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Wolfert\'s Roost and Miscellanies by Washington Irving

W >> Washington Irving >> Wolfert\'s Roost and Miscellanies



Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, David Widger
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team




WOLFERT'S ROOST

AND

MISCELLANIES

BY

WASHINGTON IRVING




CONTENTS.

CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST

SLEEPY HOLLOW

BIRDS OF SPRING

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ALHAMBRA

ABENCERRAGE

ENCHANTED ISLAND

ADELANTADO OF THE SEVEN CITIES

NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE

DESULTORY THOUGHTS ON CRITICISM

SPANISH ROMANCE

LEGEND OF DON MUIO SANCHO DE HINOJOSA

COMMUNIPAW

CONSPIRACY OF THE COCKED HATS

LEGEND OF COMMUNIPAW

BERMUDAS, THE

PELAYO AND THE MERCHANT'S DAUGHTER

KNIGHT OF MALTA

LEGEND OF THE ENGULPHED CONVENT




COUNT VAN HORN WOLFERT'S ROOST

AND

MISCELLANIES.


A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.

Sir: I have observed that as a man advances in life, he is subject to
a kind of plethora of the mind, doubtless occasioned by the vast
accumulation of wisdom and experience upon the brain. Hence he is apt to
become narrative and admonitory, that is to say, fond of telling long
stories, and of doling out advice, to the small profit and great
annoyance of his friends. As I have a great horror of becoming the
oracle, or, more technically speaking, the "bore," of the domestic
circle, and would much rather bestow my wisdom and tediousness upon the
world at large, I have always sought to ease off this surcharge of the
intellect by means of my pen, and hence have inflicted divers gossiping
volumes upon the patience of the public. I am tired, however, of writing
volumes; they do not afford exactly the relief I require; there is too
much preparation, arrangement, and parade, in this set form of coming
before the public. I am growing too indolent and unambitious for any
thing that requires labor or display. I have thought, therefore, of
securing to myself a snug corner in some periodical work where I might,
as it were, loll at my ease in my elbow-chair, and chat sociably with
the public, as with an old friend, on any chance subject that might pop
into my brain.

In looking around, for this purpose, upon the various excellent
periodicals with which our country abounds, my eye was struck by the
title of your work--"THE KNICKERBOCKER." My heart leaped at the sight.
DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, Sir, was one of my earliest and most valued
friends, and the recollection of him is associated with some of the
pleasantest scenes of my youthful days. To explain this, and to show how
I came into possession of sundry of his posthumous works, which I
have from time to time given to the world, permit me to relate a
few particulars of our early intercourse. I give them with the more
confidence, as I know the interest you take in that departed worthy,
whose name and effigy are stamped upon your title-page, and as they will
be found important to the better understanding and relishing divers
communications I may have to make to you.

My first acquaintance with that great and good man, for such I may
venture to call him, now that the lapse of some thirty years has
shrouded his name with venerable antiquity, and the popular voice has
elevated him to the rank of the classic historians of yore, my first
acquaintance with him was formed on the banks of the Hudson, not far
from the wizard region of Sleepy Hollow. He had come there in the course
of his researches among the Dutch neighborhoods for materials for his
immortal history. For this purpose, he was ransacking the archives of
one of the most ancient and historical mansions in the country. It was
a lowly edifice, built in the time of the Dutch dynasty, and stood on a
green bank, overshadowed by trees, from which it peeped forth upon the
Great Tappan Zee, so famous among early Dutch navigators. A bright
pure spring welled up at the foot of the green bank; a wild brook came
babbling down a neighboring ravine, and threw itself into a little woody
cove, in front of the mansion. It was indeed as quiet and sheltered a
nook as the heart of man could require, in which to take refuge from the
cares and troubles of the world; and as such, it had been chosen in old
times, by Wolfert Acker, one of the privy councillors of the renowned
Peter Stuyvesant.

