The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (42 page)

Her eyes were dim, her cheeks bloodless, her breath smelt earthy, her countenance was ghastly. Up she rose after she was deflowered, but loth she rose, as a reprobate soul rising to the Day of Judgment Looking on the t'one side as she rose, she spied her husband's body lying under her head. Ah, then she bewailed as Cephalus when he had killed Procris unwittingly, or Oedipus when ignorantly he had slain his father and known his mother incestuously. This was her subdued reason's discourse:

‘Have I lived to make my husband's body the bier to carry me to hell? Had filthy pleasure no other pillow to lean upon but his spreaded limbs? On thy flesh my fault shall be imprinted at the day of resurrection. Oh beauty, the bait ordained to ensnare the irreligious! Rich men are robbed for their wealth; women are dishonested for being too fair. No blessing is beauty, but a curse. Cursed be the time that ever I was begotten. Cursed be the time that my mother brought me forth to tempt. The serpent in Paradise did no more. The serpent in Paradise is damned sempiternally: why should not I hold myself damned (if predestination's opinions be true) that am predestinate to this horrible abuse? The hog dieth presently if he loseth an eye; with the hog have I wallowed in the mire, I have lost my eye of honesty, it is clean plucked out with a strong
hand of unchastity. What remaineth but I die? Die I will, though life be unwilling. No recompense is there for me to redeem my compelled offence, but with a rigorous compelled death. Husband, I'll be thy wife in heaven. Let not thy pure deceased spirit despise me when we meet, because I am tyrannously polluted. The devil, the belier of our frailty and common accuser of mankind, cannot accuse me, though he would, of unconstrained submitting. If any guilt be mine, this is my fault, that I did not deform my face, ere it should so impiously allure.'

Having passioned thus awhile, she hastily ran and looked herself in her glass, to see if her sin were not written on her forehead. With looking she blushed, though none looked upon her but her own reflected image.

Then began she again: ‘
Heu quam difficile est crimen non prodere vultu
.
²⁸⁷
“How hard is it not to bewray a man's fault by his forehead.” Myself do but behold myself, and yet I blush. Then, God beholding me, shall not I be ten times more ashamed? The angels shall hiss at me, the saints and martyrs fly from me. Yea, God Himself shall add to the devil's damnation, because he suffered such a wicked creature to come before Him. Agamemnon, thou wert an infidel, yet when thou went'st to the Trojan War, thou left'ist a musician at home with thy wife, who by playing the foot Spondaeus
²⁸⁸
till thy return might keep her in chastity. My husband going to war with the devil and his enticements, when he surrendered left no musician with me, but mourning and melancholy. Had he left any, as Aegisthus killed Agamemnon's musician ere he could be successful, so surely would he have been killed ere this Aegisthus surceased My distressed heart, as the hart whenas he loseth his horns is astonied and sorrowfully runneth to hide himself,
so be thou afflicted and distressed. Hide thyself under the Almighty's wings of mercy. Sue, plead, entreat: grace is never denied to them that ask. It may be denied; I may be a vessel ordained to dishonour.

‘The only repeal we have from God's undefinite chastisement is to chastise ourselves in this world. And I will; nought but death be my penance, gracious and acceptable may it be. My hand and my knife shall manumit
²⁸⁹
me out of the horror of mind I endure. Farewell, life that hast lent me nothing but sorrow. Farewell, sin-sowed flesh, that hast more, weeds than flowers, more woes than joys. Point, pierce, edge, enwiden, I patiently afford thee a sheath. Spur forth my soul to mount post to heaven. Jesu, forgive me; Jesu, receive me!'

So, throughly stabbed, fell she down and knocked her head against her husband's body, wherewith he, not having been aired his full four-and-twenty hours, start as out of a dream; whiles I, thorough a cranny of my upper chamber unsealed, had beheld all this sad spectacle. Awaking, he rubbed his head to and fro, and wiping his eyes with his hand, began to look about him. Feeling something lie heavy on his breast, he turned it off, and getting upon his legs, lighted a candle.

Here beginneth my purgatory. For he, good man, coming into the hall with the candle, and spying his wife with her hair about her ears, defiled and massacred, and his simple zany Capestrano run through, took a halberd in his hand, and running from chamber to chamber to search who in his house was likely to do it, at length found me lying on my bed, the door locked to me on the outside, and my rapier unsheathed in the window. Wherewith he straight conjected it was I, and calling the neighbours hard by, said I had caused myself to be locked into my chamber after that sort, sent away my courtesan whom I called my wife, and made clean my rapier, because I would not be suspected.

