Some Reminiscences | Page 4

a being so hard up for something to
do as to quarrel with me. "To disappoint one's friends" would be nearer
the mark. Most, almost all, friendships of the writing period of my life
have come to me through my books; and I know that a novelist lives in
his work. He stands there, the only reality in an invented world,
amongst imaginary things, happenings, and people. Writing about them,
he is only writing about himself. But the disclosure is not complete. He
remains to a certain extent a figure behind the veil; a suspected rather
than a seen presence--a movement and a voice behind the draperies of
fiction. In these personal notes there is no such veil. And I cannot help
thinking of a passage in the "Imitation of Christ" where the ascetic
author, who knew life so profoundly, says that "there are persons
esteemed on their reputation who by showing themselves destroy the
opinion one had of them." This is the danger incurred by an author of
fiction who sets out to talk about himself without disguise.
While these reminiscent pages were appearing serially I was
remonstrated with for bad economy; as if such writing were a form of
self-indulgence wasting the substance of future volumes. It seems that I
am not sufficiently literary. Indeed a man who never wrote a line for
print till he was thirty-six cannot bring himself to look upon his
existence and his experience, upon the sum of his thoughts, sensations
and emotions, upon his memories and his regrets, and the whole
possession of his past, as only so much material for his hands. Once
before, some three years ago, when I published "The Mirror of the
Sea," a volume of impressions and memories, the same remarks were
made to me. Practical remarks. But, truth to say, I have never
understood the kind of thrift they recommended. I wanted to pay my
tribute to the sea, its ships and its men, to whom I remain indebted for
so much which has gone to make me what I am. That seemed to me the
only shape in which I could offer it to their shades. There could not be
a question in my mind of anything else. It is quite possible that I am a
bad economist; but it is certain that I am incorrigible.

Having matured in the surroundings and under the special conditions of
sea-life, I have a special piety towards that form of my past; for its
impressions were vivid, its appeal direct, its demands such as could be
responded to with the natural elation of youth and strength equal to the
call. There was nothing in them to perplex a young conscience. Having
broken away from my origins under a storm of blame from every
quarter which had the merest shadow of right to voice an opinion,
removed by great distances from such natural affections as were still
left to me, and even estranged, in a measure, from them by the totally
unintelligible character of the life which had seduced me so
mysteriously from my allegiance, I may safely say that through the
blind force of circumstances the sea was to be all my world and the
merchant service my only home for a long succession of years. No
wonder then that in my two exclusively sea books, "The Nigger of the
'Narcissus'" and "The Mirror of the Sea" (and in the few short sea
stories like "Youth" and "Typhoon"), I have tried with an almost filial
regard to render the vibration of life in the great world of waters, in the
hearts of the simple men who have for ages traversed its solitudes, and
also that something sentient which seems to dwell in ships--the
creatures of their hands and the objects of their care.
One's literary life must turn frequently for sustenance to memories and
seek discourse with the shades; unless one has made up one's mind to
write only in order to reprove mankind for what it is, or praise it for
what it is not, or--generally--to teach it how to behave. Being neither
quarrelsome, nor a flatterer, nor a sage, I have done none of these
things; and I am prepared to put up serenely with the insignificance
which attaches to persons who are not meddlesome in some way or
other. But resignation is not indifference. I would not like to be left
standing as a mere spectator on the bank of the great stream carrying
onwards so many lives. I would fain claim for myself the faculty of so
much insight as can be expressed in a voice of sympathy and
compassion.
It seems to me that in one, at least, authoritative quarter of criticism I
am suspected of a certain unemotional, grim acceptance of facts; of