From Sail to Steam: Recollections of Naval Life — Chapter XI, Part 2

I had begun my reading with Lapeyrouse-Bonfils, in October, 1885. The preceding summer at Panama had so far affected my health as to cause a month's severe illness in the winter; and when recovered I unguardedly let myself in for another month's work, on naval tactics, which might have been postponed.

Hence the end of the following May had arrived before I began to write; but I was so full of matter, absorbed or evolved, that I ran along with steady pace, and by September had on paper, in lecture form, all of my first _Sea Power_ book, except the summary of conclusions which constitutes the final chapter.

Before publication, in 1890, the whole had been very carefully revised; but the changes made were mostly in the details of battles, or else verbal in character, to develop discussions in amplitude or clearness.

Battles had been to me at first a secondary consideration; hence for revision I had accumulated many fresh data, notably from two somewhat scarce books: _Naval Battles in the West Indies_, by Lieutenant Matthews, and _Naval Researches_, by Captain Thomas White, British officers contemporary and participant in the events which they narrate of the War of American Independence.

A lecturer is little hampered by the exactions of style; indeed, the less he ties himself to his manuscript, the more he can talk to his audience rather than read, and the more freely his command of his subject permits him to digress pertinently, the better he holds attention.

When I found after my first course that the treatment was to my hearers interesting as well as novel, the thought of publishing entered my mind; and while I had no expectation or ambition to become a stylist, the question of style gradually forced itself on my consideration.

I intend to state some of my conclusions, because the casual remarks of others, authors or critics, have been helpful to me.

Why should not style as well as war have its history and biography, to which each man may contribute an unpretentious mite?

Notably, I got much comfort from Darwin's complaint of frequent recurrences of inability to give adequate expression to thoughts, which he could then put down only in such crude, imperfect form as the moment suggested, leaving the task of elaboration to a more propitious season.

If so great a man was thus troubled, no strange thing was happening to me in a like experience.

Such good cheer in intellectual as well as moral effort is one of the best services of biography and history, raising to the rank of ministering spirits the men whose struggles and success they tell.

Was not Washington greater at Valley Forge than at Yorktown?

and Nelson beating against a head wind than at Trafalgar?

Johnson has anticipated Darwin's method in advice given in his Gargantuan manner: "Do not exact from yourself, at one effort of excogitation, propriety of thought and elegance of expression.

Invent first, and then embellish.

The production of something, where nothing was before, is an act of greater energy than the expansion or decoration of the thing produced.

Set down diligently your thoughts as they arise in the first words that occur, and, when you have matter, you will easily give it form."

To Trollope I owed a somewhat different practical maxim.

His theory Was that a man could turn out manuscript as steadily as a shoemaker shoes--his precise simile, if I remember;

and he prided himself on penning his full tale each day.

I could not subscribe to this, and think that Trollope's work, of which I am fond, shows the bad effect; but I did imbibe contempt for yielding to the feeling of incapacity, and put myself steadily to my desk for my allotted time, writing what I could.

Whether the result were ten words or ten hundred I tried to regard With equanimity.

I have never purpose attempted to imitate the style of any writer, though I unscrupulously plagiarize an apt expression.

But gradually, and almost unconsciously, I formed a habit of closely scrutinizing the construction of sentences by others; generally a fault-finding habit.

As I progressed, I worked out a theory for myself, just as I had the theory of the influence of sea power.

Style, I said, has two sides.

It is first and above all the expression of a man's personality, as characteristic as any other trait; or, as some one has said--was it Buffon?

--style is the man himself.

From this point of view it is susceptible of training, of development, or of pruning; but to attempt to pattern it on that of another person is a mistake.

For one chance of success there are a dozen of failure; for you are trying to raise a special product from a soil probably uncongenial, or a fruit from an alien stem--figs from vines.

But beyond this there is to style an artificial element, which I conceive to be indicated by the word _technique_ as applied to the arts; though it is possible that I misapprehend the term, being ignorant of art.

In authorship I understand by _technique_ mainly the correct construction of periods, by the proper collocation of their parts.

I subscribe heartily to the opinion I have seen attributed to Stevenson, that everything depends upon the order of the words; and this, in my judgment, should make the sentence as nearly as possible independent of punctuation.

