Afloat and Ashore Part 38

ALLSTON.

Roger Talcott had not been idle during my absence. Clawbonny was so dear to me, that I had staid longer than was proposed in the original plan; and I now found the hatches on the Dawn, a crew shipped, and nothing remaining but to clear out. I mean the literal thing, and not the slang phrase, one of those of which so many have crept into the American language, through the shop, and which even find their way into print; such as "charter coaches," "on a boat," "on board a stage," and other similar elegancies. "_On_ a boat" always makes me--, even at my present time of life. The Dawn was cleared the day I reached town.

Several of the crew of the Crisis had shipped with us anew, the poor fellows having already made away with all their wages and prize-money, in the short s.p.a.ce of a month! This denoted the usual improvidence of sailors, and was thought nothing out of the common way. The country being at peace, a difficulty with Tripoli excepted, it was no longer necessary for ships to go armed. The sudden excitement produced by the brush with the French had already subsided, and the navy was reduced to a few vessels that had been regularly built for the service; while the lists of officers had been curtailed of two-thirds of their names.

We were no longer a warlike, but were fast getting to be a strictly commercial, body of seamen. I had a single six-pounder, and half a dozen muskets, in the Dawn, besides a pair or two of pistols, with just ammunition enough to quell a mutiny, fire a few signal-guns, or to kill a few ducks.

We sailed on the 3rd of July. I have elsewhere intimated that the Manhattanese hold exaggerated notions of the comparative beauty of the scenery of their port, sometimes presuming to compare it even with Naples; to the bay of which it bears some such resemblance as a Dutch ca.n.a.l bears to a river flowing through rich meadows, in the freedom and grace of nature. Nevertheless, there _are_ times and seasons when the bay of New York offers a landscape worthy of any pencil. It was at one of these felicitous moments that the Dawn cast off from the wharf, and commenced her voyage to Bordeaux. There was barely air enough from the southward to enable us to handle the ship, and we profited by a morning ebb to drop down to the Narrows, in the midst of a fleet of some forty sail; most of the latter, however, being coasters. Still, we were a dozen ships and brigs, bound to almost as many different countries. The little air there was, seemed scarcely to touch the surface of the water; and the broad expanse of bay was as placid as an inland lake, of a summer's morning. Yes, yes--there are moments when the haven of New York does present pictures on which the artist would seize with avidity; but, the instant nature attempts any of her grander models, on this, a spot that seems never to rise much above the level of commercial excellencies, it is found that the accessaries are deficient in sublimity, or even beauty.

I have never seen our home waters so lovely as on this morning. The movements of the vessels gave just enough of life and variety to the scene to destroy the appearance of sameness; while the craft were too far from the land to prevent one of the most unpleasant effects of the ordinary landscape scenery of the place--that produced by the disproportion between the tallness of their spars, and the low character of the adjacent sh.o.r.es. As we drew near the Narrows, the wind increased; and forty sail, working through the pa.s.s in close conjunction, terminated the piece with something like the effect produced by a _finale_ in an overture. The brightness of the morning, the placid charms of the scenery, and the propitious circ.u.mstances under which I commenced the voyage, in a commercial point of view, had all contributed to make me momentarily forget my private griefs, and to enter cheerfully into the enjoyment of the hour.

I greatly disliked pa.s.sengers. They appealed to me to lessen the dignity of my position, and to reduce me to the level of an inn-keeper, or one who received boarders. I wished to command a ship, not to take in lodgers; persons whom you are bound to treat with a certain degree of consideration, and, in one sense, as your superiors. Still, it had too much of an appearance of surliness, and a want of hospitality, to refuse a respectable man a pa.s.sage across the ocean, when he might not get another chance in a month, and that, too, when it was important to himself to proceed immediately. In this particular instance, I became the dupe of a mistaken kindness on the part of my former owners. These gentlemen brought to me a Mr. Brigham--Wallace Mortimer Brigham was his whole name, to be particular--as a person who was desirous of getting to France with his wife and wife's sister, in order to proceed to Italy for the health of the married lady, who was believed to be verging on a decline. These people were from the eastward, and had fallen into the old error of Americans, that the south of France and Italy had residences far more favourable for such a disease, than our own country.

This was one of the provincial notions of the day, that were entailed on us by means of colonial dependency. I suppose the colonial existence is as necessary to a people, as childhood and adolescence are to the man; but, as my Lady Mary Wortley Montagu told her friend, Lady Rich--"Nay; but look you, my dear madam, I grant it a very fine thing to continue always fifteen; _that_, everybody must approve of--it is quite fair: but, indeed, indeed, one need not be five years old."

