The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (46 page)

‘At this his importunity I paused a little, not as retiring
from my wreakful resolution, but going back to gather more forces of vengeance. With myself I devised how to plague him double for his base mind. My thoughts travelled in quest of some notable new Italianism, whose murderous platform might not only extend on his body, but his soul also. The groundwork of it was this: that whereas he had promised for my sake to swear and forswear and commit Julian-like violence on the highest seals of religion, if he would but this far satisfy me he should be dismissed from my fury. First and foremost, he should renounce God and His laws, and utterly disclaim the whole title or interest he had in any covenant of salvation. Next, he should curse Him to His face, as Job was willed by his wife, and write an absolute firm obligation of his soul to the devil, without condition or exception. Thirdly and lastly, having done this, he should pray to God fervently never to have mercy upon him or pardon him.

‘Scarce had I propounded these articles unto him, but he was beginning his blasphemous abjurations. I wonder the earth opened not and swallowed us both, hearing the bold terms he blasted forth in contempt of Christianity. Heaven hath thundered when half less contumelies against it have been uttered. Able they were to raise saints and martyrs from their graves and pluck Christ himself from the right hand of his Father. My joints trembled and quaked with attending them; my hair stood upright and my heart was turned wholly to fire. So affectionately and zealously did he give himself over to infidelity, as if Satan had gotten the upper hand of our High Maker. The vein in his left hand that is derived from the heart with no faint blow he pierced, and with the full blood that flowed from it writ a full obligation of his soul to the devil Yea, he more earnestly prayed unto God never to forgive his soul than many Christians do to save their souls. These fearful ceremonies brought to an end, I bad him ope his mouth and gape wide. He did so (as what will not slaves do for fear?). Therewith made I no more ado, but shot him full into the throat with my pistol No more spake he after; so did I shoot him that he might
never speak after or repent him. His body being dead looked as black as a toad; the devil presently branded it for his own. This is the fault that hath called me hither; no true Italian but will honour me for it. Revenge is the glory of arms and the highest performance of valour; revenge is whatsoever we call law or justice. The farther we wade in revenge, the nearer come we to the throne of the Almighty. To His sceptre it is properly ascribed; His sceptre He lends unto man when He lets one man scourge another. All true Italians imitate me in revenging constantly and dying valiantly. Hangman, to thy task, for I am ready for the utmost of thy rigour.'

Herewith all the people, outrageously incensed, with one conjoined outcry yelled mainly: ‘Away with him, away with him! Executioner, torture him, tear him, or we will tear thee in pieces if thou spare him!'

The executioner needed no exhortation hereunto, for of his own nature was he hackster good enough. Old excellent he was at a boneache. At the first chop with his wood-knife would he fish for a man's heart and fetch it out as easily as a plum from the bottom of a porridge pot. He would crack necks as fast as a cook cracks eggs; a fiddler cannot turn his pin so soon as he would turn a man off the ladder. Bravely did he drum on this Cutwolfe's bones, not breaking them outright but, like a saddler knocking in of tacks, jarring on them quaveringly with his hammer a great while together. No joint about him but with a hatchet he had for the nonce he disjointed half, and then with boiling lead soldered up the wounds from bleeding. His tongue he pulled out, lest he should blaspheme in his torment. Venomous stinging worms he thrust into his ears to keep his head ravingly occupied. With cankers scruzed
³⁴⁵
to pieces he rubbed his mouth and his gums. No limb of his but was lingeringly splintered in shivers. In this horror left they him on the wheel as in hell, where, yet living, he might behold his flesh legacied amongst the fowls of the air.

Unsearchable is the book of our destinies. One murder
begetteth another; was never yet bloodshed barren from the beginning of the world to this day. Mortifiedly abjected and daunted was I with this truculent
³⁴⁶
tragedy of Cutwolfe and Esdras. To such straight life did it thenceforward incite me that ere I went out of Bologna I married my courtesan, performed many alms-deeds, and hasted so fast out of the Sodom of Italy, that within forty days I arrived at the King of England's camp
³⁴⁷
twixt Ardes and Guines in France, where he with great triumphs met and entertained the Emperor and the French King and feasted many days. And so, as my story began with the King at Tournay and Turwin, I think meet here to end it with the King at Ardes and Guines. All the conclusive epilogue I will make is this: that if herein I have pleased any, it shall animate me to more pains in this kind.

