Читать книгу Lydia Bailey - Kenneth Roberts - Страница 10

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Even before I hunted a place to live in Philadelphia, I set off for Bartram’s Gardens, carrying my carpetbag and the little portrait of Lydia in its wooden box, and I’m bound to say that those gardens, known and celebrated in every great university in Europe, were something of a disappointment. They were on the banks of the Schuylkill some three miles below Philadelphia and in size were less than half as large as our farm in Gorham. No effort at all had been made toward formality, so far as I could see; the whole area was something of a tangle, badly in need of brush-hooking. At the upper end of the gardens there was a long rambling house, and paths wandered irregularly through and around thickets. Along the paths were benches, with miniature garden-plots here and there—experimental vegetable beds, I took them to be.

It was early afternoon when my coach stopped at the gate handiest to these tangled gardens; and I had no sooner gone to the gate to get the lay of the land than I saw a barefooted farm laborer, dressed in leather breeches and leather vest, hoeing a bed of earth from which stubble protruded. He didn’t look like a helpful farm laborer, either, for his movements seemed doddery and ineffectual. When I looked more closely, I saw he was hoeing salt into the soil.

“Is that an asparagus bed?” I asked.

He straightened up to look at me, making hard work of it, as a man does when he’s been using a hoe too assiduously; but his eyes were wiser than any I had ever seen on a farm laborer. “Asparagus,” he said. “Yes. Still producing well, too, in spite of being fifteen years old last spring.”

“Well,” I said, “I hope you won’t be offended if I say I think you might get better results with lime than with salt.”

He hobbled to a near-by bench and sat down, patting the wood beside him by way of invitation. “What makes you think so?”

Feeling a little sorry for the barefooted old codger, I sat down.

“Well,” I replied, “it was largely an accident, using lime on our own bed. People down our way always use brine out of their pickle barrels on asparagus, claiming it helps ’em; but all the beds keep running out just the same. Smaller and smaller shoots every year, and tasting more and more of straw. You know how it is.”

“Yes,” the old man said, “I’ll agree salt doesn’t do much to asparagus except keep out weeds. I guess I’ll start another bed.”

“It doesn’t even keep out weeds down our way,” I said. “You won’t need a new bed if you lime and mulch.”

“I take it you’re from the South,” the old man said.

“No, I’m from Maine.”

“But you said ‘down,’ “ he protested. “Twice you said ‘down our way.’ Maine is north, and north is up, isn’t it?”

“Not in New England,” I told him. “If you live in Boston and set out to go to Maine, you always go on a southwest wind; that’s our prevailing wind. So you go downwind from Boston to Portland-‘down to Maine.’ And when you return you go ‘up’ to Boston.”

“Well, I declare,” he exclaimed. “I don’t know but what you do! You’re a farmer, or you wouldn’t know about lime; but you must be something else, too. You wouldn’t be a mariner, would you?”

“No,” I said, “I’m a farmer by inclination, but a lawyer by necessity.”

Then, since he seemed really interested, I went on to tell him my name, and I described our farm in Gorham and told him how our horse Blue Belle had stepped on a hornets’ nest one April morning and overturned a load of lime on the end of our asparagus bed, and how we’d trampled the lime into the mud in our efforts to free Blue Belle from the harness before she hurt herself.

“There was nothing to be done about it,” I told him. “The lime was so mixed with the bed that we couldn’t pick it up without hurting the crowns. But two months later the asparagus in that section was twice as big and more than twice as heavy as that on the rest of the bed.”

“Did you figure the amount of lime to the acre?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, “I figured about six tons. The next year I divided the rest of the bed into sections and limed the strips with varying amounts. The strips that had one and two tons to the acre didn’t show any results; the one with three tons was better; the one with four tons did fairly well; but those with five and six beat anything you ever saw.”

“Don’t you use any salt to keep down the weeds?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “we throw spoiled hay on the beds and never have any trouble with weeds at all. In the fall we harrow it in.”

“Who’s we?”

“Well,” I said, hoping I wasn’t treading on his toes, “we have two hands on the farm, but sometimes I think I’d be better off without ’em. I’ve never tried anything yet that they haven’t objected to.”

His answering smile seemed a little weary, and I, suspecting I was wasting both his time and my own, got up to go. “Do you know where I’d be apt to find Mr. Bartram at this time of day?” I asked.

“That’s one of the few things I’m sure of,” he said. “That’s me. I’m William Bartram.”

I sat down in a hurry. “Bartram!” I cried. “Good God! Me making suggestions to William Bartram! No wonder you smiled!”

“Oh,” Bartram said, “I was only smiling because there never was a man who experimented on a farm who didn’t have to fight everybody who worked for him. You ought to read Marshall’s experiments.”

“I have, sir,” I said. “I’ve read all of Marshall and all of Anderson—and Jared Eliot and Lord Kames. I wouldn’t be without ’em, but I’d give up all of ’em rather than give up William Bartram’s Travels.”

I was a little embarrassed by my own plain speaking, and Bartram seemed embarrassed, too, for he wriggled his bare toes on the gravel walk. “Where are you living in Philadelphia?” he asked.

“Nowhere, sir,” I said. “I’ve just come here from Washington, and for the express purpose of seeing you.”

Seeing that he still looked encouraging, I told him about my effort to collect French Spoliation Claims for my clients, and my desire to see and talk with some of the French refugees who I had been told frequented his garden.

“Bless my soul!” Bartram said. “You’ve come to the right place for French refugees. They’re here from dawn to dark, talking, trading, making love, manufacturing little articles for sale, gambling. We have all kinds here: prime ministers, authors, poets, generals, captains, rakes, priests, scientists, judges, advocates, planters, academicians, ambassadors, senators. Which kind would you like to see?”

“Well,” I said, “most of all I’d like to see somebody who was connected with the Marine in San Domingo around 1797. Most of my clients’ ships are supposed to have been taken into San Domingan ports and sold there. Another valuable person for me to see would be a judge—such a judge as might have condemned American ships captured by the French.”

“Nothing could be simpler,” Bartram said. “I can direct you to the exact men. M. Camille Laboulaye was Chief of the Marine for the Department of the North of San Domingo with headquarters at Cap François, and M. Faure was a member of the Tribunal of Commerce at Cap François. You’ll see both of them this very day.”

When I started to thank him, he stopped me. “The shoe’s on the other foot, Mr. Hamlin. You’ve experimented with soils and lime and such-like things, and you needn’t think you’re going to get away from me by just saying ‘thank you.’ You can talk to a million Frenchmen, for all of me; but since you’re going to do it in these gardens, you’re going to do it with a pruning knife in your hands, or a hoe, or something that’ll make it easier for them to talk to you—and at the same time you’ll be helping both of us. How’s that for an idea?”

“Excellent,” I said. “I’d consider it a pleasure and an honor.”

“I wouldn’t look at it that way,” Bartram returned dryly. “I’m going to get a lot of work out of you, and in return I’m going to give you a room with a good view of the Schuylkill and a mattress stuffed with the plumage of Anser Canadensis. We’ll feed you on meleagris americanus, tetrao tympanus, salmo fontinalis, arum esculentum, and garden fruits in season.”

That was how I came to set up the little portrait of Lydia Bailey in the home of William Bartram, and to interview Frenchmen who had fled to America to escape the vengeance of the blacks who had refused to concur in the French idea that liberty, equality, and fraternity were all right for Frenchmen but bad for Negroes.