Tales from Blackwood Volume Ii Part 1

Tales from "Blackwood"

Volume 2.

by Various.

CHAPTER I.

The note-book of my grandfather, Major Flinders, contains much matter relative to the famous siege of Gibraltar, and he seems to have kept an accurate and minute journal of such of its incidents as came under his own observation. Indeed, I suspect the historian Drinkwater must have had access to it, as I frequently find the same notabilia chronicled in pretty much the same terms by both these learned Thebans. But while Drinkwater confines himself mostly to professional matters--the state of the fortifications, nature of the enemy's fire, casualties to the soldiery, and the like--and seldom introduces an anecdote interesting to the generality of readers without apologising for such levity, my grandfather's sympathies seem to have been engrossed by the sufferings of the inhabitants deprived of shelter, as well as of sufficient food, and helplessly witnessing the destruction of their property.

Consequently, his journal, though quite below the dignity of history, affords, now and then, a tolerably graphic glimpse of the beleaguered town.

From the discursive and desultory nature of the old gentleman's style, as before hinted, it would be vain to look for a continuous narrative in his journal, even if it contained materials for such. But here and there a literary Jack Horner might extract a plum or two from the vast quant.i.ty of dough--of reflections, quotations, and all manner of irrelevant observations, surrounding them. The following incidents, which occurred at the most interesting period of the long and tedious siege, appear to me to give a fair idea of some of the characteristics of the time, and of the personages who figured in it; and accordingly, after subjecting them to a process a.n.a.logous to gold-was.h.i.+ng, I present them to the reader.

After a strict blockade of six months, reducing the garrison to great extremity for want of provisions, Gibraltar was relieved by Sir George Rodney, who landed a large quant.i.ty of stores. But about a year after his departure, no further relief having reached them except casual supplies from trading vessels that came at a great risk to the Rock, their exigencies were even worse than before. The issue of provisions was limited in quant.i.ty, and their price so high, that the families, even of officers, were frequently in dismal straits. This has given rise to a wooden joke of my grandfather's, who although he seldom ventures on any deliberate facetiousness, has ent.i.tled the volume of his journal relating to this period of the siege, _The Straits of Gibraltar_. He seems to have estimated the worth of his wit by its rarity, for the words appear at the top of every page.

The 11th of April 1781 being Carlota's birthday, the Major had invited Owen (now Lieutenant Owen) to dine with them in honour of the occasion.

Owen was once more, for the time, a single man; for Juana, having gone to visit her friends in Tarifa just before the commencement of the siege, had been unable to rejoin her husband. In vain had Carlota requested that the celebration might be postponed till the arrival of supplies from England should afford them a banquet worthy of the anniversary--the Major, a great stickler for ancient customs, insisted on its taking place forthwith. Luckily, a merchant-man from Minorca had succeeded in landing a cargo of sheep, poultry, vegetables, and fruit the day before, so that the provision for the feast, though by no means sumptuous, was far better than any they had been accustomed to for many months past. The Major's note-book enables me to set the materials for the dinner, and also its cost, before the reader--viz. a sheep's head, price sixteen s.h.i.+llings (my grandfather was too late to secure any of the body, which was rent in pieces, and the fragments carried off as if by wolves, ere the breath was well out of it)--a couple of fowls, twenty s.h.i.+llings (scraggy creatures, says my ancestor in a parenthesis)--a ham, two guineas--raisins and flour for a pudding, five s.h.i.+llings--eggs (how many, the deponent sayeth not), sixpence each--vegetables, nine and sixpence--and fruit for dessert, seven and tenpence. Then, for wine, a Spanish merchant, a friend of Carlota's, had sent them two bottles of champagne and one of amontillado, a present as generous then as a hogshead would have been in ordinary times; and there was, moreover, some old rum, and two lemons for punch. Altogether, there was probably no dinner half so good that day in Gibraltar.

At the appointed hour, the Major was reading in his quarters (a tolerably commodious house near the South Barracks, and at some distance outside the town) when Owen appeared.

"You're punctual, my boy; and punctuality's a cardinal virtue about dinner-time," said my grandfather, looking at his watch; "three o'clock exactly. And now we'll have dinner. I only hope the new cook is a tolerable proficient."

"What's become of Mrs Grigson?" asked Owen. "You haven't parted with that disciple of Apicius, I should hope?"

"She's confined again," said my grandfather, sighing; "a most prolific woman that! It certainly can't be above half-a-year since her last child was born, and she's just going to have another. 'Tis certainly not longer ago than last autumn," he added, musingly.

