Chapter 7

I admit that the wonder and dismay of the “well-fed wits,” if the Lady was like Mr. Waterhouse’s picture of her, do not surprise me. But I confess I do not understand modern poetry, nor, perhaps, modern painting. Where is historical Art? Where is Alfred and the Cake—a subject which, as is well known, I discovered in my researches in history. Where is “Udolpho in the Tower”? or the “Duke of Rothsay the Fourth Day after He was Deprived of his Victuals”? or “King John Signing Magna Charta”? They are gone with the red curtain, the brown tree, the storm in the background. Art is revolutionary, like everything else in these times, when Treason itself, in the form of a hoary apostate and reviewer of contemporary fiction, glares from the walls, and is painted by Royal—mark _Royal_!—Academicians! . . .

* * * * *

_From Thomas Potts_, _Esq._, _of the_ ‘_Newcome Independent_,’ _to S. Gandish_, _Esq._

Newcome, May 3.

MY DEAR SIR,—I am truly sorry to have to interrupt a connection with so old and respected a contributor. But I think you will acknowledge, on reading the proof of your article on the Academy, which I enclose, that the time has arrived when public criticism is no longer your province. I do not so much refer to the old-fashioned tone of your observations on modern art. I know little about it, and care not much more. But you have entirely forgotten, towards the end of the notice, that the “Newcome Independent,” as becomes its name, is a journal of Liberty and Progress. The very proper remarks on Lord Spencer’s portrait elsewhere show that you are not unacquainted with our politics; but, at the close (expressing, I fear, your true sentiments), you glide into language which makes me shudder, and which, if printed in the “Independent,” would spell ruin. Send it, by all means, to the “Sentinel,” if you like. Send your Tory views, I mean. As for your quotation from the “Lady of Shalott,” I can find it nowhere in the poem of that name by the author you strangely style “young Mr. Tennyson.” {165}

I enclose a cheque for a quarter’s salary, and, while always happy to meet you as man with man, must get the notice of the Academy written up in the office from the “Daily Telegraph,” “Standard,” and “Times.” {166}—Faithfully and with deep regret yours,

THOMAS POTTS.

XXI.

_From Monsieur Lecoq_, _Rue Jérusalem_, _Paris_, _to Inspector Bucket_, _Scotland Yard_.

This correspondence appears to prove that mistakes may be made by the most astute officers of police, and that even so manifest a Briton as Mr. Pickwick might chance to find himself in the toils of international conspiracy.

(Translated.)

May 19, 1852.

SIR AND DEAR FELLOW-BROTHER (_confrère_).—The so cordial understanding between our countries ought to expand itself into a community of the political police. But the just susceptibilities of the Old England forbid at this moment the restoration to a friendly Power of political offenders. In the name of the French police of surety I venture to present to the famous officer Bucket a prayer that he will shut his eyes, for once, on the letter, and open his heart to the spirit of the laws.

No one needs to teach Monsieur Bucket that a foreign miscreant can be given up, under all reserves, to the justice! A small vial of a harmless soporific, a closed carriage, a private cabin on board a Channel steamer—with these and a little of the adroitness so remarked in the celebrated Bucket, the affair is in the bag! (_dans le sac_). All these things are in the cords (_dans les cordes_) of my esteemed English fellow-brother; will he not employ them in the interest of a devoted colleague and a friendly Administration? We seek a malefactor of the worst species (_un chenapan de la pire espèce_). This funny fellow (_drôle_) calls himself Count of Fosco, and he resides in Wood Road 5, St. John’s Forest; worth abode of a miscreant fit for the Forest of Bondy! He is a man bald, stout, fair, and paying well in countenance (_il paie de mine_), conceiving himself to resemble the great Napoleon. At the first sight you would say a philanthrope, a friend of man. On his right arm he bears a small red mark, round, the brand of a society of the most dangerous. Dear Sir, you will not miss him? When once he is in our hands, faith of Lecoq, you shall tell us your news as to whether France can be grateful. Of more words there is no need.—I remain, all to you, with the assurance of my most distinguished consideration,

LECOQ.

