No More Learning

Paul Whitehead
had sung of the art in The Gymnasiad (1757); John Byrom,
Robert Barclay and others, had celebrated it in prose or verse;
and the journals, including The Gentleman's Magazine, The Flying
1 Collected Works of William Hazlitt, ed. Waller and Glover, vol. XII, p. 1.


## p. 231 (#261) ############################################

vi]
Literature of Pugilism
231
6
Post, The World and others, had published accounts of prize-
fights. But Egan was the first to make a name for himself as a
sporting journalist. Writing in a florid, slipshod style, by no
means devoid of vigour and vividness, he described the fights with
understanding and at the same time with what many of his readers
probably mistook for 'a literary touch'; and his example has not
yet completely faded from journalism. In 1824, he began editing
a weekly paper, Pierce Egan's Life in London and Sporting
Guide, which, later, developed into the more famous sporting
journal Bell's Life in London. Egan's Book of Sports and
Mirror of Life (1832) is a valuable compilation ; but his most
successful work on sport was his illustrated book, Boxiana; or,
Sketches of Antient and Modern Pugilism, from the days of the
renowned Broughton and Slack, to the championship of Crib.
The work was founded on an earlier work of the same title, pro-
duced by George Smeeton in 1812. The first two volumes of
Egan's book were issued in 1818; and a third in 1821. A new
series', in two volumes, was issued in 1828 and 1829. Here may
be read the lives and achievements of Fig, Broughton, Jackson,
Gulley, Mendoza, Molineaux, Tom Crib, Tom Spring, Jem Ward-
of all the great and lesser heroes of 'the fancy. ' Henry Downes
Miles, who, in 1906, published Pugilistica, the three volumes of
which carried the story of British boxing down to Sayers and Tom
King and the end of the prize-ring, frequently accuses Egan of
inaccuracy; but his book, for nearly a century, was the standard
history of the art, and, in his own day, was the classic work upon
the principal British sport. Among many other publications of
the time concerned with boxing, an honourable place is held by
the illustrated journal, The Fancy, which, between 1821 and 1826,
published memoirs of famous pugilists, accounts of fights, general
sporting intelligence and a few pages of miscellaneous news, all of
which are rich in information on the vigorous and not squeamish
sporting activities of the period.
Hunting, like pugilism, though in a less degree, was systematised
by the eighteenth century, and became a subject of popular, as
well as practical, literature. During the first half, or more, of the
century, every country gentleman hunted, but very many country
gentlemen kept their own packs, which were small and not choicely
bred. Few of them, probably, were maintained on even so steady,
if so nicely 'humorous' a principle as those musical fellows of
Coverly hall in Warwickshire. Squire Western's hounds have
· For bibliographical details, see Pugilistica, 1906, p. xi.
a


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232
[CH.
Caricature and Sport
not been closely described; but it is not unlikely that, in spite of
Gervase Markham's works, and Richard Blome's The Gentleman's
Recreation of 1683, and the amount of science displayed by
Somervile in The Chace, such hounds as those of lord Scattercash
were not so rare in the mid-eighteenth century as in the mid-
nineteenth. Then came a remarkable master of hounds-one
who, according to a writer commonly supposed to be Sir Egerton
Brydges, could ‘bag a fox in Greek, find a hare in Latin, inspect
his kennels in Italian, and direct the economy of his stables in
exquisite French'-a scholar and a sportsman, Peter Beckford.
Beckford, in 1781, published at Salisbury a quarto volume,
Thoughts upon Hare and Fox Hunting, which has been held
to 'mark an era not only in the literature but in the history of
hunting. This work, and the same author's Essays on Hunting,
laid the foundation of the art of hunting ; and Peter Beckford's
name has been held in veneration not only by 'Nimrod’ and
other writers on the sport, but by all serious students and
practitioners of the art. After Beckford, good books on hunting
became fairly numerous ; and among them should be mentioned
The British Sportsman by Samuel Howitt, a sportsman and
artist, who married a sister of Rowlandson and worked in close
contact with his brother-in-law. Hunting, coaching, and all
sports with horses offered an attractive field to the artists of
the day, as well as to the writers; and Bunbury proved to be the
ancestor of a long and numerous line, which includes George
Cruikshank, Leech, Robert Seymour and many other famous
names. Among the earliest successors of Bunbury is Henry
Alken, who did excellent sporting pictures between 1816 and
1831. A man of obscure origin (he is supposed to have been stud-
groom or trainer to the duke of Beaufort before he won fame as
an artist), Alken was commended by a writer (probably Christopher
North) in Blackwood's Magazine for his understanding of English
gentlemen—a subject in which George Cruikshank was held to
fail. In the great popularity of sport, Alken found ready employ-
ment as draughtsman. His National Sports of Great Britain
contains fifty admirable coloured engravings, in which his accurate
knowledge and his artistic sense are cleverly combined ; to The
Analysis of the Hunting Field, a volume of papers on the com-
ponents of a hunt reprinted from Bell's Life in London, he
contributed six of his finest designs; and his comic series,
Specimens of Riding, Symptoms of being amazed and others,
deserve the popularity they achieved. If Alken could draw like
1


