One half the world does not know what the other half reads; but good
people are now taught that the first requisite of sociological virtue is
to interest themselves in the other half. I therefore venture to call
attention to a book that has pleased me, though my delight in it may at
once class me with the "submerged tenth" of the reading public. It is
"The Pirate's Own Book."
By way of preface to a discussion of this volume, let me make a personal
explanation of the causes which led me to its perusal. My reading of
such a book cannot be traced to early habit. In my boyhood I had no
opportunity to study the careers of pirates, for I was confined to
another variety of literature. On Sunday afternoons I read aloud a book
called "The Afflicted Man's Companion." The unfortunate gentleman
portrayed in this work had a large assortment of afflictions,--if I
remember rightly, one for each day of the month,--but among them was
nothing so exciting as being marooned in the South Seas. Indeed, his
afflictions were of a generalized and abstract kind, which he could have
borne with great cheerfulness had it not been for the consolations which
were remorselessly administered to him.
If I have become addicted to tales of piracy, I must attribute it to the
literary criticisms of too strenuous realists. Before I read them, I
took an innocent pleasure in romantic fiction. Without any compunction
of conscience I rejoiced in Walter Scott; and when he failed I was
pleased even with his imitators. My heart leaped up when I beheld a
solitary horseman on the first page, and I did not forsake the horseman,
even though I knew he was to be personally conducted through his journey
by Mr. G. P. R. James. Fenimore Cooper, in those days, before I was
awakened to the nature of literary sin, I found altogether pleasant. The
cares of the world faded away, and a soothing conviction of the
essential rightness of things came over me, as the pioneers and Indians
discussed in deliberate fashion the deepest questions of the universe,
between shots. As for stories of the sea, I never thought of being
critical. I was ready to take thankfully anything with a salty flavor,
from "Sindbad the Sailor" to Mr. Clark Russell. I had no inconvenient
knowledge to interfere with my enjoyment. All nautical language was
alike impressive, and all nautical manoeuvres were to me alike
perilous. It would have been a poor Ancient Mariner who could not have
enthralled me, when
"He held me with his skinny hand;
'There was a ship,' quoth he."
And if the ship had raking masts and no satisfactory clearance papers,
that was enough; as to what should happen, I left that altogether to
the author. That the laws of probability held on the Spanish Main as on
dry land, I never dreamed.
But after being awakened to the sin of romance, I saw that to read a
novel merely for recreation is not permissible. The reader must be put
upon oath, and before he allows himself to enjoy any incident must swear
that everything is exactly true to life as he has seen it. All vagabonds
and sturdy vagrants who have no visible means of support, in the present
order of things, are to be driven out of the realm of well-regulated
fiction. Among these are included all knights in armor; all rightful
heirs with a strawberry mark; all horsemen, solitary or otherwise; all
princes in disguise; all persons who are in the habit of saying
"prithee," or "Odzooks," or "by my halidome;" all fair ladies who have
no irregularities of feature and no realistic incoherencies of speech;
all lovers who fall in love at first sight, and who are married at the
end of the book and live happily ever after; all witches,
fortune-tellers, and gypsies; all spotless heroes and deep-dyed
villains; all pirates, buccaneers, North American Indians with a taste
for metaphysics; all scouts, hunters, trappers, and other individuals
who do not wear store clothes. According to this decree, all readers are
forbidden to aid and abet these persons, or to give them shelter in
their imagination. A reader who should incite a writer of fiction to
romance would be held as an accessory before the fact.
After duly repenting of my sins and renouncing my old acquaintances, I
felt a preeminent virtue. Had I met the Three Guardsmen, one at a time
or all together, I should have passed them by without stopping for a
moment's converse. I should have recognized them for the impudent
Gascons that they were, and should have known that there was not a word
of truth in all their adventures. As for Stevenson's fine old pirate,
with his contemptible song about a "dead men's chest and a bottle of
rum," I should not have tolerated him for an instant. Instead, I should
have turned eagerly to some neutral-tinted person who never had any
adventure greater than missing the train to Dedham, and I should have
analyzed his character, and agitated myself in the attempt to get at his
feelings, and I should have verified his story by a careful reference
to the railway guide. I should have treated that neutral-tinted
character as a problem, and I should have noted all the delicate shades
in the futility of his conduct. When, on any occasion that called for
action, he did not know his own mind, I should have admired him for his
resemblance to so many of my acquaintances who do not know their own
minds. After studying the problem until I came to the last chapter, I
should suddenly have given it up, and agreed with the writer that it had
no solution. In my self-righteousness, I despised the old-fashioned
reader who had been lured on in the expectation that at the last moment
something thrilling might happen.
But temptations come at the unguarded point. I had hardened myself
against romance in fiction, but I had not been sufficiently warned
against romance in the guise of fact. When in a book-stall I came upon
"The Pirate's Own Book," it seemed to answer a felt want. Here at least,
outside the boundaries of strict fiction, I could be sure of finding
adventure, and feel again with Sancho Panza "how pleasant it is to go
about in expectation of accidents."
