Читать книгу Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 434, December, 1851 - Various - Страница 3

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 beleagured 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 quantity 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 analogous to gold-washing, 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 quantity 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 quantity, 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 entitled 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 merchantman 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 shillings, (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 shillings, (scraggy creatures, says my ancestor in a parenthesis) – a ham, two guineas – raisins and flour for a pudding, five shillings – 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 appetites, 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've 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 —niño 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 nobody answered. "Nurse is busy with de niña," she said, when nobody 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 niño!" 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 anticipated 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 greese; 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 constituted herself butler, too."

My grandfather advanced and lifted the other bottle to his nose. "'Tis the old rum," he ejaculated 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 ironmongery; 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 Fagan," 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 astonishing 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 fricassee of the fowls, and fishing 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 niño, 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 glass 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."

"We're lucky to get any," returned Owen. "Never was such a scramble. Old Fiskin, the commissary, and Mrs O'Regan, the Major's wife, both swore the left leg was knocked down to them; neither would give in, and it was put up again, when the staff doctor, Pursum, who had just arrived in a great hurry, carried it off by bidding eightpence more than either. Not one of the three has spoken to either of the others since; and people say," added Owen, "Mrs O'Regan avers openly that Fiskin didn't behave like a gentleman."

"God knows!" said my grandfather, "'tis a difficult thing in such a case to decide between politeness and a consciousness of being in the right. Fiskin likes a good dinner."

The dinner having been done justice to, Carlota removed the remains to a side-table, and the Major was in the act of compounding a bowl of punch, when there was a knock at the door. "Come in," cried Carlota.

A light and timid step crossed the narrow passage separating the outer door from that of the room they sat in, and there was another hesitating tap at this latter. "Come in," again cried Carlota, and a young girl entered with a basket on her arm.

"'Tis Esther Lazaro," said Carlota in Spanish. "Come in, child; sit here and tell me what you want."

Esther Lazaro was the daughter of a Jew in the town, whose occupations were multifarious, and connected him closely with the garrison. He discounted officers' bills, furnished their rooms, sold them everything they wanted – all at most exorbitant rates. Still, as is customary with military men, while perfectly aware that they could have procured what he supplied them with elsewhere at less expense, they continued to patronise and abuse him rather than take the trouble of looking out for a more liberal dealer. As the difficulties of the garrison increased, he had not failed to take advantage of them, and it was even said he was keeping back large stores of provisions and necessaries till the increasing scarcity should enable him to demand his own terms for them.

His daughter was about fifteen years old – a pretty girl, with hair of the unusual colour of chestnut, plaited into thick masses on the crown of her head. Her skin was fairer than is customary with her race – her eyes brown and soft in expression, her face oval, and her figure, even at this early age, very graceful, being somewhat more precocious than an English girl's at those years. She was a favourite with the ladies of the garrison, who often employed her to procure feminine matters for them. Carlota, particularly, had always treated her with great kindness – and hence the present visit. She had come, she said timidly, to ask a favour – a great favour. She had a little dog that she loved. (Here a great commotion in the basket seemed to say she had brought her protégé with her.) He had been given to her by a young school friend who was dead, and her father would no longer let her keep it, because, he said, these were no times to keep such creatures, when provisions, even those fit for a dog, were so dear. He was a very good little dog – would the Señora take him?

"Let us look at him, Esther," said Owen – "I see you have brought him with you."

"He is not pretty," said Esther, blushing as she produced him from the basket. He certainly was not, being a small cur, marked with black and white, like a magpie, with a tall curling over his back. He did not appear at all at his ease in society, for he tried to shrink back again into the basket.

"He was frightened," she said, "for he had been shut up for more than a month. She had tried to keep him in her bedroom, unknown to her father, feeding him with part of her own meals; but he had found it out, and had beaten her, and threatened to kill the dog if ever he saw it again."

"Pobrecito!" (poor little thing,) said the good Carlota – "we shall take good care of it. Toma," (take this,) offering him a bit of meat. But he crept under her chair, with his tail so depressed, in his extreme bashfulness, that the point of it came out between his forelegs.

Carlota would have made the young Jewess dine there forthwith, at the side-table still spread with the remains of the dinner; but she refused to take anything, only sipping once from a glass of wine that Carlota insisted on making her drink of. Then she rose, and, having tied the end of a string that was fastened to the dog's collar to the leg of the table, to prevent his following her, took her leave, thanking Carlota very prettily.

"A Dios, Sancho!" she said to the little dog, who wagged his tail and gave her a piteous look as she turned to go away – "A Dios, Sancho," she repeated, taking him up and kissing him very affectionately. The poor child was ready to cry.

"Come and see him every day, my child," said Carlota, "and when better times come you shall have him again."