Читать книгу Buck Whaley - David Ryan - Страница 17

4

JERUSALEM SYNDROME

On the evening of 21 October 1786 Tom Whaley entered the Phoenix Park near Dublin with feelings of excitement, indignation and fear churning in his stomach. He and an attorney, identified in reports only as a Mr O—r, had agreed to meet near the Castleknock Gate at the park’s north-western fringe to settle a quarrel. This was to be Whaley’s first duel, and although such encounters rarely ended in fatalities, there were exceptions. Just five days before two gentlemen, Robert Keon and George Nugent Reynolds, had kept a rendezvous in Sheemore, County Leitrim. Before the duel had formally commenced – ‘the seconds had neither measured the ground … nor requested the principals to take their positions’ – Keon had shot Reynolds in the head, killing him instantly.1 This murderous act was a flagrant breach of the code of honour, but it showed how tempers could flare during duels and how easy it was for them to end fatally, adding to the tension that surrounded Whaley’s encounter. However, on this occasion the proper formalities were observed and the two antagonists ‘behaved with the greatest honour and coolness at the ground’. With the seconds having agreed that the principals should discharge their pistols simultaneously on a ‘word of command’, Whaley and O—r took up their positions and prepared to fire.2

The incident that occasioned the meeting had happened only that morning, when Whaley was approaching Dublin in his carriage. On the road near Chapelizod a chaise – a two-wheeled, one-horse carriage – overtook him and while it is unclear what exactly happened, it seems the two vehicles either collided or narrowly missed one another. The mishap was sufficient to provoke an outburst of road rage, a phenomenon that has existed for as long as there have been roads. Fiery words passed between Whaley and the chaise’s occupant, Mr O—r. The two men met again that afternoon at Daly’s Chocolate House in Dublin where they tried and failed to make up the quarrel. Agreeing to settle their differences in another manner, they appointed seconds and arranged to meet that same day in the Phoenix Park.3

Although duelling was illegal, for decades gentlemen had resorted to it to settle even trivial and imagined slights. By the late eighteenth century the idea that one’s honour could only be defended by sword or pistol had become extraordinarily popular and there were many earnest advocates of the practice. In 1777 a number of self-proclaimed experts drew up a list of twenty-seven rules designed to ensure that duels were fought fairly and with some level of regulation. In the years that followed, several high-profile encounters between prominent politicians gave the practice increased respectability and legitimacy and a new breed of aggressive gentlemen known as the ‘fire-eaters’ emerged. Whaley was about to join their ranks.

The word was given and the pistol shots rang out in the evening air. Whaley’s shot missed, but ‘the ball of Mr. O—r’s pistol … entered the thick part of his antagonist’s thigh and lodged in the other’.4 A surgeon who was present attended the stricken duellist and ‘probed the muscular part to a considerable depth, but the ball … eluded his search’. Despite the excruciating pain Whaley managed to keep his composure and even shake hands with his opponent. The ball was successfully removed the next day and a few days later Whaley was said to be ‘in a fair way of recovery’.5 Samuel Faulkner’s brother Hugh, perhaps with the Keon–Reynolds encounter in mind, believed that Whaley was fortunate to escape with his life. In his opinion he had been most to blame for the duel: ‘I am astonished that a gentleman who has seen so much of the world and good company would behave in such a manner that he must quarrel with a man because his chaise drove past him on the publick road,’ he expostulated. ‘Sure he can’t think that because he has got more money than another, that he has a liberty to insult all who has less than himself.’6

Whether this was true or not, for the next few weeks Whaley was laid up and in no position to quarrel with anyone. For his mother and stepfather this was a silver lining: now they had an opportunity to try and talk some sense into him and dissuade him from further dangerous escapades. They were also anxious to somehow stem his financial excesses: on 15 December Whaley would turn 21, at which time he would have full control over his inheritance. By late November he was well enough to travel and Anne was expecting him at Somerset. ‘I am sure the country will be of service to him after his long confinement,’ she anticipated, ‘and will soon restore him to his strength and flesh, and I am in hopes that his presence will be of use to Mr Richardson.’ Her husband was in bad health and low spirits, probably partly as a result of worry over his stepson’s antics.7 He had not rescued him from a hazardous situation in 1784 to watch him throw his life away two years later and he resolved to act.

