It is in the French writers that this inordinate weakness of literary men is most conspicuous, and in them it exists to such an extent as, on this side of the Channel, to be altogether ridiculous. Every Frenchman thinks his life worth recording. It was long ago said that the number of unpublished memoirs which exist in France, on the war of the League, would, if put together, form a large library. If those relating to the war of the Revolution were accumulated, we have no doubt they would fill theBibliothèque du Roi. The number already published exceeds almost the dimensions of any private collection of books. The composition and style of these memoirs is for the most part as curious, and characteristic of French character, as their number is descriptive of their ruling passion. In the age of the religious wars, every writer of memoirs seems to have placed himself in the first rank, Henry IV. in the second; in that of the Revolution, the greater part of the autobiographies scarcely disguise the opinion, that, if the first place must be reluctantly conceded to Napoleon Buonaparte, the second must, beyond all question, be assigned to themselves. The Abbé de Pradt expressed the feeling almost every one entertained of himself in France, not the sentiment of an individual man, when he said, "There was one who overturned Napoleon, and that man was me." Most persons in this country will exclaim, that this statement is overcharged, and that it is incredible that vanity should so generally pervade the writers of a whole nation. If they will take the trouble to read Lamartine'sConfidencesandRaphael, containing the events of his youth, or hisHistoire de la Révolution de 1848, recently published, they will find ample confirmation of these remarks; nor are they less conspicuously illustrated by the more elaborateMémoires d'Outre Tombeof Chateaubriand, the name of which is prefixed to this essay.
One thing is very remarkable, and forcibly illustrates the marked difference,in this respect, between the character of the French and the English nation. In France all memoirs assume the form of autobiographies: and so general is the thirst for that species of composition that, where a man of any note has not compiled his own life, his papers are put into the hands of some skilful bookmaker, who speedily dresses them up, in the form of an attractive autobiography. This was done with the papers of Brissot, Robespierre, Marshal Ney, Fouché, and a great many others, all of which appeared with the name of their authors, and richly stored with these private papers, though it was morally certain that they could not by possibility have written their own lives. In England nothing of the kind is attempted. Scarcely any of the eminent men in the last age have left their own memoirs; and the papers of the most remarkable of them have been published without any attempt at biography. Thus we have theWellington Papers, theMarlborough Papers, theNelson Papers, theCastlereagh Papers, published without any autobiography, and only a slight sketch, though in all these cases very ably done, of the author's life by their editor. The lives of the other eminent men of the last age have been given by others, not themselves: as that of Pitt, by Tomline and Gifford; that of Fox, by Trotter; that of Sheridan, by Moore; that of Lord Eldon, by Twiss; that of Lord Sidmouth, by Pellew. There is more here than an accidental diversity: there is a difference arising from a difference of national character. The Englishmen devoted their lives to the public service, and bestowed not a thought on its illustration by themselves; the French mainly thought of themselves when acting in the public service, and considered it mainly as a means of elevation and self-laudation to themselves.
In justice to the literary men of France, however, it must be stated that, of late years at least, they have been exposed to an amount of temptation, and of food for their self-love, much exceeding anything previously seen among men, and which may go far to account for the extraordinary vanity which they have everywhere evinced. In England, literary distinction is neither the only nor the greatest passport to celebrity. Aristocratic influences remain, and still possess the deepest hold of the public mind: statesmen exist, whose daily speeches in parliament render their names as household words. Fashion exercises an extraordinary and almost inexplicable sway, especially over the fairest part of creation. How celebrated soever an author may be, he will in London soon be brought to his proper level, and a right appreciation of his situation. He will see himself at once eclipsed by an old nobleman, whose name is fraught with historic glory; by a young marquis, who is an object of solicitude to the mothers and daughters in the room; by a parliamentary orator, who is beginning to acquire distinction in the senate house. We hold this state of things to be eminently favourable to the right character of literary men; for it saves them from trials before which, it is all but certain, both their good sense and their virtue would succumb. But in Paris this salutary check upon individual vanity and presumption is almost entirely awanting. The territorial aristocracy is confiscated and destroyed; titles of honour are abolished; historic names are almost forgotten in the ceaseless whirl of present events; parliamentary orators are in general unpopular, for they are for the most part on the side of power. Nothing remains but the government of mind. The intellectual aristocracy is all in all.
It makes and unmakes kings alternately; produces and stops revolutions, at one time calls a new race to the throne, at another consigns them with disgrace to foreign lands. Cabinets are formed out of the editors of newspapers, intermingled with a few bankers, whom the public convulsions have not yet rendered insolvent; prime ministers are to be found only among successful authors. Thiers, the editor of theNationaland the historian of the Revolution; Guizot, the profound professor of history; Villemain, the eloquent annalist of French literature; Lamartine, the popular traveller, poet, and historian, have been the alternate prime ministers of France since the revolution of1830. Even the great name of Napoleon cannot save his nephew from the irksomeness of bending to the same necessity. He named Thiers his prime minister at the time of the Boulogne misadventure, he is caressing him now in the salons of the Elysée Bourbon. Successful authors thus in France are surrounded with a halo, and exposed to influences, of which in this country we cannot form a conception. They unite in their persons the fame of Mr Fox and the lustre of Sir Walter Scott: often the political power of Mr Pitt with the celebrity of Lord Byron. Whether such a concentration is favourable either to their present utility or lasting fame, and whether the best school to train authors to be the instructors of the world is to be found in that which exposes them to the combined influence of its greatest temptations, are questions on which it is not necessary now to enter, but on which posterity will probably have no difficulty in coming to a conclusion.
But while we fully admit that these extraordinary circumstances, unparalleled in the past history of the world, go far to extenuate the blame which must be thrown on the French writers for their extraordinary vanity, they will not entirely exculpate them. Ordinary men may well be carried away by such adventitious and flattering marks of their power; but we cannot accept such an excuse from the first men of the age—men of the clearest intellect, and the greatest acquisitions—whose genius is to charm, whose wisdom is to instruct the world through every succeeding age. If the teachers of men are not to be above the follies and weaknesses which are general and ridiculous in those of inferior capacity, where are we to look for such an exemption? It is a poor excuse for the overweening vanity of a Byron, a Goethe, a Lamartine, or a Chateaubriand, that a similar weakness is to be found in a Madame Grisi or a Mademoiselle Cerito, in the first cantatrice or most admired ballerina of the day. We all know that the professors of these charming arts are too often intoxicated by the applause which they meet with; we excuse or overlook this weakness from respect due to their genius and their sex. But we know, at the same time, that there are some exceptions to the general frailty; and in one enchanting performer, our admiration for talents of the very highest order is enhanced by respect for the simplicity of character and generosity of disposition with which they are accompanied. We might desiderate in the men who aspire to direct the thoughts of the world, and have received from nature talents equal to the task, the unaffected singleness of heart, and sterling good sense, which we admire, not less than her admirable powers, in Mademoiselle Jenny Lind.
The faults, or rather frailties, we have alluded to, are in an especial manner conspicuous in two of the most remarkable writers of France of the present century—Lamartine and Chateaubriand. There is some excuse for the vanity of these illustrious men. They have both acquired an enduring fame—their names are known all over the world, and will continue to be so while the French language is spoken on the earth; and they have both, by their literary talents, been elevated to positions far beyond the rank in society to which they were born, and which might well make an ordinary head reel from the giddy precipices with which it is surrounded. Chateaubriand powerfully aided in crushing Napoleon in 1814, when Europe in arms surrounded Paris: with still more honourable constancy he resisted him in 1804, when, in the plenitude of his power, he executed the Duke d'Enghien. He became ambassador to London for the Restoration—minister of foreign affairs, and representative of France at the Congress of Verona. He it was who projected and carried into execution the French invasion of the Peninsula in 1823, the only successful expedition of the Restoration. Lamartine's career, if briefer, has been still more dazzling. He aided largely in the movement which overthrew Louis Philippe; by the force of his genius he obtained the mastery of the movement, "struggled with democracy when it was strongest, and ruled it when it was wildest;" and had the glory, by his single courage and energy, of saving the character of the revolution from bloodshed, and coercing the Red Republicans in the verytumult of their victory. He has since fallen from power, less from any known delinquencies imputed to him, than from the inherent fickleness of the French people, and the impossibility of their submitting, for any length of time, to the lead of a single individual. The autobiography of two such men cannot be other than interesting and instructive in the highest degree; and if we see in them much which we in England cannot altogether understand, and which we are accustomed to stigmatise with the emphatic epithet "French," there is much also in them which candour must respect, and an equitable spirit admire.
