I stared at the thing and the obsequious words that were inscribed upon it:
To the Honble Samuel Pepys, Esquire,
Secretary of the Admiralty of England
President of the Royal Society
Master of the Trinity House
There was the outward and visible sign of Pepys’s greatness, the standard that fluttered upon his indestructible battlements. Pepys was immortal.
Then it was that I saw as clear as though the whole scene were lit by a lightning flash that I could not remain in London a day longer. It was impossible to tarry in a city where S.P. lorded it so and where my son, my only son who must not be acknowledged, spoke of this bandy-legged little clerk as though he were a god.
I must quit these shores and seek my fortune beyond the seas. Thus I was shackled to my master as surely as those felons who are chained together and despatched to people our colonies. And though I might die of a fever or be murdered by the Caribs or enslaved by cut-throat Biscayans, yet any such fate were better than to sit out my last years in London in humiliation and obscurity. Westward I must decline with the sun, to borrow the words of Mr Dryden.
I would return in triumph like a Roman general and those who had not been with me on the voyage (videlicet, one S. Pepys) would think themselves accursed they had not been with us. I had besides a design for the long term that I had scarcely confided even to myself. Kit had sent me upon business to Alderman Gauden that had been chief victualler to the Navy, who lived in a great house at Clapham on the north side of the common. The house was of red brick and white stucco with figures of gods upon its pediment. The garden had an avenue of peach trees in espalier that led to a round carp-pond. At the corners of a wall the alderman had built two pavilions in the same taste. It was a pretty retreat and though it was in the suburbs the alderman swore to me that on a fast horse he could be in the City within the hour. Yet I doubted whether he had made this journey since the press of coaches and carts had become so great, he being ancient and much decayed. The house was already broken down though it was modern, for he was now a pauper, the government being unable to unwilling to pay his bills for the Dutch wars, so it was doubtful whether he would die first or be bankrupt.
Either way the house must be sold and I resolved that if I could further augment my fortune I should be the purchaser when it came to the market. I had given instructions to an agent that lived upon the common to send me the latest news of the matter. Thus I would have that greatest of blessings as I set out upon my voyage, viz. something to look forward to.
Yet while I watched my son parcel up the charts I had bought, I could not repress a tear at the recollection of what might have been. For did not this Fisher who had made my son his partner and married him to his daughter himself also have a sister? If I had married her and had kept to the trade, might it not have been me who – but then I recalled the sister, a pale puking thing, Emma, Emilia, some such name, and knew that I could not have borne such a life. You were begotten for adventure, I said to myself, as I took the maps from his long hands that were as soaped and scented as a lady’s.
Pray send your mother a hearty greeting from me. I knew her also (I should not have said so but I could not forbear).
Thus I strode out of the shop with the charts under my arm.
So you’re coming then, His Grace grunted.
Only if you take me.
Well, the rest of the crew will be ruffians, so one more will make no odds.
I am obliged to Your Lordship for the commendation.
Quick, Jem, pour me a glass. I must drain it before the doctors come.
But he had drunk only halfway when no less than four quacks were brought in, led in by old Dr Barwick who looked in a fair way to sign his own death bill before the year was out.
Dr Hobbs, Dr Brown, and this is Dr Sloane whom you have already met. In my opinion, he is one of the finest young Scotsmen to come out of Ireland since they were planted there.
Well, Sloane, will you come?
The learned Dr Sydenham told me I had better drown myself in Rosamund’s pond than go to Jamaica.
Pay no heed to Sydenham, Dr Sloane, he is not even a member of the College and you will recall that at the coming of the Great Plague –
You stayed in town, Dr Barwick, and he did not. But I will come to Jamaica, Your Grace, though not to flout Dr Sydenham whom I much respect, but because I want to learn the truth about tropical diseases, of which so much nonsense is spoken, and I hope I may have the honour to cure you and your household of any such which you have the misfortune to contract on the voyage.
