Trail of an Artist-Naturalist

Ernest Thompson Seton

• Editorial: A Thousand Fields
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781528767149
• Categoría: Art
• Categoría: Artist Biographies

"Trail of an Artist-Naturalist" is the 1940 Autobiography of Ernest Thompson Seton. Ernest Thompson Seton (1860 – 1946) was an English author and wildlife artist who founded the Woodcraft Indians in 1902. He was also among the founding members of the Boy Scouts of America, established in 1910. He wrote profusely on this subject, the most notable of his scouting literature including "The Birch Bark Roll" and the "Boy Scout Handbook". Seton was also an early pioneer of animal fiction writing, and he is fondly remembered for his charming book "Wild Animals I Have Known" (1898). This volume constitutes a fascinating look into the life of a person who played an important role in the environmental and naturalist movement of a young North America, and it is not to be missed by those with an interest in the history of American Scouting. Other notable works by this author include: "Lobo, Rag and Vixen" (1899), "Two Little Savages" (1903), and "Animal Heroes" (1911). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this book now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

PART I

Childhood

I

THE MOULD THAT SHAPED THE MIND

IN the north of England, sixty-odd miles south of the Scottish Border, is the famous river Tyne, running easterly to empty into the North Sea. Nine miles up this is the great commercial city of Newcastle; and at the mouth of this river is the seaport of South Shields, famous for its harbour, its commerce, and its vast exports of coal. This was the home of my people, although nearly all were of Scottish origin. They had fled from Scotland after risking all and losing all in the Stuart Rebellion of 1745. Most were here hiding under assumed names and were slowly re-establishing their fortunes in the great game of the Merchant Marine.

The town of South Shields, some 40,000 in population, was divided into a great manufacturing district along the river, a large coal-mining and developing section on the hills, and finally, near the mouth of the river, and fronting on the sea, was a colony of men who had so far succeeded that they now owned one or more ships and were known as “the Ship-owners.” Both my grandfathers were in this class, so that in 1843, when my father, Joseph Logan, married Alice Snowdon, my mother, they began with comfort and prospects of affluence.

For his home, my father eventually built a substantial three-story brick house in Wellington Terrace (Number 6). Here it was that his fourteen children were born. I, number eleven, arrived on August 14, 1860.

From the windows on the south of this house was a wonderful view of wheatfields and meadows, with their pleasant variants of cows, sheep, goats, and hens on the grass, and skylarks singing in the sky, far away to Cledon and on towards Sunderland and down the coast to Souter Point, where moans the unearthly siren on fearful nights of fog. Our easterly view of the sea was shut off by bosky hills and terraced houses. But towards the north we could see across the mile-wide grey-green harbour flecked with boats, twinkling with winnowing gulls, away to the other shore, called Tynemouth. Here, stark and sombre, stood ever and unchanging the dark and towering ruin known as Tynemouth Abbey, a grim reminder of the Church’s power a thousand years ago, a grim reminder of the terror of the Vikings, the Sea Kings, in those same days so long gone by. For here it was that Red Eric landed with his husky berserks clanging their shields and flashing their spears; here, after he had gathered at his will all that appealed, he had set the torch; and all he left is what we see today.

In this setting, or near by, it was that my people dwelt for several generations.

Monsignor (later Archbishop) Robert Seton of New Jersey, the historian of the family, points out that all the Setons were sportsmen and had literary tastes and gifts; so, as he said to me: “Blood will tell. You are a true scion of the line and impelled by its best traditions and interests.”

On the Cameron side I had a similar inheritance; all the Camerons were hunters—often man-hunters—and our remote ancestor Evan Cameron of Lochiel was the most famous wolf-hunter of his day. One by one he hunted down the wolf-packs that ravaged the highland herds, and in the final round-up it was his sturdy arm that drove the spear through the last grim leader of the wolves and ended forever the menace of the wolf in Scotland. The middle name “Evan” that my parents conferred on me was in memory of this famous wolf-hunting ancestor.

Among the Seton family traditions of our home circle was one relating to “Fighting Geordie.” He was a famous warrior in numberless Scottish battles and border feuds, and yet it was commonly said that he did all his best fighting when confronted with disastrous defeat. When his comrades were unnerved and appalled by the apparent hopelessness of their situation, the spirit of a demon, a giant, entered into Geordie, and he led them to the fray with such courage, force, and fury that never once was he wholly defeated.