I am well aware that good literature--to use Matthew Arnold's phrase--is
a criticism of life. But the criticism of life, with its discriminations
between things which look very much alike, is pretty serious business.
We cannot keep on criticising life without getting tired after a while,
and longing for something a little simpler. There is a much-admired
passage in Ferishtah's Fancies, in which, after mixing up the beans in
his hands and speculating on their color, Ferishtah is not able to tell
black from white. Ferishtah, living in a soothing climate, could stand
an indefinite amount of this sort of thing; and, moreover, we must
remember that he was a dervish, and dervishry, although a steady
occupation, is not exacting in its requirements. In our more stimulating
climate, we should bring on nervous prostration if we gave ourselves
unremittingly to the discrimination between all the possible variations
of blackishness and whitishness. We must relieve our minds by
occasionally finding something about which there can be no doubt. When
my eyes rested on the woodcut that adorns the first page of "The
Pirate's Own Book," I felt the rest that comes from perfect certainty in
my own moral judgment. Ferishtah himself could not have mixed me up.
Here was black without a redeeming spot. On looking upon this pirate, I
felt relieved from any criticism of life; here was something beneath
criticism. I was no longer tossed about on a chop sea, with its
conflicting waves of feeling and judgment, but was borne along
triumphantly on a bounding billow of moral reprobation.
As I looked over the headings of the chapters, I was struck by their
straightforward and undisguised character. When I read the chapter
entitled The Savage Appearance of the Pirates, and compared this with
the illustrations, I said, "How true!" Then there was a chapter on the
Deceitful Character of the Malays. I had always suspected that the
Malays were deceitful, and here I found my impressions justified by
competent authority. Then I dipped into the preface, and found the same
transparent candor. "A piratical crew," says the author, "is generally
formed of the desperadoes and renegades of every clime and nation."
Again I said, "Just what I should have expected. The writer is evidently
one who 'nothing extenuates.'" Then follows a further description of
the pirate: "The pirate, from the perilous nature of his occupation,
when not cruising on the ocean, that great highway of nations, selects
the most lonely isles of the sea for his retreat, or secretes himself
near the shores of bays and lagoons of thickly wooded and uninhabited
countries." Just the places where I should have expected him to settle.
"The pirate, when not engaged in robbing, passes his time in singing old
songs with choruses like,--
'Drain, drain the bowl, each fearless soul!
Let the world wag as it will;
Let the heavens growl, let the devil howl,
Drain, drain the deep bowl and fill!'
Thus his hours of relaxation are passed in wild and extravagant frolics,
amongst the lofty forests and spicy groves of the torrid zone, and
amidst the aromatic and beautiful flowering vegetable products of that
region."
Again: "With the name of pirate is also associated ideas of rich
plunder,--caskets of buried jewels, chests of gold ingots, bags of
outlandish coins, secreted in lonely out-of-the-way places, or buried
about the wild shores of rivers and unexplored seacoasts, near rocks
and trees bearing mysterious marks, indicating where the treasure is
hid." "As it is his invariable practice to secrete and bury his booty,
and from the perilous life he lives being often killed, he can never
revisit the spot again, immense sums remaining buried in these places
are irrevocably lost." Is it any wonder that, with such an introduction,
I became interested?
After a perusal of the book, I am inclined to think that a pirate may be
a better person to read about than some persons who stand higher in the
moral scale. Compare, if you will, a pirate and a pessimist. As a
citizen and neighbor I should prefer the pessimist. A pessimist is an
excellent and highly educated gentleman, who has been so unfortunate as
to be born into a world which is inadequate to his expectations.
Naturally he feels that he has a grievance, and in airing his grievance
he makes himself unpopular; but it is certainly not his fault that the
universe is no better than it is. On the other hand, a pirate is a bad
character; yet as a subject of biography he is more inspiring than the
pessimist. In one case, we have the impression of one good man in a
totally depraved world; in the other case, we have a totally depraved
man in what but for him would be a very good world. I know of nothing
that gives one a more genial appreciation of average human nature, or a
greater tolerance for the foibles of one's acquaintances, than the
contrast with an unmitigated pirate.
My copy of "The Pirate's Own Book" belongs to the edition of 1837. On
the fly-leaf it bore in prim handwriting the name of a lady who for many
years must have treasured it. I like to think of this unknown lady in
connection with the book. I know that she must have been an excellent
soul, and I have no doubt that her New England conscience pointed to the
moral law as the needle to the pole; but she was a wise woman, and knew
that if she was to keep her conscience in good repair she must give it
some reasonable relaxation. I am sure that she was a woman of versatile
philanthropy, and that every moment she had the ability to make two
duties grow where only one had grown before. After, however, attending
the requisite number of lectures to improve her mind, and considering in
committees plans to improve other people's minds forcibly, and going to
meetings to lament over the condition of those who had no minds to
improve, this good lady would feel that she had earned a right to a few
minutes' respite. So she would take up "The Pirate's Own Book," and feel
a creepy sensation that would be an effectual counter-irritant to all
her anxieties for the welfare of the race. Things might be going slowly,
and there were not half as many societies as there ought to be, and the
world might be in a bad way; but then it was not so bad as it was in the
days of Black Beard; and the poor people who did not have any societies
to belong to were, after all, not so badly off as the sailors whom the
atrocious Nicola left on a desert island, with nothing but a blunderbuss
and Mr. Brooks's Family Prayer Book. In fact, it is expressly stated
that the pirates refused to give them a cake of soap. To be on a desert
island destitute of soap made the common evils of life appear trifling.
