VI
IN THE retrospect of a life which had, besides its preliminary stage of childhood
and early youth, two distinct developments, and even two distinct elements, such
as earth and water, for its successive scenes, a
certain amount of naïveness is unavoidable. I
am conscious of it in these pages. This remark is put forward in no apologetic spirit.
As years go by and the number of pages grows
steadily, the feeling grows upon one, too, that
one can write only for friends. Then why
should one put them to the necessity of
protesting (as a friend would do) that no
apology is necessary, or put, perchance, into
their heads the doubt of one's discretion?
So much as to the care due to those friends
whom a word here, a line there, a fortunate
page of just feeling in the right place, some
happy simplicity, or even some lucky subtlety,
has drawn from the great multitude of fellow
beings even as a fish is drawn from the depths
of the sea. Fishing is notoriously (I am
talking now of the deep sea) a matter of luck.
As to one's enemies, they will take care of
themselves.
There is a gentleman, for instance, who,
metaphorically speaking, jumps upon me with
both feet. This image has no grace, but it is
exceedingly apt to the occasion—to the several occasions. I don't know precisely how
long he has been indulging in that intermittent exercise, whose seasons are ruled by the
custom of the publishing trade. Somebody
pointed him out (in printed shape, of course)
to my attention some time ago, and straightway I experienced a sort of reluctant affection
for that robust man. He leaves not a shred
of my substance untrodden: for the writer's
substance is his writing; the rest of him is
but a vain shadow, cherished or hated on
uncritical grounds. Not a shred! Yet the
sentiment owned to is not a freak of affectation or perversity. It has a deeper, and, I
venture to think, a more estimable origin than
the caprice of emotional lawlessness. It is,
indeed, lawful, in so much that it is given
(reluctantly) for a consideration, for several
considerations. There is that robustness, for
instance, so often the sign of good moral
balance. That's a consideration. It is not,
indeed, pleasant to be stamped upon, but the
very thoroughness of the operation, implying
not only a careful reading, but some real
insight into work whose qualities and defects,
whatever they may be, are not so much on
the surface, is something to be thankful for in
view of the fact that it may happen to one's
work to be condemned without being read
at all. This is the most fatuous adventure
that can well happen to a writer venturing his
soul among criticisms. It can do one no harm,
of course, but it is disagreeable. It is disagreeable in the same way as discovering a
three-card-trick man among a decent lot of
folk in a third-class compartment. The open
impudence of the whole transaction, appealing
insidiously to the folly and credulity of mankind, the brazen, shameless patter, proclaiming the fraud openly while insisting on the
fairness of the game, give one a feeling of
sickening disgust. The honest violence of a
plain man playing a fair game fairly—even if
he means to knock you over—may appear
shocking, but it remains within the pale of
decency. Damaging as it may be, it is in no
sense offensive. One may well feel some
regard for honesty, even if practised upon
one's own vile body. But it is very obvious
that an enemy of that sort will not be stayed
by explanations or placated by apologies.
Were I to advance the plea of youth in excuse
of the naïveness to be found in these pages,
he would be likely to say "Bosh!" in a column
and a half of fierce print. Yet a writer is no
older than his first published book, and, notwithstanding the vain appearances of decay
which attend us in this transitory life, I stand
here with the wreath of only fifteen short summers on my brow.
With the remark, then, that at such tender
age some naïveness of feeling and expression
is excusable, I proceed to admit that, upon
the whole, my previous state of existence was
not a good equipment for a literary life.
Perhaps I should not have used the word
literary. That word presupposes an intimacy
of acquaintance with letters, a turn of mind,
and a manner of feeling to which I dare lay
no claim. I only love letters; but the love
of letters does not make a literary man, any
more than the love of the sea makes a seaman.
And it is very possible, too, that I love the
letters in the same way a literary man may
love the sea he looks at from the shore—a scene
of great endeavour and of great achievements
changing the face of the world, the great open
way to all sorts of undiscovered countries.
