William Cobbett . Edward E. Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ was no concern of mine. It could not, by any contrivance, be hooked in amongst my duties. He therefore talked to me, at first in a sort of ambiguous manner. He said that the Commissioners wanted him to do it—and, d——n them, he would not do it for them. Then, when I saw him again, he asked me something about it, showing me their rude mass of papers at the same time. I now began to find what he would be at; but I affected not to understand him, turned the matter as soon as I could, and so we parted. At this time I had long been waiting to go and see an old farmer and his family, and to shoot wild pigeons in the woods; and, as the distance was great, and a companion on the journey necessary, I wanted a sergeant to go with me. The leave to do this had been put off for a good while, and the adjutant knew that I had the thing at heart. What does he do now, but come to me, and after talking about the Report again, affect to lament, that he should be so much engaged with it, that there was no hope of my being permitted to go on my frolic, till he had finished the Report. I, who knew very well what this meant, began to be very anxious for this finishing, to effect which I knew there was but one way. Tacked on to the pigeon-shooting the report became an object of importance, and I said, ‘Perhaps I can do something, sir, in putting the papers in order for you.’ That was enough. Away he went, brought me the whole mass, and tossing them down upon the table: ‘There,’ said he, ‘do what you like with them; for, d——n the rubbish, I have no patience with it!’ Rubbish it really was, if we looked only at the rude manner of the papers; but the matter would to me, at this day, have been very interesting. I d——d the papers as heartily as he did, and with better reason; but they were to bring me my week’s frolic; and, as I entered into everything with ardour, this pigeon-shooting frolic, at the age of about 23 [27], was more than a compensation for all the toil of this Report and its appendix. To work I went, and with the assistance of my shooting-companion sergeant, who called over the figures to me, I had the appendix completed in rough draft, in two days and one night. Having the detail before me, the Report was short work, and the whole was soon completed. But before a neat copy was made out, the thing had to be shown to the Commissioners. It would not do to show it them in my handwriting. The adjutant got over this difficulty by copying the report; and having shown it, and had it highly applauded—‘Well then,’ said he, ‘here sergeant-major, go and make a fair copy.’ This was the most shameless thing that I ever witnessed. This report and appendix, though I hated the job, were, such was my habit of doing everything well, executed with so much neatness and accuracy, that the Duke of Kent, who afterwards became Commander-in-chief in those provinces, and who was told of this report, which was in his office at Halifax, had a copy of it made to be kept in the office, and carried the original with him to England as a curiosity; and of this fact he informed me himself. The duke, from some source or other, had heard that it was I who had been the penman upon this occasion, though I had never mentioned it to anybody. It drew forth a great deal of admiration at Fredericton, and the Lieutenant-governor, General Carleton,[5] asked me in plain terms, whether it was I who had drawn up the Report. The adjutant had told me that I need not say but it was he, because he had promised to do it himself. I was not satisfied with his logic; but the pigeon-shooting made me say, that I certainly would say it was done by him if any one should ask me. And I kept my word with him; for, as I could not give the question of the governor the go-by, I told him a lie at once, and said it was the adjutant. However, I lied in vain; for, when I came to Halifax, in my way from the United States to England, ten years afterwards, I found that the real truth was known to a number of persons, though the thing had wholly gone out of my mind; and after my then late pursuits, and the transactions of real magnitude in which I had been concerned, I was quite surprised that anybody should have attached any importance to so trifling a thing.”

      It appears that the Duke of Kent, who was Commander-in-chief at that station a few years later, was one of the “persons” who got wind of this affair; and in 1800, when Cobbett was returning to England the second time, the Duke saw him, and showed that he had kept the veritable copy as a curiosity, having had it transcribed for the use of the Governor. Further—

      “When I told him the whole story, he asked me how much the Commissioners gave me; and when I told him not a farthing, he exclaimed most bitterly, and said that thousands of pounds had, first and last, been paid by the country for what I had done.”

It must be noted, too, that there were individual cases of benefit arising from the example of our very smart sergeant. Several men caught the “grammar”-fever, whilst an increasing zeal appeared, in the performance of duty, on the part of many of his comrades. So far, indeed, that his services to the regiment were at last recognized in public orders. When the regiment was relieved and sent home in the autumn of 1791, Cobbett applied for his discharge; which he obtained, accompanied by a flattering testimonial from his major,[6] to his “good behaviour, and the services he had rendered the regiment.”

      And, with all his duties, Cobbett found time for his share of sports; skating, fishing, shooting, and even gardening, took some portion of his hours of liberty. He could work, and he could play, but could never be idle for a minute.

      It must have been in the year 1787, when Cobbett was about twenty-five years of age, that he first saw his future wife. She was the daughter of an artilleryman, and then only about thirteen, and, although so very young, won the heart of our sergeant in a twinkling. Her character, too, had been moulded by careful and untiring parents; and when the lover came by, there was the promise of a genuine helpmeet for one, who required in that respect a woman of unquestioned propriety, of great industry, and of unfailing discretion. How quickly he prospered, and the whole story of his courtship, with the one great risk that it ran of being annulled, is all told in the “Advice to a Lover;” suffice it to say here, that not only was there never a moment’s regret, but that Cobbett, to the last day of his life laid all his fame and all the earthly prosperity which he had enjoyed, to the happy choice which he had made in his wife. The first trial came, early enough in the history of the affair, to be a real trial, when the artillery were sent home, and carried the sergeant’s hopes along with them, besides 140 or 150 guineas of his savings in the girl’s pocket.

      FOOTNOTES

      [1] This was Mr. Benjamin Garlike, who afterwards became envoy to two or three foreign courts. He died in 1815, unmarried, ætat. forty-nine. For a notice of him, vide Gent. Mag. lxxxv. 564. Cobbett met him again, when in the full tide of fame, and says that “he had lived so long in courts, had so long had to do with superior power, and had so long lived in submission to the mandates of others, that he became nervous when he heard my ordinary talk, about men in place and authority.”

[2] Some clever lecturer has said that “he had but little knowledge of books, and even less of other men’s thoughts.” We find, however, in “Porcupine’s Works” (1794–1800), quotations from, or references to, Swift, Shaftesbury, Pope, Sterne, Butler, Dryden, Shakespeare, Somerville, Racine, Montesquieu, Le Sage, Cervantes, Congreve, and Bishop Watson, besides minor names. But such is the way of these clever historical lecturers—cooking a man’s reputation in their own pot, and taking the skimmings for truth.

[3] Colonel Debbieg was himself no ordinary man, and had seen active service in various parts of the world. He entered the army in 1746, at the age of fourteen, served in the Low Countries, and afterwards in North America under General Wolfe, whose friendship and entire confidence he soon acquired. He was gazetted Colonel-Commandant of the Engineers early in 1783, but retired in a year or two; gazetted Major-General, 1798, General 1803. He died in 1810, at an advanced age, having employed his retirement in ingenious studies in fortification. The circumstance in the text refers to certain letters of Debbieg (who was a high-spirited fellow) which were addressed to his СКАЧАТЬ