I was prevailed on to take these pa.s.sengers, and I got a specimen of their characters even as we dropped down the bay, in the midst of the agreeable scene to which I have just alluded. They were _gossips_; and that, too, of the lowest, or personal cast. Nothing made them so happy as to be talking of the private concerns of their fellow-creatures; and, as ever must happen where this propensity exists, nine-tenths of what they said rested on no better foundation than surmises, inferences drawn from premises of questionable accuracy, and judgments that were entered up without the authority, or even the inclination, to examine witnesses.

They had also a peculiarity that I have often remarked in persons of the same propensity; most of their gossiping arose from a desire to make apparent their own intimacy with the private affairs of people of mark--overlooking the circ.u.mstance that, in thus making the concerns of others the subjects of their own comments, they were impliedly admitting a consciousness of their own inferiority; men seldom condescending thus to busy themselves with the affairs of any but those of whom they feel it to be a sort of distinction to converse. I am much afraid good-breeding has more to do with the suppression of this vice, than good principles, as the world goes. I have remarked that persons of a high degree of self-respect, and a good tone of manners, are quite free from this defect of character; while I regret to be compelled to say that I have been acquainted with divers very saintly _professors_, including one or two parsons, who have represented the very _beau ideal_ of scandal.

My pa.s.sengers gave me a taste of their quality, as I have said, before we had got a mile below Governor's Island. The ladies were named Sarah and Jane; and, between them and Wallace Mortimer, what an insight did I obtain into the private affairs of sundry personages of Salem, in Ma.s.sachusetts, together with certain glimpses in at Boston folk; all, however, referring to qualities and facts that might be cla.s.sed among the real or supposed. I can, at this distant day, recall Scene 1st, Act 1st, of the drama that continued while we were crossing the ocean, with the slight interruption of a few days, produced by sea-sickness.

"Wallace," said Sarah, "did you say, yesterday, that John Viner had refused to lend his daughter's husband twenty thousand dollars, to get him out of his difficulties, and that he failed in consequence?"

"To be sure. It was the common talk through Wall Street yesterday, and everybody believes it"--there was no more truth in the story, than in one of the forty reports that have killed General Jackson so often, in the last twenty years. "Yes, no one doubts it--but all the Viners are just so! All of us, in our part of the world, know what to think of the Viners."

"Yes, I suppose so," drawled Jane. "I've heard it said this John Viner's father ran all the way from the Commons in Boston, to the foot of State Street, to get rid of a dun against this very son, who had his own misfortunes when he was young."

"The story is quite likely true in part," rejoined Wallace, "though it can't be _quite_ accurate, as the old gentleman had but one leg, and _running_ was altogether out of the question with _him_. It was probably old Tim Viner, who ran like a deer when a young man, as I've heard people say."

"Well, then, I suppose he ran his horse," added Jane, in the same quiet, drawling tone. "_Something_ must have run, or they never would have got up the story."

I wondered if Miss Jane Hitchc.o.x had ever taken the trouble to ascertain who _they_ were! I happened to know both the Viners, and to be quite certain there was not a word of truth in the report of the twenty thousand dollars, having heard all the particulars of the late failure from one of my former owners, who was an a.s.signee, and a considerable creditor. Under the circ.u.mstances, I thought I would hint as much.

"Are you quite sure that the failure of Viner & Co. was owing to the circ.u.mstance you mention, Mr. Brigham?" I inquired.

"Pretty certain. I am '_measurably acquainted_' with their affairs, and think I am tolerably safe in saying so."

Now, "measurably acquainted" meant that he lived within twenty or thirty miles of those who _did_ know something of the concerns of the house in question, and was in the way of catching sc.r.a.ps of the gossip that fell from disappointed creditors. How much of this is there in this good country of ours! Men who live just near enough to one another to feel the influence of all that rivalry, envy, personal strifes and personal malignancies, can generate, fancy they are acquainted, from this circ.u.mstance, with those to whom they have never even spoken. One-half the idle tales that circulate up and-down the land, come from authority not one t.i.ttle better than this. How much would men learn, could they only acquire the healthful lesson of understanding that _nothing_, which is much out of the ordinary way, and which, circulates as received truths ill.u.s.trative of character, is true in _all_ its material parts, and very little in _any_. But, to return to my pa.s.sengers, and that portion of their conversation which most affected myself. They continued commenting on persons and families by name, seemingly more to keep their hands in, than for any other discoverable reason, as each appeared to be perfectly conversant with all the gossip that was started; when Sarah casually mentioned the name of Mrs. Bradfort, with some of whose _supposed_ friends, it now came out, they had all a general visiting acquaintance.

