which I published my first novel. I am sorry to add that poor
Tickeracandua, to whom it owed so much, subsequently met the very fate
in reality which I had assigned to him in fiction; though as good a
fellow as many I have met _out_ of a show, he came to the same end as
'Don't Care' did in the nursery story, and was 'eaten (or at all events
killed) by lions.'
[Illustration: signed drawing: W. Clark Russell]
'_THE WRECK OF THE "GROSVENOR"_'
BY W. CLARK RUSSELL
[Illustration: CLARK RUSSELL AS A MIDSHIPMAN OF SEVENTEEN]
I am complimented by an invitation to tell what I can recollect of the
writing, publication, and reception of the earliest of my sea books,
'The Wreck of the "Grosvenor."' I approach the subject with diffidence,
and ask the reader to forgive me if he thinks or finds me unduly
egotistical. 'John Holdsworth: Chief Mate,' preceded 'The Wreck of the
"Grosvenor."' I do not regard that story as a novel of the sea. I was
reluctant and timid in dealing with ocean topics when the scheme of that
tale came into my head; I contented myself with pulling off my shoes and
socks and walking about ankle deep into the ripples. But in the
'Grosvenor' I went to sea like a man; I signed articles aboard her as
second mate; I had ruffians for shipmates, and the stench of the
harness-cask was the animating influence of the narrative. It is the
first sea book I ever wrote, in the sense, I mean, that its successors
are sea books: what I have to say, therefore, agreeably to the plan of
these personal contributions, will refer to it.
[Illustration: I WAS A CHILD OF THIRTEEN]
And first, I must write a few words about my own experience as a sailor.
I went to sea in the year 1858, when I was a child of thirteen years and
a few months old. My first ship was a well-known Australian liner, the
'Duncan Dunbar,' commanded by an old salt, named Neatby, who will always
be memorable to me for his habit of wearing the tall chimney-pot hat of
the London streets in all weathers and parallels, whether in the
roasting calms of the Equator, or in the snow-darkened hurricanes of the
Horn. I went to sea as a 'midshipman' as it is termed, though I never
could persuade myself that a lad in the Merchant Service, no matter how
heavy might be the premium his friends paid for him, has a right to a
title of grade or rating that belongs essentially and peculiarly to the
Royal Navy. I signed for a shilling a month, and with the rest of us
(there were ten) was called 'young gentleman'; but we were put to work
which an able seaman would have been within his rights in refusing, as
being what is called 'boys'' duty. I need not be particular. Enough that
the discipline was as rough as though we had been lads in the
forecastle, with a huge boatswain and brutal boatswain's mates to look
after us. We paid ten guineas each as a contribution to some imagination
of a stock of eatables for the midshipmen's berth; but my memory
carries no more than a few tins of preserved potatoes, a great number of
bottles of pickles, and a cask of exceedingly moist sugar. Therefore, we
were thrown upon the ship's provisions, and I very soon became
intimately acquainted with the quality and nature of the stores served
out to forecastle hands.
[Illustration: NEATBY]
I made, but not after the manner of Gulliver, several voyages into
remote nations of the world, and in the eight years I was at sea I
picked up enough knowledge to qualify me to give the public a few new
ideas about the ocean life. Yet when the scribbling mania possessed me
it was long before I could summon courage to write about the sea and
sailors. I asked myself, Who is interested in the Merchant Service? What
public shall I find to listen to me? Those who read novels want stories
about love and elopements, abductions, and the several violations of the
sanctities of domestic life. The great mass of readers--those who
support the circulating libraries--are ladies. Will it be possible to
interest ladies in forecastle life and in the prosaics of the cabin?
[Illustration: ANCHORED IN THE DOWNS]
Then, again, I was frightened by the Writer for Boys. _He_ was very much
at sea. I never picked up a book of his without lighting upon some
hideous act of piracy, some astounding and unparalleled shipwreck, some
marvellous island of treasure. This writer, of a clan numerous as
Wordsworth's 'little lot of stars,' warned me off and affrighted me. His
paper ship had so long and successfully filled the public eye that I
shrank from launching anything real, anything with strakes and
treenails, anything with running rigging so leading that a sailor would
exactly know what to let go when the order was given. In plain English,
I judged that the sea story had been irremediably depressed, and
rendered wholly ridiculous by the strenuous periodic and Christmas
labours of the Writer for Boys. Had he not sunk even Marryat and Michael
Scott, who, because they wrote about the sea, were compelled in due
course by the publishers to address themselves exclusively to boys! The
late George Cupples--a man of fine genius--in the course of a letter to
me, complained warmly of being made to figure as 'Captain' George
Cupples upon the title-page of his admirable work, 'The Green Hand.' He
assured me that he was no captain, and that his name thus written was
merely a bookseller's dodge to recommend his story to boys.