No, perhaps I had better say that the life at
sea—and I don't mean a mere taste of it,
but a good broad span of years, something
that really counts as real service—is not,
upon the whole, a good equipment for a
writing life. God forbid, though, that I
should be thought of as denying my masters
of the quarter-deck. I am not capable of that
sort of apostasy. I have confessed my attitude of piety toward their shades in three or
four tales, and if any man on earth more than
another needs to be true to himself as he hopes
to be saved, it is certainly the writer of fiction.
What I meant to say, simply, is that the
quarter-deck training does not prepare one
sufficiently for the reception of literary criticism. Only that, and no more. But this
defect is not without gravity. If it be permissible to twist, invert, adapt (and spoil)
Mr. Anatole France's definition of a good
critic, then let us say that the good author
is he who contemplates without marked joy
or excessive sorrow the adventures of his soul
among criticisms. Far be from me the intention to mislead an attentive public into the
belief that there is no criticism at sea. That
would be dishonest, and even impolite. Everything can be found at sea, according to the
spirit of your quest—strife, peace, romance,
naturalism of the most pronounced kind,
ideals, boredom, disgust, inspiration—and
every conceivable opportunity, including the
opportunity to make a fool of yourself,
exactly as in the pursuit of literature. But
the quarter-deck criticism is somewhat different from literary criticism. This much they
have in common, that before the one and
the other the answering back, as a general
rule, does not pay.
Yes, you find criticism at sea, and even
appreciation—I tell you everything is to be
found on salt water—criticism generally impromptu, and always viva voce, which is the
outward, obvious difference from the literary
operation of that kind, with consequent freshness and vigour which may be lacking in the
printed word. With appreciation, which
comes at the end, when the critic and the
criticised are about to part, it is otherwise.
The sea appreciation of one's humble talents
has the permanency of the written word,
seldom the charm of variety, is formal in its
phrasing. There the literary master has the
superiority, though he, too, can in effect but
say—and often says it in the very phrase—
"I can highly recommend." Only usually he
uses the word "We," there being some occult
virtue in the first person plural which makes
it specially fit for critical and royal declarations. I have a small handful of these sea
appreciations, signed by various masters,
yellowing slowly in my writing-table's left-hand drawer, rustling under my reverent
touch, like a handful of dry leaves plucked
for a tender memento from the tree of knowledge. Strange! It seems that it is for these
few bits of paper, headed by the names of a few
Scots and English shipmasters, that I have
faced the astonished indignations, the mockeries, and the reproaches of a sort hard to
bear for a boy of fifteen; that I have been
charged with the want of patriotism, the want
of sense, and the want of heart, too; that I
went through agonies of self-conflict and shed
secret tears not a few, and had the beauties
of the Furca Pass spoiled for me, and have
been called an "incorrigible Don Quixote,"
in allusion to the book-born madness of the
knight. For that spoil! They rustle, those
bits of paper—some dozen of them in all.
In that faint, ghostly sound there live the
memories of twenty years, the voices of
rough men now no more, the strong voice of
the everlasting winds, and the whisper of a
mysterious spell, the murmur of the great sea,
which must have somehow reached my inland
cradle and entered my unconscious ear, like
that formula of Mohammedan faith the
Mussulman father whispers into the ear of
his new-born infant, making him one of the
faithful almost with his first breath. I do
not know whether I have been a good seaman,
but I know I have been a very faithful one.
And, after all, there is that handful of "characters" from various ships to prove that all
these years have not been altogether a dream.
There they are, brief, and monotonous in
tone, but as suggestive bits of writing to me
as any inspired page to be found in literature.
But then, you see, I have been called romantic.
Well, that can't be helped. But stay. I
seem to remember that I have been called a
realist, also. And as that charge, too, can
be made out, let us try to live up to it, at
whatever cost, for a change. With this end in
view, I will confide to you coyly, and only because there is no one about to see my blushes
by the light of the midnight lamp, that these
suggestive bits of quarter-deck appreciation,
one and all, contain the words "strictly
sober."
