Catherine: A Story

by William Makepeace Thackeray

And here, having brought him upon the scene again, we may as well shortly narrate some of the principal circumstances which befell him after his sudden departure from Birmingham; and which he narrated with much candour to Mrs. Catherine.

He rode the Captain's horse to Oxford (having exchanged his military dress for a civil costume on the road), and at Oxford he disposed of “George of Denmark,” a great bargain, to one of the heads of colleges. As soon as Mr. Brock, who took on himself the style and title of Captain Wood, had sufficiently examined the curiosities of the University, he proceeded at once to the capital: the only place for a gentleman of his fortune and figure.

Here he read, with a great deal of philosophical indifference, in the Daily Post, the Courant, the Observator, the Gazette, and the chief journals of those days, which he made a point of examining at “Button's” and “Will's,” an accurate description of his person, his clothes, and the horse he rode, and a promise of fifty guineas' reward to any person who would give an account of him (so that he might be captured) to Captain Count Galgenstein at Birmingham, to Mr. Murfey at the “Golden Ball” in the Savoy, or Mr. Bates at the “Blew Anchor in Pickadilly.” But Captain Wood, in an enormous full-bottomed periwig that cost him sixty pounds,[*] with high red heels to his shoes, a silver sword, and a gold snuff-box, and a large wound (obtained, he said, at the siege of Barcelona), which disfigured much of his countenance, and caused him to cover one eye, was in small danger, he thought, of being mistaken for Corporal Brock, the deserter of Cutts's; and strutted along the Mall with as grave an air as the very best nobleman who appeared there. He was generally, indeed, voted to be very good company; and as his expenses were unlimited (“A few convent candlesticks,” my dear, he used to whisper, “melt into a vast number of doubloons”), he commanded as good society as he chose to ask for: and it was speedily known as a fact throughout town, that Captain Wood, who had served under His Majesty Charles III. of Spain, had carried off the diamond petticoat of Our Lady of Compostella, and lived upon the proceeds of the fraud. People were good Protestants in those days, and many a one longed to have been his partner in the pious plunder.

* In the ingenious contemporary history of Moll Flanders, a
periwig is mentioned as costing that sum.

All surmises concerning his wealth, Captain Wood, with much discretion, encouraged. He contradicted no report, but was quite ready to confirm all; and when two different rumours were positively put to him, he used only to laugh, and say, “My dear sir, I don't make the stories; but I'm not called upon to deny them; and I give you fair warning, that I shall assent to every one of them; so you may believe them or not, as you please.” And so he had the reputation of being a gentleman, not only wealthy, but discreet. In truth, it was almost a pity that worthy Brock had not been a gentleman born; in which case, doubtless, he would have lived and died as became his station; for he spent his money like a gentleman, he loved women like a gentleman, he would fight like a gentleman, he gambled and got drunk like a gentleman. What did he want else? Only a matter of six descents, a little money, and an estate, to render him the equal of St. John or Harley. “Ah, those were merry days!” would Mr. Brock say,—for he loved, in a good old age, to recount the story of his London fashionable campaign;—“and when I think how near I was to become a great man, and to die perhaps a general, I can't but marvel at the wicked obstinacy of my ill-luck.”

“I will tell you what I did, my dear: I had lodgings in Piccadilly, as if I were a lord; I had two large periwigs, and three suits of laced clothes; I kept a little black dressed out like a Turk; I walked daily in the Mall; I dined at the politest ordinary in Covent Garden; I frequented the best of coffee-houses, and knew all the pretty fellows of the town; I cracked a bottle with Mr. Addison, and lent many a piece to Dick Steele (a sad debauched rogue, my dear); and, above all, I'll tell you what I did—the noblest stroke that sure ever a gentleman performed in my situation.

“One day, going into 'Will's,' I saw a crowd of gentlemen gathered together, and heard one of them say, 'Captain Wood! I don't know the man; but there was a Captain Wood in Southwell's regiment.' Egad, it was my Lord Peterborough himself who was talking about me. So, putting off my hat, I made a most gracious conge to my Lord, and said I knew HIM, and rode behind him at Barcelona on our entry into that town.

“'No doubt you did, Captain Wood,' says my Lord, taking my hand; 'and no doubt you know me: for many more know Tom Fool, than Tom Fool knows.' And with this, at which all of us laughed, my Lord called for a bottle, and he and I sat down and drank it together.

“Well, he was in disgrace, as you know, but he grew mighty fond of me, and—would you believe it?—nothing would satisfy him but presenting me at Court! Yes, to Her Sacred Majesty the Queen, and my Lady Marlborough, who was in high feather. Ay, truly, the sentinels on duty used to salute me as if I were Corporal John himself! I was on the high road to fortune. Charley Mordaunt used to call me Jack, and drink canary at my chambers; I used to make one at my Lord Treasurer's levee; I had even got Mr. Army-Secretary Walpole to take a hundred guineas as a compliment: and he had promised me a majority: when bad luck turned, and all my fine hopes were overthrown in a twinkling.

“You see, my dear, that after we had left that gaby, Galgenstein,—ha, ha—with a gag in his mouth, and twopence-halfpenny in his pocket, the honest Count was in the sorriest plight in the world; owing money here and there to tradesmen, a cool thousand to the Warwickshire Squire: and all this on eighty pounds a year! Well, for a little time the tradesmen held their hands; while the jolly Count moved heaven and earth to catch hold of his dear Corporal and his dear money-bags over again, and placarded every town from London to Liverpool with descriptions of my pretty person. The bird was flown, however,—the money clean gone,—and when there was no hope of regaining it, what did the creditors do but clap my gay gentleman into Shrewsbury gaol: where I wish he had rotted, for my part.