Fortunate is the hero who links his name romantically with that of awoman. A tender interest in his fame is assured. Still morefortunate is he if he is able to record his own achievements and giveto them that form and color and importance which they assume in hisown gallant consciousness. Captain John Smith, the first of anhonored name, had this double good fortune.
We are indebted to him for the glowing picture of a knight-errant ofthe sixteenth century, moving with the port of a swash-buckler acrossthe field of vision, wherever cities were to be taken and headscracked in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and, in the language of one ofhis laureates"To see bright honor sparkled all in gore."But we are specially his debtor for adventures on our own continent,narrated with naivete and vigor by a pen as direct and clear-cuttingas the sword with which he shaved off the heads of the Turks, and forone of the few romances that illumine our early history.
Captain John Smith understood his good fortune in being the recorderof his own deeds, and he preceded Lord Beaconsfield (in "Endymion")in his appreciation of the value of the influence of women upon thecareer of a hero. In the dedication of his "General Historie" toFrances, Duchess of Richmond, he says:
"I have deeply hazarded myself in doing and suffering, and why shouldI sticke to hazard my reputation in recording? He that acteth twoparts is the more borne withall if he come short, or fayle in one ofthem. Where shall we looke to finde a Julius Caesar whoseatchievments shine as cleare in his owne Commentaries, as they did inthe field? I confesse, my hand though able to wield a weapon amongthe Barbarous, yet well may tremble in handling a Pen among so manyjudicious; especially when I am so bold as to call so piercing and soglorious an Eye, as your Grace, to view these poore ragged lines.
Yet my comfort is that heretofore honorable and vertuous Ladies, andcomparable but amongst themselves, have offered me rescue andprotection in my greatest dangers: even in forraine parts, I havefelt reliefe from that sex. The beauteous Lady Tragabigzanda, when Iwas a slave to the Turks, did all she could to secure me. When Iovercame the Bashaw of Nalbrits in Tartaria, the charitable LadyCallamata supplyed my necessities. In the utmost of my extremities,that blessed Pokahontas, the great King's daughter of Virginia, oftsaved my life. When I escaped the cruelties of Pirats and mostfurious stormes, a long time alone in a small Boat at Sea, and drivenashore in France, the good Lady Chanoyes bountifully assisted me."It is stated in his "True Travels" that John Smith was born inWilloughby, in Lincolnshire. The year of his birth is not given, butit was probably in 1579, as it appears by the portrait prefixed tothat work that he was aged 37 years in 1616. We are able to add alsothat the rector of the Willoughby Rectory, Alford, finds in theregister an entry of the baptism of John, son of George Smith, underdate of Jan. 9, 1579. His biographers, following his account,represent him as of ancient lineage: "His father actually descendedfrom the ancient Smiths of Crudley in Lancashire, his mother from theRickands at great Heck in Yorkshire;" but the circumstances of hisboyhood would indicate that like many other men who have madethemselves a name, his origin was humble. If it had been otherwisehe would scarcely have been bound as an apprentice, nor had so muchdifficulty in his advancement. But the boy was born with a merrydisposition, and in his earliest years was impatient for adventure.
The desire to rove was doubtless increased by the nature of hisnative shire, which offered every inducement to the lad of spirit toleave it.
Lincolnshire is the most uninteresting part of all England. It isfrequently water-logged till late in the summer: invisible a part ofthe year, when it emerges it is mostly a dreary flat. Willoughby isa considerable village in this shire, situated about three miles anda half southeastward from Alford. It stands just on the edge of thechalk hills whose drives gently slope down to the German Ocean, andthe scenery around offers an unvarying expanse of flats. All thevillages in this part of Lincolnshire exhibit the same character.
The name ends in by, the Danish word for hamlet or small village, andwe can measure the progress of the Danish invasion of England by thenumber of towns which have the terminal by, distinguished from theSaxon thorpe, which generally ends the name of villages in Yorkshire.
The population may be said to be Danish light-haired and blue-eyed.
Such was John Smith. The sea was the natural element of hisneighbors, and John when a boy must have heard many stories of thesea and enticing adventures told by the sturdy mariners who wererecruited from the neighborhood of Willoughby, and whose oars hadoften cloven the Baltic Sea.
Willoughby boasts some antiquity. Its church is a spaciousstructure, with a nave, north and south aisles, and a chancel, and atower at the west end. In the floor is a stone with a Latininscription, in black letter, round the verge, to the memory of oneGilbert West, who died in 1404. The church is dedicated to St.
