young and green lad who was not yet nineteen. The _Hydrabad_ usually
made a kind of triangular voyage. She took emigrants and a general cargo
to Melbourne, loaded horses there for Australia, and came back to
England once more with anything going in the shape of cargo to be picked
up in the Hooghly. She carried a Calashee crew, that is, a crew of mixed
Orientals, and among them were native Hindoos, Klings, Malays,
Sidi-boys. In those days I had not been in the United States and had not
yet imbibed any great contempt for coloured people. They were on the
whole infinitely more interesting than the Irish. I knew nothing of the
world, nothing of the Orient, and here was an Oriental microcosm. The
old serang, or bo'sun, was a gnarled and knotted and withered Malay, who
took rather a fancy to me. Sometimes I sat in his berth and smoked a
pipe with him. At other times I deciphered the wooden tallies for the
sails in the sail-locker, for though he talked something which he
believed to be English, he could not read a word, even in the
Persi-Arabic character. The cooks, or _bandaddies_, were also friends
of mine, and more than once they supplemented the intolerably meagre
steerage fare by giving me something good to eat. I soon knew every man
in the crew, and could call each by his name. Sometimes I went on the
lookout with one of them, and one particular Malay was very keen on
teaching me his language. So far as I remember the languages talked by
the crew included Malay, Hindustani, Tamil and, oddly enough, French.
That language was of course spoken by someone who came from Pondicherry,
that small piece of country which, with Chandernagor, represents the
French-Indian Empire of Du Plessis's time. I had learnt a little
Hindustani and Malay, and could understand all the usual names of the
sails and gear before I discovered that there was someone on board whose
native tongue was French, or who, at anyrate, could talk it fluently
enough. We were far to the south of the Line before I found this out.
For, of course, among his fellows the boy from Pondicherry spoke
Hindustani mixed with Malay and perhaps with Tamil. I well remember how
I made the discovery. It was odd enough to me, but far stranger, far
more wonderful, far more full of mystery to my little, excitable and
very dark-skinned friend. I daresay, if he lives, that to this hour he
remembers the English boy who so surprised him.
The weather was intensely hot and I had climbed for a little air into
one of the boats lying in the skids. The shadow of the main-topsail
screened me from the sun; there was just enough wind to keep the canvas
doing its work in silence. It was Sunday and the whole ship was
curiously quiet. But as I lay in my little shelter I was presently
disturbed by Pondicherry (that was what he was called by everyone), who
came where I was to fetch away a plate full of some occult mystery which
he had secreted there. He nodded to me brightly, and then for the first
time it occurred to me that if he came from his nameplace he might know
a little French. I knew remarkably little myself; I could read it with
difficulty. My colloquial French was then, as now, intensely and
intolerably English. I said, "_Bon jour_, Pondicherry!"
The result was astounding. He turned to me with an awe-stricken look, as
he dropped his tin plate with its precious burden, and holding out both
hands as though to embrace a fellow countryman, he exclaimed in
French,--
"What--what, do _you_ come from Pondicherry?"
For a moment or two I did not follow his meaning. I did not see what
French meant to him; I could not tell that it represented his little
fatherland. I had imagined he knew it was a foreign tongue. But it was
not foreign to him.
"No," I said, "I am an Englishman."
He sat down on a thwart and stared at me as if I was some strange
miracle. His next words let me into the heart of his mystery.
"It is _not_ possible. You _speak_ Pondicherry!"
He did not even know that he was speaking French, the language of a
great Western nation. He could not know that I was doing my feeble best
to speak the language of a great literature; the language of Voltaire,
of Victor Hugo, of diplomacy. No, he and I were speaking Pondicherry,
the language of a derelict corner of mighty Hindustan. Now he eyed me
with suspicion.
"When were you there?" he demanded in a whisper.
If I was not Pondicherry born I must at least have lived there in order
to have learnt the language.
"Pondy, I was never there," I answered.
He evidently did not believe me. I had some mysterious reason for
concealing that I was either Pondicherry born or that I had resided
there.
"Then you didn't know it?"
"No."
"And you have not been in Villianur?"
"No."
"Or Bahur?"
I shook my head. He shook his and stared at me suspiciously. Perhaps I
had committed some crime there.
"Then how did you learn it?"
"I learnt it in England."
