The Man Without a Country and Other Tales | Page 2

I have it not to send.
I remembered, when I was collecting material for my story, that in
General Wilkinson's galimatias, which he calls his "Memoirs," is

frequent reference to a business partner of his, of the name of Nolan,
who, in the very beginning of this century, was killed in Texas.
Whenever Wilkinson found himself in rather a deeper bog than usual,
he used to justify himself by saying that he could not explain such or
such a charge because "the papers referring to it were lost when _Mr.
Nolan_ was imprisoned in Texas." Finding this mythical character in
the mythical legends of a mythical time, I took the liberty to give him a
cousin, rather more mythical, whose adventures should be on the seas. I
had the impression that Wilkinson's friend was named Stephen,--and as
such I spoke of him in the early editions of this story. But long after
this was printed, I found that the New Orleans paper was right in saying
that the Texan hero was named Philip Nolan.
If I had forgotten him and his name, I can only say that Mr. Jefferson,
who did not forget him, abandoned him and his,--when the Spanish
Government murdered him and imprisoned his associates for life. I
have done my best to repair my fault, and to recall to memory a brave
man, by telling the story of his fate, in a book called "Philip Nolan's
Friends." To the historical statements in that book the reader is referred.
That the Texan Philip Nolan played an important, though forgotten,
part in our national history, the reader will understand,--when I say that
the terror of the Spanish Government, excited by his adventures,
governed all their policy regarding Texas and Louisiana also, till the
last territory was no longer their own.
If any reader considers the invention of a cousin too great a liberty to
take in fiction, I venture to remind him that "'Tis sixty years since"; and
that I should have the highest authority in literature even for much
greater liberties taken with annals so far removed from our time.
A Boston paper, in noticing the story of "My Double," contained in
another part of this collection, said it was highly improbable. I have
always agreed with that critic. I confess I have the same opinion of this
story of Philip Nolan. It passes on ships which had no existence, is
vouched for by officers who never lived. Its hero is in two or three
places at the same time, under a process wholly impossible under any
conceivable administration of affairs. When my friend, Mr. W.H. Reed,
sent me from City Point, in Virginia, the record of the death of PHILIP
NOLAN, a negro from Louisiana, who died in the cause of his country
in service in a colored regiment, I felt that he had done something to

atone for the imagined guilt of the imagined namesake of his
unfortunate god-father.
E.E.H.
ROXBURY, MASS., March 20, 1886.
* * * * *
I supposed that very few casual readers of the New York Herald of
August 18th observed, in an obscure corner, among the "Deaths," the
announcement,--
"NOLAN. Died, on board U.S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 2° 11' S., Long.
131° W., on the 11th of May, PHILIP NOLAN."
I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old
Mission-House in Mackinaw, waiting for a Lake Superior steamer
which did not choose to come, and I was devouring to the very stubble
all the current literature I could get hold of, even down to the deaths
and marriages in the Herald. My memory for names and people is good,
and the reader will see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to
remember Philip Nolan. There are hundreds of readers who would have
paused at that announcement, if the officer of the Levant who reported
it had chosen to make it thus:--"Died, May 11th, THE MAN
WITHOUT A COUNTRY." For it was as "The Man without a
Country" that poor Philip Nolan had generally been known by the
officers who had him in charge during some fifty years, as, indeed, by
all the men who sailed under them. I dare say there is many a man who
has taken wine with him once a fortnight, in a three years' cruise, who
never knew that his name was "Nolan," or whether the poor wretch had
any name at all.
There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature's story.
Reason enough there has been till now, ever since Madison's
administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy of
honor itself, among the gentlemen of the navy who have had Nolan in
successive charge. And certainly it speaks well for the esprit de