This worthy but ill-starred man had led a weary and worried life,
throughout the stormy reign of the chivalric Peter, being one of those
unlucky wights with whom the world is ever at variance, and who are kept
in a continual fume and fret, by the wickedness of mankind. At the time
of the subjugation of the province by the English, he retired hither in
high dudgeon; with the bitter determination to bury himself from the
world, and live here in peace and quietness for the remainder of his
days. In token of this fixed resolution, he inscribed over his door the
favorite Dutch motto, "Lust in Rust," (pleasure in repose.) The mansion
was thence called "Wolfert's Rust"--Wolfert's Rest; but in process of
time, the name was vitiated into Wolfert's Roost, probably from its
quaint cock-loft look, or from its having a weather-cock perched on
every gable. This name it continued to bear, long after the unlucky
Wolfert was driven forth once more upon a wrangling world, by the
tongue of a termagant wife; for it passed into a proverb through the
neighborhood, and has been handed down by tradition, that the cock of
the Roost was the most hen-pecked bird in the country.

This primitive and historical mansion has since passed through many
changes and trials, which it may be my lot hereafter to notice. At the
time of the sojourn of Diedrich Knickerbocker it was in possession of
the gallant family of the Van Tassels, who have figured so conspicuously
in his writings. What appears to have given it peculiar value, in his
eyes, was the rich treasury of historical facts here secretly hoarded
up, like buried gold; for it is said that Wolfert Acker, when he
retreated from New Amsterdam, carried off with him many of the records
and journals of the province, pertaining to the Dutch dynasty; swearing
that they should never fall into the hands of the English. These, like
the lost books of Livy, had baffled the research of former historians;
but these did I find the indefatigable Diedrich diligently deciphering.
He was already a sage in year's and experience, I but an idle stripling;
yet he did not despise my youth and ignorance, but took me kindly by the
hand, and led me gently into those paths of local and traditional lore
which he was so fond of exploring. I sat with him in his little chamber
at the Roost, and watched the antiquarian patience and perseverance
with which he deciphered those venerable Dutch documents, worse than
Herculanean manuscripts. I sat with him by the spring, at the foot of
the green bank, and listened to his heroic tales about the worthies of
the olden time, the paladins of New Amsterdam. I accompanied him in his
legendary researches about Tarrytown and Sing-Sing, and explored with
him the spell-bound recesses of Sleepy Hollow. I was present at many of
his conferences with the good old Dutch burghers and their wives, from
whom he derived many of those marvelous facts not laid down in books
or records, and which give such superior value and authenticity to his
history, over all others that have been written concerning the New
Netherlands.

But let me check my proneness to dilate upon this favorite theme; I may
recur to it hereafter. Suffice it to say, the intimacy thus formed,
continued for a considerable time; and in company with the worthy
Diedrich, I visited many of the places celebrated by his pen. The
currents of our lives at length diverged. He remained at home to
complete his mighty work, while a vagrant fancy led me to wander about
the world. Many, many years elapsed, before I returned to the parent
soil. In the interim, the venerable historian of the New Netherlands
had been gathered to his fathers, but his name had risen to renown. His
native city, that city in which he so much delighted, had decreed all
manner of costly honors to his memory. I found his effigy imprinted upon
new-year cakes, and devoured with eager relish by holiday urchins; a
great oyster-house bore the name of "Knickerbocker Hall;" and I narrowly
escaped the pleasure of being run over by a Knickerbocker omnibus!

Proud of having associated with a man who had achieved such greatness,
I now recalled our early intimacy with tenfold pleasure, and sought to
revisit the scenes we had trodden together. The most important of
these was the mansion of the Van Tassels, the Roost of the unfortunate
Wolfert. Time, which changes all things, is but slow in its operations
upon a Dutchman's dwelling. I found the venerable and quaint little
edifice much as I had seen it during the sojourn of Diedrich. There
stood his elbow-chair in the corner of the room he had occupied;
the old-fashioned Dutch writing-desk at which he had pored over the
chronicles of the Manhattoes; there was the old wooden chest, with the
archives left by Wolfert Acker, many of which, however, had been fired
off as wadding from the long duck gun of the Van Tassels. The scene
around the mansion was still the same; the green bank; the spring beside
which I had listened to the legendary narratives of the historian; the
wild brook babbling down to the woody cove, and the overshadowing locust
trees, half shutting out the prospect of the great Tappan Zee.