"Dr. Hosack is of opinion she cannot live long, I hear," said Jane, with a species of fierce delight in killing a fellow-creature, provided it only led to a gossip concerning her private affairs. "Her case has been decided to be a cancer, now, for more than a week, and she made her will last Tuesday."

"Only last Tuesday!" exclaimed Sarah, in surprise. "Well, I heard she had made her will a twelvemonth since, and that she left all her property to young Rupert Hardinge; in the expectation, some persons thought, that he might marry her."

"How could that be, my dear?" asked the husband; "in what would she be better off for leaving her own property to her husband?"

"Why, by law, would she not? I don't exactly know how it would happen, for I do not particularly understand these things; but it seems natural that a woman would be a gainer if she made the man she was about to marry her heir. She would have her thirds in his estate, would she not?"

"But, Mrs. Brigham," said I, smiling, "is it quite certain Mrs. Bradfort wishes to marry Rupert Hardinge, at all?"

"I know so little of the parties, that I cannot speak with certainty in the matter, I admit, Captain Wallingford."

"Well, but Sarah, dear," interposed the more exacting Jane, "you are making yourself unnecessarily ignorant. You very well know how intimate we are with the Greenes, and they know the Winters perfectly well, who are next-door neighbours to Mrs. Bradfort. I don't see how you can say we haven't good means of being 'measurably' well-informed."

Now, I happened to know through Grace and Lucy, that a disagreeable old person, of the name of Greene did live next door to Mrs. Bradfort; but, that the latter refused to visit her, firstly, because she did not happen to like her, and secondly, because the two ladies belonged to very different social circles; a sufficient excuse for not visiting in town, even though the parties inhabited the same house. But, the Brighams, being Salem people, did not understand that families might reside next door to each other, in a large town, for a long series of months, or even years, and not know each other's names. It would not be easy to teach this truth, one of every-day occurrence, to the inhabitant of one of our provincial towns, who was in the habit of fancying he had as close an insight into the private affairs of all his neighbours, as they enjoyed themselves.

"No doubt we are all as well off as most strangers in New York,"

observed the wife; "still, it ought to be admitted that we may be mistaken. I have heard it said there is an old Mr. Hardinge, a clergyman, who would make a far better match for the lady, than his son.

However, it is of no great moment, now; for, when our neighbour Mrs. John Foote, saw Dr. Hosack about her own child, she got all the particulars out of him about Mrs. Bradfort's case, from the highest quarter, and I had it from Mrs. Foote, herself."

"I could not have believed that a physician of Dr. Hosack's eminence and character would speak openly of the diseases of his patients," I observed, a little tartly, I am afraid.

"Oh! he didn't," said Sarah, eagerly--"he was as cunning as a fox, Mrs. Foote owned herself, and played her off finely; but Mrs. Foote was cunninger than any half-dozen foxes, and got it all out of him by negations."

"Negations!" I exclaimed, wondering what was meant by the term, though I had understood I was to expect a little more philosophy and metaphysics, not to say algebra, in my pa.s.sengers, than usually accompanied petticoats in our part of the world.

"Certainly, _negations_" answered the matron, with a smile as complacent as that which usually denotes the consciousness of intellectual superiority. "One who is a little practised, can ascertain a fact as well by means of negatives as affirmatives. It only requires judgment and use."

"Then Mrs. Bradfort's disease is only ascertained by the negative process?"

"So I suppose--but what does one want more," put in the husband;--"and that she made her will last week, I feel quite sure, as it was generally spoken of among our friends."

Here were people who had been in New York only a month, looking out for a ship, mere pa.s.sengers as it might be, who knew more about a family with which I had myself such an intimate connection, than its own members. I thought it no wonder that such a race was capable of enlightening mankind, on matters and things in general. But the game did not end here.

"I suppose Miss Lucy Hardinge will get something by Mrs. Bradfort's death," observed Miss Jane, "and that she and Mr. Andrew Drewett will marry as soon as it shall become proper."

Here was a speculation, for a man in my state of mind! The names were all right; some of the incidents, even, were probable, if not correct; yet, how could the facts be known to these comparative strangers?

