A Way in the World (33 page)

Miranda’s travels continue, year after year: this has almost become his career. There is always someone willing to provide the would-be liberator with money. As for passion, there
are constant brutal passages with chambermaids, servant women, prostitutes. There are also constant quarrels with servants. They often seem to sniff out his fraudulence or dependence, and he, with his Venezuelan-colonial ideas of authority, often roughs them up. At the upper level there continue to be introductions, onwards and onwards. The farther away from home he goes the easier it gets.

In Russia he becomes a colonel again, a Mexican nobleman, and a count. Catherine the Great herself becomes worried about what the Inquisition might do to him if he falls into Spanish hands. When he tells her that the Spanish ambassador has been challenging his right to call himself a colonel, she makes him a colonel in the Russian service. She gives him money; she tells him that the Russian embassies in Europe will always be open to him.

His reputation now feeds on itself; his failures no longer matter. When he goes back to England he enters into serious negotiations with the British government. The negotiations drag on for years, and nothing happens. But when he goes to France they make him a general in their revolutionary army. That ends in a military disaster at the siege of Maastricht, his imprisonment and trial. That doesn’t do him any harm in England; in fact, he goes back, quite legitimately, as a general. For years, then, until he is fifty-five, British plans for the invasion or liberation of South America expand and contract and expand again around General Miranda. Once there is even a plan for a conquest of the continent with ten thousand sepoys from India.

Through these years of waiting and disappointment Miranda doesn’t dwindle. He grows; he becomes more and more educated. Experience, knowledge of the world, and the acquaintance of great men have taken him far from the contrabandist captain of twenty years before. He handles himself as the head of a government in waiting. At the beginning he might have talked moralistically of the broken promises of ministers who have kept him dangling. But now he knows
that men are linked by interest and he knows what he has to offer. A British invasion without him would be resisted by the people of Spanish America. Someone like him is needed. And it is only when he fears that he will lose his role, when he sees himself useless in London in old age, that he commits himself to his absurd one-ship invasion.

THIS IS
the man who comes to the Gulf in 1806, after the failure of his first invasion. He should be ridiculous, but he isn’t. There will be a new invasion soon, this time with the help of the British fleet in the Caribbean. The generals and admirals are all for Miranda. They want the great estates in South America that Miranda’s victory will bring.

A British warship brings him from Barbados to Port of Spain. This is partly to protect him from the mutinous American mercenaries on his own ship, the
Leander
. They haven’t been paid for the whole of the year, and they have no faith in Miranda’s leadership.

Miranda is welcomed on the pier by the Trinidad governor, General Hislop. Hislop is a man of jangled nerves. He is forty, and fading. His last military service was twenty years before, in Gibraltar. He has been ten years in the West Indies in semi-administrative posts and drinks too much. He has been governor of Trinidad for three years, and he hates the island and the people.

Hislop has just had to deal with what he thought was a slave rebellion. That gave him a fright, and now he is nervous about the legality of what was done then—the hangings and the mutilations—and what has been done in his name since he became governor. He feels that everything he has done or presided over can be challenged, because since the British conquest there has been no agreed system of law. No one knows whether Spanish law operates or English law, and there are no proper lawyers to give advice about either system.

Miranda is without power. He lives on subventions from
merchants in London and now New York, and on uncertain grants from the British government. He depends now on British support for his second invasion attempt. Hislop is the representative of the British power. But at their meeting now Hislop is the suppliant, Miranda the man with the thing he can grant. Miranda recognizes that Hislop is a suppliant, and he knows that the request, when it comes, will be something like this: “General, should you have room in South America at some time for a military man, please do not hesitate to call on me.”

They drive up through the wretched little town. Away from the principal square, near the pier, many of the building plots are empty and overgrown. The streets of the Spanish-laid-out town have now been given British names, of royalty and military men: King, Queen, Prince, Duke, George, Charlotte, Frederick, St. Vincent, Abercromby. It is the rainy season, and the dirt roads are muddy and the air is warm and moist.

Government House, where Miranda is to stay as a guest of the governor, is to the north, at the foot of the hills.