And, still, I would sometimes think that if I would but take heart and
go afloat in imagination, under the old red flag, I should find within
the circle of the horizon such materials for a book as might recommend
it, at all events on the score of freshness. Only two writers had dealt
with the mercantile side of the ocean life--Dana, the author of 'Two
Years before the Mast,' and Herman Melville, both of them, it is
needless to say, Americans. I could not recollect a book, written by an
Englishman, relating, as a work of fiction, to shipboard life on the
high seas under the flag of the Merchant Service. I excluded the Writer
for Boys. I could recall no author who, himself a practical seaman, one
who had slept with sailors, eaten with them, gone aloft with them, and
suffered with them, had produced a book, a novel--call it what you
will--wholly based on what I may term the inner life of the forecastle
and the cabin.
[Illustration: SOME OF THE CREW]
[Illustration: THE MAGISTRATES]
It chanced one day that a big ship, with a mastheaded colour, telling
of trouble on board, let go her anchor in the Downs. I then lived in a
town which overlooks those waters. The crew of the ship had mutinied:
they had carried the vessel halfway down Channel, when, discovering by
that time what sort of provisions had been shipped for them, they forced
the master to shift his helm for the inwards course. The crew of
thirteen or fourteen hairy, queerly attired fellows, in Scotch caps,
divers-coloured shirts, dungaree breeches stuffed into half wellingtons,
were brought before the magistrates. The bench consisted of an old sea
captain, who had lost a ship in his day through the ill conduct of his
crew, and whose hatred of the forecastle hand was strong and peculiar; a
parson, who knew about as much of the sea as his wife; a medical
practitioner, and a schoolmaster. I was present, and listened to the
men's evidence, and I also heard the captain's story. Samples of the
food were produced. A person with whom I had some acquaintance found me
an opportunity to examine and taste samples of the forecastle provisions
of the ship whose crew had mutinied. Nothing more atrociously nasty
could be found amongst the neglected putrid sweepings of a butcher's
back premises. Nothing viler in the shape of food ever set a famished
mongrel hiccoughing. Nevertheless, this crew of thirteen or fourteen
men, for refusing to sail in the vessel unless fresh forecastle stores
were shipped, were sent to gaol for terms ranging from three to six
weeks.
[Illustration: THE WRECK OF THE 'GROSVENOR']
Some time earlier than this there had been legislation helpful to the
seaman through the humane and impassioned struggles of Mr. Samuel
Plimsoll. The crazy, rotten old coaster had been knocked into staves.
The avaricious owner had been compelled to load with some regard to the
safety of sailors. But I could not help thinking that the shore-going
menace of the sailor's life did not lie merely in overloaded ships, and
in crazy, porous hulls. Mutinies were incessantly happening in
consequence of the loathsome food shipped for sailors' use, and many
disasters attended these outbreaks. When I came away from the
magistrates' court, after hearing the men sentenced, I found my mind
full of that crew's grievance. I reflected upon what Mr. Plimsoll had
done, and how much of the hidden parts of the sea life remained to be
exposed to the public eye, to the advantage of the sailor, providing the
subject should be dealt with by one who had himself suffered, and very
well understood what he sat down to write about. This put into my head
the idea of the tale which I afterwards called 'The Wreck of the
"Grosvenor."' I said to myself, I'll found a story on a mutiny at sea,
occasioned entirely by the shipment of bad provisions for the crew. No
writer has as yet touched this ugly feature of the life. Dana is silent.
Herman Melville merely drops a joke or two as he rolls out of the
caboose with a cube of salt horse in his hand. It has never been made a
serious canvas of. And yet deeper tragedies lie in the stinking
harness-cask than in the started butt. There are wilder and bloodier
possibilities in a barrel of rotten pork, and in a cask of worm-riddled
ship's bread, than in a whole passage of shifting cargoes, and in a long
round voyage of deadweight that sinks to the wash-streak.
