A modern Ulysses : the strange history of Horace Durand, his loves and his adventures

Front matter

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Book I. I. "and Memory With Her Dreams Shall Come." 3

II. ONE OF MY EARLIEST ADVENTURES I I

III. OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY 2 2

IV FUNERAL CHIMES AND MARRIAGE BELLS 32

V MY UNCLE SAYS I AM A LUCKY DOG 4 1

VI. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 55

VII. LOVE AND MARRIAGE 62

VIII. COLONEL ERNSTONE'S SECRET

IX. THE MYSTERY OF THERESE ERNSTONE 76

Book II

I. CALYPSO'S ISLAND 83

II. OUTSIDE THE GROTTO 93

III. INSIDE THE GROTTO. 10 1

IV. THE SHADOWS OF COMING REVELATIONS 108

V SKETCH OF JUDITH TRAVERS Il8 VI. COLONEL ERNSTONE TO THE RESCUE 120

VII. A DANIEL COME TO JUDGMENT 1 24

Book III

I. THE CHIMES OF ANTWERP 1 35

II. CIRCE 145

III. I AM WRECKED AT SEA 1 56

IV. THE CARPENTER'S REPORT 1 69

V A CAPTIVE TO MAN-EATERS 177 VI. I MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF THE IRISH KING OF

KUTUTU 184

VI CONTENTS.

CHAP PAGF.

VII. STRANGE ISLANDS OF THE SEA I<?I VIII. A LESSON IN DIPLOMACY AND STRATEGY AND ITS

MARVELLOUS RESULTS. 199

IX. FROM DREAMLAND TO REALITY 209 X. IN WHICH I HAVE SOME PLEASANT EXPERIENCES

AFLOAT AND ASHORE. 2 I I

XL IDYLLIC BUT TRUE 223 XII. IN WHICH "THE MERMAID" IS THE CHIEF FACTOR OF

CERTAIN CURIOUS PLOTS AND COUNTER-PLOTS 236

Book IV

I. THE MERCHANT WISHES ME A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND

A HAPPY NEW YEAR 25 I

II. COLONEL ERNSTONE ARRIVES IN LONDON AND THE

MERCHANT LEAVES IT 260

Book V

I. THE DRAMATIC SEQUEL TO MY MEETING WITH GEORGE

HARMER AND HIS WIFE AT ANTWERP 269

II. I BECOME FAMOUS 2/9 III. WITH FATHER GABR1ELLO 293 IV SISTER CONSTANCE 3OO

V. IN WHICH I MEET MY MOTHER AND HELEN IHJNSTAN

AT ANTWERP 308

VI. STILL LINGERS UNDER THE CHIMES AT ANTWERP 32O

VII. REFLECTIONS AND REMINISCENCES 33O VIII. THE CONFESSION OF JUDITH TRAVERS, OTHERWISE

CONSTANCE GARDNER 335

Book VI

I. THE HOUSE WHERE 1 WAS BORN. 345

II. A PRETENCE OF EXPLORATION THAT LEADS TO

DISCOVERY 350

III. I ENGAGE IN A VULGAR BRAWL. 36 1

IV. A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 366 V. THE PALACE THAT WAS MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN

ANYTHING ULYSSES EVER SAW 376

VI. " TREAD YOU NEVER SO LIGHTLY SOME OF THE MUD

OF THIS WORK-A-DAY WORLD SHALL STICK" 386

VII. ON THE WAY TO THE CEDARS 399

VIII. IS SOMETHING LIKE A SHIP THAT PUTS INTO MANY

PORTS AND SAILS HOME AT LAST 406

A PERSONAL NOTE.