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VI]
Literature of Hunting
233
a gentleman, he was soon to be associated with one who could
write like a gentleman. When Lockhart said of ‘Nimrod' that
he could 'hunt like Hugo Meynell and write like Walter Scott,' he
was doubtless excited into exaggeration by the pleasure of having
hit upon a man who could write of sport without the vulgarity
of Egan. “Nimrod,' whose name was Charles James Apperley
was a man of education, a country squire and a genuine sports-
man. Loss of means turned him to literature; he contributed
articles on sport to The Sporting Magazine, The Quarterly
Review and other journals; but is best known by his two books,
The Life of a Sportsman, and Memoirs of the Life of John
Mytton, both of which were illustrated with coloured engravings
by Alken. The Life of a Sportsman, published in 1842, con-
tains a very pleasant account of country life in days when sport
was no longer confused with debauchery; while its descriptions of
runs to hounds, its lore of hunting and of four-in-hand driving
and its variety of incident and anecdote make it still both valuable
and agreeable. Apperley, though not a Walter Scott, was a good
writer; he knew his subject thoroughly, on both the scientific
and the personal sides, and this work of fiction, though poor in
plot, is rich in interest. Memoirs of the life of John Mytton
appeared as a book in 1837, a portion of the work having been
printed in The New Sporting Magazine in 1835. It shows a
difficult task performed with fidelity and tact. Apperley had been
Mytton's neighbour in Shropshire, and had extended to him
all the care that was possible when both were living in Calais
in order to avoid their creditors. Apperley's task was to write
the life of a man who, while he was one of the most heroic
sportsmen that ever lived, was also drunken, diseased and insane;
and he performed the task with admirable judgment.
Before the death of Apperley, a new sporting writer, of a more
humorous turn, had begun a brilliant career. Like ‘Nimrod,'
,
Robert Smith Surtees was both sporting writer and sportsman.
The second son (and, in his fortieth year, the successor) of a
Yorkshire landowner, he contributed in youth to The Sporting
Magazine, and, in 1831, started, with Rudolf Ackermann the
younger, The New Sporting Magazine, which he edited till 1856.
Here first appeared the comic papers, which, in 1838, were published
in a book under the title of Jorrocks Jaunts and Jollities,
with coloured plates by Alken. Lockhart shared the general
1 For the driving of stage-coaches, see Cross, Thomas, The Autobiography of a Stage
Coachman, 1861.


## p. 234 (#264) ############################################

234
[CH.
Caricature and Sport
a
admiration for these comic sketches of sporting life, and urged Sur-
tees to write a book. Surtees made further use of the conception
of Mr Jorrocks, the grocer of sporting tastes, and produced
Handley Cross, or the Spa Hunt, which was enlarged into
Handley Cross, or Mr Jorrocks' Hunt, with pictures by John
Leech. Then came Hawbuck Grange, illustrated by 'Phiz’
(Hablot Knight Browne); Ask Mamma, or The Richest Commoner
in England; Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour, illustrated by Leech;
and Mr Facey Romford's Hounds, illustrated by Leech and
Browne, besides other novels. Surtees was also the author of
the papers in Bell's Life in London, some of which were issued,
with illustrations by Alken, in a volume mentioned above, The
Analysis of the Hunting Field. It is possible that the true worth of
Surtees's work has been a little obscured by the fame of the author of
Pickwick, of which the original idea, a tale of cockney sporting life,
was to some extent suggested by the adventures of Mr Jorrocks.
Surtees is a comic writer of a broad and hearty humour and a
deft and subtle touch. In the invention of comic character and
speech, he comes second only to Dickens. Mr Jorrocks, ‘Facey'
Romford, lord Scamperdale and his friend Jack Spraggon,
Mr Sponge, Mr Jawleyford of Jawleyford court—these, with
nearly every character that Surtees troubles to elaborate, are rich
in humour; while the dialogue in these novels has a force and a
flavour comparable only with that in Dickens, or in some piece of
flourishing invective in Nashe or Greene. Surtees's comedy is,
doubtless, like that of Dickens, mainly a comedy of 'humours' or
personal oddities; and Surtees, it must be admitted, was careless
about construction and about such necessary ingredients of a novel
a
as did not interest him ; but all the fun is rooted in human nature,
and set out with abounding energy. Surtees was fortunate in the
assistance of two young artists who were then carrying on the
succession of Alken and George Cruikshank. Both John Leech
and H. K. Browne were keen sportsmen and good artists; and,
though Leech never learned to draw a horse, while Browne's horses
were as good as Alken’s, both men were comic draughtsmen of
inventiveness and humour. Browne found good material in the
novels of another sporting writer, Francis Edward Smedley, a
cripple with a taste for sporting literature. Smedley, who was for
three years editor of George Cruikshank's Magazine, wrote three
novels of high spirits and rapid comedy, Frank Fairleigh, Lewis
Arundel and Harry Coverdale's Courtship; of which the first is
still, and deservedly, popular.


## p. 235 (#265) ############################################

VI]
Punch
235
The illustrations to the books of which mention has been
made were etched and then coloured by hand. Meanwhile, the
art of wood-engraving, which had become degraded and neglected,
was revived about the close of the eighteenth century by Thomas
Bewick. Bewick and his pupils spread abroad the practice of the
art; and thus there came into being a means of illustration in
black and white very serviceable for the use of the periodical
press. Much as the vitality of pictorial art had helped to bring
into being the literature of the various kinds that have been
described above, so the existence of a number of able engravers
on wood helped to bring into being an illustrated press. In the
early years of the nineteenth century, The Observer, Bell's Life in
London and other papers owned by William Clement, had made a
special feature of their illustrations; and The Observer was quick
to take advantage of the revival in the art of wood-engraving.
At the same time, the refinement of taste and manners brought
the need of a comic journalism that should be free of scurrility
and other offence; and, before the middle of the nineteenth
century, the two influences had combined to produce the most
famous of comic journals, Punch. To the making of Punch and
its various component parts, several streams flowed. Some of
them have already been noticed in this chapter : the burlesque of
the illustrated tour; the illustrated comedy of sport; the political
or social caricature; the book of anecdote and jest. George
Cruikshank, who, in the art of comic draughtsmanship, marks
the transition from the brutality of Gillray or Rowlandson to the
delicate humour of du Maurier or Tenniel, issued, for some years
after 1835, a Comic Almanack, to which eminent authors, among
them Thackeray, contributed ; and Thomas Hood had founded
his famous Comic Annual in 1830. Account must, also, be taken
of certain comic journals that had preceded Punch, among them,
especially, the Figaro and the Charivari of Paris. The honour
of producing the first English comic journal comparable with
Punch belongs to Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, one of many lively
young humourists, the majority of whom became contributors to
the most successful of comic papers. À Beckett, who was a
barrister, and became a police magistrate, started, in 1813, an
illustrated comic journal entitled Figaro in London, which was
illustrated by Robert Seymour and, after him, by Robert Cruik-
shank. This journal à Beckett conducted for three years, and
among his many other ventures were The Wag and The Comic
Magazine. One of his literary contributors was his successor as