But if I was to find a public I must make my book a romance. I must
import the machinery of the petticoat. The pannikin of rum I proposed to
offer must be palatable enough to tempt the lips of the ladies to sip
it. My publisher would want a market, and if Messrs. Mudie and Smith
would have none of me I should write in vain; for assuredly I was not
going to find a public among sailors. Sailors don't read: a good many of
them _can't_ read. Those who can have little leisure, and they do not
care to fill up their spare hours with yarns of a calling which eighty
out of every hundred of them loathe. So I schemed out a nautical romance
and went to work, and in two months and a week I finished the story of
'The Wreck of the "Grosvenor."'
[Illustration: MRS. CLARK RUSSELL]
Whilst I was writing it an eminent publisher, a gentleman whose
friendship I had been happy in possessing for many years, asked me to
let him have a sea story. I think he had been looking into 'John
Houldsworth: Chief Mate', which some months before this time had been
received with much kindness by the reviewers. I sent him the manuscript
of 'The Wreck of the "Grosvenor."' One of his readers was a lady, and
to this lady my friend the publisher forwarded the manuscript, with a
request for a report on its merits. Now to send the manuscript of a sea
book to a woman! To submit a narrative abounding in marine terms,
thunder-charged with the bully-in-our-alley passions of the forecastle,
throbbing with suppressed oaths, clamorous with rolling oceans, the like
of which no female would ever dream of leaving her bunk to behold--to
submit all this, and how much more, to a lady for an opinion on its
merits! Of course, the poor woman barely understood a third of what she
looked at, and as, obviously she couldn't quite collect the meaning of
the remainder, she pronounced against the whole. She called it a
'catalogue of ship's furniture,' and the manuscript came back to me. I
never regret this. I do not believe that this sea book would have cut a
figure in my old esteemed friend's list. Publishers are well known by
the public for the sort of intellectual fare they deal in. If I desired
a charming story about flirtation, divorce, inconvenient husbands, the
state of the soul when it has flown out of the body, the passions of the
female heart whilst it still beats hot in the breast, I should turn to
my friend's list, well assured of handsome satisfaction. But I don't
think I could read a sea book published by him. I should suspect the
marine qualities of a Jack who had run foul of, and got smothered up in,
a whole wardrobe of female apparel, grinning with a scarcely sunburnt
face through the horse-collar of a crinoline, the deep sea roll of his
gait hampered and destroyed by the clinging folds of a flannel
petticoat.
[Illustration: THE BOATSWAIN OF THE 'GROSVENOR']
Be this as it may, I sent the manuscript of 'The Wreck of the
"Grosvenor"' to my old friend Edward Marston, of the firm of Sampson Low
& Co. The firm offered me fifty pounds for it; I took the money and
signed the agreement, in which I disposed of all rights. Do I murmur
over the recollection of this fifty pounds which, with another ten
pounds kindly sent to me by Mr. Marston as the whole of, or a part of, a
cheque received from Messrs. Harper & Brothers, was all I ever got for
this sea book? Certainly not. The transaction was absolutely fair, and
what leaning there was was in my favour. The book was an experiment; it
was published anonymously; it might have fallen dead. Happily for
publisher and author, the book made its way. I believe it was
immediately successful in America, and that its reception there somewhat
influenced inquiry here. American critics who try to vex me say that my
books never would have been read in this country but for what was said
of them in the States, and for the publicity provided for them there by
the twenty-cent editions. How far this is true I don't know; but
certainly the Yankees are handsomer and prompter in their recognition of
what pleases them than we are on our side. What they like they raise a
great cry over, and the note of so mighty a concourse, I don't doubt,
fetches an echo out of distances below the horizon.
[Illustration: THE 'HOUGOUMONT'[A]]
[Illustration: POOR JACK!]
