My tale made a great impression upon my hearers, and they poured drink down my throat, which was no discomfort for I was as dry as a salted herring.
You’ve had a most curious life, sir. You’ve seen sights that are not shown to many.
It’s true I have had moments of consequence.
You must write your memoirs, Mr Churn. Any man who has seen such things ought to bequeath his memorials.
No, no, I fear it would make a tame recital.
I venture to contradict you, sir, said one of the men who seemed to have some learning, a boatbuilder by the name of Prosper Smith: If such a book were published, I should subscribe for it.
Then I would give you your money back.
We clinked glasses and became friends and shared a barrel of the local oysters with a loaf of bread fresh baked and the world took on a kinder hue even at the World’s End.
As I went up the staircase to my miserable lodging, bending my head to avoid the beams, the thought still buzzed in my head like a bee grazing in high summer: memoirs.
The more I ruminated upon the question, the more plainly it came to me that no one of my acquaintance had nearer knowledge of the great events of the past forty years. None could speak with better insight, not only of affairs of State and military matters but of the intimate life of the Court and matters of the heart touching high persons. Of commerce too, of stationery and shipping and assurance, I was an adept such as no other chronicler could claim to be. I was also an impartial observer, for I did not enter upon any piece of business with a view to advancing myself to the highest place but merely to keep my head above water.
Yet no such person had written that which he was best fitted to write, viz. the story of his own life. No other clerk to the Council had kept a diary or a book of memorials, so far as I knew. I would be the first man to tell the world the aspect of great matters from the underside. Mine should be the worm’s-eye view.
The next day, I went to the miserable shop that sold paper in lieu of a stationer proper and bought myself a ledger, quarto, bound in good Dutch leather. It is that which forms the first volume of these memorials and by good fortune I have found a match to it for the subsequent volumes, which together make a handsome set.
I began writing in the ledger that night and every night thereafter, however tired I might be from the copperas work, which I became somewhat more attuned to as my muscles were exercised by the weight of the paddle and the stiffness of the bellows, though my back ached horribly from bending to rake the stones. Yet my thoughts remained so concentrated upon my toil that I scarce reflected upon the strangest circumstance of all, namely that I was now but five or six miles from the village where I was born and bred. If I climbed to the top of the low hills behind the miserable port, I could see in the distance the village of Churn with its queer spire sailing across the marshes.
Churn – my new surname. How odd it sounded, and yet for that disguise I now gave thanks, for else I had feared lest someone from over the hill should report it back to my friends that Jem was now a common labourer in the copperas works. But as I became accustomed to that labour, I must confess my thoughts did turn to the revolution in my affairs which had brought me back to my own country though in such a sorry state. And here I gave thanks again for that voyage upon which I was now launched. The composition of my memorials brought me an unexpected consolation, viz. that it distracted me from the miseries of my life and transformed them into scenes in a play. I had no histories or encyclopaedias to hand, and the parson was an ignorant man without a library, so that I may be in error about the date of such-and-such a battle and this or that Act of Parliament, and that shall be apologised for in a preface which I shall pen when the whole work is complete and made up into a book, which I trust shall not be till anno 1700, for I mean it to be the Chronicle of a Century as I saw it. But if there may be public error in these pages, there is also private truth. For on the recollection of my own experience my memory is exact and each moment comes alive to me again as I re-live it in my brown ledger.
After I had written my portion for that evening, which I reckoned should be 1,000 words that the work might be brought up to the present date before the year was out and compute to a grand sum of 100,000 words, though I fear I have already overshot my target and begin to wonder whether any bookseller will take the book – after I had done, as I say, I would descend into the World’s End for a well-earned glass, having put on my old mulberry coat and my canary vest and a clean shirt.
It was a warm night in May when I came into the front room where the customers were wont to gather. I was a little amazed to find it empty, but I heard voices in the back room, which was more private and where men went when they wished to be apart from the common throng of topers.
There I heard a single voice that came to predominate over the others, though it was not loud. Indeed, it was low but seemed magnified into a melodious sound that made the walls hum. I knew the voice, how well I knew it.
No, the voice said, I do not open the gate of Heaven but to those that themselves do knock. If a man ask me to be saved, I shall tell him that it is not I that can do it but he must do it himself, he must let his faith strive together with the guilt of his sin and we shall see which shall be master.
But how then are we to be brought to the true religion?
You must come on your own two feet by using the motion of your own heart and soul.
You mean, by praying?
Oh, you may pray if you wish, but God takes no notice of your prayers.
No notice, sir? That is a cold doctrine.
It is the truth, my friend.
Will he not reward us if we do his bidding and so take notice of us that way?
That is Error – and here the Prophet’s voice took on a sharper note – we are to do well not that God may take notice of it and so reward us, but because we do not want to displease that Law which is written in the Heart. This is fine ale, sir, excellent ale.
It is Kentish ale, the best there is, one of the fishermen said, but he spoke mechanically, for evidently his mind was confused by what the Prophet had said.
God takes no notice of us, you say?
I say so.
