The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campell Part 6

Several ladies of quality who had known his perfections, coveted to make the boy one of their domestics, as a page, or a playfellow to their children; for though he could not speak, he had such a vivacity in all his actions, such a sprightliness of behaviour, and such a merriment accompanying all his gestures, that he afforded more entertainment than the prettiest and wittiest little prattlers at those years are wont to do. Mr. Campbell had certainly accepted of some of these fortunate offers for his little cousin, which were many of them likely to prove very advantageous, if it had not been put in his head by some friends, particularly myself, that if he had a mind to dispose of the boy in that manner, the best way he could take would be to present him to the late Earl of Argyle, who for his namesake and for his father's sake, as well as the qualifications and endowments of the boy, would more naturally, according to all probability, take a greater pleasure and delight in him, and consequently provide better for him, and with a more lasting care, than any other person of quality that had a sudden liking to him, which might change, and took him as a stranger out of a bare curiosity.

Mr. Campbell was by these reasons overruled in the disposal of his little dumb prophetical cousin, as he called him, and resolved that an offer should be made of him to the present ill.u.s.trious Duke of Argyle's most n.o.ble father. But it so unfortunately happened, that the earl making very much a longer stay at London than was expected, Mr.

Campbell, the uncle, sent our young Duncan Campbell, his nephew, handsomely accoutred, and with a handsome sum of money in his pocket, by sea, with Captain Meek of Kircaldie, to London, with letters of recommendation to the earl's favour, and just a few days before young Duncan arrived in London, the earl was set out on his journey to his seat in Scotland.

I had now left him for near three years, not having seen him since about a year after his mother's death; and then coming to London, I had by mere accident an appointment to meet some Scotch gentlemen at the Buffalo at Charing-cross. There happened at that time to be a great concourse of Scotch n.o.bility there at an entertainment; and one of the ladies and gentlemen pa.s.sing by and seeing one of my friends, desired him to come in, and told him both he and his companion should be very welcome to partake of the diversion. The lady told him they had got a lovely youth, a Scotch miracle, among them, that would give us exquisite delight, and write down to us all the occurrences of our future lives, and tell us our names upon our first appearance. The moment I heard of it, Duncan Campbell came into my head; but as it is a thing not rare to be met with in Scotland for second sighted persons to tell such things, and as the Earl of Argyle was in the north, I thought little Duncan had been under his protection and with him, and did not dream of meeting with him there; and accordingly told my friend, before I went in, that I believed I knew a lad in Scotland would exceed this in foresight, let him be as dexterous in his art as he would.

As soon as I entered the room, I was surprised to find myself encompa.s.sed and surrounded by a circle of the most beautiful females that ever my eyes beheld. In the centre of this angelic tribe was seated a heavenly youth, with the most winning comeliness of aspect that ever pleased the sight of any beholder of either s.e.x; his face was divinely fair, and tinged only with such a sprightly blush as a painter would use to colour the picture of health with, and the complexion was varnished over by a blooming like that of flouris.h.i.+ng fruit, which had not yet felt the first nippings of an unkind and an uncivil air; with this beauty was joined such a smiling draught of all the features as is the result of pleasantry and good humour. His eyes were large, full of l.u.s.tre, majestic, well set, and the soul shone so in them, as told the spectators plainly how great was the inward vivacity of his genius; the hair of his head was thick, and reclined far below his shoulders; it was of a fine silver colour, and hung down in ringlets like the curling tendrils of a copious vine. He was by the women entertained, according to the claim which so many perfections joining in a youth just ripening into manhood might lay to the benevolent dispositions of the tender s.e.x.

One was holding the basin of water, another was.h.i.+ng a hand, a third with a towel drying his face, which another fair had greedily s.n.a.t.c.hed the pleasure of was.h.i.+ng before, while a fourth was disposing into order his silver hairs with an ivory comb, in a hand as white, and which a monarch might have been proud to have had so employed in adjusting the crown upon his head; a fifth was setting into order his cravat; a sixth stole a kiss, and blushed at the innocent pleasure, and mistook her own thoughts as if she kissed the angel and not the man; and they all rather seemed to adore than to love him, as if they had taken him not for a person that enjoyed the frequent gift of the second-sight, but as if he had been some little prophet peculiarly inspired; and while they all thus admired and wondered, they all consulted him as an oracle. The surprise of seeing a young man so happy amidst the general concurring favours of the fair, made me be for awhile lost in a kind of delightful amazement, and the consideration of what bliss he was possessed made me scarce believe my own eyes, when they told me it was Duncan Campbell, who I had left an unhappy orphan at Edinburgh. But so it was, though he was much altered in stature, being now shot up pretty fast in his growth since I had seen him, and having gained a kind of a fixed comportment, such as we may daily observe in those who are taking leave of their minority, and stepping into a stage of maturer life.

The first remarkable thing I knew him do in London, being in this splendid company, where there were so many undoubted witnesses of quality too, that had ocular proof of his predictions at that public tavern: I choose to record it here in the first place according to its due order. It was in the year 1698.

Among this angelical cla.s.s of beauties were Dr. W--lw--d's lady and daughter. Upon earth there was not sure a more beautiful creature than the daughter was; she was the leading light of all the sparkling tribe; and Otway's character suits her exactly; for she was among ten thousand eminently fair. One would imagine prosperous and lucky fortune was written upon her face, and that nothing unhappy could be read in so fair a book; and it was therefore the unanimous consent of all, that by way of good omen to the rest, his predictions should begin to be opened luckily that day, and that therefore he should first of all be consulted about her.