On the first appearance of these pages in three volumes one of my reviewers stated that "a pathetic interest "attaches to the new novel £A modern Ulysses,' a great "portion of it having been written by the author for the "amusement of his son Mr. Frank Hatton during the young "scientist's exploration of British North Borneo. As the romance "appeared in serial form the loving father sent the chapters "week by week to his accomplished son, the action of "the story moving in those strange islands of the eastern "seas of which Borneo is one of the most wonderful and "mysterious." To this may be added a few other facts. The earlier part of the novel was received by Frank Hatton at one or two distant stations, but he did not live to read the closing chapters. * We had discussed the locale of the story before he left England and the romance was inspired by the material which I had collected for

* A volume on British Borneo by W. H. Treacher, MA. (Oxon) Secretary to the Government of Perak, formerly Administrator of Labuan and H. B. M. Acting Consul-General in Borneo, First Governor of British Borneo, recently published (1891) at the government printing department Singapore contains the latest tribute to Frank Hatton. "He more than once" says the author "found himself in critical positions with inland tribes who had never seen or heard of a white man, but his calmness and intrepidity carried him safely through such difficulties, and with several chiefs he became a sworn brother going through the peculiar ceremonies customary on such occasions. In 1883 he was ascending the Segama river to endeavour to verify the native reports of the existence of gold in that district, when landing on the bank he shot at and wounded an elephant and while following it up through the jungle his repeating rifle caught in a rattan and went off, the bullet passing through his chest causing almost immediate death. Hatton before leaving England had given promise of a distinguished scientific career and his untimely fate was deeply mourned by his brother officers and a large circle of friends." Mount Hatton on the Segama perpetuates his memory where he fell. His name with others is inscribed in a government memorial at Elopura. An annual prize for scientific research was founded in his honour at South Kensington. Extracts from his diaries in a work entitled "North Borneo" were published by Sampson Low and Co. in 1889.

VIII A PERSONAL NOTE.

"The New Ceylon," a history of the newest British Colony. The shadow of my dear son's death fell across the story and I had no heart to enter upon any further business in connection with a book which had for me such sad associations. For five years it had been put away, when at the suggestion of a friend I republished its principal chapters of adventure under the title of "Captured by Cannibals," with a special dedication "To the boys of England, and at the same time to the memory of one who is a true type of the earnest youth of a great Empire which is held together because year after year there are born to its splendid heritage of fame such worthy sons as Frank Hatton." If time cannot heal our griefs, it can assuage and soften them; and to-day I find a kind of solace in complying with the request of my publishers for a new and complete edition of "A Modern Ulysses"

Garrick Club, London, 1892. Joseph Hatton.

DEDICATORY PREFACE.

TO

HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF KUTUTU,

SUZERAIN OF THE BULONAGAN ISLANDS, &C.

Sire,

I have the honour to address you from England, the centre of civilisation and power.

The chief purpose of my letter is to introduce to your Majesty's notice the accompanying pages, which, among other things, give a faithful account of my experiences in the Bulonagan islands and the Eastern Seas.

The alleged Irishism of writing a letter and being the bearer of it oneself, in this instance, loses its point. There is as yet no postal service between Europe and Kututu. You wield the sceptre of a paternal majesty outside those specific " resources of civilisation, " allusion to which has so often supplied a "glittering generality" to the splendid eloquence of an illustrious English Premier, whose sympathies I hope to enlist in behalf of your "islands of the sun. " It is, therefore, not at all strange that I should write to you a letter in the hope that I may myself deliver it, with these pages to which I venture to

X DEDICATORY PREFACE.

append it as a dedication, in grateful recognition of the services I have received at your hands, and as a tribute of admiration and respect.

The ministers of our great and glorious Queen, Victoria, have under consideration the equipment of an expedition, with a view to such a survey of Kututu and the Bulonagan islands as may lead to the establishment of commercial, and possibly even closer, relationship between your Government and that of " the old country, " as you affectionately designated —

"This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of Majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise ; This fortress, built by Nature for herself, Against infection and the hand of war ; This happy breed of men, this little world ; This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house. Against the envy of less happy lands, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.'1

When next we meet I shall have the honour to explain to you how a number of persons, whose souls are in their ledgers, propose to tunnel a pathway under "this sceptred isle," which shall render abortive its defensive moat, and thus reduce "this seat of Mars" to the level of those unhappy countries of the Continent, which, not being blessed by Nature with a " silver sea " that serves as a protective wall, are continually in fear of, or suffering from, the

DEDICATORY PREFACE. XI

piratical inroads of neighbouring' kingdoms, against whom their artificial frontiers need the everlasting guardianship of mighty armies, the maintenance of which saps the industrial strength and retards the progress and prosperity of both States and Empires.

