Authors: Francis Spufford
Golden Hill (20 page)
There was such a Species of Malignancy, in this Repetition, as I cannot rightly convey; Something, so insinuating and so tireless, so happy in the Degradation of its paltry Flesh, that I could almost, in my desperate State, believe It the Work of a Spirit sent to torment Me, a Spirit but hous’d in the derelict Body of my Companion, and working it (so to speak) mechanically, jerking its Limbs to dance by pulling with Glee upon Strings, spewing Repetitions of Filth from its Jaw by cranking a Lever. Such were my Thoughts, at any Rate, there being no Corrective to Fancy, for Me to take a Hold on, while the Taunting continu’d, it seeming not to weigh with Him, what He said, so long as He kept poking at me continually with Speech. At length He grew bor’d, however, of addressing my Back, which I kept firmly turn’d to Him. He try’d, to throw Straw at Me, but it would not fly across the Space between the
Cages: and so He return’d to his first Means, of securing my Attention.
‘Boy. Boy. Boy. Boy. Boy—’
But it gave Me Pleasure now, to think I was denying Him Something that He wanted, and I was enabled, for a Time, to ignore Him. He grew obsequious, He grew plaintive, He grew beseeching.
‘I can be wery good, if I puts my Mind to It,’ He said. ‘Come, Sir, don’t deny Me a Trifle of Company. I can suit Myself to your Innocence, see if I can’t; suit Myself to You as neat as any Tailor, Ha Ha. I can be all Sweetness and Light, I shall talk of Sweethearts and not of Cunts. Come, Sir. Come, Boy. A little Talk. Just a little Talk. Won’t the Time fly faster, if We talk? A little Talk, Sir. A little Civility. A little Parlay-voo between Unfortunates. Between Brothers, Sir. Between Brothers in Adwersity, Sir—’
‘I am not your Brother.’ You would have reproved the Sentiment, Father, on Grounds of Theology, but in any Case it was a grievous Mistake to say it aloud, for He chuckled with Satisfaction, and immediately his Grovelling vanish’d, or rather metamorphos’d.
‘Ain’t You?’ He said. ‘Well, that’s a Relief, then, a powerful strong Relief to my poor Sensibilities, ain’t It, for who’d be a Brother to a prim Prick-Drip like You? Who’d own You, you Milk-for-Spunk? You Pox-Ooze. You Flux-Breath. You Cockless Pretender. You walking Hole. You Piss-Puddle. You—’
‘Reynolds!’ I shouted, discovering that it was possible, to be converted in the Twinkling of an Eye, without at all anticipating It, from an apparent Calm to a shaking Fury. (Or rather, perhaps, a shaking Compound of Fury and Fear.) I was up, and
rattling the Bars, and shouting for the Keeper, before I rightly knew what I was doing. He came, after I had shouted for a Minute or two, with heavy Feet and a heavy Frown.
‘Can You not silence this Moon-Calf?’ I cry’d. ‘Can You not give Him a Kick to quiet his Nonsense, before I lose my Wits with listening to Him?’
‘What!’ Reynolds said. ‘Kick the poor Monster?’ He look’d across at the other Cage, and there lay its Inmate, curl’d peaceably upon the Floor, as if He had never mov’d. I almost doubted It myself. ‘I had as soon give You a Kick, Jackanapes,’ He said, ‘for You are the One who is giving the Trouble. Shall I?’
‘No, Sir,’ said I bleakly after a Moment, observing his Brawn.’
‘Then don’t give Me Cause to fetch out my Keys.’
Straightway He was gone, my Tormentor rose from the Straw, grinning like a Jack o’ Lantern with all his brown Teeth.
