- end_line
- 1363
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.879Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1306
- text
- What was the matter with the master-at-arms? And be the matter what it
might, how could it have direct relation to Billy Budd, with whom prior
to the affair of the spilled soup he had never come into any special
contact, official or otherwise? What indeed could the trouble have to do
with one so little inclined to give offence as the merchant ship’s
_peacemaker_, even him who in Claggart’s own phrase was ‘the sweet and
pleasant young fellow’? Yes, why should _Jemmy Legs_, to borrow the
Dansker’s expression, be _down_ on the Handsome Sailor?
But, at heart and not for nothing, as the late chance encounter may
indicate to the discerning, down on him, secretly down on him, he
assuredly was.
Now to invent something touching the more private career of Claggart,
something involving Billy Budd, of which something the latter should be
wholly ignorant, some romantic incident implying that Claggart’s
knowledge of the young blue-jacket began at some period anterior to
catching sight of him on board the seventy-four--all this, not so
difficult to do, might avail in a way more or less interesting to
account for whatever enigma may appear to lurk in the case. But, in
fact, there was nothing of the sort. And yet the cause, necessarily to
be assumed as the sole one assignable, is in its very realism as much
charged with that prime element of Radcliffian romance, _the
mysterious_, as any that the ingenuity of the author of the _Mysteries
of Udolpho_ could devise. For what can more partake of the mysterious
than an antipathy spontaneous and profound such as is evoked in certain
exceptional mortals by the mere aspect of some other mortal, however
harmless he may be?--if not called forth by that very harmlessness
itself.
Now there can exist no irritating juxtaposition of dissimilar
personalities comparable to that which is possible aboard a great
warship fully manned and at sea. There, every day, among all ranks,
almost every man comes into more or less of contact with almost every
other man. Wholly there to avoid even the sight of an aggravating object
one must needs give it Jonah’s toss, or jump overboard himself. Imagine
how all this might eventually operate on some peculiar human creature
the direct reverse of a saint?
But for the adequate comprehending of Claggart by a normal nature these
hints are insufficient. To pass from a normal nature to him one must
cross ‘the deadly space between,’ and this is best done by indirection.
Long ago an honest scholar, my senior, said to me in reference to one
who like himself is now no more, a man so unimpeachably respectable that
against him nothing was ever openly said, though among the few something
was whispered, ‘Yes, X---- is a nut not to be cracked by the tap of a
lady’s fan. You are aware that I am the adherent of no organised
religion, much less of any philosophy built into a system. Well, for all
that, I think that to try and get into X----, enter his labyrinth, and
get out again, without a clue derived from some source other than what
is known as _knowledge of the world_, that were hardly possible, at
least for me.’
‘Why,’ said I, ‘X----, however singular a study to some, is yet human,
and knowledge of the world assuredly implies the knowledge of human
nature, and in most of its varieties.’
- title
- Chunk 1