The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campell

CHAPTER VIII

But before we proceed to our disquisitions concerning the power and efficacy of natural magic, and examine what mysterious operations may be brought about and compassed by magical practises, and before we take a farther survey of what Mr. Campbell has performed in this kind, that relates to his profession and the public part of his life, which concerns other people as well as himself; I shall here relate some singular adventures that he passed through in his private life, and which regard only his own person. In order to this, I must return back to the year 1702, about which time some unaccountable turns of fortune attended him in his own private capacity, which must be very surprising and entertaining to my readers, when they find a man, whose foresight was always so great a help and assistance to others, who consulted him in their own future affairs, helpless, as it has been an observation concerning all such men in the account of the second-sight, and blind in his own future affairs, tossed up and down by inevitable and spiteful accidents of fortune, and made the may-game of chance and hazard, as if that wayward and inconstant goddess, was resolved to punish him, when she catched him on the blind side, for having such a quick insight and penetrating faculty in other people's matters, and scrutinizing too narrowly into her mysteries, and so sometimes preventing those fatal intentions of hers, into which she would fain lead many mortals hood-winked, and before they knew where they were. In this light, these mighty and famous seers seem to be born for the benefit and felicity of others, but at the same time to be born to unhappiness themselves. And certainly, inasmuch as we consider them as useful and beneficial often, but always satisfactory to persons who are curious in their enquiries about their fortunes, it will be natural to those of us who have the least share of generosity in our minds, to yield our pity and compassion to them, when they are remarkably unfortunate themselves; especially when that calamity seems more particularly to light upon them for their ability, and endeavour to consult the good fortune of other folks.

About the above-mentioned year, 1702, Duncan Campbell grew a little tired of his profession; such a multitude of followers troubled him, several of whom were wild youths, and came to banter him, and many more too inquisitive females to tease him with endless impertinences, and who, the more he told them, had still the more to ask, and whose curiosity was never to be satisfied: and besides this, he was so much envied, and had so many malicious artifices daily practised against him, that he resolved to leave off his profession. He had, I know, followed it pretty closely from the time I first saw him in London, which was, I think, in the beginning of the year 1698, till the year 1702, with very good success; and in those few years he had got together a pretty round sum of money. Our young seer was now at man's estate, and had learned the notion that he was to be his own governor, so far as to be his own counsellor too in what road of life he was to take, and this consideration no doubt worked with a deeper impression on his mind, than it usually does on others that are in the same blossom and pride of manhood, because it might appear more natural for him to believe that he had a sufficient ability to be his own proper adviser, who had given so many others, and some more aged than himself, counsel, with very good success. Now every experienced person knows, that when manhood is yet green, it is still in the same dangerous condition as a young plant, which is liable to be warped by a thousand cross fortuitous accidents, if good measures be not taken to support it against all the contingent shocks it may meet with from the weather or otherwise. Now, it was his misfortune to be made averse to business, which he loved before, by having too much of it, and to be so soured by meeting with numerous perplexities and malicious rubs laid in his way by invidious people, (who are the useless and injurious busy-bodies that always repine at the good of others, and rejoice to do harm to the diligent and assiduous, though they reap no profit by it themselves), that he was disgusted and deterred entirely from the prosecution of a profession by which he got not only a competent but a copious and plentiful subsistence. Nay, indeed, this was another mischief arising to him from his having so much business, that he had got money enough to leave it off, when the perplexities of it had made him willing to do so, and to live very comfortably and handsomely, like a gentleman, without it, for a time; and we know the youngest men are not wont to look the farthest before them, in matters that concern their own welfare. Now, inasmuch as he had thus taken a disgust to business and application, and was surfeited, as I may say, with the perplexities of it, it must be as natural for him, we know, to search for repose in the contrary extreme, viz., recreation and idleness, as it is for a man to seek rest after toil, to sleep after a day's labour, or to sit down after a long and tiresome walk. But there are two very distinct sorts of idleness, and two very different kinds of recreation; there is a shameful idleness which is no better than downright sloth; and there is a splendid kind of indolence, where a man having taken an aversion to the wearisomeness of a business which properly belongs to him, neglects not however to employ his thoughts, when they are vacant from what they ought more chiefly to be about, in