Letters (57 page)

We were also permitted to deliver our consular gifts: jewel’d pistols & snuffboxes, linens, brocades, Parisian rings, bracelets, & necklaces for the ladies of the harem.

“Your father would be proud of us,” Barlow exulted. “The Bashaw has been Burlingamed!”

I could scarcely agree; another such 90 days’ grace, I ventured to say, would bankrupt the Union. Tut, said Barlow, ’twas cheaper than one week of war. Bacri’s fee in particular he judged well invested, not only because the Jew alone could have made our offer (& added
gratis
the nicety of making it to the Dey’s
daughter:
a diplomatic stroke Barlow admitted he himself never would have thot of), but because in Barlow’s opinion the best thing we’d bought so far with “our” $138,000 was not the 90-day extension, but Bacri’s friendship. My father, he told me, used to swear by the cynical dictum of Smollett’s Roderick Random: that while small favors may be acknowledged & slight injuries atoned, there is no wretch so ungrateful as he whom you have mostly generously obliged, and no enemy so implacable as those who have done you the greatest wrong. He meant to cement his new friendship with Bacri at once by rendering him a small but signal service—in gratitude for Bacri’s advice that we not tell the Dey we were in Algiers for no other purpose than to complete the treaty & ransom the prisoners, but instead rent a villa & make a show of settling in for a permanent consular stay.

This 2nd stratagem was more Burlingamish than the 1st, for in addition to “H.B.-ing H.B.,” as Barlow put it
(i.e.,
Burlingaming Hassan Bashaw), we served ourselves in several ways at once. One of the older American prisoners, a certain James Cathcart, had ingratiated himself with the Dey to the point of becoming his English-language secretary & closest non-Moslem advisor; he was also our chief liaison with the other prisoners & our principal go-between with the Dey himself. It was Cathcart’s errand, for example, to relay to Barlow, almost daily, the Bashaw’s impatience that the ransom money had not arrived. Not surprisingly, the Dey’s only other confidant amongst the Infidels—our friend Bacri—was jealous of this secretary, the more since Cathcart was Christian & Bacri Jewish. It was, in fact, in the course of jesting with me on the advantage an atheist like himself ought to have in negotiations involving a Moslem, a Christian, & a Jew, that Barlow hit on his pretty inspiration: if the Dey were to send Cathcart to Philadelphia to supervise construction of the
Crescent,
we would in a single stroke liberate a chief prisoner, oblige Bacri to us for removing the object of his jealousy, & relieve ourselves of some pressure from the Dey, who could then look to Cathcart instead of us to make good on that part of his extortion. Moreover, Barlow had the wit to see that the idea should appear to be Hassan Bashaw’s own. We discust how it might best be put to him without arousing his suspicion—and it occur’d to me to suggest that
Bacri,
rather than ourselves, bring up the matter. Not only was he a better hand at insinuation (& at judging the Dey’s moods), but, should the proposal arouse the Bashaw’s suspicion or displeasure, it would fall upon Bacri—who however would have only his diplomacy to blame—rather than upon ourselves.

Barlow embraced me, then waltzt merrily about the room. I was my father’s son, he cried, my father’s son! This was 1 May: a week later Cathcart set out for Philadelphia, scarcely happier than the Dey, who preen’d & strutted at
his
shrewd idea. Or than Bacri, who—Smollett’s dictum notwithstanding—now clamor’d to return our favor. Or than Barlow, despite his fuming over Humphreys’ inability to raise the ransom money. Or than I, who till then had not recognized in myself the family precocity in diplomatical intrigue.

Barlow took thereafter to consulting me seriously on tactical matters, tho I reminded him that calling me my father’s son was sorely qualified praise; also, that any service I might render was to
him,
whom I owed so much, and not to his country, for which I had at best mixt feelings. Nonetheless I was able to be of use to him, not long after, as follows:

Our dearly bought 90 days were two-thirds spent. Colonel Humphreys’ efforts to sell three-quarters of a million dollars’ worth of discounted U. States Bank stock had got him no gold at all, only letters of credit on Madrid & Cadiz from the London banking firm of Baring & Co. They must have known (at least Barlow did) that the Spanish government was unlikely to permit the export of so much gold—particularly to those Barbary pirates who from time out of mind had made slaves of Christian Spaniards, not least among them the author of
Don Quixote.
Barlow had therefore shrewdly suggested that Humphreys transfer Baring & Co.‘s letter of credit from Spain to the branch office of Joseph Bacri in Livorno, Italy, where it could promptly be negotiated & the credit transfer’d in turn to Bacri of Algiers. The Dey would have his money (at least credit with someone he trusted); the treaty would be concluded; the prisoners could return to America & we to Paris—and the firm of Bacri would have earn’d two separate commissions on the transaction! Bacri himself had readily agreed, and we’d dispatcht a consular aide to Livorno (the English “Leghorn,” where, as it happens, old Smollett is buried) to manage the matter. But the transfer of credit had yet to be effected by Humphreys with Baring & Co.; our letters to Lisbon & London & Cadiz & Livorno & Paris & Philadelphia had as well been posted into the sea for all the answer we got. And to make matters worse, with the coming of summer Algiers was smitten by an outbreak of plague.

Of this last, dear child, I shall not speak, except to say that I had rather take my chances with a dozen red Robespierres than brave again the Terror of the Pest, the black flag of Bubonia. We were doubly desperate: by the day our three months’ grace expired (8 July, just after my 20th birthday), hundreds of Algerines & five American prisoners had expired also, and unspeakably. Daily we expected the pestilence to attack our little household. Barlow made his will. I wisht myself in Switzerland. Yet no word came from across the Mediterranean.

What came instead seem’d at first another setback, but proved a blessing in disguise. A new French consul arrived in Algiers to replace the old, bringing with him a gift to the Dey of such opulence that “ours” (which Monroe & Barlow had thot daringly extravagant) was put in the shade. To point up this disparity—and to remind us further of our tardiness with the ransom—Hassan Bashaw open’d his hairy arms to France, & would have nothing to do with us.

Prest by the Dey to ask some favor in return for his gift, the new French consul requested a loan of $200,000 in gold from the royal treasury, to defray the expenses of the French consulate! We thot the request an effrontery—the man was borrowing back more than he’d given, at a time when gold was so scarce in Algiers that even the house of Bacri had none to lend—but the Dey (a pirate after all, not a banker) granted the extraordinary loan at once. Now, it happened that Bacri’s own assets, like Barlow’s, were largely invested in French government bonds; after sharing with us his surprise that the Dey had made so improbable a loan, & his interest in anyone who had such access to the Algerine treasury, Bacri hit upon the happy idea of claiming
that same $200,000
from the French consulate, in partial payment of what the
Directoire
owed him on those bonds, reciprocating with credit in that amount for the consulate to borrow against in its routine operations! The Consul agreed, it being more convenient for him to work thro Bacri’s banks than to be, in effect, in the banking business himself; Bacri was delighted that the French government now owed money to the Dey instead of to him; and Barlow—who by this time was heartily sorry he’d volunteer’d for the Algerine service instead of improving his own fortune in Paris—wisht aloud & sincerely he’d been born a Jew instead of a Connecticut Yankee.

“Better Yankee than
yekl,”
Bacri replied, by way of cordial acknowledgement that some New England traders are sharp indeed, and some Jews dull.

Now, I much admired Joseph Bacri myself, as a shrewd but reliable fellow who took every fair advantage, but fulfill’d his obligations faithfully, & who in addition was a man of culture & political detachment (all governments, he was fond of declaring, are more or less knavish, but just that fact made the
more
or
less
of considerable importance). For some reason—perhaps because his smile included me amongst the “Yankees”—I was suddenly inspired to out-Bacri Bacri in our ongoing project to Burlingame the Bashaw. Here was our chance—I declared to Barlow when our friend had left, still exulting in his
coup de maître
—to discharge Bacri’s debt to us for removing Cathcart. Bacri—who understood credit as the Dey did not—was as confident as we that, despite all the delays, Baring & Company’s letter of credit to Humphreys in Lisbon against their banks in Madrid & Cadiz would eventually be transfer’d to Bacri’s office in Leghorn & thence to Algiers. In that sense, our personal “credit” with Bacri was good, especially in the light of our past favors to him. Against this credit, then, why ought we not to borrow at once from Bacri the entire same $200,000 that the French Consul had borrow’d from the Dey, & buy with it the immediate release of the prisoners?