As I looked round upon the scene, my heart yearned at the recollection
of my departed friend, and I wistfully eyed the mansion which he had
inhabited, and which was fast mouldering to decay. The thought struck me
to arrest the desolating hand of Time; to rescue the historic pile from
utter ruin, and to make it the closing scene of my wanderings; a quiet
home, where I might enjoy "lust in rust" for the remainder of my days.
It is true, the fate of the unlucky Wolfert passed across my mind; but
I consoled myself with the reflection that I was a bachelor, and that I
had no termagant wife to dispute the sovereignty of the Roost with me.

I have become possessor of the Roost! I have repaired and renovated it
with religious care, in the genuine Dutch style, and have adorned and
illustrated it with sundry reliques of the glorious days of the New
Netherlands. A venerable weathercock, of portly Dutch dimensions,
which once battled with the wind on the top of the Stadt-House of New
Amsterdam, in the time of Peter Stuyvesant, now erects its crest on
the gable end of my edifice; a gilded horse in full gallop, once the
weathercock of the great Vander Heyden Palace of Albany, now glitters in
the sunshine, and veers with every breeze, on the peaked turret over
my portal; my sanctum sanctorum is the chamber once honored by the
illustrious Diedrich, and it is from his elbow-chair, and his identical
old Dutch writing-desk, that I pen this rambling epistle.

Here, then, have I set up my rest, surrounded by the recollections of
early days, and the mementoes of the historian of the Manhattoes, with
that glorious river before me, which flows with such majesty through his
works, and which has ever been to me a river of delight.

I thank God I was born on the banks of the Hudson! I think it an
invaluable advantage to be born and brought up in the neighborhood of
some grand and noble object in nature; a river, a lake, or a mountain.
We make a friendship with it, we in a manner ally ourselves to it for
life. It remains an object of our pride and affections, a rallying
point, to call us home again after all our wanderings. "The things which
we have learned in our childhood," says an old writer, "grow up with our
souls, and unite themselves to it." So it is with the scenes among which
we have passed our early days; they influence the whole course of our
thoughts and feelings; and I fancy I can trace much of what is good and
pleasant in my own heterogeneous compound to my early companionship with
this glorious river. In the warmth of my youthful enthusiasm, I used to
clothe it with moral attributes, and almost to give it a soul. I admired
its frank, bold, honest character; its noble sincerity and perfect
truth. Here was no specious, smiling surface, covering the dangerous
sand-bar or perfidious rock; but a stream deep as it was broad, and
bearing with honorable faith the bark that trusted to its waves. I
gloried in its simple, quiet, majestic, epic flow; ever straight
forward. Once, indeed, it turns aside for a moment, forced from its
course by opposing mountains, but it struggles bravely through them, and
immediately resumes its straightforward march. Behold, thought I, an
emblem of a good man's course through life; ever simple, open, and
direct; or if, overpowered by adverse circumstances, he deviate into
error, it is but momentary; he soon recovers his onward and honorable
career, and continues it to the end of his pilgrimage.

Excuse this rhapsody, into which I have been betrayed by a revival of
early feelings. The Hudson is, in a manner, my first and last love; and
after all my wanderings and seeming infidelities, I return to it with a
heart-felt preference over all the other rivers in the world. I seem
to catch new life as I bathe in its ample billows and inhale the pure
breezes of its hills. It is true, the romance of youth is past, that
once spread illusions over every scene. I can no longer picture an
Arcadia in every green valley; nor a fairy land among the distant
mountains; nor a peerless beauty in every villa gleaming among the
trees; but though the illusions of youth have faded from the landscape,
the recollections of departed years and departed pleasures shed over it
the mellow charm of evening sunshine.