other matters not entirely unprofitable in life, the exercise of which he finds he can follow with more abundant ease and satisfaction. There are some sorts of recreations, too, that are mean, sordid, and base; others that are very innocent, though very diverting, and that will give one the very next most valuable qualifications of a gentleman, after those which are obtained by a more serious application of the mind. The idea which I have already given my readers of our Duncan Campbell, will easily make them judge, before I tell them, which way, in these two ways, his genius would naturally lead him; and that, when he grew an idle man, he would rather indulge himself with applying his mind to the shining trifles of life, than be wholly slothful and inactive; and that when he diverted himself he would not do it after a sordid, base manner, as having a better taste and a relish for good company; but that his recreations would still be the recreations of a gentleman. And just, accordingly, as my readers would naturally judge beforehand in his case, so it really happened. The moment he shook off business, and dismissed the thoughts of it, his genius led him to a very gallant way of life; in his lodgings, in his entertainments, in paying and receiving visits, in coffee-houses, in taverns, in fencing-schools, in balls, and other public assemblies, in all ways, in fine, both at home and abroad, Duncan Campbell was a well-comported and civil fine gentleman; he was a man of pleasure, and nothing of the man of business appeared about him. But a gentleman's life, without a gentleman's estate, however shining and pleasant it may be for a time, will certainly end in sorrow, if not in infamy; and comparing life, as moralists do, to a day, one may safely pronounce this truth to all the splendid idlers I have mentioned, that if they have sunshiny weather till noon, yet the afternoon of their life will be very stormy, rainy and uncomfortable, and perhaps just at the end of their journey, to carry on the metaphor throughout, close in the darkest kind of night. Of this, as I was a man of years and more experienced in the world than he, I took upon me to forewarn Mr. Campbell, as soon as I perceived the first dangerous fit of this elegant idleness had seized him. But when will young men, by so much the more headstrong as they have less of the beard, be guided and brought to learn! and when shall we see that happy age, in which the grey heads of old men shall be clapped upon the shoulders of youth! I told him, that in this one thing he ought to consult me, and acknowledge me to be a true prophet, if I told him the end of the seeming merry steps in life he was now taking, would infallibly bring him to a labyrinth of difficulties, out of which if he extricated himself at all, he would at least find it a laborious piece of work. His taste had been already vitiated with the sweets which lay at the top of the bitter draught of fortune, and my honest rugged counsel came too late to prevail, when his fancy had decoyed and debauched his judgment, and carried it over into another interest. I remember I writ down to him the moral story, where vicious Pleasure and Virtue are pictured by the philosopher to appear before Hercules, to court him into two several paths. I told him more particularly, since he had not an estate to go through with the gentlemanly life, as he called it, that, if he followed the alluring pleasures which endeavoured to tempt Hercules, he would involve himself at last in a whole heap of miseries, out of which it would be more than an Herculean labour for him to disentangle himself again. If he had been a man that could have ever heard with either, I would have told the reader in a very familiar idiom, that he turned the deaf ear to me; for he did not mind one syllable or tittle of the prescriptions I set down for him, no more than if he had never read them; but, varying the phrase a little, I may say at least, when he should have looked upon my counsel with all the eyes he had, he turned the blind side upon it. I was resolved to make use of the revenge natural to a man of years, and therefore applied that reproachful proverb to him, which we ancients delight much in making use of to youths that follow their own false and hot imaginations, and will not heed the cooler dictates of age, experience, and wisdom. Accordingly, I wrote down to him these words, and left him in a seeming passion: I am very well assured, young man, you think me that am old, to be a fool; but I that am old, absolutely know you, who are a young fellow, to be a downright fool, and so I leave you to follow your own ways, till sad and woful experience teaches you to know it your own self, and makes you come to me to own it of your own accord. As I was going away, after this tart admonition and severe reprimand, I had a mind to observe his countenance, and I saw him smile, which I rightly construed to be done in contempt of the advice of age, and in the gaiety and fulness of conceit, which youth entertains of its own fond opinions and hair-brained rash resolves. He was got into the company of a very pretty set of gentlemen, whose fortunes were far superior to his; but he followed the same genteel exercises, as fencing, &c., and made one at all their public entertainments; and so being at an equal expense with those who could well afford to spend what they did out of their estates, he went on very pleasantly for a time, still spending and never getting, without ever considering that it must, by inevitable consequence, fall to his lot at last to be entirely reduced to a state of indigence and want. And what commonly