He did not know me as I passed, but his small glimmering red face instantly identified the worthy little old man to me.
“Good morning, Mr Whiffle—the top of the morning to you, sir.”
“Hillo!” responded Peregrine—”Tom, is it you?—how d’ye do, man—how d’ye do?” and he started to his feet, and almost embraced me.
Now, I had never met the said Peregrine Whiffle but twice in my life; once at Mr Fyall’s, and once during the few days I remained at Kingston, before I set out on my travels; but he was a warm-hearted kindly old fellow, and, from knowing all my friends there very intimately, he, as a matter of course, became equally familiar with me.
“Why the diable came you not to see me, man? Have been here for change of air—to recruit, you know, after that demon, the gout, had been so perplexing me, ever since you came to anchor—the Firebrand, I mean: as for you, you have been mad one while, and philandering with those inconvenient white ladies the other. You’ll cure of that, my boy—you’ll come to the original comforts of the country soon, no fear!
“Perhaps I may, perhaps not.”
“Oh, your cousin Mary, I forgot—fine girl, Tom—may do for you at home yonder” (all Creoles speak of England as home, although they may never have seen it), “but she can’t make pepper-pot, nor give a dish of land-crabs as land-crabs should be given, nor see to the serving-up of a ringtail pigeon, nor rub a beef-steak to the rotting turn with a bruised papaw, nor compose a medicated bath, nor, nor—oh confound it, Tom, she will be, when you marry her, a cold, comfortless, motionless, Creole icicle!”
I let him have his swing. “Never mind her, then—never mind her, my dear sir; but time presses, and I must be off—I must indeed: so good morning; I wish you a good morning, sir.”
He started to his feet and caught hold of me. “Sha’n’t go, Tom—impossible; come along with me to my lodgings, and breakfast with me. Here, Pilfer, Pilfer,” to his black valet, “give me my stick, and massu* the chair, and run home and order breakfast—cold calipiver—our Jamaica salmon, you know, Tom—tea and coffee—pickled mackerel, eggs, and cold tongue—anything that mother Dingychops can give us; so bolt, Pilfer, bolt!”
I told him that, before I came ashore, I had heard the gig’s crew piped away, and that I therefore expected, as Jonathan says, that the captain would be after me immediately; so that I wished, at all events, to get away from where we were, as I had no desire to be caught gossiping about when my superior might be expected to pass.
“True, boy, true,” as he shackled himself to me, and we began to crawl along towards the wharf-gate leading into the town. Captain Transom by this time had landed and came up with us.
“Ah, Transom,” said Whiffle, “glad to see you. I say, why won’t you allow Mr Cringle here to go over to Spanish Town with me for a couple days, eh?”
“Why, I don’t remember that Mr Cringle has ever asked leave.”
“Indeed, sir, I neither did ask leave, nor have I thought of doing so,” said I.
“But I do for you,” chimed in my friend Whiffle. “Come, captain, give him leave, just for two days—that’s a prime chap. Why, Tom, you see you have got it, so off with you and come to me with your kit as soon as possible; I will bobble on and make the coffee and chocolate; and, Captain Transom, come along and breakfast with me too.—No refusal—I require society. Nearly drowned yesterday—do you know that? Off this same cursed wharf too—just here. I was looking down at the small fish playing about the piles, precisely in this position; one of them was as bright in the scales as a gold fish in my old grandmother’s glass globe, and I had to crane over the ledge in this fashion,” suiting the action to the word, “when away I went—”
And, to our unutterable surprise, splash went Peregrine Whiffle, Esquire, for the second time, and there he was shouting, and puffing, and splashing in the water. We were both so convulsed with laughter that I believe he would have been drowned for us; but the boat-keeper of the gig the strong athletic negro before mentioned, promptly jumped on the wharf with his boat-hook, and caught the dapper little old beau by the waistband of his breeches, swaying him up, frightened enough, with his little coat-skirts fluttering in the breeze, and no wonder, but not much the worse for it all.
“Diable porte l’amour,” whispered Captain Transom.