The great thing which characterises these memoirs, and is sufficient to redeem a multitude of vanities and frailties, is the elevated and chivalrous spirit in which they are composed. In this respect they are a relic, we fear, of the olden time; a remnant of those ancient days which Mr Burke has so eloquently described in his portrait of Marie Antoinette. That is the spirit which pervades the breasts of these illustrious men; and therefore it is that we respect them, and forgive or forget many weaknesses which would otherwise be insupportable in their autobiographies. It is a spirit, however, more akin to a former era than the present; to the age which produced the crusades, more than that which gave birth to railways; to the days of Godfrey of Bouillon, rather than those which raised a monument to Mr Hudson. We are by no means convinced, however, that it is not the more likely to be enduring in the future ages of the world; at least we are sure it will be so, if the sanguine anticipations everywhere formed, by the apostles of the movement of the future improvement of the species, are destined in any degree to be realised.
Although, however, the hearts of Chateaubriand and Lamartine are stamped with the impress of chivalry, and the principal charm of their writings is owing to its generous spirit, yet we should err greatly if we imagined that they have not shared in the influences of the age in which they lived, and become largely imbued with the more popular and equalising notions which have sprung up in Europe during the last century. They could not have attained thepoliticalpower which they have both wielded if they had not done so; for no man, be his genius what it may, will ever acquire a practical lead among men unless his opinions coincide in the main with those of the majority by whom he is surrounded. Chateaubriand's earliest work, written in London in 1793—theEssai Historique—is, in truth, rather of a republican and sceptical tendency; and it was not till he had travelled in America, and inhaled a nobler spirit amid the solitudes of nature, that the better parts of his nature regained their ascendency, and his fame was established on an imperishable foundation by the publication ofAtala et René, and theGénie du Christianisme. Throughout his whole career, the influence of his early liberal principles remained conspicuous: albeit a royalist, he was the steady supporter of the freedom of the press and the extension of the elective suffrage; and he kept aloof from the government of Louis Philippe less from aversion to the semi-revolutionary spirit in which it was cradled, than from an honourable fidelity to misfortune and horror at the selfish corrupt multitude by which it was soon surrounded. Lamartine's republican principles are universally known: albeit descended of a noble family, and largely imbued with feudal feelings, he aided in the revolt which overturned the throne of Louis Philippe in February 1848, and acquired lasting renown by the courage with which he combated the sanguinary spirit of the Red Republicans, when minister of foreign affairs. Both are chivalrous in heart and feeling, rather than opinions; and they thus exhibit curious and instructive instances of the fusions of the moving principle of the olden time with the ideas of the present, and of the manner in which the true spirit of nobility,forgetfulness of self, can accommodate itself to the varying circumstances of society, and float, from its buoyant tendency, on the surface of the most fetid stream of subsequent selfishness.
In two works recently published by Lamartine,Les ConfidencesandRaphael, certain passages in his autobiography are given. The first recounts the reminiscences of his infancy andchildhood; the second, a love-story in his twentieth year. Both are distinguished by the peculiarities, in respect of excellences and defects, which appear in his other writings. On the one hand we have an ardent imagination, great beauty of language, a generous heart—the true spirit of poetry—and uncommon pictorial powers. On the other, an almost entire ignorance of human nature, extraordinary vanity, and that susceptibility of mind which is more nearly allied to the feminine, than the masculine character. Not but that Lamartine possesses great energy and courage: his conduct, during the revolution of 1848, demonstrates that he possesses these qualities in a very high degree; but that the ardour of his feelings leads him to act and think like women, from their impulse rather than the sober dictates of reason. He is a devout optimist, and firm believer in the innocence of human nature, and indefinite perfectibility of mankind, under the influence of republican institutions. Like all other fanatics, he is wholly inaccessible to the force of reason, and altogether beyond the reach of facts, how strong or convincing soever. Accordingly, he remains to this hour entirely convinced of the perfectibility of mankind, although he has recounted, with equal truth and force, that it was almost entirely owing to his own courage and energy that the revolution was prevented, in its very outset, from degenerating into bloodshed and massacre; and a thorough believer in the ultimate sway of pacific institutions, although he owns that, despite all his zeal and eloquence, the whole provisional government, with himself at its head, would on the 16th April have been guillotined or thrown into the Seine, but for the determination and fidelity of three battalions of theGarde Mobile, whom Changarnier volunteered to arrange in all the windows and avenues of the Hotel de Ville, when assailed by a column of thirty thousand furious revolutionists.
Chateaubriand is more a man of the world than Lamartine. He has passed through a life of greater vicissitudes, and been much more frequently brought into contact with men in all ranks and gradations of society. He is not less chivalrous than Lamartine, but more practical; his style is less pictorial but more statesmanlike. The French of all shades of political opinion agree in placing him at the head of the writers of the last age. This high position, however, is owing rather to the detached passages than the general tenor of his writings, for their average style is hardly equal to such an encomium. He is not less vain than Lamartine, and still more egotistical—a defect which, as already noticed, he shares with nearly all the writers of autobiography in France, but which appears peculiarly extraordinary and lamentable in man of such talents and acquirements. His life abounded with strange and romantic adventures, and its vicissitudes would have furnished a rich field for biography even to a writer of less imaginative powers.
He was born on the 4th September 1768—the same year with Napoleon—at an old melancholy chateau on the coast of Brittany, washed by the waves of the Atlantic ocean. His mother, like those of almost all other eminent men recorded in history, was a very remarkable woman, gifted with a prodigious memory and an ardent imagination—qualities which she transmitted in a very high degree to her son. His family was very ancient, going back to the year 1000; but, till illustrated by Francois René, who has rendered it immortal, the Chateaubriands lived in unobtrusive privacy on their paternal acres. After receiving the rudiments of education at home, he was sent at the age of seventeen into the army; but the Revolution having soon after broken out, and his regiment revolted, he quitted the service and came to Paris, where he witnessed the horrors of the storming of the Tuileries on the 10th of August, and the massacre in the prisons on 2d. September. Many of his nearest relations—in particular his sister-in-law, Madame de Chateaubriand, and sister, Madame Rozambo—were executed along with Malesherbes, shortly before the fall of Robespierre. Obliged now to fly to England, he lived for some years in London in extreme poverty, supporting himself by his pen. It was therehe wrote his earliest and least creditable work, theEssai Historique. Tired of such an obscure and monotonous life, however, he set out for America, with the Quixotic design of discovering by land journey the North-west passage. He failed in that attempt, for which, indeed, he had no adequate means; but he dined with Washington, and in the solitudes of the Far West imbibed many of the noblest ideas, and found the subjects of several of the finest descriptions, which have since adorned his works. Finding that there was nothing to be done in the way of discovery in America, he returned to England. Afterwards he went to Paris, and there composed his greatest works,Atala et Renéand theGénie du Christianisme, which soon acquired a colossal reputation, and raised the author to the highest pinnacle of literary fame.
Napoleon, whose piercing eye discerned talent wherever it was to be found, now selected him for the public service in the diplomatic line. He gives the following interesting account of the first and only interview he had with that extraordinary man, in the saloon of his brother Lucien:—
"I was in the gallery when Napoleon entered; his appearance struck me with an agreeable surprise. I had never previously seen him but at a distance. His smile was sweet and encouraging; his eye beautiful, especially from the way in which it was overshadowed by the eyebrows. He had no charlatanism in his looks, nothing affected or theatrical in his manner. TheGénie du Christianisme, which at that timewas making a great deal of noise, had produced its effect on Napoleon. A vivid imagination animated his cold policy; he would not have been what he was if the Muse had not been there; reason in him worked out the ideas of a poet. All great men are composed of two natures—for they must be at once capable of inspiration and action,—the one conceives, the other executes."Buonaparte saw me, and knew me I know not how. When he moved towards me, it was not known whom he sought. The crowd opened; every one hoped the First Consul would stop to converse with him; his air showed that he was irritated at these mistakes. I retired behind those around me; Buonaparte suddenly raised his voice, and called out, "Monsieur de Chateaubriand." I then remained alone in front; for the crowd instantly retired, and re-formed in a circle around us. Buonaparte addressed me with simplicity, without questions, preamble, or compliments. He began speaking about Egypt and the Arabs, as if I had been his intimate friend, and he had only resumed a conversation already commenced betwixt us. 'I was always struck,' said he, 'when I saw the Scheiks fall on their knees in the desert, turn towards the east, and touch the sand with their foreheads. What is that unknown thing which they adore in the east?' Speedily then passing to another idea, he said, 'Christianity! theIdealogueswished to reduce it to a system of astronomy! Suppose it were so, do they suppose they would render Christianity little? Were Christianity only an allegory of the movement of the spheres, the geometry of the stars, theesprits fortswould have little to say: despite themselves, they have left sufficient grandeur tol'Infame.'5"Buonaparte immediately withdrew. Like Job in the night, I felt as if a spirit had passed before me; the hairs of my flesh stood up. I did not know its countenance; but I heard its voice like a little whisper."My days have been an uninterrupted succession of visions. Hell and heaven continually have opened under my feet, or over my head, without my having had time to sound their depths, or withstand their dazzling. I have met once, and once only, on the shores of the two worlds, the man of the last age, and the man of the new—Washington and Napoleon—I conversed a few moments with each—both sent me back to solitude—the first by a kind wish, the second by an execrable crime."I remarked that, in moving through the crowd, Buonaparte cast on me looks more steady and penetrating than he had done before he addressed me. I followed him with my eyes.'Who is that great man who cares notFor conflagrations?'"6—(Vol. iv. 118-121.)
