Book: Virginibus Puerisque

R >> Robert Louis Stevenson >> Virginibus Puerisque




There is nowhere such a background for heroism as the
noble, terrifying, and picturesque conditions of some of our
sea fights. Hawke's battle in the tempest, and Aboukir at the
moment when the French Admiral blew up, reach the limit of
what is imposing to the imagination. And our naval annals owe
some of their interest to the fantastic and beautiful
appearance of old warships and the romance that invests the
sea and everything sea-going in the eyes of English lads on a
half-holiday at the coast. Nay, and what we know of the
misery between decks enhances the bravery of what was done by
giving it something for contrast. We like to know that these
bold and honest fellows contrived to live, and to keep bold
and honest, among absurd and vile surroundings. No reader can
forget the description of the THUNDER in RODERICK RANDOM: the
disorderly tyranny; the cruelty and dirt of officers and men;
deck after deck, each with some new object of offence; the
hospital, where the hammocks were huddled together with but
fourteen inches space for each; the cockpit, far under water,
where, "in an intolerable stench," the spectacled steward kept
the accounts of the different messes; and the canvas
enclosure, six feet square, in which Morgan made flip and
salmagundi, smoked his pipe, sang his Welsh songs, and swore
his queer Welsh imprecations. There are portions of this
business on board the THUNDER over which the reader passes
lightly and hurriedly, like a traveller in a malarious
country. It is easy enough to understand the opinion of Dr.
Johnson: "Why, sir," he said, "no man will be a sailor who has
contrivance enough to get himself into a jail." You would
fancy any one's spirit would die out under such an
accumulation of darkness, noisomeness, and injustice, above
all when he had not come there of his own free will, but under
the cutlasses and bludgeons of the press-gang. But perhaps a
watch on deck in the sharp sea air put a man on his mettle
again; a battle must have been a capital relief; and prize-
money, bloodily earned and grossly squandered, opened the
doors of the prison for a twinkling. Somehow or other, at
least, this worst of possible lives could not overlie the
spirit and gaiety of our sailors; they did their duty as
though they had some interest in the fortune of that country
which so cruelly oppressed them, they served their guns
merrily when it came to fighting, and they had the readiest
ear for a bold, honourable sentiment, of any class of men the
world ever produced.

Most men of high destinies have high-sounding names. Pym
and Habakkuk may do pretty well, but they must not think to
cope with the Cromwells and Isaiahs. And you could not find a
better case in point than that of the English Admirals. Drake
and Rooke and Hawke are picked names for men of execution.
Frobisher, Rodney, Boscawen, Foul-Weather, Jack Byron, are all
good to catch the eye in a page of a naval history.
Cloudesley Shovel is a mouthful of quaint and sounding
syllables. Benbow has a bulldog quality that suits the man's
character, and it takes us back to those English archers who
were his true comrades for plainness, tenacity, and pluck.
Raleigh is spirited and martial, and signifies an act of bold
conduct in the field. It is impossible to judge of Blake or
Nelson, no names current among men being worthy of such
heroes. But still it is odd enough, and very appropriate in
this connection, that the latter was greatly taken with his
Sicilian title. "The signification, perhaps, pleased him,"
says Southey; "Duke of Thunder was what in Dahomey would have
been called a STRONG NAME; it was to a sailor's taste, and
certainly to no man could it be more applicable." Admiral in
itself is one of the most satisfactory of distinctions; it has
a noble sound and a very proud history; and Columbus thought
so highly of it, that he enjoined his heirs to sign themselves
by that title as long as the house should last.