It is many years now since 'The Wreck of the "Grosvenor"' was written,
and I do not very clearly recollect its reception in this country. I
believe it speedily went into a second edition. But before we talk of an
edition seriously we must first learn the number of copies which make
it. Since this was written, my friend, Mr. R. B. Marston, of the firm of
Sampson Low & Co., has been good enough to look into the sales of 'The
Wreck of the "Grosvenor,"' and he informs me that down to 1891 there had
been sold 34,950 copies. One of the most cordial welcomes the story
received was from _Vanity Fair_. I supposed that the review was written
by the editor, Mr. Thomas Gibson Bowles, until I learnt that the late
Mr. James Runciman was the author. The critics on the whole were
generous. They thought the book fresh. They judged that it was an
original piece of work wrought largely out of the personal experiences
of the writer. One gentleman, indeed, said that he had crossed the
Channel on several occasions between Boulogne and Folkestone, but had
never witnessed such seas as I described; and another that he had
frequently travelled to Plymouth on the Great Western Railway in company
with sailors, but had never met such seamen as the forecastle hands I
depicted. The book is considered my best--this, perhaps, because it was
my first, and its reputation lies in the memory and impression of its
freshness. It is far from being my best. Were it my property I would
re-write it. I had quitted the sea some years when I wrote the story,
and here and there my memory played me false; that is to say, in the
direction of certain minute technicalities and in accounts of the
internal discipline of the ship. Yet, on the whole, the blunders are
few considering how very complicated a fabric a vessel is, and how
ceaselessly one needs to go on living the life of the sea to hold all
parts of it clear to the sight of the mind. Professionally, the
influence of the book has been small. I have heard that it made one
ship-owner sorry and rather virtuous, and that for some time his
harness-casks went their voyages fairly sweet. He is, however, but a
solitary figure, the lonesome Crusoe of my little principality of fancy.
As a piece of literature, 'The Wreck of the "Grosvenor"' has been
occasionally imitated. Mr. Plimsoll, I understand, has lately been
dealing with the subject of sailors' food. I heartily wish success to
his efforts.
[Illustration: drawing by Geo. Hutchinson
signed: Yours very sincerely,
Grant Allen.]
_'PHYSIOLOGICAL ÆSTHETICS' AND 'PHILISTIA'_
BY GRANT ALLEN
The story of my first book is a good deal mixed, and, like many other
stories, cannot be fully understood without some previous allusion to
what historians call 'the causes which led to it.' For my first book was
not my first novel, and it is the latter, I take it, not the former,
that an expectant world, as represented by the readers of this volume,
is anxious to hear about. I first blossomed into print with
'Physiological Æsthetics' in 1877--the title alone will be enough for
most people--and it was not till seven years later that I wrote and
published my earliest long work of fiction, which I called 'Philistia.'
I wasn't born a novelist, I was only made one. Philosophy and science
were the first loves of my youth. I dropped into romance as many men
drop into drink, or opium-eating, or other bad practices, not of native
perversity, but by pure force of circumstances. And this is how fate (or
an enterprising publisher) turned me from an innocent and impecunious
naturalist into a devotee of the muse of shilling shockers.
When I left Oxford in 1870, with a decent degree and nothing much else
in particular to brag about, I took perforce to that refuge of the
destitute, the trade of schoolmaster. To teach Latin and Greek verse at
Brighton College, Cheltenham College, Reading Grammar School,
successively, was the extremely uncongenial task imposed upon me by the
chances of the universe. But in 1873, Providence, disguised as the
Colonial Office, sent me out in charge of a new Government College at
Spanish Town, Jamaica. I had always been psychological, and in the space
and leisure of the lazy Tropics I began to excogitate by slow degrees
various expansive works on the science of mind, the greater number of
which still remain unwritten. Returning to England in '76 I found myself
out of work, and so committed to paper some of my views on the origin of
the higher pleasure we derive from natural or artistic products; and I
called my book 'Physiological Æsthetics.' It was not my very first
attempt at literature; already I had produced about a hundred or more
magazine articles on various philosophical and scientific subjects,
every one of which I sent to the editors of leading reviews, and every
one of which was punctually 'Declined with thanks,' or committed without
even that polite formality to the editorial waste paper basket. Nothing
daunted by failure, however, I wrote on and on, and made up my mind, in
my interval of forced idleness, to print a book of my own at all
hazards.
[Illustration: FICTION]
I wrote 'Physiological Æsthetics' in lodgings at Oxford. When it was
finished and carefully revised, I offered it to Messrs. Henry S. King &
Co., who were then leading publishers of philosophical literature. Mr.