"A wonderful woman," said Owen; "she ought to be purchased by the Government, and sent out to some of our thinly-populated colonies. And who fills her place?"

"Why, I'll tell you," responded the Major. "Joe Trigg, my old servant, is confined too--in the guardroom, I mean, for getting drunk--and I've taken a man of the regiment, one Private Bags, for a day or two, who recommended his wife as an excellent cook. She says the same of herself; but this is her first trial, and I'm a little nervous about it."

"Shocking rascal that Bags," said Owen.

"Indeed!" said my grandfather; "I'm sorry to hear that. I didn't inquire about his character. He offered his services, saying he came from the same part of England as myself, though I don't recollect him."

"Terrible work this blockade," said the Major after a pause. "Do you know, if I was a general in command of a besieging army, I don't think I could find it in my heart to starve out the garrison. Consider now, my dear boy" (laying his forefinger on Owen's arm)--"consider now, several thousand men with strong appet.i.tes, never having a full meal for months together. And just, too, as my digestion was getting all right--for I never get a nightmare now, though I frequently have the most delicious dreams of banquets that I try to eat, but wake before I get a mouthful.

'Tis enough to provoke a saint. And as if this was not enough, the supply of books is cut off. The _Weekly Entertainer_ isn't even an annual entertainer to me. The last number I got was in '79, and I've been a regular subscriber these twelve years. There's the _Gentleman's Magazine_, too. The last one reached me a year since, with a capital story in it, only half-finished, that I'm anxious to know the end of; and also a rebus that I've been longing to see the answer to. 'The answer in our next,' says the tantalising editor. It's a capital rebus--just listen now. 'Two-thirds of the name of an old novelist, one-sixth of what we all do in the morning, and a heathen deity, make together a morsel fit for a king.' I've been working at it for upwards of a year, and I can't guess it. Can you?"

"Roast pig with stuffing answers the general description," said Owen.

"That, you'll admit, is a morsel fit for a king."

"Pooh!" said my grandfather. "But you must really try now. I've run through the mythology, all that I know of it, and tried all the old novelists' names, even Boccaccio and Cervantes. Never were such combinations as I have made--but can't compound anything edible out of them. Again, as to what we do in the morning: we all shave (that is, all who have beards)--and we yawn, too; at least I do, on waking; but it must be a word of six letters. Then, who can the heathen deity be?"

"Pan is the only heathen deity that has anything to do with cookery,"

said Owen. "Frying-pan, you know, and stew-pan."

My grandfather caught at the idea, but had not succeeded in making anything of it, or in approximating to the solution of the riddle, when Carlota entered from an inner room.

"I wish, my dear, you would see about the dinner," said the Major; "'tis a quarter past three."

"_Si, mi vida_" (yes, my life), said Carlota, who was in the habit of bestowing lavishly on my grandfather the most endearing epithets in the Spanish language, some of them, perhaps, not particularly applicable--_nino de mi alma_ (child of my soul), _luz de mis ojos_ (light of my eyes), and the like; none of which appeared to have any more effect on the object of them than if they had been addressed to somebody else.

Carlota rung the bell, which n.o.body answered. "Nurse is busy with de _nina_," she said, when n.o.body answered it; "I go myself to de _cocina_" (kitchen)--she spoke English as yet but imperfectly.

"There's one comfort in delay," said the Major; "'tis better to boil a ham too much than too little--and yet I shouldn't like it overdone either."

Here they were alarmed by an exclamation from Carlota. "_Ah Dios!

Caramba! Ven, ven, mi nino!_" cried she from the kitchen.

The Major and Owen hastened to the kitchen, which was so close at hand that the smell of the dinner sometimes antic.i.p.ated its appearance in the dining-room. Mrs Bags, the new cook, was seated before the fire. On the table beside her was an empty champagne bottle, the fellow to which protruded its neck from a pail in one corner, where the Major had put it to cool; and another bottle of more robust build, about half-full, was also beside her. The countenance of Mrs Bags wore a pleasant and satisfied, though not very intelligent smile, as she gazed steadfastly on the ham that was roasting on a spit before the fire--at least one side of it was done quite black, while the other oozed with warm grease; for the machinery which should have turned it was not in motion.

"_Caramba!_" exclaimed Carlota, with uplifted hands. "_Que picarilla!_"--(What a knave of a woman!)

