Delphi Complete Works of William Godwin 1st ed. (2022), page 283
part #1 of Delphi Classics Series
Travers found that he was every day declining in influence; and his cherished schemes were thwarted in the most vexatious manner. He had flattered himself that he had made a safe and assured beginning to a better state of things, and that he should leave behind him the grateful recollection that he had laid the first stone of an edifice, which would grow stronger and more worthy of admiration, when he himself should have ceased to exist. But now the whole face of things was reversed. The progress which he had slowly and indefatigably accomplished, was destined to a rapid destruction. Every sun that rose upon the island, witnessed the revival of some evil, and the strengthening of inveterate prejudices. Nor was this the worst. The planters, who had been galled by the advance of the generous projects of Travers, now resolved to wreak their enmity on the old man. Every day they propagated scandal and lies against him. They petitioned the government at home to concur in his exile from the colony, as a dangerous and pernicious member of society. The poor negroes were the worse treated on his account. Their oppressors augmented the severity and inhumanity of their discipline, for the purpose of signalising their triumph, and by way of vengeance against the virtuous man who had interfered in their favour. Intelligence of incarcerations and death was perpetually brought to his ears; and it was continually asserted that all these mischiefs were to be laid to his charge. The very negroes were incited to vent their griefs in hostility to him. Those who smarted from the lash, and those whose fathers and wives had been brought to an untimely end by the cruelty of their owners, were taught to regard their calamity as the fruit of his weak and romantic support of their cause. They muttered curses against him, and sometimes broke out into open revilings and insult. They annoyed him with looks of bitter and deadly revenge; and all these things, which would have been severely repressed by the masters in any other case, were secretly encouraged by them in this. They pulled down his fences, and trampled his crops under their feet.
The old man felt the injustice of this treatment more with the temper of a disappointed lover, than with the unalterable steadiness of a philosopher. He resolved for ever to quit the scene of his galling disappointments. He sold off his property in the island. His enemies, though delighted with the thought of his removal, yet entered into a conspiracy to thwart him in this point also. They seemed to shrink from the idea of buying what he was desirous to sell. They expressed themselves as if their pure hands would be contaminated by the bare touch of any thing that had belonged to the sacrilegious reformer. When he left the island of Jamaica for that of St Domingo, he found the amount of his fortune, the bequest of his ancestors, and the produce of his own superintendence and industry, reduced by more than one half.
Change of place is in a very imperfect degree the remedy of care and vexation. The elder Travers was kindly received by the planters of St Domingo, several of whom appeared to entertain views as to the negroes very similar to his own. But the arrow that he carried with him rankled in his side. He was a true lover of his species; and he could not endure with patience the miscarriage of his efforts. To encounter contumely from the very quarter from which he had merited only love, was too bitter. The insults and malignant triumph of his enemies, were never forgotten by him. To be made an exile, and robbed of half his fortune, on the very soil where he was rather entitled to statues and triumphal arches of gratitude, deprived him of sleep, and wasted his constitution and strength. In no long time he fell a martyr to the disappointment he had suffered.
The old man, being dead, left his son the sole representative of his name, and inheritor of his property, in that part of the world. The younger Travers had most of the qualities which are said to distinguish the descendants of European parents, born in a tropical climate. He was of the class of ‘souls made of fire, and children of the sun’. He had been sent over to the mother-country for education. He was bred at Eton; and his volatility, his lively qualities, and his affectionate nature had procured him a certain number of attached friends in that scene. His vivacity was inexhaustible; his large and black eyes flashed as with heaven’s own lightning; and his courage was proof against every peril. Yet with all this he was a great and an early thinker, and capable of the most invincible perseverance. He was moody; now communicative and gay, the life of every party of pleasure, and seeming to have no thought of his soul that was not imparted to every bystander; and anon, busied in inscrutable meditation, –
… as patient as the female dove,
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence would sit drooping.
He was sometimes the mere rattle of his form, a shallow stream, such as we occasionally see intersecting the green-wood meadow, imaging every surrounding object, and perpetuating none; while at other times he had fits of study which nothing could divert, as if he would penetrate into all the mysteries of nature, and all the embarrassing involutions of the profoundest reach of human thought.
His father loved him with an intense affection, and could not bear the length of separation which his education properly demanded. He recalled him abruptly to his side in Jamaica. Here at an early age the young Travers felt himself exempted from all control. His father knew no pleasure so great as that of abetting his vagaries. Many of them were attended with danger; but the old man preferred taking his chance of the injuries the boy might bring upon himself by his caprices, or even the possibility of his untimely destruction, to the ungrateful task of imposing on him the bridle of parental authority. He could not bear that those eyes the sparkles of which were so enchanting, should be dulled with disappointment, or those lips whose smiles were so bewitching, should be robbed for a moment of their flexibility and grace. On the other hand, the young man, though self-willed and incapable of voluntary constraint, loved his father with exemplary affection, and regarded him as the model of all honour and virtue. He did things strange and extraordinary, sometimes annoying; but there was no malice in his levities, which oftener obtained for him friends than enemies.