Did the art of gossiping, with all its meannesses, lies, devices, inventions, and cruelties, really possess so much advantage over the intercourse of the confiding and honest, as to enable those who practise it to discover facts hidden from eye-witnesses, and eye-witnesses, too, that had every inducement of the strongest interest in the issue, not to be deceived? I felt satisfied, the moment Mrs. Greene's name was mentioned, that my pa.s.sengers were not in the true New York set; and, justly enough, inferred they were not very good authority for one half they said; and, yet, how could they know anything of Drewett's attachment to Lucy, unless their information were tolerably accurate?

I shall not attempt to repeat all that pa.s.sed while the ship dropped down the bay; but enough escaped the gossips to render me still more unhappy than I had yet been, on the subject of Lucy. I could and did despise these people; that was easy enough; but it was not so easy to forget all that they said and surmised. This is one of the causes attendant on the habit of loose talking; one never knowing what to credit, and what not. In spite of all my disgust, and a firm determination not to contribute in any manner to the stock in trade of these people, I found great difficulty in evading their endless questions. How much they got out of me, by means of the process of negations, I never knew; but they got no great matter through direct affirmatives. Something, however, persons so indefatigable, to whom gossiping was the great aim of life, must obtain, and they ascertained that Mr. Hardinge was my guardian, that Rupert and I had pa.s.sed our boyhoods in each other's company, and that Lucy was even an inmate of my own house the day we sailed. This little knowledge only excited a desire for more, and, by the end of a week, I was obliged to submit to devices and expedients to pump me, than which even the thumbscrew was scarcely more efficient. I practised on the negative system, myself, with a good deal of dexterity, however, and threw my inquisitors off, very handsomely, more than once, until I discovered that Wallace Mortimer, determined not to be baffled, actually opened communications with Neb, in order to get a clearer insight into my private affairs. After this, I presume my readers will not care to hear any more about these gentry, whose only connection with my life grew out of the misgivings they contributed largely to create in my mind, touching the state of Lucy's affections. This much they did effect, and I was compelled to submit to their power. We are all of us, more or less, the dupes of knaves and fools.

All this, however, was the fruits of several weeks' intercourse, and I have antic.i.p.ated events a little, in order to make the statements in connection. Meeting a breeze, as has been said already, the Dawn got over the bar, about two o'clock, and stood off the land, on an easy bowline, in company with the little fleet of square-rigged vessels that went out at the same time. By sunset, Navesink again dipped, and I was once more fairly at sea.

This was at the period when the commerce of America was at its height.

The spirit shown by the young Republic in the French affair had commanded a little respect, though the supposed tendencies of the new administration was causing anything but a cordial feeling towards the country to exist in England. That powerful nation, however, had made a hollow peace with France the previous March, and the highway of nations was temporarily open to all ships alike; a state of things that existed for some ten months after we sailed. Nothing to be apprehended, consequently, lay before me, beyond the ordinary dangers of the ocean.

For these last, I was now prepared by the experience of several years pa.s.sed almost entirely on board ship, during which time I had encircled the earth itself in my peregrinations.

Our run off the coast was favourable, and the sixth day out, we were in the longitude of the tail of the Grand Bank. I was delighted with my ship, which turned out to be even more than I had dared to hope for.

She behaved well under all circ.u.mstances, sailing even better than she worked. The first ten days of our pa.s.sage were prosperous, and we were mid-ocean by the 10th of the month. During this time I had nothing to annoy me but the ceaseless _cancans_ of my pa.s.sengers. I had heard the name of every individual of note in Salem; with certain pa.s.sages in his or her life, and began to fancy I had lived a twelvemonth in the place.

At length, I began to speculate on the reason why this morbid propensity should exist so much stronger in that part of the world than in any other I had visited. There was nothing new in the disposition of the people of small places to gossip, and it was often done in large towns; more especially those that did not possess the tone of a capital. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Horace Walpole wrote gossip, but it was spiced with wit, as is usual with the scandal of such places as London and Paris; whereas this, to which I was doomed to listen, was nothing more than downright impertinent, vulgar, meddling with the private affairs of all those whom the gossips thought of sufficient importance to talk about. At Clawbonny, we had our gossip too, but it was innocent, seldom infringed much on the truth, and usually respected the right of every person to possess certain secrets that might remain inviolate to the world. No such rules prevailed with my pa.s.sengers. Like a certain editor of a newspaper of my acquaintance, who acts as if he fancied all things in heaven and earth were created expressly to furnish materials for "paragraphs," they appeared to think that everybody of their acquaintance existed for no other purpose than to furnish them food for conversation. There must have been some unusual cause for so much personal _espionnage_, and, at length, I came to the following conclusion on the subject. I had heard that church government, among the puritans, descended into all the details of life; that it was a part of their religious duty to watch over each other, jog the memories of the delinquents, and serve G.o.d by ferreting out vice. This is a terrible inducement to fill the mind with the motes of a neighbourhood, and the mind thus stowed, as we sailors say, will be certain to deliver cargo.