Did I overhear a civil murmur, "That's
very gratifying, to be sure?" Well, yes, it
is gratifying—thank you. It is at least as
gratifying to be certified sober as to be certified romantic, though such certificates would
not qualify one for the secretaryship of a temperance association or for the post of official
troubadour to some lordly democratic institution such as the London County Council, for
instance. The above prosaic reflection is put
down here only in order to prove the general
sobriety of my judgment in mundane affairs.
I make a point of it because a couple of years
ago, a certain short story of mine being published in a French translation, a Parisian critic
—I am almost certain it was M. Gustave Kahn
in the Gil-Blas—giving me a short notice,
summed up his rapid impression of the
writer's quality in the words un puissant
réveur. So be it! Who could cavil at the
words of a friendly reader? Yet perhaps
not such an unconditional dreamer as all
that. I will make bold to say that neither
at sea nor ashore have I ever lost the sense
of responsibility. There is more than one
sort of intoxication. Even before the most
seductive reveries I have remained mindful
of that sobriety of interior life, that asceticism
of sentiment, in which alone the naked form
of truth, such as one conceives it, such as
one feels it, can be rendered without shame.
It is but a maudlin and indecent verity that
comes out through the strength of wine. I
have tried to be a sober worker all my life—
all my two lives. I did so from taste, no
doubt, having an instinctive horror of losing
my sense of full self-possession, but also from
artistic conviction. Yet there are so many
pitfalls on each side of the true path that,
having gone some way, and feeling a little
battered and weary, as a middle-aged traveller
will from the mere daily difficulties of the
march, I ask myself whether I have kept
always, always faithful to that sobriety wherein there is power and truth and peace.
As to my sea sobriety, that is quite properly
certified under the sign-manual of several trustworthy shipmasters of some standing in their time. I seem to hear your polite
murmur that "Surely this might have been
taken for granted." Well, no. It might not
have been. That August academical body,
the Marine Department of the Board of
Trade, takes nothing for granted in the
granting of its learned degrees. By its regulations issued under the first Merchant Shipping Act, the very word SOBER must be written, or a whole sackful, a ton, a mountain of
the most enthusiastic appreciation will avail
you nothing. The door of the examination-rooms shall remain closed to your tears and
entreaties. The most fanatical advocate of
temperance could not be more pitilessly
fierce in his rectitude than the Marine Department of the Board of Trade. As I have
been face to face at various times with all
the examiners of the Port of London in my
generation, there can be no doubt as to the
force and the continuity of my abstemiousness. Three of them were examiners in sea-manship, and it was my fate to be delivered
into the hands of each of them at proper
intervals of sea service. The first of all, tall,
spare, with a perfectly white head and mustache, a quiet, kindly manner, and an air of
benign intelligence, must, I am forced to
conclude, have been unfavourably impressed
by something in my appearance. His old,
thin hands loosely clasped resting on his
crossed legs, he began by an elementary question, in a mild voice, and went on, went on.
. . . It lasted for hours, for hours. Had I
been a strange microbe with potentialities
of deadly mischief to the Merchant Service
I could not have been submitted to a more
microscopic examination. Greatly reassured
by his apparent benevolence, I had been at
first very alert in my answers. But at
length the feeling of my brain getting addled
crept upon me. And still the passionless
process went on, with a sense of untold ages
having been spent already on mere preliminaries. Then I got frightened. I was
not frightened of being plucked; that even-tuality did not even present itself to my mind.
It was something much more serious and
weird. "This ancient person," I said to
myself, terrified, "is so near his grave that
he must have lost all notion of time. He is
considering this examination in terms of
eternity. It is all very well for him. His
race is run. But I may find myself coming
out of this room into the world of men a
stranger, friendless, forgotten by my very
landlady, even were I able after this endless
experience to remember the way to my hired
home." This statement is not so much of a
verbal exaggeration as may be supposed.