Helen. In the village the Wesleyan Methodists also have a place ofworship. According to the parliamentary returns of 1825, the parishincluding the hamlet of Sloothby contained 108 houses and 514inhabitants. All the churches in Lincolnshire indicate the existenceof a much larger population who were in the habit of attendingservice than exists at present. Many of these now empty are of sizesufficient to accommodate the entire population of several villages.
Such a one is Willoughby, which unites in its church the adjacentvillage of Sloothby.
The stories of the sailors and the contiguity of the salt water hadmore influence on the boy's mind than the free, schools of Alford andLouth which he attended, and when he was about thirteen he sold hisbooks and satchel and intended to run away to sea: but the death ofhis father stayed him. Both his parents being now dead, he was leftwith, he says, competent means; but his guardians regarding hisestate more than himself, gave him full liberty and no money, so thathe was forced to stay at home.
At the age of fifteen he was bound apprentice to Mr. Thomas S.
Tendall of Lynn. The articles, however, did not bind him very fast,for as his master refused to send him to sea, John took leave of hismaster and did not see him again for eight years. These detailsexhibit in the boy the headstrong independence of the man.
At length he found means to attach himself to a young son of thegreat soldier, Lord Willoughby, who was going into France. Thenarrative is not clear, but it appears that upon reaching Orleans, ina month or so the services of John were found to be of no value, andhe was sent back to his friends, who on his return generously gavehim ten shillings (out of his own estate) to be rid of him. He isnext heard of enjoying his liberty at Paris and making theacquaintance of a Scotchman named David Hume, who used his purse--tenshillings went a long ways in those days--and in return gave himletters of commendation to prefer him to King James. But the boy hada disinclination to go where he was sent. Reaching Rouen, and beingnearly out of money, he dropped down the river to Havre de Grace, andbegan to learn to be a soldier.
Smith says not a word of the great war of the Leaguers and Henry IV.,nor on which side he fought, nor is it probable that he cared. Buthe was doubtless on the side of Henry, as Havre was at this time inpossession of that soldier. Our adventurer not only makes noreference to the great religious war, nor to the League, nor toHenry, but he does not tell who held Paris when he visited it.
Apparently state affairs did not interest him. His reference to a"peace" helps us to fix the date of his first adventure in France.
Henry published the Edict of Nantes at Paris, April 13, 1598, and onthe 2d of May following, concluded the treaty of France with PhilipII. at Vervins, which closed the Spanish pretensions in France. TheDuc de Mercoeur (of whom we shall hear later as Smith's "Duke ofMercury" in Hungary), Duke of Lorraine, was allied with the Guises inthe League, and had the design of holding Bretagne under Spanishprotection. However, fortune was against him and he submitted toHenry in February, 1598, with no good grace. Looking about for anopportunity to distinguish himself, he offered his services to theEmperor Rudolph to fight the Turks, and it is said led an army of hisFrench followers, numbering 15,000, in 1601, to Hungary, to raise thesiege of Coniza, which was beleaguered by Ibrahim Pasha with 60,000men.
Chance of fighting and pay failing in France by reason of the peace,he enrolled himself under the banner of one of the roving andfighting captains of the time, who sold their swords in the bestmarket, and went over into the Low Countries, where he hacked andhewed away at his fellow-men, all in the way of business, for threeor four years. At the end of that time he bethought himself that hehad not delivered his letters to Scotland. He embarked at Aucusanfor Leith, and seems to have been shipwrecked, and detained byillness in the "holy isle" in Northumberland, near Barwick. On hisrecovery he delivered his letters, and received kind treatment fromthe Scots; but as he had no money, which was needed to make his wayas a courtier, he returned to Willoughby.
The family of Smith is so "ancient" that the historians of the countyof Lincoln do not allude to it, and only devote a brief paragraph tothe great John himself. Willoughby must have been a dull place tohim after his adventures, but he says he was glutted with company,and retired into a woody pasture, surrounded by forests, a good waysfrom any town, and there built himself a pavilion of boughs--lesssubstantial than the cabin of Thoreau at Walden Pond--and there heheroically slept in his clothes, studied Machiavelli's "Art of War,"read "Marcus Aurelius," and exercised on his horse with lance andring. This solitary conduct got him the name of a hermit, whose foodwas thought to be more of venison than anything else, but in fact hismen kept him supplied with provisions. When John had indulged inthis ostentatious seclusion for a time, he allowed himself to bedrawn out of it by the charming discourse of a noble Italian namedTheodore Palaloga, who just then was Rider to Henry, Earl of Lincoln,and went to stay with him at Tattershall. This was an ancient town,with a castle, which belonged to the Earls of Lincoln, and wassituated on the River Bane, only fourteen miles from Boston, a namethat at once establishes a connection between Smith's native countyand our own country, for it is nearly as certain that St. Botolphfounded a monastery at Boston, Lincoln, in the year 654, as it isthat he founded a club afterwards in Boston, Massachusetts.