This Sloane was a lean, sharp young man with a long nose and a crinkle about the mouth. He knew his own mind, that any fool could see at first glance, but I doubted whether I would care for him.
You shall share a cabin with Jem here, Jem is my trusted counsellor (a description which I had never had applied to me before).
The sharp young man bowed to me.
Hans Sloane, sir, I am honoured to make your acquaintance. And he gave me an up-and-down look as though I were already his patient.
Now then, Your Grace, Dr Barwick said, we are all agreed on the best medicine for the tropics.
I think I can guess at it.
No more than a modicum of wine, plenty of water, making sure only that it be fresh, and no late nights. I rely on you, Dr Sloane, to ensure His Grace’s obedience.
Here Kit grunted an oath which made the doctors jump out of their skins and which I will not set down. Dr Barwick turned swiftly to talking of fees. Dr Sloane, it came out, had already secured that he should be paid £600 per annum with a previous payment of £300 for his preparation for this service. My respect for him grew greater by the minute.
It might be thought from all this high bustle that we were to weigh anchor on the morrow. That was not Kit’s way. First, his humour was lethargic and, second, he was a lover of preparation. He could spend a morning in determining what types of oatmeals and pease we should take and whether they would keep better in large barrels or small. And my lady could match him, for she must have a dozen gowns, and shawls and veils and stockings made for Jamaica that would be as light as gossamer and yet protect her from the fierceness of the sun. Meanwhile Dr Sloane was collecting his medicines and his instruments and having chests and cabinets made for his specimens of the flora and fauna of the islands.
Am I a doctor or a botanist or a zoologist? He pondered. Can one be one without being all three, for Nature scatters her secrets without regard for our subtle divisions?
Quite so, I said, thinking only that there was now scarce room on my side of the cabin to keep a shirt or any change of underlinen.
It was September before Captain Lawrence Wright advised us that we might at last step aboard His Majesty’s frigate Assistance which was lying at Spithead with two large merchant ships for company and the Duke’s yacht, which was to lodge His Grace’s household, to wit, one mad duchess, one Ulster doctor, myself and a dozen others, and a queer young man whom Kit presented to me as his cousin Thomas Monck, who was to captain the yacht, but how he was related I could not fathom. If illegitimate, he seemed too old to be of Kit’s spawning, too young to be the Lord-General’s. And if he was either’s bastard, I could not see why the Duchess tolerated him, for he was taciturn and ill-favoured. But then I recalled that morose fellow that had skulked about the Cockpit in the General’s day and was sometimes called in to dinner when there was room and presented to the company as ‘my worthy cousin Colonel Thomas Monck’, though colonel of what regiment was never disclosed, nor his kinship to my master, so that I fancied each generation of Moncks must have its byblow.
My theory found its confirmation the first night after we had weighed anchor.
What think you of my cousin the Captain? His Grace inquired.
I have not yet had enough time to gauge his merit. He is a near connection?
Kit grinned. He was halfway through his second bottle.
The nearest,
my boy.
Oh, I said, affecting amazement.
I was barely sixteen at the time. She was three years older and must be sent down to Devonshire so as not to blight my wedding. My father told me you must always settle your bastards to a profession. He put his in the Army, so I chose the Navy for young Tom. He’s done well – as he must do, for he can expect nothing more from me.
Then I saw how the arrogance of greatness had filled his soul and emptied it of those sympathies that we are born with. For my own part, if I had had the means to assist my own son (and he the necessity to receive assistance), I should have been generous.
Does Her Grace know?
Oh she could know if she wished to. But she prefers to be mad and know nothing.
We made but a stuttering beginning, for no sooner had we set sail than bad weather compelled us to take shelter behind the Isle of Wight. Once more we weighed anchor and this time were driven by the equinoctial storms to take refuge in St Helen’s Road outside Plymouth harbour, where we swung about for a fortnight, being most foully seasick (Dr Sloane advised us to drink small beer as an emetic). While we were at Plymouth, a party of Devon gentlemen came out to wish us godspeed, for Kit had never ceased to command the love of his fellow Devonians. What must they have thought as our party staggered to the rail, as green in the face as a row of ghosts and scarce able to thank them for their kindness.
