At Hale an old woman came out of a cottage and began to take down the shutters. Durand, who, not knowing English, had resolved to play the part of a deaf and dumb man, quietly took the shutters from her, and placed them in their proper position. Then he took a broom and swept away the water from the front of the door; got the kettle and filled it from the pump, the old woman being too astonished to be able to say anything, a feeling which was increased when her silent visitor raked the cinders out of the grate, and laid the fire. Then she said something in broad Lancashire, but he signified that he was deaf and dumb, and he understood her so far as to know that she expressed pity. At this point he sank on to a settle and fell fast asleep from sheer exhaustion from walking and exposure. When he awakened he found breakfast awaiting him, and made a good meal. Then he did a foolish thing. At the sound of horses’ hoofs he sprang up in alarm and fled from the house—an act doubly ill-advised, inasmuch as it betrayed his affliction to be assumed, and, had his entertainer been a man instead of an old woman, would assuredly have stirred the hue and cry after him.
He now took a wrong turning, and found himself going towards Liverpool, but corrected his road, and at midday reached a barn where two men were threshing wheat. He asked leave by signs to rest, which was granted. We shall now see how the native ingenuity of the Frenchman stood him in good stead in circumstances where the average Englishman would have been a useless tramp and nothing more. Seeing some fresh straw in a corner, Durand began to weave it into a dainty basket. The threshers stayed their work to watch him, and, when the article was finished, offered to buy it. Just then the farmer entered, and from pity and admiration took him home to dinner, and Durand’s first act was to present the basket to the daughter of the house. Dinner finished, the guest looked about for work to do, and in the course of the afternoon he repaired a stopped clock with an old skewer and a pair of pincers, mended a chair, repaired a china image, cleaned an old picture, repaired a lock, altered a key, and fed the pigs!
The farmer was delighted, and offered him a barn to sleep in, but the farmer’s daughter injudiciously expressed her admiration of him, whereupon her sweetheart, who came in to spend the evening, signed to him the necessity of his immediate departure.
For weeks this extraordinary man, always simulating a deaf-mute, wandered about, living by the sale of baskets, and was everywhere received with the greatest kindness.
But misfortune overtook him at length, although only temporarily. He was standing by a very large tree, a local lion, when a party of visitors came up to admire it, and a young lady expressed herself in very purely pronounced French. Unable to restrain himself, Durand stepped forward, and echoed her sentiments.
‘Why!’ exclaimed the lady. ‘This is the dumb man who was at the Hall yesterday repairing the broken vases!’
The result was that he was arrested as an escaped prisoner of war, sent first to Ormskirk, and then back to his old prison at the Liverpool Tower.
However, in a short time, through the influence of Sir Edward Cunliffe, one of the members for Liverpool, he was released, and went to reside with the P.’s in Dale Street. In the following September Mr. Durand and Miss P. became man and wife, and he remained in Liverpool many years, as partner in her uncle’s business.
In 1779 Howard the philanthropist, in his tour through the prisons of Britain, visited the Liverpool Tower. He reported that there were therein 509 prisoners, of whom fifty-six were Spaniards, who were kept apart from the French prisoners, on account of racial animosities. All were crowded in five rooms, which were packed with hammocks three tiers high. The airing ground was spacious. There were thirty-six invalids in a small dirty room of a house at some distance from the prison. There were no sheets on the beds, but the surgeons were attentive, and there were no complaints.
At the prison, he remarked, the bedding required regulation. There was no table hung up of regulations or of the victualling rate, so that the prisoners had no means of checking their allowances. The meat and beer were good, but the bread was heavy. The late Agent, he was informed, had been very neglectful of his duties, but his successor bore a good character, and much was expected of him.