Upon this was I laid in prison, should have been hanged, was brought to the ladder, had made a ballad for my farewell
in a readiness, called
Wilton's Wantonness
, and yet, for all that, scaped dancing in a hempen circle. He that hath gone through many perils and returned safe from them makes but a merriment to dilate them. I had the knot under my ear. There was fair play; the hangman had one halter, another about my neck was fastened to the gallows, the riding device
²⁹⁰
was almost thrust home, and his foot on my shoulder to press me down, when I made my saint-like confession as you have heard before, that such and such men at such an hour brake into the house, slew the zany, took my courtesan, locked me into my chamber, ravished Heraclide, and finally how she slew herself.

Present at the execution was there a banished English earl who, hearing that a countryman of his was to suffer for such a notable murder, came to hear his confession and see if he knew him. He had not heard me tell half of that I have recited but he craved audience and desired the execution might be stayed.

‘Not two days since it is, gentlemen and noble Romans,' said he, ‘since, going to be let blood in a barber's shop against the infection, all on sudden in a great tumult and uproar was there brought in one Bartol, an Italian, grievously wounded and bloody. I, seeming to commiserate his harms, courteously questioned him with what ill debtors he had met, or how or by what casualty he came to be so arrayed. “Oh,” quoth he, “long have I lived sworn brothers in sensuality with one Esdras of Granado: five hundred rapes and murders have we committed betwixt us. When our iniquities were grown to the height, and God had determined to countercheck our amity, we came to the house of Johannes de Imola” (whom this young gentleman hath named). There did he justify all those rapes in manner and form as the prisoner here hath confessed. But lo, an accident after, which neither he nor this audience is privy to. Esdras of Granado, not content to have ravished the matron Heraclide and robbed her, after he had betook him from thence to his heels, lighted on his companion Bartol with his courtesan,
whose pleasing face he had scarce winkingly glanced on, but he picked a quarrel with Bartol to have her from him. On this quarrel they fought. Bartol was wounded to the death, Esdras fled, and the fair dame left to go whither she would. This, Bartol in the barber's shop freely acknowleged, as both the barber and his man and other here present can amply depose.'

Deposed they were. Their oaths went for current. I was quit by proclamation. To the banished earl I came to render thanks, when thus he examined and schooled me:

‘Countryman, tell me, what is the occasion of thy straying so far out of England to visit this strange nation? If it be languages, thou may'st learn them at home; nought but lasciviousness is to be learned here. Perhaps, to be better accounted of than other of thy condition, thou ambitiously undertakest this voyage: these insolent fancies are but Icarus' feathers, whose wanton wax, melted against the sun, will betray thee into a sea of confusion.

‘The first traveller was Cain, and he was called a vagabond runagate on the face of the earth. Travel (like the travail wherein smiths put wild horses when they shoe them) is good for nothing but to tame and bring men under.

‘God had no greater curse to lay upon the Israelites, than by leading them out of their own country to live as slaves in a strange land. That which was their curse, we Englishmen count our chief blessedness. He is nobody, that hath not travelled: we had rather live as slaves in another land, crouch and cap and be servile to every jealous Italian's and proud Spaniard's humour, where we may neither speak, look, nor do anything but what pleaseth them, than live as freemen and lords in our country.

‘He that is a traveller must have the back of an ass to bear all, a tongue like the tail of a dog to flatter all, the mouth of a hog to eat what is set before him, the ear of a merchant to hear all and say nothing. And if this be not the highest step of thraldom, there is no liberty or freedom.

‘It is but a mild kind of subjection to be the servant of one master at once; but when thou hast a thousand thousand
masters, as the veriest botcher, tinker, or cobbler freeborn will domineer over a foreigner and think to be his better or master in company, then shalt thou find there is no such hell as to leave thy father's house, thy natural habitation, to live in the land of bondage.

‘If thou dost but lend half a look to a Roman's or Italian's wife, thy porridge shall be prepared for thee, and cost thee nothing but thy life. Chance some of them break a bitter jest on thee and thou retort'st it severely or seemest discontented, go to thy chamber and provide a great banquet, for thou shalt be sure to be visited with guests in a mask the next night, when in kindness and courtship thy throat shall be cut, and the doers return undiscovered. Nothing so long of memory as a dog; these Italians are old dogs and will carry an injury a whole age in memory. I have heard of a box on the ear that hath been revenged thirty year after. The Neapolitan carrieth the bloodiest mind, and is the most secret fleering
²⁹¹
murderer; whereupon it is grown to a common proverb, “I'll give him the Neapolitan shrug,” when one intends to play the villain and make no boast of it.