heightens the misfortune of such men, and so of all gentlemen's younger brothers, who live upon the ready money that is given them for their portions, is, that the prosperity they live in for a time gains them credit enough just to bring them in debt, and render them more miserable than those very wretches who never had either any money or credit at all. They run themselves into debt out of shame, and to put off the evil day of appearing ruined men as long as they can, and then, when their tempers are soured by adversity, they grow tired of their own lives; and then, in a quarrel, they or some other gentleman, may be, is run through, or else being hunted by bailiffs, they exercise their swords upon those pursuers. Thus, where gentlemen will not consider their circumstances, their very prosperity is a cause of, and aggravates their misery; their very pride, which was a decent pride at first, in keeping up and maintaining their credit, subjects them too often to the lowest and the meanest acts, and their courage, which was of a laudable kind, turns into a brutish and savage rage; and all the fine, esteemed, flourishing, and happy gentleman ends, and is lost in the contemned, poor and miserable desperado, whose portion at last is confinement and a gaol, and sometimes even worse, and what I shall not so much as name here. Into many of these calamities Mr. Campbell had brought himself before it was long, by his heedlessness, and running, according to the wild dictates of youth, counter to all sound and wholesome advice. He had, it seems, run himself into debt, and one day as he was at a coffee-house, the sign of the Three Crowns, in Great Queen-street, in rushed four bailiffs upon him, who being directed by the creditor's wife, had watched him into that house, and told him they had a warrant against him, and upon his not answering, they being unacquainted with his being deaf and dumb, offered to seize his sword. He startled at their offering of violence, and taking them for ruffians, which he had often met with, repelled the assaulters, and drawing his sword, as one man, more bold than the rest, closed in with him, he shortened his blade, and in the fall pinned the fellow through the shoulder, and himself through the leg, to the floor. After that he stood at bay with all the four officers, when the most mischievous assailant of them all, the creditor's wife, ventured to step into the fray, and very barbarously took hold of that nameless part of the man, for which, as she was a married woman, nature methinks should have taught her to have a greater tenderness, and almost squeezed and crushed those vitals to death. But at last he got free from them all, and was going away as fast as he could, not knowing what consequences might ensue. But the woman who aimed herself at committing murder, in the most savage and inhuman manner, ran out after him, crying out, Murder! murder! as loud as she could, and alarmed the whole street. The bailiffs following the woman, and being bloody from head to foot, by means of the wound he received, gave credit to the outcry. The late Earl Rivers's footmen happening to be at the door, ran immediately to stop the supposed murderer, and they indeed did take him at last, but perceived their mistake, and discovered that instead of being assistants in taking a man whom they thought to be a murderer endeavouring to make his escape from the hands of justice, they had only been tricked in by that false cry to be adjutants to a bailiff in retaking a gentleman, who, by so gallant a defence, had rescued himself from the dangers of a prison; and when they had discovered this their mistake they were mighty sorry for what they had done. The most active and busy among the earl's footmen was a Dutchman, and the earl happening to be in a room next the street, and hearing the outcry of murder, stepped to the window, and seeing his own servants in the midst of the bustle, examined the Dutchman how the matter was, and, being told it, he chid the man for being concerned in stopping a gentleman that was getting free from such troublesome companions. But the Dutchman excused himself, like a Dutchman, by making a very merry blunder for a reply; Sacramente, said he, to his lord, if I had thought they were bailiffs, I would have fought for the poor dumb gentlemen, but then why had he not told me they were bailiffs, my lord?

In short, Duncan Campbell was carried off as their prisoner; but the bailiff that was wounded was led back to the coffee-house, where he pretended the wound was mortal, and that he despaired of living an hour. The proverb, however, was of the fellow's side, and he recovered sooner than other people expected he could. As soon as all danger was over, an action for damages and smart money, as their term is, was brought against Mr. Campbell; the damages were exaggerated and the demand was so extravagant, that Duncan Campbell was neither able, just at that time, nor willing, had he been able, to pay so much, as he thought, in his own wrong, and having no bail, and being ashamed to make his case known to his better sort of friends, who were both able and willing to help him at a dead lift, he was hurried away to gaol by the bailiffs, who showed such a malignant and insolent pleasure, as commonly attends powerful revenge, when they put him into the Marshalsea. There he lay in confinement six weeks, till at last four or five of his chief friends came by mere chance to hear of it; immediately they consulted about his deliverance, and unanimously resolved to contribute for his enlargement, and they accordingly went across the water together, and procured it out of hand.

