with Nolan in a friendly way, so as to be sure that nobody else spoke to
him. The dancing went on with spirit, and after a while even the fellows
who took this honorary guard of Nolan ceased to fear any _contretemps_.
Only when some English lady—Lady Hamilton, as I said, perhaps—called
for a set of “American dances,” an odd thing happened. Everybody then
danced contra-dances. The black band, nothing loath, conferred as to what
“American dances” were, and started off with “Virginia Reel,” which they
followed with “Money Musk,” which, in its turn in those days, should
have been followed by “The Old Thirteen.” But just as Dick, the leader,
tapped for his fiddles to begin, and bent forward, about to say, in true
negro state, “‘The Old Thirteen,’ gentlemen and ladies!” as he had said
“‘Virginny Reel,’ if you please!” and “‘Money-Musk,’ if you please!” the
captain’s boy tapped him on the shoulder, whispered to him, and he did
not announce the name of the dance; he merely bowed, began on the air,
and they all fell to—the officers teaching the English girls the figure,
but not telling them why it had no name.
But that is not the story I started to tell. As the dancing went on,
Nolan and our fellows all got at ease, as I said—so much so, that it
seemed quite natural for him to bow to that splendid Mrs. Graff, and say—
“I hope you have not forgotten me, Miss Rutledge. Shall I have the honor
of dancing?”
He did it so quickly, that Fellows, who was by him, could not hinder him.
She laughed and said—
“I am not Miss Rutledge any longer, Mr. Nolan; but I will dance all the
same,” just nodded to Fellows, as if to say he must leave Mr. Nolan to
her, and led him off to the place where the dance was forming.
Nolan thought he had got his chance. He had known her at Philadelphia,
and at other places had met her, and this was a Godsend. You could not
talk in contra-dances as you do in cotillions, or even in the pauses of
waltzing; but there were chances for tongues and sounds, as well as for
eyes and blushes. He began with her travels, and Europe, and Vesuvius,
and the French; and then, when they had worked down, and had that long
talking-time at the bottom of the set, he said, boldly—a little pale, she
said, as she told me the story, years after—
“And what do you hear from home, Mrs. Graff?”
And that splendid creature looked through him. Jove! how she must have
looked through him!
“Home!! Mr. Nolan!!! I thought you were the man who never wanted to hear
of home again!”—and she walked directly up the deck to her husband, and
left poor Nolan alone, as he always was. He did not dance again.
I cannot give any history of him in order; nobody can now; and, indeed,
I am not trying to. These are the traditions, which I sort out, as I
believe them, from the myths which have been told about this man for
forty years. The lies that have been told about him are legion. The
fellows used to say he was the “Iron Mask”; and poor George Pons went to
his grave in the belief that this was the author of “Junius,” who was
being punished for his celebrated libel on Thomas Jefferson. Pons was not
very strong in the historical line. A happier story than either of these
I have told is of the war. That came along soon after. I have heard this
affair told in three or four ways—and, indeed, it may have happened more
than once. But which ship it was on I cannot tell. However, in one, at
least, of the great frigate-duels with the English, in which the navy was
really baptized, it happened that a round-shot from the enemy entered one
of our ports square, and took right down the officer of the gun himself,
and almost every man of the gun’s crew. Now you may say what you choose
about courage, but that is not a nice thing to see. But, as the men who
were not killed picked themselves up, and as they and the surgeon’s
people were carrying off the bodies, there appeared Nolan, in his shirt
sleeves, with the rammer in his hand, and, just as if he had been an
officer, told them off with authority—who should go to the cock-pit with
the wounded men, who should stay with him—perfectly cheery, and with
that way which makes men feel sure all is right and is going to be right.
And he finished loading his gun with his own hands, aimed it, and bade
the men fire. And there he stayed, captain of that gun, keeping those
fellows in spirits, till the enemy struck—sitting on the carriage while
the gun was cooling, though he was exposed all the time—showing them
easier ways to handle heavy shot—making the raw hands laugh at their own
blunders—and when the gun cooled again, getting it loaded and fired twice
as often as any other gun on the ship. The captain walked forward by way
of encouraging the men, and Nolan touched his hat, and said—
“I am showing them how we do this in the artillery, sir.”
