The Mayor of Troy Part 1

The Mayor of Troy.

by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch.

PROLOGUE.

Good wine needs no bush; but this story has to begin with an apology.

Years ago I promised myself to write a treatise on the lost Mayors of Cornwall--dignitaries whose pleasant fame is now night, recalled only by some neat byword or proverb current in the Delectable (or as a public speaker p.r.o.nounced it the other day, the Dialectable) Duchy.

Thus you may hear of "the Mayor of Falmouth, who thanked G.o.d when the town jail was enlarged"; "the Mayor of Market Jew, sitting in his own light"; "the Mayor of Tregoney, who could read print upside-down, but wasn't above being spoken to"; "the Mayor of Calenick, who walked two miles to ride one"; "the Mayor of East Looe, who called the King of England 'Brother.'" Everyone remembers the stately prose in which Gibbon records when and how he determined on his great masterpiece, when and how he completed it. "It was at Rome: on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the City first started in my mind." So I could tell with circ.u.mstance when, where and how I first proposed my treatise; and shall, perhaps, when I have concluded it. But life is short; and for the while my readers may be amused with an instalment.

Now of all the Mayors of Cornwall the one who most engaged my speculation, yet for a long while baffled all research, was "the Mayor of Troy, so popular that the town made him Ex-Mayor the year following."

Of course, if you don't know Troy, you will miss half the reason of my eagerness. Simple, egregious, adorable town! Shall I go on here to sing its praises? No; not yet.

The reason why I could learn nothing concerning him is that, soon after 1832, when the Reform Bill did away with Troy's Mayor and Corporation, as well as with its two Members of Parliament, someone made a bonfire of all the Borough records. O Alexandria! And the man said at the time that he did it for fun!

This brings me to yet another Mayor--the Mayor of Lestiddle, who is a jolly good fellow.

Nothing could be handsomer than my calling the Mayor of Lestiddle a jolly good fellow; for in fact we live at daggers drawn. You must know that Troy, a town of small population (two thousand or so) but of great character and importance, stands at the mouth of a river where it widens into a harbour singularly beautiful and frequented by s.h.i.+ps of all nations; and that seven miles up this river, by a bridge where the salt tides cease, stands Lestiddle, a town of fewer inhabitants and of no character or importance at all. Now why the Reform Bill, which sheared Troy of its ancient dignities, should have left Lestiddle's untouched, is a question no man can answer me; but this I know, that its Mayor goes flouris.h.i.+ng about with a silver mace shaped like an oar, as a symbol of jurisdiction over our river from its mouth (forsooth) so far inland as a pair of oxen yoked together can be driven in its bed.

He has, in fact, no such jurisdiction. Above bridge he may, an it please him, drive his oxen up the riverbed, and welcome. I leave him to the anglers he will discommodate by it. But his jurisdiction below bridge was very properly taken from him by order of our late Queen (whose memory be blessed!) in Council, and vested in the Troy Harbour Commission. Now _I_ am Chairman of that Commission, and yet the fellow declines to yield up his silver oar! We in Troy feel strongly about it. It is not for nothing (we hold) that when he or his burgesses come down the river for a day's fis.h.i.+ng the weather invariably turns dirty. We mislike them even worse than a German band--which brings us no worse, as a rule, than a spell of east wind.

Nevertheless, the Mayor of Lestiddle is a jolly good fellow, and I am glad that his townsmen (such as they are) have re-elected him.

One day this last summer he came down to fish for mackerel at the harbour's mouth, which can be done at anchor since our sardine factory has taken to infringing the by-laws and discharging its offal on the wrong side of the prescribed limit. (We Harbour Commissioners have set our faces against this practice, but meanwhile it attracts the fish.) It was raining, of course. Rowing close up to me, the Mayor of Lestiddle asked--for we observe the ordinary courtesies-- what bait I was using. I answered, fresh pilchard bait; and offered him some, delicately forbearing to return the question, since it is an article of faith with us that the burgesses of Lestiddle bait with earthworms which they dig out of their back gardens. Well, he accepted my pilchard bait, and pulled up two score of mackerel within as many minutes, which doubtless gave him something to boast about on his return.

