The Yellow Admiral

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Then we are in the same boat, brother. I had scarcely been home a month before writs started coming in—actions for wrongful seizure, forcible detainer and the like, based on my taking slavers who by one damned quibble or another could claim protection. Most were dismissed out of hand, but two or three were argued before the court and although that dear good man Lawrence did all he could, I was cast in damages. Stephen, you would never believe the amount of damages when it comes to shipping and cargo. I have been refused leave to appeal on the most recent, and there are at least two more pending. Lawrence spoke to the Admiralty counsel, a member of the same inn, who told him that my instructions had been perfectly clear: they forbade me to interfere with any protected vessel, and if in spite of that I did so, I must bear the consequences. For my own part, I spoke to the First Sea Lord—I had always regarded him as a friend—but he was pretty cold and distant, as high as Pontius Pilate, and he gave exactly the same answer, except that he said I must pay the consequences. Well, I can not pay them, if any of the other cases goes against me. Even as things are, we can only just scrape by if Sophie sells Ashgrove: this place and the whole Woolcombe estate are entailed.' Stephen shook his head, looking so wretchedly low that Jack went on, 'But like you, I am not at all desperate. I too have my service pay, and so long as I am a member they can't arrest me. Lord, Stephen, we have been very much worse off. Shall we see if we can find any rabbits?'

  The moment that he stirred from his damp seat the spaniel sprang up and whimpered with eagerness, cast to and fro among the seedling asters, and vanished behind a row of myrtle: here she could be heard marking, at a stand, but she was a silent bitch and uttered nothing but an urgent whine.

  'That will be the gate leading to the common,' said Jack. 'I wanted you to see it in any event, a lovely piece of country.' They walked quickly through, and there on the path some thirty yards beyond there was a white scut bobbing along. Jack whipped up his gun; the rabbit made a somersault; the spaniel raced out and brought it back, breathing deep with satisfaction.

  'So this is the common,' said Stephen, looking over a broad expanse of rough pasture, fern-brake, scattered trees, with here and there a pool; the whole agreeably undulating, autumn-coloured, with a fine great sky over it, adorned with the whitest sailing clouds. 'An elegant common too, so it is; but my ideas are all confused. I had supposed your father and his friends had enclosed it, to your great distress, when we were on the far side of the world.'

  'Certainly they inclosed Woolhampton common and it did grieve me. But this is another piece of common land called Simmon's Lea—it was always my favourite—and now they want to inclose it too. Over my dead body! Such fun I had here when I was a boy: mostly alone but sometimes with young fellows from the farms or the village—netting, ferreting, drawing the mere, poaching on Mr Baldwin's land, leading his keepers a rare old dance, wild-fowling in a hard winter—Heneage Dundas used to come down sometimes. And when the Blackstone came over in this part of the country we would always find a fox in the furze. Did you notice that old chap in the stable-yard?'

  'Certainly.'

  'That was Harding, a real country-man, born and bred in the parish—there are a score of Hardings here. He began as a kennel-boy with the Blackstone, where his father was huntsman; then he whipped-in for another pack, but having a nasty fall he took to being an under-keeper beyond Wimborne, and then after a spell as a water-bailiff he came to us as keeper, oh, well before I was born. I can't remember a time without him. I am no expert on birds, as you are very well aware, but what little I do know I learnt from him. This very path leads to a place where he showed me a nightjar's egg, lying there on the ground. Have you ever seen a nightjar's egg, Stephen?'

  'I have; but it was brought to me. I have never found one.'

  'Then I do not have to tell you how beautiful they are. Then as for fishing and setting snares and finding a hare, and shooting for that matter, he—oh, well shot, Stephen.'

  The spaniel brought the rabbit back. Stephen praised the gun, as pretty a gun as he had ever seen. 'Do you preserve, at all, Jack?' he asked as they went on.