And this is the part of the story where all the legends agree; and the
commodore said—
“I see you do, and I thank you, sir; and I shall never forget this day,
sir; and you never shall, sir.”
And after the whole thing was over, and he had the Englishman’s sword, in
the midst of the state and ceremony of the quarter-deck, he said—
“Where is Mr. Nolan? Ask Mr. Nolan to come here.”
And when Nolan came, the captain said—
“Mr. Nolan, we are all very grateful to you to-day; you are one of us
to-day; you will be named in the despatches.”
And then the old man took off his own sword of ceremony, and gave it to
Nolan, and made him put it on. The man told me this who saw it. Nolan
cried like a baby, and well he might. He had not worn a sword since
that infernal day at Fort Adams. But always afterwards, on occasions of
ceremony, he wore that quaint old French sword of the commodore’s.
The captain did mention him in the despatches. It was always said he
asked that he might be pardoned. He wrote a special letter to the
Secretary of War. But nothing ever came of it. As I said, that was about
the time when they began to ignore the whole transaction at Washington,
and when Nolan’s imprisonment began to carry itself on because there was
nobody to stop it without any new orders from home.
I have heard it said that he was with Porter when he took possession of
the Nukahiwa Islands. Not this Porter, you know, but old Porter, his
father, Essex Porter—that is, the old Essex Porter, not this Essex. As
an artillery officer, who had seen service in the west, Nolan knew more
about fortifications, embrasures, ravelins, stockades, and all that, than
any of them did; and he worked with a right good-will in fixing that
battery all right. I have always thought it was a pity Porter did not
leave him in command there with Gamble. That would have settled all the
question about his punishment. We should have kept the islands, and at
this moment we should have one station in the Pacific Ocean. Our French
friends, too, when they wanted this little watering-place, would have
found it was preoccupied. But Madison and the Virginians, of course flung
all that away.
All that was near fifty years go. If Nolan was thirty then, he must
have been near eighty when he died. He looked sixty when he was forty.
But he never seemed to me to change a hair afterwards. As I imagine his
life, from what I have seen and heard of it, he must have been in every
sea, and yet almost never on land. He must have known, in a formal way,
more officers in our service than any man living knows. He told me once,
with a grave smile, that no man in the world lived so methodical a life
as he. “You know the boys say I am the Iron Mask, and you know how busy
he was.” He said it did not do for any one to try to read all the time,
more than to do anything else all the time; but that he read just five
hours a day. “Then,” he said, “I keep up my note-books, writing in them
at such and such hours from what I have been reading; and I include in
these my scrap-books.” These were very curious indeed. He had six or
eight, of different subjects. There was one of History, one of Natural
Science, one which he called “Odds and Ends.” But they were not merely
books of extracts from newspapers. They had bits of plants and ribbons,
shells tied on, and carved scraps of bone and wood which he had taught
the men to cut for him, and they were beautifully illustrated. He drew
admirably. He had some of the funniest drawings there, and some of the
most pathetic, that I have ever seen in my life. I wonder who will have
Nolan’s scrap-books.
Well, he said his reading and his notes were his profession, and that
they took five hours and two hours respectively of each day. “Then,”
said he, “every man should have a diversion as well as a profession. My
Natural History is my diversion.” That took two hours a day more. The
men used to bring him birds and fish, but on a long cruise he had to
satisfy himself with centipedes and cockroaches and such small game. He
was the only naturalist I ever met who knew anything about the habits of
the house-fly and the mosquito. All those people can tell you whether
they are _Lepidoptera_ or _Steptopotera_; but as for telling how you can
get rid of them, or how they get away from you when you strike them—why
Linnæus knew as little of that as John Fox the idiot did. These nine
hours made Nolan’s regular daily “occupation.” The rest of the time he
talked or walked. Till he grew very old, he went aloft a great deal. He
always kept up his exercise; and I never heard that he was ill. If any
other man was ill, he was the kindest nurse in the world; and he knew
more than half the surgeons do. Then if anybody was sick or died, or if
the captain wanted him to, on any other occasion, he was always ready to
read prayers. I have said that he read beautifully.