Further, there are many awkwardnesses of expression which proper training or subsequent practice can eliminate; and in proportion as a writer attains the faculty of instinctively avoiding these, his technique improves.

Perfected, he would never use them, and his sentences would flow untaught from his pen in absolutely clear reflection of his thought.

As an example of what I mean by awkwardnesses, I would cite the use of "whose" as the possessive of "which."

I know that adequate authority pronounces this correct, so it is not on that score I reject it.

Moreover, I recognize that in myself the repulsion is somewhat of an acquired taste.

When I began to write I thus employed it myself, but its sound is so inevitably suggestive of "who" as to constitute an impertinence of association.

I have lately been reading a very excellent history of the United States, in which the frequent repetition of "whose" in this sense causes me the sensation of perpetually "stubbing" my toe; an Americanism, which, I will explain to any British reader, means stumbling over roots or on an unequal pavement, the irritation of which needs not exposition.

In the matter of natural style I soon discovered that the besetting anxiety of my soul was to be exact and lucid.

I might not succeed, but my wish was indisputable.

To be accurate in facts and correct in conclusions, both as to appreciation and expression, dominated all other motives.

This had a weak side.

I was nervously susceptible to being convicted of a mistake; it upset me, as they say.

Even where a man writes, this is a defect of a quality; in active life it entails slowness of decision and procrastination, failure "to get there."

I

have no doubt that much contemporary writing suffers delay from a like morbid dread as to possibility of error.

The aim to be thus both accurate and clear often encumbered my sentences.

My cautious mind strove to introduce between the same two periods every qualification, whether in abatement or enforcement of the leading idea or statement.

This in many cases meant an accumulation of clauses, over which I exercised my ingenuity and lavished my time so to arrange them that the whole should be at once apprehended by the reader.

It was not enough for me that the qualifications should appear a page or two before, or after, and in this I think myself right; but in wanting them all in the same period, as I instinctively did,--and do, for nature is obstinate,--I have imposed on myself needless labor, and have often taxed attention as an author has no right to do.

Unless under pressing necessity, I myself will not be at pains to read what I can with difficulty understand.

It is to this anxiety for full and accurate development of statements and ideas that I chiefly attribute a diffuseness with which my writing has been reproached; I have no doubt justly.

I have not, however, tried to check the evil at the root.

I am built that way, and think that way; all round a subject, as far as I can see it.

I am uneasy if a presentment err by defect, by excess, or by obscurity apparent to myself.

I must get the whole in; and for due emphasis am very probably redundant.

I am not willing to attempt seriously modifying my natural style, the reflection of myself, lest, while digging up the tares of prolixity I root up also the wheat of precision.

The difference emphasized by Dr. Johnson, "between notions borrowed from without and notions generated within," seems to me to apply to the mode of expression as well as to the idea expressed.

The two spring from the same source, and correspond.

You impress more forcibly by retaining your native manner of statement; chastened where necessary, but not defaced by an imitation, even of a self-erected, yet artificial, standard.

It does not do to meddle too much with yourself.

But I do resort to a weeding process in revising; a verb or an adjective, an expletive or a superlative, is dragged out and cast away.

Even so, as often as not, I have to add.

The words above, "as far as I can see it," have just been put in.

Of course, in the interest of readers, I resort to breaking up sentences; but to me personally the result is usually distasteful.

The reader takes hold more easily, as a child learns spelling by division into syllables;

but I am conscious that instead of my thoughts constituting a group mutually related, and so reproducing the essential me, they are disjointed and must be reassembled by others.

A man untrained in youth, and who has never systematically sought to repair the defect, can scarcely hope fully to compass technique in style.

He will thus lose some part of that which he may gain by being more nearly his natural self; for there is a real gain in this.

Such advance as I have made in technique--and I trust I have made some--I have owed to the critical running analysis of the construction of sentences, which has been my habit ever since I began to write.

That this is constant with me, subconsciously, is shown by the frequency with which it passes into a conscious logical recasting of what I read.

To get antecedents and consequents as near one another as possible; qualifying words or phrases as close as may be to that which they qualify; an object near its verb; to avoid an adjective which applies to one of two nouns being so placed as to seem to qualify both; such minute details seem to me worthy of the utmost care, and I think I can trace advance in these respects.

My experiments tend to show that the natural order of nominative, verb, object, is usually preferable; and as a rule I find that adverbs and adverbial phrases fall best between nominative and verb.