  'Oh no. I just take a gun out from time to time, more for the walk than anything else: I love this common. If a shot offers, well and good, but I have no notion of breeding birds up in order to knock them down again. And a shot does offer most days, because many of my neighbours do preserve, and do breed up pheasants by wholesale, so when they have one of these big shoots, with driven birds, a good many come on to our land. Some of these people resent it, and one mean-spirited sodomite says that my reason for opposing the enclosure is that I like getting high-reared game for nothing. There is a lot of ill-feeling . . . and that fellow,' said Jack, cocking his head to bring his good eye to bear in what was now a habitual gesture, 'that fellow on the pony, coming into sight behind those willows, is a perfect example. A sailor, I am sorry to say, and a scrub.'

  'That sounds a contradiction in terms.'

  'You are truly good to say so, Stephen; but when you consider . . . However, this fellow Griffiths is not so much as a sailor, neither. You will remember him in Valletta and Gib as a commander—he had the Espiègle and then the Argus—a big black-haired red-faced domineering cove, younger than me but with much more influence—a member for Carton and Stranraer's heir, his nephew—and he was made post in the same month. But after a cruise or two in the Terpsichore, when he had an ugly mutiny on his hands, he refused commands that would have taken him to the West Indies. He prefers farming, high farming; he has a deal of land over towards Paston. He was the prime mover in enclosing Woolhampton Common—by the way, we say either Woolcombe or Woolhampton here: it's all one—and now he wants to do the same to Simmon's Lea. He and his friends want everything laid out like military camp, with straight lines and right angles. High yields and high rents, of course, and the game-laws enforced to the letter Z. I may malign him, but just as he seems not to know the odds between a ship kept in apparent good order by Botany Bay methods and one which is in really good order, seamanlike order, because officers and men know their duty and do it without being driven, so he don't know the difference between a well-run estate and a place not far removed from a penal settlement, where people are turned off for a trifle, and a suspicion of poaching is a man's ruin. Tenants at will, of course, whenever a lease falls in . . . he is veering this way. I shall just move my hat to him, and ask him how he does. We are still on speaking-terms, after all.' They walked on in silence for a while and then Jack moved well off the path to give the pony room, called out 'Good day, sir. How do you do?'—touching his hat as he spoke.

  Griffiths returned the greeting without a smile, looking very closely at Stephen, who, for his part, saw one of those heavy, dissatisfied men, much more inclined to ill-humour than to any hint of gaiety—if indeed gaiety had not deserted them entirely, together with their youth. Victims of the power of giving orders? Of a disordered liver? Or both no doubt, together with a froward spleen and pancreas.

  'It was Burton, I think,' he said some minutes later, 'who observed that there were men who sucked nothing but poison from books. And who has not met youths and even maidens with ludicrous ideas of what is the thing for persons of spirit, and with permanently distorted notions of conduct that is acceptable and conduct that is not? Yet may not authors be even more poisonous?'

  'In the Navy there are usually people to bring a puppy to his senses,' said Jack. 'Though I must confess . . .'

  The confession was lost. They had reached the plashy bottom, and a snipe got up with its usual cry, corkscrewing away at a tremendous pace. Jack fired and missed: the dog looked at him with contempt. 'It serves me right,' he said as he reloaded, 'I had almost said the service was not perfect.'

  'There would be more water here in the winter, sure?' asked Stephen.

  'Oh yes, much more: almost a little lake.'

  'It is very much like what we call a turlough in Ireland,' said Stephen. 'Sometimes far from barren,' and he gave Bess a discreet but significant lo
ok, nodded towards a dense patch of reeds. She ran questing forward and within two minutes she flushed a brace of teal, and they rising straight up from their confined piece of water. Stephen hit the right-hand bird: Jack missed the other.

  'I should never have spoken at all,' he said, quite out of countenance—Bess had brought the little duck to Stephen's hand. 'You can never get into trouble by holding your Goddamn tongue.'

  'It was the gun entirely,' said Stephen. 'The sweetest little gun—comes up so quick, and, as you say, shoots wonderfully sharp.'