The two men talk about the invasion force.

Hislop says, “We can’t give you any of our own troops, of course. But the Americans on your ship will have to go with you. Some of them are saying they will stay here, but I will let them know that they are allowed to be here only as members of your force. I have identified the ringleader among the Americans.”

“Biggs.”

“That’s it. We can deal with Biggs. The Spanish authorities are another matter. They have been spreading the word that the island will go back to Spain when the peace comes. This means that none of the Spaniards here will volunteer. They are also spreading the rumour that you will set all the slaves free. This is to discourage the French volunteers. Rouvray has got about a hundred and ninety French volunteers.
They will want to hear from you that you will secure property rights in slaves. That’s what it always comes down to in this part of the world, as you know. Land and slaves. As governor of this place there are times when I feel I am just a jailer for the planters.”

Miranda says, “I asked for letters to be sent here.”

“You have quite a few. Some have been sent on from Tortola, some from the Leeward Islands station. And Mr. Turnbull has sent me boxes of leaflets and samples for you. You are to distribute them when you land in Venezuela. With your recommendations. Some people have a very simple idea of military operations.”

Government House is in need of repair. Hislop apologizes. He says the Treasury of the island is empty. The previous administrator had very grand ideas of the style in which he and his family and his secretaries should live. He stayed for only six months, but he left a hole. After that there was the expense of fortifications, some of them now abandoned. The few public works Negroes that are now employed about the Government House grounds—mud-stained, in ragged brown linen clothes: the standard slave wear: Miranda has seen it on Negroes during the drive through the town—have been bought from the dealers on credit.

“They are not carpenters or craftsmen,” Hislop says. “A carpenter would have cost a hundred pounds. These cost sixty. And they’re new Negroes. From Africa. No good for anything except in a field gang, and they don’t speak English or French. The story is that the trade is going to be stopped next year, so the merchants are bringing in as many new Negroes as they can now. That’s creating its own problems. If you stay here long enough, that’s all you start thinking about. Negroes and land.

“It will be no surprise to you, General, that you are in demand here. Miss McLurie wants to meet you. She’s one of our ladies. She came in 1802 and is suffering from the lack
of society. She wears a transparency. That’s what she calls it. It shows her bosom. Apparently it’s the latest fashion. She wants to hear from your very own lips about Lady Hester Stanhope and Catherine the Great. These stories have preceded you. That’s the way it is with famous people, and you are the most famous man to have come here. Before you came, I suppose Commodore Samuel Hood was the most famous man we had here. Nelson’s second-in-command at the Battle of the Nile.”

Miranda says, “I met Hood before he came out here.”

“And Be’nard wants to see you. He has been very pressing in the last week.” Hislop pronounced the French name in an English way, making it sound like “Bennard.” “He is a planter, courtesy of de Gourville. He is married to de Gourville’s daughter. This makes him a relation by marriage of Baron de Montalembert. Be’nard doesn’t let you forget it. The baron is one of our biggest planters. He will be a good man to get on your side. He came here from Santo Domingo five or six years ago. His estate is just around the corner from here. Just after he came here he lost a hundred and twenty of his Negroes by poison. It is a famous story. I am sure Be’nard will tell it again. He is going to call very soon.”

“Bernard. I knew a Bernard in Paris. He later came to London. I sent out a Bernard here from England seven years ago. To keep an eye on things for me. He came and I never heard a word. Not a word. Will this be the same man? Worried that I’m turning up? Or deciding that there is something I can do for him? What do you think, General?”

“General Miranda, you asked just now about your letters. They are in your room. But there is another. It was thrown into the sentry box yesterday morning. It is anonymous. It may be abusive of me. It is what I’ve had to live with here. I am not Sure that honour applies here, but I pass that letter on to you as a matter of honour. My request is that you will handle it in the same way. You have been the object of calumny
and persecution yourself, General. It is very easy to be vilified in a place like this.”

The men separate. Dinner is to be at three. Miranda goes to his section of the house, henceforth his headquarters. He sees the satchels with the Tortola and Leeward Islands mail. And the folded dingy anonymous letter Hislop mentioned.