Still, the desirability of tying each period to its predecessor, as does the rhyme of the fourth and fifth lines of a sonnet, will modify arrangement.

In reading another author, where such precaution as I name is neglected, a word misplaced in its relation to the others of the sentence runs my mind off the track, like an engine on a misplaced switch, and I dislike the trouble of backing to get on the right rails.

It is the same with my own work, if time enough elapses between composition and subsequent reading.

Generally I make such time, either in manuscript or proofs;

but I am chagrined when I meet slips in the printed page, as I too often do.

There is no provision against such fault equal to laying the text aside till it has become unfamiliar; but even this is not certain, for construction, being consonant to your permanent mode of thinking, may not when erroneous jar upon you as upon another.

In acquiring an automatic habit, which technique should become, principles tend to crystallize into rules, and a few such I have;

counsels of perfection many of these, too often unrealized.

I do not like the same word repeated in the same paragraph, though this lays a heavy tax on so-called synonymes.

Assonances jar me, even two terminations "tion" near together.

I will not knowingly use "that" for "which," except to avoid two "whiches" between the same two periods.

The split infinitive I abhor, more as a matter of taste than argument.

I recognize that it is at times very tempting to snuggle the adverb so close to the verb; but I hold fast my integrity.

Once, indeed, I took it into my head not to split compound tenses, and carried this fad somewhat remorselessly through a series of republished articles; but the result has not pleased me.

Boswell tells us that Johnson would have none of "former" and "latter;" that he would rather repeat the noun than resort to this subterfuge.

I see no good reason for rejecting these convenient alternatives; but nevertheless I have obsequiously bowed to the autocrat and taken a skunner to the words--the only literary snobbishness of which I am conscious.

I can stand out against Macaulay's proscription of prepositions ending sentences.

Although I generally twist them round, they often please my ear there.

It is not exactly in point, but I have always rejoiced over "Silver was nothing accounted of" in the days of King Solomon; indeed, I was brought to book by a proofreader for concluding a sentence with "accounted of."

I let it stand, so taking was it to me.

The question doubtless occurs to most authors how far they are under bonds to the King's English.

As to grammar, I submit; the consequences of anarchy dismay me; but I question whether in words coinage is an attribute of sovereignty.

There is, of course, plenty of false money going around, current because accepted; but I think a man is at liberty to pass a new word, a word without authority in dictionaries, if it be congruous to standard etymology.

I once wrote "eventless;"

but, on looking, found it not.

Yet why not?

"Homeless," "heartless," "shoeless," etc. ; why merely "uneventful," a form only one letter longer, it is true, but built up to "eventful" to be pulled down to "uneventful"?

Besides, "uneventful" does not mean the same as "eventless."

"Doubtless" and "undoubtedly" differ by more than a shade in sense, and we have both.

So we have "anywhere," "nowhere," "somewhere," "everywhere;" why not "manywhere," if you need it?

Again, if "hitherto" be good--and it is--why not "thitherto"?

In the case of "eccentric" as a military term, I felt forced to frame "ex-centric;"

the former--I ask Dr. Johnson's pardon--has, in America at least, become so exclusively associated with the secondary though cognate idea of singularity that it would not convey its restricted military significance to a lay reader.

I had been assigned to the War College in October, 1885, Admiral Luce being still its president, but I did not go into residence until the end of the following August.

Luce had then been for some months detached, to command the North Atlantic fleet, and I had succeeded him by default, without special orders that I can remember.

He was anxious for me to live on the spot, to be "on deck," as he phrased it, for the College had many enemies and few friends; and matters were not helped by a sharp official collision that summer between him and Secretary Whitney, who from indifference passed into antagonism.

I cannot say that his change was due to this cause, and for a long time his hostility did not take form in act.

Now that the College, after twenty years, has had the warm encomium of the President of the United States in his message to Congress, it is interesting to a veteran recipient of its early buffets to recall conditions.

In my two years' incumbency we got decidedly more kicks than halfpence.

Yet in retrospect it gains.

A prominent New York lawyer once told me of a young man from a distant State consulting him with a view to practising in the city.

In response to some cautious warning as to the difficulties, he said: "Do you mean that with my education and capacity I cannot expect rapid success?"

