BOOKS.
PAUL JONES.*
THE reputation which Paul Jones won in his own time, and keeps unto this day, is proof enough that skilful manage- ment may delude even the discriminating eye of posterity. That he was a first-rate captain is beyond dispute ; that he fought, on the few occasions when battle was offered him, with an admirable courage his adversaries were eager to acknow- ledge. But it was due to his temperament that he seemed to his French allies the greatest Admiral that ever trod a quarterdeck ; and he imposed himself so skilfully upon all
men save the stern natives of Massachusetts that he still enjoys the reputation that he ardently wished for himself.
" The hero of the most desperate battles ever fought upon the ocean,"—such is the absurd verdict of a partial critic, and no man ever won so brilliant a reputation with so small a warrant.
But it was not only his talent for self-advertisement that gave Paul Jones the crown of immortality. The contrasts of his career helped to glorify him. Despite his humble birth, his instincts were aristocratic, and though he prattled about the rights of man, because it was the jargon of the time, his real attitude towards the people was an attitude of contempt. Wherefore the lights and shadows of his life are too strong to escape notice, and Paul Jones is celebrated above a vast crowd of better men. Mr. Buell, his last biographer, has so small a sense of humour that he thinks England has been unfair to his hero. He speaks foolishly of " the common English pre- judice against Paul Jones," and a little thought might have convinced him that the prejudice which he denounces is far too rare. The sympathy of his English contemporaries for Paul Jones would have been unmeasured hypocrisy. No doubt he was taken up by Horace Walpole, who would have lionised a cut- throat; no doubt he was received by some leaders of the Whig party. But the English officers who declined to serve with Paul Jones in Russia behaved with a dignity which well became them. For Jones, in spite of his qualities, was a renegade and a buccaneer. He was a Briton fighting against his own country. Wherever he might find England's anemias there he found his own friends, and so flagrant was kris disloyalty that in later years he pleaded guilty to unauthor- ised insolence. No sooner was he in command of a warship than be made straight for Whitehaven, the British port he knew best, because he thought that there he might inflict the heaviest damage. That he failed was not his fault, nor is failure the slightest palliation. And not only did he fight against his own land; he took up arms without cause or reason. He had no grievance against Great Britain; he had no natural love of chimerical freedom. " I am not in arms as an American," he Raid, " I profess myself a citizen of the world." And being a citizen of the world, he aimed merely at military glory. He fought not for a cause nor a country, he fought for fighting's sake, and we should have liked him all the better had he flown the black flag, and plundered whatever craft he met.
For, despite the pious adulation of Mr. Buell, it .is clear that Paul Jones cared little enough for freedom or for the
cant of rafajrette. Principles vierd. nothing' 'all he asked was a command. Of his politiordnitkkuceri timiebnly • Paul Jones, Founder of the American Nary. By Augustus C. Buell. London : egal Paul, 'Trench, and Co. [EN.]
ring true which were inspired by the ardour of the soldier, and the chance of a fight soon flung him off the democrat's perch. The French King and Lafayette had both been his Mends ; yet notwithstanding the advancement they had procured for him, he stood by neither. In 1791 he was pitiless against the people, contemptuous of Lafayette. When the notables were disarmed, "then or never," said Paul
Jones, " was the time for grapeshot For once I wished I might be in command of the thirty cannon that were parked in the courtyard, with trained men standing ready to work them. Some slaughter would have been necessary. But it would have been a slaughter of criminals " We agree with Paul Jones. A strong man in command of the cannon might have averted the Terror. But Paul Jones's sympathy speedily veered round; he knew Robe- spierre,—he the protege of Louis XVI. ; and no sooner did he see the unbutchered criminals in power than he hoped that France "in her struggle for liberty might find use for him."
We shall not, therefore, understand Paul Jones until we have stripped him of all pretension. He was not a patriot, for he fought against his own country ; he was a disloyal friend, for he was prepared to support the enemies of his patron ; he was not a Quixotic politician, " the Chevalier Jones," for Republican principles vanished at the touch of Royalty. No, he was nothing more than a hard fighter, who found a command more easily abroad than at home, and who may be more wisely compared to Teach and Morgan than to Nelson and Collingwood. Born in Kirkcud- bright in 1746, the son of a Scots gardener, he early took to the sea, captained a boat belonging to the Donald Currie of the time, and in 1773 inherited some property and the name of Jones, bequeathed by his brother. He was already master of all the sea-lore that could be acquired in his day, and besides had conquered the French and Spanish tongues. Moreover, he had a natural magnificence of manner which gave him the command of men, and it is small wonder that when the war broke out between England and her American Colonies, Paul Jones should have come to the front. He played his part in the organisation of the American Navy, and though at the outset he was but a Lieutenant, he was speedily put in command, first of the Providence,' and then of the Alfred.' For his colleagues he had but little regard. " Four of them were respectable skippers," said he, " and they all outlived the war." His purpose was always to harass the commerce of his opponents, and a long experience of the merchant service had taught him where lay the vulnerable points of the British dominion. " Jones was not called upon —more is the pity "—says Captain Mahan, "to play a part in the great Navy, but to adapt very limited means to the attain- ment of considerable ends."
However, as he progressed his means increased. Arrived in Europe, he made a rapid attack on our coasts aboard the Ranger.' An attempt to kidnap the Earl of Selkirk, a piece of mere brigandage, failed, but the Ranger' captured the Drake,' and Jones was jubilant. The exploit was not so splendid as Mr. Buell would have us believe ; nor does it prove, as Mr. Buell suggests, that " England and Englishmen could be conquered on the sea." For it was but an episode, and the Captain who is said to have " conquered England and Englishmen" was a Briton who had learned his seaman- ship on English ships. None the less, the capture of the Drake' showed Jones an efficient sailor, and it is no wonder that Captain Pearson of the Semple' cried out to the doctor, when he saw the Bon Homme Richard' appear : " The stranger is probably Paul Jones. If so, there's work ahead." And work ahead there was. For this fight was the great glory of Paul Jones. As he lived in expectation of it, so he survived upon the credit it brought him. From one point of view he lost the battle, since the convoy which the Serapis ' was guarding went safely on its way: But as a piece of hard fighting it was all that a valiant man might desire,—a hand- to-hand battle, such as bruisers love. Jones's tactics were admirable, and seeing that his own ship was like to be destroyed by a superior weight of metal, he instantly closed,
and rendered his enemies' guns of no effect. When the Sempie struck • her• flag; the Bon Homme 'Richard'' was • withta an we 6f sinking, and• timie was some small ' justification for Jones's' bbastfulness. With a• braggart insolence, he afterwards complained that Captain Pearson •
his opponent, had not received a dukedom, and with a mighty flourish he laid a British frigate at the feet of a French Princess. The rest of his life—with an inter- lude of Russian service—was spent in commerce or in the French Court. His hatred of England gave him a position in Paris not unlike the position which lately seemed to be within the reach of President Kruger, and his fine manner vastly improved it. He won the affection of a King's daughter, the accomplished Aim& de Telison, and he died still hoping for a command in the Navy of the Revolution. Whether he would have attained with years a mastery of his art, we may doubt. But he achieved enough for memory, and his manifold accomplish- ments of speech and manner, together with the changes and chances of his life, have crowned him with glory. Yet he does not deserve the unmeasured panegyric of Mr. Buell, whose peevish biography is more likely to irritate the reader than to convince him.
Previous page
