In circa 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson travelled steerage on a long transatlantic voyage from Scotland to America. He recorded his experiences in ‘The Amateur Immigrant’ (1883) and notes the entertainment on board the ship; `We were indeed a musical ship’s company, and cheered our way into exile with the fiddle, the accordion,and the songs of all nations’ ^[1]

He later recalls a sickness on the ship and visits ‘steerage no 1’ where: 'A white-faced Orpheus was cheerily playing to an audience of white-faced women. It was as much as he could do to play, and some of his hearers were scarcely able to sit; yet they had crawled from their bunks at the first experimental flourish, and found better than medicine in the music.’^[2]

Arnold Middleton recalls his own experiences as a ship’s violinist on the first chapter of ‘Sailor and Beachcomber’ Experiences he later summed up,:’I rigged the fiddle in the fo’c’sle’s gloom.^[3]

    But, in ‘Sailor and Beachcomber,’ Middleton recalls another occasion when he travelled between the South Sea Islands and attempted to teach Stevenson the rudiments of violin playing.^[4]

1. ↑ 'The Amateur Emigrant' (The Folio Society'1991) p18
2. ↑ 'The Amateur Emigrant'(The Folio Society'1991) p22
3. ↑ 'Sprays from the Bush Sea and Mountain (Richards'1932) p.7
   

   'Outbound for Rio Grande, we caught the trade.

   I rigged the fiddle in the foc's'sle gloom;

   Played Paganini's jigs until they made

   "Dell's and old Olwyn's long dead youth rebloom'.

4. ↑ 'Sailor and Beachcomber' (Grant Richards'1914) Chapter five.

Chapter Two

In the second chapter of ‘Sailor and Beachcomber’ Middleton describes his arrival in Brisbane after ‘jumping’ ship. He takes a snapshot of an expanding colonial town and writes of his own efforts to establish a foothold in the surrounding scrubland. Needless to say he aborts his enterprise with the same speed that he ‘jumped’ ship. But where did he find the material for his story?

Family research reveals that an elder brother, Charles Middleton II, had already established married life there. Further family research reveals that relations- from both his father and mother’s side of the family - had also established bases in Australia,

All his brothers were sailors^[1] (A post of midshipman had been a highly sought position in those years) and the family seem to have travelled the trade routes for business, emigration and pleasure in the same fashion that a contemporary family might utilise ‘Ryanair’

It would also seem that Middleton had written about his immediate family. In chapter two of ‘Sailor and Beachcomber’ he mentions his father, Charles Sharp Middleton and his father's anguished comment about the literary profession ‘’Who wants poets, musicians and authors? - with their men and women made of moonrise?’^[2]?

He also imagines his ‘brothers and sisters, all dreaming in velvet comfort,’ in their house in England. This house was their home near East Croydon station - romantically named ‘Einhallow’ ^[3] - among the developing commuter lands of London.  

 He also recalls his sisters in a poem ^[4] written before ‘Sailor and Beachomber’ had been published. These poems were the embryonic travels books and one can wonder what his sisters thought of being so recorded? Middleton writes a loving inscription to his sister ‘Rosie’ in the ‘The Castle By the Sea’.

1. ↑ Nell’s notebooks (I will add the relevant chapter)
2. ↑ Sailor and Beachcomber (Grant Richards(1914) p31
3. ↑ ‘In the Green leaf’ (The Fortune Press 1950) p10. ( ‘Einhallow’ was 7 Havelock Road, Addiscombe, Croydon - confirmed in the directories of the local studies department of Croydon Library)
4. ↑ 'The Prodigial's Return' (Bush and Sea Rymes etc' The Walter Scott Publishing Co Ltd 1912) p65.

Chapter Three

Middleton's early poems are the seed beds of his travel books. 'Out on the wide domain ^[1] we slept, as independents do' he explains in his poem 'On the Rocks' ^[2]

It is rather fortuitous that he meets an aged poet among his comrades: 'out of the big tail pocket of his ragged coat he pulled a dirty old bundle which was all of his poetic work' ^[3] - a foretaste of Middleton's later re-telling of Maori legends, but the prose style itself often consist of lines of his early poetry. He recalls a long tramp in the Australian Bush which echoes his poem 'Comrades' ^[4] excerpted here:

1. ↑ The 'domain' refers to an area of the bay of Sydney Harbour
2. ↑ Bush and Sea Rhymes' etc (The Walter Scott Publishing Co 1912) p167
3. ↑ Sailor and Beachcomber (1914) p37
4. ↑ Comrades' Bush and Sea Rhymes p145

Chapter Four

In chapter four of ‘Sailor and Beachcomber', Middleton makes a reference to a musical engagement as a violinist for the Brisbane Theatre. Perhaps it was such an engagement that he notes in an entry for a music ‘Who is Who’ of the 1940’s ^[1]. Much of the narrative of this chapter had previously been recorded in his poem ‘On the Rocks’^[2] and could form a ‘tableau vivant’ in a theatrical production.

Middleton’s early travel books were well reviewed and I drew attention to this in the first chapter of my biography ‘A footnote to Stevenson’^[3] He received a complimentary review in the 'Athenaeum' ^[4]

1. ↑ Who was Who
2. ↑ On the rocks
3. ↑ A footnote to Stevenson
4. ↑ The Athemaeum