But it is the spirit of the men, and not their names,
that I wish to speak about in this paper. That spirit is
truly English; they, and not Tennyson's cotton-spinners or Mr.
D'Arcy Thompson's Abstract Bagman, are the true and typical
Englishmen. There may be more HEAD of bagmen in the country,
but human beings are reckoned by number only in political
constitutions. And the Admirals are typical in the full force
of the word. They are splendid examples of virtue, indeed,
but of a virtue in which most Englishmen can claim a moderate
share; and what we admire in their lives is a sort of
apotheosis of ourselves. Almost everybody in our land, except
humanitarians and a few persons whose youth has been depressed
by exceptionally aesthetic surroundings, can understand and
sympathise with an Admiral or a prize-fighter. I do not wish
to bracket Benbow and Tom Cribb; but, depend upon it, they are
practically bracketed for admiration in the minds of many
frequenters of ale-houses. If you told them about Germanicus
and the eagles, or Regulus going back to Carthage, they would
very likely fall asleep; but tell them about Harry Pearce and
Jem Belcher, or about Nelson and the Nile, and they put down
their pipes to listen. I have by me a copy of BOXIANA, on the
fly-leaves of which a youthful member of the fancy kept a
chronicle of remarkable events and an obituary of great men.
Here we find piously chronicled the demise of jockeys,
watermen, and pugilists - Johnny Moore, of the Liverpool Prize
Ring; Tom Spring, aged fifty-six; "Pierce Egan, senior, writer
OF BOXIANA and other sporting works" - and among all these,
the Duke of Wellington! If Benbow had lived in the time of
this annalist, do you suppose his name would not have been
added to the glorious roll? In short, we do not all feel
warmly towards Wesley or Laud, we cannot all take pleasure in
PARADISE LOST; but there are certain common sentiments and
touches of nature by which the whole nation is made to feel
kinship. A little while ago everybody, from Hazlitt and John
Wilson down to the imbecile creature who scribbled his
register on the fly-leaves of BOXIANA, felt a more or less
shamefaced satisfaction in the exploits of prize-fighters.
And the exploits of the Admirals are popular to the same
degree, and tell in all ranks of society. Their sayings and
doings stir English blood like the sound of a trumpet; and if
the Indian Empire, the trade of London, and all the outward
and visible ensigns of our greatness should pass away, we
should still leave behind us a durable monument of what we
were in these sayings and doings of the English Admirals.

Duncan, lying off the Texel with his own flagship, the
VENERABLE, and only one other vessel, heard that the whole
Dutch fleet was putting to sea. He told Captain Hotham to
anchor alongside of him in the narrowest part of the channel,
and fight his vessel till she sank. "I have taken the depth
of the water," added he, "and when the VENERABLE goes down, my
flag will still fly." And you observe this is no naked Viking
in a prehistoric period; but a Scotch member of Parliament,
with a smattering of the classics, a telescope, a cocked hat
of great size, and flannel underclothing. In the same spirit,
Nelson went into Aboukir with six colours flying; so that even
if five were shot away, it should not be imagined he had
struck. He too must needs wear his four stars outside his
Admiral's frock, to be a butt for sharp-shooters. "In honour
I gained them," he said to objectors, adding with sublime
illogicality, "in honour I will die with them." Captain
Douglas of the ROYAL OAK, when the Dutch fired his vessel in
the Thames, sent his men ashore, but was burned along with her
himself rather than desert his post without orders. Just
then, perhaps the Merry Monarch was chasing a moth round the
supper-table with the ladies of his court. When Raleigh
sailed into Cadiz, and all the forts and ships opened fire on
him at once, he scorned to shoot a gun, and made answer with a
flourish of insulting trumpets. I like this bravado better
than the wisest dispositions to insure victory; it comes from
the heart and goes to it. God has made nobler heroes, but he
never made a finer gentleman than Walter Raleigh. And as our
Admirals were full of heroic superstitions, and had a
strutting and vainglorious style of fight, so they discovered
a startling eagerness for battle, and courted war like a
mistress. When the news came to Essex before Cadiz that the
attack had been decided, he threw his hat into the sea. It is
in this way that a schoolboy hears of a half-holiday; but this
was a bearded man of great possessions who had just been
allowed to risk his life. Benbow could not lie still in his
bunk after he had lost his leg; he must be on deck in a basket
to direct and animate the fight. I said they loved war like a
mistress; yet I think there are not many mistresses we should
continue to woo under similar circumstances. Trowbridge went
ashore with the CULLODEN, and was able to take no part in the
battle of the Nile. "The merits of that ship and her gallant
captain," wrote Nelson to the Admiralty, "are too well known
to benefit by anything I could say. Her misfortune was great
in getting aground, WHILE HER MORE FORTUNATE COMPANIONS WERE
IN THE FULL TIDE OF HAPPINESS." This is a notable expression,
and depicts the whole great-hearted, big-spoken stock of the
English Admirals to a hair. It was to be "in the full tide of
happiness" for Nelson to destroy five thousand five hundred
and twenty-five of his fellow-creatures, and have his own
scalp torn open by a piece of langridge shot. Hear him again
at Copenhagen: "A shot through the mainmast knocked the
splinters about; and he observed to one of his officers with a
smile, `It is warm work, and this may be the last to any of us
at any moment;' and then, stopping short at the gangway,
added, with emotion, `BUT, MARK YOU - I WOULD NOT BE ELSEWHERE
FOR THOUSANDS.'"

