“I hear you say something,” Cuffy insisted.
Hartley quickly tried to change the subject by saying, “You’re still strutting too much. A gentleman carries himself with pride, but does not strut.”
“Me don’t know what you mean by strut,” Cuffy complained.
Hartley demonstrated by putting a boastful bounce to his step and striding back and forth in front of the shack as Cuffy looked on suspiciously. In a flash, the moment of peril had passed.
When the two had repeatedly practiced the walk of a gentleman until the strut was gone from Cuffy’s gait, they took a break from the lessons. Hartley asked for some paper and a pencil to make a list of the traits of a true gentleman, claiming they were too many for anyone to remember.
“I also need some proper clothes instead of these pajamas,” Hartley said, indicating the garment that hung over him like a shift.
“You can wear dat,” Cuffy proclaimed. “You a prisoner of war. You must look different. Watch me now—is so de walk go?”
And he strolled from tree to tree glancing over his shoulder intently at his tutor for approval.
* * *
After the morning’s lesson was finished, Hartley was tied again to the tree and left sitting right in the middle of the handful of shacks with the scorching sun mercilessly raking the land. He tried to wriggle himself into the shadow of the tree but the rope around his neck was too short. People trotted by him back and forth, paying him no more mind than they would one of the dogs.
Left to himself, Hartley began thinking about his troubles. How could he make someone into a modern English gentleman? What did Cuffy think, that Hartley was God? Without doubt there was a protocol to being a gentleman. The problem was, it was a protocol so deeply etched in Hartley’s consciousness that it lay beyond words or glib formulation. He knew it as well or as badly as he knew how to breathe. But if anyone had asked him to express in plain terms the act of breathing, he would have similarly stumbled. What Hartley instinctively knew but couldn’t put into words was—to paraphrase an observation a Shavian flower girl named Eliza Doolittle would make some hundred years later—the difference between a man and a gentleman is not how he behaves, but how he is treated.
And how can one control that? What Cuffy was doing was treating life as if it was a masquerade, as if one could assume by playacting the aspects of a genuine gentleman just like that! But this was an absurd notion. Look at him, an ancestral member of the upper class by birth—it had taken the world twenty-three hectic years to make Hartley Fudges an exemplar of his class with all its accoutrements and niceties. If only he’d kept his mouth shut instead of bragging about his life as a bon vivant in London, about his imaginary heroics on the fields of honor and all the other glamorous cock-and-bull stories he’d fed Cuffy. Now here he was, about to be butchered if he couldn’t make Cuffy into a gentleman. Using Hartley’s own words, the former slave now occupied a universe that seemed a nightmarish mishmash of nonsense. For God’s sake, look at what the brute had done to the teachings of poor Plato. Perfect chicken, my foot! Hartley laughed sardonically to himself at the profound ignorance of the bumpkin. He really was a fool.
Anyone noticing him bound to the tree would think that he was slumped over on the ground in the deepest despair. That’s because no one else could see or feel the cataract of thoughts and impulses in which his whole being was aswirl. How could he make a social dunce like Cuffy understand the subtlety of pedigree and ancestry? How could such a one understand what upbringing contributed to a gentleman’s life? He wouldn’t understand the philosophers Hartley had read in their original tongue—Aristotle, Plato, Heraclitus, and so forth (Hartley himself had not understood them). He wouldn’t understand the toilets of Eton much less its playing fields. And finally, he would never understand that vast conspiracy of subordinates and classes including maids, garden boys, stable hands, tradesmen, and shop helpers of every type and scope who, by genuflecting to the concept of the English aristocracy, were directly or indirectly the creators of Hartley Fudges and other pampered aristocrats.
Hartley was convinced that he was doomed.
During these days and nights he had plenty of time to think about his predicament and about what he could do to escape. The problem with escaping was that he didn’t know where he was or how to find his way back to the plantation. With their knowledge of the terrain, the renegades would quickly track him down. Yet what choice or chance did Hartley have? He had none. He could only pretend that he was teaching Cuffy how to become a gentleman when, in fact, he was merely marking time while he tried to devise a plan of escape.
CHAPTER 16
What Cuffy wanted him to do was simply impossible: Hartley Fudges quickly came to that conclusion. Creating an English gentleman required years of upbringing and careful nurturing by a cabal of nannies, teachers, butlers that Cuffy would never have. Cuffy would have to be taught to speak in the posh accent of received pronunciation. He would have to be taught table manners and etiquette; for example, to not burp out loud in public; to give up farting, and if that required a sphincter discipline beyond his gifts, to acquire the art of passing wind noiselessly. He would have to master dressing like an English gentleman.
Hartley was at first in utter despair and just couldn’t even imagine how such a thing would be possible. In fact, the very thought of it, the very idea, was too preposterous to even contemplate, especially under the decrepit and shabby conditions of the camp. But then it occurred to him that if he couldn’t change Cuffy into an English gentleman of the nineteenth century, he would never have to fight a duel in which he might possibly be killed by his former slave.