"I was in the gallery when Napoleon entered; his appearance struck me with an agreeable surprise. I had never previously seen him but at a distance. His smile was sweet and encouraging; his eye beautiful, especially from the way in which it was overshadowed by the eyebrows. He had no charlatanism in his looks, nothing affected or theatrical in his manner. TheGénie du Christianisme, which at that timewas making a great deal of noise, had produced its effect on Napoleon. A vivid imagination animated his cold policy; he would not have been what he was if the Muse had not been there; reason in him worked out the ideas of a poet. All great men are composed of two natures—for they must be at once capable of inspiration and action,—the one conceives, the other executes.
"Buonaparte saw me, and knew me I know not how. When he moved towards me, it was not known whom he sought. The crowd opened; every one hoped the First Consul would stop to converse with him; his air showed that he was irritated at these mistakes. I retired behind those around me; Buonaparte suddenly raised his voice, and called out, "Monsieur de Chateaubriand." I then remained alone in front; for the crowd instantly retired, and re-formed in a circle around us. Buonaparte addressed me with simplicity, without questions, preamble, or compliments. He began speaking about Egypt and the Arabs, as if I had been his intimate friend, and he had only resumed a conversation already commenced betwixt us. 'I was always struck,' said he, 'when I saw the Scheiks fall on their knees in the desert, turn towards the east, and touch the sand with their foreheads. What is that unknown thing which they adore in the east?' Speedily then passing to another idea, he said, 'Christianity! theIdealogueswished to reduce it to a system of astronomy! Suppose it were so, do they suppose they would render Christianity little? Were Christianity only an allegory of the movement of the spheres, the geometry of the stars, theesprits fortswould have little to say: despite themselves, they have left sufficient grandeur tol'Infame.'5
"Buonaparte immediately withdrew. Like Job in the night, I felt as if a spirit had passed before me; the hairs of my flesh stood up. I did not know its countenance; but I heard its voice like a little whisper.
"My days have been an uninterrupted succession of visions. Hell and heaven continually have opened under my feet, or over my head, without my having had time to sound their depths, or withstand their dazzling. I have met once, and once only, on the shores of the two worlds, the man of the last age, and the man of the new—Washington and Napoleon—I conversed a few moments with each—both sent me back to solitude—the first by a kind wish, the second by an execrable crime.
"I remarked that, in moving through the crowd, Buonaparte cast on me looks more steady and penetrating than he had done before he addressed me. I followed him with my eyes.
'Who is that great man who cares notFor conflagrations?'"6—(Vol. iv. 118-121.)
'Who is that great man who cares notFor conflagrations?'"6—(Vol. iv. 118-121.)
'Who is that great man who cares notFor conflagrations?'"6—(Vol. iv. 118-121.)
This passage conveys a just idea of Chateaubriand's Memoirs: his elevation of mind, his ardent imagination, his deplorable vanity. In justice to so eminent a man, however, we transcribe a passage in which the nobleness of his character appears in its true lustre, untarnished by the weaknesseswhich so often disfigure the character of men of genius. We allude to his courageous throwing down the gauntlet to Napoleon, on occasion of the murder of the Duke d'Enghien:—
"Two days before the fatal 20th March, I dressed myself, before taking leave of Buonaparte, on my way to the Valais, to which I had received a diplomatic mission; I had not seen him since the time when he had spoken to me at the Tuileries. The gallery where the reception was going on was full; he was accompanied by Murat and his aide-de-camp. When he approached me, I was struck with an alteration in his countenance: his cheeks were fallen in, of a livid hue; his eyes stern; his colour pale; his air sombre and terrible. The attraction which had formerly drawn me towards him was at an end; instead of awaiting, I fled his approach. He cast a look towards me, as if he sought to recognise me, moved a few steps towards me, turned, and disappeared. Returned to the Hôtel de France, I said to several of my friends, 'Something strange, which I do not know, must have happened: Buonaparte could not have changed to such a degree unless he had been ill.' Two days after, at eleven in the forenoon, I heard a man cry in the streets—'Sentence of the military commission convoked at Vincennes, which has condemned to the pain ofDeathLouis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, born 2d August 1772 at Chantilly.' That cry fell on me like a clap of thunder: it changed my life as it changed that of Napoleon. I returned home, and said to Madame de Chateaubriand—'The Duke d'Enghien has just been shot.' I sat down to a table and began to write my resignation—Madame de Chateaubriand made no opposition: she had a great deal of courage. She was fully aware of my danger: the trial of Moreau and Georges Cadoudal was going on: the lion had tasted blood: it was not the moment to irritate him."—(Vol. iv. 228-229.)
"Two days before the fatal 20th March, I dressed myself, before taking leave of Buonaparte, on my way to the Valais, to which I had received a diplomatic mission; I had not seen him since the time when he had spoken to me at the Tuileries. The gallery where the reception was going on was full; he was accompanied by Murat and his aide-de-camp. When he approached me, I was struck with an alteration in his countenance: his cheeks were fallen in, of a livid hue; his eyes stern; his colour pale; his air sombre and terrible. The attraction which had formerly drawn me towards him was at an end; instead of awaiting, I fled his approach. He cast a look towards me, as if he sought to recognise me, moved a few steps towards me, turned, and disappeared. Returned to the Hôtel de France, I said to several of my friends, 'Something strange, which I do not know, must have happened: Buonaparte could not have changed to such a degree unless he had been ill.' Two days after, at eleven in the forenoon, I heard a man cry in the streets—'Sentence of the military commission convoked at Vincennes, which has condemned to the pain ofDeathLouis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, born 2d August 1772 at Chantilly.' That cry fell on me like a clap of thunder: it changed my life as it changed that of Napoleon. I returned home, and said to Madame de Chateaubriand—'The Duke d'Enghien has just been shot.' I sat down to a table and began to write my resignation—Madame de Chateaubriand made no opposition: she had a great deal of courage. She was fully aware of my danger: the trial of Moreau and Georges Cadoudal was going on: the lion had tasted blood: it was not the moment to irritate him."—(Vol. iv. 228-229.)
After this honourable step, which happily passed without leading to Chateaubriand's being shot, he travelled to the East, where he visited Greece, Constantinople, the Holy Land, and Egypt, and collected the materials which have formed two of his most celebrated works,L'Itinéraire à Jerusalem, andLes Martyrs. He returned to France, but did not appear in public life till the Allies conquered Paris in 1814, where he composed with extraordinary rapidity his famous pamphlet entitledBuonaparte and the Bourbons, which had so powerful an effect in bringing about the Restoration. The royalists were now in power, and Chateaubriand was too important a man to be overlooked. In 1821 he was sent as ambassador to London, the scene of his former penury and suffering; in 1823 he was made Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in that capacity projected, and successfully carried through, the expedition to Spain which reseated Ferdinand on the throne of his ancestors; and he was afterwards the plenipotentiary of France at the congress of Verona in 1824. He was too liberal a man to be employed by the administration of Charles X., but be exhibited an honourable constancy to misfortune on occasion of the Revolution of 1830. He was offered the portfolio of Foreign Affairs if he would abstain from opposition; but he refused the proposal, made a last noble and eloquent speech in favour of his dethroned sovereign in the Chamber of Peers; and, withdrawing into privacy, lived in retirement, engaged in literary pursuits, and in the composition or revising of his numerous publications, till his death, which occurred in June 1848.
Such a life of such a man cannot be other than interesting, for it unites the greatest possible range and variety of events with the reflections of a mind of great power, ardent imagination, and extensive erudition. His autobiography, orMémoires d'Outre Tombe, as it is called, was accordingly looked for with great interest, which has not been sensibly diminished by the revolution of 1848, which has brought a new set of political actors on the stage. Four volumes only have hitherto been published, but the rest may speedily be looked for, now that the military government of Prince Louis Napoleon has terminated that of anarchy in France. The three first volumes certainly disappointed us: chiefly from the perpetual and offensive vanity which they exhibited, and the number of details, many of them of a puerile or trifling character, which they contained. The fourth volume, however, from which the preceding extracts have been taken, exhibits Chateaubriand, in many places, in his original vigour; and if the succeeding ones are of the same stamp, we propose to return to them.