I am disposed to believe that the government of " this fortress built by Nature for herself " will favourably entertain the proposal of which you did me the honour to make me the bearer, for the reason that at the present time there is some jealousy of the French, who are showing what is called a Chauvinistic spirit of enterprise, which conflicts with the policy of England, inasmuch as it is contended by certain patriotic egotists that we are the only people who have any right to extend their Imperial and Colonial possessions.

Whether this forecast of English action should in the end be justified or not, I am on the eve of setting out, under very happy circumstances, in response to your Majesty's invitation, and with a view to a complete study of your administrative system, an exploration of your country, and the establishment of regular communication, by way of Manilla, between Hong Kong and Kututu. In this enterprise I am supported and encouraged by an excellent friend of mine, a British merchant long since settled at Manilla, and well known in the Eastern Seas. If your Majesty's labours had not been confined to a part of the world that is, in spite of our boasted British enterprise, literally unknown (and how can one wonder at this when Newfoundland, the oldest English colony, and the nearest to the

XII DEDICATORY PREFACE.

home country, still remains unexplored?), you would have been familiar with his name. He is a traveller, trader, and scholar, and I shall hope to be present when he has the felicity to entertain your Majesty at his own house.

While referring to the drawbacks which Kututu suffers in being outside the pale of European or British civilisation, I am desirous to remind your Catholic Majesty that this isolated position also has its advantages. If Kututu has no gas, it has an unclouded sky, and a moon that meets with no eclipse from cloud or fog. Though its commerce be limited, it has no duns, no necessity for co-operative stores, no joint-stock companies, no bills of exchange ; while its money is Nature's own produce, and its Royal Exchange a proper mart of barter. It is so long since you were in England that it is possible you may hardly appreciate, at their true value, the blessings of an island in which there are no paupers, no politics, no financial panics, no printing-presses, no judges fired with the Coleridgian ambition of addressing law-courts for fourteen days at a stretch, no Parisian modistes (and I might say "immodests"), and no landlaws, Irish or English; although, in respect of this last-mentioned instance of blissful ignorance, I fear Kututu may find in Bulonagan her own Irish difficulty.

It has been wisely said, that government by a single individual would be the best form of rule, given talent and integrity, and the perpetuation thereof in the succession. Illustration of this is found and quoted in the only instance of absolutely perfect rule, that of the Deity, "which is sole and unrestricted. "

DEDICATORY PREFACE. XIII

I know that your Majesty believes in this principle of a pure despotism, the weakness of which lies in the impossibility of its perpetuation; for there must be good kings and bad kings, and those monarchs who claim to be most specially selected by the Lord himself are generally least worthy of the confidence of their subjects. Kututu is safe in your hands, but you lament the absence of any possible successor who will carry on your benign and benevolent government. Hence your desire to invite such European intervention as shall keep the country from relapsing into the barbarism that still afflicts the neighbouring islands of the Bulonagans. Forgive me if I question whether a taste for blood is much worse than an inordinate thirst for rum ; you have considered the situation from all sides, and believe in the rule that leans its back against the Bank of England. So be it! I shall do my best to give effect to your opinions and desires.

I remember that in one of our conversations you deplored that custom, and the low state of Kututuan morals, should compel you to own slaves. It was not then within my knowledge that George Washington himself, who founded the American Republic and could not tell a lie, lived and died a slave-owner. Let this fact reconcile you to your position. I do not remember that the Oriental fashion of the harem, which appears to obtain at Kututu, was a subject that you mentioned with regret. Possibly Biblical warrant for the practice had already commended it to your views of paternal government. At the same time I venture to remind your Majesty of a funda-

XIV DEDICATORY PREFACE.

mental law of progress, which permits no systems civil or ecclesiastical to exist, without they move along " with the tide of general improvement. " The authority to whom I am indebted for the phrasing of this sentiment (a very simple philosopher, one William Benton Clulow) also lays stress upon " the firmest supports of princes and statesmen being the general distribution of moderate wealth, and the multiplication of domestic comforts among the members of the community, " and he contends " that it is chiefly this circumstance which has hitherto kept together the heterogeneous materials composing the American population ; as to the same cause may be attributed in no small degree the tranquillity that has so long prevailed in China, containing-, according to the most authentic accounts, about three hundred and sixty millions of inhabitants." It is plain, therefore, that the same measure of material happiness may exist under even a Despotic Monarchy as under a Republic, provided something like a comparative equalisation of property, and other none the less important external advantages, are kept in view.

