Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands quotes

That these qualities have led me into many countries, and brought me into some strange and amusing adventures, the reader, if he or she has the patience to get through this book, will see. Some people, indeed, have called me quite a female Ulysses.

I believe that they intended it as a compliment; but from my experience of the Greeks, I do not consider it a very flattering one.

It is not my intention to dwell at any length upon the recollections of my childhood. My mother kept a boardinghouse in Kingston, and was, like very many of the Creole women, an admirable doctress;

I was born in the town of Kingston, in the island of Jamaica, some time in the present century. As a female, and a widow, I may be well excused giving the precise date of this important event.

But I do not mind confessing that the century and myself were both young together, and that we have grown side by side into age and consequence.

I am a Creole, and have good Scotch blood coursing in my veins. My father was a soldier, of an old Scotch family;

I was born in the town of Kingston, in the island of Jamaica, some time in the present century.

As a female, and a widow, I may be well excused giving the precise date of this important event.

But I do not mind confessing that the century and myself were both young together, and that we have grown side by side into age and consequence. I am a Creole, and have good Scotch blood coursing in my veins.

and I was very young when I began to make use of the little knowledge I had acquired from watching my mother, upon a great sufferer—my doll.

I have noticed always what actors children are.

If you leave one alone in a room, how soon it clears a little stage; and, making an audience out of a few chairs and stools, proceeds to act its childish griefs and blandishments upon its doll.

If you had told me that the time would soon come when I should remember this sorrow calmly, I should not have believed it possible: and yet it was so.

I do not think that we hot-blooded Creoles sorrow less for showing it so impetuously; but I do think that the sharp edge of our grief wears down sooner than theirs who preserve an outward demeanour of calmness, and nurse their woe secretly in their hearts.

How slowly and gradually I succeeded in life, need not be told at length. My fortunes underwent the variations which befall all.

Sometimes I was rich one day, and poor the next.

I never thought too exclusively of money, believing rather that we were born to be happy, and that the surest way to be wretched is to prize it overmuch.

How slowly and gradually I succeeded in life, need not be told at length. My fortunes underwent the variations which befall all. Sometimes I was rich one day, and poor the next.

I never thought too exclusively of money, believing rather that we were born to be happy, and that the surest way to be wretched is to prize it overmuch.

Had I done so, I should have mourned over many a promising speculation proving a failure, over many a pan of preserves or guava jelly burnt in the making;

And here I may take the opportunity of explaining that it was from a confidence in my own powers, and not at all from necessity, that I remained an unprotected female.

Indeed, I do not mind confessing to my reader, in a friendly confidential way, that one of the hardest struggles of my life in Kingston was to resist the pressing candidates for the late Mr. Seacole’s shoes.

Officers of high rank sometimes took up their abode in my house. Others of inferior rank were familiar with me, long before their bravery, and, alas! too often death, in the Crimea, made them world famous.

For the greater portion of that distance the lines ran on piles, over as unhealthy and wretched a country as the eye could well grow weary of; but, at last, the country improved, and you caught glimpses of distant hills and English-like scenery.

Every mile of that fatal railway cost the world thousands of lives.

I was assured that its site was marked thickly by graves, and that so great was the mortality among the labourers that three times the survivors struck in a body, and their places had to be supplied by fresh victims from America, tempted by unheard-of …

But the Yankee’s capacity for swilling tea and coffee was prodigious. I saw one man drink ten cups of coffee; and finding his appetite still unsatisfied, I ran across to my brother for advice. There was a merry twinkle in his eyes as he whispered,

“I always put in a good spoonful of salt after the sixth cup. It chokes them off admirably.”

It was no easy thing to avoid being robbed and cheated by the less scrupulous travellers; although I think it was only the ’cutest Yankee who stood any fair chance of outwitting me.

and as to his offer of bleaching me, I should, even if it were practicable, decline it without any thanks.

As to the society which the process might gain me admission into, all I can say is, that, judging from the specimens I have met with here and elsewhere, I don’t think that I shall lose much by being excluded from it.

