Paul Jones as an Infant.
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness.
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, Who is our home.
Wordsworth: "Intimations of Immortality."
Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones, born in London on May 18, 1896, was the first child of Henry and Emily Margaret Jones. His grandfather, the late Thomas Mainwaring, was in his day a leading figure in literary and political circles in Carmarthenshire. My own people have been associated with that county for centuries. For our son's christening a vessel containing water drawn from the Pool of Bethesda was sent to us by my old friend Sir John Foster Fraser, who in the spring of that year passed through Palestine on his journey by bicycle round the world.
At this time I was acting editor of The Weekly Sun, a journal then in high repute. Later, at Mr. T. P. O'Connor's request, I took charge of his evening newspaper, The Sun. After the purchase of The Sun by a Conservative proprietary I severed my connection with it, and in January, 1897, went to reside in Plymouth, having undertaken the managing editorship of the Western Daily Mercury.
We remained at Plymouth more than seven years. Paul received his early education at the Hoe Preparatory School in that town. He was a lively and vigorous child overflowing with health. When he was in his sixth year we discovered that he was shortsighted—a physical defect inherited from me. The discovery caused us acute distress. I knew from personal experience what a handicap and an embarrassment it is to be afflicted with myopia. Regularly thenceforward his eyes had to be examined by oculists. For several years, in fact until he was 16, the myopia increased in degree, but we were comforted by successive reports of different oculists that though myopic his eyes were very strong, and that there was not a trace of disease in them, the defect being solely one of structure which glasses would correct.
To Paul as a boy the habitual wearing of spectacles was at first very irksome, but in time he adapted himself to them. Even defects have their compensations. He was naturally rash and daring, and his short sight undoubtedly acted as a check on an impetuous temperament. He early gave signs of unusual intelligence. His activity of body was as remarkable as his quickness of mind. At play and at work, with his toys as with his books, he displayed the same intensity; he could do nothing by halves. There never was a merrier boy. His vivacity and energy and the gaiety of his spirit brightened everybody around him. When he bounded or raced into a room he seemed to bring with him a flood of sunshine.
From his childhood he gave evidences of an unselfish nature and a desire to avoid giving trouble. He had his share of childish ailments, but always made light of them and bore discomfort with a sunny cheerfulness; his invariable reply, if he were ill and one asked how he fared, was "Much better; I'm all right, thanks." Marked traits in him as a small boy were truthfulness, generosity and sensitiveness. In a varied experience of the world I have never met anyone in whom love of truth was more deeply ingrained. On one occasion in his twelfth year, when he was wrestling with an arithmetical problem—the only branch of learning that ever gave him trouble was mathematics—and I offered to help in its solution, he rejected my proffered aid with the indignant remark: "Dad, how could I hand this prep. in as my own if you had helped me to do it?" His generosity of spirit was displayed in his eagerness to share his toys and books with other children; his sensitiveness by his acute self-reproaches if he had been unkind to anyone or had caused pain to his mother or his nurse.
Plymouth is a fine old city, beautifully situated and steeped in historic memories. Our home was in Carlisle Avenue, just off the Hoe, and on that spacious front Paul spent many happy hours as a small boy. His young eyes gazed with fascination on the warships passing in and out of Plymouth Sound, on the great passenger steamers lying at anchor inside the Breakwater, or steaming up or down the Channel; on the fishing fleet, with its brown sails, setting out to reap the harvest of the sea; and when daylight faded in the short winter days he would watch the Eddystone light—that diamond set in the forehead of England—flashing its warning and greeting to "those who go down to the sea in ships and do business in great waters." Always from the Hoe there is something to captivate the eye—the wonder and beauty of the unresting ocean; on the Cornish side the wooded slopes and green sward of Mount Edgcumbe; on the Devon side Staddon Height, rising bold and sheer from the water; looking landward the picturesque mass of houses, towers, spires, turrets that is Plymouth, and far behind the outline of the Dartmoor Hills. On the Hoe itself one's historic memories are stirred by the Armada memorial and the Drake statue; close at hand is the Citadel, the snout of guns showing through its embrasures; and near by is Sutton Pool, whence the Pilgrim Fathers set forth in the little Mayflower, carrying the English language and the principles of civil and religious liberty across the stormy Atlantic.