Some very queer thoughts passed through
my head while I was considering my answers;
thoughts which had nothing to do with seamanship, nor yet with anything reasonable
known to this earth. I verily believe that
at times I was light-headed in a sort of languid way. At last there fell a silence, and
that, too, seemed to last for ages, while,
bending over his desk, the examiner wrote
out my pass-slip slowly with a noiseless pen.
He extended the scrap of paper to me without a word, inclined his white head gravely
to my parting bow. . . .
When I got out of the room I felt limply
flat, like a squeezed lemon, and the doorkeeper in his glass cage, where I stopped to
get my hat and tip him a shilling, said:
"Well! I thought you were never coming
out."
"How long have I been in there?" I asked,
faintly.
He pulled out his watch.
"He kept you, sir, just under three hours.
I don't think this ever happened with any
of the gentlemen before."
It was only when I got out of the building
that I began to walk on air. And the human
animal being averse from change and timid
before the unknown, I said to myself that
I really would not mind being examined by
the same man on a future occasion. But
when the time of ordeal came round again
the doorkeeper let me into another room,
with the now familiar paraphernalia of models
of ships and tackle, a board for signals on
the wall, a big, long table covered with official
forms and having an unrigged mast fixed
to the edge. The solitary tenant was unknown to me by sight, though not by reputation, which was simply execrable. Short
and sturdy, as far as I could judge, clad in
an old brown morning-suit, he sat leaning
on his elbow, his hand shading his eyes, and
half averted from the chair I was to occupy
on the other side of the table. He was motionless, mysterious, remote, enigmatical, with
something mournful, too, in the pose, like
that statue of Giugliano (I think) de Medici
shading his face on the tomb by Michael
Angelo, though, of course, he was far, far
from being beautiful. He began by trying to
make me talk nonsense. But I had been
warned of that fiendish trait, and contradicted
him with great assurance. After a while he
left off. So far good. But his immobility,
the thick elbow on the table, the abrupt,
unhappy voice, the shaded and averted face
grew more and more impressive. He kept
inscrutably silent for a moment, and then,
placing me in a ship of a certain size, at sea,
under conditions of weather, season,
locality, etc.—all very clear and precise—
ordered me to execute a certain manœuvre.
Before I was half through with it he did some
material damage to the ship. Directly I had
grappled with the difficulty he caused another
to present itself, and when that, too, was met he
stuck another ship before me, creating a very
dangerous situation. I felt slightly outraged
by this ingenuity in piling trouble upon a man.
"I wouldn't have got into that mess," I
suggested, mildly. "I could have seen that
ship before."
He never stirred the least bit.
"No, you couldn't. The weather's thick."
"Oh! I didn't know," I apologized
blankly.
I suppose that after all I managed to stave
off the smash with sufficient approach to
verisimilitude, and the ghastly business went
on. You must understand that the scheme
of the test he was applying to me was, I
gathered, a homeward passage—the sort of
passage I would not wish to my bitterest
enemy. That imaginary ship seemed to labour under a most comprehensive curse. It's
no use enlarging on these never-ending misfortunes; suffice it to say that long before the
end I would have welcomed with gratitude
an opportunity to exchange into the Flying
Dutchman. Finally he shoved me into the
North Sea (I suppose) and provided me with a
lee shore with outlying sand-banks—the Dutch
coast, presumably. Distance, eight miles.
The evidence of such implacable animosity
deprived me of speech for quite half a minute.
"Well," he said—for our pace had been
very smart, indeed, till then.
"I will have to think a little, sir."
"Doesn't look as if there were much time
to think," he muttered, sardonically, from
under his hand.
"No, sir," I said, with some warmth.
"Not on board a ship, I could see. But so
many accidents have happened that I really
can't remember what there's left for me to
work with."
