It was a fine summers day in 1850, why, mid-June I believe it was. Perkins Dreyman was a-wandering, as he was wont to do, taking for himself the pleasure of an afternoon perambulatory along the old docks and warehouses of Bermondsey. He held upon himself – as he unfailingly and always did – the dutiful burden of conversation with his younger brother, the headstrong Barclays Dreyman, and together they were discussing in edifying detail the curious vanishing of John Franklin’s expedition to find the Northwestern Passage, and the chances (which appeared slim) that the lone USS Advance, dispatched in late May, could find him.
“He was a good man, was Franklin,” declared Perkins, but then – quite suddenly – he was cut short by an astounded exclamation from Barclays.
“Good lord,” Barclays cried, “Good lord! It’s the Butcher of Austria, General Haynau!”
And with that the brothers fey leapt up and beat him with sticks upon the head – as if Morris dancing – until the luckless General was bloodied at their feet and sobbing for clemency. The Draymen (for they were not men of genteel blood) were content to leave him there, but eventually settled for some modicum of mercy and allowed him re-entry to the brewery which he had recently left from, where they bought him a keg of bitter for his woes by way of apology for their impulsive natures. The Dreymen were, after all, good Christian men.
Later, Garibaldi himself upon a visit to London came to commend the Dreymen brothers on their virtues, for both their vindicative act of retribution for all those lost and flayed in Brescia to the Butcher, but also for their saintly generosity.
“It is no small matter to part ways with a keg of bitter,” he solemnly declared, “and it was only this action of spontaneous virtue, in retrospect, which saved Great Britain from a costly war with Austria.”