Barlow was incredulous. Why should the Dey accept his own money, so to speak, for the sailors’ ransom, especially as he would be relinquishing his best leverage for delivery of the frigate & payment of the rest of his demands? He need not know the source of the money, I replied; ’twas Bacri himself who routinely assay’d & certified, for a fee, the Dey’s revenues. As for that leverage, it should be pointed out to him that the plague was reducing it every day: $200,000 for 100 sick Yankee sailors was not a bad price; the Dey could always capture fresh hostages if “we” defaulted on the rest of the treaty. But Bacri, Barlow protested, slightly less incredulous but still shaking his head: What was in it for Bacri? I admitted that to be the harder question, for while our friend was most certainly not
just
a Jewish banker, neither was he just our friend. The best I could suggest was that we charter from Bacri himself a ship to fetch the sailors home in, and route it to Philadelphia by way of Livorno & Lisbon, where the captain—or one of us—might expedite delivery of the promist gold. Beyond that, we must (and, I added earnestly, we
should)
simply trust to Bacri’s goodwill.

It was this last touch, I believe, that persuaded Barlow in the 1st instance (who now hugg’d and waltzt about the room with me again, to the amazement of our Algerine house-servants) & Bacri in the 2nd, who did indeed drag his heels in indecision & astonishment at the audacity of our proposal, but at last agreed & took it upon himself to point out to the Dey that five percent of his hostages had succumb’d already to the plague.
Mirabile dictu,
the stratagem workt, with a celerity that startled even us: not 48 hours from the time we hatcht the plan, the prisoners were ransom’d with the Dey’s own gold & waiting aboard the ship
Fortune
(leased from Bacri, but crew’d & captain’d by themselves) for a fair southwesterly to carry them to Leghorn!

“Andrew Burlingame Cook the Fourth,” said Barlow, who had taken to teasing me with my full name, “you must go with them.” In one bold stroke, he declared, I had accomplisht the chiefest part of his mission. He himself must linger on until the gold arrived & the treaty was concluded. But much as he wisht my company & counsel, he wisht even more my being out of reach of the pest, & charged me now with a mission of more moment to him than his own welfare: I was to stop in Leghorn to ascertain that Bacri’s office there had received the letter of credit from Humphreys in Lisbon (we’d learnt, aghast, that Humphreys had sent it by the
regular post
instead of by express courier!) & to make sure that it was promptly negotiated & the specie shipt before Napoleon, who had open’d his great campaign against the Austrians in northern Italy, should close the port. I was then to go to his Ruthy in the rue du Bac, deliver to her his last will & testament along with letters of an equally intimate but less lugubrious character, assure her that she had no rivals amongst the pantaloon’d ladies of Algiers, & assure
him,
by return post, that she was similarly faithful. That is (he regarded me meaningly here: no libertine, he was no monk either, & had not been perfectly celibate all these months), that whatever shifts she might have devised to assuage her loneliness, they posed no threat to her love for him.

“And this inquiry you are to discharge with perfect tact,” he concluded, “as only you—or your father—could.” Except that, should the impulse take me, I was to consider myself free to stay aboard of the
Fortune
& visit the country to which I had just render’d a considerable service, perhaps even seeking out “Henry Burlingame IV” & settling once for all in my heart whether he was my father. For if he was not, or if no face-to-face accounting could justify his behavior to me, then he, Barlow, would be pleased to regard me officially as he regarded me already in his heart: as his own son.

I was much toucht, & much confused in my own heart—but enough surfeited with pestiferous Algiers to delight in putting it behind me. I went, not to Philadelphia, but to Leghorn & thence back to dear Paris. But to appease my conscience both for leaving good Joel as the Dey’s sole American hostage, in effect, & for declining that invitation to be his son (I didn’t
want
a father, I began with some excitement to understand), I perform’d him one final service ere I went, as important in my history as in his.

Our diplomatic successes in the cause of the U. States, remember, like most successes in international affairs, were at the expense of other governments, inasmuch as the Dey’s chief revenue was still the prizes taken by his corsairs. What game our treaty pledged him to forgo, he bagg’d elsewhere. In consequence, while Barlow was currently the envy of the Algerine consular community, he was also the prime target of their cabals. Nothing would have more pleased the Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, & Venetian consuls than the default of our treaty payments & a resumption of Algerine piracy against U. States merchantmen. Thus far they had been content to asperse privily, to the Dey, Barlow’s character & intentions: he was a sodomite, they insinuated; a Christian cleric; a closet poet. But on the eve of the
Fortune’s
departure, when my belongings were already packt & shipt aboard, Barlow came to my chambers much concern’d that a graver move against him might be afoot.