She had been worried about the wicked people who would not do their
duty, however faithfully they had been prodded up to it, who would not
be life members on payment of fifty dollars, and who would not be
annual members on payment of a dollar and signing the constitution, and
who in their hard and impenitent hearts would not even sit on the
platform at the annual meeting; but somehow their guilt seemed less
extreme after she had studied again the picture of Captain Kidd burying
his Bible in the sands near Plymouth. A man who would bury his Bible,
using a spade several times too large for him, and who would strike such
a world-defying attitude while doing it, made the sin of not joining the
society appear almost venial. In this manner she gained a certain moral
perspective; even after days when the public was unusually dilatory
about reforms, and the wheels of progress had begun to squeak, she would
get a good night's sleep. Contrasting the public with the black
background of absolute piracy, she grew tolerant of its shortcomings,
and learned the truth of George Herbert's saying, that "pleasantness of
disposition is a great key to do good."
Not only is a pirate a more comfortable person to read about than a
pessimist, but in many respects he is a more comfortable person to read
about than a philanthropist. The minute the philanthropist is
introduced, the author begins to show his own cleverness by discovering
flaws in his motives. You begin to see that the poor man has his
limitations. Perhaps his philanthropies are of a different kind from
yours, and that irritates you. Musical people, whom I have heard
criticise other musical people, seem more offended when some one flats
just a little than when he makes a big ear-splitting discord; and
moralists are apt to have the same fastidiousness. The philanthropist is
made the victim of the most cruel kind of vivisection,--a
character-study.
Here is a fragment of conversation from a study of character: "'That was
really heroic,' said Felix. 'That was what he wanted to do,' Gertrude
went on. 'He wanted to be magnanimous; he wanted to have a fine moral
pleasure; he made up his mind to do his duty; he felt sublime,--that's
how he likes to feel.'"
This leaves the mind in a painful state of suspense. The first instinct
of the unsophisticated reader is that if the person has done a good
deed, we ought not to begrudge him a little innocent pleasure in it. If
he is magnanimous, why not let him feel magnanimous? But after Gertrude
has made these subtle suggestions we begin to experience something like
antipathy for a man who is capable of having a fine moral pleasure; who
not only does his duty, but really likes to do it. There is something
wrong about him, and it is all the more aggravating because we are not
sure just what it is. There is no trouble of that kind in reading about
pirates. You cannot make a character-study out of a pirate,--he has no
character. You know just where to place him. You do not expect anything
good of him, and when you find a sporadic virtue you are correspondingly
elated.
For example, I am pleased to read of the pirate Gibbs that he was
"affable and communicative, and when he smiled he exhibited a mild and
gentle countenance. His conversation was concise and pertinent, and his
style of illustration quite original." If Gibbs had been a
philanthropist, it is doubtful whether these social and literary graces
would have been so highly appreciated.
So our author feels a righteous glow when speaking of the natives of the
Malabar coasts, and accounting for their truthfulness: "For as they had
been used to deal with pirates, they always found them men of honor in
the way of trade,--a people enemies of deceit, and that scorned to rob
but in their own way."
He is a very literal-minded person, and takes all his pirates seriously,
but often we are surprised by some touch of nature that makes the whole
world kin. There was the ferocious Benevedes, who flourished on the west
coast of South America, and who, not content with sea power, attempted
to gather an army. It is said that "a more finished picture of a pirate
cannot be conceived," and the description that follows certainly bears
out this assertion. Yet he had his own ideas of civilization, and a
power of adaptation that reminds us of the excellent and ingenious Swiss
Family Robinson. When he captures the American whaling-ship Herculia, we
are prepared for a wild scene of carnage; but instead we are told that
Benevedes immediately dismantled the ship, and "out of the sails made
trousers for half his army." After the trousers had been distributed,
Benevedes remarked that his army was complete except in one essential
particular,--he had no trumpets for the cavalry: whereupon, at the
suggestion of the New Bedford skipper, he ripped off the copper sheets
of the vessel, out of which a great variety of copper trumpets were
quickly manufactured, and soon "the whole camp resounded with the
warlike blasts." While the delighted pirates were enjoying their
instrumental music, the skipper and nine of the crew took occasion to
escape in a boat which had been imprudently concealed on the river bank.