I must tell one more story, which has lately been made
familiar to us all, and that in one of the noblest ballads in
the English language. I had written my tame prose abstract, I
shall beg the reader to believe, when I had no notion that the
sacred bard designed an immortality for Greenville. Sir
Richard Greenville was Vice-Admiral to Lord Thomas Howard, and
lay off the Azores with the English squadron in 1591. He was
a noted tyrant to his crew: a dark, bullying fellow
apparently; and it is related of him that he would chew and
swallow wineglasses, by way of convivial levity, till the
blood ran out of his mouth. When the Spanish fleet of fifty
sail came within sight of the English, his ship, the REVENGE,
was the last to weigh anchor, and was so far circumvented by
the Spaniards, that there were but two courses open - either
to turn her back upon the enemy or sail through one of his
squadrons. The first alternative Greenville dismissed as
dishonourable to himself, his country, and her Majesty's ship.
Accordingly, he chose the latter, and steered into the Spanish
armament. Several vessels he forced to luff and fall under
his lee; until, about three o'clock of the afternoon, a great
ship of three decks of ordnance took the wind out of his
sails, and immediately boarded. Thence-forward, and all night
long, the REVENGE, held her own single-handed against the
Spaniards. As one ship was beaten off, another took its
place. She endured, according to Raleigh's computation,
"eight hundred shot of great artillery, besides many assaults
and entries." By morning the powder was spent, the pikes all
broken, not a stick was standing, "nothing left overhead
either for flight or defence;" six feet of water in the hold;
almost all the men hurt; and Greenville himself in a dying
condition. To bring them to this pass, a fleet of fifty sail
had been mauling them for fifteen hours, the ADMIRAL OF THE
HULKS and the ASCENSION of Seville had both gone down
alongside, and two other vessels had taken refuge on shore in
a sinking state. In Hawke's words, they had "taken a great
deal of drubbing." The captain and crew thought they had done
about enough; but Greenville was not of this opinion; he gave
orders to the master gunner, whom he knew to be a fellow after
his own stamp, to scuttle the REVENGE where she lay. The
others, who were not mortally wounded like the Admiral,
interfered with some decision, locked the master gunner in his
cabin, after having deprived him of his sword, for he
manifested an intention to kill himself if he were not to sink
the ship; and sent to the Spaniards to demand terms. These
were granted. The second or third day after, Greenville died
of his wounds aboard the Spanish flagship, leaving his
contempt upon the "traitors and dogs" who had not chosen to do
as he did, and engage fifty vessels, well found and fully
manned, with six inferior craft ravaged by sickness and short
of stores. He at least, he said, had done his duty as he was
bound to do, and looked for everlasting fame.

