Part 69

Even Mrs. Shelley, a lifelong friend and correspondent, to whom he had often poured out his heart, and whom he had contemplated at one time marrying, could not be spoken of by him after her death but in disparagement and with a revelation to the world of her little weaknesses.

He was in England again in 1835, went into society, and married for the third time, to make another woman miserable. For a number of years he lived at Putney Hill, and then took a farm at Usk, in Monmouthshire, and amused himself with farming.

In or about 1870, Trelawny, then seventy-eight years old, bought a house and a small plot of land at Sompting, near Wortham, and occupied himself with gardening. One day two men with guns in their hands requested permission to enter his grounds after a bird that had taken refuge there. He answered fiercely, "All the leave I will accord you is to shoot one another."

At Sompting, Trelawny died on August 13th, 1881, at the age of eighty-six. In accordance with his wish to be laid beside Shelley, his body was embalmed in England, cremated at Gotha, and the ashes taken to the Protestant burial-ground in Rome, and laid in the tomb he had bought fifty-eight years before, next to those of his friend.

Trelawny was a very handsome man, tall and well built; he had flashing dark eyes under beetling brows, and an aquiline nose, raven-black hair, and a dusky, Spanish complexion. He spoke very loud. He retained his good looks to the end of his days.

Shelley described him in Fragments of an Unfinished Drama:--

He was as is the sun in his fierce youth, As terrible and lovely as a tempest.

In Millais' painting of "The North-West Passage," exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1874, the old sailor is a portrait of Captain Trelawny; and it has been conjectured that Thackeray delineated him as Captain Sumph in Pendennis, I, cap. 35.

The authorities for Trelawny's life are, beside the first part of his Adventures of a Younger Son, his Recollections of Shelley and Byron, 1858; the new edition of the work, published in 1878, was called Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author.

Mr. R. Garnett has a notice of the life of Trelawny prefixed to the edition of the Adventures of a Younger Son of 1890. A lengthy life of Trelawny is in the Dictionary of National Biography. An error in this is pointed out by Mr. T. C. Down in the article on "Pirate Trelawny" already referred to and quoted from.

A pleasant account of "Mr. Trelawny and his Friends" appeared in the Contemporary Review for 1878.

Something further about him may be gleaned from Frances A. Kemble's Records of a Girlhood, 1878, III, 75, 308-12. There are corrections of some of Trelawny's inaccuracies in D. Guido Biagi's The Last Days of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1898.

FOOTNOTE:

See for the above and more on the subject of "Pirate Trelawny" an article by T. C. Down in the Nineteenth Century, May, 1907.

JAMES SILK BUCKINGHAM

Mr. S. C. Hall, writing after the death of J. S. Buckingham, thus expressed his opinion of this truly remarkable man: "Whatever, during his life, envy, jealousy, monopolous interest or satirical hostility may have said to the contrary, there can be little doubt, now he is gone, that the late Mr. James Silk Buckingham was amongst the most useful as well as the most hopeful and industrious men of his time. His career was one remarkable illustration of the well-known line of the old song, 'It's wonderful what we can do if we try'; for at almost every step he took he was met by some disaster or annoyance, yet kept pressing on with the most dauntless persistence, making the best of the worst circumstances, and even when failing in his own personal endeavours, giving such an impulse to the powers of others in whatever cause or course he had engaged, that the end in view was generally attained, and in several notable instances within the period of his own life."

The Buckinghams were a North Devon family, and the grandfather of the subject of this notice had lived in Barnstaple. For several generations they had been connected with the sea. Christopher Buckingham settled at Flushing on a small farm, along with his wife Thomazine, daughter of a Hambley of Bodmin.

James Silk describes his father as wearing a cocked hat, long, square-tailed coat with large pockets and sleeves, square-toed shoes with silver buckles, and as walking abroad carrying a tall, gold-headed cane.

James Silk was born at Flushing on the 25th August, 1786. He had two brothers and a sister. His father died in 1794.

