Get Workers and nationalism: Czech and German social democracy in Habsburg Austria, 1890-1918 1st Edition Beneš free all chapters

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 62

Download the full version of the textbook now at textbookfull.

com

Workers and nationalism: Czech and German


social democracy in Habsburg Austria,
1890-1918 1st Edition Beneš

https://textbookfull.com/product/workers-and-
nationalism-czech-and-german-social-democracy-in-
habsburg-austria-1890-1918-1st-edition-benes/

Explore and download more textbook at https://textbookfull.com


Recommended digital products (PDF, EPUB, MOBI) that
you can download immediately if you are interested.

The Petrograd Workers in the Russian Revolution: February


1917-June 1918 David Mandel

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-petrograd-workers-in-the-russian-
revolution-february-1917-june-1918-david-mandel/

textbookfull.com

Biota Grow 2C gather 2C cook Loucas

https://textbookfull.com/product/biota-grow-2c-gather-2c-cook-loucas/

textbookfull.com

Jewish Encounters with Buddhism in German Culture: Between


Moses and Buddha, 1890–1940 Sebastian Musch

https://textbookfull.com/product/jewish-encounters-with-buddhism-in-
german-culture-between-moses-and-buddha-1890-1940-sebastian-musch/

textbookfull.com

Antifungal therapy Second Edition Ghannoum

https://textbookfull.com/product/antifungal-therapy-second-edition-
ghannoum/

textbookfull.com
Brain Source Localization Using EEG Signal Analysis 1st
Edition Munsif Ali Jatoi

https://textbookfull.com/product/brain-source-localization-using-eeg-
signal-analysis-1st-edition-munsif-ali-jatoi/

textbookfull.com

Engineering Trustworthy Software Systems: 5th


International School, SETSS 2019, Chongqing, China, April
21–27, 2019, Tutorial Lectures Jonathan P. Bowen
https://textbookfull.com/product/engineering-trustworthy-software-
systems-5th-international-school-setss-2019-chongqing-china-
april-21-27-2019-tutorial-lectures-jonathan-p-bowen/
textbookfull.com

Wearable Technology for Robotic Manipulation and Learning


Bin Fang

https://textbookfull.com/product/wearable-technology-for-robotic-
manipulation-and-learning-bin-fang/

textbookfull.com

The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays Margaret


Watkins

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-philosophical-progress-of-humes-
essays-margaret-watkins/

textbookfull.com

Pericyte Biology in Disease Alexander Birbrair

https://textbookfull.com/product/pericyte-biology-in-disease-
alexander-birbrair/

textbookfull.com
Trauma Care Pre-Hospital Manual Ian Greaves

https://textbookfull.com/product/trauma-care-pre-hospital-manual-ian-
greaves/

textbookfull.com
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi

WO R K E R S A N D N AT I O N A L I S M
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi

Workers and
Nationalism
Czech and German Social Democracy
in Habsburg Austria, 1890–1918

JAKUB S. BENEŠ

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi

3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Jakub S. Beneš 2017
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2017
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016942491
ISBN 978–0–19–878929–1
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi

To the memory of my grandparents—Beneš, Houdek, Polívka, Tůma


OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi

Acknowledgments

This book project began to take shape soon after I decided to become a professional
historian—an arduous, deeply rewarding, and often unpredictable path to take.
From the outset, I could not have had a better PhD supervisor and mentor than
William Hagen. Uncommonly generous with his time, always both critical and
encouraging, patient and judicious, Bill has consistently pushed me to see the big
picture, and at the same time to enter the life worlds of my subjects with humility
and sympathy. His support has helped sustain this project from the beginning.
I also benefited immensely from having Edward Dickinson and Ted Margadant on
my dissertation committee. Ed and Ted asked tough questions that have in many
ways guided me as I moved forward on the project after taking my degree, and
encouraged me to think of this story as a European one, not just a Czech and
German one.
I have incurred debts to a number of people during the research for this book.
I am grateful to Luboš Velek for his advice on sources and for recklessly approach-
ing me in the Chodovec reading room one summer afternoon in 2008. As I wiled
through the seasons in archives in Prague, Vienna, and Brno, struggling to hear the
voices of the workers who trod the thoroughfares outside a century before, many
archivists assisted me. I am particularly thankful to the staff of the Czech National
Archives, to Günter Müller, curator of the Lebensgeschichtesammlung at the
University of Vienna’s Institute of Social and Economic History, and to Katarzyna
Ewa Lassnig at the Association for Labor Movement History in Vienna. I got my
bearings in Prague thanks to my relatives, the Brejcha family, and in Vienna to the
Valeš family and Honza Vykoukal. Finding a comfortable place to live can, indeed,
facilitate more focused work. In addition, I am very appreciative of the generous
support that I received from several funding bodies, without which this project
would never have gotten off the ground: the American Council of Learned
Societies, the Central European History Society, and the UC Berkeley Institute for
European Studies.
This book benefited incalculably from lively discussions in diverse settings—
seminar rooms, conference panels, pizza joints in Davis and Berkeley, cafés and
beer halls in central Europe, and curry houses and pubs in Britain. My interloc-
utors over the past years are too numerous to list in full. I would like to thank
the participants of the Kroužek at UC Berkeley and to my year cohort at UC
Davis that met on Thursday evenings in autumn 2006 to talk theory and meth-
ods, often continuing our discussions for long hours—particularly Chad
Anderson and myself—after the seminar finished. Their thoughts and feedback
have been indispensable. A few Kroužek comrades have been part of my life on
both continents and have helped me think through the knottiest questions that
cropped up in my research and writing. My thanks to John Connelly, Sarah
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi

viii Acknowledgments

Cramsey, Mark Keck-Szajbel, and especially Michael Dean. In the UK, I have
been very fortunate to discuss my work with Jonathan Kwan, Jonathan Gumz,
and Klaus Richter.
I am also deeply indebted to those selfless colleagues who read parts or all of the
manuscript, saving me from mistakes, and at the same time giving brilliant advice:
Geoff Eley and Rudolf Kučera in particular, as well as Dick Geary and Stefan
Arvidsson. I would also like to thank the assiduous and constructive reviewers for
Oxford University Press who subsequently, in various ways, revealed their identi-
ties—Chad Bryant, Pieter Judson, and Nancy Wingfield. Their incisive comments
made my arguments more convincing and my writing clearer. The support of my
editor at Oxford University Press, Robert Faber, along with his diligent staff, has
made the production phase as smooth and enjoyable as possible.
Finally, I owe the greatest debt to my family. A constant source of support and
inspiration, I could not have done it without them. With affection I thank my
siblings Era and Martin and my parents, Jan and Vera, as well as—not least—our
stouthearted Airedale terrier Nestor, who almost lived to see the manuscript com-
pleted. And maybe most of all to you, Maja: you have been there the whole time.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi

Contents

List of Illustrations xi
List of Maps xiii
A Note on Names xv

Introduction: Socialism, Nationalism, and Democracy 1

1. Narrating Socialism in Habsburg Austria 18


Building a Poetic Organization 22
The Path of Christ 44

2. Exclusion from the Nation 53


Social Exclusion in Space 56
Everyday Ethnicity and Workers’ Internationalism 58
Exclusion from the Ranks of the Staatsvolk67
Exclusion from the Unified Národ75
1897 and Beyond 87

3. Storms of November 99
Suffrage as Revolutionary Utopia 101
The Argument of the Streets 115
Seizing the Nation 131
Coda: May 1907 139

4. Socialist Hussites, Marxist Wagnerians 143


The Most National Party 145
Genuine Schillerfeste151
Edifying Working-Class Nations 158
Returns to Lipany 162
Völkisch Visions and Rising Resentment 169

5. The Logics of Separatism 173


A Nation on the Advance 176
Working Apart 186
Learning Apart 193
The Vices of Large Nations 201
Class Ethos Remains 209
Visit https://textbookfull.com
now to explore a rich
collection of eBooks, textbook
and enjoy exciting offers!
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi

x Contents

6. War and Revolution 212


War Performance and the Working Class 214
Weathering the Storm: The Social Democratic Leadership 219
Socialist Workers Make Sense of the Cataclysm 229

Conclusion: Ideology and Utopia 239

Works Cited 245


Index 263
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi

List of Illustrations

1.1. František Cajthaml-Liberté 19


1.2. Marie Majerová 33
1.3. František Soukup 42
1.4. Franz Schuhmeier 43
2.1. A cartoon from the 1908 Czech worker calendar 79
3.1. An illustration from the 1906 Czech May Day pamphlet 111
3.2. An illustration from the 1907 Austrian-German May Day pamphlet 112
3.3. A full-page insert in the 1907 Austrian-German May Day pamphlet 113
3.4. A workers’ agitation poster from Brno, November 1905 114
3.5. A workers’ effigy of Minister-President Paul Gautsch from Brno,
November 1905 121
3.6. Demonstrators before the parliament building in Vienna in 1905 127
3.7. Social Democratic leaders approach the entrance to parliament,
November 28, 1905 128
3.8. A memorial poem to the Prague glassworker Jan Hubač 136
4.1. Engelbert Pernerstorfer 152
5.1. An illustration from the 1904 Austrian German worker calendar 206
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi

List of Maps

3.1. The route taken by demonstrators in Vienna on the evening of November


2, 1905 117
3.2. The route taken by demonstrators in Prague on the evening of November
4, 1905 119
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi

A Note on Names

Wherever possible, I have used the English name for a city (Prague, Vienna,
Cracow) or a local name that is familiar enough in English usage, for example
Brno, Klagenfurt, Pilsen, and Ostrava as opposed to Brünn, Celovec, Plzeň, or
Mährisch Ostrau/Ostrawa. In the case of multiethnic towns for which no famil-
iar English name exists, I have generally given multiple names, beginning with
the name assigned by the country in which it is found today; thus: České
Budějovice/Budweis, Liberec/Reichenberg, and Eisenkappel/Železna Kapla.
I have used only one name in cases where only one was in common usage, for
instance Kladno and Hainfeld, and in most cases where the difference was negli-
gible, such as Kolín (vs Kolin). I generally use the terms “Social Democrat”
(­capitalized to denote the official party name) and “socialist” interchangeably,
even though the Czech National Socials sometimes referred to themselves as
socialists as well, as did—more justifiably—the anarchists who constituted a tiny,
if not insignificant group in Habsburg Austria after their heyday in the 1880s.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/10/16, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/10/16, SPi

Introduction
Socialism, Nationalism, and Democracy

In his magnum opus on Social Democracy and the “nationalities question,”


­completed in 1907 when he was just twenty-six, Otto Bauer asserted that, “draw-
ing the people as a whole into the national community of culture, achieving full
self-determination by the nation, growing intellectual differentiation between the
nations—this is what socialism means.”1 In this statement, Bauer encapsulated the
novel Austro-Marxist response to the question of the proper relationship between
ethnically defined nations and the political organization of power. This was a vexed
matter in much of Europe in the nineteenth century (as it is in much of the world
today) because ethnic-cultural boundaries did not align with political boundaries.
Orthodox Marxists such as Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky had generally
deflected the question, instead predicting the eventual melting “into thin air” of
previously solid national differences under the capitalist mode of production.2
What mattered to them was the consolidation of sufficiently large and modern
states to support a dynamic bourgeoisie and, in turn, a revolutionary proletariat.
Nationalism was a mere expedient in this consolidation process, and a transient
one at that. Bauer, in contrast, viewed nations as an ineradicable dimension of
human society and culture. The mission of the socialist working classes was to
reconstitute national communities on a democratic basis in order to emancipate all
of society. As he wrote in the preface to the second edition, “the workers’ move-
ment is itself one of the most powerful levers of the expansion of the national
community of culture and the inclusion of the popular masses within it.” In the
intellectual climate of early twentieth-century socialism, such views were radical
and demanded a response from all Marxist thinkers grappling with nationalism. At
Vladimir Lenin’s behest, a young Joseph Stalin traveled in 1912 to Vienna to study
Bauer’s views. Although Stalin’s 1913 treatise refuted Bauer, Soviet nationality
­policy would later reflect some of Bauer’s basic principles.3

1 Otto Bauer, The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy, trans. Joseph O’Donnell
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 98. This was a reworking of his recently com-
pleted doctoral thesis in jurisprudence at the University of Vienna. On Bauer’s biography see, Ernst
Hanisch, Der große Illusionist: Otto Bauer (1881–1938) (Vienna: Böhlau, 2011).
2 Hans Mommsen, “Otto Bauer, Karl Renner und die sozialdemokratische Nationalpolitik in
Österreich von 1905 bis 1914,” in Keith Hitchins, ed., Studies in East European Social History, Vol. 1
(Leiden: Brill, 1977).
3 Joseph Stalin, Marxism and the National Question 1913 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub.
House, 1947); Helmut Konrad, “Sozialdemokratische und kommunistische Lösungsansätze zur
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/10/16, SPi

2 Workers and Nationalism

This book is not about Marxist theories of nationalism, but rather about how
the workers that made up one of Europe’s largest Social Democratic movements
came to embrace nationalism. It is about the historical context that persuaded
Bauer of the meaningfulness of nations and national consciousness to the indus-
trial working classes. Electoral democratization was critical this context. On May
14 and 23, 1907, shortly before Bauer’s book came out, the first elections were
held on the basis of universal, equal, direct, and secret male suffrage to the parlia-
ment of the Austrian half of the Habsburg Monarchy. The elections resulted in an
immense victory for the Social Democratic party, the only political movement
cutting across ethnic-national boundaries in a political culture increasingly riven
by intransigent nationalism. Austria’s Czech- and German-speakers predominated
in the movement since they inhabited the regions of the monarchy that had expe-
rienced rapid industrialization since the 1860s. Of the eighty-seven parliamentary
seats won by Social Democracy, fifty fell to Austria German candidates and twenty-­
four to Czechs.4 Winning nearly 23 percent of the popular vote in a state that
remained mostly agrarian up to its demise in 1918, and emerging as the largest
single party in parliament (though an alliance between Christian Socials and
German clerical parties overtook them numerically), Social Democrats viewed the
1907 elections as an epochal breakthrough.
Bauer recognized that many in his party also perceived the victory in distinctly
national terms. The May 15 headline of the Prague socialist daily Právo lidu (The
People’s Right) read “The nation—that’s us!”5 In addition to apparently paving the
way for far-reaching social reform, the clear majorities of Czech- and German-
speaking voters that turned out for Social Democracy seemed to fill with socialist
content the national categories into which many contemporaries divided Austrian
society. To socialists, this was a profound vindication of their policies against the
attacks of middle-class nationalist parties, which had interpreted their internation-
alism either as a sign that they had no nation—captured in the succinct Reich
German epithet “fellows without a fatherland”—or that they had betrayed the
nation. Instead, socialists could now feel that they were the rightful leaders of their
respective nations.
Yet the progressive potential that Bauer attached to this democratic moment
was lost in subsequent years. Czech and German Social Democrats clashed over
national autonomy in political and trade union organizations, as well as over issues
that middle-class nationalist politicians in the Habsburg Monarchy had long
­championed: bilingual signs, the national composition of the state civil service, and
national minority school rights in nationally mixed locales. Disputes came to a head
in 1911 with the autonomist Czech party cutting all organizational ties with the

nationalen Frage in Ost- und Mitteleuropa,” in Helmut Konrad, ed., Arbeiterbewegung und Nationale
Frage in den Nachfolgestaaten der Habsburgermonarchie (Vienna: Europa-Verlag, 1993); Yuri Slezkine,
“The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,”
Slavic Review 53, no. 2 (Summer 1994), 414–52; Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth
Century (New York: Vintage, 1998), 49–50.
4 The remainder went to Polish, Ruthenian, and Italian candidates.
5 “Národ—to jsme my!” Právo lidu, May 15, 1907, 1.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/10/16, SPi

Introduction: Socialism, Nationalism, and Democracy 3

­ erman-dominated “all-Austrian” party. That year, Czech and German socialist


G
candidates stood against each other in parliamentary elections in a number of dis-
tricts. The power of the still-massive Social Democratic parliamentary bloc evapo-
rated. In the view of Bauer and Karl Renner, another keen Austro-Marxist observer,
this was the result of incomplete democratization in representative bodies—below
the “people’s parliament,” voting in communal, municipal, district and crownland/
provincial bodies remained the exclusive preserve of the propertied bourgeoisie and
aristocracy. They also blamed insufficient legal recognition and protection of nation-
alities as collectives, which forced them into a destructive competition for state
resources. Their prescriptions for reforming Austria-Hungary, which would have
given nationalities cultural autonomy while maintaining a supranational state
administration in matters of political economy, were never implemented. But one
may question the extent to which discrete national collectives could be successfully
identified, delimited from each other, and equitably administered.
More importantly, it seemed that nationalist conviction extended beyond Social
Democratic party leaders, some of whom hailed from the middle and lower middle
classes, to the hundreds of thousands of socialist-inclined industrial workers.
A majority of these workers were not dues-paying party members. The 1911
­parliamentary elections presented Czech voters with a clear choice between the
autonomist party arguing for separation from their erstwhile German comrades and
a “centralist” Czech party pleading for reconciliation in the name of international-
ism. The autonomists won 96 percent (350,000) of the Czech Social Democratic
vote, while centralists won only 11 percent (14,000).6 Moreover, the ethnic-­national
splitting of trade unions, a highly risky move in Austria-Hungary’s mixed national-
ity industrial centers, advanced at the grass-roots level as much as among the organ-
izational elite. Divisive nationalism in such contexts was less ­evident in demagogic
rhetoric, zero-sum scenarios of national power, or ethnic violence as it was in the
simple proposition that workers of differing nationalities did not belong together
while they pursued a better, socially just future. Workers seemed to feel no height-
ened affinity with their co-nationals among the middle classes and ­aristocracy and
even continued to regard workers of other nationalities as natural allies, even if they
proceeded separately. Working-class nationalism thus differed essentially from the
middle-class variants that were noisiest in late Habsburg Austrian politics.
What sort of nationalism was this? In the first place, it was rooted in an ethnic
conception of nationhood, or the idea that national communities are based on inher-
ited traits, language, and culture above all. It was not a voluntarist “civic” nationalism
based on political consensus between free individuals, although it is doubtful whether
a civic nation can exist without some preexisting cultural or linguistic ties between
its potential members.7 Second, it was a democratic form of nationalism directed
against the privileges of social elites. “The people” was not the undifferentiated mass

6 Jan Galandauer, Od Hainfeldu ke vzniku KSČ: české dělnické hnutí v letech 1889–1921 (Prague:
Academia, 1986), 37.
7 Bernard Yack, “The Myth of the Civic Nation,” Critical Review 10, no. 2 (1996): 193–211; Erica
Benner, “Nationalism: Intellectual Origins,” in John Breuilly, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the History
of Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 37–42.
Visit https://textbookfull.com
now to explore a rich
collection of eBooks, textbook
and enjoy exciting offers!
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/10/16, SPi

4 Workers and Nationalism

envisaged by the nineteenth-century romantic Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini.