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236
[CH.
Caricature and Sport
editor of Figaro, Henry Mayhew, and one of his artists William
Newman, who afterwards did valuable work for Punch. Punchi-
nello, illustrated by Robert Cruikshank, was another, and a short-
lived, predecessor of Punch. Douglas Jerrold's Punch in London
was yet another. In 1830 and onwards, a large amount of young
and eager comic talent, both in art and in literature, was finding
expression; and, in 1841, the best of it combined in the production
of the most respectable and most popular of comic journals. The
facts of the founding of Punch have been disputed. The authorised
view is that Ebenezer Landells, a newspaper projector, and a wood-
engraver who had learned his art from Bewick, had the idea of a
comic journal similar to the Paris Charivari-an idea that had
previously been all but brought to fruit by Douglas Jerrold,
Thackeray, Kenny Meadows, Leech and others. After suggesting
the idea to several publishers in vain, Landells took it to the
printer, Joseph Last, who entertained it favourably, and sent him
to see Henry Mayhew, the son of Last's legal adviser. Mayhew
took him on to see Mark Lemon, a publican turned dramatist,
and the list of the staff was thereupon drawn up. At the next
meeting, Mayhew, Lemon and Stirling Coyne were appointed
joint-editors; Archibald S. Henning, cartoonist; Brine, John
Phillips and William Newman artists in ordinary, and Lemon,
Coyne, Mayhew, Gilbert Abbott à Beckett and W. H. Wills (who
was subsequently secretary to Charles Dickens), the literary staff.
The first number, which appeared on 17 July 1841, contained con-
tributions, also, by Henry Grattan (whose full name was Henry
Grattan Plunkett, and whose pseudonym was ‘Fusbos '), Joseph
Allen, an artist, and F. G. Tomlins. Before the appearance of the
second number the staff had been joined by Douglas Jerrold.
Later additions to the list of contributors in the early days of the
journal's existence were Percival Leigh (whose pseudonym was
'Paul Prendergast'), the author of The Comic Latin Grammar,
a doctor by profession, and a scholarly and gentle-minded wit ;
Albert Smith, well known for his popular lectures on the ascent
of Mont Blanc; H. A. Kennedy; William Maginn; John Oxenford,
dramatic critic; Thackeray and Horace Mayhew, younger brother
of Henry Mayhew.
To the influence of Henry Mayhew has been ascribed the
geniality of tone which differentiated Punch from Charivari ;
but that geniality was tempered, in and after the second number,
by the work of the most remarkable among the early writers for
Spielmann, M. H. , The History of Punch, 1895, chap. I.
1


## p. 237 (#267) ############################################

vi]
Contributors to Punch
237
Punch. Douglas William Jerrold was a dramatist and wit who
had already made his mark with his play, Black-eyed Susan, and
his studies of Men of Character (1838), for which Thackeray
drew illustrations. His papers in Punch, signed 'Q;' the first,
of which appeared on 12 September 1841, were the contri-
butions that attracted attention to the paper; and Jerrold's
work, thenceforth, gave Punch its tone. Here appeared, in
1843, Punch's letters to his son; in 1845, Punch's Complete
Letter-writer; and Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures, which was
issued as a book in 1846. Jerrold wrote several other serial
works for Punch, yet none so popular as Mrs Caudle. This
series, more genially humorous and less satirical than most of
Jerrold's work, made the fortune of Punch. But, in the earlier
years of the paper, it was not Jerrold's comedy but his more
serious writing—the social and political articles signed 'Q'—that
gave the journal its character and distinction. Jerrold was a
man of hasty temper and caustic tongue, but of a warm heart
and of quick sympathy with the oppressed. In his political
philosophy, there may have been some traces of the school of
Godwin ; but his leading idea (or sentiment) was the wickedness
of the rich and the oppressed innocence of the poor. With
satire (sometimes personal) and invective, he fought hard and
fearlessly, if not always wisely, in a good cause; and he gave to
Punch its trend towards liberalism in politics. Thackeray began
his connection with Punch with Miss Tickletoby's Lectures on
English History, and drawings to illustrate, occasionally other
people’s, but usually his own, writings. In Punch, too, appeared
his Diary of Fitz-Jeames de la Pluche ; his Snobs of England,
and his Punch's Prize Novelists. His regular connection with
Punch practically ended in 1851, though his last contribution
to it was published in 1854. In Miss Tickletoby's Lectures
some have seen the germ of The Comic History of England
and The Comic History of Rome, written by Gilbert Abbott
à Beckett, and illustrated by John Leech. Besides these two
prolonged efforts of humour, which, considering the extent and
nature of the task, is wonderfully well maintained, à Beckett
wrote a brilliant piece of parody, The Comic Blackstone, illustrated
by George Cruikshank and John Leech, which, even more than the
Histories, has an instructive, as well as a comic, value, and has even
been recommended as a text-book of law. Some of à Beckett's best
work for Punch consisted of the articles on the trials of a young
barrister which were signed ‘Mr Briefless': a series which gave


## p. 238 (#268) ############################################

238
[CH.
Caricature and Sport
rise, many years later, to the letters of 'A. Briefless, Junior,'
contributed to Punch by Gilbert Abbott à Beckett's son, Arthur
William à Beckett, who, with his brother, Gilbert Arthur à Beckett,
was to join the staff of Punch in later years.
Thomas Hood' began to contribute to Punch in 1843, and
amused himself and his readers with his attacks on the plagiarist,
lord William Lennox, at whom Jerrold and other wits also
had their fling. Hood is best known, however, as a contributor
to Punch, by the famous Song of the Shirt, which appeared in
the Christmas number of the year 1843. The year 1844 increased
the number of contributors by Kenealy, J. W. Ferguson and
Tom Taylor, whose connection with the paper remained unbroken
till his death in 1880. Mark Lemon, into whose hands the sole
editorship of the paper soon passed, remained in control of it for
twenty-nine years : a wise and capable director of a journal which,
by means of the celebrated weekly dinners, has always been
conducted on the principle of co-operation and mutual criticism
among the members of the staff. On his death in 1870 he was
succeeded by Shirley Brooks, who was the first to start the now
distinctive feature of the paper, Essence of Parliament; and, on the
death of Brooks in 1874, Tom Taylor became editor and retained the
post till his death. Meanwhile, the new contributors had included:
in 1845, Watts Phillips, the dramatist; in 1846, ‘Jacob Omnium'
(Matthew J. Higgins); in 1847, Horace Smith, part-author, with his
brother James, of Rejected Addresses ; in 1848, Henry Silver and
Sutherland Edwards ; in 1850, James Hannay; while other im-
portant contributors were Reynolds Hole, dean of Rochester, and
Charles L. Eastlake, keeper of the National Gallery. In 1845
appeared Coventry Patmore's single contribution to Punch, a
poem on the massacre of Arabs at Dahra ; and in 1846 came
Tennyson's reply in verse to an attack on him by Bulwer Lytton.
The artists who drew for the paper included, besides Thackeray
and others previously mentioned, H. G. Hine, Alfred Forrester
(‘Alfred Crowquill '), Sir John Gilbert, Hablot K. Browne, who
worked for Punch from 1842 to 1869; Richard Doyle, whose work
appears first in the same Christmas number for 1843 that con-
tained Hood's The Song of the Shirt, and who is best known
by the cover still in use; and 'Cuthbert Bede' (Edward Bradley),
the author of Verdant Green, a book which carried on the tradition
of The English Spy and Life in London. Punch, however, is
chiefly famous for its five principal artists. John Leech had been
1 See, ante, vol. XII, chap v.


