CHAPTER THREE

     In which my Mother proves herself a tender Wife, and at the same
     time shows her Patriotism and Devotion to her Country.

I had almost unconsciously arrived at the age of two years before there were any tidings of my father.  All the information that my mother could obtain was, that the ship’s company of the “Druid” had been turned over to another frigate called the “Melpomene,” the former having been declared not seaworthy, and in consequence condemned and broken up at Port Royal.

But no letter had been received from my father, who indeed was not much of a scholar; he could read, but he could not write.  By this time my mother’s savings were expended, and she was in great tribulation lest the deceit she had practiced should be exposed.  Indeed, there were already many surmises as to the truth of her story, it being so long that her husband had been absent.  At last, when she had changed her only remaining guinea, a letter arrived from my father, dated from Portsmouth, stating that the ship was to be paid off in a few days, and then “he would clap on all sail and be on board of his old woman in no time.”

My mother, although not a little disgusted at being called an old woman—­an affront which she determined to revenge upon a more fitting occasion—­was in raptures with the contents of the letter.  She therefore returned a kind answer, informing my father what a promising child he was blessed with, and giving him a direction to meet her at Greenwich, as she had resolved upon not receiving him at Woolwich, where her false assertions would have been exposed.  Going round to all her acquaintances, she bade them farewell, telling them that her husband had returned well, and well to-do, and had ordered her to meet him at Greenwich.  Having thus satisfactorily, as she imagined, got out of this little difficulty, she packed up and hastened to Greenwich, where she sunk her assumed rank and waited very impatiently for her husband.  He came at last, seated with many others on the outside of a stage coach—­his hat bedecked with ribbons, a pipe in one hand and flourishing a pewter pot in the other.  It hardly need be added that he was more than half tipsy.  Nevertheless, even in this state, he was well received; and after he had smothered her with kisses, dandled me on his knee, thrown into her lap all the pay he had left, and drank three more pots of porter, they went very peaceably and lovingly to repose.

I regret to say that this amity did not last long.  My father’s manners, which perhaps had been softened down by the awe which he had of Lady Hercules when he first made my mother’s acquaintance, were now more coarse, and so was his language; and the neatness and cleanliness of person which he was obliged to maintain while performing the duties of a coxswain to a married captain were not so observable.  Besides which, being no longer under discipline, he was almost every night intoxicated; and, being so, was more self-willed and regardless of his wife’s injunctions.  The consequences were that having received from my father fifty pounds, my mother first locked that up, and then “unlocked her jaw.”  Disputes were now hourly occurring; and it was “now you’re vexed,” and “hey diddle diddle,” from morning till night.