"You must surely be tired by this time, ma'am, of this long-winded yarn of mine?" said the commander of the Gloucester to the elder of his fair listeners, next evening they met with the evident expectation of hearing further; "but after all, this must be dull work for you at present, so I daresay you are amused with anything by way of a change."
——Well, one morning when Westwood and I went on deck, it was a stark staring calm; as dead as a mill-pond, save for the long winding heave that seemed to come miles up out of the stale blue water, and get tired with the journey—from the horizon to us in one lazy coil, and on every side, just serving to jerk the wheel a spoke back and forward, with nobody at it. The very bits of pumpkin-paring and fat which the cook had thrown overboard the night before, lay still alongside, with an oily track oozing round about them from the 'slush,'7—the sails hanging from the yards, up and down, like clothes on a screen—and when you looked over the side away from the sun, you saw your own face, like a fellow's that had been long drowned, peering back at you as it were round the keel—in fact, there you scarce knew where the waterwas. Somehow or other the ship kept sheering round, by little and little, till, although one had chosen a shady spot, all of a sudden the blazing sun came right into his eyes; or the single streak of white cloud laying behind you, to starboard, a while after stuck itself before your face from the very opposite quarter—you fancying, too, you had your eye the whole time on the same bit of water. Being lost in a wood or a fog was nothing to it, especially with the sun at noon drawn up right overhead, so that you couldn't look aloft, and staring down into the sea out of a pool of bright light; "like one tremendously keen little eye," as some of the passengers said, "examining a big blind one." "Why," put in one of the "writers," "I fear he wants to take themoteout of his brother's eye,—this vessel, that is to say!" "Hang it, I hope not!" said Winterton, rather alarmed. "He promises well to do it, then," said another young civilian, "but I wish he'd take thebeamout of his own, first—ha, Smythe?" However, few men have the spirit to laugh at little in a calm near the Line, so Smythe gave no more than a sickly grin, while Westwood looked the clergyman very properly.
Both passengers and crew, all of us that could swim, gave wistful looks now and then alongside at the water, hot as it seemed, for a bathe; just floating up, as it were, with the mere huge size of it, under a dazzle of light, and so blue and smooth you could'nt see a hair's breadth below; while, a bit off, the face of it, and the very air, appeared to dance and quiver like little streams of glass. However, all thoughts of bathing were put out of your head when you saw the black three-cornered affair, with a rake aft, somewhat like the end of a scythe, that went steering slowly round us; then cruising hither and thither, till its infernal horn was as dry as the deck; and at times driving straight off, as if it ran in a groove through the level surface, when back again it came from the other side, creeping lazily towards us, till it sank with a lighttip, and a circle or two on the blue water. The hook and chain were hanging up and down over the taffrail, with the piece of rank pork looking green in the shadow near the rudder, where you read the white figures of her draught as plain as in dock; but the shark, a fifteen-feet customer, if he was an inch, was too knowing to have touched it. "Pity he's gone, Collins," said Ford to me, after we had watched him at last out of sight; "wasn't there any plan of catching him, I wonder! Now we shall have abathe though, at any rate." "Gone?" said I, "he won't leave us in a hurry, if we don't leavehim!" "Poh, man!" said Ford, "I tell you he's tired out and gone away!" Five minutes after, Ford was leaning over the quarter, and wiping his face, while he fanned himself with his straw-hat, which fell out of his hand into the water. He had got over into the mizen-chains to throw a line round it, when he gave a loud shriek, and jumped in-board again. Two or three fathoms of green came up from the keel, balancing on a pair of broad fins under Ford's hat, and a big round snout touched it; then a dozen feet of white belly gleamed in the water, the hat gave a gulp as it was drawn down, and a few small air-bells rose to the top. "He prefers some flavours to others you see, Ford," said I. "'Tis the second hat I've seen you lose: I hope your head won't be in thethird; but you mariners, you see——," however Ford had bolted to his cabin. On turning round I perceived Miss Hyde with the General's lady under the awning on the other side, where the old lady leant against a cushion, with her hands crossed, and her bonnet-strings loose—though a strapping raw-boned Irishwoman she was—and kept Miss Hyde's maid fanning her from behind with a large featherpunkah. The old lady had started at Ford's cry, and gave a look round at me, half fierce and half order-wise, as if she expected to know what was the matter at once. "Only my friend lost his hat, ma'am," said I, stepping forward. "These cadets are so taygious, my dear!" said she to the young lady, falling back again without the least other notice of me. "They plague the life of me, but the brigadier can't drill them as he would if this were a troop-ship—I wish he could, for the sake of the profession!—now, my dear, dho kape out of the s-hun!" However I stuck where I was, fancying I caught the slightest bit of an arch twinkle in the corner of the young lady's eye, though she didn't look at me. "Keep going, can't ye!" said the old lady crossly to the maid. "No, ma'am, indeed!" said the girl, glancing over to her young mistress, "I'm ready to drop!" "Send up papa's kitmagar, then, Wilkins," said Miss Hyde; and the girl went off toward the gallery stair, muttering she "hoped she didn't come—here to be—made a black Indian slave of—at least to an old"—the remainder being lost in the stair. As I leant on the rail-netting, behind the old lady, I happened to tread on her fat pug-dog's tail, whereupon the ugly brute made its teeth meet without farther notice in the small of my leg, after which it gave a yelp, and ran beneath the chairs. "What's that, Die?" exclaimed its mistress: "good hivens! is that same griffin here yet, my dear! Hadn't he ayven the spirit to take a hint?—I say, was ityouhurt Dianny, young man?" "Oh, dear! no, ma'am, not for the world!" said I, looking at my trousers, hard as the thing was to stand, but thinking to smooth her over, though I was'nt quite up to the old Irishwoman, it turned out. "Ha! ha! so she bit you?" said she, with a flash of her hawk's-eye, and leaning back again coolly: "If he'd only kicked poor Die for it under my chair, now, I'd have forgiven him; but he hadn't ayven the heart at the time to drop her a curse,—andIthinking all the while, too, by the luke of his eye, he was from the county Clare! My heart warms to the county Clare always, because, although I'm not Irish myself, you know, I'd once a schoolfellow was born in it—without counting all my relations! Oh, the smooth spalpeen!" continued she, harder than before, glancing at me as I looked all abroad from one to the other;—"listen, niver you let that fellow spake to you, my dear! he's too——." But here I walked quietly off, to put the poop's length betwixt me and the talking old vixen, cursing her and her dog both, quite enough to have pleased her Irish fancy.
On the quarterdeck, the Judge and the General seemed to enjoy the heat and quiet, sitting with their feet up before the round-house, and smoking their long red-twisted hookahs, while they watched the wreaths of smoke go whirling straight up from the bowls to the awning, and listened to the faint bubble of it through the water in the bottles, just dropping a word now and then to each other. A tall thin "native" servant, with long sooty hairhanging from his snow-white turban, stood behind the Judge's chair, bolt upright, with his arms folded, and twice as solemn as Sir Charles himself: you saw a stern-window shining far abaft, through one of the round-house doors, and the fat old fellow of aconsumah8busy laying the cloth for tiffin, while the sole breath of air there was came out of there-away.