* * * * *

_From Inspector Bucket to M. Lecoq_.

May 22.

DEAR SIR,—Your polite favour to hand, and contents noted. You are a man of the world; I am a man of the world, and proud to deal with you as between man and man. The little irregularity shall be no consideration, all shall be squared, and the man wanted run in with punctuality and despatch. Expect him at Calais on the 26th current,—Faithfully yours,

C. BUCKET.

* * * * *

_From Count Fosco to Samuel Pickwick_, _Esq._, _G.C.M.P.C._, _Goswell Road_.

5 Forest Road, St. John’s Wood, May 23.

DEAR SIR,—When we met lately at the hospitable board of our common friend, Benjamin Allen, Esq., lately elected Professor of Chemistry in the University of London, our conversation turned (if you can pass me the intoxicating favour of remembering it) on the glorious science of chemistry. For me this knowledge has ever possessed irresistible attractions, from the enormous power which it confers of heaping benefits on the suffering race of mankind. Others may rejoice in the advantages which a knowledge of it bestows—the power which can reduce a Hannibal to the level of a drummer boy, or an all-pervading Shakspeare to the intellectual estate of a vestryman, though it cannot at present reverse those processes. The consideration of the destructive as compared with the constructive forces of chemistry was present, as I recollect, to your powerful intellect on the festive occasion to which I refer. “Yes!” you said (permit me to repeat your very words)—“Yes, Count Fosco, Alexander’s morning draught shall make Alexander run for his life at the first sound of the enemy’s trumpet. So much chemistry can achieve; but can she help as well as harm? Nay, can she answer for it that the lemon which Professor Allen, from the best and purest of motives, has blended with this milk-punch, shall not disagree with me to-morrow morning? Can chemistry, Count Fosco, thus thwart malign constitutional tendency?”

These were your words, sir, and I am now ready to answer your deep-searching question in the affirmative. Prolonged assiduous application to my Art has shown me how to preserve the lemon in Milk Punch, and yet destroy, or disengage, the deleterious elements. Will you so greatly honour science, and Fosco her servant, as to sup with me on the night of the twenty-fifth, at nine o’clock, and prove (you need not dread the test) whether a true follower of knowledge or a vain babbler signs—in exile—the name of

ISIDOR OTTAVIO BALDASSARE FOSCO?

* * * * *

_From Mr. Pickwick to the Count Fosco_.

May 24.

MY DEAR SIR,—Many thanks for your very kind invitation. Apart from the interests of science, the pleasure of your company alone would be more than enough to make me gladly accept it. I shall have the enjoyment of testing your milk-punch to-morrow night at nine, with the confident expectation that your admirable studies will have overcome a tendency which for many years has prevented me from relishing, as I could wish, one of the best things in this good world. Lemon, in fact, has always disagreed with me, as Professor Allen or Sir Robert Sawyer will be able to assure you; so your valuable experiment can be put, in my case, to a crucial test.—Very faithfully yours,

SAMUEL PICKWICK.

* * * * *

_From Inspector Bucket to M. Lecoq_.

May 26, 1 A.M.

MY DEAR SIR,—We have taken your man without difficulty. Bald, benevolent-looking, stout, perhaps fancies himself like Napoleon; if so, is deceived. We nabbed him asleep over his liquor and alone, at the address you meant to give, 5 Forest Road, St. John’s Wood. The house was empty, servants out, not a soul but him at home. He speaks English well for a foreigner, and tries to make out he is a British subject. Was rather confused when took, and kept ejaculating “Cold Punch,” apparently with the hope of persuading us that such was his name or alias. He also called for one Sam—probably an accomplice. He travels to Calais to-day as a lunatic patient in a strait-waistcoat, under charge of four “keepers” belonging to the force; and I trust that you have made preparations for receiving your prisoner, and that our management of the case has given satisfaction. What I like is doing business with a man like you. We may not be so smart nor so clever at disguises as the French profession, but we flatter ourselves we are punctual and cautious.—Faithfully yours,

C. BUCKET.

* * * * *

_From Mr. Pickwick to Mr. Perker_, _Solicitor_, _Gray’s Inn_.

