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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
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POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
Fifth Series
ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832
CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)
NO. 126.—VOL. III. SATURDAY, MAY 29, 1886. PRICE 1½_d._]
CLAIMANTS TO ROYALTY.
Since the famous Tichborne trial brought ‘The Claimant’ so prominently
before the reading public, the general use of a term which accurately
described his position without seeming to prejudge his case has given
it universal currency as a convenient designation in similar cases
of disputed or doubtful identity. For instance, the newspapers have
recently announced a ‘Napoleonic Claimant,’ who makes his appearance in
the most unromantic manner, by presenting himself before a magistrate
at a police station in Paris, and asking for money to pay his passage
to England. He claimed to be the Prince Imperial, the legitimate son of
the Emperor Napoleon III. and the Empress Eugenie. The announcement of
his death in Zululand was a mistake: he was not killed, but captured
by the Zulus. After some time, he effected his escape, and having
traversed Africa from south to north, he crossed the Mediterranean and
landed at Marseilles. His poverty and his dignity prevented him from
presenting himself before his mother, and so he stayed and worked in
Marseilles incognito for several years. But he met the Empress once: it
was at Vienna, at the tomb of Maximilian. So violent was his emotion,
that he swooned away. The Empress herself raised him and tended him;
but when he became conscious, she had gone. He wished now to go to her,
but he was penniless. Would the magistrate grant him the sum necessary;
and his mother, the Empress, would repay the loan? When asked to show
his papers, he produced a book in which was entered the name of Pollak,
a journeyman clockmaker of Vienna. It had been lent to him to enable
him to maintain his incognito.
When he found that his story was not to be credited, he accused the
magistrate of yielding to pressure put upon him by the Princes Victor
and Louis, whose interest it was to supplant the rightful heir. He
spoke in the language of a well-educated man; and when examined with
a view to determine his mental condition, he betrayed no symptom of
derangement.
The methods of all Claimants have a certain similarity, though some
have been more audacious and successful than others. This is perhaps
the most audacious of modern instances. But there are many examples
of Claimants more or less notorious in the history of past times,
whose pretensions are quite as difficult to reconcile with recorded
facts. In most of these historical instances the Claimants have
advanced pretensions to the name and station of a deceased member of
some reigning family, and much obscurity has thus been thrown around
historical events, whose incidental details have been confused and
complicated by the conflicting statements of contemporary or nearly
contemporary records.
Perhaps the least known, but not the least curious and tragical
story of a Claimant is that of the woman who, in the first year of
the fourteenth century, attempted to personate the Maid of Norway,
heiress to the crown of Scotland, and presumptive heiress also to
that of Norway.—It had been given out that the Maid of Norway had
died on her voyage to Scotland; but that, it was now alleged, was a
mistake; she did not die; but she was ‘sold’ or betrayed by those
who had charge of her, and carried away to an obscure hiding-place
on the continent. She had at last found means to escape, and coming
from Lübeck to Bergen—the very same port from which she had sailed for
Scotland ten years before—she there presented herself to the people
of Norway as the Princess Margaret. Although her father, King Eirik,
was now dead, and her uncle Hakon possessed the throne, her right of
succession to the crowns of Norway and of Scotland had been secured by
the marriage contract of Norburgh, by which her father had espoused
her mother Margaret, the daughter of Alexander III., king of Scotland.
The Claimant appeared old for her years, and was white-haired; but
sorrow brings gray hairs more surely than age. She was a married woman;
and her husband came with her to Norway, and subsequently shared her
tragic fate. King Hakon himself was present at her trial in Bergen, of
which, unfortunately, no record exists. But we learn from the _Iceland
Annals_ that she was burned to death as an impostor at Nordness, and
her husband beheaded. When she was being taken through the Kongsgaard
Port to the place of execution, she said; ‘I remember well when I,
as a child, was taken through this self-same gate to be carried into
Scotland; there was then in the High Church of the Apostles an Iceland
priest, Haflidi by name, who was chaplain to my father, King Eirik;
and when the clergy ceased singing, Sir Haflidi began the hymn _Veni
Creator_, and that hymn was sung out to the end, just as I was taken on
board the ship.’
Haflidi Steinsson, the priest here mentioned, had long since gone
back to Iceland, where he died parish priest of Breidabolstad; and in
chronicling his death, the annalist adds that ‘he was King Eirik’s
chaplain at the time that his daughter Margaret was taken to Scotland,
as she herself afterwards bore witness when she was being carried to
execution at Nordness.’ Indeed, so prevalent was the belief in the
personal identity of the Claimant with the daughter of King Eirik who
died on the voyage to Orkney in 1290, that the place of her execution
became a resort of pilgrims; and many of the priesthood having
countenanced the popular belief in her martyrdom, a chapel was built on
the spot where she suffered; and though uncanonised, and reprobated by
the dignitaries of the church, her memory was held in reverence till
the Reformation as St Maritte (Margaret), the Martyr of Nordness. In
1320, the number of pilgrimages to this irregular shrine had become so
numerous that Bishop Audfinn of Bergen issued an official interdict
against them, an interference which was resented by his canons, some of
whom were bold enough to protest against its promulgation.
