'New Chum' aboard the Conway

'I felt new and must have looked new.  I was new'.

from 'New Chum'

The H.M.S. Conway.

John Masefield joined the training ship, H.M.S. Conway, on the 24th of September 1891.  He was thirteen.  In his autobiographical work, New Chum, whose title refers to the name given to  newcomers to the ship, he evokes his time on board with anecdotes aplenty.  He explains that due to an outbreak of small-pox his entry was delayed by a fortnight, which at first delighted him. However, 

Had I known what disadvantages this would bring me in the next two years, I should have changed my tune.

from 'New Chum'

Masefield had read books about the sea but otherwise had no experience of life aboard a ship.  He paints his experiences in greatly mixed colours.  He describes how the old hands aboard ship often took advantage of''new chums', playing pranks on them and indulging in casual bullying.  His errors were made known to him by angry remarks and he was shoved into and out of the way.  Signs of his inexperience, like the large size of the bed-sheets he had brought, were mocked without mercy.  Yet some individuals showed great kindness to him. A character called 'H.B.' had him spin ghost yarns after lights out.  Another stopped him from being pranked:

'I was touched and charmed by his kindness: there were always many friendly men like this on board, who remembered their own first joinings.  I saw him several times during that term, but we were in different watches, and this was usually a bar to friendship.  Years later, when I was rowing on the Hudson, near the Palisades, he suddenly hailed me from the shore, at a time when neither of us could stay long to talk.  His ship was lost with all hands soon afterwards. 

from 'New Chum'

This passage serves also to remind the reader of the dispensibility of human life in sea-faring.  But for his kindness to Masefield, this man would have remained forever anonymous to us.  He was not the only man with whom Masefield had become acquainted to be lost at sea; it was a risk that hung then and hangs now over any sailor.  Marine hostility, as Masefield was soon to find out for himself, cannot be defied; hence the quiet, matter-of-fact nature of the anecdote.  To hostility that was needless, however, Masefield was less resigned:

         

It was quite clear to me...that something was very much amiss somewhere; there was too much grab, too much snatch, and I knew very well that I did not want to belong to it.  I wanted to be clear of the type of man who gave iron walls and a shelf, and a little daily offal, in exchange for a life's work.

from 'New Chum'

Masefield at thirteen had a clear vision of humanity and a greater knowledge of the worth of even a poor sailor than many of those who led them.  Masefield's affinity with the downtrodden began here, even as he himself was being trodden down by them.

Bibliography:

 Babington-Smith, Constance. 'John Masefield: A Life' (Chalford: The History Press, 2008)
Masefield, John. 'New Chum' (Kingswood, Surrey: Windmill Press, 1944)

Early Life

Lord, give to men who are old and rougher
The things that little children suffer,
And let keep bright and undefiled
The young years of the little child. 

from 'The Everlasting Mercy'.

John Edward Masefield was born in the Herefordshire market town of Ledbury on the 1st of June, 1878.  He was the third child of Edward Masefield, a lawyer in the town, and Caroline Masefield.  The family lived in 'The Knapp', a large house but a few fields from the Hereford and Gloucester Canal.

           '...Visible bread grew golden in the sun.
           Near timbered barns the red brick farmsteads stood,
           Each with an oast house like a Welsh crone's hood;
           Each floated over by the shifting flight
           Of countless pigeons flashing dark and white...'

from 'Wonderings'

Until the age of six, Masefield's 'young years' were doubtless bright and undefiled.  In So Long to Learn, 'fragments of an autobiography', Masefield recalled the intensity of childhood, - which he called 'Paradise' - and an abrupt experience, at the age of about five, of being able suddenly to

'... imagine imaginary beings complete in every detail, with every faculty and possession... these imaginations did what I wished for my delight, with an incredible perfection, in a brightness not of this world'.

As might be expected, Masefield could describe this equally richly in verse:

           'I do not know the day, the month, the year:
           It was a green time, when the sky was clear;
           I was then five or six, in open air,
           When suddenly a doorway opened there.
           An ecstasy discovered that my mind
           had every wonder that I wished to find...
           ...And I , who summoned, king of all of these,
           King of a world to enter when I chose'.

from 'Wonderings'

However, Masefield was soon to know hardship of the cruellest kind.  In 1884, his mother died giving birth to her sixth child, Norah: John was only six years of age at the time.  A year later both of his Masefield grandparents died.  Financial difficulties necessitated a new governess, Mrs Broers, of whom Masefield expressed his opinion by stabbing her with a fork in the arm.  All the time the health of his father gradually deteriorated, and he also died in 1890.  Masefield was an orphan at the age of 12.

The young family was taken in by Masefield's aunt and uncle, William and Kate Masefield. They had had no children of their own, and Aunt Kate especially was sceptical of John Masefield's interest in literature. Her recommendation was that Masefield be sent to sea in order to quash this literary enthusiasm.  So it was that in 1891 Masefield joined the H.M.S. Conway, a naval training ship moored in the Mersey - training that would qualify him not as a sailor, but as the 'sea-poet'.

The H.M.S. Conway.

If the grave's gates could be undone,
She would not know her little son,
I am so grown. If we should meet
She would pass by me in the street,
Unless my soul's face let her see
My sense of what she did for me. 

 from 'C.L.M'.  

Bibliography:

 Babington-Smith, Constance. 'John Masefield: A Life' (Chalford: The History Press, 2008)
Masefield, John.'So Long to Learn: Chapters of an Autobiography' (London and New York: Heinemann, 1952)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/HMSConway1.jpg
Masefield, John. 'Wonderings' (London: Heinemann, 1943)

A Consecration

 

THEIRS be the music, the colour, the glory, the gold;

Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould.

Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold –

Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tales be told.

from 'A Consecration' 

(Full Poem on-line here)  

 

John Masefield's first published anthology of poems (Salt-Water Ballads, 1902) began with a dedication of his poetic efforts to the 'dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth' - the down-trodden, the oppressed, the powerless - not the hard-hearted 'ruler' but the hard-working 'ranker'.  Not then, nor for the rest of his life, was he afraid - having once himself counted among them - to sing of the unsung.

In the near half-century since his death, Masefield has drifted rather from public attention. and, in the literary world, himself become one of these hard workers who 'cannot be known'.  I would like, hopefully after Masefield's humble and understated way, also to sing of his largely unsung work.  In time, I hope that this small blog, a modest tribute to Masefield the man and to Masefield the poet, will offer a succession of  illustrations of his life and of his works.

Happy reading!  I very much hope that it is enjoyable.