That I was undoubtedly speaking the unhappy truth would have been
obvious to any Frenchman. But to Pondicherry what I said was so
obviously a gross and almost foolish piece of fiction that he shook his
head disdainfully. And yet why should I lie? He spoke so rapidly that I
could not follow him.
"If you speak so fast I cannot understand," I said.
"Ah, then," he replied hopefully, "it is a long time since you were
there. Perhaps you were very young then?"
I once more insisted that I had never been at Pondicherry, or even in
any part of India. All I said convinced him the more that I was not
speaking the truth.
"You speak Hindustani with the _bandaddy_."
It is true I had learnt a dozen phrases and had once or twice used them.
To say I had learnt them in the ship was useless.
"Oh, no, you have been in India. Why will you not tell me the truth,
sahib? I am the only one from Pondicherry but you."
He spoke mournfully. I was denying my own fatherland, denying help and
comradeship to my own countryman! It was, thought Pondicherry, cruel,
unkind, unpatriotic. He gathered up the mess he had spilt and descended
sorrowfully to the main deck to discuss me with his friends among the
crew. As I heard afterwards from the wrinkled old serang, there were
many arguments started in the fo'castle as to my place of origin. It was
said, by those who took sides against Pondicherry, that even if I knew
"Pondicherry" (and for that they only had his word), I also undoubtedly
knew English. And when did any of the white rulers of Pondicherry know
that tongue? Some of the Lascars who had been on the Madras coast in
country boats swore that no one spoke English there. On the whole, as I
came from England and knew English it was more likely that I was what I
said than that I came from Pondicherry. But even so all agreed it was a
mystery that I could speak it. The serang came to me quietly.
"Say, Robat, you tell me. You come Pondicherry?"
"No, serang," said "Robat."
"But you speak Pondicherry the boy say, Robat?"
"Yes, I speak it, serang. Many English people speak it a little. Very
easy for English people learn a little, just the same as we learn _jeldy
jow, toom sooar_."
And as the serang was well acquainted with the capabilities of English
officers with regard to abusive language, he went away convinced that
"Pondicherry" and "Hindustani" insults were perhaps taught in English
schools after all.
In spite of my refusing to take Pondicherry into my confidence he
remained on friendly, if suspicious, terms with me. When I said a word
or two of French to him he beamed all over, and turned to the others as
much as to say, "Didn't I tell you he came from my country?" For
nothing that I and the serang or his friends said convinced him, or even
shook his opinion. He used to sneak up to me occasionally as he worked
about the decks and spring a question on me about someone at
Pondicherry. Of course I had heard of no one there. But my ignorance was
wholly put on; he was sure of that. Often and often I caught his eyes on
me, and I knew his mind was pondering theories to account for my
conduct. It was all very well for me or anyone else to say that
Pondicherry was talked elsewhere than in his own home. He had travelled,
he had been in Australia, in England, in many parts of the East, and he
had never, never met anyone but himself and myself who knew it! I think
he would have given me a month's pay if I would have only owned up to
having been at Pondicherry. He certainly offered me an ample plateful of
curried shark, a part of one we had caught days before, if I would be
frank about the matter; but even my desire to obtain possession of that
smell and drop it overboard did not tempt me to a white lie. I persisted
in remaining an Englishman through the whole passage of one hundred and
two days. And then at last, after good times and bad, after calms on
the Line and no small hurricane south of stormy Cape Leuuwin, we came up
with Cape Otway and entered the Heads. Pondicherry's time for solving
the mystery grew short. In another few hours the passengers would go
ashore and be never seen again. For my own part, though the passage had
been one of pure discomfort, I was almost sorry to leave the old ship. I
had to quit a number of friends, black and white, and had to face a new
and perhaps unfriendly world. Though the _Hydrabad_ half-starved me I
was at anyrate sure of water and biscuit. And many of the poor Lascars
had been chums to me. As I made preparations to leave the vessel and
stood on deck waiting, I saw Pondicherry sneaking about in the
background. I said farewell to his old serang, and the Malay
quartermasters, who were all fine men, and to some of the meaner outcast
Klings, and then Pondicherry darted up to me. I knew quite well what was
in his mind. It was in his very eyes. I was now going, and should be
seen no more. Perhaps at the last I might be induced to speak the truth.
