‘I don’t know about that, sir,’ Searcy told him reflectively. ‘I think you might perhaps go unmolested for a while.’
‘Unmolested? I would goddam hope so.’
Searcy could guess what was happening though he hadn’t been told. He had learned much general military science in the Crimea and elsewhere and could tell a flank march made in some secrecy when he saw one. He argued with himself whether tonight he would ride down towards one of the fords in the Waterloo direction. If he could get across the river he should meet up with the U.S. cavalry vedettes at the western end of Pope’s army and give the warning that Lee was making fools of them.
Even if he could flit across the river tonight, he had small chance of flitting back again, so that he could never expect accreditation to work in the South again. And in that case would not see Mrs Whipple until the war ended. Unlike Usaph Bumpass, Kyd Douglas, Tom Jackson and others, Horace Searcy did not expect the war to end by the autumn of 1862. He was not sure that it would be finished by Christmas of 1864. He did not want to wait two or more years for his next sight of plain but superb Dora Whipple.
He had little doubt that to inform Pope, a mediocre general, of the great flank march that was under way against him was worth sacrificing any journalistic privilege for. The question was whether he was willing to give up Mrs Whipple for the same chancy reason.
It wouldn’t bean easy crossing if he tried it. You could be sure there was a strong Confederate picket line down on the river to shield this march which was going on. He would have to creep through that if he could. If he were a better swimmer he would travel on foot, but then he needed a horse in case he had to cross quickly, in a deep place with currents, and in case he was chased by cavalry.
He reflected how if any of these officers passing the gate knew his true opinion and the work he did for Secretary Stanton, they would certainly come up there on the porch, make a grand Southern speech, and shoot him in the head.
They would tell him before putting the bullet in him that he typified Britain in its hypocrisy, that Britain could never have abolished slavery if slavery had been internal to Britain. But slavery had always been external to it – had existed in the British colonies, in Africa, in Jamaica. It was easy to destroy and abolish something that was distant from you. What did it matter to Westminster if the economy of Jamaica was destroyed? Well, sah (they would say before shooting him), the economy of the South is not about to be destroyed to suit the hypocritic feelings of London or Washington. The Southern form of slavery, sah, is the best condition to which an African nigger could hope to aspire, sah! Bang, sah!
Searcy supposed that in Southern terms he deserved a bullet, for he had never felt as strong against anything since child labour as he did against the civilisation of the South.
When he first went South in the spring of ’61, before the first shot had been fired by South Carolina against the Federal fortress called Sumter, he’d had a vague feeling against slavery but was willing to look on it as he felt an outsider should, as more the business of the Americans than any business for him. He started to get passionate about it with his first sighting of negro field slaves in the coastal lowlands of North Carolina. Their ragged shoeless condition made the house slaves in their mock-Georgian wigs and pantaloons seem even more like some sort of ridiculous human poodles.
Then, on the train from Savannah to Macon, Georgia, he’d had that conversation with the Reverend Mr Elliott, the Bishop of Georgia. Elliott was a big handsome cleric who sat down in the saloon bar with Horace Searcy and set out to prove to him that the Bible and the Constitution of the United States both sanctioned slavery. As the man talked, and Searcy looked at his large open face, it began to appear to the English aristocrat that this urbane and eloquent bishop ought to be fought, that his place in history was beside the witch-hunters of the last century, and with the priests who worked for the Inquisition three hundred years ago, and who could prove from the Bible that God wanted people racked and tortured.
The bishop and others argued with him all the way down the line. At every railroad depot where they stretched their legs, on every boat landing that spring, were advertisements offering rewards for the recapture of this or that runaway negro, with a description of the man, the whip and brand marks, the scars that came from Massa’s blows, the cuts that came from Massa’s malicious riding crop. But still it was all God’s will, according to Bishop Elliott.
In every big town you could see the great slave yards with the massive hoardings outside them.
W. C. Mentor – Money advanced on slaves.
Constant supplies of
Virginia negroes
On sale or hire
And behind the sign, a high-walled depot in the middle of the nice white houses of Raleigh or Wilmington, Macon or Savannah, and behind the walls the slave pens where black humans were kept for inspection.