Permit me, then, Mr. Editor, through the medium of your work, to
hold occasional discourse from my retreat with the busy world I have
abandoned. I have much to say about what I have seen, heard, felt, and
thought through the course of a varied and rambling life, and some
lucubrations that have long been encumbering my portfolio; together with
divers reminiscences of the venerable historian of the New Netherlands,
that may not be unacceptable to those who have taken an interest in his
writings, and are desirous of any thing that may cast a light back upon
our early history. Let your readers rest assured of one thing, that,
though retired from the world, I am not disgusted with it; and that if
in my communings with it I do not prove very wise, I trust I shall at
least prove very good-natured.

Which is all at present, from

Yours, etc.,

GEOFFREY CRAYON.

* * * * *

TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.

Worthy Sir: In a preceding communication, I have given you some brief
notice of Wolfert's Roost, the mansion where I first had the good
fortune to become acquainted with the venerable historian of the New
Netherlands. As this ancient edifice is likely to be the place whence
I shall date many of my lucubrations, and as it is really a very
remarkable little pile, intimately connected with all the great epochs
of our local and national history, I have thought it but right to give
some farther particulars concerning it. Fortunately, in rummaging a
ponderous Dutch chest of drawers, which serves as the archives of the
Roost, and in which are preserved many inedited manuscripts of Mr.
KNICKERBOCKER, together with the precious records of New-Amsterdam,
brought hither by Wolfert Acker at the downfall of the Dutch dynasty,
as has been already mentioned, I found in one corner, among dried
pumpkin-seeds, bunches of thyme, and pennyroyal, and crumbs of new-year
cakes, a manuscript, carefully wrapped up in the fragment of an old
parchment deed, but much blotted, and the ink grown foxy by time, which,
on inspection, I discovered to be a faithful chronicle of the Roost. The
hand-writing, and certain internal evidences, leave no doubt in my
mind, that it is a genuine production of the venerable historian of the
New-Netherlands, written, very probably, during his residence at the
Roost, in gratitude for the hospitality of its proprietor. As such, I
submit it for publication. As the entire chronicle is too long for the
pages of your Magazine, and as it contains many minute particulars,
which might prove tedious to the general reader, I have abbreviated and
occasionally omitted some of its details; but may hereafter furnish
them separately, should they seem to be required by the curiosity of an
enlightened and document-hunting public. Respectfully yours, GEOFFREY
CRAYON.

* * * * *

A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST.

FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.

About five-and-twenty miles from the ancient and renowned city of
Manhattan, formerly called New-Amsterdam, and vulgarly called New-York,
on the eastern bank of that expansion of the Hudson, known among
Dutch mariners of yore, as the Tappan Zee, being in fact the great
Mediterranean Sea of the New-Netherlands, stands a little old-fashioned
stone mansion, all made up of gable-ends, and as full of angles and
corners as an old cocked hat. Though but of small dimensions, yet, like
many small people, it is of mighty spirit, and values itself greatly on
its antiquity, being one of the oldest edifices, for its size, in the
whole country. It claims to be an ancient seat of empire, I may rather
say an empire in itself, and like all empires, great and small, has had
its grand historical epochs. In speaking of this doughty and valorous
little pile, I shall call it by its usual appellation of "The Roost;"
though that is a name given to it in modern days, since it became the
abode of the white man.

Its origin, in truth, dates far back in that remote region commonly
called the fabulous age, in which vulgar fact becomes mystified, and
tinted up with delectable fiction. The eastern shore of the Tappan Sea
was inhabited in those days by an unsophisticated race, existing in all
the simplicity of nature; that is to say, they lived by hunting and
fishing, and recreated themselves occasionally with a little tomahawking
and scalping. Each stream that flows down from the hills into the
Hudson, had its petty sachem, who ruled over a hand's-breadth of forest
on either side, and had his seat of government at its mouth. The
chieftain who ruled at the Roost, was not merely a great warrior, but a
medicine-man, or prophet, or conjurer, for they all mean the same thing,
in Indian parlance. Of his fighting propensities, evidences still
remain, in various arrowheads of flint, and stone battle-axes,
occasionally digged up about the Roost: of his wizard powers, we have a
token in a spring which wells up at the foot of the bank, on the
very margin of the river, which, it is said, was gifted by him with
rejuvenating powers, something like the renowned Fountain of Youth in
the Floridas, so anxiously but vainly sought after by the veteran Ponce
de Leon. This story, however, is stoutly contradicted by an old Dutch
matter-of-fact tradition, which declares that the spring in question was
smuggled over from Holland in a churn, by Femmetie Van Slocum, wife of
Goosen Garret Van Slocum, one of the first settlers, and that she took
it up by night, unknown to her husband, from beside their farm-house
near Rotterdam; being sure she should find no water equal to it in the
new country--and she was right.

