'Support for our Cause in Parliament is building quite nicely, too, I assure you. No matter the seeming Criminality of your Actions, your chiefest Patron in the Commons, Sir Malcolm Shockley, has spoken most eloquently for you, and has gathered round him not only some of the leading lights from his own growing faction, but many of the up-and-coming Reformist sorts, such as Sir Samuel Whitbread, and many of the Crown's own faction. Given the best face official government has put upon our recent debacle on Saint-Domingue, in which you played a part, and the Publick pronouncements of Congratulations to the former slaves of that colony who rose up and rebelled against the cruel state in which their former French masters kept them-cynical and false though such pronouncements were!-the ruling faction cannot appear the two- faced Janus and condemn one of their Sea Officers who freed a dozen slaves, no matter how ilegally, or be called down as hypocrites. Those voices in Commons condemning you, therefore, are mostly from the Shipping and Sugar interests, whose only god is Mammon, and rest assured that Sir Malcolm and others have made certain that everyone in Great Britain knows their Venality for what it is. A great many who might condemn your actions and call for your immediate return to face charges have muted themselves, else they are tarred the same. Even in Lord's, a body usually much more conservative and hide-bound than the Commons, you have found remarkably supportive Voices speaking to the Justification of your deed, rather than to the cut-and-dried facts of common thievery, among them your old schoolmate, Lord Peter Rushton, of all hen-headed wonders. Your deed has been interpreted as a bold geste, a blow struck for Human Freedom, as you will note when you see the newspaper articles, and the many letters written upholding your actions… I'm told that homilies and sermons have been preached…'
He'd had enough of Twigg for the moment, so he turned to that pile of newspapers and tracts, and, if he thought things were horrid then, he rapidly discovered what 'horrid' really was.
The Times, the Gazette, even the Marine Chronicle's latest numbers featured articles about him, not one of which actually got the facts right, or made things up out of whole cloth, though they weren't that condemnatory, and most of the letters to the editors sounded like the bulk of the writers somehow approved. England, after all, didn't much care for slavery; if 'Britons never, never, never shall be slaves' then why should anyone else, and only 'foreigners,' meaning Spaniards and other assorted evil types, did it, didn't they? Slave labour was something that happened far overseas, and even if Englishmen did keep slaves in the Sugar Isles, 'our' sort of slavery couldn't be all that bad, could it, compared to Dons, Dagoes, and Frogs?
The lesser papers, though, and the tracts… Good God! Every one of them splashed a copy of a large wood-cut drawing on its front, a fantastic picture of a bare-headed Lewrie in full uniform storming a minor fort of Utter Evil, with a huge sword, much like fabled King Arthur's Excalibur, in one hand, and a knight-crusader shield on his other arm bearing a shining Christian cross and the word 'Freedom' on its face! The bloated and knobby-faced villains atop the ramparts were as ogreish as anyone could wish, cringing and tearing at their hair as they directed a legion of skeletons garbed most remarkably like French grenadiers to oppose him as he (the artistic Lewrie!) actually was depicted leading a band of winged angels, for God's sake!
Little ribbons of captions led from the villains' mouths, with ' 'Tis only Business, ye Meddlesome Upstart!' and 'Curses on him who'd come 'tween us and our Money!' and other statements sure to rile the average reader.
At Lewrie's feet knelt several 'grateful' Blacks-those not impaled on the evil minions' bayonets!-expressing the most pitiful expressions of thankfulness for even a few of them being liberated, a selection of phrases that made Lewrie cringe in embarrassment and squirm in his chair!
'God above, they got Cruikshank t'do it!' Lewrie gawped aloud, when he took note of the wee signature beneath the artwork. No wonder the villains resembled the worst aspects of that artist's depictions of his stock- character 'John Bull'!
No one had loaned Cruikshank a portrait to copy, though, thank God, so 'Saint Alan, the Immaculate' (or so the scribbles on his coat stated) bore an uncanny likeness to Horatio Nelson kicking Bonaparte's fundament… though Lewrie thought that Cruikshank had made him both taller and more manly than that slim little minnikin!
