‘You will see,’ said Dawson, ‘that we shall have both, soon enough, if ever we have to fight the Americans.’
‘Ay and that will come!’ cried another. ‘For they hate us worse than the French do.’
But Dawson was talked down by another fellow who had served on the Endymion and declared that ships of this class could engage any frigate upon the seas. He was by far the most persuasive talker and convinced me that he must know best. I had no very great opinion of Dawson’s ability, but Dawson turned out to be right, I believe. Not long ago Eustace told me that the Leander and some other ship had been built to meet the American forty-fours.
They kept up this talk, without intermission, for about two hours. My head went round, though Pronto (who turned out to be there all the time incognito) listed some facts and figures which were useful to him later.
Dawson and his friends had been at this work for the best part of their lives and had thought of little else since they were twelve years old. As I listened, I began to perceive that I could never be of their company. ‘Exertion and danger’ might be all very well, as a cure for my moping, and I could fancy myself at sea, taking part in an action, but I could never, when on shore, take part in this kind of conversation. To be a sailor, one must think a great deal about ships.
Yet some obstinate part of my mind still enquired why William should be taken and I not. I determined to go through with the business, so soon as I could secure a private interview with Dawson, trusting that there might prove to be some way in which an active and healthy man of six and twenty might serve his country upon the high seas.
We eventually adjourned to the dockyards where a ship was building which Dawson wished me to see. She was modelled upon a Dutch vessel, the Hippomenes, captured at the surrender of Demerara, in which business he had taken part. He discoursed to me at some length upon the merits of this kind of craft. By the time that he had done I was so much exhausted that I returned to my inn and went to bed.
The morning found me still more reluctant to confide in him. It was clear to me that I was totally unfit to hold any position of responsibility upon a ship of war; it would be years before I had learnt a tenth part of all that I should know. And, if I meant to volunteer as a rating, I need take no advice from Dawson. I had merely to offer myself to the first recruiting party I might meet.
Why then, thought I, am I here? I must, to be sure, make some enquiries on William’s behalf, but how can Dawson help me to settle with my own conscience?
When setting out for Portsmouth I had intentionally rejected any rational consideration because I feared that it would work against my purpose. I knew perfectly well that mine was a lunatic scheme, – to break off so promising a career in favour of one which had never possessed the least attraction for me. But I believed that this lunacy might save me. The Christian martyrs – all, indeed, who follow conscience at the expense of self-interest – might be described as lunatics. I had entertained a confused notion that Dawson might take me in his ship and find a use for me, or might recommend me to some friend, – in what capacity I could not imagine, but I had been content to set this vagueness down to my own ignorance and to hope that Dawson might have some suggestion.
Waking in the sober light of morning, with all my wits about me, I perceived my own folly. However strong might be my determination to quit my present course of life, I had been already in it long enough to impair my fitness for any other. My capabilities had been for years entirely concentrated upon the grand task of making my fortune; they were now, to some extent, contracted and modified by the usage that they had received. I had, in Newsome’s company, perceived my unfitness for Orders. I now doubted whether I should ever make a capable sailor. The mere desire to be useful was not enough; I was deficient in those qualities which might make me of use, qualities which Dawson and his friends, though they were nothing out of the ordinary, most certainly possessed. They had a passion for their profession which kept them talking of open timber heads by the hour together. Ambitious they might be, greedy of advancement and prize money, envious of one another, but their hearts were in their ships.
I had invited Dawson to breakfast and he duly appeared. He was a good deal altered since I had known him at Bramfield, and not altered for the better. Then he had been a handsome young fellow, in whom every virtue had been aroused to the full by his strong attachment to my sister. And his prospects, at that time, had been excellent, for he had an uncle or cousin at the Admiralty whose interest might secure him early promotion.
But Caroline was no more, and he had not got on as he deserved. His great relative had died or forgot him. Five years of exposure, hardship and disappointment had extinguished all that prepossessing ardour, nor was his second marriage as happy as his first. He had been continually in action, but action of that commonplace and useful kind which continues from day to day, and which we are inclined to forget in favour of those few great engagements which are all that the world knows in the history of a war. He had been passed over, again and again, and would probably never rise higher than the command of a sloop.
In my mood of humility I respected him and felt him to be a better man than I, but I was also obliged to think him very dull.
As soon as we had set to work upon our bacon and eggs I opened the case of William, but had some difficulty in getting his full attention. He began by thinking that I hoped to secure William’s release and interrupted me with an assurance that he had no influence in that way. I would do better if I applied to Eustace. Set right upon this point he fell into a bitter complaint upon the policy which sent these malcontents into the Service. Your reading fellows, said he, were the plague of every commander and at the bottom of every mutiny. The trouble at the Nore had all been got up by rascals of that sort. Their leader had been a schoolmaster, if you please, and as rank a Jacobin as ever graced a gallows. Your reading fellows will bring politics into everything. I might see as much, if I would consider how differently matters went in what he called ‘the breeze at Spithead.’ That, he maintained, was no mutiny; it was but a little noise made by honest bluejackets who had grievances enough, God knew, but who put the blame where it belonged, – not upon their officers, but upon a Pay Office ashore, which robbed them. At any hour they would have put to sea directly, if the French had been troublesome. They would never have failed their officers.
