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Updated: July 15, 2025
It seemed infinitely curious and interesting to me that I and my father ever should have known Ted intimately, as one who shared our curious life on the Livorno; Ted who was born and bred there in Werrina; we who came there across thousands of miles of ocean from the world's far side, from Putney, from places whose names Ted had never heard.
As a fact, I never have got so far as to read it with any comfort in the original; and I suppose a practical educationalist would say that such fitful, desultory instruction as I did receive from my father in our cuddy living-room on board the Livorno was quite valueless. But I fancy the expert would be wrong in this, as experts sometimes are. In the schoolman's sense I learned little or nothing.
And positively I had to exercise deliberate self-restraint to prevent myself from rushing at our Livorno friend and factotum, and flinging my arms about him, as in infantile days I had been wont to make embracing leaps at Amelia from the kitchen table of the house off Russell Square. 'God spare me days! Is it you, then, chum? exclaimed Ted, as he swung round on his high heels.
I might account for it by adducing similar instances of changes in the names of cities through the bad pronunciation and spelling of foreigners. For instance, the English nickname Livorno Leghorn, the Germans insist on calling Venice Venedig, and the French convert Washington into the Chinese word Voss-Hang-Tong.
But in my youthful eyes, seen on the evening of our arrival, after a fifteen miles' walk, and, seen, too, in the glow of a singularly angry-looking evening sky, Livorno Bay, with its derelict barque to focus one's gaze, presented a spectacle almost terrifying in its desolation. Years must have passed since anything edible could have been found on board the Livorno.
The Duc de Bellegarde, Grand Equerry of France, had reached Livorno on the 20th of September, accompanied by forty French nobles, all alike eager, by the magnificence of their appearance and the chivalry of their deportment, to uphold the honour of their royal master.
And then, how I had travelled the Ariadne, my companions, my father, the derelict, Livorno Bay. And then, the blow that cut off all I had held by, and made of me an unconsidered scrap, owning nothing, and owned by nobody. I had been very miserable at the Orphanage. Yes, there was distinct pleasure in recalling and weighing the sum of my unhappiness at St. Peter's.
From Livorno I went by sea to Genoa, where I obtained chased gold and silverwork for shoulder-belts and sheaths. Truth is truth the brown-skinned rascals can do fine work. But the country the country! Roland, my fore man how any sensible man can prefer it to ours is more than I understand." "Holland is our mother," replied von Warmond.
The interjections, too, were somewhat numerous, as the guesses were crude and absurd. One said it was a vessel with despatches from Livorno, possibly with "His Eccellenza" on board; but she was reminded that Leghorn lay to the north, and not to the west.
Most of her copper had been stripped off by Hayes, but later on I found all I wanted by crawling under the bilge, and prizing off a few undamaged sheets. "Let us find out her name before we go on board," I said to my companion. "She's a foreigner, I'm sure." Walking round to her stern we looked up and saw her name, Agostino Rombo, Livorno, painted in white letters.
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