My own acquaintance with Philip Nolan began six or eight years after the
war, on my first voyage after I was appointed a midshipman. It was in
the first days after our Slave Trade treaty, while the Reigning House,
which was still the House of Virginia, had still a sort of sentimentalism
about the suppression of the horrors of the Middle Passage, and something
was sometimes done that way. We were in the South Atlantic on that
business. From the time I joined, I believe I thought Nolan was a sort
of lay chaplain—a chaplain with a blue coat. I never asked about him.
Everything in the ship was strange to me. I knew it was green to ask
questions, and I suppose I thought there was a “Plain-Buttons” on every
ship. We had him to dine in our mess once a week, and the caution was
given that on that day nothing was to be said about home. But if they
had told us not to say anything about the planet Mars or the Book of
Deuteronomy, I should not have asked why; there were a great many things
which seemed to me to have as little reason. I first came to understand
anything about “the man without a country” one day when we overhauled a
dirty little schooner which had slaves on board. An officer was sent to
take charge of her, and, after a few minutes, he sent back his boat to
ask that some one might be sent him who could speak Portuguese. We were
all looking over the rail when the message came, and we all wished we
could interpret, when the captain asked who spoke Portuguese. But none
of the officers did; and just as the captain was sending forward to ask
if any of the people could, Nolan stepped out and said he should be glad
to interpret, if the captain wished, as he understood the language. The
captain thanked him, fitted out another boat with him, and in this boat
it was my luck to go.
When we got there, it was such a scene as you seldom see, and never want
to. Nastiness beyond account, and chaos run loose in the midst of the
nastiness. There were not a great many of the negroes; but by way of
making what there were understand that they were free, Vaughan had had
their hand-cuffs and ankle-cuffs knocked off, and, for convenience sake,
was putting them upon the rascals of the schooner’s crew. The negroes
were, most of them, out of the hold, and swarming all round the dirty
deck, with a central throng surrounding Vaughan and addressing him in
every dialect, and _patois_ of a dialect, from the Zulu click up to the
Parisian of Beledeljereed.
As we came on deck, Vaughan looked down from a hogshead, on which he had
mounted in desperation, and said:
“For God’s love, is there anybody who can make these wretches understand
something? The men gave them rum, and that did not quiet them. I knocked
that big fellow down twice, and that did not soothe him. And then I
talked Choctaw to all of them together; and I’ll be hanged if they
understand that as well as they understand the English.”
Nolan said he could speak Portuguese, and one or two fine-looking Kroomen
were dragged out, who, as it had been found already, had worked for the
Portuguese on the coast at Fernando Po.
“Tell them they are free,” said Vaughan; “and tell them that these
rascals are to be hanged as soon as we can get rope enough.”
Nolan “put them into Spanish”—that is, he explained it in such Portuguese
as the Kroomen could understand, and they in turn to such of the negroes
as could understand them. Then there was such a yell of delight,
clinching of fists, leaping and dancing, kissing of Nolan’s feet, and
a general rush made to the hogshead by way of spontaneous worship of
Vaughan, as the _deus ex machina_ of the occasion.
“Tell them,” said Vaughan, well pleased, “that I will take them all to
Cape Palmas.”
This did not answer so well. Cape Palmas was practically as far from the
homes of most of them as New Orleans or Rio Janeiro was; that is, they
would be eternally separated from home there. And their interpreters, as
we could understand, instantly said: “_Ah, non Palmas_,” and began to
propose infinite other expedients in most voluble language. Vaughan was
rather disappointed at this result of his liberality, and asked Nolan
eagerly what they said. The drops stood on poor Nolan’s white forehead,
as he hushed the men down, and said:
“He says, ‘Not Palmas.’ He says, ‘Take us home, take us to our own
country, take us to our own house, take us to our own pickaninnies and
our own women.’ He says he has an old father and mother who will die if
they do not see him. And this one says he left his people all sick, and
paddled down to Fernando to beg the white doctor to come and help them,
and that these devils caught him in the bay just in sight of home, and
that he had never seen anybody from home since then. And this one says,”
choked out Nolan, “that he has not heard a word from his home in six
months, while he has been locked up in an infernal barracoon.”