Whatever were the pleasures of Tattershall, they could not longcontent the restless Smith, who soon set out again for theNetherlands in search of adventures.
The life of Smith, as it is related by himself, reads like that of abelligerent tramp, but it was not uncommon in his day, nor is it inours, whenever America produces soldiers of fortune who are ready,for a compensation, to take up the quarrels of Egyptians or Chinese,or go wherever there is fighting and booty. Smith could now handlearms and ride a horse, and longed to go against the Turks, whoseanti-Christian contests filled his soul with lamentations; andbesides he was tired of seeing Christians slaughter each other. Likemost heroes, he had a vivid imagination that made him credulous, andin the Netherlands he fell into the toils of three French gallants,one of whom pretended to be a great lord, attended by his gentlemen,who persuaded him to accompany them to the "Duchess of Mercury,"whose lord was then a general of Rodolphus of Hungary, whose favorthey could command. Embarking with these arrant cheats, the vesselreached the coast of Picardy, where his comrades contrived to takeashore their own baggage and Smith's trunk, containing his money andgoodly apparel, leaving him on board. When the captain, who was inthe plot, was enabled to land Smith the next day, the noble lords haddisappeared with the luggage, and Smith, who had only a single pieceof gold in his pocket, was obliged to sell his cloak to pay hispassage.
Thus stripped, he roamed about Normandy in a forlorn condition,occasionally entertained by honorable persons who had heard of hismisfortunes, and seeking always means of continuing his travels,wandering from port to port on the chance of embarking on a man-of-war. Once he was found in a forest near dead with grief and cold,and rescued by a rich farmer; shortly afterwards, in a grove inBrittany, he chanced upon one of the gallants who had robbed him, andthe two out swords and fell to cutting. Smith had the satisfactionof wounding the rascal, and the inhabitants of a ruined tower nearby, who witnessed the combat, were quite satisfied with the event.
Our hero then sought out the Earl of Ployer, who had been brought upin England during the French wars, by whom he was refurnished betterthan ever. After this streak of luck, he roamed about France,viewing the castles and strongholds, and at length embarked atMarseilles on a ship for Italy. Rough weather coming on, the vesselanchored under the lee of the little isle St. Mary, off Nice, inSavoy.
The passengers on board, among whom were many pilgrims bound forRome, regarded Smith as a Jonah, cursed him for a Huguenot, sworethat his nation were all pirates, railed against Queen Elizabeth, anddeclared that they never should have fair weather so long as he wason board. To end the dispute, they threw him into the sea. But Godgot him ashore on the little island, whose only inhabitants weregoats and a few kine. The next day a couple of trading vesselsanchored near, and he was taken off and so kindly used that hedecided to cast in his fortune with them. Smith's discourse of hisadventures so entertained the master of one of the vessels, who isdescribed as "this noble Britaine, his neighbor, Captaine la Roche,of Saint Malo," that the much-tossed wanderer was accepted as afriend. They sailed to the Gulf of Turin, to Alessandria, where theydischarged freight, then up to Scanderoon, and coasting for some timeamong the Grecian islands, evidently in search of more freight, theyat length came round to Cephalonia, and lay to for some days betwixtthe isle of Corfu and the Cape of Otranto. Here it presentlyappeared what sort of freight the noble Britaine, Captain la Roche,was looking for.
An argosy of Venice hove in sight, and Captaine la Roche desired tospeak to her. The reply was so "untoward" that a man was slain,whereupon the Britaine gave the argosy a broadside, and then hisstem, and then other broadsides. A lively fight ensued, in which theBritaine lost fifteen men, and the argosy twenty, and thensurrendered to save herself from sinking. The noble Britaine andJohn Smith then proceeded to rifle her. He says that "the Silkes,Velvets, Cloth of Gold, and Tissue, Pyasters, Chiqueenes, andSuitanies, which is gold and silver, they unloaded in four-and-twentyhours was wonderful, whereof having sufficient, and tired with toils,they cast her off with her company, with as much good merchandise aswould have freighted another Britaine, that was but two hundredTunnes, she four or five hundred." Smith's share of this booty wasmodest. When the ship returned he was set ashore at "the Road ofAntibo in Piamon," "with five hundred chiqueenes [sequins] and alittle box God sent him worth neere as much more." He alwaysdevoutly acknowledged his dependence upon divine Providence, and tookwillingly what God sent him.