The nationalism of socialist workers in Austria located virtue and national authenti-
city specifically in the working classes, though it could (and did) produce resentment
of workers from other nationalities. For these reasons it may be best described as left
populist nationalism. Populism is often associated with right-wing politics, but it
need not be; in the United States during the Progressive Era, labor and socialist
movements relied heavily on populist sentiment.8 Left populist nationalism devel-
oped in a period of democratization in European politics. Socialists everywhere led
the campaign for widening participation in politics at least in part because, as the
French socialist Jules Guesde noted in 1906, universal suffrage gave workers the
opportunity to make the nation their nation.9 Democratization provided the back-
drop for merging internationalist socialism with nationalism.
At the center of this story, then, was the 1905–7 culmination of the campaign
for universal suffrage in Habsburg Austria, and particularly the November 1905
demonstrations that were powered by grass-roots radicalism. Especially for Czech
Social Democrats, November 1905 was an event that transformed the structures of
working-class politics in Habsburg Austria, not least for the national meaning
assigned to it.10 The unprecedented size of the demonstrations, the radical rhetoric
suffusing them, the symbolic or real violence accompanying them, the sense of
emerging victorious in a contest with other movements for political influence, and
the framing of this victory in redemptive and national terms all contributed to the
immense impact of that month. Important preconditions for such a rupture
included the urban geographies of labor activism and patterns of working-class
socialization, embedded as they were in “zones of contact” between classes, but also
in zones of exclusion and marginalization on the expanding fringes of the Habsburg
Monarchy’s biggest industrial centers.11 Focusing on this democratizing moment
demonstrates that, for the majority of socialist-inclined workers, commitment to
the ethnic nation was a contingent event—“something that suddenly crystallizes
rather than gradually develops,” as historical sociologist Rogers Brubaker has
described it.12 An eventful understanding of nationalism allows us to grasp its
appeal for the popular classes, whose political engagement often appears to be
fleeting and intermittent, yet can be consequential. In contrast, the gradualist
account of national consciousness accreting alongside various processes of mod-
ernization seems ill-equipped to fully explain this case.13

8 Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History (New York: Basic Books, 1995),
­3–5, ch. 6.
9 John Schwarzmantel, “Nationalism and Socialist Internationalism,” in Breuilly, ed., The Oxford
Handbook of the History of Nationalism, 641.
10 On events and structures, see William H. Sewell Jr, Logics of History: Social Theory and Social
Transformation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 100, 227–9.
11 On “zones of contact”, see Lukáš Fasora, Dělník a měšťan: vývoj jejich vzájemných vztahů na
příkladu šesti moravských měst 1870–1914 (Brno: Centrum pro studium demokracie a kultury, 2010).
12 Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 19.
13 The following works see nationalism’s rise as a more or less gradual process accompanying mod-
ernization: Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis
of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations (Cambridge:
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/10/16, SPi

Introduction: Socialism, Nationalism, and Democracy 5

Populist dispositions were rooted in popular culture. Following Peter Burke,


popular culture can be defined, “in a negative way as unofficial culture, the culture
of the non-elite, the ‘subordinate classes’ as [Antonio] Gramsci called them,” which
nonetheless involves the appropriation of elements and objects from the elite, offi-
cial culture and the imposition of new meanings on them.14 Such appropriative
practices do not necessarily have political content, but in the context of the late
nineteenth-century movement aimed at workers’ emancipation, they usually
became political. Of central importance were the self-fashioning, self-legitimizing
stories through which workers construed their experience and, increasingly, their
political engagement. Scholars have shown that the urge to order past experience
into a meaningful teleological narrative featured prominently among nine-
teenth-century nationalist historians and writers.15 Postmodern and poststructur-
alist critics warn that the writing of history may never be innocent of such
tendencies, often by virtue of the formal conventions of prose writing.16 Yet the
politically charged interpretation of events and experience through powerful nar-
ratives is not the exclusive preserve of elite intellectuals. The success of popular
social movements can hinge on their ability to articulate stories that organize expe-
rience and aspirations into past beginnings, a transitional present, and a fulfilling
future end.17 They also provide a symbolic vocabulary for interpreting events and
personal experiences.18 As will be seen, the dispositions of ordinary participants
can matter a great deal in shaping the culture of a movement. Scenarios of suffer-
ing and redemption anchored in nineteenth-century popular Catholicism suffused
Austrian workers’ movement culture by way of printed fictional texts, rousing

Cambridge University Press, 1985); John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1982); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1983); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of
Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991); and, synthesizing much of these arguments, Eric J.
Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990).
14 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, Revised Ed. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1994),
xi, xx–xxi.
15 Homi K. Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), introduction; Alfrun
Kliems, Martina Winkler, eds., Sinnstiftung durch Narration in Ost-Mittel-Europa: Geschichte—
Literatur—Film (Berlin: Akademische Verlagsanstalt, 2005), especially Martina Winkler, “Clios Art
zu dichten: Erzählkonventionen in Nationalhistorien”; Stefan Berger, Linas Eriksonas, Andrew
Mycock, eds., Narrating the Nation. Representations in History, Media and the Arts (New York:
Berghahn, 2008); Monika Baár, Historians and Nationalism: East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth
Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); David L. Cooper, Creating the Nation: Identity and
Aesthetics in Early Nineteenth-century Russia and Bohemia (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University
Press, 2010).
16 Hayden White offered the pioneering and perhaps most sophisticated version of this argument:
Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1973), The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). In the latter volume White states, “narrative, far from
being merely a form of discourse that can be filled with different contents, real or imaginary as the case
may be, already possesses a content prior to any given actualization of it in speech or writing.” (p. xi).
17 Hank Johnston, ed., Culture, Social Movements, and Protest (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 13–14.
See especially Francesca Polletta, “Storytelling in Social Movements” in this volume.
18 Stephen Ingle, Narratives of British Socialism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 15,
141–2.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/10/16, SPi

6 Workers and Nationalism

o­ rations, and well-publicized personal recollections. These media constituted an


important and understudied realm of political activism.
Emphasizing the importance of such scenarios in the Austrian workers’ move-
ment elaborates on Wolfgang Maderthaner’s claim that Austrian Social Democracy
in the years of the monarchy aimed not just at a rationalistic “revolutionizing of
minds” (Revolutionisierung der Gehirne), as the famous phrase went, but also at an
“emotive and emotional binding of the broad masses to the movement” to counter
the social fragmentation that seemed to accompany industrial modernity.19 It was
this mission and the related yearning for social justice that attracted Bauer to
socialism in the first place.20 The aestheticization of politics in the sense of a
­collective Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art)—in Richard Wagner’s parlance,
­civilizational critique rooted in an undogmatic and unorthodox Marxism, a ritual-
ized canon of celebrations and commemorations, and an emotion-laden “poetic
­politics”—to use William McGrath’s term—all defined the Austrian party in the
years 1890–1918.21 The foregoing pages suggest that this poetic politics drew
much strength from the religious background of many socialist recruits. And cru-
cially, the ability of poetic politics to conjure national symbols and icons in a dis-
tinctly working-class register contributed to the self-righteous nationalist meaning
that socialists found in their actions. It is difficult to grasp the epochal significance
of the 1905 mobilizations for its participants without recognizing the emotive,
quasi-religious power of the stories into which they were placed.22
The approach this book takes to the problem of workers and nationalism in
Habsburg Austria differs from that taken by much existing scholarship on the
subject. The idea of the nation came to possess genuine appeal for a majority of
Czech- and German-speaking workers, but to understand how it became so attract-
ive we must probe deeper into the evolving culture of the socialist movement
than historians of Austrian Social Democracy have generally done. High political
debates at party congresses and on the floor of parliament, treatises published by
socialist intellectuals, and programmatic statements of party policy are less useful
in this respect than song, poetry, and fiction composed by autodidact workers’
activists, memoirs, and diaries of ordinary workers and low-level functionaries, and