  Jack only shook his head; and presently, partly to gain knowledge and partly to put his friend at a moral advantage, Stephen said, 'Pray tell me about inclosures, Jack, will you now? I have often heard of them, with some saying they will save the country from starving and others saying that it is all stuff—a mere job or a series of jobs to get the land into rich men's hands and keep the labourers' wages down; and that anyhow, with the war so nearly over—these are only reported words, Jack: not my own, God forbid—with the war so nearly over, imported wheat will soon be coming in again, so there is no need to upset the old order.'

  'As for the broader issues,' said Jack, '—what is that bird?'

  'A bar-tailed godwit, I believe.'

  'I am not qualified to speak. I leave that to people like Arthur Young or dear Sir Joe; but certainly earlier on and where really suitable land was concerned inclosing the huge old common fields did by all accounts increase the country's supplies of corn. But I was at sea—or we were both in one prison or another—most of the time and I have no more right to get up in the House and prate about inclosures in general than nine-tenths of the members have a right to talk about naval matters. Yet where these two particular commons are concerned, I do know what I am talking about, and I am absolutely opposed to the change. And that is what I shall tell the committee loud and clear.'

  'What kind of a committee?'

  'Why, a parliamentary committee, in course.'

  'Oh, indeed? Pray, Jack, let us start at the beginning. Who set about inclosing? Where does the power lie, the authority? What says the law?'

  'As for the law, God help us: every manor is a law to itself, and the courts always say consuetudo loci est observanda.' He looked at Stephen and repeated 'Consuetudo loci est observanda' rather louder, before saying, 'But I don't suppose you need to have that translated,' with a sigh. 'And the consuetudos differ amazingly, and always have, from one manor to another. Even in Woolcombe Common and Simmon's Lea, which almost touch, the commons of piscary and of estovers are quite unlike, and here in Simmon's Lea there is no common of turbary at all. Then there are all sorts of other rights, like bite of grass and fire-bote, hey-bote and house-bote, underwood, sweepage and so on, different from parish to parish but all strictly ruled by custom time out of mind and giving a man a place in the village and making it more like a right ship's company. Mark you, Stephen, I am talking about the lord's waste, not the common field nor the pasture, but the waste—what is ordinarily called the common nowadays. Most of the plough-land and grazing here was inclosed long ago, though there is still some of both attached to Simmon's Lea.' He broke off as a heron flew high over them, travelling straight with a steady, massive beat. 'They used to nest, a score of them and more, in the trees on the far side of the mere,' he said. 'But one year the water-bailiffs and some of the keepers pulled down all their great unwieldy platforms when they were breeding, and they never came back. Old Harding was one of them. He could never abide anything that competed with us in killing, whether it swam, flew or ran—fish, flesh; fowl or good red herring—and you, Stephen, you would have wept to see his barn door with hawks, falcon, owls, two ospreys and even an enormous great eagle with a white tail spread out wide, and weasels, stoats and the odd marten all nailed up—and he sold the otters' skins. But that was when he was an active keeper and I was a boy; now he don't go out, and the vermin thrive. Though I can't say I notice much odds as far as the shooting is concerned. Ware riot, you vile bitch,' he cried, for Bess, roaming as they talked, had put up an explosive pheasant, well out of reach.

  'I have rarely seen a dog look so ashamed,' said Stephen. 'She droops in all her members.'

  'And well she may,' said Jack. 'Rambling about like a mad lunatic in that indecent way. If she were younger, I should beat her. That, by the way, must have been one of Griffiths' birds, a ring-neck. Well, now, an inclosure usually starts with those who have most right in the common agreeing that it should be divided up into separate parts, into single freeholds proportionate to their rights. I do not mean all those concerned, but a good many. Then, with the blessing of the parson, the patron of the living, and as many of the gentlemen, yeomen and freeholders as are of their opinion or whom they can persuade, they appoint proper people to measure and chart everything. When this is done they present a petition to the House, begging leave to bring in a private bill, so that parliament may authorize the sharing out—so that it may become law.'

