“the path to hell is paved with good intentions.”
looking reflectively over this second instalment of my autobiography, i perceive that i am such a genuine vagabond that i have even travelled along in my reminiscences without caring for the material niceties of recognised literary method; so i have gone back over the whole track and tried earnestly to polish my efforts.
it seems quite unnecessary for vagabonds to wear (metaphorically speaking) old trousers with fringed ends to the legs, penniless pockets, dusty boots, an unshaven face and dirty collar, or to give vent to the devil-may-care utterances and all the ungrammatical “politeness” of the phraseology of the grog shanty and bush hotels, when they attempt to live over again on paper the tale of their wandering life. i cannot reform the world into a population of convivial beachcombers, nor would i if i could, out of consideration for future vagabonds, who naturally want the outer spaces of the world for their special province. neither can i make you believe i could have done better in a literary sense if i had taken more trouble with my book. but i can to some extent reform myself, and at least strive to compete with the literary aristocrats on the slopes of their own cultivated ground. i am sure they will make good company if i succeed, and they will have been my best friends. yes, i half believe in jumping out of bed on a cold night to hold a candle to the devil! i know that sometimes while you stand shivering you discover that he’s really not such a bad fellow, and the candlelight is likely to give you a glimpse of some faint resemblance in his wrinkled face, some far-off expression of that beautiful old life that he lived ere he sinned, became respectable and fell—banished from heaven.
life is a terrible contradiction; we are dead because we are born alive. our very creed is based on the sad fact that the cemetery tablets record the dates of the true beginning of life everlasting. the thundering city is a necropolis wherein multitudes of wandering corpses breathe, with inert souls and thoughts that are like night bats flitting through the sepulchres of our death, with dead eyes and dead mouths that open to cough and even sometimes laugh! my book of reminiscences is (to me at least) like those silent, moss-grey tablets of immortality; but even more wonderful and true (as far as i know), for, while i am dead, i can see my long ago. i can lift the stone slab from the grave in the silent night and gaze on the dead boy’s face, and in a way make the dead eyes laugh and the voiceless mouth mutter and sing in a hollow voice old, far-away songs of love, romance and its comrade, grief. yes, you and i can see such things. oh, how ineffably sad to some of us!
you may wonder what all this has to do with the preface to a book of reminiscences. it has a lot to do with the matter, because i am a born vagabond, and the world is incorrigibly respectable!
there are about one hundred pages missing from this book—pages that should have told of the inevitable details of stern existence: those things that all men who are vagabonds experience, such as the stomach-rumbles of hunger, monstrous hopes and misgivings, hospitals and illnesses, and cold nights sleeping out under the coco-palms and gum-trees when the wind suddenly shifts to a shivering quarter. evil thoughts, heartaches, the tenderest wishes, passionate drums, longings, and memories in the night of a woman’s eyes, the fall before great temptation, atheistical thoughts, curses and religious remorses you will look for in vain. for, after all, i am not brave enough to tell the truth! i might have done so if i had had the friendly, courageous publisher who would not cut them out of the original manuscript. but where is the publisher who would let me hide behind his influential bulk as he risked all and published the truth? yes, those things which would make the reader recognise the truth by his own responsive thrills.
well, i will risk my reputation on the opinions of those critics who will be able to read the hundred pages i have left out. for real scallawags do not always leave the worst out only. moreover, i may be lucky enough to find sympathy, for even critics are sometimes at heart genuine vagabonds, and they may realise that i have turned into the light of other days, the stars, the blue tropical skies, moonlit seas by coral reefs and palm-clad isles, and into the heart of intense dreams, to paint faithfully all that i tell.
before my north american experiences, which i have recorded in the opening chapters of this book, i had shipped before the mast of a sailing ship, the s——p, at sydney, n.s.w., intending to go with her round the horn, and so home to england. but, being unable to tolerate the bullying chief mate and the offal-flavoured fo’c’sle food, i left the boat at ’frisco and again shipped on an american tramp that was chartered for trading purposes to go cruising in the south seas, where once more i had many ups and downs, and settled for a few months in the fiji group and elsewhere. my reminiscences, and many of the incidents of that time, i have told in the second part of the present volume, which opens with “the charity organization of the south seas.”
my south sea island legends and fairy tales have never been told elsewhere. i have written them as nearly as possible in the manner in which they were told me by the samoan children and natives who were my friends. the mythology of the south seas is unfortunately becoming almost completely forgotten by the natives, who now live under such different conditions, and seem only interested in the creeds, legends and mythology of the western world.
these experiences of mine are written from memory, and i have as nearly as possible kept them in the order that i lived them; and if they seem far-flung for one as young as i was, let me assure you that hundreds of english boys have had my experiences and could tell this tale.
i am from a family of rovers. my uncles were travellers and explorers. my brothers out of the spirit of adventure all went to sea, and achieved success on sea and land through perseverance. my grandfather in his boyhood went to sea. (i believe he was born at sea. his mother was a lady of the italian court, noted for her beauty and an accomplished musician.) he was a direct descendant of charles, the second earl of middleton, whose estates were eventually confiscated by creditors—an evil destiny that has survived right down to the present, it having cropped up in the author’s own affairs.
i hope to follow this volume with another one, wherein i shall tell of my life when i settled for a while among civilised peoples and became respectable, and my serious troubles commenced.
i have to thank messrs boosey & company, of london, for permission to use certain extracts from my military band entr’actes, marches, etc., which they have published.
a. s.-m.
