Afloat and Ashore (23 page)

The disappearance of the two combatants furnished me with a hint how
to proceed. I stood out three or four minutes longer, or a sufficient
distance to make certain we should not be seen, and tacked again. In
order to draw as fast as possible out of the line of sight, we kept
the brig off a little, and then ran in towards the English coast,
which was sufficiently distant to enable us to stand on in that
direction some little time longer. This expedient succeeded perfectly;
for, when we found it necessary to tack again, day began to
dawn. Shortly after, we could just discern the West-Indiaman and the
lugger standing off the land, making the best of their way towards the
French coast. In 1799, it is possible that this bold Frenchman got his
prize into some of his own ports, though three or four years later it
would have been a nearly hopeless experiment. As for the Amanda, she
was safe; and Nelson did not feel happier, after his great achievement
at the Nile, than I felt at the success of my own expedient. Talcott
congratulated me and applauded me; and I believe all of us were a
little too much disposed to ascribe to our own steadiness and address,
much that ought fairly to have been imputed to chance.

Off Dover we got a pilot, and learned that the ship captured was the
Dorothea, a valuable West-Indiaman that had stolen away from her
convoy, and come in alone, the previous evening. She anchored under
Dungeness at the first of the ebb, and, it seems, had preferred taking
a good night's rest to venturing out in the dark, when the flood
made. Her berth was a perfectly snug one, and the lugger would
probably never have found her, had we not led her directly in upon her
prey.

I was now relieved from all charge of the brig; and a relief I found
it, between shoals, enemies, and the tides, of which I knew
nothing. That day we got into the Downs, and came-to. Here I saw a
fleet at anchor; and a pretty stir it made among the man-of-war's-men,
when our story was repeated among them. I do think twenty of their
boats were alongside of us, to get the facts from the original
source. Among others who thus appeared, to question me, was one old
gentleman, whom I suspected of being an admiral. He was in
shore-dress, and came in a plain way; the men in his boat declining to
answer any questions; but they paid him unusual respect. This
gentleman asked me a great many particulars, and I told him the whole
story frankly, concealing or colouring nothing. He was evidently much
interested. When he went away, he shook me cordially by the hand, and
said—"Young gentleman, you have acted prudently and well. Never mind
the grumbling of some of our lads; they think only of themselves. It
was your right and your duty to save your own vessel, if you could,
without doing anything dishonourable; and I see nothing wrong in your
conduct. But it's a sad disgrace to us, to let these French rascals be
picking up their crumbs in this fashion, right under our hawse-holes."

"How pleasant and how sad the turning tide
Of human life, when side by side
The child and youth begin to glide
Along the vale of years:
The pure twin-being for a little space,
With lightsome heart, and yet a graver face.
Too young for woe, though not for tears."
ALLSTON.

With what interest and deference most Americans of any education
regarded England, her history, laws and institutions, in 1799! There
were a few exceptions—warm political partisans, and here and there an
individual whose feelings had become embittered by some particular
incident of the revolution—but surprisingly few, when it is
recollected that the country was only fifteen years from the peace. I
question if there ever existed another instance of as strong
provincial admiration for the capital, as independent America
manifested for the mother country, in spite of a thousand just
grievances, down to the period of the war of 1812. I was no exception
to the rule, nor was Talcott. Neither of us had ever seen England
before we made the Lizard on this voyage, except through our minds'
eyes; and these had presented quantities of beauties and excellencies
that certainly vanished on a nearer approach. By this I merely mean
that we had painted in too high colours, as is apt to be the case when
the imagination holds the pencil; not that there was any unusual
absence of things worthy to be commended. On the contrary, even at
this late, hour, I consider England as a model for a thousand
advantages, even to our own inappreciable selves. Nevertheless, much
delusion was blended with our admiration.

