Chapter VI (2)

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 assured 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 compass 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 lusty assistants to combine with him in the assassination. 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 assassinate him; but they missed of their aim; yet it is certain they left him in a very terrible and bloody condition; and the captain went away in as bad a plight as the person was left in, whom he assaulted 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 passed 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 assault. 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 assailants, 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 associate 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 hardships 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 coarse 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 scraps 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 snatched 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 Leicestershire. 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.

Not long after this came another lady, with a like intent, to impose upon him; and was resolved, as she owned, to have laughed him to scorn if she had succeeded in her attempt. She had very dexterously dressed herself in her woman's habit, and her woman in her own; her footman squired the new-made lady in a very gentlemanly dress, hired for the purpose of a disguise, from Monmouth-street. The strange and unknown masqueraders entered Mr. Campbell's room with much art. The fellow was by nature of a clean make, and had a good look, and from following a genteel master when he was young, copied his gait a little, and had some appearance of a mien, and a tolerable good air about him. But this being the first time of his being so fine, and he a little vain in his temper, he over-acted his part; he strutted too much; he was as fond of his ruffles, his watch, his sword, his cane, and his snuff box, as a boy of being newly put into breeches; and viewed them all too often to be thought the possessor of any such things long. The affectation of the chambermaid was insufferable; she had the toss of the head, the jut of the bum, the sidelong leer of the eye, the imperious look upon her lady, now degraded into her woman, that she was intolerable, and a person without the gift of the second-sight would have guessed her to have been a pragmatical upstart, though it is very probable that during that time she fancied herself really better than her mistress; the mistress acted her part of maid the best; for it is easier for genteel modesty to act a low part, than for affected vanity to act a high one. She kept her distance like a servant, but would, to disguise things the better, be every now and then pert, according to their way, and give occasion to be chid. But there is an air of gentility inborn and inbred to some people; and even when they aim to be awkward a certain grace will attend all their minutest actions and gestures, and command love, respect, and veneration. I must therefore own that there was not need of a man's being a conjuror to guess who ought to be the lady and who the maid; but to know who absolutely was the lady, and who was the maid did require that skill. For how many such real ladies have we that are made so from such upstarts, and how many genteel waiting-women of great descent that are born with a grace about them, and are bred to good manners. Mr. Campbell's art made him positive in the case; he took the patches from the face of the maid, and placed them on the mistress's; he pulled off her hood and scarf, and gave it the lady, and taking from the lady her riding-hood, gave it the maid in exchange; for ladies at that time of day were not entered into that fashion of cloaking themselves. Then he wrote down that he should go out, and ought to send his maid in to undress them quite, and give the mistress her own clothes and the maid hers and with a smile wrote down both their names, and commended her contrivance; but after that it was remarked by the lady that he paid her less respect than she expected, and more to her footman, who was in gentleman's habit, whom he took by his side, and told a great many fine things; whereas he would tell the lady nothing farther. The lady nettled at this, wrote to him that she had vanity enough to believe that she might be distinguished from her maid in any dress, but that he had shown his want of skill in not knowing who that gentleman was. Mr. Campbell told her her mistake in sharp terms; and begging her pardon, assured her he knew several chambermaids as genteel and as well-born as her, and many mistresses more awkward and worse born than her maid; that he did not go therefore by the rule of guess and judging what ought to be, but by the rule of certainty and the knowledge of what actually was. She, however, unsatisfied with that answer, perplexed him mightily to know who the man was. He answered, he would be a great man. The lady laughed scornfully, and said she wanted to know who he was, not what he would be. He answered again, he was her footman, but that she would have a worse. She grew warm, and desired to be informed, why, since he knew the fellow's condition, he respected her so little and him so much, and accused him of want of practising manners, if he had not want of knowledge. He answered, Madam, since you will be asking questions too far, this footman will advance himself to the degree of a gentleman, and have a woman of distinction to his wife; while you will degrade yourself by a marriage to be the wife of a footman; his ambition is laudable, your condescension, mean, therefore I give him the preference; I have given you fair warning and wholesome advice, you may avoid your lot by prudence; but his will certainly be what I tell you.

This coming afterwards to pass exactly as was predicted, and his disappointing so many that had a mind to impose upon him, has rendered him pretty free from such wily contrivances since, though now and then they have happened, but still to the mortification and disappointment of the contrivers. But as we have not pretended to say, with regard to these things, that he has his genius always at his elbow or his beck, to whisper in his ear the names of persons, and such little constant events as these; so, that we may not be deemed to give a fabulous account of his life and adventures, we think ourselves bound to give the reader an insight into the particular power and capacity which he has for bringing about these particular performances, especially that of writing down names of strangers at first sight, which I don't doubt will be done to the satisfaction of all persons who shall read the succeeding chapter, concerning the gift of the second-sight.