Patrick O'Brian - The Nutmeg of Consolation

'A little farther on I came to some more of these gaunt barracks and to a street being laid out by a chain-gang, and the beginning of what the men told me was to be a hospital, built at the orders of the new governor, Colonel Macquarie: I shall be sorry not to see him, but he is away in...

'Boat's alongside, sir, if you please,' said Killick, that forgiving soul, as he took up the precious coat. 'Right arm first. Now let me ship the wig and square it just so. Hold up, and don't you ever move your head, or you will get powder on the collar.

And here' - with a transparently false casualness - 'is your gold-headed cane.'

'Your soul to the Devil, Killick,' said Stephen. 'Do you think I am going to walk into a company of officers with a cane, like a grass-combing civilian?'

'Then let me borrow the Captain's Patriotic Fund sword,' said Killick. 'Yourn has such a shabby old hilt.'

'Buckle it on and bear away,' said Stephen. 'How has the Captain come along since I came below?'

'Which he has taken a ninety-year lease of the quarter-gallery: all you can hear is groaning and gushing. He ain't been out since you was there.'

Stephen was carefully handed down the side and sat in the stern-sheets; he was followed by Pullings, shining with gold lace but smelling of mould, and the boat shoved off.

'Another dinner-table,' reflected Stephen, sitting down and spreading his napkin over his knee. 'May it be for a blessing.' The afternoon had begun pleasantly, with Mrs Macquarie and the Governor's deputy, Colonel MacPherson, receiving the guests, mostly officers of the former New South Wales Corps, now substantial landowners, of the Seventy-Third, and of the Navy. Mrs Macquarie, the most important woman in the colony, did not top it the gracious lady, but made them feel truly welcome: Stephen liked her at once, and they talked for a while. Colonel MacPherson had served for many years in India and it was clear that his head had been too long exposed to the sun, but he was amiable enough in his muffled way and he took pleasure in urging the men to drink - the men, for Mrs Macquarie was not to attend the dinner itself, and no other ladies had been invited. 'I am so sorry that Her Excellency has abandoned us,' he said to Mr Hamlyn, a surgeon, who sat on his left. 'She seemed to me particularly sympathetic, and I should have liked to ask her advice. We picked up two children, the only survivors of a small tribe wiped out by smallpox; and I dread taking them by the icy Horn to a hardly more hospitable England, and they born under the equator itself.'

'She would certainly have told you what to do,' said Hamlyn.

'She is spending this very afternoon at the orphanage. We have a great many little bastards here, you know, begotten by the Lord knows who during the voyage and often abandoned. And as you say, she is the most amiable of ladies: we passed the chief of the morning discussing plans for the hospital.' Stephen and the surgeon did the same until it was time for each to talk to his other neighbour. Hamlyn was at once engaged in a close and even passionate argument about some horses that were to race presently; but on Stephen's right hand the penal secretary, whom he thought of as Mealy-Mouth but whose name was in fact Firkins, was already taken up with a four- or five-handed conversation about convicts, the irredeemable wickedness, sloth, immorality of convicts, the assignment of convicts, their dangerous nature; and for some time he was able to survey the table. Mealy-Mouth, he observed, was a water-drinker; but Stephen, having taken a sip of the local wine, could hardly blame him for that. Immediately opposite was a big, dark-faced man, as big as Jack Aubrey or even bigger; he wore regimentals that Stephen did not recognize, presumably those of the Rum Corps. His very large face had a look of stupidity and settled ill-temper; he wore a surprising number of rings. To this man's right sat the clergyman who had said grace, and he too looked thoroughly discontented. His face was unusually round; it was red, and growing steadily redder. From the confusion of voices and the unfamiliarity of their topics it was not easy for Stephen to make out more than the general drift at first, but that was clear enough from the often-repeated 'United Irishmen' and 'Defenders' - prisoners who had been transported in large numbers, particularly after the 1798 rising in Ireland. He noticed that the Scottish officers of the Seventy-Third did not take part, but they were in the minority and the general feeling was well summed up by the clergyman, who said 'The Irish do not deserve the appellation of men. And if I needed an authority for the statement I should bring forward Governor Collins of Van Diemen's Land. Those are his very words: in the second volume of his book, I believe. But no authority is needed for what is evident to the meanest understanding. And now to crown all, priests are allowed them. A cunning priest can make them do anything; and there is nothing but anarchy to be foreseen.'

'Who is that gentleman?' asked Stephen in a low voice, Hamlyn having finished with horse-racing for the moment.

'His name is Marsden,' said Hamlyn. 'A wealthy sheep-farmer and a magistrate at Parramatta: and once he is on to the poor old Pope and popery he never leaves off.'

How true. Stephen saw Tom Pullings' bored face, fixed in a dutiful smile, near the head of the table, on Colonel MacPherson's right; and at the same time Tom looked at him - a very anxious look.

'I beg your pardon,' said the penal secretary.. 'I am shamefully remiss: allow me to help you to a little of this dish. It is kangaroo, our local venison.'

'You are very good, sir,' said Stephen, looking at it with some interest. 'Can you tell me...

But Firkins was already away on a hobbyhorse of his own, the poverty of Ireland and its inevitability. His words were mostly addressed to the other side of the table, though when he had finished his account he turned to Stephen and said 'They are not unlike our Aborigines, sir, the most feckless people in the world. If you give them sheep they will not wait for them to breed and grow into a flock: they eat them at once. Poverty, dirt and ignorance must necessarily attend them.'

'Did you ever read in Bede, sir?' asked Stephen.

'Bede? I do not think I know the name. Was he a legal writer?'

'I believe he is chiefly known for his ecclesiastical history of the English nation.'

'Ah, then Mr Marsden will know him. Mr Marsden,' -raising his voice - 'do you know of a Mr Bede, that wrote an ecclesiastical history?'

'Bede? Bede?' said Marsden, breaking off his conversation with his neighbour. 'Never heard of him.' Then resuming it, 'He was a mere boy, so we only gave him a hundred lashes on the back, and the rest on his bottom and legs.'

'Bede lived in the County Durham,' said Stephen in a momentary pause. 'Little do I or other naturalists know of the northern parts of England; but it is to be hoped that some future faunist, a person of a thinking turn of mind, a man of fortune, will undertake the tour, accompanied by a botanist and a draughtsman, and will give us an account of his journey. The manners of the wild Aborigines, their superstitions, their prejudices, their sordid way of life, will extort from him many useful reflections. And his draughtsman will portray the ruins of the great monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, the home of the most learned man in England a thousand years ago, famous throughout the Christian world and now forgotten. Such a work would be well received.'

Perhaps: the remark, however, was received in disapproving silence, with puzzled, suspicious looks; and eventually the big man opposite Stephen said, 'There ain't any Aborigines in Durham.' While the learned explained to him what might be meant by the word, Stephen said inwardly 'Let me not be a fool. God preserve me from choler,' and a flow of talk from the upper end of the table swept the incident into the past.