The room is at the back of the house. The grass and trees outside are wet from the recent rain. A hill rises up not far away. The air is damp, and the very smell of rain and earth and dead leaves brings back to Miranda the smell of the cocoa valleys to the north of Caracas, and reminds him of the sacks of cocoa beans his father had sent with him on the
Prins Frederik
in 1771, to be changed for money in Cadiz.

The room is full of small, yellowish lizards; their droppings are everywhere. There is a muslin canopy over the bed, to protect it from dust and termite wood-dust and things like lizard droppings. The canopy is discoloured and in its folds or wrinkles grey with old dust; it sags in the damp air.

Outside there is movement, talk. The slaves are not speaking Spanish or French or English, but an African language.

He begins to shape a letter in his head: “My dear Sally, this is a kind of homecoming for me, after thirty-five years. It is quite amazing: I know this rainy-season smell. Soon I suppose the rain and the wind will bring the smell of the vanilla vine. I feel I know this place very well. It is my own. It exists in my mind. But it is now full of strangers. I don’t like the sensation. I feel a great gap. Without the thought of you I would be quite lost.”

He opens the Tortola satchel and soon, among the official, secretary-written letters, sees the broad, irregular, awkward handwriting he has been looking for.

“27 Grafton Street, Fitzroy Square, London. April 15th. My ever dear General, I embrace this opportunity of writing to you my dear Sir for wile I am a night and the two babies
are asleep it seames as if I am talking to my dear Friend Himself and can hear his own voice. Leander has set down his drum and sword and gun, we have had a fair in the Road, and he makes such a noise my dear Sir saying Mamy I am going to the war to fight for the General—”

Miranda thinks, partly framing his reply, “
Querida
. My dear Sally, I love every misspelt word you write and every mistake you make. These words you wrote four months ago come to me now with your own voice. I can see my house and the library and the books again. I think without you, my dear Sally, I would become quite dizzy here, in this place I don’t know any longer, and try not to see too clearly or find out too much about, where the Negroes talk in an African language, and I can still smell the cocoa estates all around …”

“Leander sleeping is the picture of my dear Sir. My uncle from Yorkshire is with us to keep us company and to get some London portrait work. He sets Leander down in the G’s library, I must tell you I light a fire there one day every week winter and summer, and my uncle draws his picture but he doesnt set still a moment. And I am very flatter that everybody says he has the Wisdom of twice his years. My dear Sir I have followed all your Instructions and I now propose to give you the regular Budget of news Mr. Rutherfurd says I should give you to keep your Spirits up in all your trying circumstances. I talk in my mind every night to my dear G, but I don’t have news every day.

“My dear Sir your second son and mine Francisco was born on the 27th of February. All that day my thoughts were of you and your danger on the High Seas. You wished this son to have your own name, and Francisco and Leander were both of them Baptised as agreed on the 23rd of March. Mr. Rutherfurd came in the morning with Mr. Longchamp and they took us to St. Patrick’s Soho Square in a Coach. Mr. Longchamp responded for both babis. Father Gaffey wrote Mr. Longchamps name wrong in the Register and had to
scratch it out both times. I give here the copy of the Baptismal Certificate for Francisco that Father Gaffey gave me for my dear Sir it’s all in Latting so the G. must forgive errors.
Die
23
a Martii
1806
baptisatus fuit Franciscus filius Francisci Miranda et Sarae Andrews. Natus die
27
a Februarii praecedentis. Patrinis juit Joannes Michael Jean du Longchamp. Per Daniel Gaffey.

“When we went back to Grafton street Mr. Rutherfurd told me that not a few Eyebrows had been raised by the Roman Catholic Baptism with certain people we well know saying that you said one thing but in your heart of hearts were another. But I kept my peace about my dear Gen’s intentions, and I thought hard of him and his dangers that day and the next when as agreed I knew that after the Baptism of our sons my G would be making his Officers swear to serve the people of South America and their new Flag. I think about that Flag my dear Sir the hours I spent making it here in Grafton Street spreading it out sometimes on the floor of the library, with Leander tied to the table leg so he couldn’t get too close—”