Nothing is known of the Claimant’s previous history, except that the
contemporary annalist states that she came to Bergen in a ship from
Lübeck. Absolom Pedersen asserts that she came from Scotland, but gives
no authority for the statement, and there is sufficient evidence in the
records to render this highly improbable. But it is a very remarkable
circumstance that Wyntoun, the popular historian of his time, gave
currency in Scotland to the statement—which we must assume to have been
then the popular belief—that the Maid of Norway was put to death in
her own country by martyrdom. After giving circumstantial details of
the sending of the Scottish embassy to Norway, consisting of Sir David
of the Wemyss and Michael Scot of Balwearie, he adds, that when they
arrived—
Dead then was that Maiden fair,
That of law suld have been heir,
And appearëd til have been
By the law of Norway Queen;
But that Maiden sweet for-thi [_therefore_]
Was put to death by martyry.
In accordance with the usage of the period, the expression of the
chronicler describing the manner of her death would be universally
understood to mean burning at the stake; and the evident anachronism,
as well as the inherent improbability of the narrative, is accounted
for by the fact that it quite accurately describes the death of the
Claimant, but assigns it to the time of the death of the Princess.
The reason given by Wyntoun for the ‘martyrdom’ is, that the
Norwegians—though their law allowed—could not brook the idea of a woman
succeeding to the crown; and this also may be accounted for by the fact
that the woman who suffered was a pretender to the crown.
No incident in Scottish history is more pathetic than that of the
untimely death of the young Princess on her voyage to Orkney; and
no single event in the whole course of that history has exercised a
more important influence on the destinies of the nation. In these
circumstances, we cannot cease to wonder how it came to pass that there
is no authentic record of its details in the contemporary or nearly
contemporary chronicles of Scottish or Norwegian history. The only
contemporary document in Scottish record which notices her death is
the letter of the Bishop of St Andrews to Edward I., dated at Leuchars
the 7th of October 1290, in which the bishop states that there was a
rumour of her death; but that he had heard subsequently that she ‘had
recovered of her sickness, but was still weak.’ It was plain, however,
that the bishop did not believe the rumour of her recovery, for he
concludes his letter by praying King Edward to approach the Borders
with his army to prevent bloodshed, seeing that Sir Robert Bruce had
come to Perth and Mar and Athole were collecting their forces. On the
Norwegian side, there is a total absence of authentic contemporary
record of the time and manner of the death of the Princess; and there
would have been absolutely nothing known of the details of her decease,
if it had not been for the appearance ten years later of the Claimant,
whom Munch, the historian of Norway, following Bishop Audfinn, has no
hesitation in designating ‘The False Margaret.’
In his official interdict of 1320, forbidding the people ‘any longer to
invoke that woman with great vows and worship as if she had been one
of God’s martyrs,’ the bishop states that he has deemed it his duty to
declare the truth as to her case; ‘She said, indeed, that she was the
child and lawful heir of King Eirik; but when she came from Lübeck to
Bergen she was gray-haired and white in the head, and was proved to be
twenty years older than the time of King Eirik’s marriage with Margaret
of Scotland. He was then only thirteen winters old, and consequently,
could not have been the father of a person of her years. And then he
had no other child than one daughter by Queen Margaret. This only
child of King Eirik and Queen Margaret was on her journey to Scotland,
when she died in Orkney between the hands of Bishop Narve of Bergen,
and in the presence of the best men of the land, who had attended her
from Norway; and the bishop and Herr Thore Hakonson and others brought
back her corpse to Bergen, where her father had the coffin opened and
narrowly examined the body, and himself acknowledged that it was his
daughter’s corpse, and buried her beside the queen her mother, in the
stone wall on the north side of the choir of the cathedral church of
Bergen.’
Although we owe these details of the Princess’s death and burial,
meagre as they are, to the bishop’s anxiety to confute the pretensions
of the Claimant, there can be no room for doubt as to their strict
truth. And yet it was possible, ten years after the event, for a
Claimant so to influence the popular belief, that, although burned
to death as a traitorous impostor, she was regarded by many of
the priesthood as a martyr; and by the common people was not only
worshipped as a saint in the church erected to her memory on the spot
where she suffered, but celebrated in songs which long continued to be
handed down among them. Even to this day, the precise date of the death
of the Princess Margaret remains unknown; and until quite recently, it
was generally believed that she had been buried in Kirkwall Cathedral,
as is indeed stated by the Danish archæologist Worsaae in his account
of that edifice given in his work on _The Danes and Northmen in
England_. No _History of Scotland_, until the issue of the last edition
of Dr John Hill Burton’s, has noticed the curious episode of the False
Margaret, a knowledge of which is necessary in order to account for the
fact that, in Wyntoun’s time, it was the popular belief in Scotland
that the Maid of Norway had suffered martyrdom at the hands of her own
countrymen.
