In this march we were able to make many comparisons between the appearance and manner of life of the inhabitants and what we recalled of the Canadians and our own people at home. First, let me say, that though the wants of the country owing to the war were already very great, from its reliance upon England for stuffs and manufactured goods of quality, the inhabitants appeared well-fed and cheerful, and immeasurably better provided with the conveniences of life than the country people of Ireland. The women were dressed in bright and well-fitting clothing and had a remarkably independent air. Every place through which we passed was now raising two or three companies of troops to join General Washington’s army, so that on the industry of these women depended the life of the countryside, and well they knew it.
I must observe here that no town that we came to had a settled or finished look, nor can it have been solely a fault of the war that life was here universally lived as if it were a doubtful campaign against the forces of Nature; with no opportunity to enjoy the fruits of victory, but a constant impulse to engage in new battles. Accidents that in our own country would serve to drive a man half mad seemed here to produce little alarm or agitation. Nothing was either splendid or beggarly, and when a man was knocked down, he speedily picked himself up again in a manner impossible on our Continent. The labourer was everywhere content with a house of rough logs, unwhitewashed, unpainted, and not always boarded even on the inside. All around this habitation was, in general, as barren as the sea-beach, without flower-beds, paths, or lawns, but only heaps of cast rubbish and refuse; and if there was a cultivated plot called a garden, they used the plough to it, not the spade. Especially there were never any forest trees left standing for shade or adornment in the neighbourhood of a dwelling: Americans detested trees as much as our farmers detest weeds or stones. From the face of the country being everywhere overspread with forest the eyes of the people became weary of it: so that I have read of Americans landing on barren parts of the north-west coast of Ireland and expressing the greatest surprise at the ‘improved state’ of the country, so clear of trees! I never but once during all my seven years in America saw a well-laid out and completed estate, and that was General Schuyler’s at Saratoga that we had been obliged to devastate. What contributed to the untidy and hasty effect of North American negligence was the stumps of trees left standing where virgin forest had given way to the plough. They were not grubbed up but allowed to rot slowly, while the plough avoided them with crooked furrows. They stood up two or three feet at the natural height of an axe-stroke; since a man could cut many more trees in a day in this style than if he levelled the stumps with the ground. Hedges were lacking, being held to rob the soil; and instead everywhere ran rough fences of various construction, which were more convenient than charming.
This want of attention to the amenities of life had been hereditary from the first settlers. Land and timber were cheap, labour dear, and a man would be held a fool who spent his time beautifying his home and its environs, when he might be planting an orchard of fruit-trees or clearing a few acres of forest to make into a maize-field. It may be recorded here that the only American who was ever known to grub up the stumps of his trees at once was their General Stirling, who called himself Lord Stirling. He had come to England, before the war, to pray for the revival in his favour of the extinct Stirling peerage, but the House of Lords disallowed his claim and forbade him under pain of public disgrace to assume the title. When the Americans popularly conceded it to him, he showed his gratitude by a sincere and steady devotion to their cause. He was most adhesive to the dignity of his rank, and the removal of the tree stumps was in keeping with these punctilious traits of his character.
The cattle hereabouts were numerous and extraordinarily large; and so were the hogs, which they fattened upon maize. Maize, or Indian corn, was the only grain to which the climate was favourable; for wheat was inclined to the blight, barley grew dry in the ear before maturity – so that ale was a rare delicacy in America – and oats yielded more straw than grain. But Maize throve exceedingly and was the staple for both man and beast.
These Americans were so little gregarious that a rural township never consisted, as in Canada or anywhere in Europe, of a social collection of houses, inns, and places of religion surrounded by the fields and orchards of the inhabitants: we seldom saw more than a dozen houses together and the rest were here, there, and everywhere. It was as if each family wished to assert its independence of neighbours and form a village consisting of its own house and barns. When a son married, he would seldom be content, I was told, if he could not remove with his wife to a distance of two hundred miles away or more, and clear new land with his own axe.
I must say that America was certainly no Lubberland, or Land of Cockaigne, where the streets are paved with half-peck loaves, the houses roofed with pancakes, and where the fowls fly about ready roasted, with knife and fork plunged in their backs, crying, ‘Sweet, sweet, come eat me!’ It was the land of hard work and steady habits.
The women were brisk and handsome and kept their youthful looks some years longer than ours at home, though their hair turned grey sooner. For some reason, the climate did not appear to encourage wrinkles, and old men and women had a ruddy, smooth look which would contrast very cheerfully with the crumpled parchment faces of our own parents and grandparents. Their teeth, however, were very bad and their breaths sour, which some attributed to their hasty manner of eating and to immoderate fondness for molasses – which they consumed at every meal, even with greasy pork. Another cause may have been the great severity of the winter which kept them short, for months together, of green vegetables and salads and also encouraged them to profuse tippling of spirits. New England speech seemed to proceed rather through the nose than the mouth, yet was not unpleasing in effect, if the person discoursing was one of sensibility; and was so clearly articulated that, where a number of people were talking together in a crowd, an American voice, though not raised, could be distinctly heard cutting through the confused babble of the rest, with hardly a syllable lost.