The youth however entered deeply into a feeling similar to that of his father, respecting the unpopularity and ill treatment which were heaped upon the elder Travers, in return for his disinterested exertions in the cause of humanity. This circumstance produced strong emotions in his inexperienced bosom. Though, as I have said, his conduct on a majority of occasions appeared lighthearted and thoughtless, he was, amidst all his extravagances, susceptible of deep impression, profound meditation, and inflexible purpose. He ruminated on the injustice that a large portion of mankind was capable of perpetrating, and his heart sickened at the conviction. ‘Strong was his love; unbounded his resentment’. Thus his character became mingled, by turns bland and beneficent as an angel, and then again darkened with a covered fury and aversion that might better beseem a demon.
Another circumstance had contributed to add force to the particular tone of his character. An opulent proprietor of his native island, whose plantation nearly adjoined to that of his father, had a daughter, distinguished for the exquisiteness of her beauty, the grace of her form and moving, and the ingenuous sweetness of her disposition. Travers had loved her while yet a child; and, when he returned, after having spent his school-boy years in Great Britain, he beheld her with increased preference and affection. But it was during this period of his absence, that the factious opposition to his father had attained to a portentous height. Young Travers could only meet his favourite fair one with difficulty and by stealth. The father of the lady was numbered among the most inveterate foes of the elder Travers, and therefore took the utmost pains to thwart the growing attachment. Fearful that he might fail of his purpose by other means, he abruptly removed his daughter, upon pretence of a visit to Barbadoes to a relation he had in that island, and contrived that a proposal of marriage should be the fruit of this visit. The daughter returned to Jamaica; and the suitor favoured by her father, followed her. Travers, agonised by the prospect of losing the mistress of his heart, sought an interview with the planter, and by every inducement he could suggest, supplied by the vehemence of his passion, and the strength of their mutual attachment, endeavoured to prevail upon him to change his resolution. But the greater was the importunity of the youth, the more inflexible did the father of the lady appear. Travers humbled himself almost to prostration; at the same time that the other party only the more insulted over him, and taunted him with the disapprobation and estrangement with which his parent was looked upon by every respectable man in the island. In fine, the fair one of whom he had been passionately enamoured, was wedded to his rival, and lost to himself for ever. This disappointment, coming about the same time with the expulsion of his father from the scenes which from his birth had been familiar to him, his subsequent misfortunes, and at length his death through what is called a broken heart, soured the temper of the youth, and increased in him the gloom and saturnineness of disposition, with which he had been originally but slightly imbued. His gaiety had not left him for ever; but it occurred by fits only, and was then marked with a sort of alarming and portentous excess, and followed by a relapse,
As if he mocked himself, and scorned his spirit,
That could be moved to smile at any thing.
Meanwhile the first want of his heart was to love; and, when this want was emphatically gratified, he would become a mere child, and overflow with a tenderness and earnestness that could with difficulty find a parallel.
Such was the individual between whom and William a singular and exemplary friendship sprung up, immediately upon their meeting at Cape François, the principal town of the French division of the island of St Domingo. The similarity of disposition that existed between them speedily blew up their mutual partiality to a flame. They were both of them young men of warm hearts and a kind and benevolent temper. They were naturally of a gay and sanguine cast of mind, full of energy and hope. But both of them had suffered much from the malice of fortune; Travers at the time of their first encounter the most of the two. Deprived by a cruel concurrence of circumstances, of the father he worshipped, and crossed in the object of his love, he seemed to have given up for ever the expectation of a pleasing and acceptable mode of existence. Still his affectionate nature survived these adversities, and taught him to seize with avidity an object upon which he might centre the aspirations of his spirit.
Travers and William seemed to understand each other at the first encounter. They were the only persons of English birth at the party which brought them together. But, more than this circumstance, the fire that characterised the glance of Travers, and the overflowing love and goodness of heart so conspicuous in the countenance of William, made them feel as if they had been acquainted for ages. They exchanged looks while they sat apart at the social board, which spoke volumes. An incidental remark from one or the other, was listened to with earnestness, and seemed to make the heart of the hearer bound in his bosom. As soon as the forms of the festive board admitted it, they drew together, and retired into an obscure recess, where each of them poured out his congratulations that he had been so happy as to meet a brother, of the same stock, and speaking the same language, in so remote a part of the world, but, more than all, whose feelings harmonized, and who as by intuition entered into each other’s modes of apprehending and judging.
William had the most to tell. Travers could only relate that he had been born in the neighbour island, that he had been sent to England for education and had returned, and that through subsequent crosses and misfortunes he had been obliged to quit the island of his birth, and had recently lost his father. But William had just passed through a series of unprecedented vicissitudes. He had been a captive first, and then in a manner a slave. He had made his escape, and had experienced innumerable ‘accidents by flood and field’. In his arduous march he seemed to have subsisted only by miracle. He had encountered continual dangers, in the inhospitable desert, from hungry beasts, and lawless savages.