"Gracious heavens!" said my grandfather, "she's roasting it! Who ever heard of a roast ham?"

"A many years," remarked Mrs Bags, without turning her head, and still smiling pleasantly, "have I lived in gentlemen's families--" Here this fragment of autobiography was terminated by a hiccup.

"And the champagne bottle is empty," said Owen, handling it. "A nice sort of cook this of yours, Major. She seems to have const.i.tuted herself butler, too."

My grandfather advanced and lifted the other bottle to his nose. "'Tis the old rum," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed with a groan. "But if the woman has drunk all this 'twill be the death of her. Bags," he called, "come here."

The spouse of Mrs Bags emerged from a sort of scullery behind the kitchen--a tall bony man, of an ugliness quite remarkable, and with a very red face. He was better known by his comrades as Tongs, in allusion probably to personal peculiarities; for the length of his legs, the width of his bony hips, and the smallness of his head, gave him some distant resemblance to that article of domestic iron-mongery; but as his wife called herself Mrs Bags, and he was entered in the regimental books by that name, it was probably his real appellation.

"Run directly to Dr f.a.gan," said the Major, "and request him to come here. Your wife has poisoned herself with rum."

"'Tisn't rum," said Bags, somewhat thickly--"'tis fits."

"Fits!" said my grandfather.

"Fits," doggedly replied Mr Bags, who seemed by no means disturbed at the alleged indisposition of his wife--"she often gets them."

"Don't alarm yourself, Major," said Owen, "I'll answer for it she hasn't drunk _all_ the rum. The scoundrel is half-drunk himself, and smells like a spirit-vault. You'd better take your wife away," he said to Bags.

"She can leave if she ain't wanted," said Private Bags, with dignity: "we never comes where we ain't wanted." And he advanced to remove the lady. Mrs Bags at first resisted this measure, proceeding to deliver a eulogium on her own excellent qualities, moral and culinary. She had, she said, the best of characters, in proof of which she made reference to several persons in various parts of the United Kingdom, and, as she spoke, she smiled more affably than ever.

"_La picarilla no tiene verguenza_" (the wretch is perfectly shameless), cried Carlota, who, having hastily removed the ham from the fire, was now looking after the rest of the dinner. The fowls, cut up in small pieces, were boiling along with the sheep's head, and, probably to save time, the estimable Mrs Bags had put the rice and raisins destined for a pudding into the pot along with them--certainly, as Owen remarked, a bold innovation in cookery.

Still continuing to afford them glimpses of her personal history, Mrs Bags was at length persuaded to retire along with her helpmate.

"What astonis.h.i.+ng impudence," said the Major, shutting the door upon her, "to pretend to be a cook, and yet know no better than to roast a ham!"

Carlota, meanwhile, was busy in remedying the disaster as far as she could; cutting the ham into slices and frying it, making a frica.s.see of the fowls, and fis.h.i.+ng the raisins out of the pot, exclaiming bitterly all the while, in English and Spanish, against the _tunanta_ (equivalent to female scoundrel or scamp) who had spoilt the only nice dinner her _pobrecito_, her _nino_, her _querido_ (meaning my grandfather), had been likely to enjoy for a long time, stopping occasionally in her occupations to give him a consolatory kiss. However, my grandfather did not keep up the character of a martyr at all well: he took the matter really very patiently; and when the excellent Carlota had set the dinner on the table, and he tasted the fine flavour of the maltreated ham, he speedily regained his accustomed good-humour.

"It is very strange," he said presently, while searching with a fork in the dish before him, "that a pair of fowls should have only three wings, two legs, and one breast between them."

It certainly was not according to the order of nature; nevertheless the fact was so, all my grandfather's researches in the dish failing to bring to light the missing members. This, however, was subsequently explained by the discovery of the remains of these portions of the birds in the scullery, where they appeared to have been eaten after being grilled; and Mrs Bags' reason for adopting this mode of cooking them was also rendered apparent--viz. that she might secure a share for herself without immediate detection.

However, all this did not prevent them from making the best of what was left, and the Major's face beamed as he drank Carlota's health in a gla.s.s of the remaining bottle of champagne, as brightly as if the dinner had been completely successful.

"It is partly my fault, Owen," said the Major, "that you haven't a joint of mutton instead of this sheep's head. I ought to have been sharper.

The animal was actually sold in parts before he was killed. Old Clutterbuck had secured a haunch, and he a single man, you know--'tis thrown away upon him. I offered him something handsome for his bargain, but he wouldn't part with it."