So, gentlemen, I drink to you and the general reformation of American manners.”

As to the society which the process might gain me admission into, all I can say is, that, judging from the specimens I have met with here and elsewhere, I don’t think that I shall lose much by being excluded from it.

So, gentlemen, I drink to you and the general reformation of American manners.

”

“Gentlemen—I return you my best thanks for your kindness in drinking my health.

As for what I have done in Cruces, Providence evidently made me to be useful, and I can’t help it.

But, I must say, that I don’t altogether appreciate your friend’s kind wishes with respect to my complexion.

“There’s nowhere but the saloon, and you can’t expect to stay with the white people, that’s clear.

Flesh and blood can stand a good deal of aggravation; but not that.

If the Britishers is so took up with coloured people, that’s their business; but it won’t do here.”

It was a terrible thing to see young people in the youth and bloom of life suddenly stricken down, not in battle with an enemy that threatened their country, but in vain contest with a climate that refused to adopt them.

Indeed, the mother country pays a dear price for the possession of her colonies.

I think all who are familiar with the West Indies will acknowledge that Nature has been favourable to strangers in a few respects, and that one of these has been in instilling into the hearts of the Creoles an affection for English people and an …

… inclining the Creoles to practise the healing art, and inducing them to seek out the simple remedies which are available for the terrible diseases by which foreigners are attacked, and which are found growing under the same circumstances which produce the ills they minister to.

So true is it that beside the nettle ever grows the cure for its sting.

I do not willingly care to dwell upon scenes of suffering and death, but it is with such scenes that my life’s experience has made me most familiar, and it is impossible to avoid their description now and then;

and I say decidedly that the Christian’s death is the glorious one, as is his life.

You can never find a good man who is not a worker; he is no laggard in the race of life.

Three, two, or one score years of life have been to him a season of labour in his appointed sphere;

… to join my old friends of the 97th, 48th, and other regiments, battling with worse foes than yellow fever or cholera, took such exclusive possession of my mind, that I threw over the gold speculation altogether, and devoted all my energies to my new scheme.

Heaven knows it was visionary enough!

I had no friends who could help me in such a project—nay, who would understand why I desired to go, and what I desired to do when I got there.

I was so conscious of the unselfishness of the motives which induced me to leave England—so certain of the service I could render among the sick soldiery, and yet I found it so difficult to convince others of these facts.

Doubts and suspicions arose in my heart for the first and last time, thank Heaven.

Was it possible that American prejudices against colour had some root here? Did these ladies shrink from accepting my aid because my blood flowed beneath a somewhat duskier skin than theirs? Tears streamed down my foolish cheeks, as I stood in the fast thinning streets;

… islands and shores, until we are steaming against a swift current, and an adverse wind, between two tower-crested promontories of rock, which they tell me stand in Europe and in Asia, and are connected with some pretty tale of love in days long gone by.

Ah! travel where a woman may, in the New World, or the Old, she meets this old, old tale everywhere.

It is the one bond of sympathy which I have found existing in three quarters of the world alike.

My experience of washerwomen, all the world over, is the same—that they are kind softhearted folks.

Possibly the soapsuds they almost live in find their way into their hearts and tempers, and soften them.

This Scutari washerwoman is no exception to the rule, and welcomes me most heartily. With her, also, are some invalid nurses;

I hadn’t long retired to my couch before I wished most heartily that we had continued our chat; for unbidden and most unwelcome companions took the washerwoman’s place, and persisted not only in dividing my bed, but my plump person also.

Upon my word, I believe the fleas are the only industrious creatures in all Turkey.

Some of their relatives would seem to have migrated into Russia; for I found them in the Crimea equally prosperous and ubiquitous.

I have known him nervously restless if the people were behindhand, even for a few minutes, in their preparations for the wounded. But in this feeling all shared alike.

Only women could have done more than they did who attended to this melancholy duty; and they, not because their hearts could be softer, but because their hands are moulded for this work.