It is curious that in connection with the history of Scotland, and
before the close of the fourteenth century, we find the story of
another Claimant not less audacious in his pretensions, but much more
fortunate in his patrons, by whom he was maintained till his death as
a state pensioner, and buried in one of the churches of Stirling under
the royal name and regal title to which he had laid claim. There was
this strange element in his case that he was the second personator
of the same dead king. Readers of English history are familiar with
the incidents of the revolution which placed Henry of Lancaster on
the throne, and consigned ‘the good King Richard’ to a perpetual
prison in Pontefract Castle. But the subsequent events in the life
of the imprisoned monarch, and the date and manner of his death,
are shrouded in an impenetrable obscurity. One of the ablest of our
Scottish historians, Patrick Fraser Tytler, has even declared, after
an elaborate investigation of the whole available evidence, that this
second Claimant, whose story we are about to notice, was Richard II. in
reality.
It is well known that shortly after the king’s imprisonment, there was
a conspiracy to replace him on the throne. The conspirators attempted
to attract the people to their cause by spreading abroad the rumour
of his escape from Pontefract; and, as is stated by a contemporary
chronicler, ‘to make this the more credible, they brought into the
field with them a chaplain called Father Maudelain, who so exactly
resembled good King Richard in face and person, in form and speech,
that every one who saw him declared that he was their former king.’ The
conspiracy failed; and those most deeply concerned in it, among whom
was the first personator, Father Maudelain, were beheaded.
Shortly afterwards, it was given out that King Richard had died in
Pontefract Castle, on or about the 14th of February 1399. Rumour,
indeed, spoke freely of the suspicion, that if he were dead, he had
surely been murdered by his enemies, and with the connivance of the
reigning king. It was not till nearly a month after the alleged date
of his death that, in order to silence the popular rumours, King
Henry caused the body to be brought publicly to London ‘with the face
exposed,’ and laid in state for two days in the church of St Paul,
‘that the people might believe for certain that he was dead.’ ‘But,’
says the old chronicler formerly quoted, ‘I certainly do not believe
that it was the king, but I think it was Maudelain, his chaplain,’ who
had been beheaded little more than a month previously.
There were many who shared this unbelief; and in 1402, the rumours that
King Richard was yet alive became so persistent and circumstantial,
that King Henry dealt with them by putting to death a number of
persons, principally priests and friars, for spreading such treasonable
reports. The cause of the revival of these rumours at this time is
revealed in a document issued by King Henry, requiring the sheriffs to
arrest all persons guilty of spreading the report that King Richard
was alive, which had arisen from a person calling himself King Richard
having appeared in Scotland in company with one William Serle, who had
been groom of the robes to Richard, and had possessed himself of his
signet.
As the scene thus shifts to Scotland, we naturally turn to the Scottish
chronicles and records for the further elucidation of the mystery.
Wyntoun and Bower—each writing of events which happened within his
own lifetime—narrate the story of this second Claimant in much the
same manner. He came from the out-isles of Scotland, having been
discovered in the kitchen of Donald, Lord of the Isles, by persons
who had seen King Richard, and recognised his likeness. He was sent
in charge of Lord Montgomery to Robert III. of Scotland, by whom
he was well received, and assigned a pension of one hundred merks
yearly. After King Robert’s death, the pension was continued by the
Regent Albany. The Scottish Chamberlain, in charging his accounts with
these annual payments, has entered them as paid to ‘King Richard of
England.’ Finally, we learn from an old Scottish chronicle that when
he died at Stirling in 1419, his body was buried on the north side
of the high-altar of the Church of the Preaching Friars, and a long
Latin epitaph graven over his tomb informed the reader that ‘Here lies
buried King Richard of England.’ Yet it has been established as clearly
as any such question can now be established by evidence, that this
second personator of King Richard was an adventurer named Thomas Ward,
or Thomas of Trumpington, who, with his confederate William Serle,
is exempted by name from the general amnesty granted to political
offenders by Henry IV. in 1403.
IN ALL SHADES.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Meanwhile, Harry Noel himself was quite unconsciously riding round to
the Hawthorns’ cottage, to perform the whole social duty of man by
Edward and Marian.
‘So you’ve come out to look after your father’s estates in Barbadoes,
have you, Mr Noel?’ Marian inquired with a quiet smile, after the first
greetings and talk about the voyage were well over.
Harry laughed. ‘Well, Mrs Hawthorn,’ he said confidentially, ‘my
father’s estates there seem to have looked after themselves pretty
comfortably for the last twenty years, or at least been looked after
vicariously by a rascally local Scotch agent; and I’ve no doubt they’d
have continued to look after themselves for the next twenty years
without my intervention, if nothing particular had occurred otherwise
to bring me out here.’
‘But something particular did occur—eh, Mr Noel?’
‘No, nothing occurred,’ Harry Noel answered, with a distinct stress
upon the significant verb. ‘But I had reasons of my own which made
me anxious to visit Trinidad; and I thought Barbadoes would be an
excellent excuse to supply to Sir Walter for the expenses of the
journey. The old gentleman jumped at it—positively jumped at it.
There’s nothing loosens Sir Walter’s pursestrings like a devotion to
business; and he declared to me on leaving, with tears in his eyes
almost, that it was the first time he ever remembered to have seen me
show any proper interest whatsoever in the family property.’
‘And what were the reasons that made you so very anxious, then, to
visit Trinidad?’