‘The only precept that a traveller hath most use of and shall find most ease in is that of Epicharchus,
²⁹²
Vigila, et memor sis ne quid credos
: “Believe nothing, trust no man yet seem thou as thou swallowedst all, suspectedst none, but wert easy to be gulled by everyone.”
Multi fallere docuerunt
(as Seneca saith)
dum timent falli
: “Many by showing their jealous suspect of deceit have made men seek more subtle means to deceive them.”

‘Alas, our Englishmen are the plainest-dealing souls that ever God put life in. They are greedy of news, and love to be fed in their humours
²⁹³
and hear themselves flattered the best that may be. Even as Philemon, a comic poet, died with extreme laughter at the conceit of seeing an ass eat figs, so have the Italians no such sport as to see poor English
asses, how soberly they swallow Spanish figs,
²⁹⁴
devour any hook bated for them. He is not fit to travel that cannot, with the Candians, live on serpents, make nourishing food even of poison. Rats and mice engender by licking one another; he must lick, he must crouch, he must cog, lie and prate, that either in the Court or a foreign country will engender and come to preferment. Be his feature what it will, if he be fair spoken he winneth friends.
Non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Ulysses
:
²⁹⁵
“Ulysses, the long traveller, was not amiable, but eloquent” Some allege they travel to learn wit, but I am of this opinion: that, as it is not possible for any man to learn the art of memory, whereof Tully, Quintilian, Seneca and Hermannus Buschius have written so many books, except he have a natural memory before, so it is not possible for any man to attain any great wit by travel except he have the grounds of it rooted in him before. That wit which is thereby to be perfected or made staid is nothing but
Experientia longa malorum
,
²⁹⁶
‘the experience of many evils', the experience that such a man lost his life by this folly, another by that; such a young gallant consumed his substance on such a courtesan; these courses of revenge a merchant of Venice took against a merchant of Ferrara; and this point of justice was showed by the duke upon the murtherer. What is here but we may read in books, and a great deal more too, without stirring our feet out of a warm study?

Vobis alii ventorum praelia narrent
(said Ovid)
Quasque Scilla infestet, quasve Charybdis aquas
.
“Let others tell you wonders of the wind,
How Scylla or Charybdis is inclined.”
   —
vos quod quisque loquetur
Credite
. “Believe you what they say, but never try.”

So let others tell you strange accidents, treasons, poisonings,
close packings in France, Spain and Italy; it is no harm for you to hear of them, but come not near them.

‘What is there in France to be learned more than in England, but falsehood in fellowship, perfect slovenry, to love no man but for my pleasure, to swear
Ah par la mort Dieu
when a man's hams are scabbed? For the idle traveller, I mean not for the soldier, I have known some that have continued there by the space of half-a-dozen years, and when they come home they have hid a little wearish
²⁹⁷
lean face under a broad French hat, kept a terrible coil
²⁹⁸
with the dust in the street in their long cloaks of grey paper, and spoke English strangely. Nought else have they profited by their travel, save learnt to distinguish of the true Bordeaux grape, and know a cup of neat Gascoigne wine from wine of Orleance. Yea, and peradventure this also, to esteem of the pox as a pimple, to wear a velvet patch on their face, and walk melancholy with their arms folded.

‘From Spain what bringeth our traveller? A skull-crowned hat of the fashion of an old deep porringer, a diminutive alderman's ruff with short strings like the droppings of a man's nose, a close-bellied doublet coming down like a peak behind as far as the crupper, and cut off before by the breastbone like a partlet or neckercher, a wide pair of gaskins which ungathered would make a couple of women's riding kirtles, huge hangers
²⁹⁹
that have half a cow-hide in them, a rapier that is lineally descended from half-a-dozen dukes at the least. Let his cloak be as long or as short as you will; if long, it is facéd with Turkey grogeran
³⁰⁰
ravelled; if short, it hath a cape like a calf s tongue and is not so deep in his whole length, nor hath so much cloth in it, I will justify, as only the standing cape of a Dutchman's cloak. I have not yet touched all, for he hath in either shoe as much taffatie for his tyings as would serve for an ancient; which serveth
him (if you will have the mystery of it) of the own accord for a shoe-rag. A soldier and a braggart he is (that's concluded). He jetteth strouting,
³⁰¹
dancing on his toes with his hands under his sides. If you talk with him, he makes a dishcloth of his own country in comparison of Spain, but if you urge him more particularly wherein it exceeds, he can give no instance but ‘in Spain they have better bread than any we have'; when, poor hungry slaves, they may crumble it into water well enough and make misers
³⁰²
with it, for they have not a good morsel of meat except it be salt piltchers to eat with it all the year long, and, which is more, they are poor beggars and lie in foul straw every night.