AN EXORDIUM--FINE SHIPS--HIGH BARBARY CAPTAINS--FREE-BORN
ENGLISHMEN--MONSTROUS FIGURE--SWASHBUCKLER--THE GRAND COACHES--THE
FOOTMEN--A TRAVELLING EXPEDITION--BLACK JACK--NELSON'S CANNON--PHARAOH'S
BUTLER--A DILIGENCE--TWO PASSENGERS--SHARKING PRIEST--VIRGILIO--LESSONS
IN ITALIAN--TWO OPINIONS--HOLY MARY--PRIESTLY
CONFEDERATES--METHODIST--LIKE A SEPULCHRE--ALL FOR THEMSELVES
'I am a poor postilion, as you see; yet, as I have seen a thing or two
and heard a thing or two of what is going on in the world, perhaps what I
have to tell you connected with myself may not prove altogether
uninteresting. Now, my friends, this manner of opening a story is what
the man who taught rhetoric would call a hex--hex--'
'Exordium,' said I.
'Just so,' said the postilion; 'I treated you to a per--per--peroration
some time ago, so that I have contrived to put the cart before the horse,
as the Irish orators frequently do in the honourable House, in whose
speeches, especially those who have taken lessons in rhetoric, the
per--per--what's the word?--frequently goes before the exordium.
'I was born in the neighbouring county; my father was land-steward to a
squire of about a thousand a year. My father had two sons, of whom I am
the youngest by some years. My elder brother was of a spirited roving
disposition, and for fear that he should turn out what is generally
termed ungain, my father determined to send him to sea: so once upon a
time, when my brother was about fifteen, he took him to the great seaport
of the county, where he apprenticed him to a captain of one of the ships
which trade to the high Barbary coast. Fine ships they were, I have
heard say, more than thirty in number, and all belonging to a wonderful
great gentleman, who had once been a parish boy, but had contrived to
make an immense fortune by trading to that coast for gold-dust, ivory,
and other strange articles; and for doing so, I mean for making a
fortune, had been made a knight baronet. So my brother went to the high
Barbary shore, on board the fine vessel, and in about a year returned and
came to visit us; he repeated the voyage several times, always coming to
see his parents on his return. Strange stories he used to tell us of
what he had been witness to on the high Barbary coast, both off shore and
on. He said that the fine vessel in which he sailed was nothing better
than a painted hell; that the captain was a veritable fiend, whose grand
delight was in tormenting his men, especially when they were sick, as
they frequently were, there being always fever on the high Barbary coast;
and that though the captain was occasionally sick himself, his being so
made no difference, or rather it did make a difference, though for the
worse, he being when sick always more inveterate and malignant than at
other times. He said that once, when he himself was sick, his captain
had pitched his face all over, which exploit was much applauded by the
other high Barbary captains--all of whom, from what my brother said,
appeared to be of much the same disposition as my brother's captain,
taking wonderful delight in tormenting the crews, and doing all manner of
terrible things. My brother frequently said that nothing whatever
prevented him from running away from his ship, and never returning, but
the hope he entertained of one day being captain himself, and able to
torment people in his turn, which he solemnly vowed he would do, as a
kind of compensation for what he himself had undergone. And if things
were going on in a strange way off the high Barbary shore amongst those
who came there to trade, they were going on in a way yet stranger with
the people who lived upon it.