And even if I did not own up bravely, it was at anyrate necessary to bid
farewell to a countryman, though he denied his own country. He came
close to me in the crowd and touched my sleeve appealingly.
"What is it, Pondy?"
"Oh, sahib, you tell me _now_ where you learn Pondicherry?"
"Pondy, I told you the truth long ago," I answered.
"Sahib, it is not possible."
He turned away, and I went on board the tug which served us as a tender.
Presently I saw him lean over the rail and wave his hand. When he saw
that I noticed him he called out in French once more, with angry,
scornful reproach,--
"If you were not there, how, _how_ can you speak it?"
A GRADUATE BEYOND SEAS
The travel-micrococcus infected me early. Before I can remember I
travelled in England, and, when my memory begins, a stay of two years in
any town made me weary. My brothers and sisters and I would then inquire
what time the authorities meant to send my father elsewhere, and we were
accustomed to denounce any delay on the part of a certain Government
department in giving us "the route." Such a youth was gipsying, and if
any original fever of the blood led to wandering, such a training
heightened the tendency. To this day even, after painful and laborious
travel, Fate cannot persuade me that my stakes should not be pulled up
at intervals. I understand "trek fever," which, after all, is only
Eldorado hunting. With the settler unsatisfied a belief in immortality
takes its place.
In the ferment of youth and childhood, which now threatens to quiet
down, my feet stayed in many English towns and villages, from
Barnstaple to Carlisle, from Bedford to Manchester, and I hated them all
with fervour, only mitigating my wrath by great reading. I could only
read at eight years of age, but from that time until eleven I read a
mingled and most preposterous mass of literature and illiterature. It
was a substitute for travel, and, in my case, not a substitute only, but
a provoker. Reading is mostly dram-drinking, mostly drugging; it throws
a veil over realities. With the child I knew best it urged him on and
infected me with world-hunger and roused activities. To be sure the
Elder Brethren, who are youth's first gaolers, nearly made me believe,
by dint of repetition (they, themselves, probably believing it by now),
that books and knowledge, which are acquired for, with, by and through
examinations, were, of themselves, noble and admirable, and that an
adequate acquaintance with them (provided such acquaintance could be
proved adequate to Her Majesty's Commissioners of the Civil Service)
would inevitably make a man of me. For the opinion is rooted deep in
many minds that to surrender one's wings, to clip one's claws, to put a
cork in one's raptorial beak, and masquerade in a commercial barnyard,
is to be a very fine fowl indeed.
Some spirit of revolt saved the child (now a boy, I guess) from being a
Civil Cochin China, and sent him to Australia. The ship in which I
sailed for Melbourne was my first introduction to outside realities, to
world realities as distinct from the preliminary brutalities of school,
and it opened my eyes--indeed, gave me eyes instead of the substitutes
for vision favoured by the Elder Brethren, who may be taken to include
schoolmasters, professors, and good parents. How any child survives
without losing his eyesight altogether is now a marvel to me. Certainly,
very few retain more than a dim vision, which permits them to wallow
amongst imitations (such as a last year's Chippendale morality) and
imagine themselves well furnished. My new university (after Owens
College an admirable hot-bed for some products under glass) was the
_Hydrabad_, 1600 tons burden, with a mixed mass of passengers, mostly
blackguards in the act of leaving England to allow things to blow over,
and a Lascar crew, Hindoos, Seedee boys and Malays. The professors at
this notable college were many, and all were fit for their unendowed
chairs. They taught mostly, and in varying ways, the art of seeing
things as they are, and if some saw things as they were not, that is,
double, the object lesson was eminently useful to the amazed scholar.
Some of them pronounced me green, and I was green.
But a four months' session and procession through the latitudes and
longitudes brought me to Australia in a less obviously green condition.
I had learnt the one big lesson that too few learn. I had to depend on
myself. And Australia said, "You know nothing and must work." Had I not
sat with Malays, and collogued with negroes, and eaten ancient shark
with Hindoos? I was afraid of the big land where I could reckon on no
biscuit tub always at hand, but these were men who had faced other
continents and other seas. I could face realities, too, or I could try.