Some one said to me the other day that they considered
this story to be of a pestilent example. I am not inclined to
imagine we shall ever be put into any practical difficulty
from a superfluity of Greenvilles. And besides, I demur to
the opinion. The worth of such actions is not a thing to be
decided in a quaver of sensibility or a flush of righteous
commonsense. The man who wished to make the ballads of his
country, coveted a small matter compared to what Richard
Greenville accomplished. I wonder how many people have been
inspired by this mad story, and how many battles have been
actually won for England in the spirit thus engendered. It is
only with a measure of habitual foolhardiness that you can be
sure, in the common run of men, of courage on a reasonable
occasion. An army or a fleet, if it is not led by quixotic
fancies, will not be led far by terror of the Provost Marshal.
Even German warfare, in addition to maps and telegraphs, is
not above employing the WACHT AM RHEIN. Nor is it only in the
profession of arms that such stories may do good to a man. In
this desperate and gleeful fighting, whether it is Greenville
or Benbow, Hawke or Nelson, who flies his colours in the ship,
we see men brought to the test and giving proof of what we
call heroic feeling. Prosperous humanitarians tell me, in my
club smoking-room, that they are a prey to prodigious heroic
feelings, and that it costs them more nobility of soul to do
nothing in particular, than would carry on all the wars, by
sea or land, of bellicose humanity. It may very well be so,
and yet not touch the point in question. For what I desire is
to see some of this nobility brought face to face with me in
an inspiriting achievement. A man may talk smoothly over a
cigar in my club smoking-room from now to the Day of Judgment,
without adding anything to mankind's treasury of illustrious
and encouraging examples. It is not over the virtues of a
curate-and-tea-party novel, that people are abashed into high
resolutions. It may be because their hearts are crass, but to
stir them properly they must have men entering into glory with
some pomp and circumstance. And that is why these stories of
our sea-captains, printed, so to speak, in capitals, and full
of bracing moral influence, are more valuable to England than
any material benefit in all the books of political economy
between Westminster and Birmingham. Greenville chewing
wineglasses at table makes no very pleasant figure, any more
than a thousand other artists when they are viewed in the
body, or met in private life; but his work of art, his
finished tragedy, is an eloquent performance; and I contend it
ought not only to enliven men of the sword as they go into
battle, but send back merchant clerks with more heart and
spirit to their book-keeping by double entry.

There is another question which seems bound up in this;
and that is Temple's problem: whether it was wise of Douglas
to burn with the ROYAL OAK? and by implication, what it was
that made him do so? Many will tell you it was the desire of
fame.

"To what do Caesar and Alexander owe the infinite
grandeur of their renown, but to fortune? How many men has
she extinguished in the beginning of their progress, of whom
we have no knowledge; who brought as much courage to the work
as they, if their adverse hap had not cut them off in the
first sally of their arms? Amongst so many and so great
dangers, I do not remember to have anywhere read that Caesar
was ever wounded; a thousand have fallen in less dangers than
the least of these he went through. A great many brave
actions must be expected to be performed without witness, for
one that comes to some notice. A man is not always at the top
of a breach, or at the head of an army in the sight of his
general, as upon a platform. He is often surprised between
the hedge and the ditch; he must run the hazard of his life
against a henroost; he must dislodge four rascally musketeers
out of a barn; he must prick out single from his party, as
necessity arises, and meet adventures alone."