New Englanders were, then as now, generally esteemed the most inquisitive people in the world. They greatly lacked for entertainment in the country and made up for this with gossip and with minding the business of other people. No stranger who arrived, however greatly fatigued, at an inn but was pestered by the company and by each newcomer who dropped in, to reveal his name, destination, origin, family condition, trade, intentions, and political colour. This provided good sport, for the stranger was always suspected of misleading his interrogators, who would try to trick him into contradictions. If he proved sulky, hospitability would dry up, and if he asked questions in return he would get more grins than answers. It can be conceived, then, what interest the passage of our army excited, especially when it was learned that among our officers were no fewer than six members of Parliament and a number of peers. Lieutenant M’Neil of our regiment was annoyed at the giggles and ironical curtsies of a row of very handsome young women who came out to see us at Worcester; and when a small queer great-grandmother in a tall hat, standing a little beyond them, raised her hands to Heaven and stared at us with astonishment, he turned to her tartly: ‘So, Mother Goose,’ he said, ‘must you too come wandering out to see the lions?’ She replied archly: ‘Lions, lions! I declare now I had mistook you for lambs.’
We were sorry for young Lieutenant Lord Napier. He was much troubled by the curiosity of the women at the house where he was lodged, who imagined that a Lord must be something more than man and kept peeping in at doors and windows, in the hope of seeing a creature with angel’s wings or a devil’s hoof and tail, or I know not what else. At last four of them, pushing boldly into the room inquired: ‘We hear you have got a Lord among you. Pray now, which may he be?’ Then they looked sternly at Lieutenant Kemmis, as if to say: ‘Dare to deceive us and it will be the worse for you.’
Unfortunately for Lord Napier, he was fresh from a tumble in the mud, and had not yet got his clothes sufficient
ly dried to allow the dirt to be brushed off; one side of his face was bemired, too. But Lieutenant Kemmis, knowing that there would be no peace until these women were satisfied, pointed to his Lordship and cried out in the resonant tones of a herald-at-arms: ‘Ladies, there you behold the form and person of the Right Honourable Francis Napier, of His Majesty’s Thirty-first Regiment of Foot, Baron of Merchiston in the Kingdom of Scotland, Baronet of Nova Scotia, Hereditary Lord Almoner to the Akhoond of Swat, Grand Squire of Gotham, Lord of a hundred inferior lordships in the Land of Cockaigne, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Liliburlero, and much besides which I have forgot. Gaze on him, ladies, for you will never look upon his like again.’ They gazed very attentively at his Lordship, who blushed beneath his mud. At length one of them exclaimed: ‘Well, if that be a Lord, I never desire to see any other Lord than the Lord Jehovah.’ Nevertheless, a number of other women came in to see the show, for which privilege they had paid entrance-money to the landlord.
The last stage of our march was from Weston to Prospect Hill, near Cambridge, which lies six miles from Boston. Exceedingly heavy rain fell, but our people bore up very well and sang choruses as we approached the end of our travels, to proclaim that our spirit was undaunted. The most sanguine among us did not imagine that we would have less than two or three weeks of waiting before the transports appeared which would take us home to Britain; but it was argued that the cost of keeping so many men in fuel and provisions would prompt the people of Massachusetts, whose Court had passed resolutions for procuring suitable accommodation for our army, to be rid of us as speedily as possible – or so soon at least as we were no longer able to pay for our subsistence in coin.
Meanwhile we determined to make the best of our lot, which was, to be short, deplorable. We were put that evening, drenched to the skin, into the temporary barracks that had been erected for the shelter of the revolutionary troops during the siege of Boston. These had since been dismantled and allowed to fall into utter decay. In a number of cases thirty or forty persons, men, women, and children, were indiscriminately crowded together in one small, miserable open hut. Our provisions and fuel were on short allowance, our bedding was a scanty amount of straw, and we had no furniture of any sort but our own camp-kettles, and these General Burgoyne had with difficulty saved for us from the enemy, who wished to seize them as legitimate plunder.
How mercifully is the future hidden from the eyes of man! Had it been revealed to us by an Angel that our army, by Congress’s profligate repudiation of the Convention, was to remain in captivity for five miserable years, I believe the great mass of us would have run mad, falling upon our guards with our bare hands in a desperate attempt to wrest back our freedom.
In what manner I myself, after having been closely confined for a twelve-month, succeeded in escaping to the British Army in New York, and there took up arms once more against the Americans; and travelled, before the war was over, through another eight states of the American Union, Northern, Southern, and Middle, is a separate story from this. For I then changed my title from ‘Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth’ to ‘Sergeant Lamb of The Twenty-third, or Royal Welch Fusiliers’. Yet into that account Kate Harlowe must again enter (whom now I thought altogether lost to me) and several comrades of The Ninth, who also escaped, and Mrs Jane Crumer, and even that unaccountable personage, the mock-priest John Martin. But, for the present, I have told enough. I have, it will be observed, endeavoured to demark the right line of duty and behaviour which the soldier in the ranks ought invariably to pursue. I may have lost my aim, but even in its failure I trust that my motive will be thought laudable.
PENGUIN CLASSICS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario,
Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,
New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published by Methuen & Co. 1940
Published in Penguin Classics 2012
Copyright © Robert Graves, 1940
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-197097-4
1 Scilicet: Samuel Adams.
Robert Graves, Sergeant Lamb's America
(Series: # )
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends