Morgan was at first taken aback, but when he looked at Dickens’s grinning face, he realized that the man was being facetious.
“You must excuse me, Captain. I have been wallowing in delightful sarcasm as I am in the midst of writing my American novel, Martin Chuzzlewit. I find it hard to restrain myself sometimes. Steamships are not my favorite vessels. I traveled on the Cunard liner to America and I was never happier to come back by sail.”
“So I understand, Mr. Dickens. I read your lively account in American Notes of your stormy passage on the steamer, the Britannia, with great amusement. I am heartened by the brisk sales of your book as your descriptions of the dangers of traveling by steamship will no doubt mean more business for my shipping line.”
“Indeed,” Dickens exclaimed delightedly, his eyebrows arching upward. “With all the vitriol I have received of late from your countrymen, it is welcome to hear a rare endorsement from an American. My good friend Stanny has told me all about you, naturally only good things. I had expected you to have a mahogany face with a red bandanna on your head and rum-and-water teardrops in your eyes.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Dickens, I hardly ever spit tobacco on the floor.”
The author laughed.
“You seem to have won a place in this small club of theirs, Captain Morgan. Everyone has told me that I must meet you. They all say you are quite the salty storyteller.”
Morgan nodded. “Maybe so, but in that case, Mr. Dickens, you must have considerably more brine in you than I do.”
Dickens laughed again. “I’ll take that as a compliment, Captain.”
“You must come with us on a cruise down the Thames, Mr. Dickens. Leslie has already done this, and he says his friend Thackeray is eager as well. Uwins, the Chalon brothers, and Stanfield have all said they’ll come with me. We will drop you off at Gravesend. Even old Turner may come.”
“Did I hear the name of Turner? What is that madman painting now?”
Slightly startled by this sudden interruption, Morgan and Dickens turned to face the stout-chested Lord Nanvers, who introduced himself to Dickens even as he nodded to Morgan.
“In The Slave Ship you can barely see the vessel. Everything is a blur. Do you know that painting by Turner, Captain? I must say I far prefer the realistic maritime scenes of our host, Clarkson Stanfield. What about you, Mr. Dickens? Do you ever understand what Turner is depicting?”
“I would say that paintings are somewhat like human beings,” replied Dickens with the faintest of smiles. “They’re not always what they seem.”
The sound of oak barrels being rolled up the gangway interrupted Morgan’s reverie. He noticed that the pool of sunlight had shifted from his chair to an old chessboard he kept on a small table. He picked up one of the ivory pieces and began squeezing the smooth surface. The worn ivory board had been one of the many gifts he had received from Joseph Bonaparte, the former King of Spain, who had chartered his ship to cross the Atlantic three times. The chessboard had been used by Bonaparte’s brother, Napoleon Bonaparte, during the fallen emperor’s imprisonment on St. Helena. Morgan prized this possession. He often touched these ivory pieces with a certain awe as he tried to imagine the figures being moved around the chessboard by the man who had once conquered Europe. He put the bishop down and picked up the king, and his mind flashed back to the last trip with old Joseph Bonaparte on the Philadelphia in the fall of 1839. That’s when he had heard about the French slaver Le Rodeur, a story that had troubling similarities with the last snippets of information he had read in Abraham’s journal.
On that September passage, the Philadelphia’s cargo hold had been loaded to capacity with crates and boxes of Bonaparte’s treasured art, works from some of the great European masters like Titian, Murillo, Poussin, and Salvator Rosa. Bonaparte was leaving Point Breeze, his estate on the Delaware River, for good. He had fled to America in 1815 when he made his escape from Europe, and now he was returning. They had favorable westerly winds across the Atlantic and the Philadelphia’s saloon had been filled with memorable discussions about America. De Tocqueville’s De la Démocratie en Amerique had recently been published in English under the title Democracy in America. Morgan pointed out how the book’s optimistic views about the country differed sharply from Frances Trollope’s merciless descriptions of America.
Bonaparte had shrugged off the English criticism and said something in French Morgan couldn’t understand: “Il faut faire le dos rond et laisser la pluie tomber.” Morgan asked Bonaparte’s personal secretary, Monsieur Louis Mailliard, what that meant. “It means, Captain Morgan, that sometimes you have to resign yourself to take criticism. Literally in French, you have to round your back and let the rain fall.”