19 Wolfgang Maderthaner, “Die Entstehung einer demokratischen Massenpartei: sozialdemokra-


tische Organisation von 1889 bis 1918,” in Wolfgang Maderthaner, Wolfgang C. Müller, eds., Die
Organisation der österreichischen Sozialdemokratie 1889–1995 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1996), 28.
20 Hanisch, Der große Illusionist, 12.
21 William J. McGrath, Dionysian Art and Populist Politics in Austria (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1974), particularly Pt. III, “In Search of a Poetic Politics”; Wolfgang Maderthaner, “Politik als
Kunst: Viktor Adler, die Wiener Moderne und das Konzept einer poetischen Politik,” in Jürgen Nautz,
Richard Vahrenkampf, eds., Die Wiener Jahrhundertwende: Einflüsse, Umwelt, Wirkungen (Vienna:
Böhlau, 1993); “Victor Adler und die Politik der Symbole. Zum Entwurf einer ‘poetischen Politik,’ ”
in Norbert Leser, Manfred Wagner, eds., Österreichs politische Symbole (Vienna: Böhlau, 1994);
“Austro-Marxism: Mass Culture and Anticipatory Socialism,” in Judith Beniston, Robert Vilain, eds.,
Culture and Politics in Red Vienna (London: Maney Publishing, 2006).
22 A power that some scholars see as central to the psychological appeal of the national idea itself.
See Patrick Colm Hogan, Understanding Nationalism: On Narrative, Cognitive Science, and Identity
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2009); Anthony D. Smith, Chosen Peoples (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/10/16, SPi

Introduction: Socialism, Nationalism, and Democracy 7

the often rousing orations heard in socialist pubs, meeting halls, and in the streets.
Records of such expression, which figure prominently here, alongside more famil-
iar sources, appeared only exceptionally in previous works that explored the
social-economic preconditions of nationalist conflict or probed the nationalist
convictions of various high-ranking socialist leaders.
Hans Mommsen’s 1963 study, for instance, which remains unsurpassed in its
breadth, underscored economic competition among the rising national bourgeoi-
sies; the non-German middle classes were particularly resentful of the dominance
of German and German-Jewish capital. He made much of coinciding national
and class tensions in some industrial centers, which pitted workers of one nation-
ality against employers of another. Friction also occurred during the in-migration
of unorganized workers of one nationality to an industrial area populated by
organized workers of another nationality, with the former subjecting the latter to
wage pressure as potential strikebreakers.23 In the 1870s and 1880s, the early
workers’ movement, in spite of these unfavorable social conditions, gravitated
toward an economically grounded internationalism. But from the 1890s, Social
Democracy’s organizational growth led, in Mommsen’s account, to the rising
influence of petty bourgeois elements, especially in the Czech party, which
embroiled the party in prestige-driven nationalist competition.24 Most social his-
torians studying Habsburg Austrian Social Democracy followed his methodology,
combining an emphasis on social-economic structures with an analysis of organ-
izational disputes among party and trade union leaders.25 The main lesson for
Marxian scholars from the 1960s to the 1980s was that Austria-Hungary’s eco-
nomic backwardness made destructive petty bourgeois nationalism into an irre-
sistible force that possessed “mass psychological” allure for the working classes.26
A number of worthy Czech studies written during the Communist era counter-
balanced Mommsen’s judgment that nationalism affected the empire’s Slavic
workers more than the G ­ erman-speaking ones, but did not present a substantially
different approach.27 In all these accounts, organizational disputes exacerbated

23 Hans Mommsen, Die Sozialdemokratie und die Nationalitätenfrage im Habsburgischen


Vielvölkerstaat: das Ringen um die supranationale Integration der zisleithanischen Arbeiterbewegung
(1867–1907) (Vienna: Europa-Verlag, 1963), 18–29.
24 Mommsen, Die Sozialdemokratie, 169–70, 407, 412–13.
25 Helmut Konrad identified this as a weakness of the literature in Nationalismus und
Internationalismus: die österreichische Arbeiterbewegung vor dem ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna: Europa-Verlag,
1976), 1–5. Compare Geoff Eley, “Review: Nationalism and Social History,” Social History 6, no. 1
(Jan. 1981): 87–107. Konrad was mostly interested in intellectual history, as was Raimund Löw in Der
Zerfall der “Kleinen Internationale”: Nationalitätenkonflikte in der Arbeiterbewegung des alten Österreich
(1889–1914) (Vienna: Europa-Verlag, 1984); “Der Zerfall der ‘kleinen International,’ ” in Wolfgang
Maderthaner, ed., Arbeiterbewegung in Österreich und Ungarn bis 1914 (Vienna: Europa-Verlag, 1986).
26 Mommsen, Die Sozialdemokratie, 10, 412–13.
27 Zdeněk Šolle, Socialistické dělnické hnutí a česká otázka 1848–1918 (Prague: Academia, 1969); Jiří
Kořalka, Severočeští socialisté v čele dělnického hnutí českých a rakouských zemí (Liberec: Severočeské krajské
nakladatelství, 1963); “Arbeiteremanzipation und Bildung in einer aufsteigenden Nationalgesellschaft:
das Beispiel Böhmens,” in Jürgen Kocka, ed., Arbeiter und Bürger im 19. Jahrhundert: Varianten ihres
Verhältnisses im europäischen Vergleich (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1986); Jan Galandauer, Bohumír Šmeral
1880–1914 (Prague: Academia, 1981); Od Hainfeldu. See also Jacques D. Rupnik, “The Czech Socialists
and the Nation (1848–1918),” in Eric Cahm, Vladimir Fišera, eds., Socialism and Nationalism in
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 07/10/16, SPi

8 Workers and Nationalism

deleterious bourgeois influence on key socialist leaders, who were responsible for
activating nationalist sentiment among the working masses. Ordinary workers’
attraction to the national idea was largely taken for granted but rarely explained.
The virtual absence of cultural history in previous works on nationalism and
socialism in Habsburg Austria made it exceedingly difficult to do this. While
authors on the subject agreed that the reverberations of the first Russian Revolution
in 1905 and 1906 along with the first elections based on universal male suffrage
in 1907 heightened the nationalism of industrial workers, they could not con-
vincingly say why this was the case.28
This book offers a much more culturalist answer to the question of how workers
in an immense and dynamic Social Democratic movement became ethnic nation-
alists. In doing so, it builds on two major recent historiographical trends in the
history of east central Europe. One has witnessed the rediscovery of the working
class as an important site of historical experience and political mobilization. In part
this has flowed from a reconceptualization of class itself. The old notion that class
and class consciousness deterministically and inevitably arose from changes in pro-
ductive relations had a longer career in central and eastern Europe, particularly
under Communism, than it did in western Europe. Already in 1963, E.P. Thompson
proposed that the English working class made itself through self-definition and
self-demarcation (that is, through culture) as much as it was made by the onset of
capitalist industrialization. With the rise of cultural history in the 1980s, a number
of scholars altogether abandoned the socioeconomic framing of class—the irreduc-
ible social “experience” upon which, for Thompson, the cultural construction of
class was predicated—and regarded class itself as a cultural category, or a language
for conjuring an imagined collective into being, or even a narrative device.29
Perhaps most usefully, Geoff Eley and Keith Nield have sought to combine the
Thompsonian social and discursive approaches to class by defining it as a cultural
and ideological postulate that is nonetheless powerful because it speaks to “demon-
strable social facts.”30
Several scholars working on the Habsburg lands have in practice deployed this
approach, abandoning the materialist determinism of Communist-era ­historiography

Contemporary Europe (1848–1945) (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1979). While the heavily ideological cli-
mate in which they worked obliged such scholars to identify baleful currents of “revisionism” and
“opportunism,” they steered away from oversimplified dichotomies of proto-Leninism versus “incorrect”
trajectories (everything else), typical of the Stalinized 1950s and works such as Jiří Doležal, Jan Beránek,
Ohlas první ruské revoluce v českých zemích (Prague: Naše Vojsko, 1955).
28 Mommsen, Die Sozialdemokratie; Marlis Sewering-Wollanek, Brot oder Nationalität?
Nordwestböhmische Arbeiterbewegung im Brennpunkt der Nationalitätenkonflikte (1889–1911) (Marburg:
Herder-Institut, 1994), 202, 224–5; Marina Cattaruzza, Sozialisten an der Adria. Plurinationale
Arbeiterbewegung in der Habsburgermonarchie (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2011), 15, 138–9.
29 For a discussion of these debates, see Geoff Eley, Keith Nield, The Future of Class in History:
What’s Left of the Social? (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007).
30 Eley, Nield, The Future, 167. This is similar to the notion of “dispositions” elaborated in Ira
Katznelson, “Working-Class Formation: Constructing Cases and Comparisons,” in Katznelson,
Aristide R. Zolberg, eds., Working Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and
the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 17–19.
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
gallant officer, sir, he turned out to be arterwards—when
he was sailin’ master on the Colossus. Did you ever see,
sir, such a ornhandy ship for tackin’ as the old Colossus?
If Mr. Forrester hadn’t been a rale sailor, he’d ’a’ got
hisself in trouble all the time with that old three-decker.”

Captain Forrester knew this was honest praise from an


honest man, and it pleased him more than many fine
words from fine people. After a moment Jack continued:

“Axin’ your parding, sir, there’s a midshipman on this


’ere ship as is named Mr. Forrester. I never see a young
gentleman so like that other midshipman Forrester as I
knowed more ’n twenty-five year ago.”