"I fear not," replied the mentor.

A few months later they met casually.

"Are you getting on as fast as you had hoped?"

asked the older man.

"No," admitted the other, "but it's heaps of fun."

He doubtless got on, and so did the College.

I at the time was less appreciative of the fun, but I liked the work, and now I see also the comical side.

Between the early favor of the Department and his own energy, Luce had given the College a good send-off, like a skiff shoved by hand from the wharf into mid-stream.

There remained only to keep it moving.

We had an appropriation, and a building that was ready for lecturing;

with also two as yet uncompleted suites of quarters, for myself and one other officer.

We had also a very respectable library, in which, among many valuable works, conspicuously selected with an eye to our special objects, I recall with amusement certain ancient encyclopaedias, contributed apparently by well-wishers from stock which had begun to encumber their shelves.

Howbeit, like Quaker guns, these made a brave show if not too closely scrutinized, and spared us the semblance of poverty in vacant spaces.

Every military man understands the value of an imposing front towards the enemy.

When I arrived, I was the sole occupant of the building; and except an army officer--now General Tasker Bliss--was the only _attache_.

As I walked round the lonely halls and stairways, I might have parodied Louis XIV.

, and said, "_Le College, c'est moi_."

I had, indeed, an excellent steward, who attended to my meals and made my bed.

There was but one lamp available, which I had to carry with me when I went from room to room by night; and, indeed, except for the roof over my head, I might be said to be "camping out."

There was yet a month before the class of officers was to arrive.

This interval was more than occupied preparing the necessary maps for my lectures, much of the time by my lonely light.

Owing to lack of regular assistance, a great part of the map work was done by my own hands, often sprawled on the floor as my best table; though I was fortunate in receiving much voluntary help from a retired lieutenant, now Captain McCarty Little, then and always an enthusiastic advocate of the College, who did some of the drafting and all the coloring.

Thus were put together three of the four maps which afterwards appeared in my first book.

The fourth, of the North Atlantic Ocean, was begged of the hydrographer of the navy; a friendly Rhode Island man.

Besides the maps, there were to be produced some twenty or more battle plans.

For these I hit on a device which I can recommend.

I cut out a number of cardboard vessels, of different colors for the contending navies, and these I moved about on a sheet of drawing-paper until satisfied that the graphic presentation corresponded with facts and conditions.

They were then fastened in place with mucilage.

This saved a great deal of drawing in and rubbing out, and by using complementary colors gave vivid impression.

In combats of sailing fleets you must look out sharp, or in some arrangement, otherwise plausible, you will have a ship sailing within four points of the wind before you know it.

Nor is this the only way truth may be insulted.

Times and distances also lay snares for incautious steps.

I noticed once in an account of an action two times, with corresponding positions, which made a frigate in the meanwhile run at eighteen knots under topsails.

By such shifts we scrambled along as best we could our first year, content with beef without horseradish, as Sam Weller has it; hitching up with rope when a trace gave way, in the blessed condition of those who are not expecting favors.

But worse was to come.

Besides the general offence against conservatism by being a new thing, the College specifically had poached its building from another manor.

It stood upon the grounds of the Naval Training Station, for apprentices, which considered itself defrauded of property and intruded upon by an alien jurisdiction--an _imperium in imperio_.

The two were not even under the same bureau, so the antagonism existed in Washington as well as locally; and now a Secretary of malevolent neutrality.

Truly some one was needed "on deck;" though just what he could do with such a barometer did not appear, unless he bore up under short canvas, like Nelson, who "made it a rule never to fight the northwesters."

And such was very much our policy; reefed close down, looking out for squalls at any moment from any quarter, saying nothing to nobody, content to be let alone, if only we might be so let.

Small sail; and no weather helm, if you please.

One most alleviating circumstance was the commandant of the training station, the local enemy, one of the born saints of the earth, Arthur Yates.

Officially, of course he disapproved of us; professional self-respect and precedent, bureau allegiance, and all the rest of it, were outraged; but when it came to deeds, Yates could not have imagined an unkind act, much less done it.

Nor did he stop there; good-will with him was not a negative but an active quality.

What we wanted he would always do, and then go one better, if he could find a way to add to our convenience; and when we ultimately came to grief, after his departure, he wrote me a letter of condolence.