‘Why, Mrs Hawthorn, how can you ask me? Wasn’t I naturally desirous of
seeing you and Edward once more after a year’s absence?’
Marian coughed a little dry cough. ‘Friendship is a very powerfully
attractive magnet, isn’t it, Edward?’ she said with an arch smile to
her husband. ‘It was very good of Mr Noel to have thought of coming
four thousand miles across the Atlantic just to visit you and me,
dear—now, wasn’t it?’
‘So very good,’ Edward answered, laughing, ‘that I should almost be
inclined myself (as a lawyer) to suspect some other underlying motive.’
‘Well, she _is_ a very dear little girl,’ Marian went on reflectively.
‘She is, certainly,’ her husband echoed.
Harry laughed. ‘I see you’ve found me out,’ he answered, not altogether
unpleased. ‘Well, yes, I may as well make a clean breast of it, Mrs
Hawthorn. I’ve come across on purpose to ask her; and I won’t go back
either, till I can take her with me. I’ve waited for twelve months, to
make quite sure I knew my own heart and wasn’t mistaken about it. Every
day, her image has remained there clearer and clearer than before, and
I _will_ win her, or else stop here for ever.’
‘When a man says that and really means it,’ Marian replied
encouragingly, ‘I believe in the end he can always win the girl he has
set his heart upon.’
‘But I suppose you know,’ Edward interrupted, ‘that her father has
already made up his mind that she’s to marry a cousin of hers at
Pimento Valley, a planter in the island, and has announced the fact
publicly to half Trinidad?’
‘Not Mr Tom Dupuy?’ Harry cried in amazement.
‘Yes, Tom Dupuy—the very man. Then you’ve met him already?’
‘He lunched with us to-day at Orange Grove!’ Harry answered, puckering
his brow a little. ‘And her father actually wants her to marry that
fellow! By Jove, what a desecration!’
‘Then you don’t like what you’ve seen so far of Mr Tom?’ Marian asked
with a smile.
Harry rose and leaned against the piazza pillar with his hands behind
him. ‘The man’s a cad,’ he answered briefly.
‘If we were in Piccadilly again,’ Edward Hawthorn said quietly, ‘I
should say that was probably a piece of pure class prejudice, Noel; but
as we are in Trinidad, and as I happen to know Mr Tom Dupuy by two or
three pieces of personal adventure, I don’t mind telling you in strict
confidence, I cordially agree with you.’
‘Ah!’ Harry Noel cried with much amusement, clapping him heartily on
his broad shoulder. ‘So coming to Trinidad has knocked some of that
radical humbug and nonsense clean out of you, has it, Teddy? I knew it
would, my dear fellow; I knew you’d get rid of it!’
‘On the contrary, Mr Noel,’ Marian answered with quiet dignity, ‘I
think it has really made us a great deal more confirmed in our own
opinions than we were to begin with. We have suffered a great deal
ourselves, you know, since we came to Trinidad.’
Harry flushed in the face a little. ‘You needn’t tell me all about it,
Mrs Hawthorn,’ he said uneasily. ‘I’ve heard something about the matter
already from the two Dupuys, and all I can say is, I never heard before
such a foolish, ridiculous, nonsensical, cock-and-bull prejudice as the
one they told me about, in the whole course of my precious existence.
If it hadn’t been for Nora’s sake—I mean for Miss Dupuy’s’—and he
checked himself suddenly—‘upon my word, I really think I should have
knocked the fellow down in his uncle’s dining-room the very first
moment he began to speak about it.’
‘Mr Noel,’ Marian said, ‘I know how absurd it must seem to you, but you
can’t imagine how much Edward and I have suffered about it since we’ve
been in this island.’
‘I can,’ Harry answered. ‘I can understand it easily. I had a specimen
of it myself from those fellows at lunch this morning. I kept as calm
as I could outwardly; but, by Jove, Mrs Hawthorn, it made my blood boil
over within me to hear the way they spoke of your husband.—Upon my
honour, if it weren’t for—for Miss Dupuy,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘I
wouldn’t stop now a single night to accept that man’s hospitality after
the way he spoke about you.’
‘No, no; do stop,’ Marian answered simply. ‘We want you so much to
marry Nora; and we want to save her from that horrid man her father has
chosen for her.’
And then they began unburdening their hearts to Harry Noel with the
long arrears of twelve months’ continuous confidences. It was such a
relief to get a little fresh external sympathy, to be able to talk
about it all to somebody just come from England, and entirely free from
the taint of West Indian prejudice. They told Harry everything, without
reserve; and Harry listened, growing more and more indignant every
minute, to the long story of petty slights and undeserved insults. At
last he could restrain his wrath no longer. ‘It’s preposterous,’ he
cried, walking up and down the piazza angrily, by way of giving vent
to his suppressed emotion; ‘it’s abominable! it’s outrageous! it’s
not to be borne with! The idea of these people, these hole-and-corner
nobodies, these miserable, stupid, ignorant noodles, with no more
education or manners than an English ploughboy—O yes, my dear fellow,
I know what they are—I’ve seen them in Barbadoes—setting themselves up
to be better than you are—there, upon my word I’ve really no patience
with it. I shall flog some of them soundly, some day, before I’ve done
with them; I know I shall. I can’t avoid it. But what on earth can have
induced you to stop here, my dear Teddy, when you might have gone back
again comfortably to England, and have mixed properly in the sort of
society you’re naturally fitted for?’