‘
That
won’t work, Boy,’ He said. ‘You’re stuck with Me, You are. Now I’ve thought Me, since You won’t be civil, of the wery Story to treat You right for It; to medicine up your Disrespect. And hey hey, It’s a true ’un. All the better, eh? For so You may jes’ picture It, as I tell It, and know It happen’d, but five Years back, in this wery Place, in these wery Streets, on our lovely Common, where I’m sure You po-litely stroll’d, You Puppet, while You was po-litely purposing your po-lite Robbery. But This ain’t polite; no. This has got some Gristle in It; and some Marrow too. Well: You have noticed, ain’t You, that the old Fort where His Nibs lives is the Worse for Wear? All scorch’d up like a half-burned Log. Now the Night that happen’d I was drinking in Hughson’s Tavern, over by the River, and about the Middle of the Candle a little Welsh Bugger (His Name I can’t recall) puts his Head in the Door and cries, Lively boys, there’s
Somefink afire. We tumbles out onto the Cobbles, for to get a Look-see, though the Frost was hard and biting, and to be sure, there’s Sparks in the Sky, and a red Glow like Hell’s Locker had sprung open, beyond Trinity Spire. ’Tis the Fort for Sure, said Caesar, a Nigger belonging to Vaarck the Baker; and Sarah Hughson, the Tavern-keep’s Lady, She holds up her Hands, like one warming Theirself, and says, There’s a Hearth I’m glad to see lit, and there’s all the big Houses too on Broad Street might burn, for Me. She being angry because Hughson her Man was in Chokey downstairs here, for receiving Goods. I remembers the Words, for I give ’em in Court later. Well, We laugh’d, and We went back in and drunk a Toast or Three to Fire. They was jolly Fellows, in Hughson’s: Caesar and Prince who was John Auboyneau’s Nigger, and Newfie Peg who lodg’d there with Caesar’s Brat. Prince and Caesar, They call’d Theirselves the Geneva Club, for They lift’d Barrels from out the Warehouses, to sell ’em to Hughson, and that’s why the Gin was cheap, and no Fuss when You puk’d. Peg was Caesar’s Girl, but you could have her for a Shilling, or for a Glass, when the Thirst was on Her. Jolly Fellows, yes, and many a Jolly Night the Capting had with ’em. But in the morning—’
I had no Notion whereto this Story was tending. Yet perhaps it tended somewhat to my Relief, for though the Monster had seem’d to threaten Something by it, He now was winding Himself, I judg’d, into a Labyrinth of Foul Anecdote, where He might wander reminiscing till He lost Wits and Lucidity again for the Exercise, and I hop’d might leave Me be. I hop’d it most desperately, for I still trembled. Moving soft so as not to disturb his Flow, and nodding from Time to Time, I ventured to sit down and privily took up my Pen again.
I am writing in the Straw now while pretending to listen. Father, another of the short Days is darkening, and the Air is gathering up again in Stars and Splinters the Ice the Morning melted from it. It seems hard if I must pass this remaining Portion of my Life in the Lap of another’s Delirium.
‘So, Some said the Frenchies done it, and Some said ’twas the Spaniards, come to put the Pope upon Us; but Most agreed, in a Panick, it must be the Niggers done the actual Deed of the Burning; and Mr Horsmanden, as is Recorder and Justice along of De Lancey, He sees This, and being a quick old Screw for Anything to an Advantage, He says to Himself, I’ll make Somefink of This. And He snatches up Caesar and Prince and a Dozen more besides, and in the Court He says, a grand Conspiracy, Gents, a heinous and dastardly Plot, and don’t the People love It. Well, I see which Way the Wind is blowing, and when it comes my Turn, to go Witness, I does my Best to dish the Niggers too, and give ’em a few shrewd Blows in the Telling, of how They laugh’d at the Tragic Sight.’
‘What, your Friends? The Jolly Fellows?’ I said, incredulous despite Myself.
‘Oh, You
is
awake. – I’ll awake You in a Minute, I’ll be bound. – Yes, Caesar and Prince and the Others.’
‘You did not think that, perhaps, being their Friend, you might stay your Hand?’