## p. 239 (#269) ############################################

vi]
Contributors to Punch
239
drawing for Bells Life in London when he was brought to Punch
by Percival Leigh. By 1844, he was paramount on the artistic
side of the paper and in the cartoons. His studies of low life ;
his scenes in the life of sport in which Mr Briggs revives, to
some extent, the humours of Mr Jorrocks); his ridicule of the
beards and moustaches that had come into fashion after the Crimean
war, of the female movement known as 'Bloomerism' and of the
crinoline-all these present a full and lively picture of the age on
its social side, filled with gentle satire, never coarse, and only unfair,
perhaps, in the case of the Volunteer movement. In 1850 John
Tenniel began his work for Punch, and brought into the paper the
dignity which, during his career, gave to Punch's pictorial comments
on political affairs an impressive weight without loss of fun. In the
following year, Charles Keene, introduced by Henry Silver, began
those studies of homely humour which continued the tradition of
the earlier works by Leech. In 1860, George du Maurier, the
typical satirist of the mid-Victorian era, put upon Punch the seal of
'gentility. The follies and foibles of society,' the mistakes of the
vulgar, the beauty of refined womanhood were the themes of this
delicate art. And, in 1867, Linley Sambourne brought in his lively
fancy, graceful humour and decorative design.
Punch has had many rivals, the most important of which were
Tom Hood's Fun, illustrated by E. G. Dalziel, and Judy, illus-
trated by Calvert. None of the rivals, however, was able to
sustain the freshness of interest, combined with the moderation
and refinement which have preserved, though they did not
create, the eminence of Punch. During most of the years of the
journal's existence it has proved a faithful mirror of the changing
times ; and the art, literature, politics and manners of the age
cannot be studied without it.


## p. 240 (#270) ############################################

CHAPTER VII
THE LITERATURE OF TRAVEL, 1700—1900
A CHAPTER on the literature of travel must treat of widely
different things, and should open with some attempt at definition.
The phrase "literature of travel' suggests, in the first instance,
such books as Sterne's Sentimental Journey, Kinglake's Eothen,
Borrow's Bible in Spain, Dufferin's Letters from High Lati-
tudes, Stevenson's Inland Voyage-books in which the personality
and literary power of the writer count for more than his theme,
books which need not treat of anything new, but merely of
something sufficiently unusual to provide an interesting topic for
a writer who, in any case, would be interesting. The travels
described in such narratives need not be historical or intrinsically
notable. Their value rather lies in this, that they provide a topic
for literature. Their writers are known rather as authors than as
travellers. But such books are, relatively, few. Most writers on
travel are remembered as travellers rather than as authors, and
the value of their works lies not so much in revealing the per-
sonality and literary power of the writer as in successfully describing
his journeys and discoveries. “No one expects literature in a book
of travel,' says Mary Kingsley. Countless printed pages record the
travels and discoveries of two centuries. This chapter can only be
kept within reasonable limits by recognising that the literature of
travel and the written records of travel are not the same thing.
The present purpose is to mention such books only as can claim
to belong to literature. Any general definition would be difficult,
since every work must be judged by its own merits, and the best
books possess an individuality which refuses to be reduced to
categories. Moreover, established repute must be taken into
account: for any work which stands as the monument of a great
achievement, apart from purely technical or scientific matter, has
won a place in literature.
Yet, in general, there are two qualifications. In the first place,


## p. 241 (#271) ############################################

CH. VII]
William Dampier
241
one who writes about travel should have something of the born
traveller in him, something of the spirit of Tennyson's Ulysses or
Browning's Waring. Whatever we do, let us not sit still; there's
time enough for that when we lose the use of our legs. ' So writes
a notable traveller, now little read, E. D. Clarke; and, again,
* The joy I feel in the prospect of visiting the countries within the
Arctic is not to be expressed. ' Secondly, the author must write
in the same vein, so that the narrative shall itself reflect the spirit
and passion of travel which possesses the writer.
In a travel-book, viewed as literature, accuracy is no merit,
unless the style and character of the work enjoin accuracy. Thus,
in Dampier's Journals or Cook's Narrative or Darwin's Voyage of
the Beagle, since the very nature and purpose of these books
stamp them as faithful records, any flaw in accuracy would be
a literary flaw. But, in reading Borrow's Bible in Spain, one of
the finest travel-books ever written, no one pauses to ask whether
every page depicts actual occurrences exactly as they happened.
For Borrow, catching the very spirit of the picaresquè romance,
gives a truer picture of Spain than any accurate description could
offer. He views and depicts the country in the light of his own
sympathetic genius.
In books of discovery, since they are, in some sort, scientific
histories, accuracy is demanded; yet, even in this kind, there are
exceptions-for example, Bruce's Travels in Abyssinia. Here,
the veteran hero, telling his story years after the event, views
through the magnifying haze of memory, illuminated by a pic-
turesque and transparent personal vanity, the fantastic and exotic
melodrama in which he had played a part. It matters little if his
narrative was coloured by his dreams. He has painted for us the
true Abyssinia as no one else could have done.
William Dampier, sailor, logwood-cutter, buccaneer or pirate,
privateer and explorer, may be regarded as the pioneer of modern
travellers. At two-and-twenty, he became under-manager of a
Jamaica estate; but soon wandered away to trade, to logwood-
cutting in Yucatan and to buccaneering. For seven years (1679—
86), he served under various pirate-captains along the Spanish
Main and in the Pacific, and then spent five adventurous years
(1686—91) wandering homewards from California by the East
Indies and the Cape. After publishing narratives of his voyages,
he was sent by the admiralty as commander of an exploring
expedition to New Holland (Australia). His ship foundered
16
E. L. XIV.
CH. VII.