Then Montgomery, Alabama. When Searcy went there that spring it was the Confederacy’s first capital. On the eve of his meeting with Judah Benjamin and Jeff Davis and Mr Treasurer Memminger in the Confederate capitol, a mock-Greek pile on one of Montgomery’s few low hills, Searcy sat on the hotel porch amongst gentlemen spurting tobacco juice from their mouths with immense accuracy (but missing the spittoons anyhow very often), and from there watched the sale of a young black man.
The salesman stood on the steps by a fountain in a square outside the hotel. In the midst of the plumes of water stood an Athenian statue of a lady, for these Southerners were big on Greek architecture; maybe they thought it went some way towards proving they were cultured gentlemen. On a crate set in front of this stone woman, from whose feet the jets of water burst, stood a wiry young negro in good muscle. Surprising that the sale of a fit young man could be, more than the image of sad-eyed black women and pot-bellied, ‘bare-assed’ children, the thing that made Searcy feel he must do something. It may well have been the way the negro boy carried his little cloth bundle in his hands. What mementos were therein no one could guess, but he looked exactly as if there was no place on earth he could call home.
In the square itself that afternoon, given the heat, the only spectators were a few Irish labourers in a waggon, some volunteers in grey homespun, and about half a dozen gentlemen in black coats, satin waistcoats and black hats, who were genuine buyers. The gentlemen on the verandah, chewing and spitting and sipping cocktails, might become interested if the bidding proved low.
‘A prime field-hand,’ the auctioneer yelled. He was an Irishman and as whimsical as his race. ‘Why, can’t you tell jest by looking at him what a good-natured boy he is. There now …’ He took hold of the slave’s jaw and turned the black head profile-on to the audience. ‘… there’s docility in that eye of his’n. No scars on him to speak of – you can verify that – except the few littl’uns that come from the normal conversations atween mastah and slave.’
There was a lazy guffaw from the verandah.
‘This here fella ain’t got any problems – nary a taste for licker and no conjugal ties, by which I mean he has no wife, no place to distract his mind from the fitting attachment to a new mastah. Enine hunthred and fiferty! Ah, gentlemen, is your attachment to the divinely-ordained institution of slavery of such a pale nature that you can’t do better in the presence of a prime boy such as this than enine hunthred and fiferty. Are we to write to Abe Lincoln and say Mr Lincoln, you’re right about us, take our heartland, for our attachment to our birthright tends to peter out at enine hunthred and fifterty dollars.’
There were the sort of amused catcalls you’d expect from the crowd, both on the verandah and in the square.
‘That’s good, thank you, sir. We have enine hunthred and eseventy-fife and we can, as God pertects us, expect more. We have enine hunthred and … and we have ah-one athousand. We have ah-one thousand. Oh, gentlemen, oh, gentlemen! No more? I have instructions concerning the reserve price on this fine specimen whose owner is selling him merely to employ the sale price in setting up a company
of Emerald Guards to fight against the Northern tyranny. Any advance … Reserve is ah-one thousand. Ah-one ethousand is accepted, sir. Would you kindly join the nigger and meself, sir, at the notary’s, where the exchange will be formalised. I thank you gentlemen one and all for your attention.’
‘That nigger went cheap,’ said a slow-chewing Alabaman voice on the hotel porch.
‘Yessir. Niggers is going cheap these days. Why, a man could well speculate in ’em at a time like this, but I for one don’t think I will.’
What Searcy witnessed a week later on the steamer Southern Republic, travelling down the steep-banked River Alabama from Montgomery to the Mississippi, made the passionate exception he took to slavery even stronger. The captain of the steamer was another Irishman called Meagher, the ship a top-heavy floating wooden fortress of saloons and smoking rooms and cabins. At godforsaken landings along the way, the steam whistle screamed and the calliope atop the steamer played ‘Dixie’. The framework of the Southern Republic was of such raw and resinous pine that turpentine oozed out from the joints; and a visit to the engine room, where blacks naked to the clout thrust pine beams into the mouths of the boilers, convinced you the whole light, over-driven structure would explode any second. In contrast, life on the upper decks was pretty gracious by Southern standards. The whole ship, from engine room to calliope, seemed to Searcy like a great floating symbol of the South itself.