‘Ain’t You simple, then! No, it don’t do to be too pertickler in this World. You must take your Pleasures where You find them; a Drink and a Joke one Day, and the Next, whatever the Day brings. I never thought I owed a Fellow a Debt, that We shared a good Time; nor He, Me; so best to get in first, before He can get at You. Anyway. Prince and Caesar and the Niggers, They
go down, a-course; and Horsmanden says, Gents, We must have special hard Punishments, so all the World may mark. And Prince and the Others, They must be burned on the Common, slow, but Caesar, says Horsmanden, since that He purposed to set up as King, must be broken on the Wheel. Which the People was wery satisfied with: You could hear Them growl, in the Court. The only Problem being, that Nobody in New-York knowed the Trick of It, not Peters the Hangman, not Nobody. And when the Call went out, does Anyone know how? – why, not a Soul replied, there being, Boy, Things as are wanted to be done in the World, which Few want the doing of, no Matter how fierce they growl. Well, thinks I, a Chance for the Capting, and foolish not to take it. I’ll do it, I says, for I have seen it done in the Brazils. (Which was nearly true.) So, Boy, picture Me on the Morrow, out upon the Common, with poor Caesar truss’d to the Wheel of a Wagon, and Me furnish’d with a Crowbar, and also a Barrel of Beer, for to wet my Whistle with while I work’d, which I took wery kind, it being likely to be a lengthy Job; and a Crowd round about me, eager-like yet hesitant, glad the Lot of ’em that ’twas to be my Hands on the Crowbar. Good Morning, says I to Caesar. Friend, says He, won’t You give Me a Ding on the Head first off, and let Me out quick? Sorry, says I, We must give ’em a Show. And I grins at Him, for what is Life without a little Pleasure in’t? But though I speaks so confident, I am to speak true working by Guesses; They have give Me a Book, a Surgeon’s Book, with a Map of all the Bones, but the Capting has never been much of a Reader. Says I inside my Head, well, let us commence Operations with the Shins, for They are near the Surface, and will make an easy Target while I gets my Eye in—’
‘I don’t want to hear This.’
‘Don’t You? Don’t want your Medicine? Then You are Plumb out of Luck, Boy; for You
shall
hear it, every word the Capting chuses to medicine You with. I swings the Bar—’
I cover my Ears, I sing with all the Force of my Lungs, I crouch in the Dusk and try to crawl away into this Trail of Ink, but I cannot block it out. Night comes, but He goes on remorseless, with no End in sight, either of the dreadful Story or of the poor screaming Victim it concerns – for there are, says the Monster, one hundred and fifty-six Bones in the mortal Tower, and He means Me to hear of the clumsy, patient, methodical Splintering of them all, running in at my Ear like a Venom, churning my Guts till I spew (to his high Satisfaction) into the Straw. ‘Then come the Ribs,’ He says.
Father, I can hardly see to write. His ruin’d Countenance bobs in the Dark, talking, talking, with cheerful indifferent animal Glee. I do not understand how Anyone can be so lost, so content to be devour’d by Impulse. This may seem a strange Declaration, from One who deliberately lost Himself in London, with Nothing in his Pocket, but the sad Truth about Me, Father, is that however low I wandered, I always knew I could come back. I would return and stand conceal’d behind the Park Trees opposite Lord ——’s House, sometimes, in those first Weeks of my Wanderings, and just look upon It. And having seen It was still there, with a Door that would open to Me at the Price merely of a few Recriminations, I was enabled to trudge away again. Though sometimes the Temptation was strong. You see, I have never doubted my Safety. Such was the Reason for my Impatience, at all your Proclamations of Danger.
I remember the Moment – as You purposed I should never forget It – when You bared your Arm and, seizing Me, drew up
the Sleeve on Mine, and laid it besides yours on the Table, and bade Me attend to the Colours of our Skin. Yours, a Brown like well-milked Coffee; Mine, for it was Summer, a faint yet insistent Amber. ‘This is our Destiny,’ You said. ‘The Lord has given it Us, and We must find his Grace in It.’ And You drew for Me the liveliest Picture you could, with all the Resource You were wont to dedicate in Sermons to rendering Hell-Fire, of the Cruelties awaiting Me on account of that Colour, were I not careful. Of Slaveries, Plantations, Chains, Whips, Floggings, Burnings; of a whole World of Terrors lying, as You made It sound, just beyond the first Milestone on the Road out of the Parish. You represented to Me, that my only Safety was at Home; my only Passport, in the wider World, the Protection of Lord ––—. I was I suppose Five Years of Age, and I ran to my Mother to hide my Head in her Apron, the Whiteness of her Arms round Me seeming then a Kind of Promise of Exemption, a Freedom from all You had named. ‘He must understand, Martha,’ You said, when She protested. But I would not believe, not then, not later, that We had no Choice but to hide Ourselves. Or that the Chance of You having a Slave for a Father, and my having One for a Grandfather, must be a perpetual Doom upon Us. Or that We must forever accept from Lord ––— a Kindness precious near to Ownership. I would not believe You. Your Fear, I said to Myself, was a Disease of your Soul, individually. I would not catch It. I would not consent to be afraid.