Still half averted, and with his eyes concealed, he made unexpectedly a grunting remark.
"You've done very well."
"Have I the two anchors at the bow, sir?"
I asked.
"Yes."
I prepared myself then, as a last hope for
the ship, to let them both go in the most
effectual manner, when his infernal system of
testing resourcefulness came into play again.
"But there's only one cable. You've lost
the other."
It was exasperating.
"Then I would back them, if I could, and
tail the heaviest hawser on board on the end
of the chain before letting go, and if she parted
from that, which is quite likely, I would just
do nothing. She would have to go."
"Nothing more to do, eh?"
"No, sir. I could do no more."
He gave a bitter half-laugh.
"You could always say your prayers."
He got up, stretched himself, and yawned
slightly. It was a sallow, strong, unamiable
face. He put me, in a surly, bored fashion,
through the usual questions as to lights and
signals, and I escaped from the room thankfully—passed! Forty minutes! And again
I walked on air along Tower Hill, where so
many good men had lost their heads because,
I suppose, they were not resourceful enough
to save them. And in my heart of hearts
I had no objection to meeting that examiner
once more when the third and last ordeal
became due in another year or so. I even
hoped I should. I knew the worst of him
now, and forty minutes is not an unreasonable time. Yes, I distinctly hoped. . . .
But not a bit of it. When I presented myself to be examined for master the examiner
who received me was short, plump, with a
round, soft face in gray, fluffy whiskers, and
fresh, loquacious lips.
He commenced operations with an easy-going "Let's see. H'm. Suppose you tell
me all you know of charter-parties." He kept
it up in that style all through, wandering
off in the shape of comment into bits out of
his own life, then pulling himself up short and
returning to the business in hand. It was
very interesting. "What's your idea of a
jury-rudder now?" he queried, suddenly, at
the end of an instructive anecdote bearing
upon a point of stowage.
I warned him that I had no experience of
a lost rudder at sea, and gave him two classical
examples of makeshifts out of a text-book.
In exchange he described to me a jury-rudder
he had invented himself years before, when
in command of a three-thousand-ton steamer.
It was, I declare, the cleverest contrivance
imaginable. "May be of use to you some
day," he concluded. "You will go into steam
presently. Everybody goes into steam."
There he was wrong. I never went into
steam—not really. If I only live long enough
I shall become a bizarre relic of a dead barbarism, a sort of monstrous antiquity, the
only seaman of the dark ages who had never
gone into steam—not really.
Before the examination was over he imparted
to me a few interesting details of the transport
service in the time of the Crimean War.
"The use of wire rigging became general
about that time, too," he observed. "I was
a very young master then. That was before
you were born."
"Yes, sir. I am of the year of 1857."
"The Mutiny year," he commented, as if
to himself, adding in a louder tone that his
ship happened then to be in the Gulf of
Bengal, employed under a government charter.
Clearly the transport service had been the
making of this examiner, who so unexpectedly
had given me an insight into his existence,
awakening in me the sense of the continuity
of that sea life into which I had stepped from
outside; giving a touch of human intimacy to
the machinery of official relations. I felt
adopted. His experience was for me, too, as
though he had been an ancestor.
Writing my long name (it has twelve letters)
with laborious care on the slip of blue paper,
he remarked:
"You are of Polish extraction."
"Born there, sir."
He laid down the pen and leaned back to
look at me as it were for the first time.
"Not many of your nationality in our service, I should think. I
never remember meeting
one either before or after I left the sea.
Don't remember ever hearing of one. An inland people, aren't you?"
I said yes—very much so. We were remote
from the sea not only by situation, but also
from a complete absence of indirect association, not being a commercial nation at all,
but purely agricultural. He made then the
quaint reflection that it was "a long way for
me to come out to begin a sea life"; as if
sea life were not precisely a life in which one
goes a long way from home.