‘_I_ did,’ Marian answered firmly; ‘I induced him, Mr Noel. I wouldn’t
let him run away from these miserable people. And besides, you know,
he’s been able to do such a lot of good here. All the negroes love him
dearly, because he’s protected them from so much injustice. He’s the
most popular man in the island with the black people; he’s been so good
to them, and so useful to them, and such a help against the planters,
who are always trying their hardest to oppress them. And isn’t that
something worth staying for, in spite of everything?’
Harry Noel paused and hesitated. ‘Tastes differ, Mrs Hawthorn,’ he
answered more soberly. ‘For my part, I can’t say I feel myself very
profoundly interested in the eternal nigger question; though, if a man
feels it’s his duty to stop and see the thing out to the bitter end,
why, of course he ought in that case to stop and see it. But what does
rile me is the idea that these wretched Dupuy people should venture to
talk in the way they do about such a man as your husband—confound them!’
Tea interrupted his flow of indignation.
But when Harry Noel had ridden away again towards Orange Grove on Mr
Dupuy’s pony, Hawthorn and his wife stood looking at one another in
dubious silence for a few minutes. Neither of them liked to utter the
thought that had been uppermost in both their minds from the first
moment they saw him in Trinidad.
At last Edward broke the ominous stillness. ‘Harry Noel’s awfully
dark, isn’t he, Marian?’ he said uneasily.
‘Very,’ Marian answered in as unconcerned a voice as she could well
summon up. ‘And so extremely handsome, too, Edward,’ she added after a
moment’s faint pause, as if to turn the current of the conversation.
Neither of them had ever observed in England how exceedingly
olive-coloured Harry Noel’s complexion really was—in England, to be as
dark as a gipsy is of no importance; but now in Trinidad, girt round
by all that curiously suspicious and genealogically inquiring society,
they couldn’t help noticing to themselves what a very dark skin and
what curly hair he happened to have inherited.
‘And his mother’s a Barbadian lady,’ Edward went on uncomfortably,
pretending to play with a book and a paper-knife.
‘She is,’ Marian answered, hardly daring to look up at her husband’s
face in her natural confusion. ‘He—he always seems so very fond of his
mother, Edward, darling.’
Edward went on cutting the pages of his newly-arrived magazine in grim
silence for a few minutes longer; then he said: ‘I wish to goodness he
could get engaged and married offhand to Nora Dupuy very soon, Marian,
and then clear out at once and for ever from this detestable island as
quickly as possible.’
‘It would be better if he could, perhaps,’ Marian answered, sighing
deeply. ‘Poor dear Nora! I wish she’d take him. She could never be
happy with that horrid Dupuy man.’
They didn’t dare to speak, one to the other, the doubt that was
agitating them; but they both agreed in that half-unspoken fashion that
it would be well if Harry pressed his suit soon, before any sudden
thunderbolt had time to fall unexpectedly upon his head and mar his
chance with poor little Nora.
As Harry Noel rode back to Orange Grove alone, along the level
bridle-path, he chanced to drop his short riding-whip at a turn of the
road by a broad canepiece. A tall negro was hoeing vigorously among the
luxuriant rows of cane close by. The young Englishman called out to him
carelessly, as he would have done to a labourer at home: ‘Here you, hi,
sir, come and pick up my whip, will you!’
The tall negro turned and stared at him. ‘Who you callin’ to come an’
pick up your whip, me fren’?’ he answered somewhat savagely.
Noel glanced back at the man with an angry glare. ‘You!’ he said,
pointing with an imperious gesture to the whip on the ground. ‘I called
you to pick it up for me. Don’t you understand English?’
‘You is rude gentleman for true,’ the old negro responded quietly,
continuing his task of hoeing in the canepiece, without any attempt to
pick up the whip for the unrecognised stranger. ‘If you want de whip
picked up, what for you doan’t speak to naygur decently? Ole-time folk
has proverb, “Please am a good dog, an’ him keep doan’t cost nuffin.”
Get down yourself, sah, an’ pick up your own whip for you-self if you
want him.’
Harry was just on the point of dismounting and following the old
negro’s advice, with some remote idea of applying the whip immediately
after to the back of his adviser, when a younger black man, stepping
out hastily from behind a row of canes that had hitherto concealed
him, took up the whip and handed it back to him with a respectful
salutation. The old man looked on disdainfully while Harry took it;
then, as the rider went on with a parting angry glance, he muttered
sulkily: ‘Who dat man dat you gib de whip to? An’ what for you want to
gib it him dere, Peter?’
The younger man answered apologetically: ‘Dat Mr Noel, buckra from
Englan’; him come to stop at Orange Grobe along ob de massa.’
‘Buckra from Englan’!’ Louis Delgado cried incredulously. ‘Him doan’t
no buckra from Englan’, I tellin’ you, me brudder; him Trinidad brown
man as sure as de gospel. You doan’t see him is brown man, Peter, de
minnit you look at him?’
