I used the rest of this gloomy day in obtaining from the Lords of the Treasury the proper order for passing my collection through the Customs, which has been before mentioned, arranging my letters of credit, &c., and returned by the evening’s train to Liverpool, to join my collection again, and Daniel and the grizly bears.
On my return to that city I found poor Daniel in a sad dilemma with the old lady about the bears, and the whole neighbourhood under a high excitement, and in great alarm for their safety. The bears had been landed in the briefest manner possible; exempted from the usual course that almost everything else takes through the Queen’s warehouse; and, though relieved from the taxes of the customs, I soon found that I had duties of a different character accumulating that required my attention in another quarter. The agreement made by the old lady with Daniel to keep them in her yard for so much per day, and for as long a time as he required, had been based upon the express and very judicious condition that they were to do no harm. From the moment of their landing they had kept up an almost incessant howling, so Rocky-Mountain-ish and so totally unlike any attempts at music ever heard in the country before, that it attracted a crowd night and day about the old lady’s door, that almost defeated all attempts at ingress and egress. A little vanity, however, which she still possessed, enabled her to put up with the inconvenience, which she was turning to good account, and counting good luck, until it was ascertained, to her great amazement as well as alarm, that the bears were passing their huge paws out of the cage, between the iron bars, and lifting up the round stones of her pavement for the pleasure of once more getting their nails into the dirt, their favourite element, and which they had for a long time lost sight of.
In their unceasing pursuit of this amusement, by night and by day, they had made a sad metamorphosis of the old lady’s pavement, as, with the strength of their united paws, they had drawn the cage around to different parts of the yard, totally unpaving as they went along. At the time of the poor old lady’s bitterest and most vehement complaint, they were making their move in the direction of her humble tenement, the walls of which were exceedingly slight; and her alarm became insupportable. The ignorant crowd outside of the inclosure, who could get but a partial view of their operations now and then, had formed the most marvellous ideas of these monsters, from the report current amongst them that they were eating the paving-stones; and had taken the most decided and well-founded alarm from the fact that the bears had actually hurled some of the paving-stones quite over the wall amongst their heads, which were calling back an increased shower of stones and other missiles, adding fresh rage and fears to the growling of the bears, which altogether was threatening results of a more disastrous kind.
In this state of affairs I was very justly appealed to by the old lady for redress and a remedy, for it was quite evident that the condition of her agreement with Daniel had been broken, as the bears were now decidedly doing much harm to her premises; destroying all her rest, and (as she said) “her appetite and her right mind;” and I agreed that it was my duty, as soon as possible, to comply with her urgent request that they should be removed. She insisted on its being done that day, as “it was quite impossible to pass another night in her own bed, when there was such howling and groaning and grunting in her yard, by the side of her house.” Daniel took my directions and immediately went through the town in search of other quarters for them, and was to attend to their moving whilst I was to spend the day in the Custom-house, attending to the examination of my collection of 600 paintings and many thousand Indian costumes, weapons and other curiosities, which were to be closely inspected and inventoried, for duties.
Immersed in this mystery of difficulties and vexations at the customs during the day, I had lost sight of Daniel and his pets until I was free at night, when I was assailed with a more doleful tale than ever about the bears. Troubles were gathering on all sides. Poor Daniel had positively arranged in several places for them, but when “their characters were asked from their last places,” he met defeat in every case, and was obliged to meet, at last, the increased plaints of his old landlady, whose rage and ranting were now quite beyond control. She had made complaint to the police, of whom a posse had been sent to see to their removal. Daniel in the mean time had dodged them, and was smiling amidst the crowd at the amusing idea of their laying hold of them, or of even going into the yard to them. The police reported on the utter impossibility of removing them to any other part of the town, their “character” having been so thoroughly published already to all parts; and it was advised, to the utter discomfiture of the old lady, that it would be best for them to remain there until they should be removed to London, and that I should pay for all damages. The poor old lady afterwards had a final interview with Daniel in the crowd, when she very judiciously resolved that if the bears did not move, she must—which she did that night, and placed Daniel in her bed, as the guardian of her property and of his pets, until the third or fourth day afterwards, when they were moved to the railway, and by it (night and day, catching what glimpses they could of the country they were serenading with their howls and growls as they passed through it under their tarpaulin) they were conveyed to the great metropolis.
Owing to the multiplicity of articles to be examined and inventoried in the customs, and the great embarrassment of the clerics in writing down their Indian names, my labours were protracted there to much tediousness; but when all was brought to a close by their proposing, most judiciously, to count the number of curiosities instead of wasting paper and time and paralysing my jaws by pronouncing half a dozen times over, and syllable by syllable, their Indian names, my collection of eight tons weight was all on the road and soon at the Euston station in London, where we again recognised the mournful cries of the grizlies, who had arrived the night before.
On arriving at the station, I found Daniel at a small inn in the vicinity, where he seemed highly excited by some unpleasant altercation he had had with the landlord and inmates of the house, growing out of national and political prejudices, which had most probably been too strongly advanced on both sides. Daniel had suddenly raised a great excitement in the neighbourhood by his arrival with the grizly bears, whose occasional howlings had attracted crowds of people, curious to know the nature of the strange arrival; and all inquirers about the station being referred to their keeper, who was at the inn, brought Daniel and his patience into notoriety at once.
Daniel ([Plate No. 2]) is an Irishman, who emigrated to the United States some twenty years since, and, by dint of his industry and hard labour, had met with success in acquiring an humble independence, and had formed the most undoubted attachment to the Government and its institutions; and, from his reading, and conversation with the world, had informed himself tolerably well in political matters, which he was always ready to discuss; and being rather of a hasty and irascible temperament, he often got into debates of that nature, that led him into danger of unpleasant results. It was in the midst of one of these that I found him at the inn, surrounded by at least a hundred labouring men and idlers from the streets, who had been drawn around him at first, as I have said, to get some information of the bears, but who had changed their theme, and were now besieging him on all sides, to combat him on some political dogma he had advanced relative to his favourite and adopted country, the United States; or to taunt him with slaunts at his native country, all of which, with his native wit, he was ready to meet with ability, until, as he afterwards told me, “they were showered upon him so rapidly, and from so many quarters at once, that it became quite impossible to answer them, and that the stupid ignorance and impertinence of some of them had worn out all his patience, and irritated him to that degree, that I must excuse him for the excitement I had found him under when I arrived.” With much difficulty I rescued him from the crowd that had enclosed him, and, retiring to a private room, after matters of business had been arranged, he gave me the following account of the difficulties he had just been in, and of the incidents of his journey from Liverpool to London with the bears.