Accordingly, the mother, to be satisfied of his talent before she proceeded to any other questions, asked him in writing if he knew the young lady, her name, and who she was. After a little ruminating and pondering upon the matter, and taking an exact view of the beauty, he wrote down her name, told Mrs. W--lw--d she was her daughter, and that her father was a doctor. Convinced by his so readily telling the name and quality of persons he had never seen in his lifetime, that fame had not given a false character of his capacity, she proceeded in her questions as to her future fortune. He gazed afresh at her very eagerly for some time, and his countenance during that time of viewing her seemed to be ruffled with abundance of disturbance and perplexity. We all imagined that the youth was a little touched at the heart himself with what he saw, and that instead of telling hers, he had met in her bright eyes with his own destiny, the destiny of being for ever made a slave and a captive to so many powerful and almost irresistible charms.

At length, after having a long debate within himself, which we thought proceeded from the strugglings of love and pa.s.sion, he fetching a great sigh, which still convinced us more, took the pen and wrote to Mrs.

W--lw--d, that he begged to be excused, and that his pen might remain as dumb and silent as his tongue on that affair. By this answer we concluded, one and all, that our former conjectures were true, and we joined in pressing him the more earnestly to deliver his real and sincere opinion concerning the accidents upon which the future fortunes of her life were to turn and depend. He showed many mighty reluctances in the doing it; and I have often since considered him in the same anguish as the late great Dr. Ratcliff, who was endeavouring by study to save a certain fair one, whom he loved with a vehemence of temper, and who was, as his reason told him, got far away beyond the reach of the art of physic to recover. At last he wrote in plain terms that his backwardness and unwillingness to tell it, arose from his wishes that her fortune would be better than his certain foreknowledge of it told him it would be, and begged that we would rest satisfied with that general answer, since it was in so particular a case, where he himself was a well-wisher in vain, to the lady about whom he was consulted. The young lady herself thinking that if she knew any disasters that were to befall her she might, by knowing the nature of them beforehand, and the time when they were likely to happen, be able, by timely prudence and forecast, to avert those evils, with many beseechings urged him to reveal the fatal secret. After many struggles to avoid it, and as many instances made to him both by mother and daughter for the discovery of his prescience in that point, he complied with very great difficulty; and blotting the paper with tears that trickled fast from his eyes, he gave her the lamentable scroll, containing the words that follow; viz., I wish it had not fallen to my lot to tell this lady, whom everybody that but once looks at her must admire, though they must not have leave to love, that she is not much longer to be possessor of that lovely face, which gains her such a number of adorers. The smallpox will too soon turn a ravisher, and rifle all those sweets and charms that might be able to vanquish a king and to subdue a conqueror of mighty battles.

Her reign is doomed, alas! to be as short as it is now great and universal; I believe she has internal beauties of the mind, not the least inferior to those external excellences of the body; and she might, perhaps, by the power of her mind alone, be absolute queen of the affections of men, if the smallpox threatened not too surely to be her farther enemy, and, not contented to destroy the face, was not perversely bent to destroy the whole woman. But I want words to express my sorrow. I would not tell it if you did not extort the baneful secret from my bosom. This fair creature, whose beauty would make one wish her immortal, will, by the cruel means of the smallpox, give us too sudden a proof of her mortality. But neither the mother nor herself ought too much to repine at this, seeing it appears to be the decree of Providence, which is always to be interpreted as meant for our good, and seeing it may be the means of translating her the sooner only to her kindred angels, whose beauty she so much resembles here on earth, and to be among the lowest cla.s.s of whom, is better than being the greatest beauty of the world here below, and wearing an imperial crown. While I comfort you, I cannot help the force of nature, which makes me grieve myself; and I only give you, because you compel me to it, so particular and so exact an answer to so particular and so exacting a question.

The mother, who took the paper, was prudent enough to conceal from the daughter what he said; but nature would force its way, and bubbled from her eyes; and the daughter perceiving that, pressed hard to see it, and wept at the consideration that hard fate, though she knew not particularly what way, was to befall her. Never surely was anything so beautiful in tears, and I obtained of the mother to see the writing. At last, in general terms, to free her from a suspense of mind, it was told her that some trouble should happen to her that should diminish her beauty. She had courage enough to hear that misfortune with disdain, and crying, If that be all, I am armed, I don't place much pride in that which I know age must shortly after destroy, if trouble did not do it before; and she dried up her tears; and, if what Mr. Bruyere says, be true, viz., that the last thing a celebrated woman thinks of when she dies, is the loss of her beauty, she showed an admirable pattern of female philosophy, in bearing such a cruel prediction with such unspeakable magnanimity, as exceeded even the patience of stern stoicism, considering she was a woman, to whom beauty is more dear than life.

If any evil, that is impending over people's heads, could be evaded by foreknowledge, or eluded by art, she had the fairest opportunity of having this prediction annulled, which would have been more to the satisfaction of the predictor than knowing it verified, than ever any woman had. Her mother was specifically told that the fatal distemper should be the smallpox; her father was, and is still, a very eminent physician; and distempers of that kind, especially, are much more easily prevented by care, than cured by art, and by art more easily set aside, when there is a timely warning given to a physician to prepare the body against the danger of the poison, than when the distemper has once catched hold of a body at unawares, when it is unpurged of any gross humours that may accompany it. But neither the foreknowledge and caution of the mother, nor the skill and wisdom of the great physician her father, were sufficient to ward off the approaching harm, that was written in the books of fate. Not many suns had finished their yearly courses, before she was forced to submit to the inevitable stroke of death, after the infectious and malicious malady had first ravished her beauty, rioted in all her sweets, and made an odious deformed spectacle of the charmer of mankind. The death of the daughter worked hard upon the mother's bowels, and dragged her speedily after her, with a broken heart to the grave.