'Must not've paid him all that much!' he muttered. 'Damn!' He pushed all that aside, skimmed over the last few sentences of Twigg's letter, which didn't amount to much, and sat back in utter misery. A trip to his wine-cabinet was in order, he decided, badly! Re-armed with a glass of brandy, he returned to his desk to see what else there was to plague him.
Well, there were letters from Sewallis and Hugh. Both of them almost made him feel much better, for they were frankly proud of him, all eager to leave their stultifying school, and go fight the French, and the evil 'blackbirders'!
His father, Sir Hugo, was also complimentary, noting that his and their ward Sophie's social invitations had increased since word of what he'd done had first appeared in the newspapers, though the old fart did complain that he'd have to sell off his shares in a Liverpool slave ship on the quiet side, since the price had suddenly sunk so low, and he might not have profitted from it, anyway, and how dare his son associate with such a 'wild-eyed and rabid pack of hounds,' sure to be exposed in future in secret league with the most Jacobite and Levelling wing of the Foxites and 'French-Lovers' who had lost all credence after King Louis and his Queen had been beheaded in '92! Besides, an English gentleman should not appear in the papers unless he did something glorious or noteworthy; else, only his birth, his wedding, and his demise should be grist for common reading by the lower sorts!
His daughter, Charlotte, sent a one-page letter, which stated that 'Mama told me you did something Heroic, though extremely Foolish and Reckless, over some Black People, but that is your Nature, as Mama has ever said. Thank you for the dolls from heathen Brazil, they are very pretty, though the package contained a large, black, and hairy Spider as big as my hand. Before Governess squished it, it was most awfully good fun to chase about! Mama says the Admiralty told her you are now in Africa or India. If you can find another spider, I would love it. If not a spider, I would very much like a Monkey!'
And, Caroline, herself, well…
Long-suffering, God-only-knows-what-you-have-done-to-shame-us-this-time, though she did note that the vicar of St. George's in Anglesgreen had delivered a rather impassioned (for him) homily about slavery, and why it should be abolished throughout the realm, as it was already in Great Britain. She also noted that her brother, Governour Chiswick, a former slave-owner himself in the Carolinas before the American Revolution, had nearly stormed out in anger, had not his sweet wife, Millicent, restrained him, and that the two of them were now at-loggerheads over the subject. The vicar had praised their own local 'Emancipator,' had almost (but not quite!) called him a 'True Christian Gentleman' (which might have set off inappropriate laughter, and driven Caroline to storm out, Lewrie suspected) so that almost everyone in Anglesgreen now thought him a fine fellow, even the local squire, Sir Romney Embleton. What his otter-faced son, Harry, thought was not recorded, but then, who cared a damn what Harry Embleton thought!
'… though our lands in the Cape Fear, of such sweet Memory, were, indeed, worked by Negro Labour, never in my mind can I recall an instant of such Brutality as the papers describe in the Sugar Islands of the Caribbean, Alan. Why else would Old Mammy and a few others of our household clew to us so fiercely, and kindly, and my old Mammy to Emigrate with us to England, where, 'til her Passing, she served Mama and Papa and me so Faithfully and Cheerfully, even after Manumission?
'I can only pray that the accounts of the Reformers and Abolitionists are greatly exaggerated to foment their Cause's success, or, should they prove True, that the Reformers succeed, for no one of our former acqaintance in North Carolina, a most genteel and refined Society, could ever have even conceived of such fiendishness. Evidently, the planter class in the Sugar Isles are an utterly Depraved lot, bad as the tobacco- chewing dregs who are now, I am told, populating lower portions of the old Georgia colony!'
Am I too cynical, or is she too naive? he had to wonder at her well-edited remembrances.
'Alan, you have ever been a Puzzlement. Worthy of cursing for an inveterate Rogue and Rake-Hell, a jocular and slothful Lack-A-Day, where an Upright Man would shew Sobriety, Diligence, and Rectitude in his doings. For a man grown, you evince such a Boyish, Indolent face to Life. Surely, such should preclude your Advancement in such a demanding profession as Seafaring, and the Navy, yet, you not only thrive, you are become a great Success, and a