“Swallowed a Scotch pint of salt water to a certainty.—Run, Pilfer, bring me some brandy—gout will be into my stomach, sure as fate—feel him now—run, Pilfer, run, or gout will beat you—a dead heat that will be!” And he keckled at his small joke very complacently.
We had him carried by our people to his lodgings, where, after shifting and brandying to some tune, he took his place at the breakfast table, and did the honours with his usual amenity and warmheartedness.
After breakfast, Peregrine remembered—what the sly rogue had never forgotten, I suspect—that he was engaged to dine with his friend, Mr Pepperpot Wagtail, in Kingston.
“But it don’t signify; Wagtail will be delighted to see you, Tom—hospitable fellow, Wagtail; and now I recollect myself, Fyall and Aaron Bang are to be there; dang it, were it not for the gout we should have a night on’t!”
After breakfast we started in a canoe for Kingston, touching at the Firebrand for my kit.
Moses Yerk, the unpoetical first-lieutenant, was standing well forward on the quarterdeck as I passed over the side to get into the canoe, with the gunroom steward following me, carrying my kit under his arm.
“I say, Tom, good for you, one lark after another.”
“Don’t like that fellow,” quoth Whiffle; “he is quarrelsome in his drink for a thousand; I know it by the cut of his jib.”
He had better have held his tongue, honest man; for as he looked up broad in Yerk’s face, who was leaning over the hammocks, the scupper immediately overhead—through whose instrumentality I never knew—was suddenly cleared, and a rush of dirty water, that had been lodged there since the decks had been washed down at day-dawn, splashed slapdash over his head and shoulders and into his mouth, so as to set the dear little man a-coughing so violently that I thought he would have been throttled. Before he had recovered sufficiently to find his tongue we had pulled fifty yards from the ship, and a little farther on we overtook the captain, who had preceded us in the cutter, into which we transhipped ourselves. But Whiffle never could acquit Yerk of having been, directly or indirectly, the cause of his suffering from the impure shower.
This day was the first of the Negro Carnival, or Christmas holidays, and at the distance of two miles from Kingston the sound of the negro drums and horns, the barbarous music, and yelling of the different African tribes, and the more mellow singing of the Set Girls, came off upon the breeze loud and strong.
When we got nearer, the wharfs and different streets, as we successively opened them, were crowded with blackamoors, men, women, and children, dancing and singing and shouting, and all rigged out in their best. When we landed on the agents’ wharf we were immediately surrounded by a group of these merrymakers, which happened to be the Butchers’ John Canoe party, and a curious exhibition it unquestionably was. The prominent character was, as usual, the John Canoe, or Jack Pudding. He was a light, active, clean-made young Creole negro, without shoes or stockings; he wore a pair of light jean small-clothes, all too wide, but confined at the knees, below and above, by bands of red tape, after the manner that Malvolio would have called cross-gartering. He wore a splendid blue velvet waistcoat, with old-fashioned flaps coming down over his hips, and covered with tarnished embroidery. His shirt was absent on leave, I suppose, but at the wrists of his coat he had tin or white iron frills, with loose pieces attached, which tinkled as he moved, and set off the dingy paws that were stuck through these strange manacles, like black wax tapers in silver candlesticks. His coat was an old blue artillery-uniform one, with a small bell hung to the extreme points of the swallow-tailed skirts, and three tarnished epaulets—one on each shoulder; and, O ye immortal gods!—O Mars armipotent!—the biggest of
the three stuck at his rump, the point d’appui for a sheep’s tail. He had an enormous cocked-hat on, to which was appended in front a white false-face or mask, of a most methodistical expression, while, Janus-like, there was another face behind, of the most quizzical description, a sort of living Antithesis, both being garnished and overtopped with one coarse wig, made of the hair of bullocks’ tails, on which the chapeau was strapped down with a broad band of gold lace.