'Oh the strange ways of the black men who lived on that shore, of which
my brother used to tell us at home--selling their sons, daughters, and
servants for slaves, and the prisoners taken in battle, to the Spanish
captains, to be carried to Havannah, and when there, sold at a profit,
the idea of which, my brother said, went to the hearts of our own
captains, who used to say what a hard thing it was that free-born
Englishmen could not have a hand in the traffic, seeing that it was
forbidden by the laws of their country; talking fondly of the good old
times when their forefathers used to carry slaves to Jamaica and
Barbadoes, realising immense profit, besides the pleasure of hearing
their shrieks on the voyage; and then the superstitions of the blacks,
which my brother used to talk of; their sharks' teeth, their wisps of
fowls' feathers, their half-baked pots full of burnt bones, of which they
used to make what they called fetish, and bow down to, and ask favours
of, and then, perhaps, abuse and strike, provided the senseless rubbish
did not give them what they asked for; and then, above all, Mumbo Jumbo,
the grand fetish master, who lived somewhere in the woods, and who used
to come out every now and then with his fetish companions; a monstrous
figure, all wound round with leaves and branches, so as to be quite
indistinguishable, and, seating himself on the high seat in the villages,
receive homage from the people, and also gifts and offerings, the most
valuable of which were pretty damsels, and then betake himself back
again, with his followers, into the woods. Oh the tales that my brother
used to tell us of the high Barbary shore! Poor fellow! what became of
him I can't say; the last time he came back from a voyage, he told us
that his captain, as soon as he had brought his vessel to port and
settled with his owner, drowned himself off the quay, in a fit of the
horrors, which it seems high Barbary captains, after a certain number of
years, are much subject to. After staying about a month with us, he went
to sea again, with another captain; and, bad as the old one had been, it
appears the new one was worse, for, unable to bear his treatment, my
brother left his ship off the high Barbary shore, and ran away up the
country. Some of his comrades, whom we afterwards saw, said that there
were various reports about him on the shore; one that he had taken on
with Mumbo Jumbo, and was serving him in his house in the woods, in the
capacity of swashbuckler, or life-guardsman; another, that he was gone in
quest of a mighty city in the heart of the negro country; another, that
in swimming a stream he had been devoured by an alligator. Now, these
two last reports were bad enough; the idea of their flesh and blood being
bit asunder by a ravenous fish was sad enough to my poor parents; and not
very comfortable was the thought of his sweltering over the hot sands in
quest of the negro city; but the idea of their son, their eldest child,
serving Mumbo Jumbo as swashbuckler was worst of all, and caused my poor
parents to shed many a scalding tear.
'I stayed at home with my parents until I was about eighteen, assisting
my father in various ways. I then went to live at the Squire's, partly
as groom, partly as footman. After living in the country some time, I
attended the family in a trip of six weeks which they made to London.
Whilst there, happening to have some words with an old ill-tempered
coachman, who had been for a great many years in the family, my master
advised me to leave, offering to recommend me to a family of his
acquaintance, who were in need of a footman. I was glad to accept his
offer, and in a few days went to my new place. My new master was one of
the great gentry, a baronet in Parliament, and possessed of an estate of
about twenty thousand a year; his family consisted of his lady, a son, a
fine young man just coming of age, and two very sweet amiable daughters.
I liked this place much better than my first, there was so much more
pleasant noise and bustle--so much more grand company, and so many more
opportunities of improving myself. Oh, how I liked to see the grand
coaches drive up to the door, with the grand company; and though, amidst
that company, there were some who did not look very grand, there were
others, and not a few, who did. Some of the ladies quite captivated me;
there was the Marchioness of --- in particular. This young lady puts me
much in mind of her; it is true, the Marchioness, as I saw her then, was
about fifteen years older than this young gentlewoman is now, and not so
tall by some inches, but she had the very same hair, and much the same
neck and shoulders--no offence, I hope? And then some of the young
gentlemen, with their cool, haughty, care-for-nothing looks, struck me as
being very fine fellows. There was one in particular, whom I frequently
used to stare at, not altogether unlike some one I have seen
hereabouts--he had a slight cast in his eye, and . . . but I won't enter
into every particular. And then the footmen! Oh, how those footmen
helped to improve me with their conversation. Many of them could
converse much more glibly than their masters, and appeared to have much
better taste. At any rate, they seldom approved of what their masters
did. I remember being once with one in the gallery of the play-house,
when something of Shakespeare's was being performed: some one in the
first tier of boxes was applauding very loudly. "That's my fool of a
governor," said he; "he is weak enough to like Shakespeare--I
don't;--he's so confoundedly low, but he won't last long--going down.
Shakespeare culminated"--I think that was the word--"culminated some time
ago."
'And then the professor of elocution, of whom my governors used to take
lessons, and of which lessons I had my share, by listening behind the
door; but for that professor of elocution I should not be able to round
my periods--an expression of his--in the manner I do.
'After I had been three years at this place my mistress died. Her death,
however, made no great alteration in my way of living, the family
spending their winters in London, and their summers at their old seat in
S--- as before. At last, the young ladies, who had not yet got husbands,
which was strange enough, seeing, as I told you before, they were very
amiable, proposed to our governor a travelling expedition abroad. The
old baronet consented, though young master was much against it, saying
they would all be much better at home. As the girls persisted, however,
he at last withdrew his opposition, and even promised to follow them as
soon as his parliamentary duties would permit; for he was just got into
Parliament, and, like most other young members, thought that nothing
could be done in the House without him. So the old gentleman and the two
young ladies set off, taking me with them, and a couple of ladies' maids
to wait upon them. First of all, we went to Paris, where we continued
three months, the old baronet and the ladies going to see the various
sights of the city, and the neighbourhood, and I attending them. They
soon got tired of sight-seeing, and of Paris too; and so did I. However,
they still continued there, in order, I believe, that the young ladies
might lay in a store of French finery. I should have passed my idle time
at Paris, of which I had plenty after the sight-seeing was over, very
unpleasantly, but for Black Jack. Eh! did you never hear of Black Jack?