Peter shook his head and grinned solemnly. ‘No, Mistah Delgado, him
doan’t no brown man,’ he answered, laughing. ‘Him is dark for true, but
still him real buckra. Him stoppin’ up at house along ob de massa!’
Delgado turned to his work once more, doggedly. ‘If him buckra, an’ if
him stoppin’ up wit dem Dupuy,’ he said half aloud, but so that the
wondering Peter could easily overhear it, ‘when de great an’ terrible
day come, he will be cut off wit all de household. An’ de day doan’t
gwine to be delayed long now, neider.’ A mumbled Arabic sentence, which
Peter of course could not understand, gave point and terror to this
last prediction. Peter turned away, thinking to himself that Louis
Delgado was a terrible obeah man and sorcerer for certain, and that
whoever crossed his path, had better think twice before he offended so
powerful an antagonist.
Meanwhile, Harry Noel was still riding on to Orange Grove. As he
reached the garden gate, Tom Dupuy met him, out for a walk in the cool
of the evening with big Slot, his great Cuban bloodhound. As Harry
drew near, Slot burst away suddenly with a leap from his master, and
before Harry could foresee what was going to happen, the huge brute
had sprung up at him fiercely, and was attacking him with his mighty
teeth and paws, as though about to drag him from his seat forcibly with
his slobbering canines. Harry hit out at the beast a vicious blow from
the butt-end of his riding-whip, and at the same moment Tom Dupuy,
sauntering up somewhat more lazily than politeness or even common
humanity perhaps demanded, caught the dog steadily by the neck and held
him back by main force, still struggling vehemently and pulling at the
collar. His great slobbering jaws opened hungrily towards the angry
Englishman, and his eyes gleamed with the fierce light of a starving
carnivore in sight and smell of his natural prey.
‘Precious vicious dog you keep, Mr Dupuy,’ Harry exclaimed, not over
good-humouredly, for the brute had made its teeth meet through the flap
of his coat lappets: ‘you oughtn’t to let him go at large, I fancy.’
Tom Dupuy stooped and patted his huge favourite lovingly on the head
with very little hypocritical show of penitence or apology. ‘He don’t
often go off this way,’ he answered coolly. ‘He’s a Cuban bloodhound,
Slot is; pure-blooded—the same kind we used to train in the good old
days to hunt up the runaway niggers; and they often go at a black man
or a brown man—that’s what they’re meant for. The moment they smell
African blood, they’re after it, like a greyhound after a hare, as
quick as lightning. But I never knew Slot before go for a white man!
It’s very singular—ex-cessively singular. I never before knew him go
for a real white man.’
‘If he was my dog,’ Harry Noel answered, walking his pony up to the
door with a sharp lookout on the ugly mouth of the straining and
quivering bloodhound, ‘he’d never have the chance again, I can tell
you, to go for another. The brute’s most dangerous—a most bloodthirsty
creature. And indeed, I’m not sentimental myself on the matter of
niggers; but I don’t know that in a country where there are so many
niggers knocking about casually everywhere, any man has got a right to
keep a dog that darts straight at them as a greyhound darts at a hare,
according to your own confession. It doesn’t seem to me exactly right
or proper somehow.’
Tom Dupuy glanced carelessly at the struggling brute and answered with
a coarse laugh: ‘I see, Mr Noel, you’ve been taking counsel already
with your friend Hawthorn. Well, well, in my opinion, I expect there’s
just about a pair of you!’
(_To be continued._)
TOBACCO CULTIVATION.
The question of the cultivation of tobacco has recently been brought
within the range of practical agriculture. In both Houses of Parliament
the government has announced that permission will be given to grow
this plant, and cure it in proper manner, as experiments, in various
parts of the country, and more especially in Ireland. The Council of
the Royal Agricultural Society of England, with His Royal Highness the
Prince of Wales in the chair, determined to help the government in the
matter, provided the government gave a grant towards the experiments.
The subject thus becomes one of special moment. It is very doubtful,
however, whether any experiments that can be made will give us much
more information than we at present have regarding this crop. That it
can be grown in this country is certain. To take up the first seed
catalogue that comes to our hand—that of Messrs Carter & Co.—we find
that for a long series of years past, the seed of no fewer than seven
varieties of Nicotiana is announced as for sale. The plants are grown
in many gardens, and the leaves are dried and used as fumigants against
insects. In fact, so simple is the growth of the plant, that the only
directions given are to ‘Sow on heat, and transplant to good, rich,
loamy soil, or sow out of doors in May.’ That the plant can be grown
is certain; but if grown on an agricultural scale, it will have to
bear with the usual effects of climate, injurious insects, and the
thousand-and-one ills which plant-life is heir to. That is, so far as
the plant is concerned. The great difficulty in every country will
begin with the curing, and is the cause of the tobacco crop being
gradually given up.
So far as Europe is concerned, there has been a great decrease in
tobacco cultivation during recent years. In the Netherlands, the
acreage is at present something like half what it was ten or twelve
years ago. In Belgium, the decrease in area has been considerable, but
not to so great an extent. In Austro-Hungary the acreage under tobacco
was in 1884 less by 8768 acres than two years previously. In Germany,
the area of the crop fell from 1881 to 1883 by over 12,000 acres.
