He would undertake any sort of trouble to
assist those whom he thought deserved assistance. He was a
handsome man, strikingly like a gentleman, with highly courteous
manners, which resembled those of his maternal uncle, the famous
Lord Castlereagh, as I was told by the Minister at Rio.
Nevertheless he must have inherited much in his appearance from
Charles II., for Dr. Wallich gave me a collection of photographs
which he had made, and I was struck with the resemblance of one
to Fitz-Roy; and on looking at the name, I found it Ch. E.
Sobieski Stuart, Count d'Albanie, a descendant of the same
monarch.
Fitz-Roy's temper was a most unfortunate one. It was usually
worst in the early morning, and with his eagle eye he could
generally detect something amiss about the ship, and was then
unsparing in his blame. He was very kind to me, but was a man
very difficult to live with on the intimate terms which
necessarily followed from our messing by ourselves in the same
cabin. We had several quarrels; for instance, early in the
voyage at Bahia, in Brazil, he defended and praised slavery,
which I abominated, and told me that he had just visited a great
slave-owner, who had called up many of his slaves and asked them
whether they were happy, and whether they wished to be free, and
all answered "No." I then asked him, perhaps with a sneer,
whether he thought that the answer of slaves in the presence of
their master was worth anything? This made him excessively
angry, and he said that as I doubted his word we could not live
any longer together.
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