This lady, whose fortune so great and so distinguished an a.s.sembly had chosen to hear as a happy forerunner and lucky omen of all their own, which were to be asked afterwards in their turns, proving so contrary to their expectations, already unfortunate in the prediction, and having been in tears about the matter, disheartened all the rest of the beauties from consulting him farther that day. The person who kept the tavern, by name, Mrs. Irwin, alleged that as some people were very fortunate, and others unfortunate upon the same day, so one lady might be before told a mishap one minute, and another lady all the prosperity in nature the very next minute following, and therefore that what the unfortunate lady had heard was not to be taken as ominous, or as what could malignantly influence the day, neither ought it to be the least hinderance to any who had the curiosity of being let into the secrets of time beforehand. However, whether the ladies were convinced or no; if she prevailed over their belief in that point, she could not prevail over their humour, which, though they might not believe the former prediction ominous to themselves, were naturally awed for fear of the like, peradventure, for a time, and so it was agreed, _nemine contradicente_, as a witty lady wrote it down, That no more pet.i.tions should for that day be presented by any of that company to his dumb, yet oracular, majesty. Mrs. Irwin, however, would have her way; said she did not presume to such honour as to call herself of that company, and that therefore she might consult him without breaking through the votes of the a.s.sembly. Many endeavoured to dissuade her, but as she was pa.s.sionately fond of knowing future events; and had a mighty itch to be very inquisitive with the oracle about what might happen, not only to herself, but her posterity; it was agreed that he should have the liberty of satisfying her curiosity, since she presumed her fortune was sure to be so good, and was so forward and eager for the knowledge of it. But, alas! such is too often the fantastical impulse of nature unluckily depraved, that it carries us often into wishes of knowing, what when known we would be glad to unknow again, and then our memory will not let us be untaught.

Mrs. Irwin was at that time in a pretty commodious way of business, everything in plenty round about her, and lived more like a person of distinction, that kept such a cellar of wine, open house, and a free table, than like one who kept a tavern. She brought in her pretty children, that were then almost babies, the youngest having not long been out of the nurse's arms, or trusted to the use of its own legs.

These children she loved as a mother should love children; they were the delight of her eyes all day, and the dream of her imagination all night.

All the pa.s.sions of her soul were confined to them; she was never pleased but when they were so, and always angry if they were crossed; her whole pride was centered in them, and they were clothed and went attended more like the infants of a princess, than of a vintner's relict. The fortune of these was what she had near at heart, and of which she was so eager of being immediately apprised. Her impatience was proportionable to the love she had for them, and which made her wish to foreknow all the happiness that was like to attend them. She sat cheerfully down, presented one to him, and smiling, wrote the question in general terms, viz., is this boy to be happy or unhappy. A melancholy look once more spread itself all over the face of the predictor, when he read the too inquisitive words, and he seemed mightily to regret being asked a question, to which he was by his talent of foreseeing compelled to give so unwelcome an answer. The colour of the poor woman flushed and vanished alternately, and very quick, and she looked not quite like the picture of despair, but a disconsolate woman, with little hopes on one hand, and great doubts and dismal fears on the other. She professed she read great evil in the troubles of his face, thanked him for his good nature, told him that they all knew that though he could foretell he could not alter the acts and decretals of fate, and therefore desired him to tell her the worst; for that the misfortunes, were they never so great, would be less dreadful to her than remaining in the state of fear and suspension. He at last wrote down to her that great and unexpected and even unavoidable accidents would involve the whole family in new calamities, that the son she asked him about would have the bitterest task of hards.h.i.+p to go through withal, while he lived, and that to finish all more unhappily, he would be basely and maliciously brought to an untimely end, by some mortal enemy or other, but that she should not trouble herself so much on that head, she would never see it, for it would happen some years after she was departed from the world. This melancholy account closed up the book of predictions for that day, and put a sad stop to all the projected mirth and curiosity. Now I must tell the reader how and when the event answered the prediction. And in a few words, it was thus; poor Mrs. Irwin, by strange accidents, decayed in the world, and dying poor, her sons were forced to be put out apprentices to small trades, and the son, whom the above-mentioned prediction concerned, was, for stealing one cheese from a man in the Haymarket, severely prosecuted at the Old Bailey, and on Wednesday, the 23rd of December, 1713, hanged at Tyburn, with several other criminals.

The two foregoing pa.s.sages are of so tragical a nature, that it is time I should relieve the minds of my readers with some histories of ladies who consulted him with more success and advantage, to whom his predictions were very entertaining, when they so came to pa.s.s in their favour, the relation whereof will consequently be agreeable to all readers who have within them a mixture of happy curiosity and good nature.

Two ladies, who were the most remarkable beauties in London, and most courted, turned at the same time their thoughts to matrimony; and being satiated, I may say wearied, with the pleasure of having continually after them a great number and variety of adorers, resolved each, about the same time, to make a choice of their several men, to whom they thought they could give most happiness, and from whom they might receive most. Their names, for they are both persons of distinction, shall be Christallina and Urbana. Christallina was a virgin, and Urbana a young widow. Christallina engrossed the eyes, the hearts, and the sighs of the whole court; and wherever she appeared, put any court lady out of her place, that had one before in the heart of any youth; and was the most celebrated toast among the _beau monde_. Urbana's beauty made as terrible havock in the city; all the citizens' daughters that had many admirers, and were in fair hopes of having husbands when they pleased themselves, as soon as Urbana had lost her old husband, found that they every day lost their lovers; and it was a general fear among the prettiest maids, that they should remain maids still, as long as Urbana remained a widow. She was the monopolizer of city affection, and made many girls, that had large stocks of suitors, bankrupts in the trade of courts.h.i.+p, and broke some of their hearts, when her charms broke off their amours. Well, but the day was near at hand when both the belles of the court and the city damsels were to be freed from the ravages which these two tyrants, triumphant in beauty and insolent in charms, made among the harvest of love. Each had seen her proper man, to whom the enjoyment of their person was to be dedicated for life. But it being an affair of so lasting importance, each had a mind to be let into the knowledge of the consequences of such a choice, as far as possible, before they stepped into the irrevocable state of matrimony. Both of them happened to take it into their heads, that the best way to be entirely satisfied in their curiosity, was to have recourse to the great predictor of future occurrences, Mr. Duncan Campbell, whose fame was at that time spread pretty largely about the town. Christallina and Urbana were not acquainted with each other, only by the report which fame had made of beauty. They came to Mr. Campbell's on the same day, and both with the same resolution of keeping themselves concealed and under masks, that none of the company of consulters, who happened to be there, might know who they were. It happened that on that very day, just when they came, Mr. Campbell's rooms were more than ordinarily crowded with curious clients of the fair s.e.x, so that he was obliged to desire these two ladies, who expressed so much precaution against, and fear of having their persons discovered, to be contented with only one room between them, and with much ado they complied with the request, and condescended to sit together _incog._ Distant compliments of gesture pa.s.sed between them, the dress and comportment of each making them appear to be persons of figure and breeding, and after three or four modish courtesies, down they sat, without so much as once opening their lips, or intending so to do. The silence between them was very formal and profound for near half an hour, and nothing was to be heard but the snapping of fans, which they both did very tunably, and with great harmony, and played as it were in concert.