The wizard sachem had a great passion for discussing territorial
questions, and settling boundary lines; this kept him in continual feud
with the neighboring sachems, each of whom stood up stoutly for his
hand-breadth of territory; so that there is not a petty stream nor
ragged hill in the neighborhood, that has not been the subject of long
talks and hard battles. The sachem, however, as has been observed, was a
medicine-man, as well as warrior, and vindicated his claims by arts
as well as arms; so that, by dint of a little hard fighting here, and
hocus-pocus there, he managed to extend his boundary-line from field
to field and stream to stream, until he found himself in legitimate
possession of that region of hills and valleys, bright fountains and
limpid brooks, locked in by the mazy windings of the Neperan and the
Pocantico. [Footnote: As every one may not recognize these boundaries
by their original Indian names, it may be well to observe, that the
Neperan is that beautiful stream, vulgarly called the Saw-Mill River,
which, after winding gracefully for many miles through a lovely valley,
shrouded by groves, and dotted by Dutch farm-houses, empties itself
into the Hudson, at the ancient drop of Yonkers. The Pocantico is that
hitherto nameless brook, that, rising among woody hills, winds in many a
wizard maze through the sequestered banks of Sleepy Hollow. We owe it to
the indefatigable researches of Mr. KNICKERBOCKER, that those beautiful
streams are rescued from modern common-place, and reinvested with their
ancient Indian names. The correctness of the venerable historian may be
ascertained, by reference to the records of the original Indian grants
to the Herr Frederick Philipsen, preserved in the county clerk's office,
at White Plains.]

This last-mentioned stream, or rather the valley through which it flows,
was the most difficult of all his acquisitions. It lay half way to the
strong-hold of the redoubtable sachem of Sing-Sing, and was claimed by
him as an integral part of his domains. Many were the sharp conflicts
between the rival chieftains for the sovereignty of this valley, and
many the ambuscades, surprisals, and deadly onslaughts that took place
among its fastnesses, of which it grieves me much that I cannot furnish
the details for the gratification of those gentle but bloody-minded
readers of both sexes, who delight in the romance of the tomahawk and
scalping-knife. Suffice it to say that the wizard chieftain was at
length victorious, though his victory is attributed in Indian tradition
to a great medicine or charm by which he laid the sachem of Sing-Sing
and his warriors asleep among the rocks and recesses of the valley,
where they remain asleep to the present day with their bows and
war-clubs beside them. This was the origin of that potent and drowsy
spell which still prevails over the valley of the Pocantico, and which
has gained it the well-merited appellation of Sleepy Hollow. Often, in
secluded and quiet parts of that valley, where the stream is overhung by
dark woods and rocks, the ploughman, on some calm and sunny day as
he shouts to his oxen, is surprised at hearing faint shouts from the
hill-sides in reply; being, it is said, the spell-bound warriors, who
half start from their rocky couches and grasp their weapons, but sink to
sleep again.

The conquest of the Pocantico was the last triumph of the wizard sachem.
Notwithstanding all his medicine and charms, he fell in battle in
attempting to extend his boundary line to the east so as to take in the
little wild valley of the Sprain, and his grave is still shown near the
banks of that pastoral stream. He left, however, a great empire to his
successors, extending along the Tappan Zee, from Yonkers quite to Sleepy
Hollow; all which delectable region, if every one had his right, would
still acknowledge allegiance to the lord of the Roost--whoever he might
be. [Footnote: In recording the contest for the sovereignty of Sleepy
Hollow, I have called one sachem by the modern name of his castle or
strong-hold, viz.: Sing-Sing. This, I would observe for the sake
of historical exactness, is a corruption of the old Indian name,
O-sin-sing, or rather O-sin-song; that is to say, a place where any
thing may be had for a song--a great recommendation for a market town.
The modern and melodious alteration of the name to Sing-Sing is said to
have been made in compliment to an eminent Methodist singing-master, who
first introduced into the neighborhood the art of singing through the
nose. D. K.]