Ah! if you had ever been an English servant in Paris, you would have
known Black Jack; not an English gentleman's servant who has been at
Paris for this last ten years but knows Black Jack and his ordinary. A
strange fellow he was--of what country no one could exactly say--for as
for judging from speech, that was impossible, Jack speaking all languages
equally ill. Some said he came direct from Satan's kitchen, and that
when he gives up keeping ordinary, he will return there again, though the
generally-received opinion at Paris was, that he was at one time butler
to King Pharaoh; and that, after lying asleep for four thousand years in
a place called the Kattycombs, he was awaked by the sound of Nelson's
cannon at the battle of the Nile, and going to the shore, took on with
the admiral, and became, in course of time, ship steward; and that after
Nelson's death he was captured by the French, on board one of whose
vessels he served in a somewhat similar capacity till the peace, when he
came to Paris, and set up an ordinary for servants, sticking the name of
Katcomb over the door, in allusion to the place where he had his long
sleep. But, whatever his origin was, Jack kept his own counsel, and
appeared to care nothing for what people said about him, or called him.
Yes, I forgot, there was one name he would not be called, and that was
"Portuguese." I once saw Black Jack knock down a coachman, six foot
high, who called him black-faced Portuguese. "Any name but dat, you
shab," said Black Jack, who was a little round fellow, of about five feet
two; "I would not stand to be called Portuguese by Nelson himself." Jack
was rather fond of talking about Nelson, and hearing people talk about
him, so that it is not improbable that he may have sailed with him; and
with respect to his having been King Pharaoh's butler, all I have to say
is, I am not disposed to give the downright lie to the report. Jack was
always ready to do a kind turn to a poor servant out of place, and has
often been known to assist such as were in prison, which charitable
disposition he perhaps acquired from having lost a good place himself,
having seen the inside of a prison, and known the want of a meal's
victuals, all which trials King Pharaoh's butler underwent, so he may
have been that butler; at any rate, I have known positive conclusions
come to on no better premises, if indeed as good. As for the story of
his coming direct from Satan's kitchen, I place no confidence in it at
all, as Black Jack had nothing of Satan about him but blackness, on which
account he was called Black Jack. Nor am I disposed to give credit to a
report that his hatred of the Portuguese arose from some ill treatment
which he had once experienced when on shore, at Lisbon, from certain
gentlewomen of the place, but rather conclude that it arose from an
opinion he entertained that the Portuguese never paid their debts, one of
the ambassadors of that nation whose house he had served, having left
Paris several thousand francs in his debt. This is all that I have to
say about Black Jack, without whose funny jokes and good ordinary I
should have passed my time in Paris in a very disconsolate manner.
'After we had been at Paris between two and three months, we left it in
the direction of Italy, which country the family had a great desire to
see. After travelling a great many days in a thing which, though called
a diligence, did not exhibit much diligence, we came to a great big town,
seated around a nasty salt-water bason, connected by a narrow passage
with the sea. Here we were to embark; and so we did as soon as possible,
glad enough to get away--at least I was, and so I make no doubt were the
rest, for such a place for bad smells I never was in. It seems all the
drains and sewers of the place run into that same salt bason, voiding
into it all their impurities, which, not being able to escape into the
sea in any considerable quantity, owing to the narrowness of the
entrance, there accumulate, filling the whole atmosphere with these same
outrageous scents, on which account the town is a famous lodging-house of
the plague. The ship in which we embarked was bound for a place in Italy
called Naples, where we were to stay some time. The voyage was rather a
lazy one, the ship not being moved by steam; for at the time of which I
am speaking, some five years ago, steam-ships were not so plentiful as
now. There were only two passengers in the grand cabin, where my
governor and his daughters were, an Italian lady and a priest. Of the
lady I have not much to say, she appeared to be a quiet respectable
person enough, and after our arrival at Naples I neither saw nor heard
anything more of her; but of the priest I shall have a good deal to say
in the sequel (that, by the bye, is a word I learnt from the professor of
rhetoric), and it would have been well for our family had they never met
him.
'On the third day of the voyage the priest came to me, who was rather
unwell with sea-sickness, which he, of course, felt nothing of--that kind
of people being never affected like others. He was a finish-looking man
of about forty-five, but had something strange in his eyes, which I have
since thought that all was not right in a certain place called the heart.
