Not indeed that I could have claimed to have been a shining success in any of the various commercial paths wherein I had strayed, more or less painfully, but I must plead that I was very young, and entirely without the guidance which youngsters have a right to expect from their elders. And now I must make a jump of a great many years, to the time in fact when relentless need drove me into commercialism again. And with this what I suppose I must call the serious part of my narrative begins.
CHAPTER V INTO TRADE IN SPITE OF MYSELF
Splendid and universal as are the attainments of seamen, it is only the bare truth to say that one of the rarest qualifications to find among them is commercial aptitude. There are, of course, notable exceptions, and in the days when masters and officers of vessels were allowed to add to their income substantially by trade with the natives of the countries which they visited, and were granted a certain amount of space in the hold wherein to store the merchandise they bought, the trading instinct must have been fairly general. Indeed there are not wanting cynics at sea to-day, who will tell you that what with the slop-chest, tobacco selling, and the outrageous rates of exchange, many a deep water skipper of a sailing ship could give points to an Armenian. And the latter is supposed by sailors to be equal in, let us call it trading power, to five Parsees, one of whom again equals five Jews.
But I do not think this is fair. It does not follow that a man is a born trader because he can sell necessaries to people who must have them from him or go without, and cannot go without. It only argues lack of conscience on the part of the seller. And to expect, without lack of competition, the same characteristics would, I am afraid, be indicative of a weak mind. At any rate I am quite certain that, speaking generally, a sailor when he comes ashore is helpless in the hands of business people, and that it is a very long while before he is able to think their thoughts and walk in their ways.
So when I first settled down ashore to steady employment in an office at a fixed salary of £2 per week, after fifteen years of irresponsibility as regards domestic affairs, I quickly learned that I was very callow indeed in those matters. My first false step was in buying furniture, wherewith to make a home, on the hire system. It must be remembered that I had a wife and one child, but that I was practically beginning a new life. And I did so by hanging round my neck a burden of debt which I did not get rid of for fifteen years, and then—but I must not anticipate the regular sequence of my story.
The next was to take a house. I had tried apartments several times, but something always went wrong, I was always made to feel that I was only in the house on sufferance, and being an enthusiast for peace, I always moved rather than have a row. But moving as a fairly regular experience is apt to pall upon one. It costs a good deal of money even when you hire the local greengrocer's van and horse at one and sixpence an hour, and it is very hard work, for unless you buckle to and do the lion's share yourself, you find at nightfall that you have just got in, you have parted with the bulk of your savings, and the best part of a heavy night's work is before you, putting up bedsteads and reducing the chaotic heap of your belongings to a condition in which you can find what you want within reasonable distance of the time that you want it.
For this and other reasons which I need not now specify I decided to take a house. I satisfied myself that by letting the floor below and the floor above the one I intended to keep for ourselves at the current rate in the neighbourhood, carefully ascertained beforehand, that I should live rent free or nearly so, and of course in a neighbourhood like that it was unthinkable that I should ever be empty. I mean the house of course. By which process of reasoning I demonstrated that I possessed one of the prime requirements of a tradesman—hope that my venture would be justified by the profit on my outlay.
But, alas, I was not made of the fibre necessary in order to be a successful sub-landlord. By the end of the first year of my tenancy I had come to the conclusion that I was a known mark for all the undesirables in the neighbourhood. If a tenant was clean he was utterly unreasonable, looking upon me as his bond-slave, and his right to do as he liked indefeasible, even though it might be destructive to my peace of mind or rest of body. And his one argument in reply to any remonstrance was, "I pay my rent and can go where I like. And don't you interfere with me."