  'On the face of it, that seems fair enough. After all, the country is run on those lines: the majority is always right, and those who do not like it may lump it—an expression I heard in the mouth of an officer leading a press-gang, when one of the captives expostulated with him.'

  'It would be perfectly fair, if it were like a jury or even a vestry, where every man has a voice, and where all the others know him and value his opinion according to his reputation in the village. But in this case the majority is determined not by counting heads but by counting shares: that is to say the value of the holdings. Griffiths, a fairly rich newcomer, has perhaps ten thousand pounds' worth. Harding and all his relations in the farms and cottages may have come by holdings worth two or three hundred in the last two or three hundred years. So what will their vote amount to? And then there are three or four other big men apart from Griffiths. My own cousin Brampton, at Westport, longs to round out three of his farms, where the common runs deep into the estate. Well, now, when we were sweltering in the Gulf of Guinea, and while you, my poor Stephen, were not only sweltering but also turning as yellow as a guinea, they got together their precious petition, with a majority of shares supporting it—I need not tell you how easy it is for a man with a fair-sized estate to persuade cottagers who earn much of their living on that estate to put their signature or marks to a paper that takes away their share in a common—and after a long pause while it was being put into proper order and the bill drafted, Griffiths presented it to the House. It was read twice in the usual gabble, no one paying the least attention, and it was referred to a committee, the parliamentary committee that I was telling you about. If that committee reports favourably the bill will be read a third time, almost certainly without debate, and passed as a matter of course and commissioners will come down and start the sharing out. But if I can prevent it, the committee will not report favourably.'

  'How shall you prevent it?'

  'If my shares in the common are not enough to do away with their majority, they will at least reduce it to precious little; and then I should lay handsome odds, say eleven to three, that the weight of my position will swing the balance—will turn the scale.'

  'Sure, a post-captain in the Royal Navy is a most imposing creature; but is not Captain Griffiths of the same rank and somewhat greater seniority?'

  'Certainly. But he is not lord of the manor and I am.'

  'Heavens, Jack, I had no notion of it, no notion at all. So they still exist? The office or perhaps I should say the eminence I had heard of, but supposed it to belong to the distant past, when lords exercised the droit de seigneur with the utmost rigour, and the high justice and the low, with a private pair of gallows. So they still exist? I am amazed, amazed.'

  Even now, after all these years, the extent of Stephen's ignorance by land as well as by sea, of course, could astonish Captain Aubrey. He looked affectionately down, and in the simplest words explained the nature of his function. 'It amounts to little nowadays, after all the modern passion for paring down and changing for the s
ake of change: the lord of the manor has few rights left apart from what the manor courts leave him, and the occasional escheat; but logically or not he does retain a certain standing, and it is rare for a committee to go against his opposition. And then again, he does have some powers coming down from earlier times: I may not be able to lie with the commoners' brides on their wedding night, but I do open the fair in the Dripping Pan—by the charter it cannot start without I am there, or at least my deputy—and I do kick the first football of the season and bowl the first ball when cricket comes round, unless I am at sea.'

  They had been rising steadily through his account of lordship of a manor and now, from the top of a grassy bank he waved down to a shallow amphitheatre—it was too large to be called a dell—with a fine sward kept trim by sheep and rabbits and now by a small, remote flock of snow-white geese tended by a girl. 'You would not think so to look at it now,' he said, 'but on Old Lammas Day you can hardly get along for stalls and tents—Aunt Sally, the great rat of Tartary, two or three bearded ladies, boxing-booths, where our lads get finely battered by knowing old bruisers from Plymouth—such fun. And this is where we have our football in the winter and cricket in the summer, as well as leaping and foot races. In good years we field an eleven that can beat teams of fifteen and even seventeen from most of the nearby villages. Down there, a little south of east, do you see—no, to the left—there is the lane the fair people come up on the days before Old Lammas. It will take us a little out of our way, but I should like to take you down and across; there is something in the south pasture that may please you; and'—looking at his watch—'we have plenty of time before Welland comes to see me.'