If your Majesty were posted up to date in the current literature of the time, I suspect 1 should have had to quote the modern philosophers Spencer, Arnold, Mallock, and others. I am thankful it is as it is; otherwise I should also have had to read their books, instead of having merely skimmed them, with the result that I am more than ever content with the smattering of their predecessors which I picked up at Breedon, a district of England that is duly mentioned in the following chapters. I fear I prefer

DEDICATORY PREFACE. XV

Tacitus to Arnold, Voltaire to Spencer, Tom Payne to Mallock, Adam Smith to Mongredien, and the early works of George Eliot to the later essays of Thomas Carlyle; but I must confess to you that I am not an educated man in the academic sense of being educated. I may therefore be glorifying myself in an ignorance of which, under more favourable conditions, I should be ashamed.

I envy your Majesty the delight of making a first acquaintance with some of these authors ; and I am vain enough to believe that you may experience some pleasure in the present work, which will be elevated in the general estimation of the public by the adornment it receives in being dedicated to royalty, and more especially by one who knows what it is to call a king his intimate friend. A learned American traveller long since discovered that emperors and kings, when one is fortunate enough to see them at home, are very much like ordinary people. He found them so pleasant and natural that he never afterwards had any confidence in the " tinsel kings of the theatres. " When they " swaggered round the stage " in jewelled crowns and splendid robes, he felt bound to observe that none of the monarchs with whom he was personally acquainted put on airs or " marched about in crowns and sceptres." I call to mind the natural majesty of your own demeanour when first I saw you. I remember your Majesty's pleasant familiarity at the Cannibal Court of the Kututus ; and I see you now, through the mists of morning, dealing out certain unexhausted resources of civilisation upon the revolted

XVI DEDICATORY PREFACE.

islanders of your gentle suzerainty. On each occasion you proved to me that a king- may have as generous a heart as an uncrowned hero, and that a liberal-minded man sustains no necessary disability, in his capacity for individual friendships, by becoming an emperor.

I wish the work I now invite your Majesty to read were entirely worthy of your attention. It is full of anachronisms and it has many other short-comings. What they are exactly I do not at present know. All England will become acquainted with them, however, when certain critical searchers after error have reported thereon. Similarly, by virtue of sympathies which make the whole world kin, good things, which their author never dreamed of, will also be discovered; and if this literary barque have not to bear more weight of condemnation than such light craft is constructed to carry in the tempestuous seas of Public Opinion, then it shall haply sail into many peaceful ports, proclaiming to the world the hitherto unknown kingdom of Kututu, and adding a new name to the history of monarchs who are celebrated for their courage and magnanimity.

May it please your Majesty to permit me to subscribe myself,

Your Majesty's faithful and humble servant,

Horace Durand.

A MODERN ULYSSES.

Book I

There is no pleasure that I have experie?iced like a child's Midsummer holiday — the time, I ?nean, when two or three, of us used to go away up the brook and take our dinners with us, and come home at night tired, happy, scratched beyond recognition, with a great nosegay, three little trout, and one shoe, the other having been used for a boat till it had, gone down with all hands out of soundings. How poor our Derby days, our Greemvick dinners, our evening parties, where there are plenty of nice girls, after that ! Depend upo?i it, a man never experiences such pleasure or grief after fourteen years as he does before, unless in some cases, in his first love-making, when the sensation is new to him. — Kingsley

B

Chapter I. "and Memory Too With Her Dreams Shall

COME. "

" Is it a true story ? " asked the little fellow, looking up at the Frenchman, who had laid aside his violoncello and was fighting imaginary foes with his bow.