Thus we took leave of our native shores, with pale countenances and uneasy bellies, but for Dr Sloane who seemed very well and much occupied with observing a sea-bird which he called a Greater Sea-Swallow or Hirundo Marina major but a seaman from Pembroke told me was only a common shearwater that nests on the cliffs in these parts.
When we had passed the Lizard, the Duke ordered his Admiral’s flag hoisted on the main top mast, and several huzzas and guns discharged marked the drinking of His Grace’s health, for he was Vice-Admiral of those seas. Kit stood there in his admiral’s uniform on the deck, rolling a little with the pitch of the vessel and a greenish-yellow in the face, but with a complacent countenance, for were not the waves his to command as far as the eye might see? His wife stood at his side, deathly pale also, and shivering in the breeze. Huzza! we all went in her honour, though in truth they were a melancholy pair.
As we sailed south, the weather began to smile upon us. A grampus followed us all one day, about forty foot long, and spouting great plumes of water from two channels in his head, and porpoises came to play about us, swimming past the ship and then coming back at us again, whereat the sailors would throw out harping irons and bring them in quite easily.
Oh the poor creature, the Duchess cried as they brought one up on the deck and began to skin the fat off it, and then, oh but it stinks, as the fishy smell began to spread through the ship.
But she would watch for hours the dolphins play in our wake and when a lark was blown into our rigging and perched there too weary to sing, she wanted one of the seamen to climb up and catch it, that she might keep it in a cage and listen to its music in her cabin, but when the ship’s boy had climbed up to within arm’s length of it, the bird flew off to one of the other ships and perched there.
The Duke spent much of his time on the Assistance, busying himself with the dividing of the stores and matters of navigation of which he knew little. Even the Captain was ignorant how to set a true course for Madeira, and had to take counsel from the old Pembroke seaman who had voyaged that way many times before. But we were only sixteen days from Plymouth when we came to anchor in the Madeira road. It seemed as though we had already passed the tropic-line, for the sun shone down upon the palm trees above us and the natives came out in their boats which were heaped with oranges and lemons and other southern fruits. There we took on wine and fresh water and provisions and weighed anchor and set sail, but with little wind. For three days we idled along the shore of the island, and there we first took dolphins with what they call fisgigs, viz. sharp arrow-headed or bearded irons fitted with poles of about ten feet long and a rope tied to them. The seamen then put out lines and hooks baited with rags which dabbled in and out of the water as we sailed, so as to imitate the flying fish which the dolphins pursue with great greediness. Thus lured, the dolphins were easy prey for the seamen waiting with their fisgigs on the yardarm or the poop.
It is cruel sport, the Duchess said, but still she hung out over the side to watch. For our part, we lolled upon the deck of the yacht on cushions that we had brought from our cabins and talked idly of many matters that had nothing to do with our voyage, while Dr Sloane made observation and noted down all that he saw: the tropic-bird with the two feathers in its tail, the Portuguese men-o’-war that have such a terrible sting, the flying fish and the dolphins leaping after them. At night he brought us out on deck to see the sea-water alight along the bow of the ship where the water is more broken, like sparks of fire leaping up as if a flint-and-steel were struck together, and then vanishing. He had a bucket of water drawn and as the water struck the bucket-rope, the sparkles lit up along it, so that it was a slender rope of fire.
Oh it is so pretty, the Duchess said, leaning down over the side. But now it is gone, so soon. Is that not sad?
I think it must be phosphorus, the doctor said. Mr Boyle showed me a suspension of it. He called it the Aerial Noctiluca.
It shines only for us, I think, the Duchess said. If we had not sailed this way, those sparkles would never have been lit.
It may well be so, madam. The action of the rope –
Our passage leaves a trail of light. Is that not a poetic thought, Jem? She took my arm.