Does he not come to us upon our deathbed and forgive us our sins if we repent?
I wish that I could say that he did. It would be a consolation, but he does not.
So we are damned to Hell and there is no way out of the bottomless pit for any of us?
The bottomless pit is within a man, not without, and besides, the soul is a mortal thing, dying with the body, and so after death it sleeps until that day when we shall all be raised or damned. You said that Mrs Splint had some fresh cheese, from Canterbury, I believe?
Yes, yes, I will ask for some and for bread too.
One of the hearers came past me – it was Prosper Smith – and there was a puzzled gaze upon his face, yet he seemed also uplifted, as I had seen men and women so often uplifted before, women most especially, although in his doctrine there were none but males in Heaven.
To let him go past me, I had to come out into the middle of the passage where the Prophet could see me and I him.
He sat in the middle of the bench, upright, unbowed by age, his long red hair now turned to grey lichen, with his lips sucking on his old clay pipe but his face still commanding, his lineaments still as carved as an Indian’s, his eye still as a hawk’s. He must have been above eighty years of age.
So, Jeremiah, you are come here.
He spoke without amazement, though it was thirty years and more since we had met. He did not mean to say that the hand of Providence had brought us together, or any such thing as another preacher might have said. Here I was, there was no mystery in it. Yet him saying so seemed to make it a wonderful thing.
This gentleman when he was young got my letter to the Lord Mayor printed at his own charge. At that time he was a Ranter, were you not?
Of that company but not one of them.
The P
rophet, like his God, paid no notice to me on this fine point.
But you heard the words that God spake to John Reeve, didn’t you, and you believed that it was the voice of God and asked for John Reeve’s blessing?
I did.
There were many such in those days, desperate atheistical ranters who proclaimed that God was in a table-chair or a stool, but they came to believe, most of them, that we were the two last Prophets and Witnesses of the Spirit. Ah, here’s the cheese and do I perceive a mutton pie, there’s nothing like Kentish mutton.
He put down his pipe and began to eat, in his slow ruminative fashion. At first the topers watched him as though his eating were some miraculous event. Then they began to talk among themselves about matters of the day – how one boat had lost its mast in the great wind, how some said Tomkinson’s oysters were bad – and the Prophet joined in the conversation, quietly as a visitor must do. And I could see how amazed they were that a Prophet should be so curious as to material things and should not wish to be always preaching and proselytising.
When he had finished, he looked at me and said:
I want to know something of what’s befallen you since we last met, but tonight I’m weary, we’ll talk of it tomorrow. Let us walk upon the shore.
At these words, my whole body seemed filled with light and as though emptied of weight. Perhaps it was only that I was tired after long hours raking the beds, for the boilers were not lit that day. Perhaps it was that and the ale too. Perhaps it was that it was so long since any man had asked after me not for advantage, but I fell into a kind of swoon and toppled over upon the floor where I sat as though felled by a blow.
At any other time, they would have said I was drunk, but now there was a hush as though we were at prayer and some man said: Lord preserve us.
Let us hope that he may, the Prophet said, but we have no right to expect it.
He rose from his seat and pulled me to my feet and shook my hand. And even in these simple motions there was such grave majesty that the rest of them gasped as though he had performed some magical trick. And I too who had shaken off the shackles of superstition so many years before felt the old power flow from his fingers into mine.
Go in peace, the Prophet said.
And I stumbled up the stairs, and fell upon my bed in my mulberry coat and was asleep in a minute, a long sweet sleep, the sleep of a careless boy.
The next morning I rose refreshed and came downstairs expecting to be before the Prophet, but Mrs Splint told me it was nearly nine o’clock and he was already gone out.
I went out on to the shingles and at first could see nobody, but then an old woman coming up from the Swale to gather goldstones told me that she had seen an old man walking that way. I went up to where the shore became the bank of the river and the shingles were heaped high and there I saw him, an immense figure suffused with golden light, for it was a fine morning and the sun shone full upon him. So bright was the light that his hair seemed reddened once more and to me he was as he had once been in that tavern in the Minories (though to a stranger he might have looked like an old man stumbling upon the pebbles).
Good-morrow, Jeremiah, these pebbles make hard walking.
There’s a path behind.
I like to be by the sea. Now let us sit down and you shall tell me your tale.
So we sat upon the high bank of shingles and I began to tell the history of my life since we had last met, which I did with some fluency, for I had spent the past year writing it in these journals and was now all but arrived at the present day. He asked me no questions concerning my narrative, but sat there motionless as though he had been carved of oak.
I feared the old man and did not wish to annoy him. Yet I wished also to seem not inconsiderable or petty in his eyes, for he had always esteemed me as a gentleman set apart from most of his disciples, and so – it was pure folly – I began to embroider my narrative:
On my coming back to England from Jamaica, I said, I continued my practice in assurance and became well known on Change as a man of business. But after some years I wearied of the town and meeting a kinsman on Tower Hill I took the position in his copperas factory that he offered me. The work is hard, but it is exceeding useful, for green vitriol is the source of ink and dye and also the mordant that keeps the dye fast –
But the Prophet was not much interested in the uses of vitriol. I could see that his mind was fixed elsewhere.