But it must not be supposed that we had no cheerful scenes upon the sick-wharf. Sometimes a lighthearted fellow—generally a sailor—would forget his pain, and do his best to keep the rest in good spirits.

It was astonishing to note how completely, now that he was in the land of the Giaours, he adapted himself to the tastes and habits of the infidels.

Like a Scotch Presbyterian, on the Continent for a holiday, he threw aside all the prejudices of his education

, and drank bottled beer, sherry, and champagne with an appreciation of their qualities that no thirsty-souled Christian could have expressed more gratefully.

Thieves, biped and quadruped, human and animal, troubled me more than ever; and perhaps the most difficult to deal with were the least dangerous.

The Crimean rats, for instance, who had the appetites of London aldermen, and were as little dainty as hungry schoolboys.

Whether they had left Sebastopol, guided by the instinct which leads their kindred in other parts of the world to forsake sinking ships, or because the garrison rations offended their palates, or whether they had patriotically emigrated, to make war against the English larders, I …

Then their calling me “mother” was not, I think, altogether unmeaning.

I used to fancy that there was something homely in the word; and, reader, you cannot think how dear to them was the smallest thing that reminded them of home.

Some of my Crimean patients, who were glad of me as nurse and doctress, bore names familiar to all England, and perhaps, did I ask them, they would allow me to publish those names.

If I were to speak of all the nameless horrors of that spring as plainly as I could, I should really disgust you; but those I shall bring before your notice have all something of the humorous in them—and so it ever is.

Time is a great restorer, and changes surely the greatest sorrow into a pleasing memory.

The sun shines this springtime upon green grass that covers the graves of the poor fellows we left behind sadly a few short months ago:

you would easily believe that soap and water were luxuries not readily obtainable, that shirts and socks were often comforts to dream about rather than possess, and that they were familiar with horrors you would shudder to hear named.

Tell me, reader, can you fancy what the want of so simple a thing as a pocket-handkerchief is?

To put a case—have you ever gone out for the day without one; sat in a draught and caught a sneezing cold in the head?

And had you been fortunate enough to have visited the British Hotel upon rice-pudding day, I warrant you would have ridden back to your hut with kind thoughts of Mother Seacole’s endeavours to give you a taste of home.

If I had nothing else to be proud of, I think my rice puddings, made without milk, upon the high road to Sebastopol, would have gained me a reputation.

What a shout there used to be when I came out of my little caboose, hot and flurried, and called out, “Rice-pudding day, my sons.”

You would scarcely expect to finish up your dinner with pastry, but very often you would have found a good stock of it in my larder.

Whenever I had a few leisure moments, I used to wash my hands, roll up my sleeves and roll out pastry.

Very often I was interrupted to dispense medicines; but if the tarts had a flavour of senna, or the puddings tasted of rhubarb, it never interfered with their consumption.

And all because I was a woman, forsooth.

What nonsense to talk like that, when I was doing the work of half a dozen men.

Then he would laugh and declare that, when our campaigns were over, we would render rivalry impossible, by combining to open the first restaurant in Europe. There was always fun in the store when the good-natured Frenchman was there.

Seacole; come and look after him, if he’s hit;” and so often as this happened I would pass the night restlessly, awaiting with anxiety the morning, and yet dreading to hear the news it held in store for me.

I used to think it was like having a large family of children ill with fever, and dreading to hear which one had passed away in the night.

And as often as the bad news came, I thought it my duty to ride up to the hut of the sufferer and do my woman’s work. But I felt it deeply. How could it be otherwise?

I felt it to be so, for I never failed (although who was I, that I should preach?) to say something about God’s providence and relying upon it; and they were very good.

No army of parsons could be much better than my sons.

They would listen very gravely, and shake me by the hand again, while I felt that there was nothing in the world I would not do for them. Then very often the men would say, “I’m going in with my master tonight, Mrs. Seacole;

… with me on the previous evening, had seemed dull, but had supped at my store, and on the following morning a brother officer told me he was shot dead while setting his pickets, which made me ill and unfit for work for the whole day.