Thus far Montaigne, in a characteristic essay on GLORY.
Where death is certain, as in the cases of Douglas or
Greenville, it seems all one from a personal point of view.
The man who lost his life against a henroost, is in the same
pickle with him who lost his life against a fortified place of
the first order. Whether he has missed a peerage or only the
corporal's stripes, it is all one if he has missed them and is
quietly in the grave. It was by a hazard that we learned the
conduct of the four marines of the WAGER. There was no room
for these brave fellows in the boat, and they were left behind
upon the island to a certain death. They were soldiers, they
said, and knew well enough it was their business to die; and
as their comrades pulled away, they stood upon the beach, gave
three cheers, and cried "God bless the king!" Now, one or two
of those who were in the boat escaped, against all likelihood,
to tell the story. That was a great thing for us; but surely
it cannot, by any possible twisting of human speech, be
construed into anything great for the marines. You may
suppose, if you like, that they died hoping their behaviour
would not be forgotten; or you may suppose they thought
nothing on the subject, which is much more likely. What can
be the signification of the word "fame" to a private of
marines, who cannot read and knows nothing of past history
beyond the reminiscences of his grandmother? But whichever
supposition you make, the fact is unchanged. They died while
the question still hung in the balance; and I suppose their
bones were already white, before the winds and the waves and
the humour of Indian chiefs and Spanish governors had decided
whether they were to be unknown and useless martyrs or
honoured heroes. Indeed, I believe this is the lesson: if it
is for fame that men do brave actions, they are only silly
fellows after all.

It is at best but a pettifogging, pickthank business to
decompose actions into little personal motives, and explain
heroism away. The Abstract Bagman will grow like an Admiral
at heart, not by ungrateful carping, but in a heat of
admiration. But there is another theory of the personal
motive in these fine sayings and doings, which I believe to be
true and wholesome. People usually do things, and suffer
martyrdoms, because they have an inclination that way. The
best artist is not the man who fixes his eye on posterity, but
the one who loves the practice of his art. And instead of
having a taste for being successful merchants and retiring at
thirty, some people have a taste for high and what we call
heroic forms of excitement. If the Admirals courted war like
a mistress; if, as the drum beat to quarters, the sailors came
gaily out of the forecastle, - it is because a fight is a
period of multiplied and intense experiences, and, by Nelson's
computation, worth "thousands" to any one who has a heart
under his jacket. If the marines of the WAGER gave three
cheers and cried "God bless the king," it was because they
liked to do things nobly for their own satisfaction. They
were giving their lives, there was no help for that; and they
made it a point of self-respect to give them handsomely. And
there were never four happier marines in God's world than
these four at that moment. If it was worth thousands to be at
the Baltic, I wish a Benthamite arithmetician would calculate
how much it was worth to be one of these four marines; or how
much their story is worth to each of us who read it. And mark
you, undemonstrative men would have spoiled the situation.
The finest action is the better for a piece of purple. If the
soldiers of the BIRKENHEAD had not gone down in line, or these
marines of the WAGER had walked away simply into the island,
like plenty of other brave fellows in the like circumstances,
my Benthamite arithmetician would assign a far lower value to
the two stories. We have to desire a grand air in our heroes;
and such a knowledge of the human stage as shall make them put
the dots on their own i's, and leave us in no suspense as to
when they mean to be heroic. And hence, we should
congratulate ourselves upon the fact that our Admirals were
not only great-hearted but big-spoken.

The heroes themselves say, as often as not, that fame is
their object; but I do not think that is much to the purpose.
People generally say what they have been taught to say; that
was the catchword they were given in youth to express the aims
of their way of life; and men who are gaining great battles
are not likely to take much trouble in reviewing their
sentiments and the words in which they were told to express
them. Almost every person, if you will believe himself, holds
a quite different theory of life from the one on which he is
patently acting. And the fact is, fame may be a forethought
and an afterthought, but it is too abstract an idea to move
people greatly in moments of swift and momentous decision. It
is from something more immediate, some determination of blood
to the head, some trick of the fancy, that the breach is
stormed or the bold word spoken. I am sure a fellow shooting
an ugly weir in a canoe has exactly as much thought about fame
as most commanders going into battle; and yet the action, fall
out how it will, is not one of those the muse delights to
celebrate. Indeed it is difficult to see why the fellow does
a thing so nameless and yet so formidable to look at, unless
on the theory that he likes it. I suspect that is why; and I
suspect it is at least ten per cent of why Lord Beaconsfield
and Mr. Gladstone have debated so much in the House of
Commons, and why Burnaby rode to Khiva the other day, and why
the Admirals courted war like a mistress.