Sainte Pélagie, May 28.

DEAR PERKER,—For heaven’s sake come over here at once, bringing some one who can speak French, and bail me out, or whatever the process of their law may be. I have been arrested, illegally and without warrant, at the house of a scientific friend, Count Fosco, where I had been supping. As far as I can understand, I am accused of a plot against the life of the Emperor of the French; but the whole proceedings have been unintelligible and arbitrary to a degree. I cannot think that an English citizen will be allowed to perish by the guillotine—innocent and practically unheard! Please bring linen and brushes, &c., but not Sam, who would be certain to embroil himself with the French police. I am writing to the _Times_ and Lord Palmerston.—Sincerely yours,

SAMUEL PICKWICK.

* * * * *

_From Monsieur Lecoq to Inspector Bucket_.

May 27.

SIR,—There has arrived a frightful misunderstanding. The man you have sent us is not Fosco. Of Fosco he has only the baldness, the air benevolent, and the girth. The brand on his right arm is no more than the mark of vaccination. Brought before the Commissary of Police, the prisoner, who has not one word of French, was heard through an interpreter. He gives himself the name of Piquouique, _rentier_, English; and he appeals to his Ambassador. Of papers he had letters bearing the name Samuel Pickwick, and, on his buttons, the letters P.C., which we suspect are the badge of a secret society. But this is not to the point; for it is certain that, whatever the crimes of this brigand, he is _not_ Fosco, but an Englishman. That he should be found in the domicile of Fosco when that droll had evaded is suspicious (_louche_), and his explanation does not permit itself to be understood. I have fear that we enjoy bad luck, and that M. Palmerston will make himself to be heard on this matter.

Accept, Monsieur, the assurance of my high consideration.

LECOQ.

P.S.—Our comrade, the Count Smorltork, of the Police of Manners (_police des moeurs_), has come to present himself. Confronted with the bandit, he gives him reason, and offers his faith that the man is Piquouique, with whom he encountered himself when on a mission of secrecy to England it is now some years. What to do? (_Que faire_?)

XXII.

_From Mr. Allan Quatermain to Sir Henry Curtis_.

Mr. Quatermain offers the correct account of two celebrated right and left shots, also an adventure of the stranger in the Story of an African Farm.

DEAR CURTIS,—You ask me to give you the true account, in writing, of those right and left shots of mine at the two lions, the crocodile, and the eagle. The brutes are stuffed now, in the hall at home—the lions each on a pedestal, and the alligator on the floor with the eagle in his jaws—much as they were when I settled them and saved the Stranger. All sorts of stories have got into the papers about the business, which was simple enough; so, though no hand with a pen, I may as well write it all out.

I was up on the Knobkerry River, prospecting for diamonds, in Omomborombunga’s country. I had nobody with me but poor Jim-jim, who afterwards met with an awful death, otherwise he would have been glad to corroborate my tale, if it needed it. One night I had come back tired to camp, when I found a stranger sitting by the fire. He was a dark, fat, Frenchified little chap, and you won’t believe me, but it is a fact that he wore gloves. I asked him to stay the night, of course, and inspanned the waggons in laager, for Omomborombunga’s impis were out, swearing to wash their spears in the blood of The Great White Liar—a Portuguese traveller probably; if not, I don’t know who he can have been; perhaps this stranger: he gave no name. Well, we had our biltong together, and the Stranger put himself outside a good deal of the very little brandy I had left. We got yarning, so to speak, and I told him a few of the curious adventures that naturally fall to the lot of a man in those wild countries. The Stranger did not say much, but kept playing with a huge carved walking-stick that he had. Presently he said, “Look at this stick; I bought it from a boy on a South African Farm. Do you understand what the carvings mean?”

“Hanged if I do!” I said, after turning it about.

