Peter Roget Escapes
I’d just graduated from medical school,
didn’t know what to do next –
performed odd jobs, took extra courses,
even volunteered as a test subject
for a nitrous oxide trial
at the Pneumatic Institution in Clifton.
Seeing me despondent, flailing about,
my uncle got me a position as a chaperone
for the two teenaged sons of John Philips,
a wealthy cotton mill owner in Manchester,
a year-long trip to the continent,
to learn French before joining the business.
Brits now flocked to France
after eight long years of war,
the peace treaty signed in Amiens closing it out.
Off we went in February of 1802,
only weeks after I’d turned twenty-three.
The boys and I had a great time in Paris,
even saw Napoleon at the Tuileries Palace,
then on to Geneva, where our luck ran out.
Imperial Napoleon had marched on Italy, Holland, Switzerland,
so King George III declared war on France
just a year after the armistice.
The French retaliated, British citizens
declared prisoners of war,
to be transported to Verdun.
I sent Burton and Nathaniel to their father’s associates in Neuchâtel,
tried establishing Swiss citizenship,
since my late father hailed from Geneva,
but in the end, the boys and I sneaked off, through obscure villages,
disguising ourselves in shabby clothes, only speaking French,
bribed a French guard with a bottle of wine,
crossed the Rhine into Germany.
Free at last! It was like waking from a nightmare!
We’d escaped – absconded, evaded, avoided, extricated ourselves,
fled, scrammed, vanished, saved our necks, slipped away, broke out:
we’d taken French-leave!