You have travelled far, Jeremiah.
So I have.
And have you met many of our faith in your wanderings?
I met a Mr Lucas in Jamaica, with whom I smoked a pipe or two. He was well acquainted with your teachings.
We have friends everywhere, but they are few and scattered. The expenses of travel in these times are very heavy.
They are so.
At my age, I cannot travel far but by coach. My legs will not tolerate much walking.
Just so.
Our loyal friends in the faith are honest people, but they are not rich, for they do not whore after the things of this world but content themselves with plain living. Those blaspheming hypocrites called Quakers are well furnished with money though they pretend to be poor. Now, Jeremiah, I ask you this plainly: you have strayed from the true faith, haven’t you, since we last met?
Umm, I said.
You took service with that Antichrist who is now justly abhorred of all men?
It is true I was appointed Clerk to Cromwell’s Council, and in that office I could not very well –
I will hear no more of it, the Prophet said with a grand sweep of his hand. The flesh is weak and ambition is a scarlet temptress. I perceive that you are an honest-hearted man at bottom.
I hope I may say I am.
I, Lodowick Muggleton, say you are an honest-hearted man and I will give you room to prove it.
How so?
I ask you a simple thing, a convenient matter, namely, that you should hire me a coach that I may travel about Kent upon God’s work. Thus you may say that you have given wings to God’s last true prophet that is alive upon this earth. Mr Powell in Bread Street will let me have his carriage for five pounds the month or seven pound ten shillings for two months.
I would willingly help you, but I have no money.
No money? Don’t trifle with me. I saw you in your fine mulberry coat lording it in the tavern last night. Don’t tell me you have no money.
It is an old coat, sir, I had it when I was with the Lord General, and I have spent all my wages in the tavern and owe Mrs Splint five shillings beside.
You’re a canting hypocrite, Jeremiah. Didn’t you tell me that you were a prosperous man of business in the marine insurance in London and you were in command of a great manufactory here?
It was all embellishment, sir.
So you lie to me first and then you deny me. You are a treacherous toad that puffeth yourself up and then shrivels into a nothing when asked of your charity to assist your loving friend in the Lord.
It is not denial, it is poverty.
I do not believe you. You are a mannikin, sir, a worthless mannikin.
Well then, I retorted, angered by his words, I do not believe you are God’s Last Messenger and I would not pay for your coach even if I had the money which I have not.
WHAT?
The Prophet rose up, somewhat unsteady upon his legs but towering above me none the less, though I am a tall man.
Whoso lies to me and denies me lies to the Lord and denies the Lord. And seeing God hath chosen me his Last True Prophet and hath set me in his place here upon earth, to give judgement upon all lying hypocritical spirits who deny me as they would deny him, therefore (and here his voice rose to a mighty resonance that seemed to rebound upon the far shore of the river and return to us again), therefore I do pronounce Jeremiah Mount cursed and damned, soul and body, from the presence of God, elect men and angels, to eternity.
But –
I tell you, Jeremiah Mount, that your soul shall die two d
eaths: the first death is natural, the second death is eternal, and when God shall raise you again in the resurrection, which to the dead will not last above a quarter of an hour, you shall pass through the first death into the second where the worm of conscience shall never die nor the fire of Hell go out, in utter darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth for evermore. And you shall remember you were told so by the Last True Prophet and Witness of the Spirit, Lodowick Muggleton.
With these words the Prophet stepped down off the shingles and began to walk back to Whitstable at a stately pace leaning upon his stick. I sat upon the shingles and watched him go. When he was a hundred yards distant, he turned about and shouted at me again:
You’re a mannikin, sir, a mannikin.
At least I think that is what he said, but his words were half-drowned by the noise of the tide upon the pebbles. Then he walked on and was lost to my sight behind the bank of shingles.
It is not every day that a man is cursed to all eternity in such a high style, and for a time I was breathless as though a horse had kicked me in the belly. But then, when he was out of sight, the old worm began to burrow within me, I mean the worm of doubt not of conscience. How did he know that there would be only a quarter of an hour to the dead between the first death and the second death? Might it not seem like forty minutes or an hour or two? And how could I be consumed by the fire of Hell and the worm not be consumed also? And how could the darkness be utter if the fire was so fierce? Then I saw what foolishness it was that he should call me mannikin when his God was but five foot high (how dwarfish he would have looked besides the Prophet) and his Heaven was six miles up in the sky, and I laughed and lay upon the shingle and threw pebbles into the sparkling water so that they danced upon it like swallows.
And it came to me then that liberty was the most precious thing to have. I did not mean freedom from prophets and preachers only, or from superstition, but freedom from all connection that may tether a man. It came to me also that a man prospers when he follows the promptings of his heart and not the calculations of his brain and that I had been most fortunate in the company of those who had followed that receipt, I mean Nan and Peter Llewelyn and Will Symons and Samson Lucas, for the wandering star shines brightest. And the
Jem (and Sam) Page 41