Otherwise I will swear upon an English Chronicle
  never to be outlandish Chronicler more
    while I live. Farewell as many
      as wish me well.

FINIS

CONTAINING

The Description and first
Procreation and Increase of the Town of
Great Yarmouth
²
in Norfolk

With a new play never played before,
of the praise of the
RED HERRING

Fit of all Clerks of Noblemen's
kitchens to be read; and not unnecessary
by all serving men that have short
board-wages to be remembered.

Famam peto per undas
.
³

To his worthy good patron, Lusty Humfrey,
⁴
according as the townsmen do christen him;
Little Numps, as the Nobility and Courtiers do name him;
and Honest Humfrey, as all his friends and acquaintance
esteem him, King of the Tobacconists
hic & ubique
,
⁵
and
a singular Mecaenas
⁶
to the Pipe and the Tabour
(as his patient livery attendant can witness) his
bounden Orator T. N. most prostrately offers
up this tribute of ink and paper.

M
OST
courteous, unlearned lover of poetry, and yet a poet thyself, of no less price than H.S.,
⁷
that in honour of Maid Marian gives sweet Margaret for his Empress and puts the sow most saucily upon some great personage, whatever she be, bidding her (as it runs in the old song) ‘Go from my garden, go, for there no flowers for thee doth grow'; these be to notify to your Diminutive Excelsitude and Compendiate Greatness what my zeal is towards you, that in no straiter bonds would be pounded
⁸
and enlisted, than in an Epistle Dedicatory.

To many more lusty-blood Bravamente signors,
⁹
with Cales beards
¹⁰
as broad as scullers' maples
¹¹
that they make clean their boats with, could I have turned it over, and had nothing for my labour, some fair words except of ‘Good sir, will it please you to come near and drink a cup of wine?' After my return from Ireland
¹²
I doubt not but my fortunes will be of some growth to requite you. In the meantime my sword is at your command. And, before God, money so scatteringly runs here and there upon
utensilia
, furnitures,
¹³
ancients,
¹⁴
and other necessary preparations (and, which is a double charge, look how much tobacco we carry with us to expel cold, the like quantity of stavesacre
¹⁵
we must provide us of to kill lice in that rugged country of rebels), that I say unto you, in the word
¹⁶
of a martialist, we cannot do as we would. I am no incredulous Didymus, but have more
faith to believe they have no coin than they have means to supply themselves with it; and so leave them.

To any other carpetmonger
¹⁷
or primrose knight of primero
¹⁸
bring I a dedication; and
¹⁹
the dice overnight have not befriended him, he sleeps five days and five nights to new-skin his beauty, and will not be known he is awaked till his men upon their own bonds (a dismal world for trenchermen when their master's bond shall not be so good as theirs) have took up commodities or fresh droppings of the mint for him. And then: what then? He pays for the ten dozen of balls he left upon the score at the tennis court; he sends for his barber to depure, decurtate
²⁰
and sponge him, whom having not paid a twelvemonth before, he now rains down eight quarter-angels into his hand, to make his liberality seem greater, and gives him a cast
²¹
riding jerkin and an old Spanish hat into the bargain, and God's peace be with him.

The chamber is not rid of the smell of his feet, but the greasy shoemaker with his squirrels'-skin and a whole stall of ware upon his arm enters and wrencheth his legs for an hour together, and after shows his tally.
²²
By St Loy, that draws deep,
²³
and by that time his tobacco merchant is made even with, and he hath dined at a tavern and slept his undermeal at a bawdy house, his purse is on the heild,
²⁴
and only forty shillings he hath behind to try his fortune with at the cards in the presence; which if it prosper, the Court cannot contain him, but to London again he will, to revel it and have two plays in one night, invite all the poets and musicians to his chamber the next morning; where, against their coming,
²⁵
a whole heap of money shall be bespread upon the board, and all his trunks opened to show his rich
suits. But the devil a whit
²⁶
he bestows on them, save bottle-ale and tobacco, and desires a general meeting.