Then come the inst.i.tutions, with their never-ending elections, and the construction that has been put on the right of the elector to inquire into all things; the whole consummated by the journals, who a.s.sume a power to penetrate the closet, ay, even the heart,--and lay bare its secrets. Is it any wonder, if we should become, in time, a nation of mere gossips? As for my pa.s.sengers, even Neb got to consider them as so many nuisances.

From some cause or other, whether it was having these loose-tongued people on board or not, is more than I can say, but certain it is, about the time Salem was handsomely cleaned out, and a heavy inroad had been made upon Boston, that the weather changed. It began to blow in gusts, sometimes from one point of the compa.s.s, sometimes from another, until the ship was brought to very short canva.s.s, from a dread of being caught unprepared. At length, these fantasies of the winds terminated in a tremendous gale, such as I had seldom then witnessed; and such, indeed, as I have seldom witnessed since. It is a great mistake to suppose that the heaviest weather occurs in the autumnal, spring, or winter months.

Much the strongest blows I have ever known, have taken place in the middle of the warm weather. This is the season of the hurricanes; and, out of the tropics, I think it is also the season of _the_ gales. It is true; these gales do not return annually, a long succession of years frequently occurring without one; but, when they do come, they may be expected, in our own seas, in July, August, or September.

The wind commenced at south-west, on this occasion, and it blew fresh for several hours, sending us ahead on our course, at the rate of eleven knots. As the sea got up, and sail was reduced, our speed was a little diminished perhaps; but we must have made more than a hundred miles in the first ten hours. The day was bright, cloudless, genial, and even bland; there being nothing unpleasant in the feeling of the swift currents of the air, that whirled past us. At sunset I did not quite like the appearance of the horizon; and we let the ship wade through it, under her three top-sails, single-reefed, her fore-course, and fore-top-mast staysail. This was short canva.s.s, for a vessel that had the wind nearly over her taffrail. At nine o'clock, second reefs were taken in, and at ten, the mizen-top-sail was furled. I then turned in, deeming the ship quite snug, leaving orders with the mates to reduce the sail, did they find the ship straining, or the spars in danger, and to call me should anything serious occur. I was not called until daylight, when Talcott laid his hand on my shoulder, and said, "You had better turn out, Captain Wallingford; we have a peeler, and I want a little advice."

It was a peeler, indeed, when I reached the deck. The ship was under a fore-course and a close-reefed main-top-sail, canva.s.s that can be carried a long time, while running off; but which, I at once saw, was quite too much for us. An order was given immediately, to take in the top-sail. Notwithstanding the diminutive surface that was exposed, the surges given by this bit of canva.s.s, as soon as the clews were eased off sufficiently to allow the cloth to jerk, shook the vessel's hull. It was a miracle that we saved the mast, or that we got the cloth rolled up at all. At one time, I thought it would be necessary to cut it from the yard. Fortunately the gale was steady, this day proving bright and clear, like that which had preceded.

The men aloft made several attempts to hail the deck, but the wind blew too heavily to suffer them to be heard. Talcott had gone on the yard himself, and I saw him gesticulating, in a way to indicate there was something ahead. The seas were running so high that it was not easy to obtain much of a look at the horizon; but, by getting into the mizen-rigging, I had a glimpse of a vessel's spars, to the eastward of us, and directly on our course. It was a ship under bare poles, running as nearly before us as she could, but making most fearful yaws; sometimes sheering away off to starboard, in a way to threaten her with broaching-to; then taking a yaw to port, in which I could see all three of her masts, with their yards pointed nearly at us. I got but one glimpse of her hull, as it rose on a sea, at the same instant with the Dawn, and it actually appeared as if about to be blown away, though I took the stranger to be a vessel at least as large as we were ourselves.

We were evidently approaching her fast, though both vessels were going the same way.