straighten up and go ‘long, never tremble: or be alive again, and
dare me to the desert damnation can’t you keep away from that
greasy water? pull her down! snatch her! snatch her baldheaded!
with thy sword; if trembling I inhabit then, lay in the leads!–no,
only the starboard one, leave the other alone, protest me the baby
of a girl. Hence horrible shadow! eight bells–that watchman’s
asleep again, I reckon, go down and call Brown yourself, unreal
mockery, hence!”
He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy
and tragic, but it was a damage to me, because I have never since
been able to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way. I cannot rid
it of his explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with
their irrelevant “What in hell are you up to NOW! pull her down!
more! MORE!–there now, steady as you go,” and the other
disorganizing interruptions that were always leaping from his
mouth. When I read Shakespeare now, I can hear them as plainly as
I did in that long-departed time–fifty-one years ago. I never
regarded Ealer’s readings as educational. Indeed they were a
detriment to me.
His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that
detail he was a good reader, I can say that much for him. He did
not use the book, and did not need to; he knew his Shakespeare as
well as Euclid ever knew his multiplication table.
Did he have something to say–this Shakespeare-adoring Mississippi
pilot–anent Delia Bacon’s book? Yes. And he said it; said it all
the time, for months–in the morning watch, the middle watch, the
dog watch; and probably kept it going in his sleep. He bought the
literature of the dispute as fast as it appeared, and we discussed
it all through thirteen hundred miles of river four times traversed
in every thirty-five days–the time required by that swift boat to
achieve two round trips. We discussed, and discussed, and
discussed, and disputed and disputed and disputed; at any rate he
did, and I got in a word now and then when he slipped a cog and
there was a vacancy. He did his arguing with heat, with energy,
with violence; and I did mine with the reserve and moderation of a
subordinate who does not like to be flung out of a pilot-house that
is perched forty feet above the water. He was fiercely loyal to
Shakespeare and cordially scornful of Bacon and of all the
pretensions of the Baconians. So was I–at first. And at first he
was glad that that was my attitude. There were even indications
that he admired it; indications dimmed, it is true, by the distance
that lay between the lofty boss-pilotical altitude and my lowly
one, yet perceptible to me; perceptible, and translatable into a
compliment–compliment coming down from above the snow-line and not
well thawed in the transit, and not likely to set anything afire,
not even a cub-pilot’s self-conceit; still a detectable compliment,
and precious.
Naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to Shakespeare–if
possible–than I was before, and more prejudiced against Bacon–if
possible than I was before. And so we discussed and discussed,
both on the same side, and were happy. For a while. Only for a
while. Only for a very little while, a very, very, very little
while. Then the atmosphere began to change; began to cool off.
A brighter person would have seen what the trouble was, earlier
than I did, perhaps, but I saw it early enough for all practical
purposes. You see, he was of an argumentative disposition.
Therefore it took him but a little time to get tired of arguing
with a person who agreed with everything he said and consequently
never furnished him a provocative to flare up and show what he
could do when it came to clear, cold, hard, rose-cut, hundred-
faceted, diamond-flashing reasoning. That was his name for it. It
has been applied since, with complacency, as many as several times,
in the Bacon-Shakespeare scuffle. On the Shakespeare side.
Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to
me when principle and personal interest found themselves in