Suddenly eight bells struck, and every one seemed glad of something new; the Judge'sconsumahcame out salaaming to say tiffin was ready; the cuddy passengers went below for wine-and-water and biscuit; and the men were at dinner. There being nothing to take care of on deck, and the heat of course getting greater, not a soul staid up but myself; but I preferred at the moment lighting a cheroot, and going up aft to see clear of the awnings. The cockatoo had been left on the poop-rail, with his silver chain hitched round one of the mizen back-stays, where it shifted from one leg to the other, hooked itself up the back-stay as far as it could go, then hurried down again, and mused a bit, as wise as Solomon,—then screamed out at the top of its voice—"Tip—tip—pr-r-retty cacka—tip-poo—cok-ka—whee-yew-ew-ew!" finishing by a whistle of triumph fit to have split one's ears, or brought a gale of wind—though not on account of skill in its books, at any rate. Again it took to swinging, quietly head-down, at a furious rate, and then slewed upright to plume its feathers, and shake the pink tuft on its head. No sooner had I got up the stair, however, than, to my perfect delight, I saw Violet Hyde was still sitting aft, and the old Irishwoman gone; so I stepped to the taffrail at once, and, for something to be about, I hauled tip the shark-hook from astern. The moment I caught her eye, the young lady smiled—by way of making up, no doubt, for the old one. "Howverylonely it is!" said she, rising and looking out; "the ship almost seems deserted, except by us!" "By Jove! I almost wish it were," thought I. "A dead calm, madam," I said, "and likely to hold—the under-swell's gone quite down, and a haze growing." "Are we sureeverto leave this spot then?" asked she, with a slight look of anxiety. "Never fear it, ma'am," said I; "as soon as the haze melts again, we're near a breeze I assure you—only, by the length of the calm and the heat together, not to speak of our being so far to east'ard, I'm afraid we mayn't get rid of it without a gale at the end to match." "Indeed?" said Miss Hyde. The fact was, Westwood and I had been keeping a log, and calculated just now we were somewhere to south-eastward of Ascension; whereas, by the captain and mate's reckoning, she was much farther to west. "I never thought the sea could appear so awful," said she, as if to herself—"much more than in a storm." "Why, madam," said I, "you haven't exactly seen one this voyage—one needs to be close-hauled off the Cape for that." Somehow or other, in speaking toher, by this time I forgot entirely about keeping up the sham cadet, and slipped into my own way again; so all at once Ifelther two dark-blue eyes looking at me, curiously. "How!—why," exclaimed she suddenly, and then laughing, "you seem to know all about it!—why, you speak—have you been studying sea affairs so thoroughly, sir, with your friend, who—but Idothink, now, one can scarcelytrustto what you have said?" "Well—why—well," said I, fiddling with the shark-hook, "I don't know how it is, but I feel as if I must have been at sea some time or other before;—you wouldn't suppose it, ma'am, but whenever I fix my eyes on a particular rope, I seem almost to know the name of it!" "And itsuse, too?" asked she, merrily. "I shouldn't wonder!" said I; "perhaps I wasbornat sea, you know, ma'am?" and I gave a side-look to notice how she took it. "Ah! perhaps!" said Miss Hyde, laughing; "but do you know one sometimes fancies these things; and now I think of it, sir, I even imagined for a moment I had seenyourselfbefore!" "Oh," said I, "that couldn't be the case; I'm sure, for my part, I should recollect clear enough if I'd seen—a—aladyanywhere! I think you said somethingof the kind, ma'am, that night of the last squall—about the water and the clouds, ma'am, you remember?" The young lady looked away, though a notion seemed to flash through her mind. "Yes," said she, "that terrible rain—youwere——" "Washed into the lee-scuppers," said I, indifferently, for I didn't want her to suspect it wasIthat had kissed her hand in the dark as I carried her in. "I hope Sir Charles and yourself got in safe, madam?" However, she was watching the water alongside, and suddenly she exclaimed—"Dear! what a pretty little fish!" "By heavens!" said I, seeing the creature with its sharp nose and blue bars, as it glanced about near the surface, and then swam in below the ship's bilge again, "that's one of the old villain's pilots—he's lying right across our keel! I wish I could catch that shark!" The pork was of no use for such an old sea-lawyer, and I cast a wistful eye on the Irishwoman's fat pug-dog stretched asleep on her shawl by the bulwark; she was far gone in the family way, and, thought I, "he'd takethatin a trice!" I even laid out some marline from a stern-locker, and noticed how neatly one could pass the hook under her belly round to the tail, and seize her so snugly on, muzzled and all; but it was no go, with the devil to pay afterwards. All of a sudden I heard somebody hawking and spitting above the awning forward, near where the cockatoo kept still trying to master his own name. "The Yankee, for a thousand!" thought I, "is Daniel trying to walk along the spanker-boom!" Next, someone sung out, "Hal-loo-oo-oo!" as if there was a tomahawk over him, ready to split his brain. Miss Hyde looked alarmed, when the Scotch mate, as I thought, roared, "Shiver my tops'ls!" then it was a sailor hailing gruffly, "Bloody Capting Brown—bloody Capting Brown, damn your—Capting Brown!" "Somebody drunk aloft!" thought I, walking forward to see; when a funny little black head peeped round the awning, with a yellow nose as sharp as a marlinspike, and red spectacles, seemingly, round its keen little eyes; then, with a flutter and a hop, the steward's pet Mina-bird came down, and lighted just under the cockatoo. "Ha!" said I, laughing, "it's only Parson Barnacle!" as the men called him—a sooty little creature scarce bigger than a blackbird, with a white spot on each wing, and a curious pair of natural glasses on his head, which they kept in the forecastle and taught all sorts of "jaw," till they swore he could have put the ship about, took kindly to tar, and hunted the cockroaches like a cat. No doubt he was glad to meet his countryman the cockatoo, but Tippoo stuck up his crest, swelled his chops, and looked dreadfully frightened; while the Mina-bird9cocked his head on one side, gave a knowing wink as it were, though all the time as grave with his spectacles as a real parson. "How's her head?" croaked he, in a voice like a quarter-master's, "blowing hard!" "Damn Capting Brown!" and hopped nearer to the poor cockatoo, who could stand it no longer, but hooked himself up the backstay as fast as possible, out of sight, the chain running with him: and just as I swung myself clear of the awning to run aloft for a catch of it, out flew Parson Barnacle to the end of the crojack-yard, while the cockatoo gave a flap that loosed the kitmagar's lubberly hitch, and sent him down with his wings spread on the water. At another time it wouldn't have cost me a thought to go head-foremost after him, when I heard his young mistress exclaiming, "Oh, poor dear Tippoo will be drowned!" but recollecting our hungry green friend on the other side, I jumped down for the end of a rope to slip myself quietly alongside with. However, at the very moment, Tom the man-o'-war's man happening to come up from the fore-hatchway to throw something overboard, and seeing Miss Hyde's cockatoo, off went his shoes and jacket at once, and I heard the splash as he struck the water. I had scarce time to think, either, before I saw Mick O'Hooney's red head shoot up on deck, and heard him sing out,"Man overboard, be the powers, boys! Folly my lader! Hurroo!" and over he sprang. "Here's dip," said another, and in half a minute every man that could swim was floundering in the smooth water alongside, or his head showing as it came up,—pitching the cockatoo to each other, and all ready to enjoy their bathe; though, for my part, I made but one spring to the ship's starboard quarter, to use the only chance of saving the thoughtless fellows from a bloody fate to some of them. I knew the shark would be cautious at first, on such a sudden to-do, and I had marked his whereabouts while the men were all well toward the bows; and "hang it!" thought I, seeing the old woman's fat pug in my way, "Dianny, or die-all; I bear no malice, but you must go for it, my beauty!" As quick as thought, I made one turn of marline round her nose, took off the pork, and lashed her fast on to the hook all standing, in spite of her squeaks; then twisted the lady's shawl round the chain for a blind to it, and flung the whole right over the larboard quarter, where I guessed the old fellow would be slewing round astern to have a lookout before he went fairly in chase. I watched the line sink slowly with the weight over the gunwale for half a minute, afraid to let him see my head, and trembling for fear I should hear a cry from one of the men; when jerk went the rope clear of a belaying-pin as he ran off with his bait. I took a quick turn to hook him smartly in the throat, and then eased off again till the "cleets" brought him up with a "surge" fit to have parted the line, had it not been good new three-inch rope—though, as it was, the big Indiaman would soon have sheered stern-round to the force of it, if he'd only pulled fair. The young lady stood noticing what I did, first in a perplexed sort of way, and then with no small surprise, especially when the shark gave every now and then a fiercer tug, as he took a sweep astern: by this time, however, everybody was on deck in a crowd, the passengers all in a flurry, and half of the men scrambling up from alongside to tail on to the line, and run him out of water. So away they went with it full speed towards the bows, as soon as the ladies were out of the way—dragging two or three cadets back foremost, head over heels, down the poop stair—till, in spite of his tugging, the shark's round snout showed over the taffrail, with the mouth wide open under his chin, as it were, and one row of teeth laid flat behind another, like a comb-maker's shop. A running bowline passed round his handsome waist, then another pull, and over he came on the poop, floundering fourteen feet long, and flourishing his tail for room, till the carpenter chopped it across, in a lucky moment, with his axe.