Samuel Faulkner had calculated the total amount of Whaley’s fortune at £48,674, eighteen shillings and ten pence halfpenny, in addition to the annual rental income from the estates.8 On paper the young man was due to come into this impressive inheritance on 15 December 1786, but for years he had been borrowing heavily on the strength of it, even selling one of his Carlow properties, Castletown House, to Faulkner earlier that year to raise money.9 Richardson insisted that Whaley examine the state of his fortune and when he did he ‘found it still more diminished by the variety of my dissipation and extravagance’. (W, 35) Even more worrying, it seemed that the money that remained was insufficient to clear his outstanding debts. Richardson now made a valiant attempt to rein in Whaley’s spending, warning him that ‘the way of life in which I was engaged, must inevitably lead me to ruin … and that at the rate I proceeded, I must in a short time be reduced to indigence’. (W, 35) ‘With tears in his eyes’ he urged his stepson to relinquish his two greatest indulgences: Harriet, on whom he was spending an ‘extraordinary, not to say scandalous’ (W, 35) amount, and the yacht. Each was costing him in the region of £5,000 a year.10 Though genuinely touched by his stepfather’s concerns, Whaley found it impossible to give up both of his ‘favourite hobby-horses’. Eventually he agreed to sell the ship rather than part ways with Harriet, to whom he was ‘now really attached’. (W, 37) He later confided to Faulkner that he would ‘rather have her happy than any other woman in the world’.11

***

Offloading the yacht meant that Whaley’s planned voyage to the Mediterranean would be put on hold, though he still hoped to one day undertake it and perhaps even make money by betting on it. It was not surprising that gambling or ‘play’ continued to use up much of Whaley’s time and money: in the eighteenth century it was a near universal pastime. ‘This obsession of the age played itself out most ferociously … in the drawing rooms and private clubs’, where members gambled feverishly over cards and dice.12 The most famous Irish club was Daly’s Club on Dame Street, a ‘mecca for gamblers’.13 Daly’s was frequented at all hours and its candles burned behind drawn blinds even in the daytime. It had become one of Whaley’s favourite haunts and his losses there were such that his brother John, hardly a paragon of restraint himself, declared himself ‘very sorry’ that ‘Tom’s itch for gambling’ continued. ‘I think if he goes on much longer he will not have a farthing left.’14 Yet even in the midst of his money worries Whaley showed compassion for others, notably his one-time bearleader William Wray, whose health and fortunes had declined steadily in the two years since the grand tour. In May 1786, when Wray was destitute and near death, Whaley had contributed a significant sum to support him. Then, in December, he provided a Miss Katherine Wray (probably William’s daughter or sister) with an annuity which he insisted on renewing even when he himself was in financial distress.15

The following year did not bring much change in Whaley’s fortunes. He was now in control of what was left of his inheritance but as expected it did not meet his needs and he still required around £2,000 to pay off his debts. Frustrated that rents due on his Carlow and Armagh estates had not been collected, he blamed Faulkner for procrastinating: ‘I cannot help remarking that those things are generally the agents faults.’ He even tried to borrow £1,000 from his sister’s father-in-law, Sir Annesley Stewart, who turned down the request unequivocally: ‘I could no more raise a £1,000 at present than I could a million. I was in hopes you were free from all embarrassments except the ship and am very much concerned indeed to find it otherwise.’16 Then, in May, there came a reprieve: all but one of his creditors agreed to give him ‘time sufficient, to raise the mon[e]y’ to pay them. Welcome as this was, the constant anxiety was making Whaley despondent. ‘Would to God, I were as old and as fat as you’, he remarked to Samuel Faulkner, in not altogether complimentary terms. ‘I am sure I should then be as happy[.] at present I am poor and miserable.’17 If he remained in Dublin frequenting places like Daly’s he would only add to that poverty and he decided, or allowed himself to be persuaded, to spend the summer with Harriet at Faulkner’s country retreat, Fort Faulkner in County Wicklow.