Italy, with its magnificent climate, grows only 8202 acres; while in
France, where the government purchase the crop, only 32,800 acres were
grown last year. It is to America, however, that we must turn for our
best information as to the growth of tobacco. In the last four census
years, this crop was grown to the following extent: 1850, crop of
199,752,655 pounds; 1860, crop of 434,209,461 pounds; 1870, 262,735,341
pounds; and 1880, crop of 472,661,117 pounds, grown on 638,841 acres.
Here we find that although there was a great decrease in the growth of
this crop after the war, it gradually picked up again, and the crop is
now as large as ever. In 1883, 451,545,641 pounds were grown on an area
of 638,739 acres. Its total value was £8,091,072.
The method of cultivation adopted in the United States cannot fail
to be of use to the English or Irish grower. In the first place, a
word should be said upon the position of tobacco in crop rotations.
Travellers in South America have often noticed the desolate appearance
of some portions of the country. This is due to the exhaustion of the
soil by continuous tobacco-growing. A very large proportion of what
was known as tobacco land has thus been reduced to a condition of
poverty, and has been left to itself, and is covered with weeds. A good
authority declares that this fault can be easily remedied, and that by
growing tobacco as a rotation crop. After two crops of tobacco have
been taken from the land, and after this a crop of corn, and then a
crop of clover or vetches, after the latter have been cut or fed off,
the land may be again prepared for another crop of tobacco. A word may
be said here also on manures. In the best tobacco plantations, two
hundred pounds of nitrate of soda and two hundred and fifty pounds of
superphosphate per acre are used—the former bringing up a heavier crop,
and the latter improving its quality. Besides these, large applications
of farmyard manure are made. Taking Wisconsin as the State more
particularly to be treated of, we find that the seed-beds are burned
lightly, and a liberal allowance of manure worked in, to the depth of
six inches, with a hoe or spade. This work of preparation begins in
July, when the manure is applied. The bed is reworked in August, and
again in September, for the purpose of keeping down any weeds or grass
that may spring up; and finally, in November, it is hoed and raked
and prepared to receive the seed, which is either sown in the Fall or
early in the succeeding spring. When sown in the Fall, the seed is not
previously sprouted. After sowing, the bed is compacted by rolling,
tramping, or clapping with a board. The plants are carefully nursed by
liquid manuring and by weeding. The young plants are generally large
enough for transplanting by the 1st of June.
The land for the main crop—that is, into which the plants are
transplanted from the seed-bed—is ploughed in the Fall after the
crop of the previous year, and twice in the spring—in May, and just
before the 1st of June. Coarse and rough manures are applied with the
autumn ploughing, and finer well-rotted sorts in May. After the last
ploughing, the land is thoroughly pulverised by harrows or drags, and
marked off for the plant. The varieties of tobacco grown are either
the seed-leaf or the Spanish. If the former, the plants are placed two
and a half feet by three feet apart; but if the latter, three feet by
a foot and a half. Thus, if the seed-leaf variety, some five thousand
five hundred plants are used to the acre; and if the Spanish, nine
thousand six hundred. As soon as the soil is in proper condition to
work after the plants have been set out, a cultivator with five teeth
is run between the rows, and this is kept up once or twice a week,
until the field has been gone over five or six times. The crop is hoed
twice—once after the cultivator has been run through the first time.
Very little earth is put round the plant, level cultivation being
preferred. In some portions of the district, a horse-hoe is used in
cultivating the crop; this implement, from its peculiar construction,
enables the operator to go very near each plant and stir every portion
of the soil. In very small patches, the cultivation is done entirely
with the hoe, which is kept up every week until the plants are so large
that they cannot be worked without breaking the leaves.
The next operations are termed ‘topping’ and ‘suckering.’ In about
forty-eight or fifty days after the plants are set, if the crop has
been well cultivated and the weather seasonable, the flower-buds make
their appearance, and are pinched out, leaving from fourteen to sixteen
leaves on each plant. None of the bottom leaves are taken off, but
all are left to mature, or dry up, serving as a protection against
the dirt. Fields, however, are often seen in full blossom before the
tobacco is topped, and this results in great damage to the crop.
Tobacco is suckered twice—once in about a week after it is topped, and
again just before it is cut, which is generally about two weeks after
topping. ‘Suckering’ consists in the removal of young suckers, which at
this time make their appearance in large numbers. As has been noted,
tobacco is generally ready for harvesting in two weeks after being
topped; but there is considerable variation in the time on various
soils. On warm sandy loams, the plant will be as ripe in twelve days as
it will be on heavy clayey soils in eighteen days. This is one of the
reasons why sandy loams are preferred.
Harvesting commences early in August, and continues without
intermission into September. The time preferred for cutting is from
two o’clock in the afternoon until nearly sundown, because at that
time tobacco is less liable to be blistered by the heat of the sun.