At last, one of the civil, well-bred mutes, happening to sneeze, the other very gracefully bowed, and before she was well aware, out popped the words, Bless you, madam. The fair sneezer returned the bow, with an--I thank you, madam. They found they did not know one another's voices, and they began to talk very merrily together, with pretty great confidence, and they taking a mutual liking from conversation, so much familiarity grew thereupon instantly between them, that they began not only to unmask, but to unbosom themselves to one another, and confess alternately all their secrets. Christallina owned who she was, and told Urbana the beau and courtier that had her heart. Urbana as frankly declared that she was a widow, that she would not become the lady's rival, that she had pitched upon a second husband, an alderman of the city. Just by that time they had had their chat out, and wished one another the pleasure of a successful prediction, it came to Christallina's turn to visit the dumb gentleman, and receive from his pen oracular answers to all the questions she had to propose. Well, he accordingly satisfied her in every point she asked him about; but while she was about this, one of Mr. Campbell's family going with Urbana to divert her a little, the widow rallied at the virgin as a fool, to imagine that she should ever make a conquest of the brightest spark about the court, and then let fly some random bolts of malice to wound her reputation for chast.i.ty. Now it became the widow's turn to go and consult; and the same person of Mr. Campbell's family in the mean time entertained Christallina. The maid was not behindhand with the widow; she rallied against the widow, represented her as sometimes a coquette, sometimes a lady of pleasure, sometimes a jilt, and lifted up her hands in wonder and amazement that Urbana should imagine so rich a man as an alderman such a one, should fall to her lot. Thus Urbana swore and protested that Christallina could never arrive at the honour of being the wife to the courtly Secretarius, let Mr. Campbell flatter her as he would; and Christallina vowed that Campbell must be a downright wizard if he foretold that such a one as Urbana would get Alderman Stiffrump as a husband, provided a thing so improbable should come to pa.s.s.

However, it seems, Duncan had told them their own names and the names of their suitors, and told them farther, how soon they were both to be married, and that too directly to their heart's content, as they said rejoicingly to themselves, and made their mutual gratulations.

They went away each satisfied that she should have her own lover, but Christallina laughed at Mr. Campbell for a.s.signing the alderman to Urbana; and Urbana laughed at him for promising the courtier to the arms of Christallina.

This a pretty good figure of the tempers of two reigning toasts with regard to one another.

First, their curiosity made them, from resolving to be concealed, discover one another wilfully; from utter strangers grow as familiar as old friends in a moment, swear one another to secrecy, and exchange the sentiments of their hearts together; and, from being friends, become envious of each other's enjoying a similitude of happiness; the compliments made on either side face to face, were, upon the turning of the back, turned into reflections, detraction, and ridicule; each was a self-lover and admirer of her own beauty and merit, and a despiser of the other's.

However, Duncan Campbell, proved at last to be in the right; Urbana was wrong in her opinion of Christallina's want of power over Secretarius, and Christallina was as much out in her opinion that Urbana would miss in her aim of obtaining Stiffrump; for they both proved in the right of what they thought with regard to their own dear single persons, and were made happy according to their expectations, just at the time foretold by Mr. Campbell.

Christallina's ill wishes did not hinder Urbana from being mistress of Alderman Stiffrump's person and stock, nor did Urbana's hinder Christallina from showing herself a s.h.i.+ning bride at the Ring, in Secretarius's gilded chariot, drawn by six prancers of the proud Belgian kind, with her half dozen of liveries with favours in their hats, waiting her return at the gate of Hyde Park.

Both loved and both envied, but both allowed of Mr. Campbell's foreknowledge.

Having told you two very sorrowful pa.s.sages, and one tolerably successful and entertaining; I shall now relate to you another of my own knowledge, that is mixed up with the grievous and the pleasant, and chequered, as it were, with the shade and the suns.h.i.+ne of fortune.

Though there are vicissitudes in every stage of life under the sun, and not one ever ran continually on with the same series of prosperity; yet those conditions which are the most liable to the signal alterations of fortune, are the conditions of merchants; for professed gamesters I reckon in a manner as men of no condition of life at all; but what comes under the statute of vagabonds.

It was, indeed, as the reader would guess, a worthy and a wealthy merchant, who was to run through these different circ.u.mstances of being.

He came and visited our Mr. Campbell in the year 1707, he found him amidst a crowd of consulters; and being very eager and solicitous to know his own fortune just at that critical juncture of time, he begged of him, if possible, to adjourn his other clients to the day following, and sacrifice that one wholly to his use; which as it was probably more important than all the others together, so he wrote down that he would render the time spent about it more advantageous to Mr. Campbell; and, by way of previous encouragement, threw him down ten guineas as a retaining fee.

Mr. Campbell, who held money in very little esteem, and valued it so much too little, that he has often had my reprehensions on that head, paused a little, and after looking earnestly in the gentleman's face, and reading there, as I suppose, in that little s.p.a.ce of time in general, according to the power of the second-sight, that what concerned him was highly momentous, wrote him this answer; That he would comply with his requests, adjourn his other clients to the day following, and set apart all the remnant of that, till night, for inspecting the future occurrences of which he had a mind to be made a master.

