Read Online Golden Hill by Francis Spufford - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Francis Spufford
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printer’s devil asked Hendrick, inking the pages of the new Post-Boy.
By morning the news was all around the town, from the Bowling Green to the Out Ward, that the stranger was a Saracen conjurer, and quite possibly an agent of the French.
Pope Day
November 5th
20 Geo. II
1746
I
Had a map been drawn, a week later, of Mr Smith’s movements through the streets of New-York, with a thickness for each path beaten by his feet in proportion to the number of times he trod it, a tangled hydra indeed would have been revealed, with its head at Mrs Lee’s house.
One thick line led to the Merchants’ Coffee-House, where every morning he breakfasted, receiving cordial conversation from Hendrick and an ever-increasing number of the regulars, and cold nods from Septimus Oakeshott. Another, still a substantial spoor of ink but slightly thinner, led to Golden Hill Street and the Lovells; another again, to the low streets on the western or Hudson side of the Broad Way, up against the outer palisade of the town, where it then split into a purposeful splay of tendrils, for Smith was deliberately visiting every tavern or gin-cellar or drinking den he could find, and privily enquiring in each one whether such a man might be found as a fellow who specialised in the recovery of lost things . In London such people certainly existed, serving as recognised points of communication between the daylight and the criminal cities, between bon ton and flash mob; and to ask for one was to signal plainly that you wished to opennegotiations with the thief who had robbed you. But whether it was that New-York lacked this sophisticated convenience, or that he was asking in the wrong words, all he found was sullen silence in the earth-floored rooms he entered, and unfriendly stares from those drinking there.
Meanwhile, certain other threads broader than a single passage marked his route to places where he had begun, as discreetly as possible, to make the enquiries his errand required. Yet entangling these main and subordinate limbs of the hydra − almost losing them in a maze of the finest lines – was a spider’s scribble extending everywhere, as if Mr Smith had made it his systematic business to stroll, unhurried, at least once along every lane, street, dock and thoroughfare the city contained. This was not so far from the truth. Almost everywhere had seen Mr Smith wander by, whistling under his breath; but nowhere did he lay eyes on any who might have been the lanky, black-haired thief, of whom he had glimpsed only the back view. Perhaps the thief had cut or dressed his long hair, perhaps he was lying low, perhaps he inhabited one of the outer settlements – Greenwich or Haarlem, Breuckelen or Flushing – which Smith had not yet penetrated; perhaps he was long gone along the High Road to Boston, or over the water to New Jersey, with the windfall in the leather portfolio. Perhaps Smith was simply being unlucky, for even in a city of only seven thousand souls, it is possible for two of them never to meet, for them to draw paths of ink that cross, over and over, yet never arrive in the same place at the same time.
His purse grew ever lighter. Day by day, it perceptibly clinked and rustled less. Soon it would not clink and rustle at all, vapour being silent. The most strict economy regulated Smith’s spending on necessaries. At least, such spending as no-one could observe,and might draw conclusions from; for nothing could be more disastrous to his credit, he realised, than to betray any suggestion that he needed to pinch pennies, or had access to anything less than inexhaustible funds. If he was to maintain his ability to run up bills he need not settle, until the bill on Lovell was paid at the Christmas quarter-day, it must always appear to be no more than a rich man’s whim that he preferred to handle any particular expense with credit rather than cash. So he laid out his slender store of coin and paper where it would make the most open-handed
By morning the news was all around the town, from the Bowling Green to the Out Ward, that the stranger was a Saracen conjurer, and quite possibly an agent of the French.
Pope Day
November 5th
20 Geo. II
1746
I
Had a map been drawn, a week later, of Mr Smith’s movements through the streets of New-York, with a thickness for each path beaten by his feet in proportion to the number of times he trod it, a tangled hydra indeed would have been revealed, with its head at Mrs Lee’s house.
One thick line led to the Merchants’ Coffee-House, where every morning he breakfasted, receiving cordial conversation from Hendrick and an ever-increasing number of the regulars, and cold nods from Septimus Oakeshott. Another, still a substantial spoor of ink but slightly thinner, led to Golden Hill Street and the Lovells; another again, to the low streets on the western or Hudson side of the Broad Way, up against the outer palisade of the town, where it then split into a purposeful splay of tendrils, for Smith was deliberately visiting every tavern or gin-cellar or drinking den he could find, and privily enquiring in each one whether such a man might be found as a fellow who specialised in the recovery of lost things . In London such people certainly existed, serving as recognised points of communication between the daylight and the criminal cities, between bon ton and flash mob; and to ask for one was to signal plainly that you wished to opennegotiations with the thief who had robbed you. But whether it was that New-York lacked this sophisticated convenience, or that he was asking in the wrong words, all he found was sullen silence in the earth-floored rooms he entered, and unfriendly stares from those drinking there.
Meanwhile, certain other threads broader than a single passage marked his route to places where he had begun, as discreetly as possible, to make the enquiries his errand required. Yet entangling these main and subordinate limbs of the hydra − almost losing them in a maze of the finest lines – was a spider’s scribble extending everywhere, as if Mr Smith had made it his systematic business to stroll, unhurried, at least once along every lane, street, dock and thoroughfare the city contained. This was not so far from the truth. Almost everywhere had seen Mr Smith wander by, whistling under his breath; but nowhere did he lay eyes on any who might have been the lanky, black-haired thief, of whom he had glimpsed only the back view. Perhaps the thief had cut or dressed his long hair, perhaps he was lying low, perhaps he inhabited one of the outer settlements – Greenwich or Haarlem, Breuckelen or Flushing – which Smith had not yet penetrated; perhaps he was long gone along the High Road to Boston, or over the water to New Jersey, with the windfall in the leather portfolio. Perhaps Smith was simply being unlucky, for even in a city of only seven thousand souls, it is possible for two of them never to meet, for them to draw paths of ink that cross, over and over, yet never arrive in the same place at the same time.
His purse grew ever lighter. Day by day, it perceptibly clinked and rustled less. Soon it would not clink and rustle at all, vapour being silent. The most strict economy regulated Smith’s spending on necessaries. At least, such spending as no-one could observe,and might draw conclusions from; for nothing could be more disastrous to his credit, he realised, than to betray any suggestion that he needed to pinch pennies, or had access to anything less than inexhaustible funds. If he was to maintain his ability to run up bills he need not settle, until the bill on Lovell was paid at the Christmas quarter-day, it must always appear to be no more than a rich man’s whim that he preferred to handle any particular expense with credit rather than cash. So he laid out his slender store of coin and paper where it would make the most open-handed
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