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_ Chapter I
(from My Autobiography)
Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished
manuscript which constitute this formidable Autobiography and
Diary of mine, certain chapters will in some distant future be
found which deal with "Claimants"--claimants historically
notorious: Satan, Claimant; the Golden Calf, Claimant; the
Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Claimant; Louis XVII., Claimant;
William Shakespeare, Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant; Mary Baker
G. Eddy, Claimant--and the rest of them. Eminent Claimants,
successful Claimants, defeated Claimants, royal Claimants, pleb
Claimants, showy Claimants, shabby Claimants, revered Claimants,
despised Claimants, twinkle star-like here and there and yonder
through the mists of history and legend and tradition--and, oh,
all the darling tribe are clothed in mystery and romance, and we
read about them with deep interest and discuss them with loving
sympathy or with rancorous resentment, according to which side we
hitch ourselves to. It has always been so with the human race.
There was never a Claimant that couldn't get a hearing, nor one
that couldn't accumulate a rapturous following, no matter how
flimsy and apparently unauthentic his claim might be. Arthur
Orton's claim that he was the lost Tichborne baronet come to life
again was as flimsy as Mrs. Eddy's that she wrote SCIENCE AND
HEALTH from the direct dictation of the Deity; yet in England
nearly forty years ago Orton had a huge army of devotees and
incorrigible adherents, many of whom remained stubbornly
unconvinced after their fat god had been proven an impostor and
jailed as a perjurer, and today Mrs. Eddy's following is not only
immense, but is daily augmenting in numbers and enthusiasm.
Orton had many fine and educated minds among his adherents, Mrs.
Eddy has had the like among hers from the beginning. Her Church
is as well equipped in those particulars as is any other Church.
Claimants can always count upon a following, it doesn't matter
who they are, nor what they claim, nor whether they come with
documents or without. It was always so. Down out of the long-
vanished past, across the abyss of the ages, if you listen, you
can still hear the believing multitudes shouting for Perkin
Warbeck and Lambert Simnel.
A friend has sent me a new book, from England--THE
SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM RESTATED--well restated and closely reasoned;
and my fifty years' interest in that matter--asleep for the last
three years--is excited once more. It is an interest which was
born of Delia Bacon's book--away back in the ancient day--1857,
or maybe 1856. About a year later my pilot-master, Bixby,
transferred me from his own steamboat to the PENNSYLVANIA, and
placed me under the orders and instructions of George Ealer--dead
now, these many, many years. I steered for him a good many
months--as was the humble duty of the pilot-apprentice: stood a
daylight watch and spun the wheel under the severe
superintendence and correction of the master. He was a prime
chess-player and an idolater of Shakespeare. He would play chess
with anybody; even with me, and it cost his official dignity
something to do that. Also--quite uninvited--he would read
Shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when it
was his watch and I was steering. He read well, but not
profitably for me, because he constantly injected commands into
the text. That broke it all up, mixed it all up, tangled it all
up--to that degree, in fact, that if we were in a risky and
difficult piece of river an ignorant person couldn't have told,
sometimes, which observations were Shakespeare's and which were
Ealer's. For instance:
What man dare, _I_ dare!
Approach thou WHAT are you laying in the leads for? what a
hell of an idea! like the rugged ease her off a little, ease her
off! rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the THERE she
goes! meet her, meet her! didn't you KNOW she'd smell the reef if
you crowded in like that? Hyrcan tiger; take any ship but that
and my firm nerves she'll be in the WOODS the first you know!
stop he starboard! come ahead strong on the larboard! back the
starboard! . . . NOW then, you're all right; come ahead on the
starboard; straighten up and go 'long, never tremble: or be
alive again, and dare me to the desert DAMNATION can't you keep
away from that greasy water? pull her down! snatch her! snatch
her baldheaded! with thy sword; if trembling I inhabit then, lay
in the leads!--no, only with the starboard one, leave the other
alone, protest me the baby of a girl. Hence horrible shadow!
eight bells--that watchman's asleep again, I reckon, go down and
call Brown yourself, unreal mockery, hence!
He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and
stormy and tragic, but it was a damage to me, because I have
never since been able to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way.
