Thomas Hearne

“ The actor is more likely to have been Sir Thomas's son. The father took no degree at Cambridge. On leaving the university he became amanuensis to Sir Francis Walsingham, and his dexterity and despatch gained for him in that capacity the nickname of ‘Swiftsure,’ after a well-known ship. He displayed some interest in antiquities, and joined the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries, founded by Archbishop Parker. A paper on sterling money, read to the members by Lake, appears in Hearne's ‘Curious Discourses,’ i. ”

“ In the present, as in the former impression, I have given that part of Hearne's Latin preface to his edition of this work which has relation to it; also Mr. Lewis's preface, and the Dedication to the first edition by its anonymous editor T. P.
It should appear that Mr. Roper compiled this life about the close of Queen Mary's reign (A.D. 1557) , when Sir Thomas More's English Works were first collected and printed, at the queen's instance, by his nephew, Mr. Justice Rastall. ”

“ But what he issued to the world was only a part of Hearne's literary work. He was in constant correspondence with very many of the antiquaries and literary men of his day, and their replies fill the greater part of ‘Rawl. Lett.’ vols. i–xxxvii., preserved in the Bodleian Library. Beginning from 1705 to within a few days of his death, he also kept an elaborate diary, giving lengthy extracts from the books he read or which came under his notice, remarks on his friends and enemies, upon public matters, university gossip and history, and indeed anything that interested him at the moment. ”

“ Travelling without incumbrance, the war-party, with Hearne in company, reached a river of some size called Congecawthawhachaga, on the 21st of June, and there they met a large body of the Copper Indians or Red Knives, one of whom, then a boy named Cascathry, was well known in 1820-21 to Sir John Franklin. This boy joined the war-party, and in his old age remembered the circumstances well. Hearne says that he ascertained with his Elton's quadrant the position of the ferry over the river to be 68° 46' north, and 118° 15' west of London. ”

“ In 1727 he was unanimously elected to the Camden professorship of ancient history, no other candidate offering himself. Hearne relates that soon after his election he bought a hundred pounds' worth of books on history and chronology, 'on purpose to qualify him the better to discharge' the duties of the office. He died 29 May 1761, having survived his children, who died young, and three wives, Lady Tyrell, Elizabeth Woodward, and Mrs. Graves, daughter of Peter Cranke. He bequeathed 2,000l. intrust for the king's scholars of Westminster elected to Christ Church, and another 2,000l. ”

“ It is only fair to state that during these three days of hard work no fault was to be found with Hearne. The sealing-master knew he was being closely watched, and he was well aware that Captain Len Guy would not spare him if he tried to get up insubordination amongst his comrades. It was a pity that his bad instincts had induced him to play such a part, for his strength, skill, and cleverness made him a very valuable man, and he had never proved more useful than under these circumstances. ”

“ If he had for a moment suspected that Hearne spoke of what happened on board the Grampus, if he had heard that the rascal (as Hurliguerly called him, and not without reason) constantly talked to Martin Holt about his brother, I really do not know what would have happened.
In short, whatever the intentions of Hearne might be, it was dreadful to think that our sailing-master, on whose fidelity Captain Len Guy ought to be able to count, was in conspiracy with him.
The sealing-master must have a strong motive for acting in this way. What it was I could not imagine. ”

“ Hearne's expedition of discovery.
Before starting on his journey in 1769, Hearne received full instructions from Moses Norton, the Governor. He was provided with an escort and was urged to cultivate, as he went, friendly relations with the Indians. "Smoke your calumet of peace with their leaders in order to establish a friendship with them." He was equipped with instruments, and was required to take account of latitude and longitude of the chief points visited; he was to seek for a north-west passage through the continent. ”

“ Thus the new men of the crew, and especially the Americans, did not conceal their regret for the captain’s indifference in the presence of so many animals worth their weight in gold, and more abundant than they had ever seen whales at that period of the year. The leading malcontent was Hearne, a sealing-master, to whom his companions were ready to listen. He had found it easy to get the upper hand of the other sailors by his rough manner and the surly audacity that was expressed by his whole personality. Hearne was an American, and forty-five years of age. ”

“ The diary gives Hearne's sentiments on things and persons in a very outspoken way; he has no tenderness for the Hanoverians or his personal opponents, and only commends the honest men, i.e. nonjurors and adherents of the exiled royal family. ”

“ Charles Hearn was a man particularly susceptible to feminine grace and charm. He found on his return a wife whose beauty had vanished, the light washed out of her eyes by weeping, a figure grown fat and unwieldy, lines furrowed on the beautiful face by discontent and ill-humour; but, above all other determining causes for bringing about the unhappiness of this ill-matched pair, Charles Hearn had heard by chance, from a fellow-officer on the way home, that his first love, the only woman to whom his wandering fancy had been constant, was free again, and was living as a widow in Dublin. ”

“ All Hearne's collections are included, with his diaries; the latter were bought by Rawlinson of the widow of Bishop Hilkiah Bedford for 105l. To St. John's College he bequeathed his heart, which is preserved in a marble urn in the chapel, some of his printed books, coins, and a set of medals of Louis XIV and XV, a cabinet which had belonged to Hearne, and a large residue of his estate. To the College of Surgeons he gave some skeletons and preservations in spirits. He also provided a salary for the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. ”

“ Well, while they were conversing on the bridge of the Halbrane, I heard them talking about Dirk Peters, and Hearne was saying: ‘You must not owe a grudge to the half-breed, Master Holt, because he refused to respond to your advances and accept your thanks! If he be only a sort of brute, he possesses plenty of courage, and has showed it in getting you out of a bad corner at the risk of his life. ”