Altogether, while clouds were gathering in Washington, it was perpetual sunshine at home as to official and personal relations.

I have no doubt he would have drawn maps for me had I asked it.

None the less, trouble was at hand.

In 1886 we had a session which by general consent was very successful in quality, if not in quantity, lasting little over two months.

Our own bureau controlled the ordering of officers, so it swept together a sufficient number to form a class.

We had several excellent series of lectures: on Gunnery in its higher practical aspects, by Lieutenant Meigs, who has since left the navy for a responsible position in the Bethlehem Iron Works; on International Law, by Professor Soley, who under the next administration became Assistant-Secretary of the Navy; on Naval Hygiene, by a naval surgeon, Dr. Dean; together with others less notable.

All these had been contracted for by Luce.

Captain Bliss and myself, as yet the only two permanent _attaches_, of course took our share.

So much was new to the officers in attendance, not only in details but in principle, that I am satisfied nine-tenths of them went away friendly; some enthusiastic.

The College had steered clear of any appearance of scientific, or so-called post-graduate, instruction, consecutive with that given at Annapolis; and had demonstrated that it meant to deal only with questions pertinent to the successful carrying-on of war, for promoting which no instrumentality existed elsewhere.

The want had been proved, and a means of filling it offered.

The listeners had been persuaded.

I well remember my own elation when they went away in the latter part of November.

Success had surpassed expectation.

But in a fortnight Congress met, and it soon became evident that we were to be starved out,--no appropriation.

It was a short session, too; scant time for fighting.

I went to Washington, and pleaded with the chairman of the House naval committee, Mr. Herbert; but while he was perfectly good-natured, and we have from then been on pleasant terms, whenever he saw me he set his teeth and compressed his lips.

His argument was: Once establish an institution, and it grows; more and more every year.

There must be economy, and nowhere is economy so effectually applied as to the beginnings.

In vain did I try to divert his thoughts to the magnificent endings that would come from the paltry ten thousand the College asked.

He stopped his ears, like Ulysses, and kept his eyes fixed on the necessity of strangling vipers in their cradle.

In vain were my efforts seconded by General Joe Wheeler, also a representative from Alabama, and strongly sympathetic with military thought.

No help could be expected from the Secretary, and we got no funds.

The fiscal year would end June 30, 1887. It was of no use to try saving from the current balance, for by law that must be turned in at the year's end.

So we shrugged our shoulders and trusted to luck, which came to our assistance in a comical manner.

For summer we were all right, or nearly so; but winter might freeze us out.

Still, unless the Secretary saw fit to destroy the College by executive order, it had a right to be warm; so we sent in our requisition for heating the building.

It went through the customary channels, was approved, and the coal in the cellars before the Department noticed that there was no appropriation against which to charge it.

Upon reference to the Secretary, he decided that the coal had been ordered and supplied in good faith, and should be left and paid for.

In fact, however, if the building was used it would have to be heated; the decision practically was to let the College retain the building.

It was an excellent occasion to wipe us out by a stroke of the pen, but Mr. Whitney had not yet reached that point.

The fuel, I think, was charged to the bureau to which the Training Station belonged, which would not tend to mollify its feelings.

Coal was our prime necessity, but it was not all.

The hostile interest now began to cut us short in the various items which contribute to the daily bread of a government institution.

We lived the year from hand to mouth.

From the repairs put on the building a twelvemonth before there was left a lot of refuse scrap lying about.

This we collected and sorted, selling what was available, on the principle of slush-money.

Slush, the non-professional may be told, is the grease arising from the cooking of salt provisions.

By old custom this was collected, barrelled, and sold for the benefit of the ship.

The price remained in the first lieutenant's hands, to be expended for the vessel; usually going for beautifying.

What we sold at the College we thus used; not for beautifying, which was far beyond us, but to keep things together.

This proceeding was irregular, and for years I preserved with nervous care the memoranda of what became of the money, in case of being questioned; although I do not think the total went much beyond a hundred dollars.

It is surprising how much a hundred dollars may be made to do.

For our lectures the hydrographer again made for the College two very large and handsome maps.

The session of 1887 was longer and more complete than the year before;

but specifically it increased our good report in the service and added to us hosts of friends.

Many were now ready to speak in our favor, if asked; and some gave themselves a good deal of trouble to see this or that person of importance.

