The Book of Gallant Vagabonds

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Henry Beston. The Book of Gallant Vagabonds

The Book of Gallant Vagabonds

Table of Contents

FOREWORD

One: JOHN LEDYARD

I

II

III

Two: BELZONI

I

II

III

IV

Three: EDWARD JOHN TRELAWNY

I

II

III

IV

V

Four: THOMAS MORTON OF MERRY-MOUNT

I

II

III

IV

V

Five: JAMES BRUCE

I

II

III

IV

Six: ARTHUR RIMBAUD

I

II

FOOTNOTES

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Henry Beston

e-artnow, 2022

.....

For two troubled years, John Ledyard walks the flagstones of a British barrack yard, for the war of the Revolution is being fought in America, and he can neither escape nor bring himself to take naval service against his countrymen. Barrack life, however, ends by exhausting his patience, he seeks a transfer to the American station, and the December of 1782 finds him aboard a British man of war lying in Huntington Bay, Long Island. As the island was then in the hands of the British, John obtains seven days’ leave, but patriotically forgets to report aboard. From a stay with friends at Huntington, he hastens to Southold, where his mother keeps a boarding house, then frequented chiefly by British officers.

He rode up to the door, alighted, went in, and asked if he could be accommodated in her house as a lodger. She replied that he could, and showed him a room into which his baggage was conveyed. After having adjusted his dress, he came out, and took a seat by the fire in company with several other officers, without making himself known to his mother, or entering into conversation with any person. She frequently passed and repassed through the room, and her eye was observed to be attracted to him with more than usual attention. At last after looking at him steadily for some minutes, she deliberately put on her spectacles, approached nearer to him, begging his pardon for her rudeness, and telling him that he so much resembled a son of hers, who had been absent eight years, that she could not resist her inclination to view him more closely. “The scene that followed,” adds the old chronicler, “may be imagined, but not described.”

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