All hands gathered round the shark to see him cut up, which was as good as a play to them, becalmed as we were; when, to my no small dismay, I heard Mrs Brigadier Brady's loud voice asking where her dog was; and the Brigadier himself, who seemed more afraid of his wife than anybody else, kept poking about with his red-faced English butler to find the animal. "For godsake," said he, in a half whisper, twenty times over, "haven't ye seen Mrs Brady's dog, any of ye?—she'll rout the ship inside out for it, captain, if we don't soon ase her mind!" However, I knew only Miss Hyde was aware who caught the shark, and as she didn't appear to have told, why of course I kept all fast, myself. "Here's a 'baccy-box!" sung out the big old boatswain, standing astride over the tail, while the cook and his black mate ripped away from the tail up. "Hand over, if ye please, sir," said 'ugly' Harry, it's mine's, Mr Burton!" Harry gave it a wipe on his knee, and coolly bit a quid off the end of his lost pigtail. The next thing was Ford's hat, which no one claimed, so black Sambo clapped it on his woolly head. "What's that you've got there now, Sambo?" said the boatswain, "out with it, my lad!" "Golly!" chuckled the nigger, rolling the whites of his eyes and grinning like mad; "oh sar, misser Barton! dis 'ere shark riglar navligator! I 'clare to you, sar, um got chr'ometer aboard! Oh gum! berry much t'ink dis you own lost silber tickler, misser Barton!" "Bless me, so it is, my lad!" said the boatswain, as the black handed him a silver watch as big as a turnip, and he looked at the cook, who was busy fumbling with his knife. "Sorryas you wastaxedwith it, doctor!"10said he, doubtfully,—"well I'm blowed, though!—it only goes an hour and a-half,—and here it's a-ticking yet!" Here a burst of laughter went round, and somebody sung out, "Maybe the ould pawn-broking Judas of a shark winded it up, hisself, jist to mark the time o' his 'goin' off the hooks'!" "I say, doctor!" hailed another, "too bloody bad, an't it though, to cut upyer uncle?" "Ha! ha! ha!" cried the cadets and writers, looking at the Scotch surgeon, "d'ye hear that, doctor? I wouldn't stand it! They say you ain't particular in Edinbro', though! Some rum mistakes happened there, eh, doctor?" The Scotchman got into a passion at this, being the worst cut they could give any fellow from a country where they were famous for kindred and body-snatching at once—but all of a sudden there was a "Hulloo! Shiver my taw'sels! What's this? Let's see!" and the whole poopful of us were shoving together, and jumping on each other's shoulders to have a look. "Well, we-ell!" said the old boatswain, as he peered curiously into the mess of shark's bowels—"I'll be d——d!" "The likes o' that now!" croaked the old sailmaker, lifting up his two hands, "tan't lucky, Mr Burton!" "My eye! them's not youngsharks, anyhow!" said one of the men. "What's t'ou think they be, mun," said the north-country Chips, "but litter o' yoong blind poops? an' here's t' ou'd un, see, as deed's mutton! Dang him, but some un's got an' baited t' hook wi't, there's nou't else in 's guts!" The whole poop was one roar of laughing, when Mrs Brady's pug was found delivered of four pups, inside the shark, since she went overboard, and two of 'em alive; the news ran fore and aft in a moment. "Took shortshe's been, Jack!" said one. "Beats the profit Joney!" "I say, 'mate, them whelps is born twice over. Blessed if my Sal at home, now, wouldn't give a year's 'lotment for one on 'em!" "Poor devil!" said one of the writers, "she must have been sadly in want of a lying-in hospital!" "Look out, all hands of ye!" cried some one, "there's the old girl herself coming on deck! sharp's the word!" And away we scuttled right and left, some aloft, and some down one poop-ladder, as Mrs Brady, with the Brigadier and his butler after her, came fuming up the other. The black made one spring over the quarter as soon as he saw her; but the Irish topman, Mick, slipped his foot amongst the shark's blood, and rolled on his back, while the old bo'sun made stand in the thick of it behind. "Saze the villains, I charge ye, Brigadier!" screamed Mrs Brady, though he and his manservant only kept dodging the boatswain round a sort of a quagmire of blood and grease, while the old vixen caught Mick by his red hair and whiskers. "Where's my dog, ye murdering spalpeen?" said she, panting for breath, "what have ye done with my Dianny, ye monsther? Spake, or I'll——" "Be the holy elaven thousand, yer ladyship!" said Mick, "an' it'slostdid ye think she wor! isn't therefiveof 'em back! Whisper! yer ladyship's riv'rence,—she'slaid in, poor craythure, an'——" "Oh!you Irish thief!" roared Mrs Brady, hitting him a slap as he tried to rise, that sent him down again, "is itthatyou'd say to——" "No, thin'," sung out Mick, rubbing his ear, and guarding with one arm,—"rest her sowl! but I'm innycint! Avthat'll plase, mim, och an' I'll swear she died a vargin ——" Tug came both Mrs Brady's hands through his hair, while the butler caught a kick in the stomach from Mick's foot. "Murther!" gasped the poor fellow, "sure an' I dun' know she was ayven a faym'le; bad luck t'ye, 'mates, give uz a hand. Och, an' is this the road ye thrate a counthryman, mim?" "Meyour countryman! ye bogtrottin' wretch ye!" screamed the old fury, her brogue getting worse the more she heated,—"takethat!—don't rise, if ye dare!" "Faix thin, yer ladyship darlin'," said O'Hooney, grinning in spite of his hard usage, "I tould a lie,—och, lave some o' me hair!—murther intirely! I'm——" All the time none of us could stir for sheer laughing, but seeing poor Mick like to fare hard with the old vixen, who wasnear as big as himself, and as strong as a horse, I whispered to the men to run round and let go the poop awning—so down it came, with a few buckets of water in it, over the five of them; and you just saw Mrs Brady's sharp elbow through the canvass, lifted for the next slap, when we had her all fast, struggling like a cat in a bag, while O'Hooney and the boatswain crept out below. "D——d breeze that we've had!" said the bo'sun, shaking himself on the forecastle. "Couldn't ye've bowsed over on the old jade's pitticuts, Mick?" said one of his shipmates, "and capsized her all standing?" "Sorra fut you'd stir, yourself, 'mate," said he, wiping his face, "wid such a shay grinnydeer! she'd manhandle ye as asy's twurl a mop!"
After all this you may suppose one didn't weary even of the calm. As soon as the decks were clear, most of us took tea on the poop, for fear of meeting the Brigadier's lady below, every one holding his cup ready for a start. Rollock the planter, who had slept and swung in his cot half the day, was like to split his sides when he heard the story: by the way, I believe both the little pups lived and throve on goats' milk, and the men called one of them 'Young Jonah,' though he had so much of the terrier that the old lady disowned him. It was quite dark, and cool for a night near the Line, though not a ripple stirred, and I staid after the rest to smoke a cigar, stopping every now and then near the aftermost bull's-eye, that shone through the deck, and thinking of Lota. "By Jove!" thought I, "she hasn't said a word of it. Think of having a secret, almost, withher!" After all, though, I felt well enough I might as soon hope for the Emperor of China's daughter as for such a creature, unless something wonderfully strange fell out: deucedly in love as I was, I wasn't puppy enough to fancy I'd ever succeed by mere talk; "but here's for a bold heart and a weather-eye!" I thought; "and if these can do it, Iwill!" said I aloud, when some one clapped me on the shoulder. "Well, Tom, are you there?" said I, thinking it was Westwood. "Why," answered old Rollock, laughing, "not so far wrong, my boy,—but as it's thirty years since any one called me so, I thought youwere, for a moment!—meditating, eh?" "Only a cigar before bed-time—will you have one, sir?" "Ah—well," said the planter, "I'll take a light, at least—queer life this, eh? Shouldn't know thiswaswater, now—more like train-oil! Looksjunglisha little under the stars yonder." "Nothing but the haze come down," said I; "'tis clear enough aloft, though,—look out for squalls ere long!" "As your friend Ford would have it,"—said Rollock; "but how a lad of your spirit can manage to stand this so well, I can't think!" "Deyvilish dull, sir!" said I, with a lazy drawl, "but can't be helped, you know." Come, come, now, don't mend it by copying poor Winterton," chuckled Rollock; "you're no fool, Collins, so don't pretend to be. I say though, Collins my boy," continued he, rather gravely, "there is one really soft piece I begin to notice in you lately—I fear you're falling in love with that girl!" "I, sir!" said I; "dear me! what makes you—" "My dear boy," went on the kind-hearted old fellow, "I take an interest in you; no lad of your stuff practises all this tomfoolery without something under it, and I see you'vesomeserious meaning or other. Did you know her before?" "Oh—why—not exactly," I dropped out, taken rather short. "I see, I see!" he went on; "but I tell you what, Collins, a cadet can do nothing madder than marry at first landing; she had better be a cold-hearted flirt, after all—though, God knows, no man can say whatthatdoes but one that's—felt it! I—I mean Iknew—a young fellow that went out as ambitious as you can be, and he$mdash;" Here the planter's voice shook a little, and he stopped, puffing at his cheroot till the short end of it just lighted up his hook nose and part of his big white whiskers in the dark, only you saw his eye glistening too. "Devil take it!" thought I, "who'd have expected the old boy to be so sharp, though." "Well but, Collins," said he at last, "just you enter heart and soul into your profession; I'd stake my life you'll rise, who knows how far—get your captain's pay even,thenyou may think of it—that is, if she—" "Why," saidI, "d'ye suppose the Judge would—" "Judge!" exclaimed Mr Rollock, "when—worse and worse! weren't we talking of pretty little Kate Fortescue? Mydearboy, you don't intend to say you mean Miss Hyde! I leftthatto your first officer, as they call him!—why, that young girl will be the beauty of Calcutta." At this I fancied some one else gave a whistle near us. "Of course, sir," said I, raising my voice, "you didn't suppose me such a fool." In fact, Miss Fortescue, had never entered my head at all. "Something strange aboutyou, Collins!" I said the planter, a little shortly; "you puzzle me, I must say." As we turned to go below, I heard somebody walk down the poop-ladder, and then the mate's voice sting out from the binnacle to "strike eight bells!"