At the captain’s table in the dining room, while the calliopes screamed and the Southern Republic moved through crowds of mosquitoes and populations of alligators, Southern gentlemen started to speak of the captain’s success running slaves to Mobile a few years back. Captain Meagher had taken a ship to the west coast of Africa, loaded up with Ashantis and returned to Mobile. The collector of duty on slaves imported into Mobile heard about the ship, but somehow the sheriff couldn’t be found anywhere in the town and the U.S. Marshal was missing, both of them of course well paid by the captain’s partners to vanish for a few days. Meagher trans-shipped all the negroes to a river steamer called The Czar that night, and by the time the collector got out to inspect the slave cargo there was no cargo at all.
But it wasn’t only the collector he duped, it was his partners too. When they asked for their cut of the slaves he smiled sweetly and said he didn’t understand them. To show his good faith though he gave them a couple of old niggers each. They were beaten, those partners – there was no one they could complain to, for running niggers illegally was Subject to capital punishment. And so suddenly Meagher had had slaves and land and wealth, and he built a fleet of steamers of which Southern Republic was the newest and proudest.
Searcy watched the way Meagher listened to the others tell this story about him, watched the broad leer on the man’s face. ‘Well now,’ he said, winking and nudging, ‘so you think these biggers I got aboard here come from Africa? I’ll show you.’
He called to a fine jet-skinned boy of maybe sixteen years. ‘Jest come here, Bully.’
The boy came over. He was near-naked, his cheeks were marked with a tribal pattern of scars and his chest also had tattoos.
‘What’s your name, boy?’
‘Mah name Bully, sah!’
‘Where you born?’
‘Me born Sout’ Karliner, sah!’ ‘There, you see he weren’t taken out of Africa. Bully, I got a power of the South Car’lina niggers aboard, ain’t that so?’
‘Yessah!’
‘You happy, Bully?’
‘Yessah.’
‘Show these gen’lmen here how you’re happy.’
The boy grinned maniacally and started to rub his belly. ‘Yummy, yummy, plenty bellyful, sah!’
‘That’s what I calls a really philosophical chap. Now, Mr Searcy, I wager you got a lot of people in your own country cain’t pat their bellies an’ say what Bully here jest said.’
Everyone laughed except Searcy. It wasn’t that he couldn’t disapprove of his own country. It was the boy, Bully, who interested him. ‘Did he get those tribal marks in South Carolina?’ Searcy asked the captain.
‘Why yes, he did,’ said the captain, winking. ‘It’s the way them nigger women have of marking their offspring to recognise ’em. Ain’t that so, Bully?’
There was laughter, laughter and the spitting of tobacco juice.
‘Mind you,’ the captain went on, all mock serious. ‘We’re obliged now and then to let some niggers in to keep up the balance ‘gainst the niggers you run into Canada.’
Well, they could laugh. Tonight, the night Dan Hill’s division edged west, they might be about to pay for their laughter. Not their laughter against the Honourable Horace Searcy, who was willing to believe he might seem a little ridiculous to Americans. But for their laughter against the black race and all the blows that were innate in that laughter.
After supper, feeling wistful about Mrs Whipple, Searcy loaded his two Derringers and put one in his breast pocket and one in the side pocket of his jacket. In the dark they made no difference to the contours of his clothing. He had the farmer’s boy saddle his horse. Dan Hill’s division had passed on up the road towards Amissville. Soon General David Rumple Jones’s boys would take to it, slipping away from Pope’s front in the dark. There was no sign of it yet though.
