Paul Collins - Banvard's Folly - Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn't Change the World

It was not easy accomplishing this in his father's house: "The truth is," he later admitted, "time was short and knowledge in what I went about so very small and confused, and what I did was by stealth, and fear of being detected by my father." But once he felt ready to assume his new identity, he approached his father and announced that he was departing to the Low Countries.

His father began to weep. How could George leave him now--his own grown son, whom he had not seen since he was but a child of five years? But the boy prevailed upon his father; was it not he, after all, who had been regaling George with tales of youthful adventures in the Netherlands? Reluctantly, his father agreed. He outlined a safe route to the Dutch, and tearfully bid his son farewell. As he left, George mailed off a letter to his mother, explaining that he was traveling to the Low Countries for a brief spell, but would be back home again soon. And then he walked away, leaving his father's cottage behind him, until it diminished into a speck far behind him, and then disappeared altogether.

George's parents never heard from him again.

Out on the road, begging in fluent Latin and occasionally pausing to jabber excitedly in "Japanese," at first George found somewhat more success than he had as an Irishman. It mattered little that he didn't look the least bit Asian; later acquaintances ventured that George, with his pasty complexion and light blond hair, resembled a Dutchman. But in the 1690's almost nobody in Europe, least of all George himself, knew what an actual Asian looked like.

The blond boy could be utterly fearless in his pose as an Asian because, for all he knew, he really did look like one.

In fact, when he reached the garrisoned town of Landau, his Japanese act was a hit with the foot soldiers there. George was in mid-routine when several musketeers grabbed him and dragged him off. The boy was brought before the town's commanding officer, who demanded an explanation of his presence. George babbled some "Japanese" and flailed about through his alibis until the officer simply ordered him to be tossed in jail as a spy. He was released the following day, led to the city gates, and told never to come back.

His long travels and habitual inclination to shabbiness proved a poor combination. "I saw myself in a short time covered with rags and vermine," he lamented, "and infected with a virulent itch." His hands became disgustingly pustulent, and his mean appearance did not inspire much charity among fellow pilgrims.

Dragging himself into Li@ege, George found shelter with a group of fellow vagrants in a local hospital, where men passed the day by swapping stories, booze, tubercular coughs, and lice. Word came that the Dutch army was hiring

"such vagrants as appeared fit to carry a musket." George persuaded six

"fellow ragamuffins" to join him in a trip down to the recruiter. The recruiter sent off all six of George's companions to their fate in the army, but George was different; he wanted George as his personal servant.

But first, George had to be made presentable, and that meant getting him new clothes and curing his rash. His rash now covered most of his body, and had left him covered in scabs. And so ointments were rubbed in, special baths given, leeches applied. Nothing worked. His body was as repellent as ever.

His new mentor simply gave up on trying to cure the condition, and had George accompany him back to the city of Aix-la-Chapelle. There, it turned out, the recruiter owned a coffeehouse and billiards hall, and George was pressed into service as a waiter. In his off hours, he was to tutor his employer's son in Latin. But his new master clearly hoped that the presence of a Japanese freak might attract extra business to the coffeehouse. Unfortunately, the townspeople were too occupied with seeking out the newly fashionable springs where they could take mineral-water cures.

The coffeehouse had employees working in another sideline, a refreshment catering business for large balls and banquets. George was never sent out, on account of the rather offputting scabs that covered his inflamed hands, until one day when there was no one else available. Doling out punch to wealthy guests, George stared agog at the grandeur of the party before him. It was a world he'd scarcely known before.

His job eventually came to an unexpected end. George was sent by his employer's wife on a journey of many miles on foot to deliver a message to her husband, who had gone off to attend to some business. The boy was in an unfamiliar province, and the map his father had given him was no good now. He wandered back and forth to different crossroads, trying to remember where it was that he'd come from and where he was supposed to be going. But he was hopelessly lost, and mortified to think that even if he did find his master, he'd be terribly late with the message. And so, inquiring for the way to Cologne, he set off on his own once again.

As he trod wearily into Cologne, George told himself that at least from here he could find his way back to his father's and then his mother's home again.

But once in town, he again fell upon that last resort of the desperate traveler--the army recruitment officer. The regiment he joined was a ragged unit of deserters from the French army, university dropouts, and bewildered German farmboys. Most spent their off hours drunk or whoring, though George was little inclined to follow. But playing the unconverted heathen, he

delighted in twisting the few pious soldiers into logical knots as they tried to explain and defend the bizarre precepts of Christian religion.

One such fellow, hoping to convert his Japanese comrade, talked him into visiting a monk:

When we got to the monastery, we found the good old capuchin sitting on a bench ... with a lusty young woman kneeling before him, barking like a dog, and making a great many other antick noises and postures; upon which I was told that she was possessed, and that the good father was exorcising an evil spirit out of her.

George did not convert that day.

His regiment staggered into the winter underfed, underclothed, and with scarcely a freezing pallet to sleep on. George could barely keep up, and finally the captain of the regiment recommended him for discharge. But once he got his papers, he also got a nasty shock: they wanted his uniform back.

George stripped down and shivered--at which point he discovered that the captain had sold off the civilian clothes that he was to have held for discharge. George was turned out into the cold with nothing but a blue linen frock to wear, the bare soles of his feet numb against the frozen soil. Though he would have scarcely believed it as he walked away from the garrison, half naked in the freezing air, his discharge was lucky. Many of his comrades died of exposure and disease later that winter.

Begging for clothes and food, George made his way back to Cologne again, where another officer took pity on the forlorn boy.

--What is your name? he asked the ragged pilgrim.

George thought carefully.

--Psalmanazar, he finally answered.

The officer personally recruited him into his regiment, and that spring they were deployed in Holland. With his new name, Psalmanazar took on a whole new vitality in creating himself anew as a Japanese. His favorite ploy was showing up at the regimental Sunday services to distract the Christians: I would turn my back to them, and turning my face to the rising or setting sun, to make some awkward shew of worship, or praying to it ... I made me a little book with figures of the sun, moon and stars, and other such imagery as my phrensy suggested to me, and filled the rest with a kind of gibberish prose and verse, and which I muttered or chanted as often as the humour took me.

His strange antics caught the attention of the regimental commander, Brigadier George Lauder, who invited him to dine with him one evening late in February 1703--an unheard-of honor for a foot soldier. George arrived to find several other officers and regimental officials with Lauder, including the chaplain, a Scotsman named Alexander Innes. As George dined hungrily on officers' fare, and suffered the droning speeches of the regiment's staff, he felt Innes, who was quieter and a little more friendly than the rest, observing him across the table.