The calm was as dead as ever next morning, and, if possible, hotter than before—not a rope changed aloft, nor a cloth in the sails moved; but it was pretty hazy round us, which made the water a sort of pale old-bottle blue, that sickened you to look at; and a long dipping and drawling heave gradually got up as if there were blankets on it; the ship, of course, shifting round and round again slowly, like a dog going to lie down, and the helm getting every now and then a sudden jolt. Near noon it cleared up with a blaze of light, as it were; the sole difference at first being, that what looked like melting lead before, now turned into so many huge bright sheets of tin, every bend of it as good as flashing up thousands of needles in your eyes. A good deal surprised we were, however, shortly after, to find there was a sail in sight, another square-rigged vessel, seemingly standing up on the horizon six or seven miles off. Being end on to us at the time, though every glass in the ship was brought to bear on her, 'twas hard to say what she was; then she and we went bobbing and going up and down with a long round heave between us, slowly enough, but always at cross purposes, like two fellows see-sawing on a plank over a dyke. When she was up, we were down, and we just caught sight of her royal, no bigger than a gull on the water; yerk went our rudder, and next time she seemed to have vanished out of the glasses altogether, till we walked round to the other side, and made her out again under the awning on the opposite beam. At length she lifted broad to us for a moment or two, showing a long pale sort of hull with a red streak, apparently without ports, and brig-rigged, though the space betwixt her two masts was curious for that kind of craft. "Wonderful light-sparred for her size that brig, sir," said the third officer, dropping his glass. "Ay, so she is, Mr Small," replied Captain Williamson: "what would you call her, then? You've as good knowledge of craft as any man, Mr Small, I think." "Why," said the old mate, screwing his eye harder for a long look, "I'd say she's—not a cruiser, Captin Williamson—no, nor a Greenock Indyman—nor a—" "Oh!" said Finch, "some African timberer or other, I daresay, Small." "Well, Mr Finch," said the third mate, handing him the glass, "mayhap you'll just say yourself, sir." "No, no, Mr Small," said the captain; "I'd trust to you as soon as any man, sir, in a matter of the kind." "Why, the hull of her's wonderful Yankee-like, sir," said Small again; "I'm thinking they've been andsquaredher out of a schooner—and a d——d bad job of it, sir! Bless us! what a lean-headed pair o'taups'ls, too,—as high as our fore one, sir." Suddenly the old mate gave his thigh a slap, and laid down his glass on the capstan: "Lord, sir!" said he, "that's the thing; she's nothing more nor less but a John Crapeau, Captain Williamson!" "I daresay you're right, Mr Small," said the skipper, taking the glass; "just so,—ay, ay,—I thought it myself!" "Pity old Nap's boxed up yonder then, sir," said the first officer, rubbing his hands and pointing to eastward, where he thought St Helena was: "why, sir, we should have the peppering of the Frenchman; I don't suppose we'd need to care though she were twice the size—and what's more, we want fresh water before seeing the Cape, sir!" "Well," said the old skipper, laughing, "that is the worst of it, Finch! As for spirit, you've as much as any man, Mr Finch, and Idothink we'd know how to take the weather-hand of him—eh?""I'll be bound we should!" said Finch, laughing too. As for the Frenchman, both Westwood and I had made him out by his rig at once, thanks to man-o'-war practice; but we smiled to each other at the notion of making a prize of Monsieur, under Finch's management, with not a gun that could have been used for half a day, and everything else at sixes and sevens.
In a little while it was proposed amongst the cadets, hot as the calm was, to make a party to go and see the French vessel. Ford of course was at the head of it. Winterton thought they would no doubt have plenty of champagne on board, and some others, who could row, wanted to try their hands. Accordingly the captain's gig was got ready, a sort of awning rigged over it, and two or three of them got in; when one, who was Miss Fortescue's cousin, persuaded her to join, if Mr Rollock would come. Then the Brigadier, being rather a goodhumoured man, said he should like to face the French once more, and Daniel Snout shoved himself in without asking by your leave. One of the men was sent to take charge; and as there was room still, I was just going to jump in too, for the amusement of it, when Mrs Brady hurried to the taffrail with her parasol up, and said, if the Brigadier went, she should go as well,—in fact, the old woman's jealousy of her rib was always laughably plain. "Hang it! then," thought I, "catch me putting myself in the same boat withher! the same ship is enough, in all conscience!" So away they were lowered off the davits, and began pulling in tolerable style for the brig, a couple of hours' good work for such hands at mid-day, smooth water as it was. "Now, gentlemen," said the first officer briskly, as we looked after, them dipping over the long bright blue heave—"now, gentlemen, and ladies also, if they please, we'll have another party as soon as the men get their dinner—give these gentlemen a full hour's law, we'll overhaul them. See the larboard quarter-boat clear, Jacobs." It was just the least possible hazy again behind the brig in the distance, and as the Judge stood talking to his daughter on the poop, I heard her say, "Is the other vessel not coming nearer already, papa? See how much more distinct its sails are this moment—there!—one almost observes the white canvass!" "Pooh, Lota child!" answered Sir Charles, "that cannot be—'tis perfectly calm, don't you know?" In fact, however, Lota showed a sailor's eye for air, and I was noticing it myself; but it wasonlythe air made it look so. "All! now," exclaimed she again, "'tis as distant as ever! That must have been the light:" besides, the brig had been lifting on a wide swell. "I beg pardon, Sir Charles," said the mate, coming up and taking off his cap, "but might I use the freedom—perhaps yourself and Miss Hyde would like to visit the French brig?" The Judge looked at his daughter as much as to ask if she would like it. "Oh yes! so much!" exclaimed she, her bright eyes sparkling, "shall we? No, the deuce! NotI!" said Sir Charles: "I shall take my siesta. Quite safe, sir—eh?" "Oh, quite safe, Sir Charles!" said Finch, "a dead calm, sir—I'll take the utmost care you may be sure, Sir Charles—as safe as the deck, sir!" "Oh, very well," replied the Judge, and he walked down to see after his tiffin. The young lady was going down the quarter-gallery stair, when I caught my opportunity to say—"I hope you'll excuse it, Miss Hyde, ma'am—but Idotrust you'll not risk going in the boat so far, just now!" Half a minute after I spoke, she turned round, and looked at me with a curious sort of expression in her charming face, which I couldn't make out,—whether it was mischievous, whether it was pettish, or whether 'twas inquisitive. "Dear me!" said she, "why—do you—" "The weather might change," I said, looking round about, "and I shouldn't wonder if it did—or a swell might get up—or—" "I must say, Mr—Mr Collins," said she, laughing slightly, "you are very gloomy in anticipating—almost timorous, I declare! I wonder how you came to be so weather-wise! But why did you not advise—poor Mrs Brady, now?" I couldn't see her face as she spoke, but the tone of the last words made me feel I'd have givenworlds to look round and see what it was like at the moment. "Perhaps, ma'am," said I, "you may remember therain?" "Well, we shall see, sir!" replied she, glancing up with a bright sparkle in her eye for an instant, but only toward the end of the spanker-boom, as it were; and then tripping down the stair.
