Foreigners (3 page)

Again I dined alone, and with the same young attendant
ministering to my needs, but the quality of the food
appeared not to have improved. I signalled to the boy that
he should remove my plate, and soon thereafter the
innkeeper joined my table clutching a bottle of port and
two glasses. He looked somewhat downcast, as though in
possession of news that he was going to find difficult to
convey. However, after some preliminary conversation about
the beautiful day that we had enjoyed, he turned his attention
to his own journey to Birmingham and began to sing
the praises of the merchants of that town. I listened until
his tongue stopped flapping, and the sheepish look on his
face suggested that he was suddenly aware that he might
possibly be exhausting my patience. He poured yet another
drink for us both. 'I have,' he said, 'made some discoveries
about your Mr Barber.' I presumed he had and so I simply
waited for him to share with me the nature of these discoveries.
'The child you saw today is Frank Barber's daughter,
but I know there are also other children. Apparently the
wife, Elizabeth, attempts to keep their Burntwood schoolhouse
by herself, although the place enjoys an enrolment
of only four pupils, and it is said that it will probably
close before the year is out for want of custom. Mrs Barber's
skills as a teacher are not greatly in demand, but her fees
are such that practically any pocket can afford her
ser vices. According to the intelligence of those who were
prepared to speak with me on this sad subject, those in
desperate need would today rather send their children elsewhere
than to Mrs Barber, so it's inevitable that soon the
school will be no more.' At this he paused, as though
trying to impress the gravity of the situation upon me,
but I said nothing and merely took a sip of my wine. 'And
then,' he continued, 'there is the case of Frank Barber
himself. His final days hereabouts in Lichfield were not
easy, filled as they were with both illness and poverty.
Apparently Mr Barber squandered the not inconsiderable
sum of money that his master left to him in his will.
Furthermore, if you don't mind my saying, the fellow did
let himself go, for when I last saw him he'd lost all his
teeth, and his face was severely marked with the pox. He
was as sad and as broken as a man can be while still
remaining with us in this world.' The innkeeper paused.
'Of course, his last offence was to insist on wearing his
late master's clothes, although they had clearly long past
all usage. It was a truly pitiful sight.'

I listened but chose to say nothing in response to my
host's words, but of course London society had long been
aware of Francis Barber's descent into financial difficulties.
Following his departure to Lichfield, some two years
after his master's death, many had answered Francis' calls
for money, for the negro claimed to have incurred significant
expenses due to his own failing health and that of
his delicate children, and the poor man appeared to be
permanently fastened into coils of debt and anxiety.
However, having squandered the generous sum that his late
master had left for him in his will, and having often
displayed 'vulgar insolence' in his written communication
with those who had tried valiantly to help him, there were
soon few in the doctor's circle who felt either sympathy
or concern for the negro's welfare. Within a few years of
his arrival in Lichfield, the careless Barber had also, much
to the dismay of his few remaining supporters, managed
to fully deplete the capital which had been set aside to
provide him with an annuity. The nature of his presumably
unhappy life on Stowe Street in Lichfield remained a
mystery to those of us who remembered 'London Frank',
and this, after all, was partly why I had chosen to seek out
the negro, in order that I might discover for myself the
full story of his fall from grace. 'I am led to believe,'
continued my host, 'that Mrs Barber will be at home
tomorrow, for apparently today she travelled from
Burntwood into Lichfield on a series of errands. I'm sure
that she'll be happy to speak with a gentleman such as
yourself, and particularly on the matter of her late husband.
No doubt she can help you with information where perhaps
I have failed your good self.' I stifled my contempt, for
this outburst of false modesty on the part of my foolish
host was perfectly transparent. He was asking me, in an
indirect manner, what exactly was my business with Mrs
Barber, but that, of course, was something that I would
never divulge to a man such as this. It was then that I
realised that the man was most likely in drink, and although
I desired his absence I reminded myself that he was my
host and I should endeavour to tolerate him for a while
longer. We sat together for an hour or so more, exchanging
pleasantries about the seasons, and about London and
Birmingham societies, before I finally tired of this man's
prattle and retired to my room where I took to my incommodious
bed and discovered that, once again, the innkeeper
had not had the decency to at least venture to improve
matters by applying a warming pan to make the devilish
cot more tolerable.