There is certainly a very keen appet.i.te in curiosity; it cannot stay for satisfaction, it is pressing for its necessary repast, and is without all patience: hunger and thirst are not appet.i.tes more vehement and more hard and difficult to be repressed than that of curiosity; nothing but the present now is able to allay it. A more expressive picture of this I never beheld than in the faces of some, and the murmurs and complaints of others, in that little inquisitive company, when the unwelcome note was given about signifying an adjournment for only twenty-four hours.

The colour of a young woman there came and went a hundred times, if possible, in the s.p.a.ce of two minutes; she blushed like a red rose this moment, and in the switch of an eyelash she was all over as pale as a white one: the suitor, whose name her heart had gone pit-a-pat for the s.p.a.ce of an hour to be informed of from the pen of a seer, was now deferred a whole day longer; she was once or twice within an ace of swooning away, but he comforted her in particular, by telling her, though he said it only by way of jest, that the day following would be a more lucky day to consult about husbands than the present that she came on. The answer was a kind of cordial to her hopes, and brought her a little better to herself.

Two others, I remember, sisters and old maids, that it seems were misers, women ordinarily dressed and in blue ap.r.o.ns, and yet, by relation, worth no less than two thousand pounds each, were in a peck of troubles about his going and leaving them unsatisfied. They came upon an inquiry after goods that were stolen, and they complained that by next morning at that time, the thief might be got far enough off, and creep into so remote a corner, that he would put it beyond the power of the devil and the art of conjuration to find him out and bring him back again. The disturbance and anxiety that was to be seen in their countenances was like that which is to be beheld in the face of a great losing gamester, when his all, his last great stake, lies upon the table, and is just sweeping off by another winning hand into his own hat.

The next was a widow who bounced, because, as she pretended, he would not tell her what was best to do with her sons, and what profession it would be most happy for them to be put to; but in reality all the cause of the widow's fuming and fretting, was not that she wanted to provide for her sons, but for herself; she wanted a second husband, and was not half so solicitous about being put in a way of educating those children she had already, as of knowing when she should be in a likelihood of getting more. This was certainly in her thoughts, or else she would never have flounced about in her weed, from one end of the room to the other, and all the while of her pa.s.sion, smile by fits upon the merchant, and leer upon a young pretty Irish fellow that was there. The young Irishman made use of a little eye-language; she grew appeased, went away in quite a good humour, scuttled too airily down stairs for a woman in her clothes, and the reason was certainly that she knew the matter before, which we took notice of presently after: the Irishman went precipitately after her down stairs without taking his leave.

But neither were the two misers for their gold, the virgin for a first husband, nor the widow for a second, half so eager as another married woman there was for the death of her spouse. She had put the question in so expecting a manner for a lucky answer, and with so much keen desire appearing plainly in her looks, that no big-bellied woman was ever more eager for devouring fruit; no young, hasty bridegroom, just married to a beauty, more impatient for night and enjoyment, than she was to know what she thought a more happy moment, the moment of her husband's last agonising gasp. As her expectation was the greatest, so was her disappointment, too, and consequently her disorder upon his going and leaving her unresolved. She was frantic, raging, and implacable; she was in such a fury at the delay of putting off her answer to the day following, that in her fury she acted as if she would have given herself an answer which of the two should die first, by choking herself upon the spot, with the indignation that swelled in her stomach and rose into her throat on that occasion. It may look like a romance to say it, but indeed they were forced to cut her lace, and then she threw out of the room with great pa.s.sion; but yet had so much of the enraged wife left, beyond the enraged woman, as to return instantly up stairs, and signify very calmly, she would be certain to be there next day, and beseeched earnestly that she might not meet with a second disappointment.

All this hurry and bustle created a stay a little too tedious for the merchant, who began to be impatient himself, especially when word was brought up that a fresh company was come in; but Mr. Campbell was denied to them; and to put a stop to any more interruptions, the merchant and the dumb gentleman agreed to slip into a coach, drive to a tavern in the city, and settle matters of futurity over a bottle of French claret.

The first thing done at the tavern, was Mr. Campbell's saluting him upon a piece of paper by his name, and drinking his health. The next paper held a discourse of condolence for a disaster that was past long since; namely, a great and considerable loss that happened to his family, in the dreadful conflagration of the city of London. In the third little dialogue which they had together, he told the merchant that losses and advantages were general topics, which a person unskilled in that art might venture to a.s.sign to any man of his profession; it being next to impossible that persons who traffic should not sometimes gain, and sometimes lose. But, said Mr. Duncan Campbell, I will sketch out particularly, and specify to you some future misfortunes with which you will unavoidably meet; it is in your stars, it is in destiny, that you should have some trials, and therefore when you are forewarned, take a prudent care to be forearmed with patience, and by longanimity, and meekly and resignedly enduring your lot, render it more easy, since impatience can't avert it, and will only render it more burdensome and heavy. He gave these words to the merchant; who pressed for his opinion that moment. By your leave, resuming the pen, said the dumb gentleman, in writing, we will have this bottle out first and tap a fresh one, that you may be warmed with courage enough to receive the first speculative onset of ill fortune, that I shall predict to you, with a good grace, and that may perhaps enable you to meet it when it comes to reduce itself into action, with a manful purpose and all becoming resolution.

The merchant agreed to the proposal, and put on an air of the careless and indifferent as well as he could, to signify that he had no need to raise up an artificial courage from the auxiliary forces of the grape.

