Cornish Characters and Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Cornish Characters and Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Cornwall (England : County) -- Biography; Cornwall (England : County) -- History; Legends -- England -- Cornwall (County)
When paid off he was sent under a Scotch captain, who treated him
badly, and then he was in another vessel and resolved to desert the
service. This he did at Bombay. So far we can trust what Trelawny has
given us in that remarkable book _Adventures of a Younger Son_; but
from this point on he romances, but romances with an air of reality.
It is not possible to discriminate fact from fiction in what follows.
Undoubtedly Pirate Trelawny started on his memoirs with the intent of
writing his autobiography, but he was inordinately vain, and delighted
in posturing as a hero and in describing marvellous adventures through
which he passed, heightening them sensationally with wonderful skill.
What seems probable is that, after deserting from the navy, he was for
a while in the merchant service, and then joined a privateer cruising
in the India seas. As Mr. E. Garnett well says, "the Younger Son is an
excellent stage hero by the finish; he meets and overcomes all odds;
it is truly a glorious Trelawny--the Trelawny of his own imagination."
He states that he was married when he was twenty-one, and that the
marriage took place in England, so that he must have returned home
somewhere about 1813. But we really know nothing authentic of his
movements till 1822, when he was in England, and thence went to Italy,
where he made acquaintance with Lord Byron and with Shelley. After
the lamentable death of the latter poet he attended at the cremation
of the body. Thence he went with Byron to Greece in the _Hercules_, to
aid the Greeks against the Turks. They arrived at Cephalonia, off the
west coast, in the beginning of August, 1823, and there Lord Byron
resolved on staying till he could ascertain how things were
progressing in Greece and decide on his future course of action. This
delay did not at all suit the impetuosity of the character of
Trelawny, who called it dawdling, and set forward for the mainland in
company with Hamilton Browne, making his way to the seat of the Greek
Government. He also sent emissaries to England to endeavour to raise a
loan, and then proceeded to Athens. Here the insurgent leader Odysseus
was in command, and to his fortunes Trelawny at once attached himself,
and married the sister of the Greek chieftain.
Major Temple, resident at Santa Maura, during his mission to the Morea
in June, 1824, met Odysseus, and described him as "a perfect Albanian
chieftain--savage in manners and appearance, of great muscular
strength, and about six feet high."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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