‘My usual boiled fowl and oyster-sauce, with a pint of claret: and I do not mind how soon I have it. The sight of your hunger has excited mine.’
They moved on to the already well-filled supper-room, and for some time they ate seriously, with few more words than ‘How is your bird?’ ‘Capital, I thank you: and your pudding?’ ‘A fine honest piece of work,’ said Stephen, taking a little wishbone from his mouth. The recipe for Black’s steak and kidney pudding called for larks. ‘And this, for example, is the true skylark, Alauda arvensis, not one of the miserable sparrows you find in certain establishments.’
When the cutting-edge of appetite was somewhat blunted, they talked of their most recent captures – moths, butterflies, beetles. Then pudding in the ordinary sense made its appearance: apple tart for Stephen, sillabub for Sir Joseph.
‘I had a most gratifying journey,’ said Stephen, lashing on the cream. ‘Apart from the fact that a vessel which bounds, fairly bounds, over the main fills all aboard with joy, I grudged every hour away from London. There are many things I must tell you, and I have real hopes of making your flesh creep.’
‘Have you, though?’ said Blame, looking at him with a considering eye. ‘Perhaps coffee at my house might be better.’
They walked up a foggy St James’s Street and so to Shepherd’s Market and the familiar book-lined room far from the sound of traffic.
‘Have you ever met an amateur intelligence-agent?’ asked Stephen, when they were installed with their coffee and petits fours.
‘You would not mean Diego Diaz, would you?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Stephen, somewhat dashed.
‘Oh, one sees him everywhere – Almack’s, White’s, the big dinners. He is very well with most of the women who entertain in London, and he knows a great many people. The embassy people fight rather shy of him, however, in spite of his grand connexions.’
‘Yes, he is a little conspicuous. I will come back to him presently, if you will allow me. For the moment, may I talk about some Chileans I met in France?’
‘Please do.’
‘Met again, I should have said, since I was introduced to them first in Peru. They are warranted by O’Higgins, Mendoza, and Guzman; and with their friends they are interested in a renewal of our alliance, our understanding, with the Peruvians, but this time an alliance directed at Chilean independence. I have drawn up an account of our conversations, of their needs and their hopes, of their resources and of their undertaking with regard to slavery: and since, unlike the Peruvian enterprise, theirs depends to a considerable degree on a naval or quasi-naval presence, I think it proper to submit these papers to you in the first place, together with their credentials and letters from our friends in those parts, in the hope that you will talk the matter over.’
‘I shall most certainly do so,’ said Blame, receiving the
packet; and looking intently at Stephen he added, ‘How eager, how deeply committed do you think they are, compared with the Peruvians?’
‘On the basis of my contacts with them in America and of my long, long interviews during the last week, I should say that our prospects of success are greater by perhaps a
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third. And as you will find when you read my pages they rely much more on attack and defence by sea – on the mobility conferred by even a froward ocean, as compared with the mountains and intolerable deserts of the lower western part
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of South America.’
‘I look forward with the utmost eagerness to reading your account many of the people here who supported us last time will be enchanted’
‘Dear Joseph, how kind of you to say so You will put it into the proper Whitehall prose, scabrous, flat-footed, with
much use of the passive, will you not? I may have allowed something approaching enthusiasm to creep in.’
Sir Joseph poured them out some remarkably smooth full-bodied old brown brandy and when each had thoughtfully
drunk about half his glass he said, ‘There are only two things to be said against your otherwise Heaven-sent coca-leaves:
they do diminish one’s acuity of taste, and they do prevent ~:4~ one from sleeping.
Happily I have taken none today, though
I shall do so tonight in order to digest your papers – that was a mere parenthesis, and I go on But how very much their advantages outweigh them – the vivid intensity of reflection, the vividness of life itself, the reduction of corn monplace distresses, cares and even griefs to their proper
status And I have recently found that they enhance one’s appreciation of music, particularly of difficult music, to a very high degree’
They talked for a while of their sources of supply, of the difference between the leaves from various regions, possibly
from different sub-species of the same shrub, and each showed the other the contents of his pouch
Then Stephen said, ‘May I turn to my particular friend Jack Aubrey?’
‘Do, by all means,’ said Sir Joseph.
‘Like most officers of his rank and seniority he is of course deeply concerned about the likelihood of his being yellowed at a future flag-promotion. Can you properly tell me anything about his prospects?’
Blame poured more brandy, and said, ‘Yes, I can. I wish I could say that they were better than they are; and I am not at all sure that he would not be well advised to retire as a post-captain rather than risk the humiliation of being passed over. He is of course a brilliant sailor, as most people would admit. But to some degree he is his own most active and efficient enemy, as I have often told you, Stephen, begging you to keep him at sea or down in the country. He so often addresses the House, speaking with authority as a successful officer; but very rarely does he say anything in favour of the ministry. And his vote is by no means sure. As an aside I will also say, with regard to his present difficulties in the law-courts, that the legal people at the Admiralty might take a different view of defending him were he more reliable:
were he a cast-iron, heart-of-oak supporter of Government.’
‘I cannot but admit that when he gets up and speaks of corruption in the dockyards and improper material being used on men-of-war he is sometimes regrettably intemperate.’
‘What a gift you have for understatement, Stephen. And then again he makes powerful enemies outside the Commons. Lord Stranraer’s recent dispatches have done your friend
– and mine too, if I may say so – the utmost harm. Neglect of duty: leaving manoeuvres in order to chase a prize … A prize that is likely to cost him dear, splendid though I hear it was – fairly ballasted with gold-dust in little leather bags.’
‘You know how this ill-will arose, sure?’
‘I know that the Admiral, a most zealous incloser of land, advised his heir and nephew, Captain Griffiths, to inclose a common bordering on his estate and Aubrey’s; that at the last stage Aubrey opposed the petition before the committee; and that it was thrown out.
He is also said to have set the
country-people against Griffiths, whose stacks have been burnt, his game and deer massacred and himself and his servants pelted in the village, so that his life there is no longer worth living. Stranraer sees this unnatural insubordination of the villagers in exactly the same light as naval mutiny, and of course abhors it. Stranraer’s word against a serving officer carries great weight with Government.’
‘I know little about the gentleman.’
‘He is very able, of that there is no doubt, and a great political economist. To be sure he has made no particular name in the Navy, but that may well have been from lack of opportunity. In his youth he was unusually good-looking and he made a brilliant marriage –
a widowed lady with very large estates in her own right – far, far more important than his. It is true that they go to a son by her first marriage or rather to his guardian, since he is an idiot, but while she lives he controls at least nine seats in the Commons, quite apart from the considerable number he guides by his personal influence. He speaks, and speaks very well, for the moneyed landed interest and his support is very much valued by the Ministry – his support in the Commons, I mean, since in the Lords the government majority is so great that his vote there hardly signifies.’
‘Has he the reputation of an honest man? A scrupulous man?’
‘He is generally much respected: I know nothing against him: but I should not put my hand in the fire for any man as powerful as he has been these many years, so concerned with politics, and so passionate in his religion of inclosures, the country’s one salvation.’