“Well, do you see that figure?” and he touched a thing like a Noah out of a child’s ark. “That was a hunter like you, my friend, but not in all respects. That hunter pursued a vast white bird with silver wings, sailing in the everlasting blue.”

“Everlasting bosh!” said I; “there is no bird of the kind on the veldt.”

“That bird was Truth,” says the Stranger, “and, judging from the anecdote you tell me about the Babyan woman and the Zulu medicine-man, it is a bird _you_ don’t trouble yourself with much, my friend.”

This was a pretty cool thing to say to a man whose veracity is known like a proverb from Sheba’s Breasts to the Zambesi.

_Foide Macumazahn_, the Zulus say, meaning as true as a yarn of Allan Quatermain’s. Well, my blood was up; no man shall call Allan Quatermain a liar. The fellow was going on with a prodigious palaver about a white feather of Truth, and Mount Sinai, and the Land of Absolute Negation, and I don’t know what, but I signified to him that if he did not believe my yarns I did not want his company. “I’m sorry to turn you out,” I said, “for there are lions around”—indeed they were roaring to each other—“and you will have a parroty time. But you apologise, or you go!”

He laughed his short thick laugh. “I am a man who hopes nothing, feels nothing, fears nothing, and believes nothing that you tell me!”

I got up and went for him with my fists, and whether he feared nothing or not I don’t know; but he scooted, dropping a yellow French novel, by one Catulle Mendes, that I could make neither head nor tail of. I afterwards heard that there was something about this stranger in a book called “The Story of an African Farm,” which I once began, but never finished, not being able to understand most of it, and being vexed by the gross improbability of the girl not marrying the baby’s father, he being ready and willing to make her an honest woman. However, I am no critic, but a plain man who tells a plain tale, and I believe persons of soul admire the book very much. Any way, it does not say who the Stranger was—an allegorical kind of bagman I fancy; but I am not done with him yet.

Out he went into the dark, where hundreds of lions could be plainly seen making love (at which season they are very dangerous) by the flashes of lightning.

It was a terrific yet beautiful spectacle, and one which I can never forget. The black of night would suddenly open like a huge silver flower, deep within deep, till you almost fancied you could see within the gates of heaven. The hills stood out dark against the illimitable splendour, and on every koppie you saw the huge lions, like kittens at play, roaring till you could scarcely hear the thunder. The rain was rushing like a river, all glittering like diamonds, and then, in the twinkling of an eye, all was black as a wolf’s mouth till the next flash. The lightning, coming from all quarters, appeared to meet above me, and now was red, now golden, now silver again, while the great cat-like beasts, as they leaped or lay, looked like gold, red, and silver lions, reminding me of the signs of public-houses in old England, far away. Meantime the donga beneath roared with the flooded torrent that the rain was bringing down from the heights of Umbopobekatanktshiu.

I stood watching the grand spectacle for some time, rather pitying the Stranger who was out in it, by no fault of mine. Then I knocked the ashes out of my pipe, ate a mealy or two, and crept into my _kartel_, {184} and slept the sleep of the just.

About dawn I woke. The thunder had rolled away like a bad dream. The long level silver shafts of the dawn were flooding the heights, raindrops glittered like diamonds on every kopje and karroo bush, leaving the deep donga bathed in the solemn pall of mysterious night.

My thoughts went rapidly over the millions of leagues of land and sea, where life, that perpetual problem, was now awaking to another day of struggle and temptation. Then the golden arrows of the day followed fast. The silver and blue sky grew roseate with that wide wild blush which testifies to the modest delight of nature, satisfied and grateful for her silent existence and her amorous repose. I breakfasted, went down into the donga with a black boy, poor Jim-jim, who was afterwards, as I said, to perish by an awful fate, otherwise he would testify to the truth of my plain story. I began poking among the rocks in the dry basin of the donga, {185} and had just picked up a pebble—I knew it by the soapy feel for a diamond. Uncut it was about three times the size of the koh-i-noor, say 1,000 carats, and I was rejoicing in my luck when I heard the scream of a human being in the last agony of terror. Looking up, I saw that on either side of the donga, which was about twenty feet wide, a great black lion and lioness were standing with open jaws, while some fifty yards in front of me an alligator, in a deep pool of the flooded donga, was stretching his open snout and gleaming teeth greedily upwards. Over head flew an eagle, and _in mid-air between_, as I am a living and honourable man, a human being was leaping the chasm. He had been pursued by the lion on my left, and had been driven to attempt the terrible leap; but if he crossed he was certain to fall into the jaws of the lion on my right, while if he fell short in his jump, do you see, the alligator was ready for him below, and the great golden eagle watched the business from above, in case he attempted to escape _that_ way.

All this takes long to tell, though it was passing in a flash of time. Dropping the diamond (which must have rolled into a crevice of the rock, for I never saw it again), I caught up my double-barrelled rifle (one of Wesson & Smith’s), aimed at the lion on the right hand of the donga with my right barrel, and then hastily fired my left at the alligator. When the smoke cleared away, the man had reached the right side of the donga safe and sound. Seeing that the alligator was dying, I loaded again, bowled over the lioness on the left, settled the eagle’s business (he fell dead into the jaws of the dying alligator, which closed on him with a snap). I then climbed the wall of the donga, and there lay, fainting, the Stranger of last night—the man who feared nothing—the blood of the dead lion trickling over him. His celebrated allegorical walking-stick from the African Farm had been broken into two pieces by the bullet after it (the bullet) had passed through the head of the lion. And, as the “Ingoldsby Legends” say, “nobody was one penny the worse,” except the wild beasts. The man, however, had had a parroty time, and it was a good hour before I could bring him round, during which he finished my brandy. He still wore gloves. What he was doing in Omuborumbunga’s country I do not know to this day. I never found the diamond again, though I hunted long. But I must say that two better right and left shots, considering that I had no time to aim, and that they were really snapshots, I never remember to have made in my long experience.

This is the short and the long of the matter, which was talked of a good deal in the Colony, and about which, I am told, some inaccurate accounts have got into the newspapers. I hate writing, as you know, and don’t pretend to give a literary colour to this little business of the shots, but merely tell a “plain, unvarnished tale,” as the “Ingoldsby Legends” say.

As to the Stranger, what he was doing there, or who he was, or where he is now, I can tell you nothing. He told me he was bound for “the almighty mountains of Dry-facts and Realities,” which he kindly pointed out to me among the carvings of his walking-stick. He then sighed wearily, very wearily, and scooted. I think he came to no good; but he never came in my way again.

And now you know the yarn of the two stuffed lions and the alligator with the eagle in his jaws.

Ever yours,

ALLAN QUATERMAIN.

XXIII.

_From the Baron Bradwardine to Edward Waverley_, _Esq._, _of Waverley Honour_.

The Baron explains the mysterious circumstances of his affair with his third cousin, Sir Hew Halbert.—“Waverley,” chap. xiv.

Tully Veolan, May 17, 1747.

SON EDWARD,—Touching my quarrel with Sir Hew Halbert, anent which I told you no more than that it was “settled in a fitting manner,” you have long teased me for an ampler explanation. This I have withheld, as conceiving that it tended rather to vain quolibets and jesting, than to that respect in which the duello, or single combat, should be regarded by gentlemen of name and coat armour. But Sir Hew being dead, and buried with his fathers, the matter may be broached as among friends and persons of honour. The ground of our dispute, as ye know, was an unthinking scoff of Sir Hew’s, he being my own third cousin by the mother’s side, Anderson of Ettrick Hall having intermarried, about the time of the Solemn League and Covenant, with Anderson of Tushielaw, both of which houses are connected with the Halberts of Dinniewuddie and with the Bradwardines. But _stemmata quid faciunt_? Sir Hew, being a young man, and the maut, as the vulgar say, above the meal, after a funeral of one of our kin in the Cathedral Kirkyard of St. Andrews, we met at Glass’s Inn, where, in the presence of many gentlemen, occurred our unfortunate dissension.