Mind you, a day was a long time to give to sorrow in the Crimea.

I could give many other similar instances, but why should I sadden myself or my readers? Others have described the horrors of those fatal trenches;

If I had been in the least humour for what was ludicrous, the looks and curiosity of the Russians who saw me during the armistice would have afforded me considerable amusement.

I wonder what rank they assigned me.

How true it is, as somebody has said, that misfortunes never come singly. N.B. Pleasures often do. For while we were dull enough at this great trouble, we had cholera raging around us, carrying off its victims of all ranks.

On the following day, directly I heard of the armistice, I hastened to the scene of action, anxious to see once more the faces of those who had been so kind to me in life.

That battlefield was a fearful sight for a woman to witness, and if I do not pray God that I may never see its like again, it is because I wish to be useful all my life, and it is in scenes of horror and distress that a woman can do so much.

It was late in the afternoon, not, I think, until half-past four, that the Russians brought over the bodies of the two leaders of yesterday’s assault. They had stripped Sir John of epaulettes, sword, and boots. Ah!

If I had been in the least humour for what was ludicrous, the looks and curiosity of the Russians who saw me during the armistice would have afforded me considerable amusement. I wonder what rank they assigned me.

How true it is, as somebody has said, that misfortunes never come singly. N.B. Pleasures often do.

For while we were dull enough at this great trouble, we had cholera raging around us, carrying off its victims of all ranks.

Of course the summer introduced its own plagues, and among the worst of these were the flies. I shall never forget those Crimean flies, and most sincerely hope that, like the Patagonians, they are only to be found in one part of the world.

Nature must surely have intended them for blackbeetles, and accidentally given them wings.

There was no exterminating them—no thinning them—no escaping from them by night or by day.

… his teeth closed upon it, in the agonies of death, so tightly that I had to call to those around to release it, which was not done until it had been bitten so deeply that I shall carry the scar with me to my grave.

Poor fellow, he meant me no harm, for, as the near approach of death softened his features, a smile spread over his rough inexpressive face, and so he died.

I attended another Russian, a handsome fellow, and an officer, shot in the side, who bore his cruel suffering with a firmness that was very noble.

I do not know whether he survived his wounds, but I fear not.

Many others, on that day, gave me thanks in words the meaning of which was lost upon me, and all of them in that one common language of the whole world⁠—smiles.

I carried two patients off the field; one a French officer wounded on the hip, who chose to go back to Spring Hill and be attended by me there, and who, on leaving, told us that he was a relative of the Marshal (Pelissier);

and had they not, instead of laughing at him, credited his assertion, and proceeded to arrest me.

Now, such a charge was enough to make a lion of a lamb; so I refused positively to dismount, and made matters worse by knocking in the cap of the first soldier who laid hands upon me, with the bell that hung at my saddle.

Upon this, six or seven tried to force me to the guardhouse in rather a rough manner, while I resisted with all my force, screaming out for Mr. Day, and using the bell for a weapon.

“Tenez! Madame Seacole, I too am American a little.”

What a pity I was not born a countess! I am sure I should have made a capital courtier.

Witness my impromptu answer:—

but the most delicate piece of attention was shown me by one of the Sappers and Miners, who, hearing the report that I was dead, positively came down to Spring Hill to take my measure for a coffin.

This may seem a questionable compliment, but I really felt flattered and touched with such a mark of thoughtful attention.

Very few in the Crimea had the luxury of any better coffin than a blanket-shroud, and it was very good of the grateful fellow to determine that his old friend, the mistress of Spring Hill, should have an honour conceded to so very few of …

I was one of the first to ride down to the Tchernaya, and very much delighted seemed the Russians to see an English woman.

I wonder if they thought they all had my complexion.

I soon entered heartily into the then current amusement—that of exchanging coin, etc., with the Russians.