Vaughan always said he grew gray himself while Nolan struggled through
this interpretation. I, who did not understand anything of the passion
involved in it, saw that the very elements were melting with fervent
heat, and that something was to pay somewhere. Even the negroes
themselves stopped howling, as they saw Nolan’s agony, and Vaughan’s
almost equal agony of sympathy. As quick as he could get words, he said:
“Tell them yes, yes, yes; tell them they shall go to the Mountains of the
Moon if they will. If I sail the schooner through the Great White Desert
they shall go home!”
And after some fashion Nolan said so. And then they all fell to kissing
him again, and wanted to rub his nose with theirs.
But he could not stand it long; and getting Vaughan to say he might
go back, he beckoned me down into our boat. As we lay back in the
stern-sheets and the men gave way, he said to me: “Youngster, let that
show you what it is to be without a family, without a home, and without
a country. And if you are ever tempted to say a word or to do a thing
that shall put a bar between you and your family, your home, and your
country, pray God in His mercy to take you that instant home to His own
heaven. Stick by your family, boy; forget you have a self, while you do
everything for them. Think of your home, boy; write and send, and talk
about it. Let it be nearer and nearer to your thought, the farther you
have to travel from it; and rush back to it, when you are free, as that
poor black slave is doing now. And for your country, boy,” and the words
rattled in his throat, “and for that flag,” and he pointed to the ship,
“never dream a dream but of serving her as she bids you, though the
service carry you through a thousand hells. No matter what happens to
you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses you, never look at another
flag, never let a night pass but you pray God to bless that flag.
Remember, boy, that behind all these men you have to do with, behind
officers, and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself,
your Country, and that you belong to Her as you belong to your own
mother. Stand by Her, boy, as you would stand by your mother, if those
devils there had got hold of her to-day!”
I was frightened to death by his calm, hard passion; but I blundered
out, that I would, by all that was holy, and that I had never thought of
doing anything else. He hardly seemed to hear me; but he did, almost in a
whisper, say: “O, if anybody had said so to me when I was of your age!”
I think it was this half-confidence of his, which I never abused, for I
never told this story till now, which afterward made us great friends. He
was very kind to me. Often he sat up, or even got up, at night, to walk
the deck with me, when it was my watch. He explained to me a great deal
of my mathematics, and I owe to him my taste for mathematics. He lent
me books, and helped me about my reading. He never alluded so directly
to his story again; but from one and another officer I have learned, in
thirty years, what I am telling. When we parted from him in St. Thomas
harbor, at the end of our cruise, I was more sorry than I can tell. I was
very glad to meet him again in 1830; and later in life, when I thought I
had some influence in Washington, I moved heaven and earth to have him
discharged. But it was like getting a ghost out of prison. They pretended
there was no such man, and never was such a man. They will say so at the
Department now! Perhaps they do not know. It will not be the first thing
in the service of which the Department appears to know nothing!
There is a story that Nolan met Burr once on one of our vessels, when
a party of Americans came on board in the Mediterranean. But this I
believe to be a lie; or, rather it is a myth, _ben trovato_, involving a
tremendous blowing-up with which he sunk Burr—asking him how he liked to
be “without a country.” But it is clear from Burr’s life that nothing of
the sort could have happened; and I mention this only as an illustration
of the stories which get a-going where there is the least mystery at the
bottom.
So poor Philip Nolan had his wish fulfilled. I know but one fate more
dreadful; it is the fate reserved for those men who shall have one day
to exile themselves from their country because they have attempted her
ruin, and shall have at the same time to see the prosperity and honor to
which she rises when she has rid herself of them and their iniquities.
The wish of poor Nolan, as we all learned to call him, not because his
punishment was too great, but because his repentance was so clear, was
precisely the wish of every Bragg and Beauregard who broke a soldier’s
oath two years ago, and of every Maury and Barron who broke a sailor’s. I
do not know how often they have repented. I do know that they have done
all that in them lay that they might have no country—that all the honors,
associations, memories, and hopes which belong to “country” might be
broken up into little shreds and distributed to the winds. I know, too,
that their punishment, as they vegetate through what is left of life to
them in wretched Boulognes and Leicester Squares, where they are destined
to upbraid each other till they die, will have all the agony of Nolan’s,
with the added pang that every one who sees them will see them to despise
and to execrate them. They will have their wish, like him.
