F. T. BULLEN

North Otago Times, Volume CI, Issue 13234, 4 March 1915, Page 3

F. T. BULLEN

, FROM-ERRAND BOY TO POPULAR AUTHOR. rCAKEEIfOF SUCCESS AND TRAGEDY. ■

The- lato Fiank Bnllen, whose death : lias inst been announced, was bom at l'addington'on Apul fl, 18.") i. As his parents wefe poor, young Bullen'was takcir from school at the age of nine aud sent to work as an errand boy. In 1569 he went to sea, serving in various capacities up to and including chief mate in all parts of the world, lie retired from the sea in 1883, and became junior clerk iu the Meteorological Office'until 1899. Frank Billion excelled in the writing of sea stories, and among his best works are "The Cruise of the Cachalot," "Idylls of the Sea," "The Log of a Sea Waif," and "Men of the Merchant Service." He also wrote many short, stories, articles and essays. Writing from London, under date January 9th, a correspondent says:— vDo you remember how years ago we were all reading and talking about that fine book of the sea, "The Cruise of the Cachalot," whose publication brought its previously unknown writer, Mr-Frank T. Bullen j renown? Undoubtedly von do, and will also recall that Mr Bullen proved to have begun life as the child of a poor couple in, the grubby London district of Pad(dtngton, anil'that, after several years as<an eirand bov, and several more in Which he lived the life of a true nomad, he went .to sea, and there served in eveiv capacity up to and including chief mate. 'After which, completely "fed up" with life on the ocean wave, he settled down at a land-luhhers job in the British Meteorological Office and incidentally started writing books. -The first of these, "The Cruise of the Cachalot," easily the book of its year, sold like the, proverbial hot cakes (it'went into three editions in as many months), and was followed by a whole string of others, including "Idylls of • the Sea" and "The Log of a Sea Waif;" and probably nobody outside his own circle of friends doubted that Bullen, who is now 57, had amassed a .tidvjsum in royalties, and could look forward to his riper years with the complacency bred of a comfortable balance nt-the bank. So it was with rather a shock thai one learned the other day from a private letter written by Bullen to h friend, that, far from being a man of means, this writer is actually reduced to subsisting on charity, and that iu health as well as in estate he is a broken man. "I have kept few secrets regarding myself," he writes, "ami I certainly do'not think that now is the time.-to'begin keeping them, so I will at once sav that as far as 1 can tell bv ail the usual methods I am an invalid so helpless that to get upstairs (one flight) to bed is a portentous task, leaving me gasping for several min- . tites, and that 1 am maintained in this hardly living condition by a charitablb contribution of 30s per week. And whv am I thus? Well, principally, I believe, from unnecessary hardships inflicted upon me between nine years of and eleven and a half, whereof tho , were insufficient food aud bitter d exposure of an ill-clad little body. Thus i'l were sown the seeds of a disease that r\ has never left me, and now is bringing V me at the age of 57 to my end. ''But the public which, in some mysterious manner, reads and loves mj boob without buying them, strangely enough'assume that 1 have made a large fortune by authorship, and am living iu luxury." Now, Ido not waul a large fortune, nor luxury, but I am knowledge that this is a~ generai belief, for many reason*, but- lowest of all on the ground of thfl great number of appeals made to me, ,for monev for all sorts of causes, the which if 'I did as I wished and answer- / ed.thcra would cost me a dollar a week y in stamps. Still, except for the wrong m. impressions stated above, 1 have very - little reason to complain. There are far more gifted and worthy persons than myself who have not met with recognition, and have gone Into, oblivion Unrecognised. And ifThad only been a little more pushing, a little more callousand oblivious to justice, perhapsbut,; no, such' a success is not worth having." A lonely little boy, wnose molucr died before' he could remember her, young Bullen was taken in charge by ' • a-hard-working aunt. "Her usual bedtime," he has placed on record, "was .1 'a.m., mine was 7 p.m., so as I slept with her, and she lay soundly sleeping until nine, the bright summer inum- - ings were almost interminably, long to " ■.: nie. But happily there stood on the narrow mantelpiece a few books, a Bible, a cookery book, somebody's advice to young.servauts, a Book of Common Prayer and 'Paradise Lost.' When I,became able to read, I used to climb cautiously over the head of the bed, get a book and steal back again. 'Paradise Lost'soon superseded,all the others, and, incredible as it may sound, before I had completed my fifth year I had read it through, 'arguments' and all, twice." ■ When he was twelve, and had tieen bullied almost out of his life by a harsh stepmother, young Bullen shipped as cabin-boy on an "old tub of a - barque" bound for Mexico, and was promptly wrecked on one of the Campeche Cays. Rescued, he served for a while as'a deputy-billiard-marker at a hotel in Havana,'and later became apprenticed to a carver of ships' figureHe pined for England, however, and, having returned to this country in another ship, found himself in London with no visible means of support, "Never shall I forget," he pays, "snatching a handful of whelks -7- out of a. big tub in Billingsgate shell- ■ fish market and scuttling away to a dark corner with them, only to find that they were unboiled and consc- ' quently uneatable, although I hadn't broken my fast for nearly two days," Bo he went on another voyage and saw thirty persons die of yellow-fever on the sliort passage. When he was twenty-two Bullen married, his wife '■■being*just eighteen. This was on a Monday, and on the following Wednesday he sailed before the mast again bound for Calcutta. Meanwhile he had made lus famous cruise in the Cachalot; and incidentally been wrecked a couple of times more. Not much j/f a life has his been, so far as happiness 1 is concerned, though one packed H'ith Incident.