The Man Without a Country and Other Tales | Page 2

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.
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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 corps of the profession, and the personal honor of its members, that to the press this man's story has been wholly unknown,--and, I think, to the country at large also. I have reason to think, from some investigations I made in the Naval Archives when I was attached to the Bureau of Construction,