The particular of it is that bounty is bankrupt, and Lady Sensuality licks all the fat from the seven liberal sciences,
²⁷
that poetry, if it were not a trick to please my Lady,
²⁸
would be excluded out of Christian burial, and, instead of wreaths of laurel to crown it with, have a bell with a cock's-comb clapped on the crown of it by old Johannes de Indagines
²⁹
and his choir of dorbellists.
³⁰
Wherefore the premisses
³¹
considered (I pray you consider of that word ‘premisses', for somewhere I have borrowed it) neither to rich, noble, right worshipful or worshipful, of spiritual or temporal, will I consecrate this work, but to thee and thy capering humour alone, that, if thy stars had done thee right, they should have made thee one of the mightiest princes of Germany; not for thou canst drive a coach or kill an oxe so well as they, but that thou art never well but when thou art amongst the retinue of the muses, and there spendest more in the twinkling of an eye than in a whole year thou gettest by some grazierly gentility thou followest. A king thou art by name, and a king of good fellowship by nature, whereby I ominate
³²
this encomion of the King of Fishes was predestinate to thee from thy swaddling clothes. Hug it, ingle
³³
it, kiss it and cull
³⁴
it now thou hast it, and renounce eating of green beef
³⁵
and garlic till Martlemas, if it be not the next style to
The Strife of Love in a Dream
³⁶
or
The Lamentable Burning of Teverton
.
³⁷

Give me good words I beseech thee, though thou givest me nothing else, and thy words shall stand for thy deeds; which I will take as well in worth, as if they were the deeds and evidences of all the land thou hast. Here I bring you a red herring; if you will find drink to it, there an end, no other detriments will I put you to. Let the can of strong ale your constable, with the toast his brown bill,
³⁸
and sugar and nutmegs his watchmen, stand in a readiness to entertain me every time I come by your lodging. In Russia there are no presents but of meat or drink: I present you with meat, and you, in honourable courtesy to requite me, can do no less than present me with the best morning's draught of merry-go-round
³⁹
in your quarters. And so I kiss the shadow of your feet's shadow, amiable donzel,
⁴⁰
expecting your sacred poem of the
Hermit's Tale
,
⁴¹
that will restore the golden age amongst us, and so upon my soul's knees

I take my leave.

Yours for a whole last
⁴²
of red

Herrings.

T
H.
N
ASHE
.

To his Readers, he cares not what they be.

‘
Nashe's Lenten Stuff'
. And why ‘
Nashe's Lenten Stuff
'? Some scabbed scald
⁴³
squire replies, ‘Because I had money lent me at Yarmouth, and I pay them again in praise of their town and the red herring.' And if it were so, Goodman Pig-wiggen,
⁴⁴
were not that honest dealing? Pay thou all thy debts so if thou canst for thy life. But thou art a ninny-hammer; that is not it. Therefore, Nickneacave,
⁴⁵
I call it
Nashe's Lenten Stuff
as well for it was most of my study the last Lent, as that we use so to term any fish that takes salt, of which the red herring is one the aptest. ‘Oh, but,' saith another John Dringle,
⁴⁶
‘there is a book of the
Red Herring's Tale
printed four terms since, that made this stale.' Let it be a tale of haberdine if it will; I am nothing entailed thereunto. I scorn it, I scorn it, that my works should turn tail to any man. Head, body, tail and all of a red herring you shall have of me, if that will please you; or if that will not please you, stay till Easter Term and then, with the answer to the Trim Tram,
⁴⁷
I will make you laugh your hearts out. Take me at my word, for I am the man that will do it This is a light friskin of my wit, like the praise of injustice, the fever quartan, Busiris, or Phalaris,
⁴⁸
wherein I follow the trace of the famousest scholars of all ages, whom a wantonizing humour once in their lifetime hath possessed to play with straws and turn mole-hills into mountains.