The cruise of the Nona The story of a cruise from Holyhead to the Wash, with reflections and judgments on life and letters, men and manners
It is possible that I exaggerate the effect of the evil; it is possible
that some novel remedy besides the obvious one of increasing the power
of the Crown may set things right. It has certainly done so in the
past; the break-up of one institution apparently necessary to society
has discovered the importance of other forces which have saved society
by bringing up new forces unsuspected. It is possible. Perhaps it is
probable. It is to be hoped. And that is all one can say.
Such thoughts are suitable for a drizzling calm, and for wet canvas
hanging useless and dead in a hopeless dawn upon a sea without life.
But with the coming of a little wind, a little northeasterly wind in
the growing light; with its blowing away of the misty rain, and its
bringing a heartening into the morning, I prefer to turn to better
things, to the realities: to the English water and to the English land.
The mist scudded off from the Folkestone waters, the light not only
brightened, but grew coloured, until at last there was a fine, flaming
dawn over the Kentish chalk and the Bastion cliffs of the Kentish
salient, and very soon she was running to it prettily, her wet canvas
holding the wind well, and, if anything, pressing her a little too
hard. My companion came on deck with the morning, woken by the new
life in the hull, and by the run of the sea along the sides. As yet
the water was smooth, for the wind was a trifle off shore, and would
so remain until we had come into the hollow bend of the flat coast,
the last of which runs almost due south, and which ends in the shingle
of Dungeness. Also we were still on the ebb and the wind followed the
stream.
After the sun had risen the breeze grew stronger, and even violent;
but as I greatly desired to round the Ness before the tide should
catch me and raise a sea, I would not take in a reef. So I held on,
though with the more southerly course we were setting, and with the
wind still rising, it was not over safe; for that wind was now coming
almost due aft, her boom was right out, and I feared a gybe. To take
every advantage of any slight northing of the wind that might come, I
ran closer into the coast at a still greater risk of gybe, of course,
if the wind should hold where it did when we came to the sharp turn of
the Ness. We were now running for it very hard indeed, and the Nona,
splendidly as she lifts when properly trimmed, was burying a little
owing to too great press of mainsail, and with head sails doing no work
to support her bows. A slight sea had risen, although the tide was
still with us and with the wind, and once or twice she took it green as
she plunged forward.
Then it was, as I held the Nona with difficulty thus, right in front of
a wind that was now much too strong for her canvas, that I understood
what had long puzzled me, and that is, why the ancients, down to
the end of the Dark Ages in the Mediterranean, and to, perhaps, the
fourteenth century in the North, continued to step the masts of their
square rig so far aft. It was to prevent burying; to give the bow its
chance of lifting to the sea. For this rig sailed at its best with the
wind aft, and when their boats were running so with the great square
sail driving them into the seas, had their mast been stepped forward,
they would have buried dangerously.
And why do you think men were so long in adapting the fore-and-aft to
larger boats?
But I cannot delay to consider such things of the past, for I am at the
edge of Dungeness, and with my heart in my mouth lest at any moment
she should gybe over.
I handed the helm to my companion, who had a better eye than I had, and
a firmer hold, and he, with great skill, did just save the gybe. We had
not the luck to hold the tide; we caught the turn of it and the early
flood nearly two miles from Dungeness Point, and, as you may imagine,
it raised a short and buffeting sea, which made our task the more
perilous. My companion handled her beautifully, until I told him he
could go as near as he liked to the end of the Ness, because the land
shelves down here so steeply as to give one deep water right up against
the shore. We were, perhaps, five minutes in the worst of the ordeal
just opposite the lighthouse before we could put the helm a trifle over
and get the wind fairly on our quarter and breathe again. It seemed
about half an hour, for the strength of the tide, even against that
wind, made us forge very slowly past the land, and it was astonishing
to see the white foam racing by while the shingle, a stone’s throw
away, barely crept past us; but save the gybe he did, as I said, and
there came that placid moment when she would take a turn a little west
of south, and then fairly west of south, and the roar of the wind was
at her quarter and I had no excuse for an excessive nervousness. But
she was pressing too hard altogether, so now we threw her round (as
I ought to have done long before), took in two reefs, and then were
able to set an easy and comfortable line for the doubtful harbour of
Rye, which neither of us had yet made. We feared we might touch at the
entry, but we had at least the comfort of a wind off the land, yet far
round enough to take us in without beating, and we were on a rising
tide.
I have often thought that a boat running snug and properly reefed to
suit the wind is a model of the virtue which the theologians called
temperance, and which has nothing to do with the historical dread of
wine bred in those who have themselves suffered from, or have seen in
their families, the disease called dipsomania. For temperance does not
mean doing things half-heartedly, still less does it mean doing or
not doing things extremely. It means suiting your implements to your
motive power, and not carrying on at a risk. It is not unconnected with
dignity, and there is something profound about it; I will call it the
contralto among the virtues, and leave it at that.
