Synopses & Reviews
SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT Sir Humphrey Gilbert ELIZABETHS RACKETEER By DONALD BARR CHIDSEY NEW YORK Bwtijntf MCMXXXII SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, PIONEER CONTENTS I. THE FINE ART OF FAILURE i II. RELIGION AND POLITICS 6 III. ELIZABETH WAITS 10 IV. HIS FIRST FIGHT 19 V. AN ARMCHAIR SAILOR 25 VI. SPECTACULAR SHAN ONEIL 34 VII. THE COUSINS CAUSE TROUBLE 41 VIII. THE QUALITY OF MERCY 48 IX. HOME LIFE, DEBATES, MAGIC 55 X. A THANKLESS JOB 63 XL EXPERIMENTS IN DECEIT 70 XII. ANOTHER GRAND IDEA 78 XIII. A CELEBRATED ARGUMENT 85 XIV. ALWAYS THE PIONEER 93 XV. FROBISHER AMONG THE ESKIMOS 101 XVI. PIRACY, LTD in XVII. KNOLLYS BACKS OUT 120 XVIII. A HUSHED-UP AFFAIR 127 XIX. THE MASTER THIEF OF THE UNKNOWN WORLD 137 XX. DESIGNING ARCADIA 146 XXI. THE GREAT ADVENTURE BEGINS 158 XXII. OVER THE BOUNDING MAIN 165 XXIII. DISASTER 176 XXIV. THE END OF A PIONEER 188 BIBLIOGRAPHY 196 INDEX 199 ILLUSTRATIONS SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT, PIONEER TYPICAL FIGHTING-SHIP OF THE TIME SIR HUMPHREY TAKES NEWFOUNDLAND THE GILBERT MAP Frontispiece Facing page 116 178 End papers vu SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT CHAPTER I THE FINE ART OF FAILURE IT DOESNT pay to be a pioneer. The shores of his tory are strewn with wreckage which represents in telligent, earnest, but unsuccessful efforts to get to some place before anybody else got there, or to do something nobody else ever had done relics, these, of which the layman would have no present knowledge were it not that modern beach-combers perhaps rendered desper ate by the realization that everything else had been gleaned have concentrated on these bits of wreckage, and clamoured about them, insisting upon their sig nificance in the scheme of things. Which is all to the good. With stones of successand grand achievement we have been surfeited. Recipes, formulas, secrets of success, have been heaped upon us too liberally. And the fine art of failure has been ignored. Victory may have its glory there is poetry In defeat. While success dazzles, stuns by its very brilliancy, fail ure is of the stuff we all understand we know it, feel at home with it it is gemudllch. Moreover, one failure, properly examined, contains far more instruction than any tale of a goal achieved. So if you like lessons, the wreckage is filled with them. Humphrey Gilbert was a failure. He was an excep tionally intelligent man, energetic, well-born and well connected, far-sighted, ambitious, likable, inestimably courageous. But he was a born pioneer. All his life he was ruled by a passion for doing something new, sailing seas no man ever had sailed before, establishing an 2 THE FINE ART OF FAILURE empire in far-away lands nobody ever had seen. It doesnt be it repeated pay. Examine the wreckage. Before Fulton, many a hard-working and well-informed scientist invented the steamboat and got only bank ruptcy for his pains. Who remembers the predecessors of the Wright brothers, or cares anything about their bruises and broken bones And how many laboratory workers, do you suppose, scorched their hands and faces, and endured the derision of their associates, be fore that mediaeval monk discovered gunpowder for the Western World Even old Admiral Columbus, an ex ception among exceptions, died in jail while less original seamen were making money along the trail he had blazed. Contemporaries were fond of referring to u gentle Humphrey Gilbert. It is well not to be misled. The man was anything but gentle in the modern senseof that word. He was a dreamer, yes, and a scholar but he was also a man of action, who on the field of battle could be as brutal, as bloodthirsty, as any personage in history far more so than most of them. It is likely that the adjective referred rather to his breeding. In that sense, he was gentle...