I told him, smiling, that no doubt I could
have found a ship much nearer my native
place, but I had thought to myself that if I
was to be a seaman, then I would be a British
seaman and no other. It was a matter of
deliberate choice.
He nodded slightly at that; and, as he kept
on looking at me interrogatively, I enlarged
a little, confessing that I had spent a little
time on the way in the Mediterranean and in
the West Indies. I did not want to present
myself to the British Merchant Service in an
altogether green state. It was no use telling
him that my mysterious vocation was so
strong that my very wild oats had to be sown
at sea. It was the exact truth, but he would
not have understood the somewhat exceptional psychology of my sea-going, I fear.
"I suppose you've never come across one
of your countrymen at sea. Have you, now?"
I admitted I never had. The examiner
had given himself up to the spirit of gossiping
idleness. For myself, I was in no haste to
leave that room. Not in the least. The era
of examinations was over. I would never
again see that friendly man who was a professional ancestor, a sort of grandfather in the
craft. Moreover, I had to wait till he dismissed me, and of that there was no sign.
As he remained silent, looking at me, I
added:
"But I have heard of one, some years ago.
He seems to have been a boy serving his
time on board a Liverpool ship, if I am not
mistaken."
"What was his name?"
I told him.
"How did you say that?" he asked, puckering up his eyes at the uncouth sound.
I repeated the name very distinctly.
"How do you spell it?"
I told him. He moved his head at the
impracticable nature of that name, and observed:
"It's quite as long as your own—isn't it?"
There was no hurry. I had passed for
master, and I had all the rest of my life
before me to make the best of it. That
seemed a long time. I went leisurely through
a small mental calculation, and said:
"Not quite. Shorter by two letters, sir."
"Is it?" The examiner pushed the signed
blue slip across the table to me, and rose
from his chair. Somehow this seemed a very
abrupt ending of our relations, and I felt
almost sorry to part from that excellent man,
who was master of a ship before the whisper
of the sea had reached my cradle. He offered
me his hand and wished me well. He even
made a few steps toward the door with me,
and ended with good-natured advice.
"I don't know what may be your plans,
but you ought to go into steam. When a
man has got his master's certificate it's the
proper time. If I were you I would go into
steam."
I thanked him, and shut the door behind
me definitely on the era of examinations.
But that time I did not walk on air, as on
the first two occasions. I walked across the
hill of many beheadings with measured steps.
It was a fact, I said to myself, that I was now
a British master mariner beyond a doubt. It
was not that I had an exaggerated sense of
that very modest achievement, with which,
however, luck, opportunity, or any extraneous influence could have had nothing to do.
That fact, satisfactory and obscure in itself,
had for me a certain ideal significance. It
was an answer to certain outspoken scepticism and even to some not very kind aspersions. I had vindicated myself from what
had been cried upon as a stupid obstinacy or
a fantastic caprice. I don't mean to say
that a whole country had been convulsed by
my desire to go to sea. But for a boy between fifteen and sixteen, sensitive enough,
in all conscience, the commotion of his
little world had seemed a very considerable
thing indeed. So considerable that, absurdly
enough, the echoes of it linger to this day.
I catch myself in hours of solitude and retrospect meeting arguments and charges made
thirty-five years ago by voices now forever
still; finding things to say that an assailed
boy could not have found, simply because of
the mysteriousness of his impulses to himself.
I understood no more than the people who
called upon me to explain myself. There was
no precedent. I verily believe mine was the
only case of a boy of my nationality and antecedents taking a, so to speak, standing jump
out of his racial surroundings and associations.
