Early travels

Middleton's first choice of career had not been that of a vagabond or a sailor, or indeed, that of a writer. He had wanted to be a musician and put the blame for his romantic choice firmly on his father. 'I was not wholly to blame' he apologised in his final travel book, 'I am certain that my omnivorous reading of romantic fiction, and also of the great poets, was mainly responsible for my choice. ‘My father, a literary man, and author of the first complete Shelley biography, he persuaded me to throw aside my 'penny dreadfuls' and read good books'. Consequently he unwittingly added flaming illusions to my romance-saturated mind. Encouraged by a promised award of double pocket money I would read Byron’s Corsair, Child Harold, and much of Keats and Shelley. Not that I admired their poetic beauty and similes, but because their works radiated a romantic glamour over the world in which I lived' .

The vagabond later wrote his own interpretation of Shelley's life - the poet who had been his greatest influence - and puts equal blame upon him: 'For it was through reading Shelley's 'Epipsychidion' when a boy, that I threw aside my ambitious music studies, and shipping before the mast, searched for years to find:

'An isle under Ionian skies!

Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise.'

The vagabond spent his youth travelling in the East. Of all his ports of call he loved the South Sea Islands the best. He returned to them again and again in his youth and, in later years, In his imagination. Nearly all of his storIes are based around the islands and many tell of the adventures of a runaway ship's apprentice who ’jumped ship' on his first voyage to Australia. But, later, the elderly vagabond thought that he had found Shelley’s paradise in the South Seas.

The islands had often been visited by European artists. Among the most famous of these was Herman Melville who described them in his novel 'Typee' which captured the Victorian imagination in 1846. Robert Louis Stevenson's later Sea writings had a similar effect. At the turn of the century the islands were painted by Gauguin. A twentieth century visitor was Rupert Brooke who pronounced them a disappointment. He felt that the islands only provided what romance the visitor had brought with him. Slightly trotting on their heels - metaphorically - speaking - the young vagabond certainly brought plenty of romance with him. Stevenson was a dying man in the years of his visits - the 1880's to the 1900's - and Gauguin middle-aged and a relative newcomer but, for the adolescent, the island's were places of colour, adventure and excitement. Towards the end of his life, the remembrance of his youth there, took on an almost mythical quality. The islands became a personal 'Paradise Lost'.

The vagabond's memories were, for the larger part, happy ones. He had taken his violin with him on his travels. His busking provided occasional employment and also turned him into a bit of an oddity. Imagine a charming and eccentric young man with a violin case tucked under his arm, European dress and an over-large, white sun-helmet barely perched on his head. As he played on his violin, his sun-helmet would often be tipped over his forehead by a laughing, native girl with the comment: "Silly Papalangi.' "Oh music man of long fiddle-stick' was one name bestowed upon him.

He recalled his adventures with candour in his first travel book 'Sailor and Beachcomber' which was published by 'Grant Richards' in 1914.

The book is roughly and picturesquely written and, as the author admits, he told a story that many boys who had escaped from the restrictions of Victorian England could have told. A contemporary critic of the 'Standard' commented 'Mr Middleton has a story to tell and he knows how to tell it in racy and picturesque words. It is alive with sunny good humour and rich in the revelation of a phase of life which haunts the dreams of many of us.'

When he returned to England, the vagabond had embarked upon a musIcal career and a critic of the 'Athenaeum' drew attention to this aspect of his life in a complimentary review of 'Sailor and Beachcomber' which begins: 'The Literature of the South Seas is becoming as voluminous as that of the war, Here is another tale of desultory wandering years. The author is a traveller and sailor who is best known as the composer of those cheerful military marches which are a permanent feature of many a brass-band programme. The uninitiated would probably have Imagined that he is the master of a military band band. They are very wide off the mark indeed. He spent a wilder and more undisciplined youth than is likely to fall the lot of any englishman today.’

The critic clearly enjoyed reading the book and there is a note of envy in his review. For, after spendIng a couple of page's disclosing most of Middleton's misdeeds, he comments: 'On the whole 'Sailor and Beachcomber' is one of the most satisfactory books of wandering travel we have come across. The style is racy and unaffected, and free from boasting and egoism'. He ends his review on a topical note by commenting on the fact that Middleton seemed to have as greater capacity for making friend as the Germans had for making enemies.