## p. 242 (#272) ############################################

242 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900
[CH.
6
'through perfect age' at Ascension on the homeward voyage.
Dampier was afterwards tried by court-martial for cruelty to his
lieutenant, was found guilty and declared unfit to command a
king's ship. However, he soon sailed in command of two privateers
to the South sea (1703—7) upon a voyage diversified by mutinies,
desertions and disruption. In 1708–11, Dampier served as pilot
to the privateer Woodes Rogers.
Dampier's experiences as logwood-cutter and pirate supply the
best part of his writings. This common seaman, serving before
the mast in a pirate-ship, writes with a curious gentleness and
sympathy and in vigorous, dignified, expressive prose. A born
wanderer and observer, he describes with quaint and picturesque
fidelity seas, coasts, people, plants and animals. His observations
on peoples, customs and trade have a distinct historical value.
All the Indians that I have been acquainted with who are under the
Spaniards seem to be more melancholy than other Indians that are free; and
at these public meetings when they are in the greatest of their jollity, their
mirth seems to be rather forced than real. Their songs are very melancholy
and doleful, so is their music; but whether it be natural to the Indians to be
thus melancholy or the effect of their slavery, I am not certain. But I have
always been prone to believe that they are then only condoling their misfor-
tunes, the loss of their country and liberties, while although those that are
now living do not know nor remember what it was to be free, yet there seems
to be a deep impression in their thoughts of the slavery which the Spaniards
have brought them under, increased probably by some traditions of their
ancient freedom.
He thus describes a piratical episode in Nicaragua :
The next morning the Spaniards killed one of our tired men.
stout old grey-headed man, aged about eighty-four, who had served under
Oliver in the time of the Irish Rebellion; after which he was at Jamaica, and
had followed privateering ever since. He would not accept of the offer our
men made him to tarry ashore, but said he would venture as far as the best
of them; and when surrounded by the Spaniards he refused to take quarter,
but discharged his gun amongst them, keeping a pistol still charged; so they
shot him dead at a distance. His name was Swan. He was a very merry
hearty old man, and always used to declare he would never take quarter.
He was a
Captain Woodes Rogers, commander of two privateer ships,
wrote an admirable account of his expedition (1712). He briefly
describes the outward voyage to Juan Fernandez, duly narrates
with greater fullness the exciting story of his cruise in the south
Pacific, the capture of various prizes and of the city of Guayaquil,
and the fight with the Manila galleon and her consort. Here and
there, the reader is tempted to discern the hand of his pilot
Dampier; for example, in the description of 'humming-birds, not
much larger than humble-bees, their bills no thicker than a pin,


## p. 243 (#273) ############################################

vil] Anson's Voyage Round the World 243
their legs proportional to their bodies, and their minute feathers
of most beautiful colours. ' One passage has a permanent and
singular interest; it describes how they found on the island of
Juan Fernandez
>
a man cloathed in goat-skins, who seemed wilder than the original owners of
his apparel. His name was Alexander Selkirk, a Scotsman, who. . . had
lived alone on the island for four years and four months. . . . He had with
him his clothes and bedding, with a firelock and some powder and bullets,
some tobacco, a knife, a kettle, a bible, with some other books, and his mathe-
matical implements. He diverted himself and provided for his sustenance as
well as he could; but had much ado to bear up against melancholy for the
first eight months, and was sore distressed at being left alone in such a
desolate place. He built himself two huts. . . thatched with long grass and
lined with goat skins. . . . He. . . employed himself in reading, praying and singing
psalms, so that he said he was a better Christian during his solitude than he
had ever been before. . . . When his clothes were worn out, he made himself
a coat and cap of goat-skins, which he stitched together with thongs of the
same, cut out with his knife, using a nail by way of a needle or awl. . . . At his
first coming on board, he had so much forgotten his language, for want of
use, that we could scarcely understand him, as he seemed to speak his words
by halves.
In 1740—4, commodore Anson, afterwards lord Anson and
first lord of the admiralty, made his famous voyage round the
world. The account of it was the joint production of Anson
himself and his chaplain Walters. The narrative closely holds
the reader throughout, describing how a squadron of seven vessels
sailed from Spithead for the South sea and Panama, there to join
hands with Vernon's trans-Atlantic expedition; and how, off Tierra
del Fuego, by 'a continual succession of such tempestuous weather as
surprised the oldest and most experienced mariners' it was reduced
'to a couple of shattered, half-manned cruisers, and a sloop. '
After long refitting at Juan Fernandez, two ships sailed out-
once more a formidable fighting force. They attacked and burnt
the town of Paita; and, after long watching and waiting, they
captured the Manila galleon carrying a million and a half of
dollars. Finally, Anson reached home in a single treasure-laden
ship.
Thus was this expedition finished, when it had lasted three years and nine
months; after having, by its event, strongly evinced this important truth:
That though prudence, intrepidity and perseverance united are not exempted
from the blows of adverse fortune, yet in a long series of transactions
they usually rise superior to its power, and in the end rarely fail of proving
successful.
The wreck of the 'Wager,' one of Anson's ships, on a desolate
island of southern Chile, produced several narratives. The most
notable of these was written twenty-six years after the event by
16-2