"The port of Falmouth," wrote he in his unfinished memoirs, "being nearest to the entrance of the Channel, there were permanently stationed here two squadrons of frigates, one under the command of Sir Edward Pellew (afterwards Lord Exmouth), the other under the command of Sir John Borlase Warren. The former, as commodore, hoisted his pennant on the Indefatigable, the latter on the Révolutionaire. Each squadron consisted of five frigates of thirty-two and forty-four guns each; and, in addition to these, there were continually arriving and departing from Carrick Roads, the outer anchorage of Falmouth, line-of-battle ships and smaller vessels of war; while the prizes taken from the French were constantly brought into the port for adjudication and sale. There were two large prisons, with open courts, for the reception of the French prisoners thus taken, and every month added many to their inmates.

"Both the naval commodores, as well as such captains of the frigates belonging to the squadrons as were married, had their families residing at Flushing, and the numerous officers of different grades, from the youngest midshipman to the first lieutenant, were continually coming and going to and fro ... so that the little village literally sparkled with gold epaulets and gold-laced hats and brilliant uniforms."

He tells a curious story of his childhood. Corn, owing to the war, had mounted to famine price, and the miners of Cornwall went about in gangs waging war against all forestallers, regraters, and hoarders of grain, and demolishing bakers' shops, mills, and grain stores.

"A body of some three or four hundred of these men entered Flushing, and as they were all dressed in the mud-stained smock frocks and trousers in which they worked underground, all armed with large clubs and sticks of various kinds, and speaking an uncouth jargon, which none but themselves could understand, they struck terror wherever they went. Their numbers were quite equal to the whole adult male population of the little village, so that the men stood aghast, the women retired into their houses, and closed their doors, and the children seemed struck dumb with affright. The moment of their visit, too, was most inopportune, for on that very day a large party of the captains and officers of the packets residing at Flushing were occupied in storing a cargo of grain that had just been discharged from a coasting vessel at the quay, and locking it up in warehouses to secure it from plunder."

At this time it happened that all the ships of war were absent on their cruising grounds. The situation was dangerous, and the men threatened an attack on the warehouses, and were muttering and brandishing their clubs, and falling into ranks, when Captain Kempthorne snatched up little James Silk, then an urchin of six or seven, seated him on a sack of corn, and bade him strike up a hymn.

With his shrill little pipe, he started--

Salvation, O! the joyful sound, 'Tis music to our ears.

Whereupon at once the mob took up the chant, sang the hymn, with their strong masculine lungs; the clubs were let fall, and, the hymn ended, they dispersed harmlessly.

James Silk went to sea in the Lady Harriet, a Government packet. On his third voyage to Lisbon he was captured by a French corvette and assigned to prison at Corunna; he was then about ten years old, and the gaoler's daughter of the same age fell in love with him, and softened the rigour of his captivity by bringing him dainties from her father's table. She tried to induce the boy to elope with her, but James had sufficient English common sense not to accept the offer, and finally he was sent to Lisbon, obliged to tramp the whole way, several hundred miles, barefooted, and begging food and a lodging on his way. At Lisbon he was taken on board the Prince of Wales, and returned to England, where his mother induced him to leave the sea, and provided him with a small stationer's and bookseller's shop on the Fish Strand, Falmouth. His mother died in 1804, and when James Silk was aged only nineteen he married Elizabeth Jennings, a farmer's daughter. He got tired of being a shopkeeper and volunteered on board a man-of-war; but on seeing a seaman flogged round the fleet for mutiny, was so disgusted with the sight that he deserted, and started a bookshop at Plymouth Dock. However one of the trustees of his wife's inheritance had speculated with the money in smuggling ventures and lost all, so that J. S. Buckingham became bankrupt. He went to sea again, and was appointed chief officer on board the Titus, bound for Trinidad, Captain Jennings, perhaps a kinsman of his wife.