For you must understand that there was no idea
of any sort of "career" in my call. Of Russia
or Germany there could be no question. The
nationality, the antecedents, made it impossible. The feeling against the Austrian service was not so strong, and I dare say there
would have been no difficulty in finding my
way into the Naval School at Pola. It would
have meant six months' extra grinding at
German, perhaps; but I was not past the age
of admission, and in other respects I was well
qualified. This expedient to palliate my folly
was thought of—but not by me. I must
admit that in that respect my negative was
accepted at once. That order of feeling was
comprehensible enough to the most inimical
of my critics. I was not called upon to offer
explanations; but the truth is that what I
had in view was not a naval career, but the
sea. There seemed no way open to it but
through France. I had the language, at any
rate, and of all the countries in Europe it is
with France that Poland has most connection. There were some facilities for having
me a little looked after, at first. Letters
were being written, answers were being received, arrangements were being made for
my departure for Marseilles, where an excellent fellow called Solary, got at in a round-about fashion through various French channels,
had promised good-naturedly to put
le jeune
homme in the way of getting a decent ship
for his first start if he really wanted a taste
of
ce métier de chien.
I watched all these preparations gratefully, and kept my own counsel. But what I
told the last of my examiners was perfectly
true. Already the determined resolve that
"if a seaman, then an English seaman" was
formulated in my head, though, of course,
in the Polish language. I did not know six
words of English, and I was astute enough
to understand that it was much better to
say nothing of my purpose. As it was I was
already looked upon as partly insane, at
least by the more distant acquaintances.
The principal thing was to get away. I put
my trust in the good-natured Solary's very
civil letter to my uncle, though I was shocked
a little by the phrase about the
métier de chien.
This Solary (Baptistin), when I beheld him
in the flesh, turned out a quite young man,
very good-looking, with a fine black, short
beard, a fresh complexion, and soft, merry
black eyes. He was as jovial and good-natured as any boy could desire. I was still
asleep in my room in a modest hotel near the
quays of the old port, after the fatigues of
the journey via Vienna, Zurich, Lyons, when
he burst in, flinging the shutters open to the
sun of Provençe and chiding me boisterously
for lying abed. How pleasantly he startled
me by his noisy objurgations to be up and off
instantly for a "three years' campaign in the
South Seas!" O magic words! "Une campagne
de trois ans dans les mers du sud"—that is the
French for a three years' deep-water voyage.
He gave me a delightful waking, and his
friendliness was unwearied; but I fear he
did not enter upon the quest for a ship for me
in a very solemn spirit. He had been at sea
himself, but had left off at the age of twentyfive, finding he could earn his living on shore
in a much more agreeable manner. He was
related to an incredible number of Marseilles
well-to-do families of a certain class. One of
his uncles was a ship-broker of good standing,
with a large connection among English ships;
other relatives of his dealt in ships' stores,
owned sail-lofts, sold chains and anchors, were
master-stevedores, calkers, shipwrights. His
grandfather (I think) was a dignitary of a
kind, the Syndic of the Pilots. I made acquaintances among these people, but mainly
among the pilots. The very first whole day
I ever spent on salt water was by invitation,
in a big half-decked pilot-boat, cruising under
close reefs on the lookout, in misty, blowing
weather, for the sails of ships and the smoke
of steamers rising out there, beyond the slim
and tall Planier lighthouse cutting the line of
the wind-swept horizon with a white perpendicular stroke. They were hospitable souls,
these sturdy Provençal seamen. Under the
general designation of
le petit ami de Baptistin
I was made the guest of the corporation of
pilots, and had the freedom of their boats
night or day. And many a day and a night,
too, did I spend cruising with these rough,
kindly men, under whose auspices my intimacy with the sea began. Many a time
"the little friend of Baptistin" had the hooded
cloak of the Mediterranean sailor thrown over
him by their honest hands while dodging at
night under the lee of Château d'If on the
watch for the lights of ships. Their seatanned faces, whiskered or shaved, lean or
full, with the intent, wrinkled sea eyes of the
pilot breed, and here and there a thin gold
hoop at the lobe of a hairy ear, bent over
my sea infancy. The first operation of seamanship I had an opportunity of observing
was the boarding of ships at sea, at all times,
in all states of the weather. They gave it to
me to the full. And I have been invited to
sit in more than one tall, dark house of the
old town at their hospitable board, had the
bouillabaisse ladled out into a thick plate by
their high-voiced, broad-browed wives, talked
to their daughters—thick-set girls, with pure
profiles, glorious masses of black hair arranged
with complicated art, dark eyes, and dazzlingly
white teeth.