It was some time before I could manage to convince him that William, though a reading fellow, was sensible, well disposed, and unlikely to lead a mutiny. I believed him determined to make the best of it, and I merely wished to know how I might get news of his welfare and whereabouts.
Dawson, when he had grasped this, grew more attentive. He listened to the whole story and ended by getting up quite a regard for William, saying that he wished he got more men of that temper on his sloop.
‘You may depend upon it he will do well,’ he said, ‘and may soon expect to be made a petty officer. We are short of men fit for that work, and it does no harm if they have had some schooling. As for his wife, he will be able to send her a letter from the Depot Ship, when he knows to what vessel he will be drafted.’
He also asked me to let him know these particulars, as soon as I had got them, in case it should ever be in his power to do William a good turn. He might know something of William’s commander, and be able to drop a word to him. He mentioned some vessel then at Plymouth, the name of which I forget, but it began with a B, and might have been the Boyne, the Bellona or the Blenheim, – upon which he hoped that William might serve, for she was, he said, a very good ship. It was a thousand pities that Eustace was in the Mediterranean and that I could not have gone to him, ‘for I am sure he would be very glad to get hold of such a man, and he might have some chance of doing it. As for me, if I got such an one, I daresay I should lose him. You would not credit the shabby tricks that have been played upon me.’
He wandered off into a disconsolate account of the intrigues whereby commanders got away each other’s men, com
plaining that brisk young fellows, with a turn for the sea, never came his way, – that he got none but cripples and jail-birds, and he might count himself lucky if he put to sea with a crew that had arms and legs. There is that side to every profession, – the jealousies, the feuds and the shabby tricks.
By the time that we had finished with Dawson’s grievances we had almost finished breakfast, and I had still said nothing of what was uppermost in my mind. I looked at his stolid red face and wondered how to begin.
‘It appears to me that these things are managed very unjustly,’ I said at last. ‘Here is a fellow like William, taken from his wife and children, and from a farm which will run to ruin without him, while gentlemen like myself are left in peace.’
‘Why,’ said Dawson, ‘we don’t want for officers, you know.’
‘I suppose not. But I think I should have chosen the Navy as my profession, had I been able to foresee what dangers my country was going to encounter. I don’t like to sit snug at home whilst others are forced to fight for me.’
He gave a start of surprise and stared at me a little thoughtfully.
‘Would you not feel it so, in my place?’ I asked him.
‘Why, you don’t sit snug alone,’ he said. ‘Most Britons do the same. And some fellows must be in Parliament, I suppose, else we should have no British Constitution to defend.’
He thought this a capital joke and laughed heartily as he repeated:
‘Ay, ay! We need some fellows to be sitting in Parliament.’
I repeated that I disliked that occupation and asked him outright if it was possible for a man of my age to join the Navy. At that he seemed thunderstruck, but was not, when he discovered that I was in earnest, as derisive as I had feared. There was, indeed, something almost apologetic in his manner, as he assured me that my plan was impossible.
‘To be of use in the Service, you know, a man must have been bred up to it.’
‘William Hawker was not.’
‘Ay, but he is a bluejacket. I speak of officers. There is no way but to start at the beginning. A man of your age could not well take service as a midshipman, amongst boys of twelve years old.’
‘But is there, then, no way in which I may fight for my country?’
‘Well, to be sure, you might join the Army. For that you need know nothing in particular. You have but to purchase a commission.’
I objected that the Army did not fight. Nor did it at that period. The danger upon the seas had been averted by our Navy, but the great military campaigns had not begun. We had not yet met Buonaparte upon land and some of us doubted whether we should ever do so. It is difficult now to recall our want of faith in our armies, ten years ago. When heard of, they were in retreat, and the unsuccessful expeditions to South America and Egypt had still further depressed our spirits.
‘There is to be fighting now in Portugal,’ said Dawson. ‘They say that Wellesley is sailed from Ireland with a large force and that Moore is called back from Sweden.’
‘It will be over in a week or so,’ said I. ‘Depend upon it, we shall be thrown out of Portugal. We are not sending forces sufficient to meet the French in Spain.’
‘When did we ever send forces sufficient to meet the French? Were I a soldier I should be glad enough to serve under Wellesley.’
‘I know that Castlereagh is all for him, but I believe that he is not to command.’
‘What? Is he out? We had a cutter came in here, two days ago, that was at Cork when he embarked. ’Twas said on all sides that he was to command.’
‘When he reaches Lisbon,’ said I, ‘he will find, if he does not know it already, that Dalrymple and Burrard have been put over him.’
Pronto had received this information, just before quitting Ullacombe, in a long letter of gossip from a particular friend, which told him of the recent squalls in Downing Street, and how pressure, brought by the Duke of York on behalf of Burrard, had ousted Castlereagh’s man. It is exactly like Pronto to know that a general has been deprived of his command before the poor gentleman knows of it himself.