" True ! " said the Frenchman, " every word of it."

" Carky Jones says 'Jack the Giant Killer ' and 'Cinderella' are made up out of somebody's head."

" She is of the earth earthy, " said the Frenchman, " and has not imaginations. "

" I tow'd him they was made up, because he was for starting off hissen and going on his ventures ; he's so fanciful, " said Carky Jones, a stolid Midland Counties domestic.

" I was only wondering what there is at the other end of the long road over the hills yonder," said the boy.

" There is always one long road over the hills of life, " said the Frenchman, " which we wonder about, but it is best to wait till we get there."

" Oh, " said the boy, with a puzzled expression of face, " are those the hills of life, yonder over the river and far away ? "

" No, they are not so steep ; we will cross over those littler Alps one day and see the grand Palace, " said the Frenchman.

" Is the new story about the Palace ? "

" What, the adventures of Ulysses ? No, when you are old enough to read Fenelon you will find that when Ulysses lived there were no statues, no pictures, no painted ceilings, only Nature with her flowers and shells and vines and lovely caves, the one of Calypso for example."

" Like Robinson Crusoe's island ?" asked the boy. " Something of that kind, " answered the Frenchman. "Robinson Crusoe is true?" asked ( the boy, with a certain suggestion of hope and fear in the expression of his voice.

" Just as true as Ulysses. "

A sigh of relief announced the satisfaction which the boy found in this statement.

" And now, Monsieur of Many Questions, shall I go on ? "

" If you please, father, "' said the boy, who was lying upon a rug by the old-fashioned fireplace, his chin resting between his two hands, his black eyes fixed upon the story-teller.

It was a pretty domestic picture, this scene in the early days of Horace Durand, which was the name of the boy who believed in Robinson Crusoe and wondered what there might be beyond the white road, over the hills that shut out from the world the little town where he was born. Let me try and enable the reader to realise it.

An old-fashioned room, wainscoted in oak; a bay window, looking out upon garden, lawn, river, and hills; opposite the bav window an open fireplace, with a low settle or seat, shadowed by an abutting mantelshelf. Doors on both sides of the room. Near the window, a round table. Carky Jones, a ruddy stoutly-built servant, is laying a service of blue and white china upon the round table. Close by, sitting upon a high-backed chair, and with her feet upon a velvet hassock, is a pretty young woman of about three-and-twenty. She is netting with coloured wools. A fair young creature, with brown hair and blue eyes, she is somewhat gaily attired, and wears more jewelry than is in keeping with her quiet artistic surroundings.

MEMORY WITH HER DREAMS SHALL COME. 5

By the fireplace sits a middle-aged gentleman, French in appearance and manner. A spare and somewhat ascetic figure, his features are sharp and pronounced; dark sunken eyes under strongly marked brows, a prominent nose with delicately moulded nostrils, a mouth betokening more refinement than strength of character, a shaven face, iron-grey hair closely cropped. His coat of brown cloth, with bronzed buttons, is high in the collar, cut dress-fashion, and with tight sleeves. He wears a cream-coloured cravat pinned with an antique cameo brooch, and now and then he takes the smallest imaginable pinch of snuff from the smallest imaginable gold snuff-box. By his side is a music-stand, and near it lies a violoncello. In one hand he holds a closed book in a French vellum binding ; and he is conducting, as it were, his conversation with his cello bow. On the floor, upon a thick but well-worn Indian rug, reclines a dark-haired boy of seven, in a marone velvet frock, with an antique lace frill falling around the throat, and giving additional prominence to the tangled dull black hair that partly fringes the boy's swarthy face and falls upon his shoulders ; his legs are bare to the knee, except as regards the covering of a pair of short socks and buckled shoes.

In a recess behind the cello-player is a square piano, -upon which are scattered a few sheets of music, several pencil designs for lace, some watercolour sketches, a newspaper, sundry books, and a handful of neglected laburnums, " Whits un bosses" and lilacs, that betoken a want of love for flowers on the part of the pretty lady sitting by the window.