We sped on (the stream against us, very slight now that we were inside
the Ness); we saw before us the broomstick, or whatever you like to
call it, which marks (or does not mark) the entry into Rye Haven, and
the last bare remnant of what was once the crowded fairway, a market
for the nations—the harbour of Rye.
The little town stood up inland, neat and beautiful, red and grey,
a pyramid thrown up towards its squat steeple; for under that keen
northeasterly air all was clear and well cut. The pilot book gave us
no comfort; it only told us that the deep changes with every gale,
and, as for the lead, there was no use for it, the shore would come
too steep; what we had to do was to look out for the outer buoy, and
round it, hoping that as we turned we should neither touch nor get into
irons, but still have the wind easterly enough to round to take us in.
On the plan I had by me the fairway was marked dangerously near the
point from which the wind was coming, but I trusted to luck, and still
kept her to her course.
Any man making Rye Haven must first resign himself to the will of
God, and consider, especially if the boat is running and a little
over-canvassed, that death is but a mighty transition; that it is
all sand hereabouts, with no cruel rocks to tear the tender body with
their horrid fangs; that nothing is worth calculating in life, because
things happen by fate anyhow, or by chance, but certainly not by our
direction; and that if, or when, she strikes, it will not be his
fault. There is no man living that can ever tell you the deep into Rye
Harbour, for it shifts with every wind, and at the best it is of the
narrowest. As for me, I have made it four times in my life, each time I
have touched and never have I struck, and how the thing was done no one
knows. Nevertheless, they still build ships in Rye, and the tradition
of the sea is all about it, though what used to be the old haven is now
a field.
I remember sitting up to a very late and clear sunset of a Whit-Monday,
gazing, under the sharp northeast breeze (the Nona moored at last
to the wooden quay), at the pyramid of red roofs, and the highly
successful walls and battlements of Rye, and considering within my mind
many things.
First I considered within my own dear mind how marvellously this place
had been preserved, seeing what modern England is, and what modern
travel is. It is, of course, a stage-scenery town, such as I have heard
that Rothenburg is in Germany, and, therefore, there is an interest
in preserving it; but I never heard that any such pains were taken to
prevent its destruction by increase or rebuilding, or by any of those
courses which bring death to beauty, such as a good train service,
clubs, large and torturing hotels. Rye manages to live on. I suppose
there is a spell. At any moment it may be broken, and the flood will
pour in.
Being what it is, you cannot begin thinking about Rye without finding
yourself dragged on to consider preciosity, and from that to the
business of letters is but half a step.
Here at Rye did I meet and speak with Henry James, who was in the
very heart of letters. Here also did I meet his brother, William
James, whose business in life it was to write about philosophy,
but whose conversation when I met him turned principally upon the
subtle diplomatic genius of the King of England then reigning;
upon the stability of English institutions; the excellence of the
English police, and the singular faculty shown by our institutions of
permitting differences without conflict. Also the piercing wit of the
paper ‘Punch,’ and the profound wisdom of ‘The Times.’ I had just come
back with a companion from foreign parts; I had been sleeping rough,
and I was in no condition to take part in polite conversation, so I did
all the listening, and, as I listened, I still considered how literary
was Rye. And so now, years after, looking at Rye from my boat, was I
led on to consider the trade or business of letters.
When a writing man approaches that subject, he feels—at least I
feel—like a man before a jumbled heap of material of all kinds—one of
those refuse-heaps in which you may pick up stray bits of machinery,
or salve a little fuel, or find what you will. Or again, it is like
being in one of those shops—there are few of them left, alas!—where
an old half-wit has collected all manner of things, so that one knows
not whether to begin by the furniture, or the glass, or the pictures,
or the second-hand telescopes, or the books. For there is an indefinite
number of ways of considering letters.
To those who have had to pursue letters as a trade (and to this I have
been condemned all my life since my twenty-fifth year) it certainly is
the hardest and the most capricious, and, indeed, the most abominable
of trades, for the simple reason that it was never meant to be a trade.
A man is no more meant to live by writing than he is meant to live
by conversation, or by dressing, or by walking about and seeing the
world. For there is no relation between the function of letters and the
economic effect of letters; there is no relation between the goodness
and the badness of the work, or the usefulness of the work, or the
magnitude of the work, and the sums paid for the work. It would not be
natural that there should be such a relation, and, in fact, there is
none.
This truth is missed by people who say that good writing has no market.
That is not the point. Good writing sometimes has a market, and very
bad writing sometimes has a market. Useful writing sometimes has a
market, and writing of no use whatsoever, even as recreation, sometimes
has a market. Writing important truths sometimes has a market.
Writing the most ridiculous errors and false judgments sometimes has
a market. The point is that the market has nothing to do with the
qualities attached to writing. It never had and it never will. There