He skipped up to us with a white wand in one hand and a dirty handkerchief in the other, and with sundry moppings and mowings, first wiping my shoes with his mouchoir, then my face (murder, what a flavour of salt fish and onions it had!), he made a smart enough pirouette, and then sprang on the back of a nondescript animal that now advanced, capering and jumping, about after the most grotesque fashion that can be imagined. This was the signal for the music to begin. The performers were two gigantic men, dressed in calf-skins entire, head, four legs, and tail. The skin of the head was made to fit like a hood, the two fore-feet hung dangling down in front, one over each shoulder, while the other two legs, or hind-feet, and the tail, trailed behind on the ground; deuce another article had they on in the shape of clothing except a handkerchief, of some flaming pattern, tied round the waist. There were also two flute-players in sheep-skins, looking still more outlandish, from the horns on the animals’ heads being preserved; and three stout fellows who were dressed in the common white frock and trousers, who kept sounding on bullocks’ horns. These formed the band, as it were, and might be considered John’s immediate tail or following; but he was also accompanied by about fifty of the butcher negroes, all neatly dressed-blue jackets, white shirts, and Osnaburg trousers, with their steels and knife-cases by their sides, as bright as Turkish yataghans, and they all wore clean blue-and-white striped aprons. I could see and tell what they were; but the Thing John Canoe had perched himself upon I could make nothing of. At length I began to comprehend the device.
The Magnus Apollo of the party, the poet and chief musician—the nondescript already mentioned—was no less than the boatswain of the butcher gang, answering to the driver in an agricultural one. He was clothed in an entire bullock’s hide, horns, tail, and the other particulars, the whole of the skull being retained, and the effect of the voice growling through the jaws of the beast was most startling. His legs were enveloped in the skin of the hind-legs; while the arms were eased in that of the fore, the hands protruding a little above the hoofs; and as he walked, reared upon his hind-legs, he used (in order to support the load of the John Canoe, who had perched on his shoulders like a monkey on a dancing bear) a strong stick, or sprit, with a crutch-top to it, which he leant his breast on every now and then.
After the creature—which I will call the Device for shortness—had capered with its extra load, as if it had been a feather, for a minute or two, it came to a standstill, and, sticking the end of the sprit into the ground, and tucking the crutch of it under its chin, it motioned to one of the attendants, who thereupon handed—of all things in the world—a fiddle to the ox! He then shook off the John Canoe, who began to caper about as before, while the Device set up a deuced good pipe, and sang and played—barbarously enough, I will admit—to the tune of Guinea Corn, the following ditty :—
“Massa Buccra lob for see
Bullock caper like monkee—
Dance, and shump, and poke him toe,
Like one humane person—just so.”
And hereupon the tail of the beast, some fifty strong, music men, John Canoe and all, began to rampauge about, as if they had been possessed by a devil whose name was Legion:—
“But Massa Buccra have white love,
Soft and silken like one dove.
To brown girl—him barely shivel—
To black girl—oh, Lord, de Devil!”
Then a tremendous gallopading, in the which Tailtackle was nearly capsized over the wharf. He looked quietly over the edge of it.
“Boat-keeper, hand me up that switch of a stretcher.” (Friend, if thou be’st not nautical, thou knowest what a rack-pin, something of the stoutest, is.)
The boy did so, and Tailtackle, after moistening well his dexter claw with tobacco-juice, seized the stick with his left by the middle, and, balancing it for a second or two, he began to fasten the end of it into his right fist, as if he had been screwing a bolt into a socket. Having satisfied himself that his grip was secure, he let go the hold with his left hand, and crossed his arms on his breast, with the weapon projecting over his left shoulder, like the drone of a bagpipe.
The Device continued his chant, giving the seaman a wide berth, however:—
“But when him once two tree year here,
Him tink white lady wery great boder;
De coloured peoples, never fear,
Ah, him lob him de morest nor any oder.”
Then another tumblification of the whole party.
“But, top—one time bad fever catch him,
Coloured peoples kindly watch him—
In sick-room, nurse voice like music—
From him hand taste sweet de physic.”
Another trampoline.
“So alway come—in two tree year,
And so wid you massa—never fear;
Brown girl for cook—for wife—for nurse,
Buccra lady—poo—no wort a curse.”
“Get away, you scandalous scoundrel,” cried I “away with you sir!”