Two of his benefactors were officers, and were just then going over to Flanders. Duncan Campbell, to whom they communicated their design, was resolved to try his fortune in a military way, out of a roving kind of humour, raised in him partly by his having taken a sort of aversion to his own profession in town, and partly by his finding that he could not live, without following a profession, as he had done, any longer. He, over a bottle, frankly imparted his mind to them at large; he signified to them that he hoped, since they had lately done him so great a favour in freeing him from one captivity, they would not think him too urgent if he pressed for one favour farther, upon natures so generous as theirs, by whom he took as great a pleasure in being obliged, as he could receive in being capable of obliging others. He wrote to them that the favour he meant was to redeem him from another captivity, almost as irksome to him as that out of which they had lately ransomed him. This captivity, continued he, is being either forced to follow my old profession, which I have taken an entire disgust to, for a maintenance, or being forced to live in a narrower way than suits with my genius, and the better taste I have of higher life. Such a state, gentlemen, you know, is more unpalatable than half-pay; it is like either being forced to go upon the forlorn hope, or else like a man's being an entirely cashiered and broken officer, that had no younger brother's fortune, and no other support but his commission. Thus, though you have set my body at liberty, my soul is still under an imprisonment, and will be till I leave England, and can find means of visiting Flanders, which I can do no otherwise than by the advantage of having you for my convoy. I have a mighty longing to experience some part of a military life, and I fancy, if you will grant me your interest, and introduce me to the valiant young Lord Lorne, and be spokesmen for a dumb man, I shall meet with a favourable reception; and as for you, gentlemen, after having named that great patron and pattern of courage and conduct in the field, I can't doubt but the very name I bear, if you had not known me, would have made you take me for a person of a military genius, and that I should do nothing but what would become a British soldier, and a gentleman; nothing, in fine, that should make you repent the recommendation.

These generous and gallant friends of his, it seems, complied with his request, and promised they would make application for him to the Lord Lorne, and Duncan Campbell had nothing to do but to get his bag and baggage ready, and provide himself with a pass. His baggage was not very long a getting together, and he had it in tolerable good order, and as for his pass, a brother of the Lord Forbes was so kind as to procure him one upon the first application Duncan made to him.

Accordingly, in a few days afterwards, they went on board, and having a speedy and an easy passage, arrived soon at Rotterdam. Duncan met with some of his English acquaintance in that town, and his mind being pretty much bent upon rambling, and seeing all the curiosities, customs, and humours he could, in all the foreign places he was to pass through, he went, out of a frolic, with some gentlemen, next day, in a boat to an adjacent village, to make merry over a homely Dutch entertainment, the intended repast being to consist of what the boors there count a great delicacy, brown bread and white beer. He walked out of sight from his company, and they lost one another; and strolling about by himself at an unseasonable hour, as they call it there after the bell has tolled, Duncan Campbell, who neither knew their laws, nor if he had, was capable of being guided by the notice which their laws ordain, was taken into custody in the village, for that night, and carried away the next day to Williamstadt, where he was taken for a spy, and put into a close imprisonment for three or four days.

But some Scotch gentlemen, who had been in company with Mr. Campbell at Mr. Cloysterman's, a painter in Covent-garden, made their application to the magistrate and got him released; he knew his friends the officers, that carried him over, were gone forward to the camp, and that there was no hope of finding them at Rotterdam, if he should go thither, and so he resolved, since he had had so many days punishment in Williamstadt, to have three or four days pleasure there too, by way of amends, before he would set out on his journey after his friends. But on the third night he got very much in drink; and as he went very boisterously and disorderly along, a sentry challenged him; and the want of the sense of hearing had like to have occasioned the loss of his life. The sentry fired at him and narrowly missed him; he was taken prisoner, not without some resistance, which was so far innocent, as that he knew not any reason why he should be seized; but very troublesome and unwarrantable in so orderly a town; so the governor's secretary, after the matter was examined into, judging it better for the unhappy gentleman's future safety, advised him to return home to his own country, and accordingly bespoke him a place in a Dutch ship called Yowfrow Catherine, for his passage to England.