Kegan Paul, their reader, reported doubtfully of the work. It was not
likely to pay, he said, but it contained good matter, and the firm
would print it for me on the usual commission. I was by no means
rich--for fear of exaggeration I am stating the case mildly--but I
believed somehow in 'Physiological Æsthetics.' I was young then, and I
hope the court of public opinion will extend to me, on that ground, the
indulgence usually shown to juvenile offenders. But I happened to
possess a little money just at that moment, granted me as compensation
for the abolition of my office in Jamaica. Messrs. King reported that
the cost of production (that mysterious entity so obnoxious to the soul
of the Society of Authors) would amount to about a hundred guineas. A
hundred guineas was a lot of money then; but, being young, I risked it.
It was better than if I had taken it to Monte Carlo, anyway. So I wrote
to Mr. Paul with heedless haste to publish away right off, and he
published away right off accordingly. When the bill came in, it was, if
I recollect aright, somewhere about 120_l._ I paid it without a murmur;
I got my money's worth. The book appeared in a stately green cover, with
my name in front, and looked very philosophical, and learned, and
psychological.
[Illustration: SCIENCE]
Poor 'Physiological Æsthetics' had a very hard fate. When I come to look
back upon the circumstances calmly and dispassionately now, I'm not
entirely surprised at its unhappy end. It was a good book in its way, to
be sure, though it's me that says it as oughtn't to say it, and it
pleased the few who cared to read it; but it wasn't the sort of
literature the public wanted. The public, you know, doesn't hanker
after philosophy. Darwin, and Herbert Spencer, and the Editor of
_Mind_, and people of that sort, tried my work and liked it; in point of
fact, my poor little venture gained me at once, an unknown man, the
friendship of not a few whose friendship was worth having. But
financially, 'Physiological Æsthetics' was a dead failure; it wasn't the
sort of work to sell briskly at the bookstalls. Mr. Smith would have
none of it. The reviews, indeed, were, almost without exception,
favourable; the volume went off well for a treatise of its kind--that is
to say, we got rid of nearly 300 copies; but even so, it left a deficit
of some forty or fifty pounds to the bad against me. Finally, the
remaining stock fell a victim to the flames in Mr. Kegan Paul's
historical fire, when many another stout volume perished: and that was
the end of my _magnum opus_. Peace to its ashes! Mr. Paul gave me 15_l._
as compensation for loss sustained, and I believe I came out some 30_l._
a loser by this, my first serious literary venture. In all these
matters, however, I speak from memory alone, and it is possible I may be
slightly wrong in my figures.
But though 'Physiological Æsthetics' was a financial failure, it paid me
in the end, both scientifically and commercially. Not only did it bring
me into immediate contact with several among the leaders of thought in
London, but it also made my name known in a very modest way, and induced
editors--those arbiters of literary fate--to give a second glance at my
unfortunate manuscripts. Almost immediately after its appearance, Leslie
Stephen (I omit the Mr., _honoris causa_) accepted two papers of mine
for publication in the _Cornhill_. 'Carving a Cocoanut' was the first,
and it brought me in twelve guineas. That was the very first money I
earned in literature. I had been out of work for months, the abolition
of my post in Jamaica having thrown me on my beam-ends, and I was
overjoyed at so much wealth poured suddenly in upon me. Other magazine
articles followed in due course, and before long I was earning a
modest--a very modest--and precarious income, yet enough to support
myself and my family. Moreover, Sir William Hunter, who was then engaged
on his gigantic 'Gazetteer of India,' gave me steady employment in his
office at Edinburgh, and I wrote with my own hand the greater part of
the articles on the North-West Provinces, the Punjaub, and Sind, in
those twelve big volumes.
Meanwhile, I was hard at work in my leisure moments (for I have
sometimes some moments which I regard as leisure) on another ambitious
scientific work, which I called 'The Colour-Sense.' This book I
published on the half-profits system with Trübner. Compared with my
first unhappy venture, 'The Colour-Sense' might be counted a distinct
success. It brought me in, during the course of about ten years,
something like 25_l._ or 30_l._ As it only took me eighteen months to
write, and involved little more than five or six thousand references,
this result may be regarded as very fair pay for an educated man's time
and labour. I have sometimes been reproached by thoughtless critics for
deserting the noble pursuit of science in favour of fiction and filthy
lucre. If those critics think twenty pounds a year a sufficient income
for a scientific writer to support himself and a growing family
upon--well, they are perfectly at liberty to devote their own pens to
the instruction of their kind without the slightest remonstrance or
interference on my part.