Frank T. Bullen.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue XV, 11 April 1903, Page 1000

Frank T. Bullen.

The author of that fascinating sea stnrj, “The (’rui«c of the Cachalot/’ forms lhe subject of an article in •‘M.A.P.” Nearly forty years ago lie was a street arab earning his. living- -

Heaven save the mark! —by holding horses, selling newspapers, what Von like, and sleeping oftener than not with little but the velvet pall of night to cover him. A few weeks since be was

the guest of the evening at the Authors' <’lub. A line achievement, this junip from waif to novelist, had authorship l>een his aim all along, but an absolute- ' Jy marvellous one when one considers that no thought ol writing entered his head till within the last decade, and when one learns the story of bis previous life. For the first nine years of his life he was a happy child, lovingly cared for by his aunt, a poor dressmaker. It many years were to pass before the literary seed in him was to germinal e and fructify it was early implanted. His aunt possessed a few books, among them ••Paradise Lost,” and before the child was five years old he had read Milton’s groat poem twice through, ”arguments’ and all. This was the first manifestation of an abiding passion for reading, and one can trace the Miltonic in fluence in Air Bullen’s descriptive passages -gorgeous in word-painting, grand in conception, and breathing n spirit of the deepest piety. Scarcely had he acquired the three “B’s” than his sun sank beneath the horizon with tropical suddenness—-no doubt, he. thought for ever. He fell into the clutches ot a stepmother, more stony-hearted than Ox-ford-street, and in his own words there came in place of love, education, and sympathy, “hunger, blows, and severe, exhausting labour ironi six in the morning till eleven at night, and an atmosphere of vile language.” Remember that lie was a very little boy for his years. He escaped from this horrible irawsty of a home, became, as already mentioned, a street arab, and then took to the sea., lor long hampered in obtaining berths by his tiny size. Of his perils, hardships, and Ulysses-like wanderings as a sanor one need not. speai< here; the .story has been told as none else could tell it in his books. As strength came to him he was perilously near developing into a thorough-paced blackguard, but an early “conversion,” as he terms it, and, by whatever name we designate if, a wonderful turning point in Jus career occurring in Port Un a liners, brought him up with a round turn. He married “oh nothing.” as .he puts it, at twenty-one, and rose as high as mate, but lie had not sulHcient money io pay the levs lor master's examination, which colloquially speaking, be could have passed “on los head.’’ 1882 foun t him on shore’ out of work, penniless, and with a. wile ami child to support. JI the baby was plump, the parents were well-nigh starving, when he obtained a post as computc»r (a sort of junior clerk) in the Meteorological Office, and thought himself a Rothschild. But as the years rolled by his quivrr tilled, and his salary of “2 a week seemed Jess princely than at the first Jlush. Little mouths wanted food, little feet required to bo shod, and he was at his wits’ end how to supplement his income. For a Jong time it never occurred to him to write--it too seldom does to rhe men who have seen life without the varnish—but the foreordained came to pass, ami ho commenced writing. in three years lie made under .C4O, and felt himself a ghastly failure. Then lie sent an article to the “Cornhill.” which was printed, and Mi St. Leo Ntrachey became l»is literary father: but it was not until the “( raise oi Hie Uachalot” was published in lbU9 i hat he emerged from the gloomy wood ♦ d poxerty on to the smiling, sunlit plain of smeess. The unknown drudge of the Meteorologic.' I Office suddenly found himself the object of the outspoken ad miration of men like Kipling and the most famous critics of the day. But he had little heart to enjoy his laurels, for with him was Hie gnawing memory of i he beloved boy -Ids youngest child—who had died on the very day Hint the ‘•(.’aclmlot” was a eve pied by Messrs Smith, Ehler and Co. Since then he has steadily advanced with “Idylls of the Sea,” which someone wittily called “Thv Loves of the Whales,” ’‘'Che Log of a Sea Waif.” “With ( lirist nt Sen,” and a s<*ries of other books, down to his latest, “A W Indvimui's Wife/’ Ivo Jong to com-

weiit upon here. us see how he looks in the plenitiute of his success. Long ycMis of bitterness, suffering, and privation have not failed to leave their, imprint. He es.ii be as jolly as a sandboy, iiut in repose his face is very sad and careworn. Physically, he is a man of inconsiderable build, though I should be sorry for the hooligan who “took him on,” with blsek hair and beard, heavily shot with grey, a prominent nose, and particularly tine keen brown eyes. On the whole, a trifle Semitie-looking, though he comes of Dorset stock. ■ From the above, there is obviously no physical resemblance between him and the real, torpedo-bearded truculent little ruffian of Mr Cuteliffe Hyne’s romances. Yet there is a certain mental affinity. Air Bullen lacks Captain Kettle’s feroeity and punctilio, but, like him, he is a "man of his hands,” has the same strongvein of religious feeling —if he does not proselytise with a six-shooter and the same taste for weird music. Captain Kettle found solace, if his audience did not, in the concertina, and a concertina and a gramophone are amongst Mr Bullen’s playthings. One may add that at one time he was a strenuous open-ar." preacher. Aecustomed from early youth to severe toil, he gets through a wonderful amount of work. hive thousand words in a day, written in an exquisitely neat and legible hand—for he lias always taken a physical joy in the mere act of writing —is nothing to him, and for the last three years he has been very busy lecturing, with great success. He is only forty-six, so, although he has achieved much in a short time, who shall «rv what he may yet do in the future?