RECOLLECTIONS
LIST OF WORKS
BY
FRANK T. BULLEN
THE CRUISE OF THE “CACHALOT”
IDYLLS OF THE SEA
THE LOG OF A SEA WAIF
WITH CHRIST AT SEA
THE MEN OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE
A SACK OF SHAKINGS
A WHALEMAN’S WIFE
DEEP-SEA PLUNDERINGS
THE APOSTLES OF THE SOUTH-EAST
SEA WRACK
SEA PURITANS
SEA SPRAY
CREATURES OF THE SEA
BACK TO SUNNY SEAS
A SON OF THE SEA
ADVANCE AUSTRALASIA
FRANK BROWN, SEA APPRENTICE
A BOUNTY BOY
THE CALL OF THE DEEP
THE PIRATE HUNTERS
TOLD IN THE DOG WATCHES
THE BITTER SOUTH
BEYOND
CUT OFF FROM THE WORLD
THE SEED OF THE RIGHTEOUS
FIGHTING THE ICEBERGS
A COMPLEAT SEA COOK
FROM WHEEL AND LOOK-OUT
THE SALVAGE OF A SAILOR
THE CONFESSIONS OF A TRADESMAN
_&c. &c._
[Illustration: Very truly yours
F T Bullen]
RECOLLECTIONS
_THE REMINISCENCES OF THE BUSY LIFE OF
ONE WHO HAS PLAYED THE VARIED PARTS
OF SAILOR, AUTHOR & LECTURER_
BY
FRANK T. BULLEN
AUTHOR OF “THE CRUISE OF THE ‘CACHALOT,’” _&c._
WITH PORTRAIT
LONDON
SEELEY, SERVICE & CO. LIMITED
38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET
1915
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION 11
I. MY EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS 19
II. RANDOM MEMORIES 33
III. MY FIRST LECTURES 51
IV. THE LECTURE TOUR 63
V. THE REAL BEGINNING 75
VI. SCOTLAND 89
VII. JOURNEYS 103
VIII. HOSPITALITY 121
IX. HOSPITALITY (_continued_) 137
X. HOTELS 147
XI. CHAIRMEN 163
XII. CHAIRMEN (_continued_) 181
XIII. LANTERNISTS 195
XIV. AUDIENCES 211
XV. AUSTRALASIA 227
XVI. SECRETARIES 241
XVII. DISCURSIONS 257
XVIII. DIVAGATIONS 275
XIX. ART OR APTITUDE 291
XX. SUMMING UP 305
INTRODUCTION
It may very well be that I am doing something now which is totally
unnecessary, indeed that is a foregone conclusion as far as many
omnivorous readers are concerned, for they never by any chance read a
Preface or an Introduction. But only the other day I was reading an
interesting volume of reminiscences, and the writer said that after the
publisher had received the manuscript he wrote sternly demanding the
reason why there was no Introduction. More, he said that one must be
written forthwith, and it was so.
Now I cannot honestly say that I, like that writer whom I have quoted,
am a novice at book writing, or have much to learn concerning the
ways of publishers, since this book will make about the thirty-sixth
that has been perpetrated by me during the last seventeen years. Too
many, far too many, I know (this to forestall the obvious remark), but
what I want to say is that in no case have I ever been asked for an
Introduction, or questioned why I had written one. Follows inevitably
the remark, “Why this one, then? Can’t you let your book tell its own
tale?”
And yet I feel very strongly that an Introduction to this book is
needed, if ever a book needed such a thing. For I really believe that
it may be my last; I dare not be more definite than that, though I
would dearly love to emulate those giants of literature who can calmly
announce that they have written their last page for publication, that
for good or ill their message has been delivered and they will say no
more. Ah no, fate has not dealt kindly enough with me for that, and
because the snarl of the proverbial wolf is never out of my ears and
the spoor of his stealthy footfall is but too clearly traceable near my
door, I must still be ready to take up my pen. This Introduction may
serve as my valedictory, if, as it is most reasonable to expect, this
book happens to be my last.
And now for the Introduction. For a good many years I have been telling
the stories that I have gathered here. It may very well be, of course,
that, as Kipling says, all that seemed so definite and amusing in
the spoken word has escaped when committed to paper. But I hope not,
because I have often been asked why I did not write my reminiscences of
the lecture platform, and I have always made some excuse, so that now
when I have done it at last, it would be a great pity for it to be a
failure.
Of course, the thing has been done before; it would be strange if
it hadn’t; but I have not had the pleasure of reading even the very
entertaining book written on the subject by the late Paul Blouet (Max
O’Rell), a veritable prince of humorists. I am inclined to think
that in one sense at any rate this is an advantage in that I cannot
consciously or unconsciously have copied any of their sayings, or
told of any of their doings, however interesting or funny. For the
same reason there cannot be any “chestnuts” in this book. Everything
told in it, except where the contrary has been expressly stated, is
an experience of my own. I am rather pleased about this, for I have
recently been more than a little disgusted to find how many oft-told
stories have been repeated in costly books of memoirs, the names
of whose writers should have been guarantee enough that they had
sufficient good stories of their own to tell without drawing upon
antiquities.
I hope I shall be given due credit for the fact that many really good
stories (as I think) have been omitted by me simply because the point
of them demanded that the actors should be known, and I would not give
those good people pain. Other stories I have had to leave out because I
was not looking for trouble and because I was somewhat doubtful of the
far-reaching operations of the law of libel. And that, I think, is all
I can say by way of Introduction to my book.
FRANK T. BULLEN.
BOURNEMOUTH,
_Dec. 17, 1914_.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Since these pages were printed Mr. Bullen has passed away. He had been
in a precarious state of health for some years, and he himself was well
aware that the end might come at any time.
He died at Madeira on February 26th, 1915, in his fifty-seventh year.
_March 4, 1915._
CHAPTER I
MY EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS
A few years ago I was in the breakfast-room of the beautiful Hotel
Frontenac at Quebec awaiting my meal at a sunny table, when I caught
sight of the head waiter. He was so strikingly like the comedian
W. H. Berry, to whom I can never be sufficiently grateful for his
mirth-compelling performances, that I sent a waiter to request his
attendance. He came on the instant, and I immediately asked him if he
were any relation to Mr. Berry, although as I could not then recall
that gentleman’s name, it took me some time to explain whom I meant.
Smilingly the head waiter disclaimed the relationship, saying:
“There was never an actor in our family that I know of. I come from a
suburb of London called Paddington.” (“So do I,” I interjected.) “I was
born in a little turning off Jonson Place, Harrow Road, called Alfred
Road.” (“So was I,” I interrupted again.) “At number --.” “Ah,” I said,
“my number was next door.”
Why this chronicling of the smallest of small beer? Because I have
never seen anybody more delighted than that bright and able man at
meeting some one who was born in the same street as himself. We have
no choice in the matter, but I doubt very much whether any tie draws
men tighter when they meet abroad than that their place of birth was
near each other--even in the same town is often enough to set up a
friendship almost masonic in its intensity. Wherefore I recall the fact
that I first saw the light in that poor street off Jonson Place, but
have no recollection of its amenities. For before even I, precocious
as I undoubtedly was, grew old enough to know intelligently, or say
at eighteen months old, my father and mother quarrelled, the weaker
vessel was thrown out, and myself, as well as an elder sister of whom
I know nothing except that she did exist, were consigned to the care
of a maiden aunt by my father, with a promise, never redeemed, to pay
something towards the expense of keeping us.
That shadowy sister very wisely took the earliest opportunity of
becoming a shade, so I remember nothing of her but what I have been
told. I may say here that I have often, in the terrible years since,
had occasion to wish that I too might then have saved myself all
further trouble; but alas! a tenaciousness of purpose and a stock of
vitality which has not yet all gone have so far hindered me that,
although I am physically a very wreck and was twelve years ago given at
the outside three years to live, I am still topside. Well, as a cynical
American friend once told me, “That’s only one more mistake you’ve
made, I guess.” I cannot contradict him.
Thus it came about that my earliest recollections centre on a quaint
little house, No. 15 Desboro’ Terrace, now called Marlborough Street.
By careful comparison and enquiry I have no doubt that I do remember
as far back as 1859-60, when I would be 2½ years old. At the end of
Desboro’ Terrace, remote from the Harrow Road, ran the main line of the
Great Western Railway, and turning sharply to the right when you had
reached the blank wall that closed the terrace, you came into a row of
little houses called Desboro’ Place which fronted the line and were
only divided therefrom by a narrow roadway and a line of tall rails.
My aunt kept a maid--not, God knows, because she had any pride of that
sort, but because she was a dressmaker and could not do the housework
and attend to her business too, and also, I am ashamed to say, because
she usually had some of her brothers sponging upon her. How well I
remember once saying to her:
“Auntie, you used to have quite a lot of people to dinner. I can
remember Grandfather, Uncle John, Uncle George, Uncle Tom, Uncle Ted,
and Aunt Kitty.”
“Ah,” she replied, “yes, but you never knew that my poor fingers were
working for them all, except Aunt Kitty--she always worked hard enough
for her keep.”
