‘Swart’s father seems to have taken the same interest in public affairs as his more famous son. He would often tell the boy of his patriotic satisfaction in the Act of 1816, which regulated the detention of Napoleon at St. Helena. He felt, as he used to say, that they had got Boney safe at last, and he could now breathe as freely as his fluffy cough would allow. Swart’s infant mother was indifferent to that great event, for she was bearing Swart in her bosom, at the factory, within three days of her delivery of him into this joyous world. Having performed this function, she went to join her ancestors, whose pedigree, I regret to say, it is impossible to trace. Swart’s father used to remark that he had been less fortunate than Prince Leopold, who, on taking the Princess Charlotte to wife, at about this time, secured 50,000l. a year with her, dead or alive. He meant to say, of course, that the grant was to be continued to the Prince in the event of the lady’s demise. It was a generous gift, for the nation had been left in extreme poverty and misery by the great war. The Marquis Camden subsequently surrendered his sinecure, “towards the relief of the public burdens,” in the handsomest way in the world, and the Prince Regent found he could spare 50,000l. a year from his own ample revenues, for the same purpose. Swart’s father was particularly touched by this last act of self-denial, and he expressed a hope that his Prince might never want a meal. The wish must have been heard in Heaven. The people at large were not so fortunate: they became like wild beasts with hunger; they rioted at Ely, they rioted at Spa-Fields. The country blazed with incendiary fires, as though for a second celebration of the Peace. The hero who had conquered the Peace was not forgotten; and Strathfieldsaye was purchased for the Duke of Wellington.
‘Swart’s father had once enjoyed the felicity of seeing his Grace, and had taken so careful a note of him that he knew the number of buttons on his blue frock-coat. It was not his only souvenir of greatness:—“Father once met the Marquis of Waterford, when his lordship was out on one of his larks. The Marquis gave father a black eye, and half a crown.”’
Victoria knotted something again: I fancy it was ‘black eye.’
‘Darkness covers the Swarts for a brief space, but in the middle of the eighteenth century they flash into view again with “Father’s great grandfather,” sold into the Plantations for indigence, in the flower of his age. Some of the workers had their fixed term of servitude, just like the burglars now; their masters were at liberty to whip them, and to impose additional years of servitude, if they ran away. “He got nabbed in a rumpus,” says Swart, “when they was taking old Commodore Anson’s treasure to the Tower. You look in the books, sir; you’ll find that right. This here Commodore had sailed round the world, and had made many rich prizes; and a million and a quarter in treasure was taken down to the Tower to be stowed away. There was thirty-two waggon loads of it, the old man counted ’em, and somehow our family’s never forgot the number. All our sort turned out, as you may fancy, to see the waggons go by. Father’s grandfather was a bit pushed at the time, and used to sleep on a brick kiln, with a few other chaps out of luck. There was no sleep that night; they couldn’t have closed their eyes, he said, if it had been a bed of down. It was such a great day for England! They all sat up singin’ songs out in the fields, till it was time to start and see the procession. The old man allus said he wasn’t a bit drunk, for he hadn’t tasted bite or sup that day. It was the sight of the waggons, somehow, seemed to make him turn faint. Anyhow, I suppose he behaved foolish, for they collared him, and as I told you, he was sold off. He couldn’t give no account of hisself—they’ve allus been very hard on you for that. Father’s grandfather’s wife went out after him, all the way to this ’ere Plantation, wherever it was. It took her three months to go, but she lost his address, and so she had to come back. They never met again. She once did some washing for Mr. Pitt, him that was made a nobleman: you’ll find that right. She died at the washtub, that was the end of her. She was a game ’un, she was; no mistake about that!”’
Poor Vickey! I see the great drops gathering, and I know they are just going to roll over: so I push on.
‘“Some of our women didn’t turn out so well. I don’t want to foul my own nest, sir, you understand, but it’s sometimes a great struggle in a poor man’s family to get enough to eat for growing gals. They always aimed above ’em though, our women did: I will say that. One of ’em took up with a master bootmaker in Bond Street by the name of Simmons—made for the Royal Family. That was my grandmother, as she might be called. I’ve heard that I might give myself the name of Fitz-Simmons, if I chose, but Swart’ll do for me. I only mention it to show that she had not demeaned herself so much as some might think.
‘“Father’s grandfather was the man in the corner of one of Mr. Hogarth’s pictures—the one ’avin’ his ’ed battered with the pewter. Ah, they was ’igh old times!”
‘I could but regard this reference to a family portrait as another note of antiquity of race. There was even some trace of a family library in a street ballad sung by a progenitor of Swart at the Coronation of George IV., and still in excellent preservation between the fly leaves of the book of Truth. In rugged, but heartfelt and effusive verse, it called on the whole earth to rejoice. A family museum of curios, often another note of lineage, was wanting, except in so far as it might be found in a red waistcoat that had belonged to Mr. Townsend, the famous Bow Street runner, who had “once locked grandfather up.” Swart had heard that it was worth money, but he could never get more than sixpence on it at the tally shop, and he had offered it in vain to Madame Tussaud.
‘Here the Bible record, and Swart’s memory of the direct oral tradition ended, but I could not have his story stop. I, therefore, went down to the Heralds’ College, and to the Record Office, and by liberal fees to certain yellow men called searchers, found out a good deal more. They proved to me beyond question, as I had long expected, that the Swarts had been always with us as actors in the great drama of history, only the managers had not thought it worth while to give them a line in the bills. As soon as I made it worth while to search beyond the bills, Swarts seemed to become as plentiful as blackberries. We found that nothing had been done without them. Dig down into the foundation of any fair structure of Imperial greatness, and you were pretty sure to come upon a Swart, if only as rubbish for the filling-in. One of them was certainly among the two-and-seventy thousand vagrants hanged, or otherwise despatched, in the reign of Bluff King Hal. They were enclosing a good deal at that time, and the Bluff one had broken up the monasteries, where the Swarts had often found a meal. These operations filled the country with vagrants, and the vagrants had to be removed. They were flogged, and fined in one of their ears, for a first offence, and hung up like flitches, for a second, and thus effectually cured. A Swort or Swyrt, of Norfolk, which, as before stated, was their country seat, had been branded as an able bodied loiterer as far back as 1547.
‘To form an idea of their situation, one must watch a fly trying to crawl out of a pot of jam. You leave him there in the morning: you find him there at night. Never, never, in the summer’s day, nor in dateless eternity, shall that fly get clear!’