquire, a native of Nova Scotia, and a retired member of
the Provincial bar. My name will seldom appear in these pages, as I am
uniformly addressed by both my companions as “Squire,” nor shall I have
to perform the disagreeable task of “reporting my own speeches,” for
naturally taciturn, I delight in listening rather than talking, and
modestly prefer the duties of an amanuensis, to the responsibilities of
original composition.
The last personage is Jube Japan, a black servant of the Attache.
Such are the persons who composed the little party that embarked at New
York, on board the Packet ship “Tyler,” and sailed on the -- of May,
184-, for England.
The motto prefixed to this work
(Greek Text)
sufficiently explains its character. Classes and not individuals have
been selected for observation. National traits are fair subjects for
satire or for praise, but personal peculiarities claim the privilege of
exemption in right of that hospitality, through whose medium they have
been alone exhibited. Public topics are public property; every body has
a right to use them without leave and without apology. It is only when
we quit the limits of this “common” and enter upon “private grounds,”
that we are guilty of “a trespass.” This distinction is alike obvious to
good sense and right feeling. I have endeavoured to keep it constantly
in view; and if at any time I shall be supposed to have erred (I say
“supposed,” for I am unconscious of having done so) I must claim the
indulgence always granted to involuntary offences.
Now the patience of my reader may fairly be considered a “private
right.” I shall, therefore, respect its boundaries and proceed at
once with my narrative, having been already quite long enough about
“uncorking a bottle.”