Bab Bab 3 · Of Two Friends of my Youth

I fear, my children, that you will think that the prologue is over long

for the play; but the foundations must be laid before the building is

erected, and a statement of this sort is a sorry and a barren thing

unless you have a knowledge of the folk concerned. Be patient, then,

while I speak to you of the old friends of my youth, some of whom you

may hear more of hereafter, while others remained behind in the country

hamlet, and yet left traces of our early intercourse upon my character

which might still be discerned there.

Foremost for good amongst all whom I knew was Zachary Palmer, the

village carpenter, a man whose aged and labour-warped body contained the

simplest and purest of spirits. Yet his simplicity was by no means the

result of ignorance, for from the teachings of Plato to those of Hobbes

there were few systems ever thought out by man which he had not studied

and weighed. Books were far dearer in my boyhood than they are now,

and carpenters were less well paid, but old Palmer had neither wife nor

child, and spent little on food or raiment. Thus it came about that on

the shelf over his bed he had a more choice collection of books--few as

they were in number--than the squire or the parson, and these books he

had read until he not only understood them himself, but could impart

them to others.

This white-bearded and venerable village philosopher would sit by his

cabin door upon a summer evening, and was never so pleased as when

some of the young fellows would slip away from their bowls and their

quoit-playing in order to lie in the grass at his feet, and ask him

questions about the great men of old, their words and their deeds. But

of all the youths I and Reuben Lockarby, the innkeeper’s son, were his

two favourites, for we would come the earliest and stop the latest to

hear the old man talk. No father could have loved his children better

than he did us, and he would spare no pains to get at our callow

thoughts, and to throw light upon whatever perplexed or troubled us.

Like all growing things, we had run our heads against the problem of

the universe. We had peeped and pryed with our boyish eyes into those

profound depths in which the keenest-sighted of the human race had seen

no bottom. Yet when we looked around us in our own village world, and

saw the bitterness and rancour which pervaded every sect, we could not

but think that a tree which bore such fruit must have something amiss

with it. This was one of the thoughts unspoken to our parents which

we carried to good old Zachary, and on which he had much to say which

cheered and comforted us.

‘These janglings and wranglings,’ said he, ‘are but on the surface,

and spring from the infinite variety of the human mind, which will ever

adapt a creed to suit its own turn of thought. It is the solid core that

underlies every Christian creed which is of importance. Could you

but live among the Romans or the Greeks, in the days before this new

doctrine was preached, you would then know the change that it has

wrought in the world. How this or that text should be construed is a

matter of no moment, however warm men may get over it. What is of the

very greatest moment is, that every man should have a good and solid

reason for living a simple, cleanly life. This the Christian creed has

given us.’

‘I would not have you be virtuous out of fear,’ he said upon another

occasion. ‘The experience of a long life has taught me, however, that

sin is always punished in this world, whatever may come in the next.

There is always some penalty in health, in comfort, or in peace of

mind to be paid for every wrong. It is with nations as it is with

individuals. A book of history is a book of sermons. See how the

luxurious Babylonians were destroyed by the frugal Persians, and how

these same Persians when they learned the vices of prosperity were put

to the sword by the Greeks. Read on and mark how the sensual Greeks were

trodden down by the more robust and hardier Romans, and finally how the

Romans, having lost their manly virtues, were subdued by the nations

of the north. Vice and destruction came ever hand in hand. Thus did

Providence use each in turn as a scourge wherewith to chastise the

follies of the other. These things do not come by chance. They are part

of a great system which is at work in your own lives. The longer you

live the more you will see that sin and sadness are never far apart, and

that no true prosperity can exist away from virtue.’

A very different teacher was the sea-dog Solomon Sprent, who lived in

the second last cottage on the left-hand side of the main street of the

village. He was one of the old tarpaulin breed, who had fought under

the red cross ensign against Frenchman, Don, Dutchman, and Moor, until a

round shot carried off his foot and put an end to his battles for ever.