  'Sailor and Beachcomber' ended the runaway's boyhood reminiscences and one year later 'A Vagabond's Odyssey' appeared. This continued his adventures as a young man and recalls the beginning of his musical career in America.

He comments In the introduction that he had earnestly gone over his efforts and tried to polish his style In order to compete with the ‘literary aristocrats' but adds, rather shamefully, that he is only a vagabond. The vagabond always kept in character.

Unfortunately he also developed a habit of interposing speculations about the infinite and his own relationship to God (and Gods) among his adventures. Also being inclined to sentiment, rhapsody and dreams and being prone to attacking Western industrial society at every opportunity - and adding a charming naivety, it is hardly surprising that 'A Vagabond's Odyssey' should comprise a manifesto on how no to become a successful, twentieth century writer. But, no matter.

Middleton had a sailor's gift for yarns and very seldom stayed for long in the same place. 'A Vagabond's Odyssey’ is about colour people and movement. Gossip, anecdote and stories abound. These stories are often introduced by "Before I forget" or I must tell you about” or "This reminds me when." Sailors, natives, sea-captains, sea -dogs, shop-keepers, kings, queens and girls are all described. But, most of all, the songs and music of the period - and the people who played it - are remembered. From an attic room - broke and practising furiously to become the world's greatest violinist - the vagabond moves to Providence. Here he joIns up with a bandmaster and has his first experience of march music. "American conductors believe in vigour and fire when they perform," he comments, "And sacrifice pianissimo to force and go; on the march, the bands Lift you off your feet through the lilt of the music.’

He soon tires of Providence and moves to to New York. Soon America is not to his liking and he catches a boat to England. It is a brief visit for, no sooner he arrives than he boards a liner for Australia. Calling at Naples, Port Said and then Melbourne. he heads for Honolulu, Apia and the Marquesian islands. Then the Sandwich Isles, Fiji; Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, Columbo and the West Coast of Africa; the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone. Then back to London, Las Patinas Sydney, Bombay and again New Zealand, Auckland and London, France, Madrid, Valencia; Nice and Genoa follow in quick succession. He returns to the South Seas, and then the Gilbert Islands. Finally ‘we put into Palmyra Isle and made things ship-shape, and then left for Apia and Fiji, where I left the boat and took a steamer bound for New New South Wales.' Mostly it is to the primitive islands that the vagabond returns - to their dances; songs, poetry and beliefs. A Victorian hippy, he is searching for a guru and a pot of gold. Often he finds the latter in the eyes of laughing native children. For the former, he often fills the role himself, describing interpreting and gIving meaning to the life around him.

Despite having played in many orchestras and opera companies around the world he would rather watch a native girl dance and lose herself in the rhythm. He loves Beethoven and Mendelsshon but remembers more vividly ‘Blow the man Down’ as I heard it sung and sung it myself with crooked-nosed sailor-men as we rounded Cape Horn, with the sea crashing ever the decks and the flying scud racing the moon.’ The book is very much a self-portrait. Middleton had little formal education; and was a self-taught musician and writer. Montaigne, Cervantes and Rousseau are a few of the wrIters that he particularly mentions who succoured him on his journey. His reading was as extensive as his travels. A volume of Keats was sadly lost overboard when flying round the Cape. ‘Don Quixote served as a pillow on his bunk. The book also tells of an illusive search for romance, but Middleton knew that this was mostly in his own head.

He never wrote about his life in England or of his family and marriage and restricted himself to a comment: ‘I hope to follow this volume with another in which I shall tell of my life among civilised people and my serious troubles commenced.’ This book never materialised, Instead he wrote a further series of travel books.

BUT HOLD: I have arrived at a period when much happened that, with apologies, can only be recorded in the 250 blank from this autobiography.

Blank page 100 would create a reader's scepticism. Who would believe that one who had sailed before the mast round the world would be so unwise? - so credulous as to trust -- ?

Page 120 blank would freeze the blood and make one's hair stand on end.

Page 150 would, undoubtedly, be libellous, and without explanation, would destroy my prestige as a member of intelligent society.

Page 180 would, maybe, inspire one to weep before God and man.

Page 200 would tell, in extenso, how, while writing melodies to my forest operetta, I imagined that I was a great composer - the less said the better!

No, it is enough for me to know the truth. Reader, think of your own unrecorded blank pages. . .

('IN THE GREEN LEAF' -1950)