This was a powerful reinforcement for the approaching struggle; but with the Secretary biassed against us, and resolute opposition from the chairman of the committee, the odds were heavy.

Mr. Whitney showed me a frowning countenance, quite unlike his usual _bonhomie_; and yielded only a reluctant, almost surly, "I will not oppose you, but I do not authorize you to express any approval from me."

With that we began a still hunt; not from policy, but because no other course was open, and by degrees we converted all the committee but three.

This was quite an achievement in its way; for, as one of the members said to me, "It is rather hard to oppose the chairman in a matter of this kind.

Still, I am satisfied it is a good thing, and I will vote for it."

So we got our appropriation by a big majority.

Mr. Herbert was very nice about his discomfiture.

That a set of uninfluential naval officers should so unexpectedly have got the better of him, in his position, had a humorous side which he was ready to see; though it is possible we, on whose side the laugh was, enjoyed it more.

He afterwards, when Secretary of the Navy, came to think much better of the College, which flourished under him.

I had soon to find that my mouth had more than one side on which to laugh.

Confident that we were out of the woods, I proceeded to halloo;

for in an address made at the opening of the session of 1888, alluding to the doubt long felt about the appropriation, I said, "That fear has now happily been removed."

I reckoned without the Secretary, who issued an order, a bolt out of the blue, depriving the College not only of its building, but of its independent existence; transferring it to the care of the commander of the Torpedo Station, on another island in Narragansett Bay.

This ended my official existence as president of the College, and I was sent off to Puget Sound; one of a commission to choose a site for a navy-yard there.

I never knew, nor cared, just why Whitney took this course, but I afterwards had an amusing experience with him, showing how men forget; like my old commodore his moment of despondency about the outcome of the war.

In later years he and I were members of a dining club in New York.

I then had had my success and recognition.

One evening I chanced to say to him, apropos of what I do not now recall, "It was at the time, you know, that you sent Sampson to the Naval Academy, and Goodrich to the Torpedo Station."

"Yes," he rejoined, complacently; "and I sent you to the War College."

It was literally true, doubtless; his act, though not his selection; but in view of the cold comfort and the petard with which he there favored me, for Whitney to fancy himself a patron to me, except on a Johnsonian definition of the word,[16] was as humorous a performance as I have known.

So I went to Puget Sound, a very pleasant as well as interesting experience; for, having a government tender at our disposal, we penetrated by daylight to every corner of that beautiful sheet of water, the intricate windings of which prepare a continual series of surprises; each scene like the last, yet different; the successive resemblances of a family wherein all the members are lovely, yet individual.

Then was there not, suburban to the city of Seattle, Lake Washington, a great body of fresh water?

Of this, and of its island, blooming with beautiful villas, a delightful summer resort in easy reach of the town by cars, we saw before our arrival alluring advertisements and pictures, which were, perhaps, a little premature and impressionist.

How seductive to the imagination was the future battle-ship fleet resting in placid fresh water, bottoms unfouled and little rusted, awaiting peacefully the call to arms; upon which it should issue through the canal yet to be dug between sound and lake, ready for instant action!

Great would have been the glory of Seattle, and corresponding the discomfiture of its rival Tacoma, which undeniably had no lake, and, moreover, lay under the stigma of having tried, in such default, to appropriate by misnomer another grand natural feature; giving its own name Tacoma to Mount Rainier, so called by Vancouver for an ancient British admiral.

A sharp Seattleite said that a tombstone had thus been secured, to preserve the remembrance of Tacoma when the city itself should be no more.

The local nomenclature affixed by Vancouver still remains in many cases.

Puget, originally applied to one only of the many branches of the sound, was among his officers.

Hood's Inlet was, doubtless, in honor of the great admiral, Lord Hood; while Restoration Point commemorates an anniversary of the restoration of Charles II.

As regarded Lake Washington, our commission was a little nervous lest an injury to the canal might interfere at a critical moment with the fleet's freedom of movement, leaving it bottled up, and wired down.

We selected, therefore, the site where the yard now stands, in a singularly well-protected inlet on the western side of the main arm, with an anchorage of very moderate depth and easy current for Puget Sound.

There, if my recollection is right, it is nearly equidistant from the two cities.

Our judgment was challenged and another commission sent out.

This confirmed our choice, but very much less land was secured than we had advised.

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