It is the unnecessary work that gets the glory mostly, especially in a
fat time of peace, but some day the scales will be held more level. A
shearer of sheep will be held more honourable than a shearer of men; and
he who shirks the world's right labour will rank with the unranked
lowest. The music-hall and theatre and unjustified fiction will have had
their day. The little man with a little gift, that should be no more
than an evening's joke or pleasure after real work, will exist no more.
But we live under the rule of Rabesqurat, Queen of Illusion.
The Australian bush university, with the sun, moon and stars in the high
places, and labour, hunger and thirst holding prominent lecturerships,
helped to educate me. The proof of that education was that I know now
that a big bit of my true life's work was done there. The preparation
turned out to be the work itself. One does necessary things there, and
they are done without glory and often without present satisfaction,
except the satisfaction given to toil. What does the world want and must
have? If all the theatres were put down and all the actors sent to
useful work, things would be better instead of worse. If all the
music-halls became drill-halls it would add to the world's health. If
most of the writers concluded justly that they were in no way necessary
or useful, some healthy man might be added to the list of workers and
some unhealthy ones would find themselves better or very justly dead.
But the sheep and cattle have to be attended to, and ships must be
sailed, and bridges must be built. Hunger and thirst, and all the
educational unrighteousness of the elements must be met, fought,
out-marched or out-manoeuvred. I went to school in the Murray Ranges,
and carried salt to fluky sheep. Even if this present screed stirred me
doubly to action, the salt-carrying was better. The sun and moon and
stars overhead, and the big grey or brown plain beneath were for ever
instilling knowledge that a city knows not. A city's soot kills elms,
they say; only plane trees, self-scaling and self-cleaning, live and
grow and survive. I think man is more like the elm; he cannot clean
himself in a city.
It has often been a question for me to solve, now youth exists no more,
except in memory, whether this present method of keeping even with one's
own needs and the world's has any justification. If it has, it lies in
the fact that my real work was mostly done before I knew it. When energy
exists devoid of self-consciousness (for self-consciousness is the
beginning of death) the individual fulfils himself naturally, obeying
the mandate within him. So in Australia, and at sea, or in America, lies
what I sometimes call the justification of my writing to amuse myself or
a few others.
For America was my second great university, and though I lack any
learned degree earned by examinations, and may put no letters after my
name, I maintain I passed creditably, if without honours, in the hardest
schools of the world. About a young man's first freedom still hangs some
illusion. With apparently impregnable health and unsubdued spirits, he
has the illusion of present immortality; life is a world without end.
But when youth begins to sober and health shows cracks and gaps, and
hard labour comes, then the realities, indeed, crawl out and show
themselves. My early work in New South Wales seemed to me then like
sport. America was real life; it was for ever putting the stiffest
questions to me. I can imagine an examination paper which might appal
many fat graduates.
1. Describe from experience the sensations of hunger when prolonged over
three days.
2. Explain the differences in living in New York, Chicago and San
Francisco on a dollar a week. In such cases, how would you spend ten
cents if you found it in the street at three o'clock in the morning?
3. How long would it be in your own case before want of food destroyed
your sense of private property? Give examples from your own experience.
4. How far can you walk without food--(_a_) when you are trying to
reach a definite point; (_b_) when you are walking with an insane view
of getting to some place unknown where a good job awaits you?
5. If, after a period (say three weeks) of moderate starvation, and two
days of absolute starvation, you are offered some work, which would be
considered laborious by the most energetic coal-heaver, would you tackle
it without food or risk the loss of the job by requesting your employer
to advance you 15 cents for breakfast?
6. Can you admire mountain scenery--(_a_) when you are very hungry;
(_b_) when you are very thirsty? If you have any knowledge of the
ascetic ecstasy, describe the symptoms.
7. You are in South-west Texas without money and without friends. How
would you get to Chicago in a fortnight? What is the usual procedure
when a town objects to impecunious tramps staying around more than
twenty-four hours? Can you describe a "calaboose"?
8. Sketch an American policeman. Is he equally polite to a railroad
magnate and a tramp? What do you understand by "fanning with a club"?
9. Which are the best as a whole diet--apples or water-melons?
10. Define "tramp," "bummer," "heeler," "hoodlum," and "politician."
This is a paper put together very casually, and just as the pen runs,
but the man who can pass such an examination creditably must know many
things not revealed to the babes and sucklings of civilisation. From my
own point of view I think the questions fairly easy, a mere
matriculation paper.