And he had every reason to think that the boy would kill him. The encampment was no parliamentary democracy where decisions were reached after civilized, logical debate. A leader here got his way not by the force of persuasion but by being stronger, tougher, and braver than the other men. From his observations of the camp and the men who lived in it, Hartley concluded that Cuffy was their leader because, of all among them, he was the fiercest.
The only way Hartley would survive would be to outthink the man who held him captive.
Hartley had never been philosophical enough to wonder whether the world he lived in was sane or mad. It had a backbone of sense enough to make one accept life’s anomalies. But now that he found himself held prisoner by renegade slaves, the leader of whom thought he could transfigure himself into an English gentleman simply by adopting the manners and outward appearances, he found himself on the brink of thinking the world quite mad. What he was faced with, Hartley decided, was a dilemma that would require superior thinking and strategy.
First, he would tell Cuffy that a person could not be a gentleman unless he looked the part, which meant dressing like a gentleman, not a ragamuffin. So while Hartley would pretend to be trying his best to turn Cuffy into a gentleman by changing the boy’s speech, he would also be making the transformation as difficult as he could by insisting on picky details. Second, he would emphasize that a true gentleman spoke English flawlessly and always with received pronunciation. He knew that Jamaicans had trouble with the initial “h” and with the “th” combination—for example, they said “tree” when they meant “three.” Hartley devised an exercise that consisted of common “th” words such as “the,” “they,” and “that,” which Jamaicans typically pronounced “de,” “dey,” and “dat.” Yet as simple as this islandwide miscue should be to fix, Hartley discovered that he could not instruct Cuffy to repeat these words a hundred times per day because Cuffy could not count to a hundred; in fact, he could not count at all.
Then there was a shortage of books. In all the camp not a single book was to be found. The camp was home to escaped slaves, most of whom could not read or write and had no use for books. Hartley pointed out to Cuffy that without books he would never overcome his illiteracy.
Two days later, after the men had returned from a night raid on a plantation, they brought back several books, inclu
ding among them Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), the most bloated novel in the history of the English language. Its first edition contained 969,000 words tamped down into 1,536 pages, and tells its story in an epistolary narrative.
On the morning the book arrived, Hartley was summoned to Cuffy’s shack and presented with it along with a book on etiquette. Clarissa had a single drop of blood on the cardboard cover but was none the worse for wear.
“You read dis book,” Cuffy ordered.
“This,” Hartley corrected.
“Dat’s what I said.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Don’t repeat what I say.”
Hartley sighed. He was still dressed in the pajama smock that he had been wearing since being abducted, and he spotted a small pile of clothing that the raiding party had just captured and deposited in a corner of the shack.
“I say,” Hartley asked, “do you much mind if I try on some of those clothes to see if they fit me?”
“You have clothes already,” Cuffy growled suspiciously. “Dese are my gentleman’s clothes.”
“These are pajamas!” Hartley said patiently. “I can’t be wearing pajamas all day long. Pajamas are what a gentleman sleeps in.”
“How come I don’t sleep in pajamas?”
“Because you’re not . . .” Hartley began, but caught himself just in time. “Because you’re not quite ready for them just yet. You have to work up to pajamas. They come later. Please let me have some proper clothes.”
Cuffy looked at him like a tailor measuring a customer for a suit. “Take some clothes,” he said, gesturing at the pile.
But after Hartley had carefully selected a shirt and a pair of pants, Cuffy took them away and said he would wear them himself.
“But what about me?” Hartley wailed.
“You already a gentleman,” Cuffy observed wryly. “You don’t need to look like one.”
* * *
That night Hartley began reading Clarissa by firelight to the band of escaped slaves. Hartley thought the book wretched and sanctimonious, filled with bogus pieties assembled in a holier-than-thou gruel, and did not want to read it. But Cuffy insisted that the whole camp be entertained by the captured backra, so Hartley had no choice but to read the book with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. At first, the group gathered around the bonfire seemed interested in the reading, and in the roseate glow of the fire the black faces were raptly focused on Hartley’s words.
The first letter was dated January 10th and was from a Miss Anna Howe to Miss Clarissa Harlowe, the eponymous character of the novel. It began:
I am extremely concerned, my dearest friend, for the disturbances that have happened in your family . . . I long to have the particulars from yourself; and of the usage I am told you receive upon an accident you could not help; and in which, as far as I can learn, the sufferer was the aggressor.
Mr. Diggs the surgeon . . . told me that there was no danger from the wound, if there were none from the fever . . .
Mr. Wyerley drank tea with us yesterday; and though he is far from being partial to Mr. Lovelace . . . yet both he and Mrs. Symmes blame your family for the treatment they gave him when he went in person to inquire after your brother’s health, and to express his concern what had happened.
Another couple paragraphs of this kind and the listeners had become restive with much yawning breaking out among them. Only Cuffy understood what the book was saying.
“A duel!” exclaimed Cuffy. “Dem fighting a duel.”
“Yes,” confirmed Hartley. “They were.”
“But dey using swords instead of pistols,” observed Cuffy.
“That’s correct,” Hartley said, yawning.
“But when we fight our duel, we’ll use pistols.”
“If we fight our duel,” Hartley said crisply.