So I said no more. And now I must return to one of my earliest
recollections. The maid, her work done, was permitted to take me out,
and she used to take me down Desboro’ Place and stand me on the coping
clutching the rails and looking down at the puff-puffs. There I saw the
wonderful engines of that day, the “Charles Dickens,” the “Robin Hood,”
and once the Queen’s special engine, the stately “Lord of the Isles,”
with the big gilt crown on the front. I knew the names of many engines
and never wanted to go and see the shops, the puff-puffs supplied all
my needs, until one day, in an evil moment for her, she took me over
the little wooden foot-bridge that still spans the line there. And a
passing engine sent a cloud of steam up through the crevices of the
planks of the bridge floor, passing up my little bare legs even unto my
waist under my frock. The sensation was a novel one, and thenceforward
I clamoured to be led thither. I did not know nor did I care if she,
my guardian, approved of it. I have since felt that I might have
been exacting, but peace be unto her whoever she was, she never made
complaint that I heard of.
Up till last year I often made journeys from Paddington, but never
without glancing up at the railings as we passed Desboro’ Place (if
that is what it is called now) and at once recalling those dim days.
They seem to belong to another life, but they had a quiet charm all
their own, entirely due to the good influence of my poor aunt,
who, amidst all her worries, always kept a cosy corner for me. My
education was her chief care, and happily for me we lived next door
to a dame-school kept by three maiden ladies. Of my experiences there
I have told at length elsewhere, so I will only say here that my
principal recollection of next door is of the ladies’ father, a nasty
old man whose chief delight seemed to be to get me on his knee in the
summer-house and puff strong tobacco smoke in my face. It was of no use
struggling or screaming, though I did both, he seemed to have no mercy.
I was taught by those gentle ladies that it was a deadly sin to hate
anybody, but I came as near hating that old man as made very little
odds.
Another curious fact emerges about this time when I would be between
four and five years old. I could read--indeed I do not know when I
learned, so easy did reading always seem--and from the kind of books
to the reading of which I was confined, I had a large and extensive
vocabulary, the use of which at inopportune moments often made some
of my uncles very angry and brought down upon my head many sarcastic
comments. But having no one to whom I could talk or play, I used to
march in stately fashion round the small garden, holding the grand
old Tom cat’s tail, as he paced majestically before me, and declaim
as if to gaping congregations my addresses upon--ah, I don’t remember
what! Of course, the themes were religious, could hardly be otherwise
remembering my reading, but I would like to know what I used to say
aloud then, and the neighbours’ opinions thereupon. As I never heard
the latter I must assume that I did not make much noise, not even when,
as it were, smitten by sudden madness, I varied my sermons with yells
of Murder! Fire! Thieves! No, it could not have been noisy, because I
remember that it never scared old Dick, the faithful cat. He was my
constant companion, so by that I know that I can never have been cruel.
Indeed the whole environment was as pure and cloistered as could be
imagined. A worse preparation for a rough-and-tumble with the world
could hardly be imagined, but my poor auntie did her best, the best
she knew for me, and kept me, as far as in her lay, unspotted from
the world. Of course there were, there always must be, occasions when
the primitive man comes to the surface, and I was no exception to the
rule. As, for instance, we once had visitors and I was ousted from my
aunt’s bed where I had always slept and put with a Mrs. Rawlins, a
large lady whom I had taken a vivid dislike to, for no reason, very
early in her visit. To please this person the sheets were taken off and
my tender skin was excoriated by the coarse blankets. And she wasn’t
a nice person. She took up most of the bed; she snored astoundingly,
and--well, it doesn’t matter now--but I did not sleep a wink all night,
and at the earliest opportunity besought my auntie not to let me sleep
with that old woman any more. I don’t know what was done, but I do
know that I was restored to my auntie’s bed the next night and said my
prayers twice through in sheer gratitude for the relief.
There was a wedding at our house; my Aunt Kitty was married and my
prospective uncle endeavoured to ingratiate himself with me. To no
purpose. I didn’t like him, and I wouldn’t be cajoled by him. I was not
a bit surprised to find in later years that all my childish aversions
were justified. But of that great upheaval one fact stands saliently
forward: I had a new muslin Garibaldi with bishops’ sleeves and round
pearl buttons, a bright plaid skirt, strap shoes and white socks. I
was then nearly six years old, but nobody so much as dreamed of a
masculine dress for me, and certainly I thought nothing of the matter.
But shortly after the wedding at Holy Trinity Church, Paddington, the
child of one of my uncles needed baptism, and my wedding garments being
fresh, it was deemed a good opportunity for me to be baptised too. Some
doubt existed as to whether I had ever been baptised at all, but my
poor mother was a Catholic, and I have since learned that, however low
she may have sunk, the priest would have insisted upon her child being
baptised in the Faith.