He was not ungrateful. Next week I received from him a parcel of MS.

with a letter saying that he had come across it, "a fly in amber," in turning over a pile of old Stannary records. How it had found its way among them he could not guess.

A fly in amber, quotha! A jewel in a midden, rather! How it came among his trumpery archives I know as little as he, but can guess.

Some Lestiddle man must have stolen it, and chosen them as a safe hiding-place.

It gave me the clue, and more than the clue. I know now the history of that Mayor of Troy who was so popular that the town made him Ex-Mayor the year following.

Listen! Stretch out both hands; open your mouth and shut your eyes!

It is a draught of Troy's own vintage that I offer you; racy, fragrant of the soil, from a cask these hundred years sunk, so that it carries a smack, too, of the submerging brine. You know the old recipe for Wine of Cos, that full-bodied, seignorial, superlative, translunary wine.

Yet I know not how to begin.

"Fortunam Priami cantabo et n.o.bile bellum."

"I will sing you Troy and its Mayor and a war of high renown," that is how I want to begin; but Horace in his _Ars Poetica_--confound him!--has chosen this very example as a model to avoid, and the critics would be down on me in a pack.

Very well, then, let us try a more reputable way.

CHAPTER I.

OUR MAJOR.

Arms and the Man I sing!

When, on the 16th of May, 1803, King George III. told his faithful subjects that the Treaty of Amiens was no better than waste paper, Troy neither felt nor affected to feel surprise. King, Consul, Emperor--it knew these French rulers of old, under whatever t.i.tle they might disguise themselves. More than four centuries ago an English King had sent his pursuivants down to us with a message that "the Gallants of Troy must abstain from attacking, plundering, and sinking the s.h.i.+ps of our brother of France, because we, Edward of England, are at peace with our brother of France": and the Gallants of Troy had returned an answer at once humble and firm: "Your Majesty best knows your Majesty's business, but _we_ are at war with your brother of France." Yes, we knew these Frenchmen. Once before, in 1456, they had thought to surprise us, choosing a night when our Squire was away at market, and landing a force to burn and sack us: and our Squire's wife had met them with boiling lead. His Majesty's Ministers might be taken at unawares, not we. We slept Bristol fas.h.i.+on, with one eye open.

But when, as summer drew on, news came that the infamous usurper was collecting troops at Boulogne, and flat-bottomed boats, to invade us; when the spirit of the British people armed for the support of their ancient glory and independence against the unprincipled ambition of the French Government; when, in the Duchy alone, no less than 8511 men and boys enrolled themselves in twenty-nine companies of foot, horse and artillery, as well out of enthusiasm as to escape the general levy threatened by Government (so mixed are all human motives); then, you may be sure, Troy did not lag behind.

Ah! but we had some brave corps among the Duchy Volunteers!

There was the St. Germans Subscription Troop, for instance, which consisted of forty men and eleven uniforms, and hunted the fox thrice a week during the winter months under Lord Eliot, Captain and M.F.H.

There was the Royal Redruth Infantry, the famous "Royal Reds," of 103 men and five uniforms. These had heard, at second hand, of Bonaparte's vow to give them no quarter, and wore a conspicuous patch of red in the seat of their pantaloons that he might have no excuse for mistaking them. There was the even more famous Mevagissey Battery, of no men and 121 uniforms. In Mevagissey, as you may be aware, the bees fly tail-foremost; and therefore, to prevent bickerings, it was wisely resolved at the first drill to make every unit of this corps an officer.

But the most famous of all (and sworn rivals) were two companies of coast artillery--the Looe Diehards and the Troy Gallants.

The Looe Diehards (seventy men and two uniforms) wore dark blue coats and pantaloons, with red facings, yellow wings and ta.s.sels, and white waistcoats. Would you know by what feat they earned their name?