## p. 244 (#274) ############################################

244 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 (CH.
admiral John Byron, nick-named 'foul-weather Jack, who had
sailed as a young officer in the ‘Wager. ' It is a most moving and
well told story of wanderings by land and sea, and possesses a
further literary interest inasmuch as the admiral's more famous
grandson used his 'grandad's narrative' for the description of
storm and shipwreck in Don Juan. A typical passage may be
given:
I had hitherto steered the boat; but one of our men, sinking under the
fatigue, expired soon after, which obliged me to take the oar in his room and
row against this heart-breaking stream. Whilst I was thus employed, one
of our men, whose name was John Bosman, tho' hitherto the stontest man
among us, fell from his seat under the thwarts, complaining that his strength
was quite exhausted for want of food, and that he should die very shortly.
As he lay in this condition, he would every now and then break out in the
most pathetic wishes for some little sustenance; that two or three mouthfuls
might be the means of saving his life. The Captain at this time had a large
piece of boiled seal by him and was the only one that was provided with
anything like a meal: but we were become so hardened against the impres.
sion of others' sufferings by our own; so familiarised to scenes of this and
every other kind of misery, that the poor man's dying entreaties were rain.
I sat next to him when he dropped, and having a few dried shell-fish (about
five or six) in my pocket, put one from time to time in his mouth, which
served only to prolong his pains; from which, however, soon after my little
supply failed, he was released by death. For this and another man . . . We
made a grave in the sands.
Several voyages of exploration, despatched to the Pacific in
the reign of George III, were described in readable and interesting
narratives by their commanders, John Byron (1764–6), Wallis and
Carteret (1766—8), James Cook (1768–71, 1772—5, 1776—9)
and George Vancouver (1791–5). To the general reader, there
is some sameness about the maritime part of these narratives,
wherein hardships, dangers and sufferings, the chances of the sea
and losses by disease are quietly treated as matters of course, so
that the story of a voyage is, in great part, almost like a domestic
a
diary. These narratives become more like travel-books when land
is touched. Carteret wrote an entertaining account of his pro-
ceedings at Madeira, and Wallis gives a more fresh and lively
account of the Society islands, discovered by him, than does his
more famous successor Cook.
The pre-eminent interest of Cook's first voyage, the greatest
among English voyages of discovery, gives distinction to his
narrative; and it seems almost impertinent to criticise as literature
the book in which a great man plainly and modestly sets forth
a great achievement. Yet, the account which has been most often
published was compiled by Hawkesworth from the journals of


## p. 245 (#275) ############################################

vii] Navigators of the Eighteenth Century 245
VII
Cook and of Joseph Banks, who accompanied the expedition as
botanist; and most people will probably find this compilation
more readable than Cook's own narrative, and will also find
Banks's journal more interesting than Cook's account. Cook's
narrative is the work of a navigator: Banks's journal is the work
of an alert scientific mind, eagerly on the watch to observe and to
describe. Cook writes thus about the most exciting and hazardous
incident of the voyage:
Our change of situation was now visible in every countenance, for it was
most sensibly felt in every breast: we had been little less than three months
entangled among shoals and rocks, that every moment threatened us with
destruction; frequently passing our nights at anchor within hearing of the
surge that broke over them; sometimes driving towards them even while
our anchors were out, and knowing that if by any accident, to which an
almost continuous tempest exposed us, they should not hold, we must in a
few minutes inevitably perish. But now, after having sailed no less than
360 leagues, without once having a man out of the chains hearing the lead
even for a minute, which perhaps never happened to any other vessel, we
found ourselves in an open sea, with deep water; and enjoyed a flow of
spirits which was equally owing to our late dangers and our present security:
yet the very waves, which by their swell convinced us that we had no rocks
or shoals to fear, convinced us also that we could not safely put the same
confidence in our vessel as before she had struck.
Cook shows a more practised hand in the livelier and easier
narrative of his second voyage Towards the South Pole and
round the World; also, in the narrative of his third voyage To the
Pacific Ocean and for exploring the Northern Hemisphere-
a narrative cut short by the death of the great navigator at the
hands of savages in the Sandwich islands.
George Vancouver, who had sailed under Cook, Rodney and
Gardner, was sent upon a voyage of discovery to the north Pacific
ocean (1791-5). His narrative, which was almost completed
when he died in 1798, was published by his brother. It contains
valuable and often picturesque observations on the countries
visited and particularly on the Spanish settlements in California.
He describes with warm sympathy the paternal relations between
the Spanish missionaries and their Indian neophytes.
The literature of maritime discovery is continued in Arctic and
Antarctic voyages accomplished and related by Franklin, Parry,
John Ross, James Ross and McClintock. These narratives, care-
fully written and, for the most part, splendidly illustrated, have the
attraction of resource, daring, endurance and brilliant achievement
in strange and novel surroundings. The later records of Arctic and
Antarctic exploration belong rather to the history of geography;


## p. 246 (#276) ############################################

246 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 [cH.
but mention must be made of captain Robert Falcon Scott's
Journal (1913), a narrative in which the last entry was made by
the dying hand of the writer as he sank under the buffets of storm
and frost on his return journey from the south pole.
The records of land travel in the eighteenth century contain,
generally, a less interesting story and less readable matter than
the maritime records. The object of the writers is, usually, to
impart information and observations laboriously collected. Sterne's
Sentimental Journey is a notable exception, which stands apart.
The prevailing dislike of mountains, of uncultivated lands and
of Gothic buildings was unfavourable to the lighter and more
sympathetic spirit of travel.
Pennant's books of travel in Great Britain were much read
in his day. They are still valuable as antiquarian records and
collections of observations ; but they are rather in the nature
of gazetteers, and the reader opens them for information, not
for recreation. The characteristic travel-book of the eighteenth
century is a ponderous quarto or folio, handsomely printed, often
beautifully illustrated, and conveying much leisurely information
concerning monuments, customs and costumes; but, as a rule, these
productions have about them little of the personal spirit, little of the
lighter literary touch which give vitality to travel-books. Richard
Pococke, who was afterwards bishop of Ossory and was thence
translated to Meath, was an eager student and observer, possessing
something of the traveller's spirit; and his work, preserved in noble
illustrated folios, is an interesting and valuable record. But his
object was rather to give a description of Egypt and of western
Asia than to entertain himself and his readers by recounting his
experiences.
On the other hand, James Bruce, laird of Kinnaird, was a born
traveller, endowed particularly with qualifications for eastern travel
-an imposing stature and presence, great physical strength and
athletic skill, strong self-confidence, a stubborn imperious deter-
mination, and a peculiar gift for mastering languages. Sir Richard
Burton, a kindred spirit, repeatedly mentions the Lord of Geesh'
with admiration. After long travel in Barbary and Syria, Bruce
left Egypt in 1769 for Abyssinia, where he spent two years. He
takes an engaging and open delight in his own prowess and
reputation, in his feats of horsemanship and of shooting, in his
appointment as one of the royal chamberlains and as governor
of Geesh, in the king's gift 'a chain of 184 links, each link weighing
31, dwt. of fine gold,' in his friendship with the princess Ozoro
6