Unable to immediately find sleep, I hoisted myself
upright and squinted about the dismal chamber. Then I
lit the candle and reached over and pulled the precious
object from the pocket of my waistcoat. The tortoiseshell
watch, which I had been led to understand the doctor had
paid Mudge and Dutton the princely sum of seventeen
guineas to purchase in 1768 had, on his death, been
bequeathed by Johnson to his beloved negro. Apparently,
as the result of a sale born of desperation, the watch had
fallen into the hands of the Canon of Lichfield, at a time
when the high and mighty of this city had taken advantage
of the black's innocence and poverty and stripped him
of all mementoes of his master. Two owners later, the
watch had come into my possession at a sale of Johnsonian
relics at a London coffee house, and for the past year I
had kept it close to my person. I harboured some notion
of presenting the watch to the negro in exchange for some
testimony about the vicissitudes of his recent life, but it
now appeared that the delicate timepiece would remain
safely in my keep. I replaced the watch and blew out the
candle, and in the darkness I allowed my mind to ruminate
upon the strange case of poor Francis Barber who,
along with the late writer Gustavus Vassa, was, at one
time, probably the foremost negro in England. Sad that
this man should have come to an unfortunate end in a
place such as Lichfield, but it was possible that my curiosity
about the negro's later years might now be satisfied by an
audience with his widow. I cast my mind back to the
malodorous carriage ride that I had shared with Francis
Barber as we journeyed to the funeral of his master, and
I remembered our one short conversation. I thought then,
and on many other occasions previous to the day of the
funeral, that being dependent upon a negro was a remarkable
situation for England's greatest literary man to find
himself in. Nevertheless, Dr Johnson remained a vocal and
vigorous protector of his negro, who he always treated as
a son as opposed to a man at his beck and call.

As far as I could ascertain this unique relationship had
begun in the middle part of the century when Barber, then
only a young boy, and not yet refined by a full exposure
to civilisation, arrived on Johnson's doorstep in London.
Some few years earlier, the eight-year-old piccaninny had
been sold on a plantation in his native Jamaica and brought
to England by a Colonel Bathurst. It is said that the boy's
original name may well have been Quashey, and it is understood
that his value was most likely five pounds or thereabouts.
Bathurst and the boy arrived in England in 1750,
whereupon Colonel Bathurst chose to live in Lincoln with
his son Richard, a doctor of medicine. It was decided that
the young Quashey, newly named Francis, should be sent
to Yorkshire to attend the Revd William Jackson's school
in the hamlet of Barton, where it was hoped that he might
acquaint himself with reading and writing. The negro boy
remained in Barton for two whole years, during which time
he achieved some knowledge of the English language, and
then the now cheerful, and surprisingly gentle, ten-year-old
boy returned to Lincoln and began service as the
younger Bathurst's servant. It soon became clear that Dr
Richard Bathurst had no desire to use the boy as an exotic
ornament and dress him as a negro page in bright satins
and a turban; he was, instead, actively looking for some
role in society that the boy might profitably fulfil. As it
transpired, Dr Bathurst's closest friend was none other than
the literary man, Samuel Johnson, who, around this same
time, lost his wife Tetty to a lingering and painful disease,
which left Johnson all alone in a large house in London
with neither company nor help. Richard Bathurst understood
that his dear friend regarded solitude as a horror,
for his sensitive mind was dangerously vulnerable to morbid
reflections. In these circumstances, the younger Bathurst
thought it only proper to pack Francis off to London in
order that he might make himself useful to a depressed
Dr Johnson.

On first encountering his future master, the ten-year-old
boy was shocked by the sight of this large, shambling
man who seemed to twitch uncontrollably about the shoulders,
and whose face appeared to be painfully contorted,
perhaps to compensate for an obvious blindness in one
eye. The scars around this man's throat were terrifying and
formed a red lumpish collar, and young Francis found it
difficult to tell when Johnson was speaking to him or
simply muttering to himself, for there seemed to be little
division between the two modes of expression. The nervous
Jamaican negro boy entered the service of Samuel Johnson,
who informed the dusky stranger that he imagined this
Jamaica to be 'a place of great wealth and dreadful wickedness,
a den of tyrants and a dungeon of slaves', but the
poor boy could make no reply for his mind was now almost
totally cleansed of memories of his birthplace.

