World Enough and Time by Nicholas Murray

coaches and 200 waggons, in more clement weather, but they were still complaining. This time it was the hard Russian saddles, the tents in which they had to sleep, the restricted diet – ‘nothing but Beef and Mutton’ – and the ‘persecution of the flies’. But at least the passing scenery diverted them. They were forced to concede ‘the delight of beholding the Rivers gliding through these vast wildernesses’. And the natives were a pleasant curiosity:
    Our habits appeared so unusual to the Peasants, that they no sooner saw two or three of my Lord’s Servants on horse-back, but away they run in all haste to their houses, clapping their doors after them, as if we had been so many ominous Birds, or Spirits come on purpose to fright them.
    But, generally speaking, ‘the small civility we found in this barbarous Nation, and the natural disposition each of us had to be returning towards his own Country, prevailed with us to leave Moscovy with much pleasure and satisfaction’. They rested for fifteen days in Riga until on 22 August they set sail in a man-of-war via the Baltic to Stockholm, nearly running short of provisions on the voyage. Arriving at Stockholm, Carlisle ‘dispatched Mr Marvel his Secretary, and Mr Taylor his Steward in the Boat … The Secretary was sent to give notice of the Ambassadors arrival and to inform himself at what time he was to make his Entry into the Town.’ The reception of the embassy by the Swedes on 8 September was less extravagant than that offered by the Russians but had, they felt, more genuine civility. They spent five weeks in Stockholm at the court of the nine-year-old King Charles XI, to whom Marvell delivered a Latin address after Carlisle had delivered it in English. Marvell then offered it in French to the Queen Mother. Guy Miège was impressed by Marvell’s artfulness as a rhetorician for, in delivering his farewell address to the Queen Mother, Carlisle said at one point ‘That the boldest eloquence would lose its speech’ then paused as if he was genuinely lost for words in praising her excellence. When Marvell delivered the same speech in French, Miège noticed that he also paused in the same place and realised that this was in fact a carefully contrived effect. In spite of all these arts, however, the Swedish mission, diplomatically speaking, was as fruitless as the Russian one and the hapless embassy set sail on a ship called the Centurion on 13 October for Denmark, arriving at Copenhagen two weeks later. During the voyage they had been entertained by two tame bears from Moscow which wrestled playfully and sucked the fingers of anyone who dared.
    On arrival at Copenhagen, Marvell was despatched, as usual, to give notice of Carlisle’s arrival ‘and to carry his Credentials to the Chancellor’. On 27 October Carlisle made his solemn entry into the town where ‘The King of Denmark appeared to us very grave and Majestick.’ Soon after this Carlisle’s wife gave birth to a son. They left – again failing in their mission to secure Danish support in preparations for war against the United Provinces – on 15 December. The sea being frozen, they travelled by land, after an initial attempt to go by sea from Elsinore had failed. Their numbers were now thinned out as they pressed on home overland, a little anxious because the hostilities of the Dutch War were just beginning, passing through the town of Bockstoud near Hamburg where another incident displayed Marvell’s hot temper. It was in the first days of January, just after dinner, when the party was due to set off to complete a further three or four leagues that night. Marvell’s waggoner said he would not go unless a friend of his, another waggoner, went along with him. Marvell was having none of this:
    The secretary not able to bring them to reason by fair means, tried what he could by foul, and by clapping a pistol to his