In person he was thin, and hard, and brown, as lithe and active as a

cat, with a short body and very long arms, each ending in a great hand

which was ever half closed as though shutting on a rope. From head to

foot he was covered with the most marvellous tattooings, done in blue,

red, and green, beginning with the Creation upon his neck and winding up

with the Ascension upon his left ankle. Never have I seen such a walking

work of art. He was wont to say that had he been owned and his body cast

up upon some savage land, the natives might have learned the whole of

the blessed gospel from a contemplation of his carcass. Yet with sorrow

I must say that the seaman’s religion appeared to have all worked into

his skin, so that very little was left for inner use. It had broken out

upon the surface, like the spotted fever, but his system was clear of

it elsewhere. He could swear in eleven languages and three-and-twenty

dialects, nor did he ever let his great powers rust for want of

practice. He would swear when he was happy or when he was sad, when he

was angry or when he was loving, but this swearing was so mere a trick

of speech, without malice or bitterness, that even my father could

hardly deal harshly with the sinner. As time passed, however, the old

man grew more sober and more thoughtful, until in his latter days he

went back to the simple beliefs of his childhood, and learned to fight

the devil with the same steady courage with which he had faced the

enemies of his country.

Old Solomon was a never-failing source of amusement and of interest to

my friend Lockarby and myself. On gala days he would have us in to dine

with him, when he would regale us with lobscouse and salmagundi, or

perhaps with an outland dish, a pillaw or olla podrida, or fish broiled

after the fashion of the Azores, for he had a famous trick of cooking,

and could produce the delicacies of all nations. And all the time that

we were with him he would tell us the most marvellous stories of Rupert,

under whom he served; how he would shout from the poop to his squadron

to wheel to the right, or to charge, or to halt, as the case might be,

as if he were still with his regiment of horse. Of Blake, too, he had

many stories to tell. But even the name of Blake was not so dear to our

old sailor as was that of Sir Christopher Mings. Solomon had at one time

been his coxswain, and could talk by the hour of those gallant deeds

which had distinguished him from the day that he entered the navy as a

cabin boy until he fell upon his own quarter-deck, a full admiral of the

red, and was borne by his weeping ship’s company to his grave in Chatham

churchyard. ‘If so be as there’s a jasper sea up aloft,’ said the old

seaman, ‘I’ll wager that Sir Christopher will see that the English flag

has proper respect paid to it upon it, and that we are not fooled by

foreigners. I’ve served under him in this world, and I ask nothing

better than to be his coxswain in the next--if so be as he should chance

to have a vacancy for such.’ These remembrances would always end in the

brewing of an extra bowl of punch, and the drinking of a solemn bumper

to the memory of the departed hero.

Stirring as were Solomon Sprent’s accounts of his old commanders, their

effect upon us was not so great as when, about his second or third

glass, the floodgates of his memory would be opened, and he would pour

out long tales of the lands which he had visited, and the peoples which

he had seen. Leaning forward in our seats with our chins resting upon

our hands, we two youngsters would sit for hours, with our eyes fixed

upon the old adventurer, drinking in his words, while he, pleased at the

interest which he excited, would puff slowly at his pipe and reel off

story after story of what he had seen or done. In those days, my dears,

there was no Defoe to tell us the wonders of the world, no _Spectator_

to lie upon our breakfast table, no Gulliver to satisfy our love of

adventure by telling us of such adventures as never were. Not once in

a month did a common newsletter fall into our hands. Personal hazards,

therefore, were of more value then than they are now, and the talk of a

man like old Solomon was a library in itself. To us it was all real. His

husky tones and ill-chosen words were as the voice of an angel, and our

eager minds filled in the details and supplied all that was wanting in

his narratives. In one evening we have engaged a Sallee rover off the

Pillars of Hercules; we have coasted down the shores of the African

continent, and seen the great breakers of the Spanish Main foaming upon

the yellow sand; we have passed the black ivory merchants with their

human cargoes; we have faced the terrible storms which blow ever around

the Cape de Boa Esperanza; and finally, we have sailed away out over the

great ocean beyond, amid the palm-clad coral islands, with the knowledge

that the realms of Prester John lie somewhere behind the golden haze

which shimmers upon the horizon. After such a flight as that we would

feel, as we came back to the Hampshire village and the dull realities

of country life, like wild birds who had been snared by the fowler and

clapped into narrow cages. Then it was that the words of my father, ‘You

will find your wings some day and fly away,’ would come back to me, and

set up such a restlessness as all the wise words of Zachary Palmer could

not allay.