The three-bay Georgian house still stands in an idyllic stretch of rolling countryside near the small village of Ballinaclash.18 Faulkner had acquired the house and adjoining lands around 1780 and placed them in the care of his steward, John Donnelly. By early 1787 William Norwood had moved to Fort Faulkner, hoping the country air would help him recover from a bad cough (in fact he was in the early stages of consumption).19 Around the middle of May Whaley and Harriet arrived with an entourage of servants. Favoured by a spell of particularly fine weather, they were much taken with the place. On 22 May Tom reported that he and Norwood had gone ‘a ferreting, and we kill[e]d 6 brace of rabbits, and … all the trout in the river’. On another occasion he claimed to have ‘had the best sport I have yet had in the river’, catching ‘one trout eleven inches long’. It is easy to picture him holding up the trout in a classic fisherman’s pose, his still boyish (though pox-scarred) face radiant with pride. Harriet, too, was enchanted by Fort Faulkner, preferring it ‘even to London’ and on 2 June Whaley declared that they were getting comfortable there. ‘I think upon my soul that I have not been so happy these many months.’20 He seemed to be reaping the benefit of the improved diet and surroundings. ‘He takes the goats whey every morning and exercises greatly after it’, Norwood reported to Faulkner, ‘so that you would almost already say he has got a look quite different from that you have seen him have this five years past’. Even the habitually dour clerk conceded that ‘we all seem as happy as we could wish ourselves’.21

These blissful days would not last. At least one person was not happy: John Donnelly. The steward was irked by the damage that Whaley’s servants, horses and livestock (the servants seem to have brought along a cow) did to the land and complained that ‘the lawn is very much hurt with dogs and p[e]ople trampling it. also I have a most damnable heavy stock on my little pasture[.] theirs two mare … and one cow of Mr. Whaleys two horses and two cow of yours that is eight head all on the gorse bogg for I may be damd. if I suffer them in the waste land’.22 He also had little time for Harriet, who he referred to as ‘the English whore’. Whaley, however, had more serious things to worry about than the irascible steward. On 6 June he found himself suffering from ‘a very great pain in his head’,23 and soon afterwards he was laid up with a fever. Though he was prone to bouts of illness throughout his life, this was one of the worst. Following a prolonged period of indolence and self-indulgence, his system may have reacted to the sudden change in lifestyle and diet.

At first Whaley’s condition gave serious cause for concern. After someone wisely treated him with Peruvian bark, a powerful anti-fever medicine,24 he improved and by early July had ‘every favourable appearance of a speedy recovery’. Harriet hoped he would be able to leave his sickbed: ‘this day we mean to get him up, and have got an arm chair for that purpose … I am happy to say I believe all danger is now over.’ At first Harriet had not known that Whaley was ill: somehow, and for some reason, his ‘friends’ (meaning, presumably, Norwood, acting on instructions) had contrived to keep her in the dark about it. ‘What reason I was not inform’d of it I cannot tell,’ she exclaimed. ‘But … it hurt me much as Mr. Whaley is my only friend.’ She knew he was the only reason his family and friends tolerated her presence, and she was understandably exasperated that they saw her as his ‘whore’ and nothing else. ‘Had anything bad happen[e]d him, they need not have been allarm’d[.] I should not have been any trouble to them while I had my own free country to go to, where the people are not quite so illiberal in their ideas as they are in Ireland.’25 Harriet was a kind-hearted soul. She knew well what it was to be a woman in vulnerable circumstances and had tried to help others less well-off than herself. Before leaving for Wicklow she had asked Faulkner to look out for her maidservant, ‘a very sober honnest woman and the best servant I ever had in Dublin’, who for some reason had suffered opprobrium from the other domestics.26

Whaley recovered slowly and hung on at Fort Faulkner for a few more months, indulging himself at his agent’s expense. Despite this he believed that the salary of £300 a year he was paying Faulkner to look after his estates was too generous, and in August he told Norwood he was determined to reduce it. The clerk reported to Faulkner,

I asked him did he know what it was he paid you he said he did answering £300 a year. To which I replied Sir. look through all your accounts and see has my uncle ever charged you a farthing for traveling expences. and which every agent in Ireland is allowed. Now Sir said I considering all this he has not over £100 a year for his trouble. We have had a great deal of conversation on this subject and I find he is determined to deduct something off the am[oun]t. of what you have at present by the receipt of the rents. Now my dear uncle who is at the bottom of this I cannot say, nor is it possible for you or I to find out at present…

Norwood was convinced that some ‘deceitfull and ill minded people’, determined to harm Faulkner, had put Whaley up to this. ‘I realy am of opinion there is some one at his elbow underminding you.’ He advised his uncle to hold the agency even at a reduced rate rather than satisfy their malice. ‘Poor young man he is foolish and ill advised at present but that will have an end.’27 Whether it would or not remained to be seen, but Norwood was right about one thing: Whaley was indeed susceptible to the wiles of the ‘deceitfull and ill minded’, and they would cause him considerable distress in the years that lay ahead.

