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Memoir of Mayne Reid
No one who has written
books for the young during the present century ever had so large a
circle of readers as Captain Mayne Reid, or ever was so well fitted by
circumstances to write the books by which he is chiefly known. His life,
which was an adventurous one, was ripened with the experiences of two
Continents, and his temperament, which was an ardent one, reflected the
traits of two races. Irish by birth, he was American in his sympathies
with the people of the New World, whose acquaintance he made at an early
period, among whom he lived for years, and whose battles he helped to
win. He was probably more familiar with the Southern and Western portion
of the United States forty years ago than any native-born American of
that time. A curious interest attaches to the life of Captain Reid, but
it is not of the kind that casual biographers dwell upon. If he had
written it himself it would have charmed thousands of readers, who can
now merely imagine what it might have been from the glimpses of it which
they obtain in his writings. It was not passed in the fierce light of
publicity, but in that pimple, silent obscurity which is the lot of most
men, and is their happiness, if they only knew it.
Briefly related, the life of Captain Reid was as follows: He was born in
1818, in the north of Ireland, the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, who
was a type of the class, which Goldsmith has described so freshly in the
“Deserted Village,” and was highly thought of for his labors among the
poor of his neighborhood. An earnest, reverent man, to whom his calling
was indeed a sacred one, he designed his son Mayne for the ministry, in
the hope, no doubt, that he would be his successor. But nature had
something to say about that, as well as his good father. He began to
Study for the ministry, but it was not long before he was drawn in
another direction. Always a great reader, his favorite books were
descriptions of travel in foreign lauds, particularly those which dealt
with the scenery, the people, and the resources of America. The spell
which these exercised over his imagination, joined to a love of
adventure which was inherent in his temperament, and inherited, perhaps
with his race, determined his career. At the age of twenty he closed his
theological tomes, and girding up his loins with a stout heart he sailed
from the shores of the Old World for the New. Following the spirit in
his feet he landed at New Orleans, which was probably a more promising
field for a young man of his talents than any Northern city, and was
speedily engaged in business. The nature of this business is not stated,
further than it was that of a trader; but whatever it was it obliged
this young Irishman to make long journeys into the interior of the
country, which was almost a terra incognita. Sparsely settled, where
settled at all, it was still clothed in primeval verdure here in the
endless reach of savannas, there in the depth of pathless woods, and far
away to the North and the West in those monotonous ocean like levels of
land for which the speech of England has no name — the Prairies. Its
population was nomadic, not to say barbaric, consisting of tribes of
Indians whose hunting grounds from time immemorial the region was;
hunters and trappers, who had turned their backs upon civilization for
the free, wild life of nature; men of doubtful or dangerous antecedents,
who had found it convenient to leave their country for their country’s
good; and scattered about hardy pioneer communities from Eastern States,
advancing waves of the great sea of emigration which is still drawing
the course of empire westward.
Travelling in a country like this, and among people like these, Mayne
Reid passed five years of his early manhood. He was at home wherever he
went, and never more so than when among the Indians of the Red River
territory, with whom he spent several months, learning their language,
studying their customs, and enjoying the wild and beautiful scenery of
their camping grounds. Indian for the time, he lived in their lodges,
rode with them, hunted with them, and night after night sat by their
blazing camp-fires listening to the warlike stories of the braves and
the quaint legends of the medicine men. There was that in the blood of
Mayne Reid which fitted him to lead this life at this time, and whether
he knew it or not it educated his genius as no other life could have
done. It familiarized him with a large extent of country in the South
and West; it introduced him to men and manners which existed nowhere
else; and it revealed to him the secrets of Indian life and character.
There was another side, however, to Mayne Reid than that we have touched
upon, and this, at the end of five years, drew him back to the average
life of his kind. We find him next in Philadelphia, where he began to
contribute stories and sketches of travel to the newspapers and
magazines. Philadelphia was then the most literate city in the United
States, the one in which a clever writer was at once encouraged and
rewarded. Frank and warmhearted, he made many friends there among
journalists and authors. One of these friends was Edgar Allan Poe, whom
he often visited at his home in Spring Garden, and concerning whom years
after, when he was dead, he wrote with loving tenderness.
The next episode in the career of Mayne Reid was not what one would
expect from a man of letters, though it was just what might have been
expected from a man of his temperament and antecedents. It grew out of
the time, which was warlike, and it drove him into the army with which
the United States speedily crushed the forces of the sister Republic —
Mexico. He obtained a commission, and served throughout the war with
great bravery and distinction. This stormy episode ended with a severe
wound, which he received in storming the heights of Chapultepec — a
terrible battle which practically ended the war.
A second episode of a similar character, but with a more fortunate
conclusion, occurred about four years later. It grew out of another war,
which, happily for us, was not on our borders, but in the heart of
Europe, where the Hungarian race had risen in insurrection against the
hated power of Austria. Their desperate valor in the face of tremendous
odds excited the sympathy of the American people, and fired the heart of
Captain Mayne Reid, who buckled on his sword once more, and sailed from
New York with a body of volunteers to aid the Hungarians in their
struggles for independence. They were too late, for hardly had they
reached Paris before they learned that all was over: Gorgey had
surrendered at Arad, and Hungary was crushed. They were at once
dismissed, and Captain Reid betook himself to London.
The life of the Mayne Reid in whom we are most interested — Mayne Reid,
the author began at this time, when he was in his thirty-first year, and
ended only on the day of his death, October 21, 1883. It covered
one-third of a century, and was, when compared with that which had
preceded it, uneventful, if not devoid of incident. There is not much
that needs be told — not much, indeed, that can be told — in the life of
a man of letters like Captain Mayne Reid. It is written in his books.
Mayne Reid was one of the best known authors of his time — differing in
this from many authors who are popular without being known — and in the
walk of fiction which he discovered for himself he is an acknowledged
master. His reputation did not depend upon the admiration of the
millions of young people who read his books, but upon the judgment of
mature critics, to whom his delineations of adventurous life were
literature of no common order. His reputation as a story-teller was
widely recognized on the Continent, where he was accepted as an
authority in regard to the customs of the pioneers and the guerilla
warfare of the Indian tribes, and was warmly praised for his freshness,
his novelty, and his hardy originality. The people of France and Germany
delighted in this soldier-writer. There was not a word in his books
which a school-boy could not safely read aloud to his mother and
sisters. So says a late English critic, to which another adds, that if
he has somewhat gone out of fashion of late years, the more’s the pity
for the school-boy of the period. What Defoe is in Robinson
Crusoe-—realistic idyl of island solitude — that, in his romantic
stories of wilderness life, Is this great scholar, Captain Mayne Reid.
R. H. Stoddard.
M.Q. Holyoake: "Captain
Mayne Raid: Soldier and Novelist."
From the Strand Magazine (London: 1891), V. 2, pp. 93-102. (pdf)
Mayne Reid, His Life and
Adventures
By his widow, Elizabeth Reid (1900) (pdf)
Principal books by Captain Mayne Reid on the Internet Archive |