I cannot rid it of his explosive interlardings, they break in
everywhere with their irrelevant, "What in hell are you up to
NOW! pull her down! more! MORE!--there now, steady as you go,"
and the other disorganizing interruptions that were always
leaping from his mouth. When I read Shakespeare now I can hear
them as plainly as I did in that long-departed time--fifty-one
years ago. I never regarded Ealer's readings as educational.
Indeed, they were a detriment to me.
His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but
barring that detail he was a good reader; I can say that much for
him. He did not use the book, and did not need to; he knew his
Shakespeare as well as Euclid ever knew his multiplication table.
Did he have something to say--this Shakespeare-adoring
Mississippi pilot--anent Delia Bacon's book?
Yes. And he said it; said it all the time, for months--in
the morning watch, the middle watch, and dog watch; and probably
kept it going in his sleep. He bought the literature of the
dispute as fast as it appeared, and we discussed it all through
thirteen hundred miles of river four times traversed in every
thirty-five days--the time required by that swift boat to achieve
two round trips. We discussed, and discussed, and discussed, and
disputed and disputed and disputed; at any rate, HE did, and I
got in a word now and then when he slipped a cog and there was a
vacancy. He did his arguing with heat, with energy, with
violence; and I did mine with the reverse and moderation of a
subordinate who does not like to be flung out of a pilot-house
and is perched forty feet above the water. He was fiercely loyal
to Shakespeare and cordially scornful of Bacon and of all the
pretensions of the Baconians. So was I--at first. And at first
he was glad that that was my attitude. There were even
indications that he admired it; indications dimmed, it is true,
by the distance that lay between the lofty boss-pilotical
altitude and my lowly one, yet perceptible to me; perceptible,
and translatable into a compliment--compliment coming down from
about the snow-line and not well thawed in the transit, and not
likely to set anything afire, not even a cub-pilot's self-
conceit; still a detectable complement, and precious.
Naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to Shakespeare--
if possible--than I was before, and more prejudiced against
Bacon--if possible--that I was before. And so we discussed
and discussed, both on the same side, and were happy.
For a while. Only for a while. Only for a very little while,
a very, very, very little while. Then the atmosphere began
to change; began to cool off.
A brighter person would have seen what the trouble was,
earlier than I did, perhaps, but I saw it early enough for all
practical purposes. You see, he was of an argumentative
disposition. Therefore it took him but a little time to get
tired of arguing with a person who agreed with everything he said
and consequently never furnished him a provocative to flare up
and show what he could do when it came to clear, cold, hard,
rose-cut, hundred-faceted, diamond-flashing REASONING. That was
his name for it. It has been applied since, with complacency, as
many as several times, in the Bacon-Shakespeare scuffle. On the
Shakespeare side.
Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons
than to me when principle and personal interest found themselves
in opposition to each other and a choice had to be made: I let
principle go, and went over to the other side. Not the entire
way, but far enough to answer the requirements of the case. That
is to say, I took this attitude--to wit, I only BELIEVED Bacon
wrote Shakespeare, whereas I KNEW Shakespeare didn't. Ealer was
satisfied with that, and the war broke loose. Study, practice,
experience in handling my end of the matter presently enabled me
to take my new position almost seriously; a little bit later,
utterly seriously; a little later still, lovingly, gratefully,
devotedly; finally: fiercely, rabidly, uncompromisingly. After
that I was welded to my faith, I was theoretically ready to die
for it, and I looked down with compassion not unmixed with scorn
upon everybody else's faith that didn't tally with mine. That
faith, imposed upon me by self-interest in that ancient day,
remains my faith today, and in it I find comfort, solace, peace,
and never-failing joy. You see how curiously theological it is.
The "rice Christian" of the Orient goes through the very same
steps, when he is after rice and the missionary is after HIM; he
goes for rice, and remains to worship.
Ealer did a lot of our "reasoning"--not to say substantially
all of it. The slaves of his cult have a passion for calling it
by that large name. We others do not call our inductions and
deductions and reductions by any name at all. They show for
themselves what they are, and we can with tranquil confidence
leave the world to ennoble them with a title of its own choosing.
Now and then when Ealer had to stop to cough, I pulled my
induction-talents together and hove the controversial lead
myself: always getting eight feet, eight and a half, often nine,
sometimes even quarter-less-twain--as _I_ believed; but always
"no bottom," as HE said.