“That’s my son—my only child—and a smart fellow, if I


do say it myself. But I want to hear something about
Jack Bell. The man I knew was a devoted American. I
wonder what he did when the colonies rebelled against
His Majesty?”

Jack twiddled his cap awkwardly for a moment, glanced 156


around and saw the door was shut, and then began to
speak. His manner was respectful and not without a
rude and simple eloquence of his own.

“Cap’n Forrester, that man Jack Bell wanted for to do his


duty. He had tooken the oath to King George when he
’listed in the navy and had served him stiddy for more ’n
forty year. But that man, Cap’n Forrester, sir, was a
American, and when that there Congress at Philadelphy
said Ameriky was free and independent, Jack Bell, he
were in a peck o’ trouble. There was his oath o’
allegiance to King George starin’ him in the face, and
there were the heart and soul o’ him tellin’ him he were
a villain to fight ag’in his own country. Well, sir, Bell, not
bein’ a eddicated man, couldn’t think out easy what was
right for him to do—’cause that man, sir, wanted for to
do his duty. But he knowed if he had suspicioned King
George was a-goin’ to declare war ag’in Ameriky, Bell,
he’d ’a’ never tooken that oath; so at last he thought it
was his duty to desert.”

The old sailor paused slightly at this word, and the 157
officer and the former captain of the maintop looked
each other squarely in the eye. The boy Dicky Stubbs,
who had a bright glance, gazed first at one and then at
the other, wondering what it all was about. After a little
pause Jack Bell continued:—

“Well, sir, that man Bell had a considerable sum o’ prize


money due him, but he thought as how he’d ruther not
take it, as he was goin’ to take French leave; so he give
that up willin’ and cheerful. And he knowed, too, if he
were caught, he’d be strung up at the yardarm in spite
of his havin’ served King George for more ’n forty years
faithful; but he thought he couldn’t die but oncet for his
country, and it didn’t matter much which way he went,
if only he was a-doin’ of his duty. So one night at
Gibralty, Jack Bell disappeared from his ship—’twas a
ship o’ the line. Maybe the Don Spaniards garroted him;
maybe he was tooken by pirates; maybe he got on a
American merchant vessel that was took arterwards by
the British, who thought she was a privateer. Anyhow
Jack Bell did what he thought was right, and if he’s got
to be hanged for it, well, that’s a easy, comfortable way
o’ gittin’ out o’ the world, and Jack Bell ain’t got no
apologies to make, excep’”—and here the old sailor’s
voice deepened—“excep’ for not desertin’ sooner.”
All this time the officer and the sailor had looked 158
steadily at each other. Captain Forrester knew perfectly
well that the man before him was Jack Bell, and, if
openly recognized, there would be but a short step for
[3]
him from the fok’sle of the Diomede to the whip at
the yardarm. But Captain Forrester also believed Jack
had acted from his conscience, and he did not believe in
hanging a man for that. After a pause the captain
spoke:—

“Sometimes it is as hard for an educated man as for an


uneducated one to know on which side his duty lies; but
it is safer to be on the side of mercy. If I should meet
Bell, I should not feel obliged to know him.”

At this Jack stood upright at “attention” and saluted the


captain. Each knew what that meant. It was Jack’s way
of thanking the captain, who knew him perfectly well,
for not betraying him.

“There is one thing, though, my conscience would 159


require me to do if I should meet Bell,” continued
Captain Forrester. “It is to land him here where he can
be watched, that he can’t get away to enlist in the rebel
navy, army, or marine corps. If King George can’t have
his services, the rebels sha’n’t.”

Jack’s face was a study in its intense disappointment,


but in a little while he seemed to submit to the
inevitable.

“Well, sir,” he said, “Jack’s pretty old now—goin’ on to


sixty—and he ain’t wuth his salt, excep’ as a foremast
man on a man-o’-war. So neither King George nor
Ameriky ain’t losin’ much. He’d ’a’ liked to jine the navy,
but as for the marines, poor Jack Bell wouldn’t trust
hisself with them murderin’ marines.”

“The Jack Bell I know always hated the marines,” said


Captain Forrester with a smile.

“I reckon he do still,” calmly remarked Jack. “And as for


fightin’ on dry land—why, sir, he’d git so tired runnin’
about he never could do no fightin’. Landsmen instid o’
fightin’ at close quarters fights over forty or fifty acres
and does more walkin’ than fightin’, I’m thinkin’.”

“Well, then,” said Captain Forrester, “to leave Jack Bell 160
and come to your own affairs. When I land you to-
morrow morning I shall ask the authorities to give you
the run of the town of Newport, but not to let you go
outside. I think I can contrive it through the admiral,
who is my friend. And how about this youngster here?”

“That brat, axin’ your parding, sir, is the son o’ the


Widow Stubbs at Newport—a excellent woman, and a
good hand at book-larnin’, as well as at the spinnin’
wheel. Her husband was killed in one o’ the fust
scrimmages o’ the war, and this ’ere brat, he run away
to jine the ’Merican navy and was took on the Betsey
along with me. I knowed his mother well, and I’ve
kinder kep’ my eye on the young one. He is a right
handy sort o’ boy, and he can sing a lot o’ chunes I’ve
larned him. He can sing all the old songs and two or
three ‘Tid re I’s’ I’ve set him.”

“Pipe up, youngster,” said the captain; “I’d like to hear


one of the old songs again. Give me ‘When the Wind at
Night Whistles o’er the Deep.’”

Little Dicky Stubbs looked scared to death. His mouth


came open, but no sound issued. Jack Bell, giving him a
nudge that nearly broke his ribs, whispered:—

“Didn’t you hear the cap’n tell you to pipe up, you 161
mutinous brat?”

Thus adjured, Dicky began in a deliciously sweet but


[4]
rather uncertain voice:

When the wind at night whistles o’er the deep


And sings to landsmen dreary,
The sailor, fearless, goes to sleep
Or takes his watch most cheery.
Snoozing here,
Tossing there,
Steadily, readily,
Cheerily, merrily,
Still from care and thinking free,
Is a sailor’s life at sea.

Before he reached the third line Dicky’s courage, and his


voice too, returned and he sang like some sweet-
throated bird the next verse:—

When the ship, d’ye see, becomes a wreck,


And landsmen hoist the boat, sir,
The sailor scorns to quit the deck
While there’s a single plank afloat, sir.

Captain Forrester, leaning his head on his hand, listened 162


to the song that carried him back to his midshipman
days, and watched the boy whose young fresh voice
echoed through the low-pitched cabin. Dicky was
unmistakably a child of the people, but his honest face,
his bright, intelligent eyes, and his clean though ragged
attire made him a prepossessing little fellow.
“You may go now,” said Captain Forrester to Jack Bell,
and meanwhile giving Dicky a bright shilling, “but do not
forget what I have told you, and also that you have got
off very well. As for that lad, take him to his mother and
tell her to keep him at home until he has cut his wisdom
teeth.”

“Thank ye kindly, sir,” answered Jack. “I’ll not forget


your orders, sir, and as long as I live I’ll not forget your
kindness, sir.” And, with a parting salute, Jack returned
to the custody of the waiting master-at-arms.

163
CHAPTER II.
A GALLANT RESCUE.

The next morning ushered in a blustering day, and the


wind blew so hard as to make it decidedly
uncomfortable for small boats in the harbor.

In the forenoon a boat was lowered from the Diomede


to take Jack Bell and Dicky Stubbs ashore. Captain
Forrester had seen the admiral, and had got permission
to let Jack Bell remain at Newport in a merely nominal
imprisonment, upon the ground of the old sailor’s age;
and with many thanks Jack bade the captain good-by
and got in the boat, with Dicky after him.

The boat was commanded by young Forrester, the


captain’s son, and so like his father that Jack felt as if
he had turned back many pages of his life, and it was
the Midshipman Forrester of twenty-five years ago
before him.

The captain’s gig had put off from the ship with the 164
captain, bound ashore, and was far behind the
midshipman’s boat. The young midshipman steered
straight for the landing-place, but he knew nothing of
the tides and currents of the harbor. The fierce wind
was against them, and he suddenly found the boat too
close to the shore, and fast nearing a ledge of sunken
rocks, around which the waves were boiling. As he half-
rose from his seat the boat lurched violently and he
suddenly lost his balance; in another moment he was
jerked overboard and disappeared. A cry went up from
every man in the boat except Jack Bell. It was not a
mere everyday fall overboard, but a fall amid sharp-
pointed rocks and dangerous eddies. Before the echo of
that cry had died over the water, Jack Bell had kicked
off his shoes, peeled off his jacket, and had plunged
into the icy water after the young midshipman.

Every movement was plain to Captain Forrester in his


gig, only a short distance away; and his crew, in a
moment, pulled furiously toward the other boat.

Jack Bell had dived exactly over the spot where young 165
Forrester had disappeared. In a minute or two he came
up, but alone. At this the agonized father covered his
face and groaned. But after a few long breaths Jack
dived again. This time when he rose a great shout went
up—he had young Forrester in his arms.