Johnson took immediately to the young black child, who
was now styled Francis Barber, but like his friend Dr
Bathurst, he too had no desire to impress his peers by
dressing the negro as a satin-clad page or forcing the child
to wear livery of any sort. He was aware that ostentatiously
attired blacks were now commonplace in London
society, appearing in law courts, answering doors, marrying
servants, running errands, sitting for portraits. In literature
they were making minor appearances in the novels,
plays, and the poetry of the age, but to Johnson's eyes the
negro, generally through no fault of his own, often lacked
a certain civility. Johnson set about the task of saving the
young heathen's soul, teaching him to pray and providing
him with some basic religious instruction, but the literary
man soon discovered that the boy's spirit appeared to be
resistant to being given information as to how he should
conduct himself. The boy also displayed a lack of enthusiasm
in applying himself to even the most basic of household
chores, and this was a cause of some surprise to his
master, although in most circumstances the general untidiness
of his living quarters never seemed to trouble Johnson
greatly. After all, Johnson was a man preoccupied with
literary matters and he had little time to waste on domestic
issues, but he
did
have some understanding of the possible
source of Francis' reluctance to follow orders. Dr Bathurst's
father, the planter and former colonel in the Jamaican
militia, had recently suffered great financial losses which
threw all of his affairs into disarray, and then he had
suddenly taken ill and died. However, his will contained
a clause which granted young Francis Barber his freedom
and the bountiful sum of twelve pounds, which greatly
pleased Johnson who was firmly wedded to the belief that
no man should by nature be the property of another.
Clearly this unexpected benevolence had fed Francis' sense
of himself as being somewhat independent and beyond
any jurisdiction, but Johnson's personality was such that
he found it relatively easy to overlook the boy's rebellious
behaviour.

It was during this period that Miss Williams, the middle-aged
daughter of a Welsh physician with whom the doctor
had become friendly, established herself as a permanent
occupant of the house, and she made it her business to
reign over the domestic arrangements with a fist of iron.
Despite her blindness, she found little difficulty ranging
up and down the dangerous stairs, from the kitchen in the
basement to her own room beneath Johnson's study, which
was located in the garret near the very apex of the house.
Miss Williams was a strict disciplinarian who seldom ate
more than plain bread with butter, but she drank copious
quantities of tea, and she saw little reason why others
should indulge themselves beyond her own rigorous diet.
Miss Williams was prepared to tolerate the doctor's peculiar,
and sometimes offensive, manners, but she had little
patience with any others who sought to resist her rule.

Upon her arrival, Francis immediately noticed that Miss
Williams exercised considerable influence over his master,
for the doctor became a little more careful in his dress,
utilising metal buttons instead of twisted hair on his
familiar brown suit, and silver buckles occasionally decorated
his shoes. However, the influence was limited, for
Johnson's wig remained large and greyish, his shirt plain
off-white, his stockings black worsted, and he continued
to eschew ruffles on his coat so that his white shirtsleeves
were generally visible. In short, his master's rugged exterior
was still likely to alarm the unsuspecting, and his physical
convulsions and general irascibility remained very much in
evidence, but Francis continued to feel happy in the
company of this kind, if somewhat eccentric, man.
However, coping with the daily presence of Miss Williams
was proving to be a great trial, for the blind woman made
it plain that although Francis might be a clear favourite
of her employer, she viewed the Jamaican as little more
than an idle black boy who had absolutely no notion of
his own modest place in the greater scheme of things. She
continually attempted to exercise her authority over Francis,
and their rancour was generally uncivil and often bitter.
Johnson seemed reluctant to adjudicate, and he habitually
allowed Miss Williams to put her oar in and verbally abuse
his negro without any attempt on his part to intervene
and curb her demanding nature.