Jim Davis

Jim Davis, by John Masefield

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Title: Jim Davis
Author: John Masefield
Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7369] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 22,

2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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Jim Davis
By
John Masefield
For Judith
CHAPTER I
MY FIRST JOURNEY
I was born in the year 1800, in the town of Newnham-on-Severn, in
Gloucestershire. I am sure of the year, because my father always told
me that I was born at the end of the century, in the year that they began
to build the great house. The house has been finished now these many
years. The red-brick wall, which shuts its garden from the road (and the
Severn), is all covered with valerian and creeping plants. One of my
earliest memories is of the masons at work, shaping the two great bows.
I remember how my nurse used to stop to watch them, at the corner of
the road, on the green strip by the river-bank, where the gipsies camped
on the way to Gloucester horse-fair. One of the masons was her

sweetheart (Tom Farrell his name was), but he got into bad ways, I
remember, and was hanged or transported, though that was years
afterwards, when I had left that countryside.
My father and mother died when I was still a boy--my mother on the
day of Trafalgar battle, in 1805, my father four years later. It was very
sad at home after mother died; my father shut himself up in his study,
never seeing anybody. When my father died, my uncle came to
Newnham from his home in Devonshire; my old home was sold then,
and I was taken away. I remember the day so very clearly. It was one
sunny morning in early April. My uncle and I caught the coach at the
top of the hill, at the door of the old inn opposite the church. The
coachman had a hot drink handed up to him, and the ostlers hitched up
the new team. Then the guard (he had a red coat, like a soldier) blew
his horn, and the coach started off down the hill, going so very fast that
I was afraid, for I had never ridden on a coach before, though I had
seen them every day. The last that I saw of Newnham was the great
house at the corner. It was finished by that time, of course, and as we
drove past I saw the beautiful woman who lived there walking up and
down the lawn with her husband, Captain Rylands, a very tall,
handsome man, who used to give me apples. I was always afraid to eat
the apples, because my nurse said that the Captain had killed a man.
That was in the wars in Spain, fighting against the French.
I remember a great deal about my first coach-ride. We slept that night
at Bristol in one of the famous coaching inns, where, as a great treat, I
had bacon and eggs for supper, instead of bread-and-milk. In the
morning, my uncle took me with him to the docks, where he had some
business to do. That was the first time I ever really saw big ships, and
that was the first time I spoke with the sailors. There was a capstan on
one of the wharves, and men were at work, heaving round it, hoisting
casks out of a West Indiaman. One of the men said, "Come on, young
master; give us a hand on the bar here." So I put my hands on to the bar
and pushed my best, walking beside him till my