I got the best of him only once. I prepared myself. I
wrote out a passage from Shakespeare--it may have been the very
one I quoted awhile ago, I don't remember--and riddled it with
his wild steamboatful interlardings. When an unrisky opportunity
offered, one lovely summer day, when we had sounded and buoyed a
tangled patch of crossings known as Hell's Half Acre, and were
aboard again and he had sneaked the PENNSYLVANIA triumphantly
through it without once scraping sand, and the A. T. LACEY had
followed in our wake and got stuck, and he was feeling good, I
showed it to him. It amused him. I asked him to fire it off--
READ it; read it, I diplomatically added, as only HE could read
dramatic poetry. The compliment touched him where he lived. He
did read it; read it with surpassing fire and spirit; read it as
it will never be read again; for HE know how to put the right
music into those thunderous interlardings and make them seem a
part of the text, make them sound as if they were bursting from
Shakespeare's own soul, each one of them a golden inspiration and
not to be left out without damage to the massed and magnificent
whole.
I waited a week, to let the incident fade; waited longer;
waited until he brought up for reasonings and vituperation my pet
position, my pet argument, the one which I was fondest of, the
one which I prized far above all others in my ammunition-wagon--
to wit, that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare's
words, for the reason that the man who wrote them was limitlessly
familiar with the laws, and the law-courts, and law-proceedings,
and lawyer-talk, and lawyer-ways--and if Shakespeare was
possessed of the infinitely divided star-dust that constituted
this vast wealth, HOW did he get it, and WHERE and WHEN?
"From books."
From books! That was always the idea. I answered as my
readings of the champions of my side of the great controversy had
taught me to answer: that a man can't handle glibly and easily
and comfortably and successfully the argot of a trade at which he
has not personally served. He will make mistakes; he will not,
and cannot, get the trade-phrasings precisely and exactly right;
and the moment he departs, by even a shade, from a common trade-
form, the reader who has served that trade will know the writer
HASN'T. Ealer would not be convinced; he said a man could learn
how to correctly handle the subtleties and mysteries and free-
masonries of ANY trade by careful reading and studying. But when
I got him to read again the passage from Shakespeare with the
interlardings, he perceived, himself, that books couldn't teach a
student a bewildering multitude of pilot-phrases so thoroughly
and perfectly that he could talk them off in book and play or
conversation and make no mistake that a pilot would not
immediately discover. It was a triumph for me. He was silent
awhile, and I knew what was happening--he was losing his temper.
And I knew he would presently close the session with the same old
argument that was always his stay and his support in time of
need; the same old argument, the one I couldn't answer, because I
dasn't--the argument that I was an ass, and better shut up. He
delivered it, and I obeyed.
O dear, how long ago it was--how pathetically long ago! And
here am I, old, forsaken, forlorn, and alone, arranging to get
that argument out of somebody again.
When a man has a passion for Shakespeare, it goes without
saying that he keeps company with other standard authors. Ealer
always had several high-class books in the pilot-house, and he
read the same ones over and over again, and did not care to
change to newer and fresher ones. He played well on the flute,
and greatly enjoyed hearing himself play. So did I. He had a
notion that a flute would keep its health better if you took it
apart when it was not standing a watch; and so, when it was not
on duty it took its rest, disjointed, on the compass-shelf under
the breastboard. When the PENNSYLVANIA blew up and became a
drifting rack-heap freighted with wounded and dying poor souls
(my young brother Henry among them), pilot Brown had the watch
below, and was probably asleep and never knew what killed him;
but Ealer escaped unhurt. He and his pilot-house were shot up
into the air; then they fell, and Ealer sank through the ragged
cavern where the hurricane-deck and the boiler-deck had been, and
landed in a nest of ruins on the main deck, on top of one of the
unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of scald and
deadly steam. But not for long. He did not lose his head--long
familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it, in any and all
emergencies. He held his coat-lapels to his nose with one hand,
to keep out the steam, and scrabbled around with the other till
he found the joints of his flute, then he took measures to save
himself alive, and was successful. I was not on board. I had
been put ashore in New Orleans by Captain Klinenfelter. The
reason--however, I have told all about it in the book called OLD
TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI, and it isn't important, anyway, it is
so long ago. _
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