Many times in life’s battles when all the cards and chances seemed against me, when the last light of hope was flickering low, I have found comfort in the thought: “Now they strike the fibre I inherit from ‘Fighting Geordie.’ He never gave up, was never defeated, and won, as I will now, against hostile combinations that seemed invincible. He never gave up, never was licked, and I will leave the self-same record behind.”

Gods! how many times that very thought has rearranged my battle-front and given me first the victory in my soul, then triumph in the world I lived in.

My father (born September 6, 1821) was an honourable man of high ideals and remarkable personal force. He was proud of his noble descent; but often he checked himself speaking of these things, as they savoured of worldly vain-glory.

By nature refined and scholarly, he loved books and art, and had aspired to a university career. But my grandfather, a rugged man of the business world, could not see the need of it. He had made his own fortune out of a small inheritance, and had had only a grammar-school education. So he bluntly told my father that he himself had succeeded without a university career, and he did not propose one for his son.

Later, however, he changed his mind in some measure, for he put his second son, Evan, through Durham University. Father’s aspirations had to be satisfied with a private tutor, thanks to whom he was made a good Latin scholar, a clever pencil artist, and a master of French, which last accomplishment was rounded off by a prolonged sojourn in France.

When, about 1837, the time came for my father to select a profession, his choice was to be a civil engineer for construction of the railroads that were then beginning to be talked of. My grandfather’s reply was simple and final: “All nothing but nonsense. The railways are a mere fad, and will soon be done away with. Yes, within three years; and then we shall be entirely back to the horses and coaches again.” And so the matter was ended, on the assumption that my father would take up the calling of his people, and devote his energies to ship-owning and ship-brokerage.

All who knew him agree in describing him as a very unusual man, with standards of life and conduct in the world that were of the highest, and inflexibly adhered to throughout life. His word was acknowledged to be as good as his bond, and he had no vices.

He had, however, one or two peculiarities which did not vanish with age. He was very indolent, had a marked craving for “proper respect”; and was, I think, the most selfish person I ever heard of or read of in history or in fiction. He was so selfish that he thought himself generous in feeding his family, so important that the most vital interests of his family were always cheerfully sacrificed to his most trifling passing convenience. His own father had been a masterful rugged man and a stern disciplinarian; therefore my father, not considering that he was treated with proper respect at home, had left the paternal roof at the age of twenty-two, and married Alice Snowdon, my mother, then twenty years of age (born December 1, 1823).

Mother was a beautiful woman with a strange diversity of gifts—profoundly religious, full of energy, yet weak in character; and before they had been wedded a month, they two were one—and that one was my father.

PROMPTLY nine months after the marriage, my eldest brother arrived; and then as speedily as Dame Nature allowed, other brothers followed in true Victorian succession. So that, not counting three might-have-beens that were ended by accidents, we were a family of eleven children in eighteen years. One only was a girl, and she died at the age of six, leaving Mother with ten sons—a grim satire on her expressed girlish view that she hated men-folk, and hoped when she grew up to be “a widow with two daughters.”

It was as far as possible from Mother’s wish to have such a swarm of children, but she had no say in that or any other leading matter.

So, in the winter of 1859–60, finding that she was once more conforming to a certain Scriptural injunction about replenishing the earth, she said to the family doctor: “I did not want any more (having now had ten); but since I have no choice, I should like to have this one amount to something. What can I do to endow the child with better gifts than common?”

The old doctor replied: “All you can do is take care of your health, keep yourself calm and quite free from any nervous upset, and fix your mind on your highest ideals.”

Strictly and with absolute self-effacement, my mother lived up to the letter and spirit of these injunctions. As soon as springtime came, she went every morning with the nurse, and took a dip in the North Sea, which rolled on the flat beach in view of our upper windows. She studied her health in every way, avoided all excitement; and in addition to her daily Bible-reading, selected Ernest Maltravers, then newly published, to crystallize her ideals. Maltravers was a country gentleman, a hunter, a sportsman, and, in the field sense, a naturalist. Mother soaked her mind in its pages, hoping that her child would be shaped along just such lines, would be an outdoors man, a sportsman, and a naturalist—and, above all, would inherit the spirit of his great ancestor, Evan Cameron, the mighty wolf-hunter of the North.

With unfaltering devotion, she went every day all summer long for the bracing salt-water dip. One day in July, there was such a heavy sea on that old Ellen, the nurse, said: “I think, ma’am, you better not go in today. It is too rough.”

But Mother replied: “I must go in for the child’s sake.”