But now I am: oh, now I am. I hate this City. I hate these People. I should never have
(Here the letter breaks off unfinished.)
âSo they just let you out?'
âThey didn't have much choice,' said Smith indistinctly, with his mouth full of bread. Hendrick and Septimus had been breakfasting at the Merchants when he came in, wild-looking and unshaven and (to tell truth) not savoury of smell. But neither were uncivil enough to mention his state of disarray, being besides desperately curious and surprised at his reappearance. âIt seems,' he went on, swallowing, âthat
Sansom's Venture
came in this morning at first light with the other two copies of my bill in the mailsack together â there'd been some error in London, and the one meant for
Antelope
had missed the tide â and presto! on the instant I was converted from a fraud and a public enemy into a wronged man. Lovell came running to City Hall with the papers in his hand, and a gaggle of my creditors strung out behind him like the tail of a comet, and gave me, oh, you should have heard it, the angriest apology in the world, every word pushed from his lips with pain.'
âYou're speaking very loud,' put in Septimus, with a warning look, for Mr Smith was announcing his story as if speaking to the whole room; and indeed, most of the room was listening to him,
with greater and lesser efforts at dissembling it, while he stuffed himself from the basket of rolls, and waved for more with scarecrow urgency.
Smith smiled breadily and nodded, and dropped his voice, but it was clear that he was not much concerned; that he was content to let New-York know, starting with the roomful of gentlemen before him, that the roles were reversed, and that Lovell's credit now lay in
his
hands, if he chose to complain of his treatment. âWell, then,' he continued, âthe keeper unlocked me, and all the others at whose suit I'd been held thronged around too, telling me how sorry they were, and pressed back on me all that had been sponged, against my debts. My
supposed
debts,' he reminded the room. âMy sword, my purse of money, my welcome in this fine establishment. Mrs Lee wanted me to know that she would change the sheets on her garret bed, in honour of me, and that there was beef-pie for supper tonight. At which, I confess, my mouth began to water, and I departed City Hall upon a velvet cushion of protestations, and so came here.'
âWell, you are welcome back,' said Hendrick, awkwardly.
âAm I?' said Smith. âThat is good to know. For I
am
back, and I mean to stay back, and it is about time that your family repented of its cat-and-mouse games, and we fell to business, I think.'
âI see that Mr Lovell is not the only angry one,' said Septimus.
âMe? Never in life!' said Smith, giving them his familiar beam of amiability: only now with a ragged carelessness, a desultory approximation, like a man who briefly raises a mask on a stick to his face but cannot be bothered to line up the eye holes. Septimus and Hendrick glanced at each other involuntarily, to share the dismay that each for different reasons was feeling.
âFor my part, I am sure you have been ill-used, and I am heartily
sorry for it,' said Hendrick carefully. âBut I ask you to remember that we worked, as we must, by the appearances of the thing; and that it was a chain of accident that set you in gaol, and not any ⦠malignancy on our part. No-one in the family bears you ill-will.'
âNo-one?'
âNot my father,' said Hendrick, swallowing, ânor Gregory Lovell, nor me, nor any of us concerned in the business you have with us. I see that Tabitha has bitten you hard enough to draw blood, and the bite is presently festering, and again I am sorry for't; but a bite from her is not policy from the houses of Lovell and Van Loon; it is in the nature of a curse, that lies in the first place on us, but which it seems we cannot help sharing. We did speak of this? But you seemed then to be enjoying the poison.'
âAlso,' put in Septimus, âyou did seem too to be enjoying the doubt you put them in, that you were here to rook them. Come on, Richard. You played at being a fraud, unmercifully. You
flirted
with it. It is not so strange if people believed you.'
â
Et tu, Brute?
' said Smith. He closed his eyes and scrubbed with his fingertips at the sockets, which Septimus and Hendrick, following the motion, saw were stained yellow with lack of sleep. The freckled skin over his nose was waxy and transparent. âTrue,' he said, with his eyes still covered. âI think my stoicism has taken a dint, gentlemen. Excuse me.'
