My Life as an Author

by Martin Farquhar Tupper

Guernsey.

Guernsey is another of the spots where your author has lived and written, though neither long nor much. He comes, as is well known, of an ancient Sarnian family, as mentioned before. As to any writings of mine about insular matters while sojourning there occasionally, they are confined to some druidical verses about certain cromlechs, a few other poems, as one given below—"A Night-Sail in the Race of Alderney,"—and in chief that in which I "Raised the Haro," which saved the most picturesque part of Castle Cornet from destruction by some artillery engineer. Here is the poem, supposing some may wish to see it: especially as it does not appear in my only extant volume of poems, Gall & Inglis. It occurs (I think solely) in Hall & Virtue's extinct edition of my Ballads and Poems, 1853, and is there headed "'The Clameur de Haro,' an old Norman appeal to the Sovereign, 1850":—

"Haro, Haro! à l'aide, mon Prince!
A loyal people calls;
Bring out Duke Rollo's Norman lance
To stay destruction's fell advance
Against the Castle walls:
Haro, Haro! à l'aide, ma Reine!
Thy duteous children not in vain
Plead for old Cornet yet again,
To spare it, ere it falls!

"What? shall Earl Rodolph's sturdy strength,
After six hundred years, at length
Be recklessly laid low?
His grey machicolated tower
Torn down within one outraged hour
By worse than Vandals' ruthless power?—
Haro! à l'aide, Haro!

"Nine years old Cornet for the throne
Against rebellion stood alone—
And honoured still shall stand,
For heroism so sublime,
A relic of the olden time,
Renowned in Guernsey prose and rhyme,
The glory of her land!

"Ay,—let your science scheme and plan
With better skill than so;
Touch not this dear old barbican,
Nor dare to lay it low!

"On Vazon's ill-protected bay
Build and blow up, as best ye may,
And do your worst to scare away
Some visionary foe,—
But, if in brute and blundering power
You tear down Rodolph's granite tower,
Defeat and scorn and shame that hour
Shall whelm you like an arrowy shower—
Haro! à l'aide, Haro!"

When my antiquarian cousin Ferdinand, the historian of "Sarnia" and our "Family Records," saw these lines, he positively made serious objection—while generally approving them—against my saying "six hundred years," whereas, according to him, it was only five hundred and ninety-three! he actually wanted me to alter it, or at all events insert "almost,"—so difficult is it to reconcile literal accuracy with poetical rhyme and rhythm. I seem to remember that he wrote to the local papers about this. However, it is some consolation to know that these heartfelt verses forced the War Office to spare Castle Cornet: the Norman appeal by Haro being a privilege of Channel-Islanders to bring their grievances direct to the Queen in council. As I have continually the honour "Monstrari digito prætereuntium" in the rôle of a "Fidicen," I suppose that poetries in such a self-record as this are not positive bores—they can always be skipped if they are—so I will even give here a cheerful bit of rhyme which I jotted down at midnight on the deck of a yacht in a half-gale off Cherbourg, when going with a deputation from Guernsey to meet the French President in 1850:—

A Night-Sail in the Race of Alderney.

I.

"Sprinkled thick with shining studs
Stretches wide the tent of heaven,
Blue, begemmed with golden buds,—
Calm, and bright, and deep, and clear,
Glory's hollow hemisphere
Arch'd above these frothing floods
Right and left asunder riven,
As our cutter madly scuds,
By the fitful breezes driven,
When exultingly she sweeps
Like a dolphin through the deeps,
And from wave to wave she leaps
Rolling in this yeasty leaven,—
Ragingly that never sleeps,
Like the wicked unforgiven!

II.

"Midnight, soft and fair above,
Midnight, fierce and dark beneath,—
All on high the smile of love,
All below the frown of death:
Waves that whirl in angry spite
With a phosphorescent light
Gleaming ghastly on the night,—
Like the pallid sneer of Doom,
So malicious, cold, and white,
Luring to this watery tomb,
Where in fury and in fright
Winds and waves together fight
Hideously amid the gloom,—
As our cutter gladly sends,
Dipping deep her sheeted boom
Madly to the boiling sea,
Lighted in these furious floods
By that blaze of brilliant studs,
Glistening down like glory-buds
On the Race of Alderney!"

A few more words as to my Sarnian literaria. Victor Hugo, when resident in Guernsey, had greatly offended my cousin (the chief of our clan) by stealing for his hired abode the title of our ancestral mansion, Haute Ville House: and so, when I called on him, the equally offended Frenchman would not see me, though I was indulged with a sight of the bric-à-brac wherewith he had filled his residence, albeit deprived of access to its inmate. Hugo was not popular among the sixties at that time. Since then, Mr. Sullivan of Jersey published on his decease some splendid stanzas in French, which by request I versified in English: so that our spirits are now manifestly en rapport.

I wrote also (as I am reminded) an ode on the consecration of St. Anne's, Alderney, when I accompanied the Bishop to the ceremony: and some memorable stanzas about the decent expediency of the Bailiff and Jurats being robed for official uniform, since ornamentally adopted; but before I wrote they wore mean and undistinguished "mufti."

I had also much to do on behalf of my friend Durham, the sculptor, in the matter of his bronze statue to Prince Albert,—advocating it both in prose and verse, and being instrumental in getting royal permission to take a duplicate of the great work now at South Kensington. My cousin the Bailiff, the late Sir Stafford Carey, dated his knighthood from the inauguration of the statue, now one of the chief ornaments of St. Peter's Port,—the other being the Victoria Tower, also a Sarnian exploit.