For him, poor fellow, he repented of his folly, and then, like a man,
submitted to the fate he had asked for. He never intentionally added
to the difficulty or delicacy of the charge of those who had him in
hold. Accidents would happen; but they never happened from his fault.
Lieutenant Truxton told me, that, when Texas was annexed, there was a
careful discussion among the officers, whether they should get hold of
Nolan’s handsome set of maps, and cut Texas out of it—from the map of
the world and the map of Mexico. The United States had been cut out when
the atlas was bought for him. But it was voted, rightly enough, that to
do this would be virtually to reveal to him what had happened, or, as
Harry Cole said, to make him think Old Burr had succeeded. So it was from
no fault of Nolan’s that a great botch happened at my own table, when,
for a short time, I was in command of the _George Washington_ corvette,
on the South American station. We were lying in the La Plata, and some
of the officers, who had been on shore, and had just joined again, were
entertaining us with accounts of their misadventures in riding the
half-wild horses of Buenos Ayres. Nolan was at table, and was in an
unusually bright and talkative mood. Some story of a tumble reminded him
of an adventure of his own, when he was catching wild horses in Texas
with his adventurous cousin at a time when he must have been quite a boy.
He told the story with a good deal of spirit—so much so, that the silence
which often follows a good story hung over the table for an instant, to
be broken by Nolan himself. For he asked perfectly unconsciously:
“Pray, what has become of Texas? After the Mexicans got their
independence, I thought that province of Texas would come forward very
fast. It is really one of the finest regions on earth; it is the Italy
of this continent. But I have not seen or heard a word of Texas for near
twenty years.”
There were two Texan officers at the table. The reason he had never heard
of Texas was that Texas and her affairs had been painfully cut out of his
newspapers since Austin began his settlements; so that, while he read
of Honduras and Tamaulipas, and, till quite lately, of California—this
virgin province, in which his brother had travelled so far, and, I
believe, had died, had ceased to be to him. Waters and Williams, the two
Texas men, looked grimly at each other, and tried not to laugh. Edward
Morris had his attention attracted by the third link in the chain of the
chaplain’s chandelier. Waters was seized with a convulsion of sneezing.
Nolan himself saw that something was to pay, he did not know what. And I,
as master of the feast, had to say—
“Texas is out of the map, Mr. Nolan. Have you seen Captain Back’s
curious account of Sir Thomas Roe’s Welcome?”
After that cruise I never saw Nolan again. I wrote to him at least twice
a year, for in that voyage we became even confidentially intimate; but he
never wrote to me. The other men tell me that in those fifteen years he
_aged_ very fast, as well he might indeed, but that he was still the same
gentle, uncomplaining, silent sufferer that he ever was, bearing as best
he could his self-appointed punishment—rather less social, perhaps, with
new men whom he did not know, but more anxious, apparently, than ever
to serve and befriend and teach the boys, some of whom fairly seemed to
worship him. And now it seems the dear old fellow is dead. He has found a
home at last, and a country.
* * * * *
Since writing this, and while considering whether or no I would print it,
as a warning to the young Nolans and Vallandighams and Tatnalls of to-day
of what it is to throw away a country, I have received from Danforth, who
is on board the _Levant_, a letter which gives an account of Nolan’s last
hours. It removes all my doubts about telling this story.
To understand the first words of the letter, the non-professional reader
should remember that after 1817, the position of every officer who had
Nolan in charge was one of the greatest delicacy. The government had
failed to renew the order of 1807 regarding him. What was a man to do?
Should he let him go? What, then, if he were called to account by the
Department for violating the order of 1807? Should he keep him? What,
then, if Nolan should be liberated some day, and should bring an action
for false imprisonment or kidnapping against every man who had had him
in charge? I urged and pressed this upon Southward, and I have reason to
think that other officers did the same thing. But the Secretary always
said, as they so often do at Washington, that there were no special
orders to give, and that we must act on our own judgment. That means, “If
you succeed, you will be sustained; if you fail, you will be disavowed.”
Well, as Danforth says, all that is over now, though I do not know but
I expose myself to a criminal prosecution on the evidence of the very
revelation I am making.
Here is the letter:—
“_Levant_, 2° 2´ S. at 131° W.