" At the stern of his solitary ship sat Ulysses, " went on the cello-player, reading from his book, and only betraying his nationality by a slight accent, and the occasional addition of the plural number to nouns singular, " and he steered right artfully. He saw the stars which are called the Pleiade and the Bear, by some called the Wain, that moves about Orion ; he saw the slow-setting- sign, the Bootes, which some call the Waggoner ; and for seventeen days he held his course. The next day the coast of Phceacia was in sight looking like a shield. Neptune saw him, and to revenge him, because Ulysses had blinded his brutal sire, Polyphemus, he raised a mighty storm and wrecked his ship, drowning all but Ulysses, who was saved by swimming with a girdle round him that Ino, a sea-goddess, had sent for his protection. After many perils from blinding surf and rocks that resisted his landing, he was washed ashore at last on the banks of the river that flowed into the sea from the land of King Alcinous, whose daughter found him in his distress, and invited him to her father's palace."

" The one at the end of the white road, over the hills yonder ? " asked the boy, in a low voice, as if unwilling to interrupt the story, but too anxious about what was on the other side of the hills to resist asking the question.

" No, another one more strange, but not so beautiful," was the answer.

" Thank you, father, " said the boy, " go on, please."

" And no one knew him ; but the king showed him great attention, not only because he was god-like in build and graciousness, but also because in those days strangers were honoured, as if they might be angels in disguise, and beggars even were fed and clothed. That was in the time before this town of Scarsdale was, or anything civilised in Britain, where even now they have not yet learnt how to honour the strangers within their gates. But the courtiers falling to converse about Ulysses, and his brave companions who had fallen by the way, he was overcome at the memory of their sufferings.

MEMORY WITH HER DREAMS SHALL COME. 7

His tears betrayed him, and at last, out of gratitude for the kindness of the king, and his daughter the princess, he said, ' O King Alcinous, I will no longer keep you in ignorance of my name and quality : I am Ulysses, that unhappy man whom the heavens and angry gods have conspired to keep an exile on the seas, wandering in search of my home which still flies from me.' All the Court was seized with admiration to behold in their presence one of those heroes who fought at Troy, whose sublime story had been made known to them by songs and tales, which they thought, as Carky Jones thinks about Jack and Cinderella, were made up out of somebody's head, as she says; but seeing- the real Ulysses, who gave them proof of his power by flinging the quoit, and other feats of strength, they now knew that the story of Troy and the mighty horse of Helen and Achilles and the rest was true; so they were all very happy listening to the history of his adventures, and, in the end, they helped him home in their glorious ships, for these Phceacians were the English of the classic world, as far as commanding the ocean is concerned, and the Greeks were the French, my ancestors and yours."

" And my mother's ? " asked the boy, glancing his black eyes towards the pretty woman who had let her netting fall upon her knee, and was apparently gazing at that road over the hills which the boy had so often referred to.

" Your mother is the sweet and gracious link that binds our ancestry of France to her people of England, and gives to you the British heart that is good and true, and with the head that is cool associates a chivalric mind, a taste for art, a noble nature, and the instinct to be a gentleman, such as all the heroes were of whom the great Homer has written. "

" Oh ! " said the boy, puzzled more than he liked to say, lest his father should wander still further from the narrative in hand.

"And Ulysses was always encouraged in his efforts to overcome all things that kept him away from his home with the knowledge that his loving wife and his dear son, his Penelope and Telemachus, his Emily and his Horace, were waiting for him whom they loved so truly, as he them. He did not know how sore beset they were, these two who were all the world to him and he to them, enemies all around them, enemies in his very palace, conspiring against mother and son to afflict her with what is worse than death, and to kill his Horace, who stood fast in defence of the honour of his father. If I your father being away in foreign lands had my good name assailed while my enemies assembled here to be cruel to your mother, you would fight for us, would you not ? "

" Till I died ! " exclaimed the boy, starting to his feet, flinging himself into his father's arms, and bursting into tears.

" Ah ! my son : Courage ! He'las, this is not well. Do not cry. Tout beau. Emily, see, I have made him weep. What shall I do ? Ah, come Horace, you are too tender hearted. Come, come ! Parblcu ! If you cry at this you will never be a man to fight the world. Courage, won eher ! Courage ! "