In another minute he was in the boat, which headed for


the nearest shore, closely followed by the captain’s gig.
Just above where they landed was a lonely little
cottage, and as soon as the keel touched the sand two
powerful sailors seized the unconscious young
midshipman and, led by Jack Bell and followed by Dicky
Stubbs, rushed up the steep incline toward the cottage.

Captain Forrester was not far behind, but when he


reached the cottage the little midshipman’s clothes had
been stripped from him, Jack Bell was vigorously rolling,
rubbing, and pounding him, while Dicky Stubbs and his
mother—for it was the Widow Stubbs’ plain cottage—
were wringing out hot cloths to put on young Forrester.
Just as Captain Forrester entered, the young
midshipman gave a loud gasp and opened his eyes, only
to close them again.

“He’s all right, sir,” cheerily called out Jack Bell, not 166
stopping in his rubbing. “He’s wuth all the dead reefers
betwixt Newport and Chiny. He got a whack on his head
from some o’ them jagged rocks, and he just fainted like
—but he’s a-comin’ to fast, sir.”

“He would not have been here to come to at all if it had


not been for you, my friend,” said the captain in a
choking voice.

Jack Bell said nothing,—he was too busy,—and the


captain, seeing the color return to his boy’s face, and
that he was breathing better at every moment, sat and
watched with longing eyes his return to life. The Widow
Stubbs was as useful in her way as Jack Bell, while
Dicky seemed to have six hands and four legs, he was
so helpful.

In half an hour the young fellow was laid in the widow’s


plain though clean bed, and, except a little weakness,
was as well as ever he was in his life, and was carried
on board the Diomede that very afternoon. The story of
Jack Bell’s plunge into the surf for him was known on
board, and from that hour Jack was safe from being
denounced as a deserter.

The fact that he was born in America had already 167


deprived his offence of the moral guilt that would have
attached to it. It was common enough for British sailors
to be pressed into the service of Spanish and French
ships when captured on merchant vessels, but there
was an unwritten law that they should desert the first
chance they had. This rule applied perfectly to Jack Bell,
and his plucky dive after a young British officer secured
for him that his past should be universally winked at
among the officers and sailors at Newport who might
recognize him.

That same night Captain Forrester came ashore and


went straight to the Widow Stubbs’ cottage, where he
felt certain he would meet the three persons he most
desired to see there.

Sure enough, on opening the door he found the widow,


Jack Bell, and the boy Dicky sitting before a blazing
hickory fire in the humble living-room. The widow sat at
her spinning wheel in one corner, and the wheel
hummed merrily. They were so poor they could not
afford even a tallow dip, but the fire made the tidy little
place quite bright and cheery. Jack Bell sat on the
wooden settle, and curled up by him was Dicky Stubbs.

Dicky had just been displaying his new accomplishments 168


in the singing line, and the Widow Stubbs had swelled
with pride at the display of Dicky’s talents. It was
happiness enough to get him back alive and well, but to
find him so grown, so much improved from the ragged
urchin who had run away, and with such a wonderful
new gift of singing, made the Widow Stubbs an
uncommonly happy woman.

They all rose as Captain Forrester entered, and the


widow gave him her only armchair.

“I have come to thank you all for my son’s life,” said


Captain Forrester as soon as he was seated, “but
especially Jack Bell, here, who risked his own life in
jumping overboard among the rocks for my son. Of
course I never can pay you for it—but here is something
that at least may give you some comforts;” and the
captain took from his breast a small package made up
of golden sovereigns banded together and held it
toward Jack Bell.

Jack, however, shook his head and folded his arms.

“I thank ’ee, sir, most respectful for ’em, and I don’t 169
mean to hurt your feelin’s by refusin’; but I can’t take
money for savin’ anybody’s life—and leastways from
you, Cap’n Forrester—as was”— Jack Bell paused,
smiled knowingly, and then continued: “This ’ere boy
sings a song called ‘Old Shipmates.’”

“Yes, I know,” answered the captain, smiling back and


knowing that Jack meant that he and the captain had
been shipmates; “but think of the pleasure you would
give me to know that this little present would make your
old age comfortable.”

“True, sir,” answered Jack; “but I ain’t used to livin’ on


my money, and I’d be a sight happier if I had sumpin’ to
do, like bein’ a night watchman or some sich thing. You
see, sir, I has had a watch now for more ’n forty year,
and it seems so ornnateral for me to git into a standin’
bed place and know I ain’t got to hear the boatswain’s
call when it’s time to turn out, that I can’t sleep a wink.
Now it seems to me, sir, as if I had a watch on shore I
could walk up and down this ’ere town callin’ out the
hours, and it would seem like I was standin’ my reg’lar
watch.”

“But couldn’t you stand watch on shore, as you call it,


just as well if you knew you had a little money put
away?”

“Not for savin’ a life, sir,” answered Jack as politely as 170


ever; but the captain knew then there was no hope of
his taking the money. “If you’d be so kind, sir, as to git
me the place as watchman, I wouldn’t ax no better.”

“You shall certainly have a watchman’s place,” said the


captain, who mentally added, “if I have to pay your
wages out of my own pocket.”

“It would seem mightily like the lookout,” continued Jack


evidently tickled with his new scheme. “I dessay I’d
forgit and call out: ‘Eight bells! Bright light, weather
cathead!’ instid o’ ‘Twelve o’clock, and all’s well!’”

The captain laughed at this and then turned to the


Widow Stubbs:—

“And you, madam, and your son—will you not permit


me to give you some little token of gratitude for your
help in restoring my son?”

The Widow Stubbs blushed at this, but, like Jack Bell,


she had scruples about taking any recompense for the
saving of life, especially as she was a woman of some
education and stood a little higher in the world than
Jack Bell.

“No, sir, I thank you; but I could not accept money from 171
anyone. What I did was very little, and what my boy did
was still less. I am glad, though, we were able to do
that little.”

The captain felt disappointed when he put his money


back in his breast pocket, but he was too much the
gentleman to insist on these humble people receiving
what they felt themselves above taking.

“At all events,” he said, looking toward Dicky’s round,


bright face, “I might be able to do something for your
boy.”

“I am afraid not,” answered the widow with a faint


smile. “We are patriots—my boy and I; my husband was
killed only six months ago in the Continental Army, and
there is nothing that a British officer could do for him,
no matter how kindly meant.”

“What do you mean to do with him at present?” asked


Captain Forrester.

The widow shook her head.

“I have just got him back after he ran away. I have not
had time to think; but there is always work hereabouts
for a good strong boy like Dicky.”

“Provided he does not run away again,” said Captain


Forrester.

Dicky turned a rosy red at finding himself the subject of 172


conversation and astonished his mother by stuttering
out,—

“P-p-please, sir, don’t the British ever give folks their


parole? I—I mean, let ’em—go—if they promise they
won’t do so any more?”

The Widow Stubbs heard this with surprise and


indignation. She had been much distressed when Dicky
had run away to join the Continental navy, although he
never got farther than the merchant ship Betsey; but his
apparent eagerness to promise he would not do so any
more struck her as a want of spirit in the boy that
mortified her keenly.

“Why, Dicky Stubbs!” she exclaimed, and said no more


for very shame of him.

“Yes; we take paroles,” said Captain Forrester, supposing


Dicky knew it referred only to officers.

“Then, sir,” cried Dicky, whose ideas of a parole were


very hazy, “all I’ve got to say is that I don’t want no
parole,—I wouldn’t take it if you was to offer it to me,—
and I ain’t going to give no promise about not running
away again. Just as soon as I am big enough to carry
my father’s musket I’m a-going to enlist in the ’Merican
army under General Washington, and it won’t be long
before I do it, neither!”

This sudden outbreak was followed by the Widow 173


Stubbs clasping Dicky in her arms and crying,“That’s my
own boy!” while Jack Bell said “Hooray!” under his
breath.

But Captain Forrester, instead of sternly calling upon


Dicky to recant, as Dicky hoped, who meant to hurl
defiance at him, only laughed. Dicky could have cried
with rage and disappointment when the captain got up,
still laughing, and said:—

“General Washington will gain a valuable recruit, and


King George a dangerous enemy.”

“I hope you’ll excuse him,” said the widow, smiling, but


a little ashamed of Dicky’s forwardness; “he doesn’t
mean to be impudent.”
“I know it,” said the captain. “He is a lad of spirit, and I
like that kind. I will now bid you good evening with a
thousand thanks for your kindness to my son; and if you
get in any trouble with that youngster of yours, write to
General Prescott and mention my name; and as for you,
Bell, the less we say about the days on the Indomptable
and the old Colossus, the better, eh?”

Jack Bell grinned broadly at that and answered:— 174

“I knowed, sir, you wouldn’t blow the gaff on a old


shipmate.”

“Good-by, then,” said Captain Forrester. “You shall be


made a watchman; and remember, if you get in any
trouble you must manage to communicate with me; but
I hope that prosperity may attend all of you, whom I
can never forget and must always feel grateful to.”

The Widow Stubbs made a low bow, Jack Bell saluted,


and Dicky, getting a lantern, lighted the captain to his
boat, which lay at the foot of the cliff.