Very, madam.
I incline to believe, persisted the doctor, that the phenomenon may proceed from particles of fish floating in the water, too small for us to see. I have observed the same sparkle on parts of dead fish lying on the shore.
Ugh, said the Duchess.
As she spoke, I felt her thigh against mine and the press of her hand grew firmer. The gentle motion of the yacht seemed to fasten us together.
Good-night, Doctor, take care (for he was observing the sparkles halfway down the rope as it swung round in the water).
Good-night, Your Grace.
As we went down into the cabin, she rubbed herself against me with a slow lascivious motion.
His Grace has sent word he will sleep on the Assistance tonight. He says he must be up betimes to take the sun, so, Jem, we may take the moon.
Now we were in her cabin and she was taking off her light cotton gown, of an ivory colour so pale it was as though she was slipping off a second skin. I could see her ribs by the light coming in through the porthole. Round her neck a gold necklace shone in that soft light.
Is that phosphorus, do you think? she said stroking the necklace. Perhaps I am a creature of the deep.
We must ask the doctor to examine you.
No you examine me first, Jem, you first.
It was as though the boat was rocking us, we being motionless but carried on by the boat. And as my mind flew off from the cabin to that distant realm to which the amorous sense transports us (though still I felt her hips rub against mine) so it reverted to my first recollection of love, my lying with Emm in the field at home and watching the distant ships at anchor swaying together in the breeze, or so we fancied though it was we who were swaying. Now I was come full circle and we were moving in time with the boat in a universal motion. Yet as that flame of passion sparkled, blew hard, so hard and then dwindled again, so a dismal intimation came upon me that this might be my last of love, just as Emm had been my first, for such sad thoughts come upon a man after the flame is quenched.
Do you feel sad afterwards, Jem?
Yes, sometimes.
Now? Do you feel sad now?
A little.
So do I. Do all women feel so?
I don’t know.
I must have a child, Jem. If it should be yours in part, you must say nothing.
I know that.
And I’ll say nothing, but I shan’t f
orget your part, so don’t forget me. You promise not to forget me? And she pressed her fingers into my shoulders, so hard that the fingernails might have drawn blood.
I promise.
They say I’m mad, Jem. You don’t think I’m mad, do you?
No, not the least.
Sometimes I do fear I am out of my mind. It’s true I’m a little distracted, but I am not gone mad.
Your health is fragile, that’s all.
I’m better now. The sea air makes me better. Oh I wish this voyage could go on for ever. Do you think the doctor is still turned round that rope?
By now he must be sailing behind us in the bucket.
All the next day we lay upon the deck and watched the dolphins. The sun grew hotter, and she took one of the seamen’s straw hats and tied a red silk ribbon round it and shaded herself from the sun so that I could see only her chin and her long swan’s neck and then the sun began to burn her there too, so that she must wind a soft scarf round her neck.
Tropic-money, Your Grace. If you’ve never crossed the tropic-line before, you must either give us money that we may drink your health or you must be ducked thrice into the sea from the yard-arm, and we wouldn’t wish to duck a lady, so it would be kinder if you were to choose the first.
She laughing threw the seamen five guineas, and laughed again when the boy who had been sent up to catch the lark was ducked. His slender body flew past us three times and he dived through the water as sweetly as a dolphin and she cheered each time he dived.
By now we were come very close to Barbados which was to be our first sight of the New World. On the 25 November, we came into Bridgetown Harbour and anchored there at noon. All the guns in the ships and the harbour forts saluted His Grace. I shall never forget the scene as we were rowed ashore: the sun’s rays bright upon the water, the smoke from the guns drifting into the sky and the water so blue as it never is at home and the hues of the Negroes’ clothes that dazzle the eyes. All round the port of Bridgetown grow the bearded figs which give the island its name, having twisted roots that hang down from the branches like full beards. In the sun of noon those roots shimmer like cobwebs so that the island seems a lost realm from the pages of a romance.
Jem (and Sam) Page 33