Auntie did not know that; she belonged, as she put it, to the
“Angelical” Church of England, and so I was baptised at Holy Trinity
Church with my infant cousin, and very well do I remember the whole
scene. The great empty echoing church and the little group of
godfathers and godmothers, the nervous young curate whose cool hand
shook so as he placed it on my head and made the sign on my forehead,
the clumsy, blundering way in which everybody seemed to behave, except
the baby who squalled lustily in the curate’s arms and made him go
crimson--ah yes--it is all so vividly present to me now. As is also the
astounding thought in my small brain that I could do the whole thing
so much better than any of them, conscious, mind you, that I was the
most self-possessed person in the little crowd. And that night, when
as usual I mounted to the top of the house and went to bed alone, for
auntie did not come till one a.m. sometimes, I felt singularly defiant
as I knelt to say my prayers. The hole in the palliasses made by their
being turned end for end, as sailors say, and the corners cut out for
the bedposts coming together, quite lost their power to frighten me
by the possibility of some evil thing coming out and doing me some
mysterious harm; nor did I any longer fear old Joe, Miss Moore’s great
macaw, with which she used to threaten us when we were naughty, though
he had hitherto always seemed to be lurking under the bed every night.
No; like the ’Badian and Jamaican nigger who considers that going to
church on the occasion of his marriage (though there is often a long
family by that time) gives him a clean bill of spiritual health for
all past and future soul-sicknesses, I had some dim idea that from
henceforth I was immune from the terror that walketh by night. I did
not put it that way, of course, but that certainly was the immediate
effect of my baptism. But it was a clean little soul, after all. Lack
of opportunity had prevented sin, and I did not even know the joy of
an occasional theft of jam or sugar. Then came an episode which I am
sure most people will find difficult of belief, and no one more so than
myself, for a reason presently to be given.
One of my uncles was a gentleman’s groom, and through lying in a damp
bed he had contracted some disease of the throat which made him an
invalid for five long years. All that time he lived with auntie, but
I believe his sweetheart, who was lady’s maid at the big house where
he had been employed, remained faithful to him and paid auntie for his
keep. He attended Dr. Sieveking at St. Mary’s Hospital, and always
took me with him on the days when he went. My recollections of those
days are all grey. He never joked, never even talked to me, and as for
giving me a penn’orth of sweets--I doubt if the idea ever occurred to
him. At last he died, and I, who did not know anything about death,
of course was banished from all the discussions which took place. Of
course, being a secretive and very quiet child, I asked no questions;
but I bided my time. It came. He was laid in his coffin in the next
room to ours--the bedroom which auntie and I occupied.
They sent me up to bed as usual and I went through all the usual
formulæ of retiring. And then I got up, crept out upon the landing,
listened intently, and, hearing nothing, fled into the death room.
There lay the coffin on its trestles covered with a sheet. The moon
shone through the white blinds as if they had not been there. I drew
the sheet back and looked upon that face. I do not believe I should
have been terrified at all, but a handkerchief was tied under his
jaw and over his head and it gave him an appearance that I cannot
describe. And one of his eyes was half open. I drew the sheet rapidly
back, I slid to the door, passed through it, closed it behind me,
listened again--no sound--crept into bed and covered my head with the
bedclothes. I lay for over an hour with thumping heart and panting
breath, but I slept at last. And I have never been able to look upon
the dead without terrible sensations since--indeed, I have not seen a
dead face since I lost my youngest boy fifteen years ago.
But I notice that I am lingering too long over those earliest days.
Yet I must just pause a moment over the change from my much-loved and
comfortable petticoats to trousers. My poor old grandfather had died
and been buried by my auntie, and from a pair of his best trousers
she made me my initial pair. Poor lady, she knew rather less than
most people of the make of masculine garments, but she did her best,
and presently, in the midst of a little group of giggling work-girls
I was endued with the tubes. That’s what they were, just tubes, and
my little legs felt as forlorn and distant in them as if they had no
connection with me. I draw a veil over other details as not being
seemly, but as I forlornly surveyed myself standing there, with those
tubes nearly reaching to my shoulders, the giggling of the girls burst
into unquenchable laughter and I nearly died with shame. No child likes
to be an object of laughter, but that I certainly was then, and all my
aunt’s well-meant efforts to stay the yells of laughter were fruitless.
They were taken off me then, but I wore them; oh yes, I wore them, and
what I endured from the street urchins who saw me in them I can never
tell--the trouble was too great. But as all those troubles were soon
to be merged in a much greater trouble, I must pass them over and get
on. Once and once only I had seen my mother. A heap of old clothing
like a pile of autumn leaves was shown me, and I was told that _that_
was my mother who had come to see me but had been taken ill. I was
frightened, and ran to hide myself. And I never saw her again. It was
not long after this that my poor auntie died, and I having no one, for
my father being a British workman with a strong desire to back horses
and play billiards, could not be expected to want me, I was flung upon
the streets.
I have told the story of that time fairly fully in different books, but
I may perhaps just pause here to point out that the position was not
common. For I had been brought up in a sheltered home without even the
faintest knowledge of evil, brought up more like a tender little girl
than a boy, and then suddenly, at the age of nine, I was flung into a
veritable maelstrom of vice. I don’t comment upon this; I just state
the fact that this happened in 1866, when I was barely nine years old.