16th May, 1809

This morning I saw a most unlikely sight for Vienna: a Negro in a rather grand uniform. He was only the second Negro of my life, and the first called to the military. A fine-looking fellow he was too; a six-footer or taller, with the red plume on his black shako taking him past seven, a brown coat with a red breast, a white waistcoat and breeches, and black boots.

With Doctor Haydn fed and resting after an hour of the kind of joint activity that the two of us still conspire to call work, I decided to visit Uncle Drew to see if he might have any use for me. He did not, but the Negro was near to my uncle’s post, standing with the staff of the French generals. He was taking a draught of water and a meal, having ridden from the King of Naples with a dispatch for Napoléon. I heard him speak his French in a wonderful bass voice, and wondered if I might converse with him a while, though I had no business to.

It is evident I did not manage the privacy of my inspection of him as I had intended, for my uncle came to me and advised me not to ride off with this one, ‘at least until your friend Sligo remedies your previous predicament’. It is the only time he has yet raised my trouble, in all my months here, and I am heartened, I suppose, that he saw fit to pull my leg about it.

I cannot say that laws were not broken, though the strict matter of which laws is the subject of some dispute. The sighting of the Negro today was a sign, I believe, that I should address this in my journal. The war is not finished here, and its cannons and its hunger may yet return and take me, so I shall make some record of the events to set against my name, should my body never be restored to the far green shores of home.

The tale concerns the first Negro of my acquaintance, a fine fellow by the name of Noah. In last year’s summer holiday, with two years of my schooling still ahead of me, I returned from Manchester to Malahide. I took my violoncello home and, upon playing it at a ball hosted by my grandmother, received numerous invitations to play further afield. My grandmother, taken with the idea that the family might have in it a musician of renown and, no doubt, wishing to see my summer pass gainfully, encouraged me to accept.

So it was that I met the Negro, Noah, a young man not two years older than me, but a finer violinist than I will ever be a violoncellist, and a very able carpenter too. It is true to say that the best nights of my short life to date were those of the summer last, when I made music with Noah to the satisfaction of all, and the two of us talked of his journeys, and dared to talk of journeying together. I should note that he does not favour the term ‘Negro’ for himself, preferring ‘Ashanti’ and ‘Akan’, which, he told me, better describe his African tribal origins. I did not know Africa had kings, and such things, until he told me.