Duncan Campbell had taken up this humour of rambling, first, of his own accord, and the troubles which he had run himself into by it, we may reasonably suppose had pretty well cured him of that extravagant itch; and there is little doubt to be made but that he rejoiced very heartily when he was got on board the ship to return to England; and that in his new resolutions he had reconciled himself to the prosecution of his former profession, and intended to set up for a predictor again as soon as he could arrive at London. But now fortune had not a mind to let him go off so; he had had his own fancy for rambling, and now she was resolved to have hers, and to give him his bellyful of caprice. Accordingly, when the Dutch ship, called Yowfrow Catherine, was making the best of her road for London, and each person in the vessel was making merry, filled with the hopes of a quick and prosperous passage, a French privateer appeared in sight, crowding all the sails she could, and bearing towards them with all haste and diligence. The privateer was double-manned, and carried thirty guns; the Dutch vessel was defenceless in comparison; and the people on board had scarce time to think, and to deplore that they should be made a prey of, before they actually were so, and had reason enough given them for their sorrow. All the passengers, to a single man, were stripped, and had French seamen's jackets in exchange for their clothes. Duncan Campbell had now a taste given him of the fate of war, as well as of the humour of travelling, and wished himself again, I warrant him, among his greatest crowd of consulters, as tiresome as he thought business to be, instead of being in the middle of a crew of sea savages. The town where the dumb prisoner was at last confined was Denain. There happened to be some English friars there, who were told by the others who he was, and to them he applied himself in writing, and received from them a great deal of civil treatment. But a certain man of the order of Recollects, happening to see him there, who had known him in England, and what profession he followed, caused him to be called to question, as a man that made use of ill means to tell fortunes. When he was questioned by a whole society of these religious men, he made them such pertinent and satisfactory answers in writing, that he convinced them he had done nothing for which he deserved their reprimand; and they unanimously acquitted him. The heads of his defence, as I have been informed, were these: —

First, he alleged that the second-sight was inborn and inbred in some men; and that every country had had examples of it more or less; but that the country of Scotland, in which he was educated from an infant, abounded the most of any with those sort of people; and from thence he said he thought he might very naturally draw this conclusion, that a faculty that was inborn and inbred to men, and grown almost a national faculty among a people who were remarkably honest, upright, and well-meaning people, could not, without some impiety, be imputed to the possessors of it as a sin; and when one of the fathers rejoined that it was remarked by several writers of the second-sight, that it must be therefore sinful, because it remained no longer among the people when the doctrines of Christianity were fully propagated, and the light of the gospel increased among them; and that afterwards it affected none but persons of vicious lives and an ill character; to this objection Mr. Campbell replied, that he knew most (even ingenious) writers had made that remark concerning the second-sight, but begged leave to be excused, if he ventured to declare that it was no better than a vulgar and common error; and the reasons were these, which he alleged in his own behalf; and to confirm his assertion, he told them men of undoubted probity, virtue, and learning, both of their own religion, viz., the Roman Catholic, and also of the reformed religion, and in several nations, had been affected, and continued all their lives to be affected, with this second-sighted power, and that there could be, therefore, no room to fix upon it the odious character of being a sinful and vicious, not to say that some called it still worse, a diabolical talent. He said he would content himself with making but two instances, because he believed those two would be enough to give content to them, his judges too, in that case. In his first instance he told them that they might find somewhat relating to this in Nicolaus Hemingius, who, in his tracts de Superstitionibus Magicis, printed at Copenhagen, anno 1575, informs the world, that Petrus Palladius, a bishop of See-landt, and professor of divinity at Copenhagen, could, from a part of his body affected, foretell from what part of the heavens tempests would come, and was seldom deceived. One of the fathers immediately asked him if he understood Latin? To this Duncan Campbell replied, No. Oh! said the friar, then, I don't remember that book was ever translated into English, that you mention. But, rejoined Duncan Campbell, the passage I mentioned to you, I have read in an English book, and word for word, according to the best of my memory, as I have written it down to you. In what English book? said the friar. I don't remember the name of the book, Duncan Campbell answered, but