But nature, when hard pressed, will break through all disguises, and not only notwithstanding the air of pleasantry he gave himself, which appeared forced and constrained, but in spite of two or three sparkling and enlivening b.u.mpers, a cloud of care would ever and anon gather and shoot heavily across his brow, though he laboured all he could to dispel it as quickly, and to keep fair weather in his countenance. Well, they had cracked the first bottle, and the second succeeded upon the table, and they called to blow a pipe together. This pipe Mr. Campbell found had a very ill effect; it is certainly a pensive kind of instrument, and fills a mind, anything so disposed, with disturbing thoughts, black fumes, and melancholy vapours, as certainly as it doth the mouth with smoke. It plainly took away even the little sparks of vivacity which the wine had given before; so he wrote for a truce of firing those sort of noxious guns any longer, and they laid down their arms by consent, and drank off the second bottle. A third immediately supplied its place, and at the first gla.s.s, the opening of the bottle, Mr. Campbell began to open to him his future case, in the following words: Sir, you have now some ventures at sea from such and such a place, to such a value. Don't be discomforted at the news which you certainly will have within three months, but it will be false at last, that they are by three different tempests made the prey of the great ocean, and enrich the bottom of the sea, the palace of Neptune. A worse storm than all these attends you at home, a wife who is, and will be more, the tempest of the house wherein she lives. The high and lofty winds of her vanity will blow down the pillars of your house and family; the high tide of her extravagance will roll on like a resistless torrent, and leave you at low water, and the ebb of all your fortunes. This is the highest and the most cutting disaster that is to befall you; your real s.h.i.+pwreck is not foreign but domestic; your bosom friend is to be your greatest foe, and even your powerful undoer for a time; mark what I say, and take courage, it shall be but for a time, provided you take courage; it will upon that condition be only a short and wholesome taste of adversity given to you, that you may relish returning prosperity with virtue, and with a greater return of thanks to Him that dispenses it at pleasure to mankind. Remember, courage and resignation is what I advise you to; use it, as becomes you, in your adversity, and believe that as I foretold that adversity, so I can foretell a prosperity will again be the consequence of those virtues; and the more you feel the one ought not to cast you down, but raise your hopes the more, that he who foretold you that so exactly, could likewise foretell you the other. The merchant was by this put into a great suspense of mind, but somewhat easier by the second prediction being annexed so kindly to the first fatal one. They crowned the night with a flask of Burgundy, and then parting, each went to their respective homes.

The reader may perchance wonder how I, who make no mention of my being there, as in truth I was not at the tavern, should be able to relate this as of my own knowledge; but if he pleases to have patience to the end of the story, he will have entire satisfaction in that point.

About half a year after, the merchant came again, told him that his prediction was too far verified, to his very dear cost, and that he was now utterly undone, and beyond any visible means of a future recovery, and doubting lest the other fortunate part of the prediction was only told him by way of encouragement, for groundless doubts and fears always attend a mind implunged in melancholy, besought him very earnestly to tell him candidly and sincerely if there was no real prospect of good, and rid him at once of the uneasiness of such a suspension of thought; But pray too, said he, with all the vehemence of repeated expostulation, satisfy me if there are any farther hopes on this side the grave?

To this Duncan Campbell made a short, but a very significant reply in writing. May the heavens preserve you from a threatening danger of life.

Take care only of yourself, great and mighty care; and if you outlive Friday next, you will yet be great and more fortunate than ever you was in all the height of your former most flouris.h.i.+ng s.p.a.ce of life. He coloured inordinately when Duncan Campbell said Friday, and conjured him to tell him as particularly as he could what he meant by Friday. He told him he could not particularise any farther, but that great danger threatened him that day; and that without extraordinary precaution it would prove fatal to him, even to death. He shook his head, and went away in a very sorrowful plight. Friday past, Sat.u.r.day came, and on that very Sat.u.r.day morning came likewise the joyful tidings, that what ventures of his were given over for lost at sea, were all come safe into the harbour. He came the moment he received those dispatches from his agent, to Mr. Duncan Campbell's apartment, embraced him tenderly, and saluted him with much gladness of heart, before a great roomful of ladies, where I happened to be present at that time; crying out in a loud voice, before he knew what he said, that Mr. Campbell had saved his life, that Friday was his birthday, and he had intended with a pistol to shoot himself that very day. The ladies thought him mad; and he, recovered from his ecstacy, said no more, but sat down, till Mr.

Campbell dismissed all his clients; and then we three went to the tavern together, where he told me the whole little history or narrative, just as is above related.

The fame which Mr. Duncan Campbell got by the foregoing, and several other predictions of the like kind, was become very large and extensive, and had spread itself into the remotest corners of this metropolis. The squares rung with it, it was whispered from one house to another through the more magnificent streets, where persons of quality and distinction reside; it catched every house in the city, like the news of stock from Exchange-alley; it run noisily through the lanes and little thoroughfares where the poor inhabit; it was the chat of the tea-table, and the babble of the streets; and the whole town, from the top to the bottom, was full of it. Whenever any reputation rises to a degree like this, let it be for what art or accomplishment, or on what account soever it will, malice, envy, and detraction, are sure to be the immediate pursuers of it with full mouth, and to hunt it down if possible, with full cry. Even the great Nostradamus, though favoured by kings and queens, which always without any other reason creates enemies, was not more pursued by envy and detraction for his predictions in Paris, and throughout France, than our Duncan Campbell was in London, and even throughout England. Various, different, and many were the objections raised to blot his character and extenuate his fame, that when one was confuted another might not be wanting to supply its place, and so to maintain a course and series of backbiting, according to the known maxim, Throw dirt, and if it does not stick, throw dirt continually, and some will stick.