English history was virtually American history; and everything on the
land, as we made our way towards town, which the pilot could point
out, was a source of amusement and delight. We had to tide it up to
London, and had plenty of leisure to see all there was to be seen. The
Thames is neither a handsome, nor a very magnificent river; but it was
amazing to witness the number of vessels that then ascended or
descended it. There was scarce a sort of craft known to Christendom, a
few of the Mediterranean excepted, that was not to be seen there; and
as for the colliers, we drifted through a forest of them that seemed
large enough to keep the town a twelvemonth in fire-wood, by simply
burning their spars. The manner in which the pilot handled our brig,
too, among the thousand ships that lay in tiers on each side of the
narrow passage we had to thread, was perfectly surprising to me;
resembling the management of a coachman in a crowded thoroughfare,
more than the ordinary working of a ship. I can safely say I learned
more in the Thames, in the way of keeping a vessel in command, and in
doing what I pleased with her, than in the whole of my voyage to
Canton and back again. As for Neb, he rolled his dark eyes about in
wonder, and took an occasion to say to me—"He'll make her talk,
Masser Miles, afore he have done." I make no doubt the navigation from
the Forelands to the bridges, as it was conducted thirty years since,
had a great influence on the seamanship of the English. Steamers are
doing away with much of this practice, though the colliers still have
to rely on themselves. Coals will scarcely pay for tugging.

I had been directed by Captain Williams to deliver the brig to her
original consignee, an American merchant established in the modern
Babylon, reserving the usual claim for salvage. This I did, and that
gentleman sent hands on board to take charge of the vessel, relieving
me entirely from all farther responsibility. As the captain in his
letter had, inadvertently I trust, mentioned that he had put
"Mr. Wallingford, his
third
mate," in charge, I got no
invitation to dinner from the consignee; though the affair of the
capture under Dungeness found its way into the papers,
viâ
Deal, I have always thought, with the usual caption of "Yankee Trick."
Yankee trick! This phrase, so often carelessly used, has probably done
a great deal of harm in this country. The young and ambitious—there
are all sorts of ambition, and, among others, that of being a rogue;
as a proof of which, one daily hears people call envy, jealousy,
covetousness, avarice, and half of the meaner vices, ambition—the
young and
ambitious
, then, of this country, too often think to
do a
good
thing, that shall have some of the peculiar merit of
a certain other good thing that they have heard laughed at and
applauded, under this designation. I can account in no other manner
for the great and increasing number of "Yankee tricks" that are of
daily occurrence among us. Among other improvements in taste, not to
say in morals, that might be introduced into the American press, would
be the omission of the histories of these rare inventions. As
two-thirds of the editors of the whole country, however, are Yankees,
I suppose they must be permitted to go on exulting in the cleverness
of their race. We are indebted to the Puritan stock for most of our
instructors—editors and school-masters—and when one coolly regards
the prodigious progress of the people in morals, public and private
virtue, honesty, and other estimable qualities, he must indeed rejoice
in the fact that our masters so early discovered "a church without a
bishop."

I had an opportunity, while in London, however, of ascertaining that
the land of our fathers, which by the way has archbishops, contains
something besides an unalloyed virtue in its bosom. At Gravesend we
took on board
two
customhouse officers, (they always set a
rogue to watch a rogue, in the English revenue system,) and they
remained in the brig until she was discharged. One of these men had
been a gentleman's servant, and he owed his place to his former
master's interest. He was a miracle of custom-house integrity and
disinterestedness, as I discovered in the first hour of our
intercourse. Perceiving a lad of eighteen in charge of the prize, and
ignorant that this lad had read a good deal of Latin and Greek under
excellent Mr. Hardinge, besides being the heir of Clawbonny, I suppose
he fancied he would have an easy time with him. This man's name was
Sweeney. Perceiving in me an eager desire to see everything, the brig
was no sooner at her moorings, than he proposed a cruise ashore. It
was Sweeney who showed me the way to the consignee's, and, that
business accomplished, he proposed that we should proceed on and take
a look at St. Paul's, the Monument, and, as he gradually found my
tastes more intellectual than he had at first supposed, the wonders of
the West End. I was nearly a week under the pilotage of the "Admirable
Sweeney." After showing me the exteriors of all the things of mark
about the town, and the interiors of a few that I was disposed to pay
for, he descended in his tastes, and carried me through Wapping, its
purlieus and its scenes of atrocities. I have always thought Sweeney
was sounding me, and hoping to ascertain my true character, by the
course he took; and that he betrayed his motives in a proposition
which he finally made, and which brought our intimacy to a sudden
close. The result, however, was to let me into secrets I should
probably have never learned in any other manner. Still, I had read and
heard too much to be easily duped; and I kept myself not only out of
the power of my tempter, but out of the power of all that could injure
me, remaining simply a curious observer of what was placed before my
eyes. Good Mr. Hardinge's lessons were not wholly forgotten; I could
run away from him, much easier than from his precepts.