For the present, Fort Faulkner had given him a taste for the rustic lifestyle and he began planning to settle down as a country gentleman. Within the coming couple of years he hoped to put aside ‘ten or twelve thousand pounds with which please God I will settle at home and laugh at the world’.28 Anne Richardson was delighted to hear of her son’s new plan and hoped that he would start farming ‘and lead the life of an honest country gentleman, he will find more real satisfaction in it, than in all the scenes of dissipation he has already been engaged in’. She dreamily anticipated that he might ‘turn his thoughts to matrimony and get some thousands with a good wife’.29 Indeed Whaley seemed to be transforming into a responsible and charitable member of society. In November he cancelled his membership of several Dublin clubs (including, possibly, Daly’s), suggesting that he had turned his back on gambling. He also showed sympathy for others who had suffered losses. The following month he and a friend, Mr Singleton, donated money to the inmates of the Four Courts Marshalsea, a debtors’ prison, professing themselves ‘shocked at so many slaves in bondage, fallen victims to the folly of wrong-headed creditors’.30

At this time Whaley and Harriet were settling into a new property he had purchased in County Carlow: Font Hill, a country house and estate adjacent to the River Barrow.31 The house boasted several showpiece rooms including a scarlet room, a green room, a drawing room, a parlour and a billiard room. There were fine views across the country to the south, which along with the Barrow offered ample opportunities for hunting and fishing. However, Font Hill was in sore need of refurbishment and Whaley and Harriet were greatly discomfited by its ‘deplorable’ condition. Holes in the roof let in the rain and the walls were ‘running down with water’. There was only one dry room, in which the couple were sleeping, but this did not prevent them from catching bad colds. By the end of December work was underway, though Whaley was still waiting for the lead needed to repair the roof to arrive.32 Meanwhile he was keen to go hunting on his new estate and he asked Faulkner to send him cock shot, duck shot, partridge shot, snipe shot and buckshot.33 He also indulged a sweet tooth: the groceries ordered in by Harriet from Dublin included ‘three loafs of house keepers lump sugar … two stone of common brown sugar and three pound of the best chocolate and two pound of brown sugar candy’.34 But life at Font Hill was too sedate for Tom. Before long his mind was wandering elsewhere and soon his body would follow.

***

Thus far in his life Whaley had not done much to earn a place in the annals of history. He had gone on a chaotic grand tour, indulged in a series of liaisons, fallen prey to swindlers, become an MP, fought a duel, accumulated large debts and made a belated effort to settle down to the quiet life. While he had certainly had some adventures, his career was not so different from that of other moneyed and wayward young men in Ireland and Britain. But things were about to change. For years Whaley had longed to travel, not simply to the usual grand tour destinations of France and Italy, but to more remote and exotic lands. As a boy he had spent long hours drawing and colouring in maps of foreign regions and he seems to have immersed himself in tales of Captain James Cook, Sinbad the Sailor and other real or legendary explorers. Now, in early 1788, he began planning in earnest for his long-anticipated trip to the Mediterranean. Although he no longer owned a ship, that need not prevent him from securing a berth on a vessel. He had also decided to do more than simply visit the Middle Sea and its ports. He dreamt of travelling beyond its shores to a great walled city, the home of some of the world’s most ancient and sacred shrines. Like thousands of pilgrims, travellers and soldiers before him, Whaley was unable to resist the lure of Jerusalem.