Neither is there any wonder; for a man, that has got applauders of all sorts and conditions, must expect condemners and detractors of all sorts and conditions likewise. If a lady of high degree, for example, should say smiling, though really thinking absolutely what she says, for fear of being thought over-credulous: Well, I vow, some things Mr. Campbell does are surprising after all; they would be apt to incline one to a belief that he is a wonder of a man; for one would imagine the things he does impossible: why, then, a prude, with an a.s.sumed, supercilious air and a scornful _tihee_, would, in order to seem more wise than she was, reply; Laud, madam, it is more a wonder to me that you can be imposed upon so. I vow to Gad, madam, I would as soon consult an almanack maker, and pin my faith upon what he p.r.i.c.ks down; or believe, like my creed, in the cross which I make upon the hand of a gipsy. Lard, madam, I a.s.sure your la's.h.i.+p he knows no more than I do of you. I a.s.sure you so, and therefore believe me. He has it all by hearsay. If the lady that believed it, should reply, that if he had notice of every stranger by hearsay he must be a greater man than she suspected, and must keep more spies in pay than a prime minister; the prude's answer would be with a loud laugh, and giggling out these words; Lard, madam, I a.s.sure you nothing can be more easy; and so take it for granted. Because she was inclined to say so, and had the act of wisdom on her side, forsooth, that she appeared hard of belief, which some call hard to be put upon, and the other lady credulous, which some though believing upon good grounds are called, and so thought, foolish; the prude's answer would be thought sufficient and convincing.

Thus malice and folly, by dint of noise and impudence, and strong though empty a.s.sertions, often run down modesty and good sense. Among the common people it is the same, but only done in a different manner. For example, an ordinary person that had consulted, might say, as he walked along, there goes the dumb gentleman who writes down any name of a stranger at first sight. Steps up a blunt fellow, that takes stubbornness for sense, and says, That is a confounded lie; he is a cheat and an impostor, and you are one of his accomplices; he will tell me my name, I suppose, if you tell it him first: he is no more dumb than I am; he can speak and hear as well as us; I have been with those that say they have heard him; I wish I and two or three more had him in our stable, and I warrant you with our cartwhips we would lick some words out of his chaps, as dumb as you call him. I tell you it is all a lie, and all a bite. If the other desires to be convinced for himself by his own experience, the rougher rogue, who perhaps has stronger sinews than the other, answers, If you lie any farther I will knock you down; and so he is the vulgar wit, and the mouth of the rabble-rout, and thus the detraction spreads below with very good success, as it does above in another kind.

As there are two comical adventures in his life, which directly suit and correspond with the foregoing reflections, this seems the most proper place to insert them in. The first consists of a kind of mob-way of usage he met with from a fellow who got to be an officer in the army, but by the following behaviour will be found unworthy of the name and the commission.

In the year 1701, a lady of good quality came and addressed herself to him much after the following manner. She told him she had choice of lovers, but preferred one above the rest; but desired to know his name, and if she made him her choice what would be the subsequent fate of such a matrimony. Mr. Duncan Campbell very readily gave her down in writing this plain and honest reply; That of all her suitors she was most inclined to a captain, a distinguished officer, and a great beau, naming his name, and one that had a great many outward, engaging charms, sufficient to blind the eyes of any lady that was not thoroughly acquainted with his manner of living. He therefore a.s.sured her, and thought himself bound, being conjured so to do, having received his fee, though there was danger in such plain and open predictions, that he was a villain and a rogue in his heart, a profligate gamester, and that if she took him to her bed, she would only embrace her own ruin. The lady's woman, who was present, being in fee with the captain, resolving to give intelligence, for fear the officer, her so good friend, should be disappointed in the siege, slily shuffled the papers into her pocket, and made a present of them to the military spark. Fired with indignation at the contents, he vowed revenge; and in order to compa.s.s it, conspires with his female spy about the means. In fine, for fear of losing the lady, though he quarrelled with Duncan Campbell, a method was to be found out how to secure her by the very act of revenge. At last it was resolved to discover to her, that he had found out what she had been told by Mr. Campbell, but the way how he had been informed was to remain a secret. He did do so, and ended his discovery with these words:--I desire, madam, that if I prove him an impostor, you would not believe a word he says. The lady agreed to so fair a proposal. Then the captain swore that he himself would never eat a piece of bread more till he had made Mr. Campbell eat his words; nay, he insisted upon it that he would bring him to his tongue, and make him own by word of mouth, that what he had written before was false and calumnious. To which the lady answered again, that if he performed what he said, she would be convinced. This brave, military man, however, not relying upon his own single valour and prowess, to bring about so miraculous a thing as the making a person that was dumb to speak, he took with him for this end three l.u.s.ty a.s.sistants to combine with him in the a.s.sa.s.sination. The ambuscade was settled to be at the Five Bells tavern, in Wych-street, in the Strand.

After the ambush was settled with so much false courage, the business of decoying Mr. Campbell into it was not practicable any other way than by sending out false colours. The lady's woman, who was by her own interest tied fast to the interests of the beau, was to play the trick of Delilah, and betray this deaf and dumb Samson, as he will appear to be a kind of one in the sequel of the story, into the hands of these Philistines. She smooths her face over with a complimenting lie from her mistress to Mr. Campbell, and acted her part of deceit so well, that he promised to follow her to the Five Bells with all haste; and so she scuttled back to prepare the captain, and to tell him how lucky she was in mischief; and how she drew him out by smiles into perdition. The short of the story is, when they got him in among them, they endeavoured to a.s.sa.s.sinate him; but they missed of their aim; yet it is certain they left him in a very terrible and b.l.o.o.d.y condition; and the captain went away in as bad a plight as the person was left in, whom he a.s.saulted so cowardly with numbers, and to such disadvantage. I was sent for to him upon this disaster, and the story was delivered to me thus, by one of the drawers of the tavern, when I inquired into it. They began to banter him, and speaking to him as if he heard, asked him if he knew his own fortune; they told him it was to be beaten to death. This was an odd way of addressing a deaf and dumb man. They added, they would make him speak before they had done. The boy seeing he made no reply, but only smiled, thought what pa.s.sed between them was a jest with an old acquaintance, and withdrew about his business. The door being fastened, however, before they began the honourable attack, they vouchsafed to write down their intent in the words above mentioned, which they had uttered before to make sure that he should understand their meaning, and what this odd way of correction was for. All the while the maid who had brought him into it was peeping through a hole and watching the event, as appears afterwards. Mr. Campbell wrote them the following answer, viz., That he hoped for fair play, that he understood beargarden as well as they; but if a gentleman was amongst them he would expect gentlemanly usage. The rejoinder they made to this, consisted, it seems, not of words but of action. The officer in conjunction with another ruffian, one of the strongest of the three he had brought, commenced the a.s.sault. As good luck would have it, he warded off their first blows, it seems, with tolerable success, and a wine quart pot standing upon the table, Duncan took to his arms, and at two or three quick blows, well managed, and close laid in upon the a.s.sailants, felled them both to the ground. Here it was that the maid discovered her knowledge of it, and privity to the plot to the whole house; for she no sooner sees the famous leader, the valiant captain, lie sprawling on the floor with bleeding temples, but she shrieked out with all the voice she could exert, Murder, murder, murder! Alarmed at this outcry, the master and all the attendants of the tavern scampered up stairs, burst into the room, and found Duncan Campbell struggling with the other two, and the quart pot still fast clenched in his hand, which they were endeavouring to wrench from him.