âThen, will you not give us one more chance?' said Hendrick, pressing his advantage. âLet us make amends. There is a Dutch festivity tonight, at the house, and I think you should come along.'
âYou're joking,' said Smith. âIt is only an hour or two since, that you were all content to see me hanged: and now I am to be your guest?'
âYou should think of this as a restoration of the way things should have been, all along.'
âI am not an actor in a farce, that I may spring back in through one door, the instant I have exited through another.'
âNo, no,' said Hendrick. âThis will be a feast day. We shall bombard you with marchpane and St Nicholas-rhymes, and sweeten you into forgiving us.'
âYou will all sit in a row and scowl at me, seriatim.'
âWe will not. I undertake it. There will be no scowling, no recriminating; no-one there who is not on their feast-day manners.'
âSeriously?'
âSeriously. I swear to it: no unpleasantness, even if we have to gag Tabitha, and lock her in the cellar. Come, what do you say?'
Smith covered his mouth with his hand and gazed at the tabletop, pitted with saw-marks from knives, and names gouged in the wood by idle hands. The moment lengthened. It was not clear if he was thinking, or refusing, or simply drifting off into reverie.
âMr Smith?' said Hendrick. No answer.
âRichard?' said Septimus.
No answer.
âIt will not be you that Uncle Lovell is most angry at,' Hendrick said, cunningly.
Smith transferred the hand from his mouth to the tallowy division-line at the centre of his forehead, and clawed at it. His gaze lifted.
âWhen I came in the door,' he said wearily, âI had the most straightforward resolution in the world, never to take anything from the pack of you again, except your money. But it seems I cannot abide by it. Oh very well, then; very well.'
âExcellent!' said Hendrick. He had plainly learned that cardinal rule of selling, that you should never linger after the bargain is struck, for he rose at once to his feet. âI shall come and fetch you from Mrs Lee's at six this evening, after you have had a chance to sleep and bathe. And now I had better go to work. Quentin! Fetch Mr Smith a plate of chops, on my bill, will you?' He left, grimacing a smile.
âHe is a good son,' said Smith to Septimus. The coffee-house was emptying around them, at the call of the desk and the counting-house.
âHe tries to be, in what he can, to make up for the ways in which he is doomed to disappoint his father.'
âAh,' said Smith. He yawned. âTell me, am I grievously offensive to the nose?'
âYes.'
âI had better go and wash off the stink, then, and get some clean clothes.'
âEat your fill first.' Septimus hesitated. âWas it ⦠very bad? I understood that the debtors' portion of the prison, if not the dungeon below, was quite clean.'
âIt was fine. Lovely straw, pleasant views, informative company.'
âWell, I am sure I have no desire to pry.'
Smith groaned. âSorry!' he said. âThe basket was a God-send, and I was more grateful for it than I can rightly say. I hope you have not been too embarrassed on my account. Achilles said you had been.'
âNot to worry,' said Septimus. âFor having participated in your downfall, I now participate in your resurrection, and may wipe the smirk off several faces. Look, here come your chops.'
âI am almost dribbling at the sight of them. â You remember the warning you gave me, at first? About the â the â
nature
of the city? I ⦠had it confirmed. In sickening abundance.'
âI thought something must have happened.'
âBastards, all of them,' said Smith, speaking in a fierce undertone to his plate. âI will punch the next one who mentions liberty.'
âYou know, London has gaols,' said Septimus gently. âNewgate is a darker pit and a deeper by far, than the little cellar here. More die at Tyburn tree every season, than have hanged here in all the years of the city.'
âAnd been scalped? Or burned? Or ⦠broken?'
âOh. You have heard
that
story.'
âAt least at home, they do not pretend to clean hands and righteous hearts.'
âI know I have been away a while,' said Septimus, âbut I am almost positive I remember there being liars in London; and hypocrites too, more than one; and girls who proved a disappointment to boys who loved them.'
âIt is not that! At leastâ It is not
all
that.'