I kept watching the gig pull slowly toward the brig in the distance, and the cutter making ready on our quarter, till the men were in, with Jacobs amongst them; where they sat waiting in no small glee for the mate and his party, who came up a few minutes after: and I was just beginning to hope that Violet Hyde had taken my advice, when she and another young lady came out of the round-house, dressed for the trip, and the captain gallantly handed them in. "My compliments to the French skipper, Mr Finch," said the captain, laughing, "and if he an't better engaged, happy to see him to dinner at two bells11in the dog-watch, we'll make it!" "Ay, ay, sir," said Finch. "Now then!-all ready?" "Smythe's coming yet," said a "writer." "We can't wait any longer for him," replied the mate; "ease away the falls, handsomely, on deck!" "Stop," said I, "I'll go, then!" "Too late, young gentleman," answered the mate, sharply, "you'll cant us gunnel up, sir!—lower away, there!" However, I caught hold of a rope and let myself down the side, time enough to jump lightly into her stern-sheets the moment they touched the water. The officer stared at me as he took the yokelines to steer, but he said nothing, and the boat shoved off; while Miss Hyde's blue eyes only opened out, as it were, for an instant, at seeing me drop in so unceremoniously; and her companion laughed. "I shouldn't have supposed you so nimble, Mr Collins!" said the writer, looking at me through his eye-glass. "Oh," said I, "Ford and I have practised climbing a good deal lately." "Ha! ha!" said the civilian, "shouldn't be surprised, now, if your friend were to take the navigation out of Mr Finch's hands, some day!" "Bless me, yes, sir!" said Finch, with a guffaw, as he sat handling the lines carelessly, and smiling to the ladies, with his cap over one ear; "to be sure—ha! ha! ha!—it's certain, Mr Beveridge! Wouldn't you take the helm here, sir?" to me. "Oh, thank you, no, sir!" replied I, modestly, "I'm not quite so faryet—but we've got a loan of Hamilton Moore and Falconer's Dictionary from the midshipmen, and mean to—" "No doubt you'll teach us a trick or two yet!" said Finch, with a sneer. "Now, for instance," said I coolly, "aloft yonder, you've got thethroat halliardsjammed in the block with a gasket, and the mizen-topsail cluelines rove wrong-side of it, which Hamilton Moore distinctly—" "Hang the lubber that did it, so they are!" exclaimed the mate, looking through the spy-glass we had with us. "Now you've yourjibshauled down, sir," continued I, "and if a squall came on abeam, no doubt they'd wish to shorten sail fromaft, and keep her away—however, she would broach-to at once, as Hamilton Moore shows must—" "You and Hamilton Moore be ——; no fear of a squall just now, at any rate, ladies," said he. "Stretch out, men—let's head upon Mr Ford and his gig, yet!" Terribly hot it was close to the water, and so stifling that you scarce could breathe, while the long glassy swell was far higher than one thought it from the ship's deck; however, we had an awning hoisted, and it refreshed one a little both to hear the water and feel it below again, as the cutter went sliding and rippling over it to long slow strokes of the oars; her crew being all man-o'-war's-men, that knew how to pull together and take it easy. The young ladies kept gazing rather anxiously at the big old Seringapatam, as she rose and dropped heavily on the calm, amused though they were at first by a sight of their late home turning "gable" on to us, with her three masts in one, and a white straw hat or two watching us from her taffrail; whereas, ahead, they only now and then caught a glimpse of the brig's upper canvass, over a hot, hazy, sullen-looking sweep of water as deep-blue as indigo—with six hairy brown breasts bending beforethem to the oars, and as many pair of queer, rollicking, fishy sort of eyes fixed steadily on their bonnets, in a shame-faced, down-hill kind of way, like fellows that couldn't help it. In fact, I noticed a curious grin now and then on every one of the men's faces, and a look to each other, when they caught sight of myself, sitting behind the mate as he paid off his high-flying speeches; Jacobs, again, regarding me all the while out of the whites of his eyes, as it were, in a wooden, unknowing fashion, fit to have made a cat laugh—seeing he never missed his mark for one moment, and drew back his head at every pull with the air of a drunk man keeping sight of his waistcoat buttons. By the time we were half-way, the swell began to get considerable, and the mate stepped up abaft to look for the gig. "Can't see the boat yet," said he; "give way there, my lads—stretch out and bend your backs! there's the brig!" "Hal-lo!" exclaimed he again, "she's clued up royals and to'gallants'ls! By heavens! there go her tops'ls down too! Going to bend new sails, though, I daresay, for it looks clear enough there." "The ship's run up a flag aft, sir," said Jacobs. "The—so she has," said Finch, turning round; "recall signal! What's wrong? Sorrywecan't dine aboard the French vessel this time, ladies!" said he—"extremelyso—and the griffins there after all, too. I hope you won't be disappointed in any great measure, Miss Hyde—but ifyouwished it now, Miss, I'd evenkeepon, and—" The young lady coloured a little at this, and turned to her companion just as I remembered her doing from the dragoon in the ball-room. "Do you not think, Miss Wyndham," said she, "weought not to wish any officer of the ship should get reproved, perhaps, onouraccount?" "Oh dear no," said Miss Wyndham; "indeed, Mr Finch, you had better go back, if the captain orders you." "Hold on there with your larboard oars, you lubbers!" sang out Finch, biting his lip, and round we went pulling for the Indiaman again; but by this time the swell was becoming so heavy as to make it hard work, and it was soon rarely we could see her at all; for nothing gets up so fast as a swell, sometimes, near the Line; neither one way nor the other, but right up and down, without a breath of wind, in huge smooth hills of water, darker than lead, not a speck of foam, and the sky hot and clear. 'Twas almost as if a weight had been lifted from off the long heaving calm, and the whole round of it were going up dark into the sky, in one weltering jumble, the more strange that it was quiet: sweep up it took the boat, and the bright wet oar-blades spread feathering out for another stroke to steady her, let alone making way; though that was nothing to the look of the Indiaman when we got near. She was rolling her big black hull round in it as helpless as a cask; now one side, then the other, dipping gunwale to in the round swell that came heaping up level with her very rail, and went sheeting out bright through the bulwarks again the masts jumping, clamps and boom-irons creaking on the yards, and every sail on her shaking, as her lower yardarms took it by turns to aim at the water—you heard all the noise of it, the plunge of her flat broadside, the plash from her scuppers, the jolts of her rudder, and voices on board; and wet you may swear shewasfrom stem to stern. "Comfortable!" thought I; "we've come home too soon of a washing-day, and may wait at the door, I fear!" "Oh dear," exclaimed the three griffins, "how are we to get in!" and the young ladies looked pale at the sight. The mate steered for her larboard quarter without saying a word, but I saw he lost coolness and got nervous—not at all the man for a hard pinch: seemingly, he meant to dash alongside and hook on. "If you do, sir," said I, "you'll be smashed to staves;" and all at once the ship appeared almost over our heads, while the boat took a send in. I looked to Jacobs and the men, and they gave one long stroke off, that seemed next heave to put a quarter of a mile between us. "D——d close shave that," said the bowman. "Begs pardon, sir," said Jacobs, touching his hat, with his eyes still fixed past the mate, upon me; "hasn't we better keep steadying off, sir, till such time as the swell—" "Hold your jaw, sirrah," growled Finch, as he looked ahead still more flurried; "there's asquallcoming yonder, gentlemen, and if we don't get quick aboard, we may lose the ship in it! Pull round, d'ye hear there." Sure enough, when we lifted, there was the French brig clear out against a sulky patch of dark-gray sky, growing in as it were far off behind the uneven swell, tillitbegan to pale; the Indiaman's topsails gave a loud flap out, too, one after the other, and fell to the mast again. Suddenly I caught the glance of Violet Hyde's eyes watching me seriously as I sat overhauling the Indiaman for a notion of what to do, and I fancied the charming girl had somehow got nearer to me during the last minute or two, whether she knew it or not: at any rate the thought of protecting such a creature made all my blood tingle. "Never fear, ma'am," said I, in a half whisper; when Finch's eye met mine, and he threw me a malicious look, sufficient to show what a devil the fellow would be if ever he had occasion; however, he gave the sign for the men to stretch out again, and high time it was, as the Indiaman's maintopsail made another loud clap like a musket-shot. Still he was holding right for herquarter—the roll the ship had on her was fearful, and it was perfect madness to try it; but few merchant mates have chanced to be boating in a Line swell, I daresay: when just as we came head on for her starboard counter, I took the boat's tiller a sudden shove with my foot, as if by accident, that sent us sheering in close under herstern. The bowman prized his boat-hook into the rudder-chains, where the big hull swung round us on both sides like an immense wheel round its barrel, every stern-window with a face watching us—though one stroke of the loose rudder would have stove us to bits, and the swell was each moment like to make the men let go, as it hove us up almost near enough to have caught a hand from the lower-deck. "For godsake steady your wheel," said I; "hard a-port!" while the mate was singing out for a line. "Now, up you go," said I to Jacobs in the hubbub, "look sharp, and send us down a whip and basket from the boom-end, as we did once in the Pandora, you know!" Up the rope went Jacobs like a cat, hand over hand; and five minutes after, down came the "basket" over our heads into the boat, made out of a studding-sail and three capstan-bars, like a big grocer's scale dangling from the spanker-boom. The mate proposed to go up first with Miss Hyde, but she hung back in favour of her companion; so away aloft went Miss Wyndham and he, swinging across the Indiaman's stern as she rolled again, with a gantline to steady them in—Finch holding on to the whip by one hand, and the other round the young lady, while my blood crept at the thought how it might have been Lota herself! As soon as it came down again, she looked for a moment from me to Jacobs, when Captain Williamson himself shouted over the taffrail, "Sharp, sharp there! the squall's coming down! she'll be up in the wind! let's get the helm free!" and directly after I found myself swinging twenty feet over the water with Violet Hyde, as the ship heeled to a puff that filled the spanker, and rose again on a huge swell, gathering steerage way, while every bolt of canvass in her flapped in again at once like thunder. I felt her shudder and cling to me—there was one half minute we swung fairly clear of the stern, they stopped hoisting,—and I almost thought I'd have wished that same half minute half a day; but a minute after she was in the Judge's arms on the poop; the men had contrived to get the cadets on board, too, and the boat was dragging astern, with the line veered out, and her crew still in it baling her out.