Going by his own account, the whole thing originated in a simple quip over a meal ‘with some people of fashion’ at Leinster House, the Duke of Leinster’s magnificent townhouse on Kildare Street (see Plate 7):

the conversation turned upon my intended voyage, when one of the company asked me to what part of the world I meant to direct my course first, to which I answered, without hesitation, ‘to Jerusalem.’ This was considered by the company as a mere jest; and so, in fact, it was; but the subject still continuing, some observed that there was no such place at present existing; and others that, if it did exist, I should not be able to find it. This was touching me in the tender point: the difficulty of an undertaking always stimulated me to the attempt. I instantly offered to bet any sum that I would go to Jerusalem and return to Dublin within two years from my departure. I accepted without hesitation all the wagers that were offered me … (W, 34–5)

When exactly this happened is uncertain: it may have been as early as 1786, when the Freeman’s Journal remarked that ‘it would be well worth his while to undertake a voyage, even to Judea’ if he could get others to join in a wager with him.35 In July 1787 he had told his mother that he intended to set off for Jerusalem that autumn, but she feared he was too weak following his illness and hoped he would postpone the trip until the following year.36 She had got her wish, but by 1788 the expedition was back on the agenda with a vengeance and betting began in earnest.

The precise terms of the wager are unclear, but it seems that the odds were placed at two to one against Whaley completing the trip, so that he stood to gain £2 for every pound he staked.37 Also, the expedition had to be completed within a certain time. Whaley himself put it at two years (W, 35) but other reports suggest a more limited timeframe: twelve months, fourteen months,38 or that ‘he should visit Jerusalem in the space of 12 months … there is no limitation as to the time of his return’.39 The patrons of Daly’s Club were the heaviest subscribers to the wager but many other members of the gentry and nobility also put their names down, among them the Earl of Grandison. Known for turning himself out in fine velvet embroidered with jewels, Grandison was said to be ‘very ingenious in the art of wasting the most possible money in the least possible time’.40 Under the terms of his bet with Whaley, made on 22 February 1788, he promised to pay him £455 ‘upon his return to Dublin from Jeruzalem’.41 This was just one of many individual wagers and when all were added up the amount Whaley stood to gain ran into five figures. He put the total at around £15,000, but other reports specify a larger sum: anything between £20,000 and £40,000.42 Whatever it was, it was a huge amount, at least €6 million in today’s money. But then gambling was one of the great obsessions of the eighteenth century. Wagers were laid on all sorts of sporting events, from prize-fighting to horseracing, but in theory one could bet on the outcome of almost anything. ‘There were bets on lives … on politics, on others’ bets, on every vagary of public and private life.’43 The famous dandy Richard ‘Beau’ Nash (1674–1761) had once ridden naked on a cow for a wager, and in 1785 Lord Derby undertook to pay Lord Cholmondeley 500 guineas ‘whenever his lordship fucks a woman in a balloon one thousand yards from earth’.44 Whaley himself claimed that he once jumped from the second-floor window of a Dover hotel ‘over the roof of the mailcoach that was then standing near the door. By laying mattresses in the street to break the fall, I performed the feat and had the honour of winning the wager.’45 (W, 326–7)

Eccentric as these bets were, gambling on something as dangerous and unpredictable as a journey to Jerusalem was all but unheard of. This was despite the fact that the Holy City, once thought to be the centre of the world, had exerted a powerful magnetism for centuries. Christian pilgrims had flocked there since the early Middle Ages, and the Crusaders had captured and held the city for nearly a hundred years. But by the early fourteenth century the Crusaders were a spent force and over the centuries that followed the flow of European pilgrims to the Holy Land slowed dramatically. By the eighteenth century few Europeans – and even fewer Irish46 – were travelling to Jerusalem. In the present age of online booking it is hard to conceive just how out of bounds most people regarded Jerusalem. One might almost as well have proposed a trip to the South Pole. To travel there for a wager was unthinkable, but as ever Whaley was galvanised by the thought of doing something that had not yet been accomplished. Indeed it was a seminal moment in his life: had it not been for the bet and the expedition that followed, it is unlikely he would be remembered today. But his track record of shambolic misadventure and profligacy did not inspire confidence, and the journey that lay ahead was so fraught with hazards that many reckoned his chances of winning the bet to be slim indeed. They ‘never imagined that a young man of his volatile disposition, would seriously engage in such a distant expedition’.47

Other than his volatility and unreliability, there were plenty of reasons for expecting Whaley to fail. The most efficient way to get to Jerusalem was to sail through the Straits of Gibraltar and down the Mediterranean, but a voyage would take several weeks and was likely to be hindered by unfavourable weather. Violent storms were frequent and could easily wreck a ship and drown its occupants, while adverse winds and dead calms could hold up the progress of a vessel for days on end. Apart from that there was the lurking possibility of attack by pirates or the naval fleets of hostile powers. Even if Whaley survived the perils of the sea, dry land presented hazards of its own. As well as visiting Jerusalem he planned to make overland detours to other places of note, in particular the city of Constantinople (Istanbul). But most land routes were ill-equipped to accommodate travellers. Unfavourable terrain, bad roads and bad weather were to be expected, along with accommodation that ranged from poor to abysmal to non-existent. Meanwhile there was an ever-present risk of attack by bandits or other hostile parties.