175
CHAPTER III.
DICKY’S PATRIOTISM.

Jack Bell very promptly got his appointment as a


watchman, and soon every night he paraded the streets
of Newport with a stick and a lantern, calling out the
hours as the night slipped away. He never could bring
himself, though, to calling as the other watchmen did,—
the hour, and then, “All’s well!”—but sung out every
half-hour the time according to the ship’s bells, always
adding what the weather was, and where the wind lay,
such as, “Six bells! Wind sou’-sou’-east!”

The townspeople soon got used to the old sailor’s way


and he was not molested in his peculiar ideas of the
time. At all events, evil characters who prowled by night
had great respect for him after having once felt the
force of his stick, because in spite of his age Jack’s arm
was still stalwart, and he was not given to arguing with
offenders.

At that time there was a large British fleet under 176


Admiral Wallace lying off Newport, besides a large land
force under General Prescott. It was impossible for Jack
not to have a great many more acquaintances than he
desired among the sailors of the fleet. But although his
true story was more than suspected, it was perfectly
well known that he had a powerful protector in Captain
Forrester. Jack’s bold dive into the icy water had turned
out a good thing for him. So Jack walked his beat all
night, and went back at daylight to the Widow Stubbs’
cottage where he slept in the loft until midday, and was
as little unhappy as he could be on shore.

The Widow Stubbs had spoken quite confidently to


Captain Forrester of Dicky’s capacity to make a living,
but it turned out not so easy as she fancied in spite of
the fact that Dicky was strong and bright and willing to
work. But he was only a twelve-year-old boy, and the
war times made business of all sorts dull. Dicky worked
around the wharves, but there were scarcely any
merchant vessels plying, and the waterfront was almost
deserted except by the British warships and crews.

The Americans held the opposite shore of Narragansett 177


Bay, and Dicky imagined that on fine days he could see
the American flag flying there, and the sight always
made him feel very well disposed to run away again, but
he never did.

Dicky, however, discovered very unexpectedly that he


possessed a means of livelihood in his beautiful young
voice, and in the songs that Jack Bell had taught him.
But the treasure of Dicky’s life was a little dog’s-eared,
ill-printed book of patriotic songs, all predicting the
speedy overthrow of John Bull, and the certainty that
the patriots would soon drive every British soldier and
sailor off American soil. The book had been smuggled
over from the Narragansett side, and was rather a
dangerous possession. But as Dicky soon learned the
songs all by heart, it would not have mattered if it had
been found and destroyed.
It was the dream of Dicky’s life though, as well as of 178
Jack Bell’s, to compose a song themselves. They had no
scruples about adapting somebody else’s music, but
they burned with ambition to create a new set of words
which rhymed. Many a night before it was time for
Jack’s watch to begin, would he and Dicky struggle over
a slate on which they had marked lines, something like
this:—

____sea
____be
____shore
____gore
____sail
____hail

But they never got any farther.

“Seems to me, young ’un,” said Jack, scratching his


head, “we’re beginnin’ at the wrong end. It’s stern
foremost, d’ye see?”

“Yes, sir,” Dicky would reply, “but in poetry I believe you


are obliged to begin stern foremost—because if you
begin at the beginning you never get any poetry—just
as if it was makin’ a song like this:—

“The ’Mericans are gallant lads; they’re bound to whip


Johnny Bull. It don’t make no matter if Johnny Bull has
got more ships and soldiers. We’re goin’ to whip him.
Now that ain’t poetry, because I begun at the
beginning.”

“That’s so,” Jack would reluctantly admit; “but if it ain’t


poetry, it’s mighty good sense, and I hope it’ll all come
true.”
In those days tavern kitchens were very respectable 179
resorts of the humbler classes of people and Jack Bell
was very fond of the kitchen of the Eagle Tavern. The
proprietor, Jacob Dyer, was a patriot at heart; but his
house was so much the resort of British sailors and
soldiers that he dared not avow the full extent of his
sympathies.

In the kitchen Dicky made most of his pennies—and he


made so many that they soon grew into shillings. It
might have been rather a dangerous place to trust a
weak or a vicious boy; but Dicky was neither weak nor
vicious. He went to the tavern to sing his songs, and
when he got through he scampered off home to his
mother with his money and was very glad to get there.
Besides, at the time when he usually turned up at the
tavern to sing, Jack Bell was comfortably established in
the chimney-corner and he kept a sharp eye on Dicky
and promptly reported any bad manners or other small
offences to the Widow Stubbs, who upon the few
occasions that Dicky had transgressed always came
down on him with the heavy hand of justice armed with
a good birch switch.

One afternoon Dicky turned up at the tavern, as usual, 180


and found the kitchen full of sailors from several
cruisers of Lord Howe’s fleet that had rendezvoused at
Newport.

“Here you are, you young rapscallion!” called out one


jolly man-o’-war’s-man. “Come here and give us ‘Black-
eyed Susan’ or I’ll give you the cat.”

This being the usual form in which those requests were


made, Dicky nodded his head, grinned, and perched
himself on the kitchen dresser to be heard the better.
Having trolled out “Black-eyed Susan,” “Strike Eight
Bells,” and other nautical ditties in his sweet boyish
treble, Dicky got down and began to hand his
homespun hat around for pennies. The sailors were
liberal and Dicky was beginning to think how his mother
would smile as he upset the hat in her lap, when one of
the sailors, a fellow with a great voice, seized him and,
holding up a glass of rum, called out: “Here, you lubber!
come and drink the king’s health.”

“Much obliged, sir,” answered Dicky readily; “but my


mother don’t on no account let me touch rum, and I’ve
promised her I won’t.”

How glad was Dicky at that moment that he had made 181
the promise! His mother had asked him and he had
done it without giving it any particular thought; but
when it came to saving him from drinking the king’s
health, Dicky’s patriotic soul rejoiced that he had so
good an excuse.

The man, rough as he was, could not ask the boy to


break his word, but he was determined to get some
British sentiment out of Dicky.

“Then you pipe up ‘God Save the King’ as loud as you


can,” he cried.

“I c-c-can’t,” said Dicky, looking around at Jack Bell in


the corner. Jack gave him an almost imperceptible wink
and nod, which meant: “You’re right; stick to it.”

“But you shall!” roared the sailor.

“But I won’t!” shouted Dicky boldly, and making a dash


for the rolling-pin on the dresser, which he seized and
flourished stoutly.
The sailor made a dash for Dicky, who, as alert as a
monkey, pushed a chair in front of him, over which the
sailor fell sprawling. The next minute Dicky gave the
window a terrific whack that smashed sash and all, and,
scrambling through, took to his heels and was almost
home by the time the sailor had got through rubbing his
bruised shins.

The Widow Stubbs was scrupulously honest, and her 182


first comment after she had praised Dicky for keeping
his word about the rum and refusing to sing “God Save
the King” was:—

“But, son, we must pay for the window.”

“Yes, mammy,” said Dicky ruefully; “and I lost three


shillings and my hat too.”

That night when Jack Bell came in for his usual chat on
the settle, he told Dicky: “You’re right, boy, and if it’s
too hard a pull for you and your mammy to pay for the
winder, why, Jack Bell has got some of the rhino and
you’re welcome to it, for I see how you stuck up to your
promise and to your country.”

Just at that minute a knock came at the door, and when


Dicky opened it Jacob Dyer walked in. Both the widow
and Dicky thought he had come for his money for the
window, and the Widow Stubbs began: “Don’t you have
any fear, sir, that I won’t pay for what my boy did to-
day, and pay it cheerful, to know I’ve got a boy who can
keep his word to me, and can’t be frightened into
singing ‘God Save the King.’”

“Widder,” said Jacob, “your boy is welcome to smash 183


that winder. Maybe he’s got more courage than Jacob
Dyer; for although I can’t sing ‘God Save the King,’
chiefly because I don’t know how to sing anything, I
feel sometimes as if I ought to be more outspoken than
I am for my country. But I have a wife and eight
children to support, and if I got the redcoats down on
me, they’d close my tavern and then I’d be on the town.
But sometimes my blood biles when I hear ’em talk
about lickin’ General Washington. I kem to-night to tell
you that if I look cross at your boy the next time he
comes to the tavern he needn’t mind. You sha’n’t pay a
cent for the winder, and I’d be a good deal more of a
’Merican if my livin’ didn’t depend on the redcoats.”

The very next day Dicky showed up in the tavern


kitchen. As usual, redcoats were plenty. Jacob Dyer, in a
huge white apron, was superintending the turning of
the spit. As soon as he caught sight of Dicky he began
to grumble.

“Here comes that Stubbs boy as cost me five shilling for 184
a glazier’s bill. If it warn’t that his mother’s a widder, I’d
be after him, I can tell you. But look out, you young
scamp, if ever you get to wreckin’ my premises again,
I’ll get after you as sure as shootin’. Do you mind that?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Dicky very meekly and not in the


least alarmed.

185
CHAPTER IV.
AN IMPORTANT ERRAND.

Visitors were few at the widow’s cottage, but the very


night after Jacob Dyer had been there another knock at
the door ushered in a very different visitor. The widow
had just trimmed the fire, swept the hearth, and drawn
up the settle, and was waiting for Jack and Dicky to
come in and get their supper of milk and porridge and
potatoes, when a thundering rat-tat-tat came at the
door. When she opened it, there stood an elderly
gentleman in a cocked hat and handsome knee buckles
and a gold-headed cane. The widow knew him in a
moment. He was Squire Stavers, one of the richest
citizens of Newport and a staunch patriot. The widow
was rather flustered by the importance of her caller, but
invited him in politely.