“Who say we not going to fight our duel?” Cuffy demanded.
“You know the rules.”
“Cuffy must become gentleman,” Cuffy said, hazarding his best received pronunciation. “Must learn to talk like a gentleman.”
“Wha’?” contemptuously dissented a slave named Quashie. “You going talk like him?”
“Me going talk anyway me want,” Cuffy shot back.
Quashie muttered under his breath.
“You don’t like it?” Cuffy challenged.
Scowling, the man lumbered to his feet, his eyes fixed on Cuffy. The moment grew taut like a drawn bowstring. But then just as quickly the tension dissipated, and while the fire licked the hardened features of the men’s faces with a playful glow, Quashie lowered his eyes and shuffled away into the night. With a baleful eye, Cuffy watched him until he disappeared into the darkness.
“Read more,” Cuffy growled, sitting cross-legged before the fire.
Hartley read some more.
* * *
Over the course of the next few weeks, the attempt to transform an African slave into an English gentleman continued. Every day Hartley and Cuffy worked on received pronunciation, saying “tree” and “three” over and over again like men possessed. For the first few days, Hartley felt like he was involved in pointless labor and was overwhelmed by the futility of what they were trying to accomplish. He would finish the session disgusted at the results and feeling like a complete fool. Sometimes he would try to talk Cuffy out of the fool’s errand they had embarked on and the argument would go around in circles to no avail. Hartley would say, with exasperation, “Why do we have to do this? What’s the point?”
Usually Cuffy would reply offhandedly, “We have to fight a duel. Only another gentleman can fight a duel with a gentleman.”
“But that’s just the point! Why do we have to fight a duel?”
“When de time is right, I will insult you. I’ll box your face before witnesses.”
“But why?”
“Because dat’s what gentlemen do.”
“That’s what gentlemen do, not dat’s.”
“I didn’t say dat’s. I said that’s.”
Another contentious pause intruded between them. Finally, Hartley broke it.
“What I mean is, what injury have I done you that requires bloodshed?”
“You made me look small before my people.”
“I didn’t mean to. It was all a misunderstanding.”
“I could have been the perfect slave. I could have been Plato’s slave.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“Dere is too.”
“There is too.”
“My point, exactly.”
Hartley sighed.
“Dat was pretty good, wasn’t it?”
“That, not dat.”
“Who’s saying dat? Not me, I assure you.”
Hartley had to admit to himself that Cuffy’s use of such words and phrases as “exactly” and “I assure you” was a definite sign of progress. But they were making no headway on the issue of the duel, and it seemed to Hartley that he was doomed to suffer the ignominy of being killed in a duel by his former slave.
The night after he began reading by firelight to the escaped slaves he was unable to sleep. Nights in this mountainous countryside were moist with dew and generally cool from a sporadic breeze as light as the stroke of a feather duster, but Hartley was in great discomfort because of the rope tied around his neck that attached him to the tree. He lay awake many nights trying to think up ways of humoring Cuffy and his twisted obsession to become an English gentleman and fight a duel with his former owner.
The instruction continued, day in and day out. Sometimes Cuffy was eager to tackle a perplexing subject such as the conjugation of irregular verbs. But just as often he would become impatient and testy with Hartley for insisting on pinpoint accuracy in the use of grammar. One day Hartley was going over the forms of the verb “to be,” drilling Cuffy in the positive and negative variations, when the boy exploded, “I was, I wasn’t, you were, you weren’t”—what kind of shit is dis?”
“It’s not shit.
It’s English grammar.”
“I can’t stand it anymore. You drive me crazy.”
“Nobody said it was easy to become an English gentleman.”
“It’s stupid.”
“Personally, I’d never fight a duel with anyone who used ain’t as a negative form of the verb to be.”
“Why do people talk in de first place?”
Hartley did a turn inside the small shack. “I know a man who rejected a challenge from a bogus English gentleman who used the word them as a demonstrative adjective.”
Cuffy looked worried, for he didn’t have a clue what Hartley was talking about; in his imagination he thought that his former owner had an incalculably rich storehouse of expressions that were right and wrong and that a slave such as he would never even come close to matching. In this estimation, Cuffy was quite wrong. Hartley could not tell an adjective from an adverb and knew no more about demonstrative adjectives than did the man in the moon. But this particular construction had so baffled him when he was a boy at Eton that it had been seared into his memory by an unforgettable number of canings. Now he flaunted it, giving Cuffy the impression that many more esoteric admonitions stocked his mental shelves and he just happened to pluck this one from among many.
“Look at them big ground lizards,” Hartley said coolly.
“Where?” asked Cuffy, who was not particularly fond of reptiles.
“Oh, I’m merely giving you an example of the use of them as a demonstrative adjective. It’s awful.”
And Hartley shuddered as a wave of revulsion washed over him like a ocean breaker. Cuffy watched, impressed. For the first time he almost gave up the attempt to become a gentleman.
“Maybe me can’t do it,” Cuffy muttered.
“Can’t do what?”
“Learn received pronunciation.”
“Are you finally coming to your senses?”
“I might as well kill you now and be done wid it.”
The Family Mansion Page 17