Here the morrice-dancers began to circle round old Tailtackle, keeping him on the move, spinning round like a weathercock in a whirlwind, while they shouted, “Oh, massa, one macaroni,* if you please.” To get quit of their importunity, Captain Transom gave them one. “Ah, good massa, tank you, sweet massa!” And away danced John Canoe and his tail, careering up the street.
In the same way all the other crafts and trades had their Gumbi-men, Horn-blowers, John Canoes, and Nondescript. The Gardeners came nearest, of anything I had seen before, to the Mayday boys in London; with this advantage, that their Jack-in-the-Green was incomparably more beautiful, from the superior bloom of the larger flowers used in composing it.
The very workhouse people, whose province it is to guard the negro culprits who may be committed to it, and to inflict punishment on them when required, had their John Canoe and Device; and their prime jest seemed to be, every now and then, to throw the fellow down who enacted the latter at the corner of a street, and to administer a sound flogging to him. The John Canoe, who was the workhouse driver, was dressed up in a lawyer’s cast-off gown and bands, black silk breeches, no stockings nor shoes, but with sandals of bullock’s hide strapped on his great splay feet, a small cocked-hat on his head, to which were appended a large cauliflower wig and the usual white false-face, bearing a very laughable resemblance to Chief-Justice S——, with whom I happened to be personally acquainted.
The whole party which accompanied these two worthies, musicians and tail, were dressed out so as to give a tolerable resemblance of the Bar broke loose, and they were all pretty considerably well drunk. As we passed along, the Device was once more laid down, and we could notice a shield of tough hide strapped over the fellow’s stern-frame, so as to save the lashes of the cat, which John Canoe was administering with all his force, while the Device walloped about and yelled, as if he had been receiving the punishment on his naked flesh. Presently, as he had rolled over and over in the sand, bellowing to the life, I noticed the leather shield slip upwards to the small of his back, leaving the lower storey uncovered in reality; but the driver and his tail were too drunk to observe this, and the former continued to lay on and laugh, while one of his people stood by in all the gravity of drunkenness, counting, as a first-lieutenant does, when a poor fellow is polishing at the gangway,—”Twenty—twenty-one —twenty-two”—and so on, while the patient roared you, an it were anything but a nightingale. At length he broke away from the men who held him, after receiving a most sufficient flogging, to revenge which he immediately fastened on the John Canoe, wrenched his
cat from him, and employed it so scientifically on him and his followers, giving them passing taps on the shins now and then with the handle, by way of spice to the dose, that the whole crew pulled foot as if Old Nick had held them in chase.
The very children, urchins of five and six years old, had their Lilliputian John Canoes and Devices. But the beautiful part of the exhibition was the Set Girls. They danced along the streets, in bands of from fifteen to thirty. There were brown sets, and black sets, and sets of all the intermediate gradations of colour. Each set was dressed pin for pin alike, and carried umbrellas or parasols of the same colour and size, held over their nice, showy, well-put-on toques, or Madras handkerchiefs—all of the same pattern—tied round their heads, fresh out of the fold. They sang as they swam along the streets in the most luxurious attitudes. I had never seen more beautiful creatures than there were amongst the brown sets—clear olive complexions, and fine faces, elegant carriages, splendid figures—full, plump, and magnificent.
Most of the sets were as much of a size as Lord-’s eighteen daughters, sailing down Regent Street, like a charity-school of a Sunday, led by a rum-looking old beadle;—others, again, had large Roman matron-looking women in the leading files—the figurantes in their tails becoming slighter and smaller as they tapered away, until they ended in leetle picaniny no bigger as my tumb, but always preserving the uniformity of dress, and colour of the umbrella or parasol. Sometimes the breeze, on opening a corner, would strike the stern-most of a set composed in this manner of small fry, and stagger the little things, getting beneath their tiny umbrellas, and fairly blowing them out of the line, and ruffling their ribbons and finery, as if they had been tulips bending and shaking their leaves before it. But the colours were never blended in the same set; no blackie ever interloped with the browns, nor did the browns in any case mix with the sables, always keeping in mind, black woman—brown lady.