I had also other acquaintances of quite a
different sort. One of them, Madame Delestang, an imperious, handsome lady in a
statuesque style, would carry me off now and
then on the front seat of her carriage to the
Prado, at the hour of fashionable airing. She
belonged to one of the old aristocratic families
in the south. In her haughty weariness she
used to make me think of Lady Dedlock in
Dickens's "Bleak House," a work of the master for which I have such an admiration, or
rather such an intense and unreasoning affection, dating from the days of my childhood,
that its very weaknesses are more precious
to me than the strength of other men's work.
I have read it innumerable times, both in
Polish and in English; I have read it only the
other day, and, by a not very surprising inversion, the Lady Dedlock of the book reminded me strongly of the
"belle Madame
Delestang."
Her husband (as I sat facing them both),
with his thin, bony nose and a perfectly
bloodless, narrow physiognomy clamped together, as it were, by short, formal side whiskers, had nothing of Sir Leicester Dedlock's
"grand air" and courtly solemnity. He belonged to the haute bourgeoisie only, and was
a banker, with whom a modest credit had
been opened for my needs. He was such an
ardent—no, such a frozen-up, mummified
Royalist that he used in current conversation
turns of speech contemporary, I should say,
with the good Henri Quatre; and when talking of money matters, reckoned not in francs,
like the common, godless herd of post-Revolutionary Frenchmen, but in obsolete and
forgotten
écus—écus of all money units in
the world!—as though Louis Quatorze were
still promenading in royal splendour the gardens of Versailles, and Monsieur de Colbert
busy with the direction of maritime affairs.
You must admit that in a banker of the nineteenth century it was a quaint idiosyncrasy.
Luckily, in the counting-house (it occupied
part of the ground floor of the Delestang
town residence, in a silent, shady street) the
accounts were kept in modern money, so that
I never had any difficulty in making my
wants known to the grave, low-voiced, decorous, Legitimist (I suppose) clerks, sitting
in the perpetual gloom of heavily barred windows behind the sombre, ancient counters,
beneath lofty ceilings with heavily molded
cornices. I always felt, on going out, as
though I had been in the temple of some
very dignified but completely temporal religion. And it was generally on these occasions that under the great carriage gateway
Lady Ded—I mean Madame Delestang—
catching sight of my raised hat, would beckon
me with an amiable imperiousness to the side
of the carriage, and suggest with an air of
amused nonchalance,
"Venez donc faire un
tour avec nous," to which the husband would
add an encouraging
"C'est ça. Allons, montez,
jeune homme." He questioned me sometimes, significantly but with perfect tact and
delicacy, as to the way I employed my time,
and never failed to express the hope that I
wrote regularly to my "honoured uncle." I
made no secret of the way I employed my
time, and I rather fancy that my artless
tales of the pilots and so on entertained
Madame Delestang so far as that ineffable
woman could be entertained by the prattle
of a youngster very full of his new experience
among strange men and strange sensations.
She expressed no opinions, and talked to me
very little; yet her portrait hangs in the gallery of my intimate memories, fixed there
by a short and fleeting episode. One day,
after putting me down at the corner of a
street, she offered me her hand, and detained
me, by a slight pressure, for a moment. While
the husband sat motionless and looking
straight before him, she leaned forward in
the carriage to say, with just a shade of warning in her leisurely tone:
"Il faut, cependant,
faire attention à ne pas gâter sa vie." I had
never seen her face so close to mine before.
She made my heart beat and caused me to
remain thoughtful for a whole evening. Certainly one must, after all, take care not to
spoil one's life. But she did not know—
nobody could know—how impossible that
danger seemed to me.