‘Dalrymple does not intend to fight very much,’ I asserted. ‘I hear that his great scheme is to entertain the Duc d’Orléans in Lisbon, if His Highness can somehow be brought there. When they have dined together, the expedition will come home. Wellesley would not have been content with a dinner-party, I daresay, but he is out.’
Dawson swore that it was a pitiful business.
‘But that is ever the way,’ he complained. ‘We must be down to hard tack and in danger of invasion before they will give command to an admiral who likes putting to sea, so one must not expect that they will appoint a general who means to fight, if they can help it. ’Tis enough to make a man turn politician! No offence intended!’
This he added hastily, as though fearing it might sound insulting.
‘Yet you advise me to join the Army,’ cried I.
‘I advise nothing of the sort. I merely say that you might find work in the Army but, as for us, you must be bred up to it. I am very sorry, Miles. I honour you for your feelings. Indeed I do. I had not thought … ’tis very strange … I believe that I did not do you justice … the fact is, that I had an argument with my wife last night … I thought her a little too partial to you political fellows, you know, and I thought that she had slighted Captain Spaulding, who sat t’other side of her, for she would not talk to him … I might have spoken unjustly … some fellows must sit in Parliament …’
He broke off in confusion. I could well imagine the argument. His wife had slighted his friends and would talk only to Pronto; he had retorted by some contemptuous criticisms of political fellows.
He shook me warmly by the hand and took his leave. But at the door, he turned to exclaim:
‘There is the Marines, you know!’
‘The Marines?’
‘They might take you. And it is not work to be despised, since Nelson set them properly to the guns. Before that, nobody could be sure what they might be supposed to do. There is the 4th Division at Woolwich might take you. That is an idea! They are all picked men, trained in the use of artillery. You might consider of it. But I must go now, for I have to meet a fellow.’
This time he really did go. Crestfallen though I was, I could not help laughing as soon as he had closed the door, for it was a most ridiculous end to my exalted project.
The Marines!
I am sure that there is no finer body of men in our services, and I don’t know why there should be a universal tendency to laugh at them. Perhaps it may be because the improvement in their condition is so recent; the old prejudice against them has not yet been overcome. Eustace had often told us of the tricks that were played upon them, aboard ship, in the old days; there is a saying among the common people: Tell that to the Marines, – implying that a Marine is so ignorant that he will believe anything.
I had been able to imagine the countenances of my family and friends at the news that I had gone for a soldier or a sailor. They might be shocked, puzzled, disappointed, even contemptuous, but they would not laugh. The news that Pronto had joined the Marines would keep half London in convulsions for nine days.
And that was the end of my trip to Portsmouth.
Lady Amersham
A DAY OR two later found me at Colesworth, the country seat of Lord Beaumont, who had married Ludovic’s sister.
She and I had always been good friends. In the old days at Brailsford she had been a plain, good-humoured girl, who did not expect me to flirt with her; we had often laid our heads together in schemes to restrain Ludovic and bring him into better accord with his father.
Her husband was a very pleasant fellow. There was but one thing amiss with the Beaumonts, – a fault which I have frequently observed in Good Society. They did not seem to suffer in the least from the vulgarity, the stupidity and the inferiority of the company which they were often obliged to keep. They were themselves well bred and intelligent, but they were not repelled by a Duchess who picked her nose or
a Marquess who believed that Cape Horn was in Africa. They would not have dreamt of choosing their friends upon the score of compatibility; to them the Peerage was a family handbook and all in it some kind of relative with whom, however repulsive, they had closer ties than they could have with any commoner, however agreeable. It is this capacity for enduring one another which preserves our Aristocracy, I think, in an age of change. We commoners are too squeamish. If a man stinks we avoid him. They are made of sterner stuff; their noses are subservient to their sense of rank.
I had a reason for pausing at Colesworth on my way to London for I hoped that Lady Sophia might help me in the matter of Mary Hawker. Kitty’s suggestion of a post as lodge-keeper was a good one; could I find any opening of that sort at Colesworth it would ensure that Mary would have friends at hand to read William’s letters to her.
As I drove up to the house I saw Ludovic at an upper window, hanging over the sill in a limp manner resembling a punchinello at a puppet show, the effect being heightened by a tasselled white night-cap. I had not known that he was to be there, and I waved gaily. He responded with a lugubrious flap of one hand before vanishing from the window. I saw that he was in one of his black moods and the reason for it was explained by his sister as soon as she saw me.
‘Do go up to Ludovic,’ she said, ‘and tell him that he must come out of his room. He has been there for three days, and all because Lowestoft is staying here.’
‘Ah, they were at Eton together, I believe.’
‘He cannot go through life like this. Everybody has been at Eton. Make him go out riding with you.’
I went up to Ludovic and found him in his dressing-gown, although the hour was noon. His room was in its usual state of confusion, – his man busy with some travelling bags which were either packing or unpacking. This was always the way with Ludovic. He can never settle. Even at Brailsford he will daily order this or that portmanteau to be packed for him, although he has no intention of going away.
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