CHAPTER VIII - SOME PORTRAITS BY RAEBURN



THROUGH the initiative of a prominent citizen, Edinburgh
has been in possession, for some autumn weeks, of a gallery of
paintings of singular merit and interest. They were exposed
in the apartments of the Scotch Academy; and filled those who
are accustomed to visit the annual spring exhibition, with
astonishment and a sense of incongruity. Instead of the too
common purple sunsets, and pea-green fields, and distances
executed in putty and hog's lard, he beheld, looking down upon
him from the walls of room after room, a whole army of wise,
grave, humorous, capable, or beautiful countenances, painted
simply and strongly by a man of genuine instinct. It was a
complete act of the Human Drawing-Room Comedy. Lords and
ladies, soldiers and doctors, hanging judges, and heretical
divines, a whole generation of good society was resuscitated;
and the Scotchman of to-day walked about among the Scotchmen
of two generations ago. The moment was well chosen, neither
too late nor too early. The people who sat for these pictures
are not yet ancestors, they are still relations. They are not
yet altogether a part of the dusty past, but occupy a middle
distance within cry of our affections. The little child who
looks wonderingly on his grandfather's watch in the picture,
is now the veteran Sheriff EMERITIS of Perth. And I hear a
story of a lady who returned the other day to Edinburgh, after
an absence of sixty years: "I could see none of my old
friends," she said, "until I went into the Raeburn Gallery,
and found them all there."

It would be difficult to say whether the collection was
more interesting on the score of unity or diversity. Where
the portraits were all of the same period, almost all of the
same race, and all from the same brush, there could not fail
to be many points of similarity. And yet the similarity of
the handling seems to throw into more vigorous relief those
personal distinctions which Raeburn was so quick to seize. He
was a born painter of portraits. He looked people shrewdly
between the eyes, surprised their manners in their face, and
had possessed himself of what was essential in their character
before they had been many minutes in his studio. What he was
so swift to perceive, he conveyed to the canvas almost in the
moment of conception. He had never any difficulty, he said,
about either hands or faces. About draperies or light or
composition, he might see room for hesitation or afterthought.
But a face or a hand was something plain and legible. There
were no two ways about it, any more than about the person's
name. And so each of his portraits are not only (in Doctor
Johnson's phrase, aptly quoted on the catalogue) "a piece of
history," but a piece of biography into the bargain. It is
devoutly to be wished that all biography were equally amusing,
and carried its own credentials equally upon its face. These
portraits are racier than many anecdotes, and more complete
than many a volume of sententious memoirs. You can see
whether you get a stronger and clearer idea of Robertson the
historian from Raeburn's palette or Dugald Stewart's woolly
and evasive periods. And then the portraits are both signed
and countersigned. For you have, first, the authority of the
artist, whom you recognise as no mean critic of the looks and
manners of men; and next you have the tacit acquiescence of
the subject, who sits looking out upon you with inimitable
innocence, and apparently under the impression that he is in a
room by himself. For Raeburn could plunge at once through all
the constraint and embarrassment of the sitter, and present
the face, clear, open, and intelligent as at the most
disengaged moments. This is best seen in portraits where the
sitter is represented in some appropriate action: Neil Gow
with his fiddle, Doctor Spens shooting an arrow, or Lord
Bannatyne hearing a cause. Above all, from this point of
view, the portrait of Lieutenant-Colonel Lyon is notable. A
strange enough young man, pink, fat about the lower part of
the face, with a lean forehead, a narrow nose and a fine
nostril, sits with a drawing-board upon his knees. He has
just paused to render himself account of some difficulty, to
disentangle some complication of line or compare neighbouring
values. And there, without any perceptible wrinkling, you
have rendered for you exactly the fixed look in the eyes, and
the unconscious compression of the mouth, that befit and
signify an effort of the kind. The whole pose, the whole
expression, is absolutely direct and simple. You are ready to
take your oath to it that Colonel Lyon had no idea he was
sitting for his picture, and thought of nothing in the world
besides his own occupation of the moment.

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