The instrument used for cutting is a hatchet, the plants being cut
off nearly on a level with the ground, and laid back on the rows
to ‘wilt.’ After wilting, they are speared on laths. Of the large
seed-leaf variety, only about six plants are put on a lath, but of
the smaller Spanish (or Havana) variety, ten are not considered too
many. After being speared on the laths, the latter are carefully put
on a long wagon-frame, made for the purpose, and carried to the sheds,
where they are arranged on the tier poles or racks, from six to ten
inches apart, according to the size of the plant, but never so close
as to permit them to touch each other. It requires six weeks to cure
the Spanish variety perfectly, and two months to cure the seed-leaf.
If the weather is dry, after the crop is out, the doors are kept
closed during the day and opened at night; but extreme care must be
taken not to cure too rapidly. In muggy, sultry weather, as much air
as possible should be given, thorough ventilation being indispensable,
to prevent ‘pole-sweat.’ Continuous damp weather and continuous dry
weather are both to be feared. It is believed by many good growers that
white veins are the result of a drought after the tobacco has been
harvested, and it is said that no crop cured when there is plenty of
rain is ever affected with them. Inferences of this kind, however, are
too often drawn without considering a sufficient number of cases to
warrant the enunciation of a general law. This is the view put forth
by Mr Killebrew, in an able paper on Tobacco-culture written for the
American government. He, however, further points out that it is a
well-established truth, deduced from the universal experience of the
cultivation of seed-leaf tobacco in every State, that a crop cannot be
cured without the alternations of moist and dry atmospheres.
A few words may be said on the curing of tobacco generally. Three
systems are adopted in the United States. It may be (1) air-dried; (2)
dried by open-fire heat from charcoal or wood fires in the barn; or
(3) by flues which convey heat from ovens and heaters built outside
the barn. The last method is said to be the best, as a better control
can be had over the temperature. No regular rule can be given, as the
heat must be regulated according to circumstances, and must change
with the weather. The main thing is to dry the tobacco gradually to
secure a good colour, and to prevent mould. When the tobacco is dry,
it must be kept so by gentle fires in wet or damp weather, and it is
not touched for the purpose of ‘bulking’ until it has become soft and
pliable. Artificial sweating is believed by some to be accompanied with
less risk than sweating by the natural process; and second stories of
warehouses are sometimes prepared as sweating chambers by being closely
ceiled or plastered. These are heated by furnaces, and the temperature
maintained at from one hundred and ten to one hundred and forty degrees.
After curing, the tobacco is prepared for market. This consists of
stripping the leaves from the stalks, tying them up in large bundles,
and afterwards sorting them. After being sorted in ‘grades,’ these
are tied up in ‘hands’ of from eighteen to twenty leaves, securely
wrapped with a leaf at the butt-end, and ‘bulked’ in piles, with the
heads out and the tails overlapping in the centre of the bulk. Here it
remains until the ‘fatty stems’ are thoroughly cured, when it is sold
to the dealers. These latter pack it in barrels and sweat the leaves
still further; but into this subject we need not go, as it can have
but little interest to the farmer who intends growing tobacco in this
country.
So far as the cost of growing tobacco is concerned, a large and
successful grower in Pennsylvania, some two years ago, published the
following statement of cost and returns from a field of nine and a
half acres: 215¾ days’ labour of men from preparing the seed-bed up to
the hanging in the barn, £43; team-work, 38½ days, with feed for 42½
days, £30; curing, stripping, and marketing, £15: total, £88. The net
receipts were £174; thus showing a profit of £86. This was in a fairly
good year.
These few notes show us that tobacco is a crop requiring a great
expenditure of labour and care, and that even in America the profits
of thirty pounds per acre, about which we have heard so much, are not
always realised. The probabilities, however, are so much against our
getting really fine qualities of tobacco, that it is doubtful if the
necessary capital will be put into the business.
‘WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS.’
I write these pages as a warning. I don’t suppose any one will profit
by it. From the time of Cassandra downwards, nobody has ever paid
attention to warnings. But that is not my affair.
A London newspaper, some years ago, gave up several columns of its
valuable space to the question: ‘What shall we do with our Boys?’ I
perused the correspondence with a strong personal interest, for I
myself am the proprietor of a boy—several boys, in point of fact; but I
refer more particularly to my eldest, aged nineteen, as to whom I felt
that it was time something was settled. I have a great belief—partly
derived from the before-mentioned correspondence, and partly from my
own observation—in studying a boy’s natural bent, and finding him an
occupation in accordance with it. Such being the case, I began to
study Augustus with a view to finding out his special aptitude; but,
unless a really remarkable faculty of outgrowing his trousers may be so
regarded, I could not for some time discover that he had any. By dint,
however, of careful observation and cross-examination of the household,
I elicited that he was addicted to making extremely offensive smells
in the back kitchen with chemicals, and that he had what he called a
‘collection’ of beetles and other unpleasant insects stuck on pins in
a box in his bedroom. It appeared, therefore, that his proclivities
were scientific, and I ultimately decided to make an analyst of
him. Accordingly, after disposing of sundry painful but presumably
necessary arrangements as to premium, Augustus was duly articled to
a Public Analyst. I use capital letters, because I observed that Mr
Scrutin himself always did so. Why, I cannot say. Possibly, a public
analyst—without capitals—would not command the same amount of public
confidence. On consideration, I don’t suppose he would.