## p. 247 (#277) ############################################

vii] Land Travel in the Eighteenth Century 247
Esther, the most beautiful woman in Abyssinia, who once addressed
him thus: 'Sit down there, Yagoube ; God has exalted you
above
all in this country, when he has put it in your power, though but
a stranger, to confer charity upon the king of it. ' His vivid account
of the hazardous overland journey from Abyssinia to Egypt is
equal to the rest of the record. Of his departure, he writes :
Neither shall I take up the reader's time with a long narrative of leave-
taking or what took place between me and those illustrious personages with
whom I had lived so long in the most perfect and cordial friendship. Men of
little and curious minds would perhaps think I was composing a panegyric
upon myself, from which therefore I most willingly refrain.
The boast is not an empty one, for a British diplomatist, Henry
Salt, visiting Abyssinia forty years later, speaks of Bruce's enduring
renown in that country and of the extraordinary impression made
upon the people by his noble personality.
A contemporary of Bruce, more famous in his day but of a less
lasting fame, E. D. Clarke, was enabled to satisfy his passion
for travel by a succession of tutorships. He had all the high
spirit and zest of a true traveller, but these qualities appear
not so much in his eleven volumes of Travels in Europe, Asia
and Africa, as in his diaries and letters quoted in the biography
of Clarke by his college friend bishop Otter. Clarke's eager
curiosity leads him into multifarious and exciting risks, now
viewing an eruption of Vesuvius, now surreptitiously visiting
the sultan's seraglio in Stamboul, now pushing his way, in an
English uniform, through a fanatical Neapolitan crowd to view
the miracle of saint Januarius. At Brixen 'Saw a cabinet of
Natural History, extensive and full of trash. ' At Vienna,
beheld the best clown I ever saw. '
Clarke, through his presence at Alexandria in 1801 when the
French army evacuated Egypt, did much to obtain for England
the Egyptian antiquities and documents collected by the French
savants. To the university of Cambridge, he made valuable gifts.
In 1808, he became the first professor of mineralogy, and, nine
years later, he was appointed university librarian. He sold bis
collection of manuscripts to the Bodleian for £1000, and cleared
nearly £7000 by the publication of his travels.
Clarke's friend and correspondent, J. L. Burckhardt, a Swiss
by birth, but by adoption a Cambridge man and, in some sort, an
Englishman, won an enduring reputation by his extensive travels
in Asia and Africa and by his faithful descriptions of oriental life.
‘During all my journeys in the East,' he writes, “I never enjoyed


## p. 248 (#278) ############################################

248 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 ([
CH.
such perfect ease as at Mecca. ' And Belzoni, the explorer of the
pyramids, writes, 'What shall I say of the late Sheik Burckhardt,
who was so well acquainted with the language and manners of
these people that none of them suspected him to be an European. '
Meantime, the farthest east found an observer in Sir John Barrow,
who accompanied lord Macartney in the first British embassy to
China in 1792. But the reader should turn, not to Barrow's
formidable quarto volumes Travels in China and A Voyage to
Cochin-China, but to his Auto-biographical Memoir, published
half-a-century later. He thus describes the ambassador's entry
into Pekin:
A multitude of moveable workshops of tinkers and barbers, of cobblers
and blacksmiths, together with tents and booths, where tea and rice and
fruit with various kinds of eatables were to be sold, had contracted the street,
spacious as it was, to a narrow road in the middle, scarcely wide enough to
allow two little carts to pass each other: yet within this narrow space were
processions bearing umbrellas, flags and painted lanterns-trains carrying
corpses to their graves with lamentable cries-others with squeaking music
conducting brides to their husbands-troops of dromedaries laden with coals
from Tartary-wheelbarrows and handcarts stuffed with vegetables; and if
to these be added numbers of pedlers with their packs, jugglers and conjurers
and fortune-tellers, musicians and comedians, mountebanks and quack-doctors
---with all these impediments, so little room was left for the persons of the
embassy that it was nearly three hours before we reached the north-western
gate.
Sir John Barrow was for forty years under-secretary to the
admiralty, and distinguished himself as an enthusiastic supporter,
and, also, as historian, of Arctic exploration. The tale of
oriental travel is continued by Sir John Malcolm, who published
anonymously an account of his second journey to Persia in 1810 as
envoy to the shah from the East India company. He observes
characters and renders eastern tales with much humour and
insight. The delightful stories of Abdullah the peasant and of
Ahmed the cobbler will bear the test of reading aloud.
The 'romantic revival,' which transformed poetry and fiction,
made itself gradually felt in the literature of travel also. It is
true that solid and formal records, such as are characteristic of
the eighteenth century, continued to appear down to about 1825.
But narratives of a more natural and easy flow were already
beginning to take their place. Sir Leslie Stephen, in an admirably
humorous piece of criticism (chapter of The play-ground
of Europe) attributes, in part at least, the modern taste for
mountains and rugged scenery to the influence of Rousseau and


