Rodney Stone

Rodney Stone

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rodney Stone, by Arthur Conan
Doyle (#31 in our series by Arthur Conan Doyle)
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Title: Rodney Stone
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5148] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on May 14, 2002]
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, RODNEY
STONE ***

Transcribed by David Price, email [email protected], from the
1921 Eveleigh Nash & Grayson edition.

RODNEY STONE

PREFACE

Amongst the books to which I am indebted for my material in my
endeavour to draw various phases of life and character in England at
the beginning of the century, I would particularly mention Ashton's
"Dawn of the Nineteenth Century;" Gronow's "Reminiscences;"
Fitzgerald's "Life and Times of George IV.;" Jesse's "Life of
Brummell;" "Boxiana;" "Pugilistica;" Harper's "Brighton Road;"
Robinson's "Last Earl of Barrymore" and "Old Q.;" Rice's "History of
the Turf;" Tristram's "Coaching Days;" James's "Naval History;" Clark
Russell's "Collingwood" and "Nelson."
I am also much indebted to my friends Mr. J. C. Parkinson and Robert
Barr for information upon the subject of the ring.
A. CONAN DOYLE. HASLEMERE, September 1, 1896.


CHAPTER I
--FRIAR'S OAK

On this, the first of January of the year 1851, the nineteenth century has

reached its midway term, and many of us who shared its youth have
already warnings which tell us that it has outworn us. We put our
grizzled heads together, we older ones, and we talk of the great days
that we have known; but we find that when it is with our children that
we talk it is a hard matter to make them understand. We and our fathers
before us lived much the same life, but they with their railway trains
and their steamboats belong to a different age. It is true that we can put
history-books into their hands, and they can read from them of our
weary struggle of two and twenty years with that great and evil man.
They can learn how Freedom fled from the whole broad continent, and
how Nelson's blood was shed, and Pitt's noble heart was broken in
striving that she should not pass us for ever to take refuge with our
brothers across the Atlantic. All this they can read, with the date of this
treaty or that battle, but I do not know where they are to read of
ourselves, of the folk we were, and the lives we led, and how the world
seemed to our eyes when they were young as theirs are now.
If I take up my pen to tell you about this, you must not look for any
story at my hands, for I was only in my earliest manhood when these
things befell; and although I saw something of the stories of other lives,
I could scarce claim one of my own. It is the love of a woman that
makes the story of a man, and many a year was to pass before I first
looked into the eyes of the mother of my children. To us it seems but an
affair of yesterday, and yet those children can now reach the plums in
the garden whilst we are seeking for a ladder, and where we once
walked with their little hands in ours, we are glad now to lean upon
their arms. But I shall speak of a time when the love of a mother was
the only love I knew, and if you seek for something more, then it is not
for you that I write. But if you would come out with me into that
forgotten world; if you would know Boy Jim and Champion Harrison;
if you would meet my father, one of Nelson's own men; if you would
catch a glimpse of that great seaman