After a few words of condolence, in a broken kind of English, he asked me
various questions about our family; and I, won by his seeming kindness,
told him all I knew about them--of which communicativeness I afterwards
very much repented. As soon as he had got out of me all he desired, he
left me; and I observed that during the rest of the voyage he was
wonderfully attentive to our governor, and yet more to the young ladies.
Both, however, kept him rather at a distance; the young ladies were
reserved, and once or twice I heard our governor cursing him between his
teeth for a sharking priest. The priest, however, was not disconcerted,
and continued his attentions, which in a little time produced an effect,
so that, by the time we landed at Naples, our great folks had conceived a
kind of liking for the man, and when they took their leave invited him to
visit them, which he promised to do. We hired a grand house or palace at
Naples; it belonged to a poor kind of prince, who was glad enough to let
it to our governor, and also his servants and carriages; and glad enough
were the poor servants, for they got from us what they never got from the
prince--plenty of meat and money; and glad enough, I make no doubt, were
the horses for the provender we gave them; and I daresay the coaches were
not sorry to be cleaned and furnished up. Well, we went out and came in;
going to see the sights, and returning. Amongst other things we saw was
the burning mountain, and the tomb of a certain sorcerer called Virgilio,
who made witch rhymes, by which he could raise the dead. Plenty of
people came to see us, both English and Italians, and amongst the rest
the priest. He did not come amongst the first, but allowed us to settle
and become a little quiet before he showed himself; and after a day or
two he paid us another visit, then another, till at last his visits were
daily.
'I did not like that Jack Priest; so I kept my eye upon all his motions.
Lord! how that Jack Priest did curry favour with our governor and the two
young ladies; and he curried, and curried, till he had got himself into
favour with the governor, and more especially with the two young ladies,
of whom their father was doatingly fond. At last the ladies took lessons
in Italian of the priest, a language in which he was said to be a grand
proficient, and of which they had hitherto known but very little; and
from that time his influence over them, and consequently over the old
governor, increased, till the tables were turned, and he no longer
curried favour with them, but they with him--yes, as true as my leg
aches, the young ladies curried, and the old governor curried favour with
that same priest; when he was with them, they seemed almost to hang on
his lips, that is, the young ladies; and as for the old governor, he
never contradicted him, and when the fellow was absent, which, by the
bye, was not often, it was, "Father-so-and-so said this," and
"Father-so-and-so said that"; "Father so-and-so thinks we should do
so-and-so, or that we should not do so-and-so." I at first thought that
he must have given them something, some philtre or the like, but one of
the English maid-servants, who had a kind of respect for me, and who saw
much more behind the scenes than I did, informed me that he was
continually instilling strange notions into their heads, striving, by
every possible method, to make them despise the religion of their own
land, and take up that of the foreign country in which they were. And
sure enough, in a little time, the girls had altogether left off going to
an English chapel, and were continually visiting places of Italian
worship. The old governor, it is true, still went to his church, but he
appeared to be hesitating between two opinions; and once, when he was at
dinner, he said to two or three English friends that, since he had become
better acquainted with it, he had conceived a much more favourable
opinion of the Catholic religion than he had previously entertained. In
a word, the priest ruled the house, and everything was done according to
his will and pleasure by degrees he persuaded the young ladies to drop
their English acquaintances, whose place he supplied with Italians,
chiefly females. My poor old governor would not have had a person to
speak to--for he never could learn the language--but for two or three
Englishmen who used to come occasionally and take a bottle with him in a
summer-house, whose company he could not be persuaded to resign,
notwithstanding the entreaties of his daughters, instigated by the
priest, whose grand endeavour seemed to be to render the minds of all
three foolish, for his own ends. And if he was busy above stairs with
the governor, there was another busy below with us poor English servants,
a kind of subordinate priest, a low Italian; as he could speak no
language but his own, he was continually jabbering to us in that, and by
hearing him the maids and myself contrived to pick up a good deal of the
language, so that we understood most that was said, and could speak it
very fairly; and the themes of his jabber were the beauty and virtues of
one whom he called Holy Mary, and the power and grandeur of one whom he
called the Holy Father; and he told us that we should shortly have an
opportunity of seeing the Holy Father, who could do anything he liked
with Holy Mary: in the meantime we had plenty of opportunities of seeing
Holy Mary, for in every church, chapel, and convent to which we were
taken, there was an image of Holy Mary, who, if the images were dressed
at all in her fashion, must have been very fond of short petticoats and
tinsel, and who, if those said figures at all resembled her in face,
could scarcely have been half as handsome as either of my two
fellow-servants, not to speak of the young ladies.