When the Queen of Illusion illudes no more youth is over. I am ready to
admit Illusion still reigned when I took to writing for a living. The
first illusion was that I was not doing it for a living (it is true I
did not make one) but because the arts were rather noble than otherwise
and extremely needed. I admit now that they are necessary, in the sense
of the necessarian, but I can see little use for them, unless the
production of Illusion (with few or many gaps in it) is needed for the
world's progress. The laudation of the artist, the writer, and the actor
returns anew with the end of the world's great year. But if any golden
age comes back, the setting apart of the Amusement Monger will cease. If
it does not cease, their antics will be the warnings of the intoxicated
Helot.
Yet without illusion one cannot write. Or so it seems to me. Is this
writing period only another university after all? Perhaps teaching never
ends, though the art of learning what is taught seems very rare. To
write and "get there" in the meanest sense, so far as money is
concerned, is the overcoming of innumerable obstacles. London taught me
a great deal that I could not learn in Australia, or on the sea, or in
any Texas, or British Columbia. But I came to London with scaled eyes,
and tasted other poverty than that I knew. Illusion is mostly
foreshortening of time. One wants to prophesy and to see. The chief
lesson here is that prophets must be blind. The end of the race is the
racing thereof after all. To do a little useful work (even though the
useful may be a thousandth part of the useless) is the end of living.
The only illusion worth keeping is that anything can be useful. So far
my youth is not ended.
MY FRIEND EL TORO
It is not everyone who can make friends with a bull, and it is not every
bull that one can make friends with. Yet next to one or two horses,
about which I could spin long yarns, El Toro, the big brindled bull of
Los Guilucos Ranch, Sonoma County, California, is certainly nearest my
heart. He was my friend, and sometimes my companion; he had a noble
character for fighting, and in spite of his pugnacity he was amiability
itself to most human beings. His final end, too, fills me with a sense
of pathos, and enrages me against those who owned him. They were
obviously incapable of understanding him as I did.
When I went up to Los Guilucos from San Francisco to take up the
position of stableman on that ranche, I had little notion of the full
extent of my duties. What these were is perhaps irrelevant in the
present connection. And yet it was because I had to work so incredibly
hard, being often at it from six in the morning to eight or nine
o'clock at night, that I made particular friends with El Toro, to give
him his Spanish name. In all that western and south-western part of the
United States there are remnants of Spanish or Mexican in the common
talk. For California was once part of Mexico. El Toro became my friend
and my refuge: when I was driven half-desperate by having ten important
things to do at once he often came in and helped me to preserve an equal
mind. I have little doubt that I should have discovered how to work this
by myself, but as a matter of fact I was put up to some of his uses by
the man whose place I took. He showed me all I had to do, and lectured
me on the character of the hard-working lady who owned the place; and
when I was dazed and stood wondering how one man could do all the
stableman was supposed to accomplish between sunrise and sundown, Jack
said, "And besides all this there is a bull!" He said it so oddly and so
significantly that my heart sank. I imagined a very fierce and ferocious
animal fit for a Spanish bull-ring, a sharp-horned Murcian good enough
to try the nerve of the best matador who ever faced horns and a vicious
charge. Then he took me round the barn and opened a stable. In it El
Toro was tied to a manger by a rope and ring through his nose: he
greeted us with a strangled whistle as he still lay down. "When you are
hard driven good old El Toro will help you," said Jack, as he sat down
on the bull's big shoulders and started to scratch his curl with a
little piece of wood which had a blunt nail in it. As I stood El Toro
chewed the cud and was obviously delighted at having his curl combed.
The departing Jack delivered me another lecture on the uses of a mild
and amiable but fighting bull on a ranche where a man was likely to be
worried to death by a lady who had no notion of how much a man ought to
do in a day. When he had finished he invited me to make friends with El
Toro by also sitting on his back and scratching him with the blunt nail.
I did as I was told, and though El Toro twisted his huge head round to
inspect me he lay otherwise perfectly calm while I went on with his
toilet. He evidently felt that I was an amiable character, and one well
adapted to act as his own man. His views of me were confirmed when I
brought him half a bucket of pears from the big orchard. With a parting
slap and a sigh of regret which spoke well both for him and the bull,
Jack went away to "fix" himself for travel. I was left in charge.