Recollections by Frank Thomas Bullen - HTML preview

CHAPTER XX
 SUMMING UP

As I draw near to the close of this book I feel profoundly sad. There comes over me a feeling like that of the invalid who takes to his bed knowing that he will leave his room no more until he is carried out. For I feel that I am now closing the door behind me upon a profession which with all its manifold delights I did not enter upon until middle age, and did not lay down until physical disability rendered it impossible to carry it on any longer. I have never enjoyed anything more than lecturing, except in America, where I felt that the people might as well sit and chew gum anywhere else as sit there stolidly before me and do so. For although in Great Britain and Australasia I was always able to get on good terms with my audiences immediately I never did succeed in doing so in America, and so that was the only lecture season of which I grew thoroughly tired. Yet my experience may be strictly personal; I have reason to believe that other men have fared far differently—some, indeed, find it impossible to fill all the lecture engagements they receive there and make very large sums of money. I would rather then say that the fault is with me—some subtle want of sympathy with the American character which reflects upon myself in coldness and inattention.

Another matter upon which I must make a few remarks to avoid misunderstanding is the avoidance in these pages of names, except in a very few instances. I have purposely omitted names of fellow-lecturers because I could not speak of them all from personal knowledge, and I would not for the world cause any heart-burnings. It would be a pity, for I firmly believe that lecturers as a class are the best of good fellows, and never speak of each other but in the highest terms of eulogy. They are naturally of many different talents, each a specialist in his way, not all equally excellent or equally successful, that need hardly be said, but all animated not only by a desire to please their public, but to help one another. All of us have felt sincere difficulty when asked by those who have the direction of societies and selection of lectures which of our colleagues we would recommend for a succeeding season. It is a tactless question, of course, but that does not make the answer easier, and we are often driven to some quaint subterfuges in reply. But when the secretary says, “We have got Mr. or Professor or Miss —— coming for the next lecture,” we get our opportunity, and I know from much pleasant experience how eagerly those occasions are seized and made full use of by all of us. And it is very pleasant too—brings out the best that is in us. Sitting here beyond these voices I rejoice to have none but pleasant recollections of those who were on the “platform” at the same time as I was, of their helpfulness and good-fellowship. Of course, we have all felt considerable annoyance at the intrusion into the lecture sphere of the big fellows to whom money was no object—they had already more than enough of that—who could not want occupation, for Heaven knows they were busy enough, and we could not help feeling that to those of us whose lecturing was our business, our main support, they were not playing the game. In fact, they were what the Trade Unionist would call blacklegs, and with far greater reason than he ever uses the term.

And there were, nay there are others, not those who give up their hard-won evenings to lecture to needy little societies, content if they may only do some good and never asking for any recognition either in money or praise, oh no, but those in high places whose names will command an audience and who take money they do not need from those who do. But except among ourselves we do not growl about these things. I should not, were I still on the job; it’s only because I am now on the further shore that I venture to say what has long been in my mind. It has always seemed to me the sheerest injustice that any man who is already earning a good income at a profession should butt into another profession on the strength of his name and take from its genuine professors so much of their hard earnings. But I suppose there will always be a diversity of view upon this point, so I merely give mine for what it may be worth; I ask no one to accept it.

But of those who belong to the inner circle whose names as I write rise before me like welcome ghosts, how gladly would I, if it were permissible, tell of your kindness to me on many occasions. That is out of the question, however, because I do not know you all equally well, and therefore I should be driven to make an unconscious selection which would never do. I therefore speak in general terms, but only from necessity of avoiding all appearance of discrimination, not because I have any favourites.

As I sit here and muse of the few and stormy years of my past life I remember with something approaching mild surprise how very easily I have taken the many great changes that have overtaken me. Only the first, when I was suddenly flung into a harsh and cruel world from the sheltered haven of my aunt’s quiet home at the age of eight and a half, was received by me with a storm of bitter grief. I remember how fiercely I wept as I have never done before or since, and I now know that could I but have foreseen what the next few years held in store for me I should probably not have survived that sad night.

Then came at eleven and a half the sudden change from Street Arab to Sea Waif, accepted with a philosophical calm that might have been expected, I admit. Fifteen years later in my young manhood came the great change from being first mate of a ship to holding a junior clerkship ashore. Now that change by all the rules should have been the hardest of all to bear calmly, but I protest that it came to me as one of the most natural of transitions, and I never felt the slightest desire to go to sea again. Only sometimes on a Saturday night, when my means were all too small to furnish the Londoner’s sacrament, a nice Sunday dinner for the family, I sighed for the irresponsible days at sea where Saturday night was no different from any other night in the week, for our bread was given us and our water was sure, even if both were poor in quality and scanty in quantity.

Then came the great and momentous change at forty-two of resigning my two-pound-a-week clerkship and embarking upon the stormy sea of journalism and authorship. Late, very late in life, and indeed too late to give me much joy, for the iron of poverty and struggle, of scorn and failure had entered into my very soul. And to crown all, my youngest son, my Benjamin, had died on the very day that my first book was accepted. But such joy as I could feel I did. All my new acquaintances and friends bade me welcome, helped me, said nice things about me, and I earned a good deal of money. I paid all my debts and enjoyed to the full what I had long sighed for, the power to pay cash for everything as I received it, and the full determination that if possible to do so should always be my rule while I lived. Most gratefully do I declare that so far that rule has been realised.

But the change was easy, I felt no strangeness about it any more than I had ever done since the first. And yet it was as great a change as a man could well experience and live. Now, however, I have come to another change which I feel is the final one, except, of course, the closing of the book to which all of us must come. And as through this month of November I sit by my fireside I do feel as I have never done before, a sense of loss, of having looked my last upon the multitude of friends I made while lecturing. I find myself recalling the upturned faces in their serried rows, the bursts of applause, the involuntary remarks made by some enthusiastic listener, the sense of power for good in that I was interesting and amusing many of my fellow-creatures by whom I should be remembered for many and many a day. Yes, even to their lives’ end, for although thirty years have passed since I heard J. Jackson Wray lecture, his image, his voice, his words are all as vivid to me now as they were on that night in Sutherland Gardens Chapel when I sat entranced to hear him.

And in like manner my heart has been rejoiced to be greeted in Australia, in South America, in India, in Canada, by some friendly voice telling me of keen recollections of my lecture at some place or another long before. Now I often sit and think with mellow happiness that scattered all over the world there are people who are thinking kindly of me to-night as of one who spoke words to them pleasant to recall, and the thought does in some measure compensate me for my very great loss.

Yes, this is the greatest change of all, and the hardest to bear, and that is principally why I have again taken up my now seldom used pen, to recall and set down many of the well-remembered incidents of my life and to bid all who loved me and knew me as a lecturer a quiet but tender

FAREWELL