“ Moreover, there was never in his life any personal happiness, romance, poetry, or satisfaction which could serve as the material of Hearn's æsthetic faculty. Almost every hour of that life had been lived in physical or mental anguish, denied desire, crushed yearnings, and unguided waywardness. Born of a Greek mother, and a roving English father, his childhood was passed in an absurd French school where another might have become a dwarfed and potted Chinese tree. ”

“ Hearne seems to have been so intent on geographical discovery that he did not allow his feelings to influence him very long against the society of his Amerindian companions, who apparently sat down and ate a dish of salmon with him an hour or so after they had killed this last old woman! The Indians now told him that they were ready again to assist him in making an end of his survey, and apparently on foot, for the Coppermine River was not navigable here, even for a boat.
Thus, first of all white men coming overland, he reached the sea coast of the Arctic Ocean. ”

“ He never loved, except in one sorry way, never suffered much, never lived much, for he was a hard worker, and he was always seeking the ever-postponed, ever-unsatisfying Paradise, so vainly hunted for, and which none ever finds except in himself. Ihm fehlt die Liebe, was said of Heine,—how much truer is it of Hearn! Conspiring with a native lack of originality and want of normal experience, his enormous near-sightedness made his choice of material and method of handling it what we know. ”

“ A MASTER-WORKMAN It was characteristic of the oddity of Hearn’s whole life that his way to the Farthest East should have led through the Farthest West, and that his way to a land where one’s first impressions are of having strayed into a child’s world of faëry,—so elfishly frail and fantastically small that one almost fears to move lest a rude gesture might destroy a baby’s dear “make believe,”—should have led through plains as gigantic as empires, and mountain gorges vast as dreams. ”

“ The church, he declared, was inexorable and cruel; he preferred, therefore, not to place himself within the domain of her sway, holding aloof, as far as possible, from Roman Catholic circles in New Orleans, and renouncing the idea of a visit to the Spanish island of Manila.
It is easy to imagine the intellectual eagerness and curiosity—appanage of his artistic nature—with which Hearn must have entered Paris. Paris, where, as he says, "talent is mediocrity; art, a frenzied endeavour to express the Inexpressible; human endeavour, a spasmodic straining to clutch the Unattainable." ”

“ In consequence of this isolation, or because of the softening influence of matrimony, here at Kumamoto he seemed for the first time to awake to the fact of having relations in that distant western land he had left so many years before. "Our soul, or souls, ever wanders back to its own kindred," he says to his sister.
His father, Charles Bush Hearn, had left three children by his second wife (daughters) , all born in India. Invalided home, Charles Hearn had died, in the Red Sea, of Indian fever; the three orphan children and his widow continued their journey to Ireland. ”

“ Though apparently only journalising and translating, Hearn was piling up experiences and sensations, not making use of them except in letters, but laying down the concrete and setting the foundation for his work in the West Indies and Japan. "The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a friendly, distant party; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them silently away." ”

“ Hearne said that Higden ‘was always reckoned a man of Parts and Honesty,’ but he considered that Higden's ‘View’ was completely confuted. ‘Nor,’ Hearne adds, ‘is the government like to thank him for his Performance, since he resolves all into Possession, and makes all Usurpers have a title to Allegiance, not excepting even Oliver himself.’ Higden took the degree of D.D. in 1710, and became prebendary of Canterbury in May 1713. ”

“ The month of September was unusually severe, and when the winter set in, the party suffered intensely from the cold, while the want of snow-shoes made their march increasingly difficult. The marvel is that Hearne ever reached the fort at all. He would not have done so very probably had it not been his fortune to fall in with an Indian chief named Matonabbee, a man of strange and exceptional character, to whom he owed not only his return to Fort Prince of Wales, but his subsequent successful journey to the Coppermine. ”

“ Here they joined a large party of Matonabbee's band, for the most part women and children. The women were by no means considered by the chief as a hindrance to the expedition. Indeed, he attributed Hearne's previous failure to their absence. 'Women,' he once told his English friend, 'were made for labour; one of them can carry or haul as much as two men can do; they pitch our tents, make and mend our clothing, and in fact there is no such thing as travelling in this country for any length of {54} time without their assistance. ”

“ What a lesson does Hearn teach to the sons of art in these days of cheap publication and hurried work. His record of stoical endeavour and invincible patience ought to be printed in letters of gold, and hung on the study wall of all seeking to enter the noble career. His re-writing of pages, some of them fifty times, the manner in which he put his work aside and waited, groping for something he knew was to be found, but the exact shape of which he did not know. ”

“ After his marriage to Setsu Koizumi, however, not even from his enemies, and their name was legion, at Kumamoto, Kobe, or Tokyo, did we ever hear the faintest suggestion of scandal connected with his name. In Japan, where there is no privacy of any sort in everyday life, where, if a man is faithless to his wife, all the quarter where he lives knows of it, and the wife accepts it as her Ingwa—or sin in a former state of existence—it would have been impossible for Hearn to have stepped over the line, however tentatively, without its being known and talked about. ”

“ Already in the small frail body, with half the eyesight given to other men, dwelt that quality of perseverance, that indomitable determination which, with all Hearn's deviations from the straight path, with all his blunderings, guided him at last out of the perplexities and weariness of life into calm and sunlight, to the enjoyment of that happiness which was possible to a man of his temperament.
"All roads lead to Rome," but it is well for the artist if he find the right one early in his career. ”

“ It is a circumstance perhaps to be lamented, that these people never attempt to assist each other on those occasions, even in the most critical cases. This is in some measure owing to delicacy, but more probably to an opinion they entertain that nature is {93} abundantly sufficient to perform every thing required, without any external help whatever. When I informed them of the assistance which European women derive from the skill and attention of our midwives, they treated it with the utmost contempt ”