very well remember the passages, and that it was in a book of authority, and which bore a credit and good repute in the world; and you, being scholars, may, if you please, have recourse to the learned original, and I doubt not but you'll find what I say to be a truth. For the second instance, he told them, that in Spain, there are those they call Saludadores, that have this kind of gift. There was, continued he, in writing, one of your own religion, venerable fathers, and of a religious order, nay, a friar too, that had this gift. He was a noted Dominican, said he, and though I forget his name, you may, by writing a letter to England, learn his name. He was a devout Portuguese, belonging to Queen Catherine Dowager's chapel, and had the second-sight to a great degree, and was famous and eminent for it. They then asked him what was the full power he had to do by the second-sight. He answered, that as they had intimated that they had perused some of the skilful writers concerning the second-sight, he did not doubt but they had found, as well as he could tell them, that as to the extent of people's knowledge in that secret way, it reached both present, past, and future events. They foresee murders, drownings, weddings, burials, combats, manslaughters, &c., all of which there are many instances to be given. They commonly foresee sad events a little while before they happen; for instance, if a man's fatal end be hanging, they will see a gibbet, or rope about his neck; if beheading, they will see a man without a head; if drowning, they will see water up to his throat; if stabbing, they will see a dagger in his breast; if unexpected death in his bed, they will see a windingsheet about his head. They foretell not only marriages, but of good children; what kind of life men shall lead, and in what condition they shall die; also riches, honours, preferments, peace, plenty, and good weather. It is likewise usual with persons that have lost anything to go to some of these men, by whom they are directed how, with what persons, and in what place they shall find their goods. It is also to be noted that these gifts bear a latitude, so that some have it in a far more eminent degree than others; and what I have here written down to you, you need not take as a truth from me; but as it concerned me so nearly, I remember the passage by heart, and you will find it very near word for word in Dr. Beaumont's book Of Familiar Spirits. Aye, said the friars, but you have a genius too that attends you, as we are informed. So, replied Duncan Campbell, have all persons that have the second-sight in any eminent degree; and to prove this I will bring no less a witness than King James, who, in his Demonology, book the third and chapter the second, mentions also a spirit called Brownie, that was wont formerly to haunt divers houses, without doing any evil, but doing, as it were, necessary turns up and down the house; he appeared like a rough man, nay, some believed that their house was all the 'sonsier,' as they called it, that is, the more lucky or fortunate, that such spirits resorted there. With these replies the friars began to own they were very well satisfied, and acquiesced in the account he had given of himself as a very good, true, and honest account; but they told him they had still a farther accusation against him, and that was, that he practised magic arts, and that he used, as they had been informed, unlawful incantations. To this he made answer, that there were two kinds of magic, of which he knew they that were men of learning could not be ignorant. The art of magic, which is wicked and impious, continued he, is that which is professed, and has been professed at all times in the world, by witches, magicians, diviners, enchanters, and such like notorious profligates; who, by having an unnatural commerce with the devil, do many strange, prodigious, and preternatural acts, above and beyond all human wisdom; and all the arguments I ever did, or ever will deduce, continued he, from that black art, is a good and shining argument; it is this, O fathers: I draw a reason from these prodigious practices of wizards, magicians, enchanters, &c., and from all the heathen idolatry and superstition, to prove that there is a Deity; for from these acts of theirs, being preternatural and above human wisdom, we may consequently infer that they proceed from a supernatural and immaterial cause, such as demons are. And this is all the knowledge I ever did or ever will draw from that black hellish art. But, fathers, there is another kind of art magic, called natural magic, which is directly opposite to theirs, and the object of which art is to do spiritual good to mankind, as the object of theirs is to torment them, and induce them to evil. They afflict people with torments, and my art relieves them from the torments they cause. The public profession of these magical arts has, as you know, fathers, it is a common distinction, between black and white magic, been tolerated in some of the most famous universities of Christendom, though afterwards for a very good reason in politics, making it a public study to such a degree was very wisely retrenched by prohibition. If this, therefore, be a fault in your own opinions, hear my accusers, but if not, you will not only excuse, but commend me.