## p. 249 (#279) ############################################

VII] Change of Literary Tone 249
his followers. On the other hand, Byron urges that natural
scenery does not, in itself, furnish an adequate topic for the poet.
I have seen as many mountains as most men and more fleets than the
generality of landsmen, and to my mind a large convoy with a few sail-of-the-
line to conduct them is as noble and poetical a prospect as all that inanimate
nature can produce.
And he applies to poetry Pope's dictum : The proper study of
mankind is man. ' Byron's own poetical book of travels, Childe
Harold, had borne out this observation. What Byron says of poetry
may be applied to literature generally; and the better travel-books
of the nineteenth century respond to this test. They deal less
with monuments, museums, churches and institutions: they deal
more with men and women in relation to their surroundings.
Sometimes, this human interest lies in the pleasant egotism of the
traveller, sometimes in his observations on those among whom
he moves. The change of tone appears notably, if not actually first,
in works by naturalists, impelled to travel by scientific motives.
Alexander von Humboldt's narrative of travels in tropical South
America, translated into English in 1814–21, deeply influenced
later observers and travellers. In 1825 appeared Waterton's
Wanderings in South America, a most entertaining and viva-
cious record of adventurous and unconventional travel. Charles
Waterton was a Yorkshire squire of an ancient Roman catholic
family, educated at Stonyhurst, a keen sportsman and enthusiastic
naturalist, also a devoted reader of Don Quixote, of the Latin
poets and of English literature. He spent eight years managing
an estate in Guiana, and, afterwards, made four journeys of
observation in the Orinoco region, between 1812 and 1824. His
account of his ride on a crocodile is classical :
It was the first and last time I ever was on a cayman's back. Should it
be asked how I managed to keep my seat, I would answer,- I hunted some
years with Lord Darlington's foxhounds.
But one may open the book on any page to be entertained by
vivid and humorous descriptions. Waterton afterwards turned
his Yorkshire park into a kind of preserve or museum of living
creatures. At the age of eighty-three, he was still climbing the
tallest forest trees and rising daily at 3 a. m.
The war of South American independence and the accom-
panying political revolution produced a number of descriptions of
travels in that continent. Among them, the journal of captain
Basil Hall, of the royal navy, has a deserved reputation. Sir Francis
Head's account of his rides across the Pampa, published in 1826,


## p. 250 (#280) ############################################

250 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900 (CH.
gives a vivid, rapid and faithful sketch of Gaucho life and character.
It was received at the time with general incredulity, which, in itself,
is sufficient proof of widespread interest. But, among narratives
of South American travel Darwin's account of the voyage of the
Beagle' is pre-eminent, not only by virtue of its place in the
history of science, but, also, by virtue of its qualities as a
picturesque and readable record of travel.
In 1848, nine years after the publication of Darwin's first work,
Alfred Russel Wallace sailed to Brazil, where he spent four years
in the scientific exploration of the Amazonian region. His book
fully justifies its frequent reimpressions as a record of travel,
apart from its scientific value. The ship in which Wallace was
returning home caught fire at sea. Her people took to the boats
and were picked up by a passing vessel. Wallace's collections were
all lost. The event is admirably described by Wallace himself.
Yet more interesting and better written than his Amazonian
narrative is his work on the Malay archipelago (1869), an account
of eight years of residence and travel in the East Indies-straight-
forward, unaffected and entertaining.
About the middle of the nineteenth century, readable books of
travel multiply with increasing facilities for travel. First among
them should be mentioned a work designed for the use of travellers,
Richard Ford's Handbook for travellers in Spain (1845). By
intimate association with Spaniards and by travel on horseback
over their mountains and plains, Ford had obtained a singularly
close and sympathetic insight into the ways of the people, besides
an intimate knowledge of their country. Sitting in an armchair at
home, one may enjoy travel in Spain and intercourse with Spaniards
by turning the pages anywhere. The constant allusions to the
episodes of the Peninsular war-which was recent history at that
time-add greatly to the interest of the book; but its principal
charm lies in Ford's vein of easy conversational comment and
anecdote, illustrated by constant quotation of Spanish proverbial
sayings and local idioms. Ford's work gains a certain piquancy
from the tinge of satire which pervades it. Although funda-
mentally full of intimate sympathy for Spain and for Spaniards,
nevertheless he writes with a certain assumption of insularity,
from the slightly fastidious standpoint of an English gentleman
-an attitude which is in pleasant contrast with his familiar
knowledge of the jests and idioms of street-corner and tavern.
A contemporary book, The Bible in Spain (1843)', by Ford's friend
1 See, ante, chap. III.
>


## p. 251 (#281) ############################################

VII]
Spain. Eothen
251
Borrow, a work of extraordinary freshness, possessing a singular
indescribable quality of its own, is, in some sort, complementary to
Ford's work. Borrow writes as a wanderer, as the friend and
companion of gypsies, vagabonds and thieves. The two writers
together supply a picture of Spain such as can scarcely be
found in Spanish literature outside the pages of Don Quixote.
They make the reader feel that, in a sense, the Pyrenees are
the boundary of Europe, that Spain is, as it were, a detached
fragment of the orient, Christian, but not wholly European-
a country whose attraction lies in its contrast of rocky wilderness
and teeming garden, of natural wealth and contented poverty, in
the simplicity and dignity of its life, in the primitive brutality or
beauty of its impulses, in its pleasant oriental courtesies.
It is, therefore, a natural transition to books on the east, books
which are not so much narratives of discovery as impressions of
a world different from ours and only half revealed. In 1844
appeared two Eastern narratives, The Crescent and the Cross by
Eliot Warburton, an Irish barrister, and Eothen by his college
friend Kinglake, of the English bar, afterwards historian of the
Crimean war. Warburton's spirited and picturesque narrative
had the greater success at the time. The tenth impression
appeared within nine years, just after the author's premature
death; for Warburton perished in the 'Amazon,' burnt at sea
in 1852 on the way to the West Indies. But Warburton's book,
with its slightly melodramatic and self-conscious tone, cannot be
compared with the fine literary and scholarly quality of Eothen,
which still holds its ground as a classic, and is, perhaps, the best
book of travel in the English language. Kinglake rode from Bel-
grade to Constantinople, thence to Smyrna, by sea to Cyprus and
Beyrout, whence he rode through Palestine and across the desert
to Cairo—where he vividly describes the plague—then from Cairo
to Damascus and Anatolia. From his saddle, he looks about him
with something of that aristocratic aloofness which has been already
noticed in Richard Ford, but, also, with something of the same
scholarly and wellbred insight and sympathy. He carries with
him through the desert a trace of the atmosphere of Eton, Trinity,
Lincoln's inn and the hunting-field. The terms on which the
eastern and Latin churches live at Jerusalem remind him of the
peculiar relations subsisting at Cambridge between town and
gown. He travelled at ease, accompanied by a little cavalcade-
servant, interpreter, guide, escort. At every halt, his baggage is
unstrapped and his tent is set out 'with books and maps and
>
a


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252 Literature of Travel, 1700—1900
[CH.
fragrant tea. ' 'A speck in the broad tracts of Asia remained still
impressed with the mark of patent portmanteaus and the heels of
London boots.