Listen. I quote the very words of their commander, Captain Bond, who survived to write a _History of Looe_--and a sound book it is.

"The East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery was established in 1803, and kept in pay from Government for six years. Not a single man of the company died during the six years, which is certainly very remarkable."

But, when you come to think of it, what an even more remarkable boast for a body of warriors!

We of Troy (180 men and two uniforms) laughed at this claim.

Say what you will, there is no dash about longevity, or very little.

For uniform we wore dark-blue coats and pantaloons, with white wings and facings, edged and ta.s.selled with gilt, and scarlet waistcoats, also braided with gilt. We wanted no new name, we! Ours was an inherited one, derived from days when, under Warwick the King-maker, Lord High Admiral of England, we had swept the Channel, summoned the men of Rye and Winchelsea to vail their bonnets--to take in sail, mark you: no trumpery dipping of a flag would satisfy us--and when they stiff-neckedly refused, had silenced the one town and carried off the other's chain to hang across our harbour from blockhouse to blockhouse. Also, was it not a gallant of Troy that a.s.sailed and carried the great French pirate, Jean Doree, and clapped him under his own hatches?

"The roaring cannons then were plied, And dub-a-dub went the drum-a; The braying trumpets loud they cried To courage both all and some-a."

"The grappling-hooks were brought at length, The brown bill and the sword-a; John Dory at length, for all his strength, Was clapt fast under board-a."

That was why we wore our uniforms embroidered with gold (_dores_).

The Frenchmen, if they came, would understand the taunt.

But most of all we were proud of Solomon Hymen, our Major and our Mayor of Troy.

I can see him now as he addressed us on the evening of our first drill, standing beside the two long nineteen-pounders on the Old Fort; erect, with a hand upon his ivory sword-hilt, his knops and epaulettes flas.h.i.+ng against the level sun. I can see his very gesture as he enjoined silence on the band; for we had a band, and it was playing "Come, Cheer Up, My Lads!" As though we weren't cheerful enough already!

[But "Come, come!" the reader will object. "All this happened a hundred years ago. Yet here are you talking as if you had been present." Very true: it is a way we have in Troy. Call it a foible--but forgive it! The other day, for instance, happening on the Town Quay, I found our gasman, Mr. Rabling, an earnest Methodist, discussing to a small crowd on the subject of the Golden Calf, and in this fas.h.i.+on: "Well, friends, in the midst of all this pillaloo, hands-across and down-the-middle, with old Aaron as bad as any and flinging his legs about more boldacious with every caper, I happens to glance up the hill, and with that I gives a whistle; for what do I see but a man aloft there picking his way down on his heels with a parcel under his arm! Every now and then he pulls up, shading his eyes, so, like as if he'd a lost his bearin's. I glances across to Aaron, and thinks I, 'Look out for squalls! Here's big brother coming, and a nice credit _this'll_ be to the family!' . . ."

The historic present, as my Latin grammar used to call it, is our favourite tense: and if you insist that, not being a hundred years old, I cannot speak as an eye-witness of this historic scene, my answer must be Browning's,--"All I can say is--I saw it!"]

"Gentlemen!" began the Major.

We might not all be officers, like the Mevagissey Artillery, but in the Troy Gallants we were all gentlemen.

"Gentlemen!"--the Major waved an arm seaward--"yonder lies your enemy. Behind you"--he pointed up the harbour to the town-- "England relies on your protection. Shall the Corsican tyrant lay his lascivious hands upon her ancient liberties, her reformed and Protestant religion, her respectable Sovereign and his Consort, her mansions, her humble cottages, and those members of the opposite s.e.x whose charms reward, and, in rewarding, refine us? Or shall we meet his flat-bottomed boats with a united front, a stern 'Thus far and no farther,' and send them home with their tails between their legs?

That, gentlemen, is the alternative. Which will you choose?"