The wizard sachem was succeeded by a line of chiefs, of whom nothing
remarkable remains on record. The last who makes any figure in history
is the one who ruled here at the time of the discovery of the country by
the white man. This sachem is said to have been a renowned trencherman,
who maintained almost as potent a sway by dint of good feeding as his
warlike predecessor had done by hard fighting. He diligently cultivated
the growth of oysters along the aquatic borders of his territories, and
founded those great oyster-beds which yet exist along the shores of the
Tappan Zee. Did any dispute occur between him and a neighboring sachem,
he invited him and all his principal sages and fighting-men to a solemn
banquet, and seldom failed of feeding them into terms. Enormous heaps of
oyster-shells, which encumber the lofty banks of the river, remain as
monuments of his gastronomical victories, and have been occasionally
adduced through mistake by amateur geologists from town, as additional
proofs of the deluge. Modern investigators, who are making such
indefatigable researches into our early history, have even affirmed that
this sachem was the very individual on whom Master Hendrick Hudson and
his mate, Robert Juet, made that sage and astounding experiment so
gravely recorded by the latter in his narrative of the voyage: "Our
master and his mate determined to try some of the cheefe men of the
country whether they had any treacherie in them. So they took them down
into the cabin and gave them so much wine and aqua vitae that they
were all very merrie; one of them had his wife with him, which sate so
modestly as any of our countrywomen would do in a strange place. In the
end one of them was drunke; and that was strange to them, for they
could not tell how to take it." [Footnote: See Juet's Journal, Purchas
Pilgrim.]

Letter: Gender roles in the Cinderella story

Doctors assure us that wherever you find an elderly, pompous old writer long past his prime you will find a bottle of scotch nearby. If only that were the case. Hilly hid mine after I fell up the stairs when I came home from the Garrick yesterday, and I've had to make do with a bottle of Blue Nun I found in the maid's parlour. Not that I am an alcoholic. Dipsomaniacs are a breed of the lower orders you meet on street corners: people like myself are bon viveurs who happen to like a drink. Or 12.

My primary observation is that drinking makes the daily grind of dealing with people so much easier. You drink a pint of whisky and become the life and soul of the party. You then start insulting people, before sweating heavily and wetting yourself involuntarily. You will usually find that everyone quickly avoids you, thereby relieving you of the need to make conversation. This is why I prefer to do much of my drinking at home. It saves so much time.

There are a great many drinks on the market - spirits, wines and beers - and I've probably drunk them all. Usually in some kind of combination with one another. Mixing cocktails is one of my favourite hobbies. Here's one I invented last week for my great sycophant, Christopher Hitchens.

The Hitch

One bottle of Babycham

One bottle of absinthe

Five shots of Angostura very bitters

Two tablespoons of bile

Two or three glasses of this tincture can give you a lifetime of self-satisfaction.

At some time you will probably be forced to invite people to your home and they may expect a drink. My advice is to offer them the cheapest tipple you can find; my local off-licence does a ghastly Mosel at 70p a bottle. I've never cared for even the best wines, and this should guarantee those poncing off you neither ask for top-ups nor stay long, thereby leaving you more money and time for the pub.

It is well known that only the very dullest of petit-bourgeois minds fail to over-imbibe on a daily basis, so I regard hangovers as a price worth paying for my brilliance. That said, I have found ways of coping with this metaphysical malaise. The first is to fuck someone; preferably somebody else's wife, but if your own is the only one around then she will do. The second is to read a book by that little shit Mart; it will either remind you you're not that bad a writer or give you some sleep.

The one downside to drinking is that it can make you fat. This is remedied by cutting out food entirely and drinking all spirits without mixers. My weight has gone down to 19st with this diet. There isn't much more to say, but as I'm being paid by the column I'd better repeat myself. And now that I'm dead, there's no harm in Bloomsbury repackaging the same material several times in the same collection.