The political situation in the Near East was another cause for concern. The region Whaley planned to visit was part of the Ottoman Empire, the greatest power in the Muslim world and a place of ‘mystery, anxiety and fantasy’.48 Following its emergence in Turkey in the fourteenth century, the Empire had grown to become one of the largest and most formidable on earth, comprising Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Syria, Palestine and large parts of Arabia and northern Africa. The Ottoman sovereign, the Sultan (also known as the ‘Grand Seignior’ or ‘Grand Seigneur’), was based in Constantinople as was the central government, the Porte. In the late eighteenth century, just as European imperial ambitions were increasing, the Ottoman Empire was in decline. Riven by internal turmoil, the Porte was losing control of some of the outlying regions, where local governors had become almost like autonomous rulers.49 Simultaneously, ongoing wars with the great powers of Europe threatened to result in the loss of other territories. For years Russia and Austria had been aggressively pursuing plans to carve up the European part of the Ottoman Empire between them, and in 1787–8 their belligerence lured the Sultan into the latest of a series of costly wars. On the eve of Whaley’s departure news was filtering through of clashes between Ottoman and Austrian armies on the Danube. Meanwhile the Russians were besieging the Ottoman-controlled city of Ochakov near the Crimea, a protracted engagement in which the Turks would ultimately come off the worst. The land war between the Ottomans and the Austrians was unlikely to hinder Whaley, but he risked being caught up in the hostilities with the Russians if they spread further south. In previous conflicts, much of the fighting had taken place in the Aegean, for instance at Çeşme near Smyrna (now Izmir), where Russian ships had destroyed an Ottoman fleet in 1770.

Whaley would be sailing directly through these seas. Commenting on his planned route, one newspaper referred ominously to ‘the disturbance which affects the scenes thro’ which he is to pass’.50 Also, those in authority would have to be dealt with and perhaps placated. Worryingly, the road to Jerusalem led through the Ottoman province of Sidon, the domain of a ruthless governor known as al-Jazzar, ‘the Butcher’. In addition, the cultural differences between the West and the Ottoman world had to be taken into account. As a European Christian travelling in lands that were predominantly Muslim, Whaley would inevitably attract curiosity, if not hostility. If he could find ways to blend in with the locals, or at least make himself less conspicuous, so much the better. Whaley did take the time to apprise himself of many of these realities by reading the accounts of Europeans who had recently travelled in the Ottoman lands, among them Francois Baron de Tott’s Memoirs … Containing the State of the Turkish Empire and the Crimea (1785) and Constantin de Volney’s Travels Through Syria and Egypt in the Years 1783, 1784, and 1785, an edition of which was published in Dublin in 1788. Volney’s work was full of useful information on the places, people and dignitaries Whaley expected to encounter.51

Yet there was one final, unpredictable force that threatened the success of his expedition: an epidemic disease whose very name inspired terror. The plague had killed millions in Europe before being all but eliminated there through improved sanitation, healthcare and the use of quarantines. But it remained rampant in the Near East and visited Constantinople almost every year. A particularly virulent outbreak in 1778 may have wiped out a third of the city’s population.52 These facts were not unknown to Whaley and while the other dangers of the journey and the ongoing wars and disturbances did not concern him much as he prepared to embark, he was terrified of falling victim to the plague.

By the summer of 1788 almost everything was ready for Whaley to begin his great undertaking, but shortly before his date of embarkation he stumbled once more on his Achilles heel. Early in August he took a trip to Brighton and predictably found himself seated once more at the gaming tables. This time he would prove more alert to the wiles of sharpers and cheats and even help expose one of them. Yet the affair would have serious consequences for his pocket, and as a result of these ‘accidental circumstances’53 he would face imprisonment. Those who had anticipated that Whaley’s much vaunted journey to the Holy Land would come to nothing looked to have been proven correct. The Jerusalem expedition, it seemed, was over before it had even begun.