I shall never forget a visit I made to a house called the Black Horse,
in St. Catherine's Lane. This last was a narrow street that ran across
the site of the docks that now bear the same name; and it was the
resort of all the local infamy of Wapping. I say
local
infamy;
for there were portions of the West End that were even worse than
anything which a mere port could produce. Commerce, that parent of so
much that is useful to man, has its dark side as everything else of
earth; and, among its other evils, it drags after it a long train of
low vice; but this train is neither so long nor so broad as that which
is chained to the chariot-wheels of the great. Appearances excepted,
and they are far less than might be expected, I think the West End
could beat Wapping out and out, in every essential vice; and, if
St. Giles be taken into the account, I know of no salvo in favour of
the land over the sea.

Our visit to the Black Horse was paid of a Sunday, that being the
leisure moment of all classes of labourers, and the day when, being
attired in their best, they fancied themselves best prepared to appear
in the world. I will here remark, that I have never been in any
portion of Christendom that keeps the Sabbath precisely as it is kept
in America. In all other countries, even the most rigorously severe in
their practices, it is kept as a day of recreation and rest, as well
as of public devotion. Even in the American towns, the old observances
are giving way before the longings or weaknesses of human nature; and
Sunday is no longer what it was. I have witnessed scenes of brawling,
blasphemy and rude tumult, in the suburbs of New York, on Sundays,
within the last few years, that I have never seen in any other part of
the world on similar occasions; and serious doubts of the expediency
of the high-pressure principle have beset me, whatever may be the just
constructions of doctrine. With the last I pretend not to meddle;
but, in a worldly point of view, it would seem wise, if you cannot
make men all that they ought to be, to aim at such social regulations
as shall make them as little vile as possible. But, to return to the
Black Horse in St. Catherine's Lane—a place whose very name was
associated with vileness.

It is unnecessary to speak of the characters of its female
visiters. Most of them were young, many of them were still blooming
and handsome, but all of them were abandoned. "I need tell you
nothing of these girls," said Sweeney, who was a bit of a philosopher
in his way, ordering a pot of beer, and motioning me to take a seat at
a vacant table—"but, as for the men you see here, half are
house-breakers and pickpockets, come to pass the day genteelly among
you gentlemen-sailors. There are two or three faces here that I have
seen at the Old Bailey, myself; and how they have remained in the
country, is more than I can tell you. You perceive these fellows are
just as much at their ease, and the landlord who receives and
entertains them is just as much at
his
ease, as if the whole
party were merely honest men."

"How happens it," I asked, "that such known rogues are allowed to go
at large, or that this inn-keeper dares receive them?"

"Oh! you're a child yet, or you would not ask such a question! You
must know, Master Wallingford, that the law protects rogues as well as
honest men. To convict a pickpocket, you must have witnesses and
jurors to agree, and prosecutors, and a sight of things that are not
as plenty as pocket-handkerchiefs, or even wallets and Bank of England
notes. Besides, these fellows can prove an alibi any day in the
week. An alibi, you must know—"