“I understand, madam,” began Squire Stavers, “that you


have an uncommonly reliable boy—a little fellow who
goes about singing for his living.”

“Yes, sir,” answered the widow, all in a flutter. “It mayn’t 186
seem such a steady business for a boy, but the times
are so hard I can’t find anything else for him to do, and
he makes a very good living and brings all his money to
me.”
“His employment will answer very well for the present,”
replied the squire, “and when times become more
settled no doubt you can find honorable work for him.
What I came to see you about to-night was in
connection with him. Is there any danger of being
overheard?”

For answer the widow rose and bolted the door of the
cottage and—rare luxury!—lighted two tallow candles.
Then the squire continued:

“I know, madam, that you are the widow of a


Continental soldier and may be depended upon to help
your country.”

“Yes, sir,” answered the widow quite promptly.

“This, then, is what I wish to say. The patriots of 187


Newport desire to communicate with the Continental
forces at Providence Plantations, and if they can get a
trusty messenger as far as Tiverton, there will be no
difficulty the rest of the way. We dare not employ a man
on this service as we are closely watched. But a boy
would never be suspected, and our communication
would be in the form of a letter that would reveal
nothing in case it was found. Mr. James Barton, who has
a gallant son in the Continental Army, and myself are
old friends, and we are supposed to be corresponding
for pleasure and profit. Mr. Barton, for example, has
beeves to sell, and writes me asking the price in the
market. His younger son has lately visited my house,
and in my letter I speak of him. Yet there is a hidden
meaning in all this, and it would be of substantial help
to the cause if we could carry information in that
manner.”
“If you will wait a few moments, sir, I will ask Mr. Bell’s
opinion. He’s a steady, sensible man, and although I’m
perfectly willing to let my boy do all he can, I’d rather
consult Mr. Bell.”

At that moment they both heard Dicky and Jack Bell 188
fumbling at the latch. The widow rose and let them in,
then bolted the door again.

Jack Bell knew well enough who Squire Stavers was,


and when Dicky heard that he, Dicky Stubbs, was
actually wanted for an important service, he could
scarcely forbear hurrahing and cutting the pigeon wing
in his delight.

“Now let me read you the letter I wish the lad to carry,”
said the Squire, putting on his great gold spectacles,
and taking a letter from his pocket. “Suppose your boy
is stopped. Let him at once produce this letter, and if
the British can find out anything from it, they are
cleverer than I take it.”

189
My dear Sir,—

Your letter, enquiring what price beeves will fetch,


is received, and I made a note of the contents. No
one can understand who has not been here lately,
the extremely low price that animal produce has
fallen to. But let me know in regard to the beeves,
stating whether you wish to sell them on the hoof
or not, which is important. The lad who takes this
can bring a verbal message straight enough, but it
would be safest to write, as boys are but heedless
creatures, and of their own memory, they are
overconfident. However, the bearer of this, may be
your son, as I am expecting him to return this way,
and I may keep it for him. The town is closely
patrolled, and although the force here is large, it is
remarkably well disciplined. Your son was very
popular among the young ladies, who seemed
determined to surround and capture him. The place
is not what it was in times of peace, as it is very
dull, the military being obliged to see an extremely
strict watch kept, and it would not be difficult in
consideration of the unsettled state of affairs to
believe that we are in a state of siege, which is a
serious matter. There is but an indifferent interest
taken in welfare of the town, except by General
Prescott commanding the land forces. He is an able
officer, and his loss would be very great should he
be transferred. I am thinking of taking up my
residence at the Eagle Tavern, or at the Overing
House, on the outskirts of the town.

I should let my house to a staff officer of my


acquaintance who wants it for six months. General
Prescott has taken up his quarters as if he meant to
stay, and it leads me to think that no change of
commanders is impending.

I am,
Your Friend and Obedient Servant,
WENTWORTH STAVERS.

Jack Bell listened with great solemnity to the reading of


this letter, and when the Squire finished reading and lay
back in the chair with a triumphant smile, Jack
remarked with emphasis:—

“There ain’t nothin’ to hurt a babby in that ’ere letter.


It’s all plain sailin’, as fur as I can see.”
The Widow Stubbs agreed with him, and Dicky thought 190
privately it was one of the stupidest letters he had ever
read.

“Well, now,” cried the Squire with a victorious air,


“suppose you read every third line, beginning at the
third from the bottom. Here you are.

“General Prescott has taken up his quarters at the


Overing House on the outskirts of the town. He is an
able officer and his loss would be a serious matter.
There is but an indifferent watch kept, and it would not
be difficult to surround and capture him. The place is
not closely patrolled, and, although the force here is
large, they are overconfident. The bearer of this can
bring a verbal message straight enough. But let me
know in regard to the beeves; the contents no one can
understand.

“Now, what do you say to that?” inquired the Squire as


he finished the interpretation of the letter.

Jack Bell’s jaw dropped and Dicky almost rolled on the 191
floor in his surprise, while his mother took the letter
and, counting the lines, saw how the information
conveyed in it was so different from what appeared on
the surface. Presently Jack Bell recovered himself
enough to bring his hand down on the table with a
thwack that made the candles jump and everybody in
the room jump, too.

The Squire enjoyed the sensation he had given his


simple audience and looked around with an air of much
satisfaction.

“Now,” said he, “I want this letter taken to Tiverton, ten


miles up. If the boy takes it, I will lend him a horse,”—
here Dicky could not forbear thrusting his tongue into
his cheek and wagging his head with rapture,—“and if
he is stopped on the way, let him hand out the letter.
They will probably read it and pass him on. And one
thing may be of use to you—I will give you two shillings
if you bring me an answer back; so, if you are stopped,
tell your captors that and they will probably let you go.”

The Squire then rose to leave and, standing with his


hand on his gold-headed cane, spoke impressively:—

“I have confided in all of you to-night, and if one word


from any of you gives rise to suspicion, there will be
deep and serious trouble for all of us.”

“I can answer for me and my boy,” said the widow, 192


while Jack Bell made reply:—

“I can answer, sir, for Jack Bell, as who is a uneddicated


man, but ain’t a fool, nor yet a rascal.”

“I believe you, and good-by to all of you. The boy must


be at my house at sunrise to-morrow morning. He
ought to be back by the early afternoon, and if he is
not, I myself will go and look for him.”

The Squire then went out and the widow and Jack Bell
and Dicky sat and looked at each other, the widow
unmindful of the extravagance of burning two candles
when there was no distinguished company.

“Well,” said she after a pause, “the boy can’t come to


harm just riding between here and Tiverton—do you
think so, Mr. Bell?”

Instead of the hearty assurance that the widow


expected, Jack looked quite solemn and seemed to
avoid an answer. But the widow’s pleading eyes forced a
reply out of him.

“’Tain’t the distance, ma’am—that’s neither here nor 193


there—and the boy could leg it easy enough. But horses
is ornnateral sort o’ beasts and they’ve got a special
spite ag’in sailor men and sailor boys too. I never see a
sailor man git on a horse that I didn’t see the four-
legged scoundrel kinder look around with a devilish grin,
as much as to say: ‘Aha, I’ve got you now! You ain’t a-
ridin’ the spanker boom, nor yet the topsail yard, and I’ll
bounce you off or bust’—and they most in gin’ally don’t
bust. I can’t help feelin’ oneasy about trustin’ him a
horseback, ma’am.”

The widow laughed at this and Dicky cried out


indignantly:—

“Why, Mr. Bell, I’d just as lief ride anything from an


elephant to a goat. ’Tain’t any harder to stick on a horse
than it is to hold on to the topsail yard.”

“Yes, it is, boy,” answered Jack with much severity, “and


a sight more dangersome. Horses, I tell you, has a spite
ag’in sailor men—and they’re mighty cunnin’ in carryin’
out their ill-will. I wish you was goin’ to leg it. That’s all.”

194
CHAPTER V.
AN ADVENTURE WITH THE REDCOATS.

Dicky was sent to bed early that night, so he could have


a good sleep before his journey. But he was so excited
over the prospect of his coming adventures that he
scarcely closed his eyes. He was up and dressed by
daybreak, and his mother had hard work holding him
until sunrise before starting off.

As it was, he arrived at the Squire’s fine house in the


town, before the Squire was up. When the horse was
led out for him to mount, Dicky made a rush at him and
scrambled up, beaming with delight. It was quite a
sober old cart horse, named Blackberry—but had he
been the finest thoroughbred in the world he could not
have given Dicky more pleasure.

The Squire gave him the letter before several of the 195
servants, without any extraordinary charges of
carefulness, merely telling him to deliver it with his own
hands to Mr. Josiah Barton, of Tiverton, and to return as
soon as possible, when he would receive two shillings—
and not to ride Blackberry too hard.

Dicky listened very respectfully, put the letter in the


bosom of his jacket and pinned it, and started off. He

You might also like