I don't really like wine. Gin is for pansies, though a snifter with water doesn't go amiss. Liqueurs are best left to patent-shoed Wops. Or Americans. Champagne is an overrated girl's drink, though it can be drunk with any food; as such, it's a perfect breakfast drink because a scotch before 10am is very non-U.

I loathe pubs with loud music, but my utmost detestation is reserved for sanctimonious ex-topers. There's nothing worse than a man who doesn't drink. I once tried not drinking for several hours and my wives and mistresses said how dull it was that I was conscious and they were spared removing my soiled trousers from my bloated legs.

Whisky is my favourite tipple, though I recommend never giving it to a Welshman as it's wasted on someone with an IQ of less than 80. Have I mentioned that I'm partial to a Macallan? Gosh is that the time? Hilly's coming to change my IV drip before I fall unconscious again. The publisher can bloody well pad out the rest of the book with a pointless quiz without me.

Q: Who will buy this?

A: No one.

The digested read digested: The old pub bore.

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A judge who was sued for libel by her mother over allegations of childhood cruelty and neglect in her bestselling "misery memoir" won her case yesterday.

Constance Briscoe burst into tears at the high court in London as a jury unanimously cleared her and publishers Hodder & Stoughton over the claims in Ugly, which her mother Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, 74, had alleged were a "piece of fiction".

During the 10-day trial, Briscoe, 51, who was one of the first black women judges in the UK, told the court her mother repeatedly beat her with a stick for bed-wetting and called her a "dirty little whore", a "potato-head" and "miss piss-a-bed".

She described trying to kill herself by drinking diluted bleach after failing to get taken into care, and told the jury she used a university grant to have plastic surgery to remove the "ugliness" her mother had taunted her over.

Briscoe, of Clapham, south London, also said that when she was nine, her mother had deliberately cut her on the inside of her arm with a knife in a row over the preparation of a chicken.

Ugly, published in 2006, has sold more than 400,000 copies in the UK. Briscoe and Hodder & Stoughton had denied libel and said the book was substantially true. Andrew Caldecott QC, for Briscoe, said the events occurred between 1964 and 1975.

Briscoe-Mitchell, from Southwark, south-east London, left court without making any immediate comment about her legal defeat. During the trial she had denied all the allegations of verbal and physical abuse and claimed she and her daughter had enjoyed a loving relationship within a happy family.

Her counsel, William Panton, told the jury Briscoe was "spinning a yarn", claiming his client had struggled to bring up her 11 children and had provided for them equally to the best of her ability.

Outside court, Briscoe told reporters she was "very happy" with the jury's verdict, which came after more than a day of deliberation.

"It is sad that my mother still feels the need to pursue me," she said. "Now I just want to get on with my career. I would like to thank all my readers who have sent me messages of support, including the very many children who provided helpful advice.

"I can quite understand why my family went into collective denial but whilst child abuse may be committed behind closed doors it should never be swept under the carpet."

Hodder & Stoughton said it was pleased with the verdict. "We are very proud to be Constance Briscoe's publisher," a statement said. "Her books Ugly and Beyond Ugly have touched hundreds of thousands of readers, many of them children. Sadly, as we know from the news over the past few weeks, child abuse is all too common and nothing and no one should ever stand in the way of the truth."

Asked during the trial why she wrote the book, Briscoe said: "I didn't believe for a split second that I owed my mother a bond of silence. I don't. I had a story to tell and that story really is that I, someone who from dirt poverty, from absolutely nowhere, with absolutely no assistance whatsoever, who faced adversity at every turn, could come through."

The court heard she had cleaned offices for two hours every day before school until her studies took her to Newcastle University, the criminal bar and, eventually, to become one of the country's few black women judges.

"I wanted to say to whoever read the book ... you can be whatever you want to be," Briscoe said. "You just have to believe in yourself ... you do not have to be posh or privileged to be at the Bar.

"You just need to believe in yourself and I truly, truly believe that my book has done an enormous amount of good."

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