When the two friends spoke of love, which they did not fail soon to do, this topic increased their mutual sympathy. The scene had closed upon Travers: his mistress was married to another. William was not aware of any such circumstance in his case. But he had been twice violently separated from the idol of his heart: once he had been sent to Canada, and formally bid to despair; and then, when recalled with every promise of approaching felicity, had been shipwrecked in sight of land, in sight of his mistress, and unaccountably given over to a series of remorseless disasters, which had pursued him for successive years.
Neither of the two had ever met with an individual of his own sex, with whom his ideas so thoroughly accorded. They were like twins, whom some strange event had separated, and cast on opposite sides of the globe, and who, when they met, then for the first time felt a kind of repose and entire contentment, as if half of himself had been torn away from each, and was now restored, so that he became perfect, equal to any encounter, and armed against every assault of nature or fortune. Travers was the one best provided with worldly means to effect whatever he purposed. Travers was the first to swear eternal friendship. He unburthened his mind, and related to his new associate all the particulars of the strange malice that had pursued the author of his being, who had first been defamed and partially impoverished, and had at last died, a martyr to his too much virtue. The recollection of this, together with the wound he had himself received in the tenderest point, filled young Travers top-full with ill will and bitterest gall, and prepared him in a just and generous cause, to pursue the man of evil, or whom he should judge such, to an irremissible extremity. He was called upon by the last injunctions of his father to pass over to Europe, and there to communicate with the remaining branch of his family, the elder branch, that had staid at home to cultivate their original demesnes, while he, of a junior stock, had crossed the Atlantic, to seek ‘fresh woods and pastures new’.
Travers and William soon became inseparable in their pursuits and amusements. They read the same books, and talked of the same authors. They found a surprising coincidence in their tastes. The same page that had enchanted the one, charmed the other. When it happened otherwise, when the one named an author with approbation with which the other was unacquainted, or quoted a passage of deep reflection or exquisite grace which the mind of the other by some accident had never rested upon, it was like the opening of a new vein of some precious metal. It was valued for itself, and valued for the sake of the hand that guided the steps of the needless wanderer. It was the same with the beauties of nature and art. They rode and walked together. In fishing or hunting, in botanic research, and in their occasional visits to the select societies of St Domingo, they were inseparable. In one point only they differed. William was impatient to return home, for there his dearest treasure was garnered, and there he anticipated the fruition of entire felicity. To Travers, who had no such anticipation, all quarters of the globe were equal, except as he desired nothing so much as to attend upon the wishes and fancies of his newly acquired friend.
While they were waiting for a vessel, which was shortly to convey them from Cape François to Havre, they in one instance joined a party of young men, who had engaged to pass over from the bay to the neighbouring island of Tortue, distant about two leagues, the object which engaged them being a hunt of the wild bulls with which the lesser island abounds. The sport was plentiful, and the party in a high state of exhilaration. In the midst of a scene of social gaiety, it is almost impossible that the most gloomy and dejected character should not for the moment forget his sorrows. Travers no longer thought of his exile and his mistress; and even William just then lost sight of the image of his Margaret.
In the evening they returned home by the same boat which had carried them out. The youngest of the party, a mere boy of ten or twelve years of age, who had gone with the rest rather as a spectator than a hunter, by some accident fell overboard. Travers, who saw the fall, with the lightning activity and decision so characteristic of a Creole, leaped immediately into the sea to his rescue. By this time the whole party became anxious spectators of the scene. Travers presently caught hold of the youth, and by his strength and skill became almost certain of saving him. But just at the moment an enormous shark, the universal terror of these seas, appeared in sight. One of the peculiarities of this animal, which mainly contributes to the consternation with which he is regarded, is the astonishing rapidity with which he cuts the waves. It remained certain that Travers at least, who appeared particularly aimed at by the shark, would perish. William perhaps was not so skilful a swimmer as his friend; but the warm regard which had in a manner sprung up in a day between him and Travers, penetrated him with energy and resolution. He caught at a drawn sword, which, in the earnestness of excited feeling, was held by one of the company; and wresting it from its holder, plunged with it into the sea. Whether or no he was so expert a swimmer as a Creole, might be disputed; but he was no mean proficient in the art. The affection he felt for his newly acquired friend, the most earnest that had animated him towards any one he had seen since his shipwreck at Plymouth, augmented his powers, and guided his hand. He dived below the body of the creature that was now almost on the point of accomplishing its fell purpose, and in an instant inflicted a mortal wound. The waves were stained with the blood of the shark; the animal writhed in agony, and then presently turned on its back, and was still. The friends, and the boy whose heedlessness had produced this terrible scene, were all saved. The mutual attachment of both the saver and the saved, was by this adventure made stronger than ever.