'Now it happened that one of the female servants was much taken with what
she saw and heard, and gave herself up entirely to the will of the
subordinate, who had quite as much dominion over her as his superior had
over the ladies; the other maid, however, the one who had a kind of
respect for me, was not so easily besotted; she used to laugh at what she
saw, and at what the fellow told her, and from her I learnt that amongst
other things intended by these priestly confederates was robbery; she
said that the poor old governor had already been persuaded by his
daughters to put more than a thousand pounds into the superior priest's
hands for purposes of charity and religion, as was said, and that the
subordinate one had already inveigled her fellow-servant out of every
penny which she had saved from her wages, and had endeavoured likewise to
obtain what money she herself had, but in vain. With respect to myself,
the fellow shortly after made an attempt towards obtaining a hundred
crowns, of which, by some means, he knew me to be in possession, telling
me what a meritorious thing it was to give one's superfluities for the
purposes of religion. "That is true," said I, "and if, after my return
to my native country, I find I have anything which I don't want myself, I
will employ it in helping to build a Methodist chapel."
'By the time that the three months were expired for which he had hired
the palace of the needy Prince, the old governor began to talk of
returning to England, at least of leaving Italy. I believe he had become
frightened at the calls which were continually being made upon him for
money; for after all, you know, if there is a sensitive part of a man's
wearing apparel, it is his breeches pocket; but the young ladies could
not think of leaving dear Italy and the dear priest; and then they had
seen nothing of the country, they had only seen Naples; before leaving
dear Italia they must see more of the country and the cities; above all,
they must see a place which they called the Eternal City, or some similar
nonsensical name; and they persisted so that the poor governor permitted
them, as usual, to have their way; and it was decided what route they
should take--that is, the priest was kind enough to decide for them, and
was also kind enough to promise to go with them part of the route, as far
as a place where there was a wonderful figure of Holy Mary, which the
priest said it was highly necessary for them to see before visiting the
Eternal City: so we left Naples in hired carriages, driven by fellows
they call veturini, cheating, drunken dogs, I remember they were.
Besides our own family there was the priest and his subordinate, and a
couple of hired lackeys. We were several days upon the journey,
travelling through a very wild country, which the ladies pretended to be
delighted with, and which the governor cursed on account of the badness
of the roads; and when we came to any particularly wild spot we used to
stop, in order to enjoy the scenery, as the ladies said; and then we
would spread a horse-cloth on the ground, and eat bread and cheese, and
drink wine of the country. And some of the holes and corners in which we
bivouacked, as the ladies called it, were something like this place where
we are now, so that when I came down here it put me in mind of them. At
last we arrived at the place where was the holy image.
'We went to the house or chapel in which the holy image was kept--a
frightful, ugly black figure of Holy Mary, dressed in her usual way; and
after we had stared at the figure, and some of our party had bowed down
to it, we were shown a great many things which were called holy relics,
which consisted of thumb-nails, and fore-nails, and toe-nails, and hair,
and teeth, and a feather or two, and a mighty thigh-bone, but whether of
a man or a camel I can't say; all of which things, I was told, if
properly touched and handled, had mighty power to cure all kinds of
disorders. And as we went from the holy house we saw a man in a state of
great excitement: he was foaming at the mouth, and cursing the holy image
and all its household, because, after he had worshipped it and made
offerings to it, and besought it to assist him in a game of chance which
he was about to play, it had left him in the lurch, allowing him to lose
all his money. And when I thought of all the rubbish I had seen, and the
purposes which it was applied to, in conjunction with the rage of the
losing gamester at the deaf and dumb image, I could not help comparing
the whole with what my poor brother used to tell me of the superstitious
practices of the blacks on the high Barbary shore, and their occasional
rage and fury at the things they worshipped; and I said to myself, If all
this here doesn't smell of fetish, may I smell fetid.
'At this place the priest left us, returning to Naples with his
subordinate, on some particular business I suppose. It was, however,
agreed that he should visit us at the Holy City. We did not go direct to
the Holy City, but bent our course to two or three other cities which the
family were desirous of seeing; but as nothing occurred to us in these
places of any particular interest, I shall take the liberty of passing
them by in silence. At length we arrived at the Eternal City: an immense
city it was, looking as if it had stood for a long time, and would stand
for a long time still; compared with it, London would look like a mere
assemblage of bee-skeps; however, give me the bee-skeps with their merry
hum and bustle, and life and honey, rather than that huge town, which
looked like a sepulchre, where there was no life, no busy hum, no bees,
but a scanty sallow population, intermixed with black priests, white
priests, grey priests; and though I don't say there was no honey in the
place, for I believe there was, I am ready to take my Bible oath that it
was not made there, and that the priests kept it all for themselves.'