âI make sure of it,' Septimus said. âNot that I am any expert.' He made a ball of bread and pushed it in a circle before him with his forefinger, like the titan Atlas manipulating with ease a very small planet. âYou know, if I find anything to praise here, when they go to such lengths to make my life miserable, you may perhaps believe it? I had a visitor, a year after landing; a grand connection of my father's bishop, come to survey an inheritance he had come into, down in the Virginias. And it puzzled me, why I found I so disliked his manner of speaking to me, more than any here, more than any number of Van Loons or Van Rensselaers, or William Smith in his cups, or Judge De Lancey at his most
self-satisfied: till it came to me, that he addressed me, as a matter of course, as a Secretary, with all my nature that it was needful to know comprised in that title. And I realised I had grown insensibly used to being treated, even by my enemies, as a man, with my nature all to be proved by what I did and said. He used no more toward me than the ordinary condescension of the great, and yet I found I resented it. I found I had gained the liberty to resent it. And that is a real liberty, Richard.'
âUnless your skin is African.'
âTrue.'
âThey would bludgeon your true love to jelly for speaking the wrong word.'
âThey would bludgeon him in London for sixpence in his pocket, or for stepping up the wrong alley. Look, dear man, I must go to work too. Sleep soon, won't you? You are missing several of the usual layers of
your
skin, and I do not think you are quite safe for company yet.'
âGoodbye,' said Mr Smith. âThank you, Septimus. Oh â how is the play?'
âSuddenly improved now that you, and not I, are playing Juba again. We have only four more rehearsals, so restore yourself, do. Eat, bathe,
sleep
.'
*
As Mr Smith walked slowly towards the William Street bath-house, his stomach loaded to the point of a moderate nausea, his own thoughts taking the greatest share of his attention, he at first confused the quietness of the streets with his quietening mind. But it was not so. New-York was quiet because it was, suddenly, far emptier. A good half of the businesses had their shutters up, and where there had been busy mobs converging on the waterfront,
his footsteps now rang out almost solitary on the cobblestones. While he had been imprisoned, the city had passed its great autumn climacteric. The sugar fleet had departed, and with it the whole frantic mood of the last weeks. The sailors, the country merchants and farmers seeing their stocks safe aboard, the buzzing projectors with their plans for instant profit, all had made their farewells; and the citizens who remained were locking down and bolting up for the winter. The city was shrinking in on itself, as Septimus had predicted. It was stoking up its stoves and sitting closer to 'em; it was drawing up its furs around itself. And not a moment too soon. The bare sky at the eastern street-ends, where the masts had thronged, had in it today a bitter green pallor, the unmistakeable colour of impending cold. On the shadowed sides of the streets the frost of the night was not melting, even at noon; and in the maze of little alleys up toward the Broad Way, where the low sun did not shine directly at all, ice already held the whole dim territory. The air there was as still and as chill as it had been in the ice-house upon Lord ââ's estate, when Mr Smith was dispatched into it one day to fetch a block for freezing a pudding, and found a buried winter reigning there underground, dark and silent, patient and permanent, lending iron rigour to each breath.
And when he awoke in the dark that evening between Mrs Lee's clean sheets, blinking and confused for a moment, he found that outside the cold panes of the dormer, the first snow was falling. Tiny flakes like feathered dust were floating out of the unlit night above into the unlit night below. He opened the casement and leaned out. On the skin he had steamed and scrubbed, pinpoints of cold prickled, as if winter were beginning without delay to tattoo its map upon him. All along the dark avenue, to left and to right, the powdery fall was already furring the cobbles with a
thin grey nap like velvet, and rimming them white along all the crooked lines between. Everything seem slowed to the speed of the descending snow. A holy expectation reigned in the thickening air, and passers-by walked as if they did not want to disturb it. Only a small party, coming from the mouth of Crown Street opposite, made any noise. They were singing something, and carrying a small lantern on a pole which lit the flakes to swarming gold in a small globe around itself, and touched the edges of their faces â the line of a hat, the scroll of an ear, the filaments of a beard â with shadowy gilding, like statues in an ancient shrine. They crossed the road. Smith, lulled and fascinated, shivered in his shirt and watched them come closer; closer
and
closer, till they were arranged in a semicircle directly below him on Mrs Lee's own doorstep, and were knocking at her door. A moment later her voice could be heard calling up the stairs for him.