So, clad in the preposterous, impossible, atrocious, and perilous long bathing-robe of that time, she waded into the surf ahead of the nurse. A giant roller came booming in and knocked her off her feet. Then the undercurrent sucked her quickly towards the sea. She screamed, the nurse dashed to the rescue, and was just able to seize Mother by her long black hair as it floated free.

She was quickly brought to the shore, where she fainted. A neighbouring bather brought a cab, and Mother was taken home, to bathe in the surf no more that summer.

The result of this shock—at least so they said—was that the baby came some weeks ahead of time, and had a horror of the sea, of all water, indeed. His nine brothers loved their daily bath, and fought to stay in it. He screamed at the sight of it, and for two years never allowed them to put him in.

Another consequence of the adventure—at least, so said the nurse—was this: although the nine brothers were bald at birth, he alone had a heavy crop of curly black hair.

This was the prenatal history of the one who arrived at 3 A.M., August 14, 1860, and who, from his mother’s literary choice and ancestral pride, was destined to bear the name “Ernest Evan.”

NONE of my brothers had any trace of the interest in wild life that was at all times an absorbing passion with me. Mother used to say that, no matter how hard I bumped my baby head or tumbled on my small round nose, she could instantly choke my howls by saying, “Look, there’s a birdie.” But, if no providential birdie happened to be in sight, a fly on the pane would serve the same purpose, though in less degree.

If she wished me to keep still for a long time, she wrapped me in a green shawl, the plaid of the Cameron Clan, and made me sit on her bed, back to a corner-post, and said: “Now you are a tree. Trees do not move.” And there I would sit playing the role for a long, long time.

One of my vivid early memories was of a visit to Rothbury in Northumberland, where my father, strong in the family tradition of sport, used to go for the salmon-fishing. I must have been three, because I remember it so clearly; and yet not four, for at that time the luxury of fishing as a sport had ceased for us.

I remember the great, rolling, grassy hills dotted over with sheep, and the winding path with a low wooden bench near by. One morning two lambs lay sleeping on this bench. All my hunter instincts were aroused by the opportunity. I eagerly toddled ahead to catch them. The lambs jumped off when I was three or four feet away; but still it was a supreme moment, almost a glorious success. For long after, I would renew the thrills of that adventurous happy day by telling how I very nearly caught two little lammies.

The seagulls, white and winnowing over the harbour, were familiar and daily sights; but when an elder brother brought one with a crippled wing to be kept in the greenhouse tank, it furnished a new wonder that I used to watch in big-eyed fascination not unmixed with fear, for it was said to bite like a dog.

As I grew old enough to enjoy the standard nursery tales, my favourites were “Red Riding-hood and the Wolf” and “The Wolf and the Seven Kids.” Though, low be it spoken—and I tell it with a sense of guilt—in each I had a measure of sympathy for the wolf. I felt that his case was not properly presented; he acted strictly within the law, and on each occasion he got a very raw deal.

IN my sixth year, while yet we lived in England, an event occurred which I think was full of character values, at least in forecast; and shows, moreover, how close akin are the hunter and the naturalist. Furthermore, it demonstrated in me the hunter blood of my clan.

We lived in No. 6 Wellington Terrace. Next door, to the west, was a family named Hewison; next, my uncle John Snowdon; next, my uncle Lee. My eldest cousin, Harry Lee, had some pet hens, which strayed, as hens will stray, into the adjoining yard of Uncle Snowdon.

My cousin, Willie Snowdon, aged seven, and I, aged five, discovered this unjustifiable foreign invasion. All our warrior and hunter instincts were aroused. We felt that we were, and ought to be, fierce barbarians, repelling a foreign foe, or Highlanders driving back the invading Saxons; or at least, primitive hunters, pursuing their lawful prey.

In the outhouse were a number of long pointed irons, used for setting lines in the harbour for overnight fishing. Armed each with one of these, we set forth to attack the enemy. We were wild men, hunting wild birds, and thrilled to realize in ourselves certain pictures, recently displayed, of Kaffirs with assegais, running down and spearing ostriches.

Among the trees of the back yard and through the elder shrubbery we chased them. It was gloriously exhilarating; and when the squawking hens, losing breath and courage, tried to hide in the dark lurksome corners, we closed in joyously, shouted, and speared them to their death.

Then, what a change! I can smell those bloody feathers yet, and hear the voice from the window: “What are you doing to those hens?”

The revulsion of feeling, the futile remorse, the dreadful...