The drawers rescued him out of their hands, and inquired into the matter. The maid in a fright confessed the whole thing. The officer and his a.s.sociate rubbed their eyes as recovering from a stunning sleep, reeled as they went to rise, paid the reckoning and slunk pitifully away; or, as the rakes' term for it is, they brushed off, and for all their odds had the worst of the lay. I, who had some authority with Mr.

Campbell, by reason of my years, and the strict acquaintance I had with his mother, when I came and found him in that pickle, and had the whole relation told to me by the people of the house, though I could not forbear pitying him within my own mind, took upon me to reprehend him, and told him that these hards.h.i.+ps would by Providence be daily permitted to fall upon him, for he met with them twenty times, while he continued in that irregular way of living and spending his time, that might be so precious to himself and many others, in drunkenness and debauchery; and I think the lessons I wrote down to him upon that head, though a little severe just at that juncture, were, notwithstanding, well timed, and did, as I guessed they would, make a more solid impression in him than at any other. In all these scuffles, whether it is that being deaf and dumb an affront works deeper upon a man, and so renders him far more fierce or resolute, it must be said, that, though nature has been kind in making him very strong, robust, and active withal, yet he has bore some shocks, one would imagine, beyond the strength of a man, having sometimes got the better of five or six ruffians in rencounters of the like kind.

The next banter he met with was in a gentler way, from an unbelieving lady, and yet she came off with very ill success, and the banter turned all upon herself in the end.

A lady of distinction, whose name shall therefore be concealed in this place, came with two or three of her special friends, who took her for the most merry, innocent, spotless virgin upon earth, and whose modesty was never suspected in the least by her relations or servants that were nearest about her; after having rallied Mr. Campbell with several frivolous questions, doubting his capacity, and vexing and teasing him with gay impertinences beyond all patience, was by him told, that he did not take fees in his profession to be made a jest of like a common fortuneteller, but to do real good to those who consulted him, as far as he was able by his predictions; that he was treated with more respect by persons of a higher condition, though her own was very good, and so offered her guinea back again with a bow and a smile. She had a little more generosity of spirit than not to be a little nettled at the proffer she had caused by so coa.r.s.e an usage. She affected appearing grave a little, and told him she would be serious for the future, and asked him to set down her name, which she had neglected before, to ask other questions that were nothing to the purpose. He promised to write it down, but pausing a little longer than ordinary about it, she returned to her former way of uncivil merriment and ungallant raillery.

She repeated to him in three or four little sc.r.a.ps of paper, one after another, as fast as she could write them, the same words, viz., That he could not tell her name, nor whether she was maid, wife, or widow; and laughed as if she would split her sides, triumphing to the rest of her companions over his ignorance and her own wit, as if she had posed him, and put him to an entire stand. But see what this overweening opinion of security ended in: the man of the second-sight was not to be so easily baffled. Vexed at being so disturbed, and coming out of his brown study, he reaches the paper and begins to write. Now it was the lady's turn to suffer, she had deserved hearty punishment, and it came into her hands with the note, to a degree of severity, as you will perceive by the contents of it just now. She read it, and swooning away, dropped from her chair. The whole room being in a bustle, I, that was in the outward chamber, ran in: while Mr. Campbell was sprinkling water in her face, a lady s.n.a.t.c.hed up the note to read it, at which he seemed mightily displeased; I, therefore, who understood his signs, recovered it out of her hands by stratagem, and ran to burn it, which I did so quick that I was not discovered in the curiosity which I must own I satisfied myself in by reading it first; a curiosity raised too high by so particular an adventure, to be overcome in so little a time of thought, as I was to keep it in my hands, and so I came by the knowledge of it myself, without being informed by Mr. Campbell. This shows how a sudden curiosity, when there is not time given to think and correct it, may overcome a man as well as a woman; for I was never over-curious in my life, and though I was pleased with the oddness of the adventure, I often blushed to myself since for the unmanly weakness of not being able to step with a note from one room to another to the fireside, without peeping into the contents of it. The contents of it were these: Madam since you provoke me, your name is ----. You are no widow, you are no wife, and yet you are no maid; you have a child at nurse at such a place, by such a gentleman, and you were brought to bed in Leicesters.h.i.+re. The lady, convinced by this answer of his strange and mystical power, and pleased with his civility in endeavouring to conceal from others the secret, after so many repeated provocations, though she showed great disorder for that day, became one of his constant attenders some time after, and would not take any step in her affairs without his advice, which she often has said since, she found very much to her advantage. She was as serious in her dealings with him afterwards, and improved by being so, as she was gay and turbulent with him before, and smarted for it. In fine, she was a thorough convert, and a votary of his; and the only jest she used afterwards to make, concerning him, was a civil witticism to his wife; to whom she was wont, every now and then, smiling, to address herself after this manner: Your husband, madam, is a devil, but he is a very handsome and a very civil one.