Travelling across country, Searcy kept off small roads and lanes and rode over low hills towards the river, veering west all the time, keeping to tiny foot tracks amongst the undergrowth. He could see fireflies burning in the lower branches of trees like festive lights, and the air was cool. Virginia was a fair land, he thought, and he was about to lose it and the treasure it held – Mrs Whipple. But no one stopped him.
The paths he took led him down to the flat by the river. Here it was still quaggy from the recent rain and all the sound was of chirping insects and the muddy noise of his horse’s hooves in the mushy earth. He thought he must be beyond the picket screen now. You’ve got round it, Searcy, he told himself. There is now only the acceptable risk of being drowned in crossing the river or shot by Union pickets on the far side. But as he was thinking about this, three horsemen stepped their horses from the woods to his left. One of them called, ‘Stand, friend!’
For a second he wondered if he could outride them, but it was too high a risk. Confederate countrymen were self-taught, yet no trained equestrian such as he was could be sure of outracing them in this manner of country. Maybe if he could stand on his dignity with them they could let him go on or at least send him home. Then perhaps he could attempt it again later in the night.
‘What do you want?’ he asked, as if they were interrupting what was for him just a pleasant night’s ride.
They drew nearer to him. Ragged Rebel cavalry. Most of what they had was taken from the U.S. – their cavalry boots, their harness, their britches, their shirts, and the Spencer repeating rifles two of them had levelled at him. One of them had a bandana tied jauntily round his neck and a lieutenant’s bars on his shoulders.
‘You British?’ the lieutenant asked. His own accent sounded Texan and very likely was.
‘I am the Honourable Horace Searcy, correspondent of The Times of London. I have accreditation from General Longstreet.’ He took out of his breast pocket the letter which had been nestling by the Derringer. It said who he was and that the Confederate officer should extend every courtesy and co-operation to him within reasonable bounds.
The lieutenant held this up to the moon and read it with one eye shut. ‘Fetch the cap’n,’ he told one of the others. Then, to Searcy, ‘And where are you going, sir?’
‘I was merely riding for my health,’ said Searcy. ‘Of course there is always the chance I’d meet up with Confederate pickets and engage them in conversation. You must understand, lieutenant, that the Confederate cavalryman is a picturesque and romantic figure to the average city-bound Englishmen.’
‘Well, I’ll be switched,’ said the Texan drily. ‘And here I was thinking I was jest average myself.’
The third horseman rode back now with an o
fficer in a big hat. ‘Mr Searcy,’ said this officer in a voice which was a little Norfolk and a little East London, a sort of English yeoman voice.
Searcy decided to sound warm and see how far the claims of a common race would get him with this captain.
‘That’s right, sir. Do I have the honour of speaking to another Englishman?’
The officer laughed at this. ‘Well, when these boys are around me I’m bound to call meself a Texican. But I am English, yes, by birthright.’ He took his hat off. ‘Sir, I often saw you in the Crimea.’
‘Oh?’ said Searcy, all warmth. ‘What regiment?’
‘I was a sergeant in the 11th Hussars.’
Searcy blinked. The 11th Hussars were the Light Brigade that crazy Lord Cardigan had ordered up the avenue of death at Balaclava. They had been told to attack the Russian artillery that was withdrawing from Voronzdof Heights, but the order got mixed and Cardigan sent them fair down the valley at the centre of the Russian line. Searcy had watched it all from a ridge just above the hill where the Light Brigade formed up. Despite Lord Alfred Tennyson’s silly poem about the event, it was the worst thing Searcy had ever seen in any war other than this one.
‘You lived?’ was all Searcy, genuinely reverent, could say for the moment.
‘Roundshot killed my horse, and I was just trying to get away on foot when some Russian infantry ran out from their redoubt and took me prisoner. I was eleven months a prisoner of the Russians, but it wasn’t bad at all there in Odessa, though I got the black fever once …’
‘And you emigrated to America?’
The three horsemen seemed bored – they’d probably heard their captain’s story often enough before.
‘The old world seemed a mite dangerous to me, Mr Searcy. As it is, I own an emporium in Houston now; my wife runs it for me. She’s a Texican, sir. They’re a different breed of women.’