119: James Holman: "The Narrative of a Journey"

StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: James Holman’s book The Narrative of a Journey.

For Jim, in honor of his birthday

In 2007, my husband, Jim, and I heard about Jason Roberts’s book, A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler. It sounded fascinating: a biography of a British naval officer who completely lost his sight at age 25 and then proceeded to travel around the world – and in the most exotic and, often, dangerous places.

Born in 1786, James Holman rose to the rank of lieutenant in the British Royal Navy. When he fell ill and lost his sight in 1825, he was forced to give up his career as a naval officer. But in his time with the navy, he had been bitten by the travel bug – and travel became his life’s quest ever after. In 1832, he became the first blind person to circumnavigate the globe.

Our favorite expedition found Holman at the edge of the world’s most famous live volcano – Mount Vesuvius. As I read Roberts’s biography aloud (a way we sometimes share books), I could barely make it through this scene – it was that hair-raising! I could not imagine myself – a sighted person – going to the very precipice of a live volcano, yet here was 19th-century blind James Holman pushing the envelope about as far as anyone could.

Holman was a sensation in his time, and deservedly so. As one source says, “In a time when blind people were thought to be almost totally helpless, and usually given a bowl to beg with, Holman's ability to sense his surroundings by the reverberations of a tapped cane or horse's hoof-beats was unfathomable.”

Roberts’s biography of Holman is a great way into the story of this extraordinary man’s life – and if you want a peak into the book, visit Roberts’s website. You can also listen to NPR’s story on A Sense of the World. If you’re hungry for more, you might want to check out Holman’s books. The Narrative of a Journey is available on Google Books, and the first volume of A Voyage Round the World is available at Project Gutenberg.

Unfortunately, Holman’s life came to a sad end. Pensioned as a member of the Naval Knights of Windsor, he was required to live at Windsor Castle. Sounds grand, I know, but the reality was far different from what you might suppose. The accommodations were meager at best, and Holman – who longed to travel – chafed at the requirement that he live at Windsor Castle and attend religious services twice a day. He frequently applied for leaves of absence from his Windsor Castle duties and was granted such leaves from time to time, but not nearly as often as he desired. This active, still vital man hated to be confined to one place.

Jason Roberts, Holman’s biographer, sums up his legacy this way:

He was known simply as the Blind Traveler – a solitary, sightless adventurer who fought the slave trade in Africa, survived a frozen captivity in Siberia, hunted rogue elephants in Ceylon and helped chart the Australian outback. Once a celebrity, a bestselling author and inspiration to Charles Darwin and Sir Richard Francis Burton, the charismatic, witty James Holman outlived his fame, dying in . . . obscurity [in 1857]. . . .

Jim and I are thrilled that Roberts has worked so hard to resurrect interest in Holman’s extraordinary life. Whether you read The Narrative of a Journey, A Voyage Round the World, or A Sense of the World, you’ll be inspired by all that is possible for human beings who dare to tackle the impossible!

Visit thestoryweb.com/holman for links to all these resources. Listen now as I read an excerpt from James Holman’s 1822 book, The Narrative of a Journey. In this scene, Holman tells of going to the very edge of Mount Vesuvius.

We proceeded along a fair road, until we arrived at a house about half way to the hermitage, where we rested a short time, and refreshed ourselves with wine and water; after this the road gradually became worse, so that if I had not, on former occasions, witnessed the astonishing powers of asses and mules, I should have conceived it impossible for them to have advanced along it. We reached the hermitage about half after eight o’clock, and at the suggestion of our guide, recruited ourselves with some of the hermit’s bread and wine; and then began the more arduous part of our journey. The road soon became very soft, being constituted of the light dust which had been thrown out from the crater; interspersed, however, with large and sharp stones, ejected from the same source; some of which were of such immense size, that did we not bear in mind the astonishing powers of elementary fire, we could scarcely credit the possibility of such masses being hurled to this distance, from out of the bowels of the mountain.

One of the greatest inconveniences I found in this ascent, was from the particles of ashes insinuating themselves within my shoes, and which annoyed my feet so much, that I was repeatedly compelled to take them off, in order to get rid of the irritating matter. Hence I would recommend future travellers to ascend in white leathern boots.

At length we reached the only part of the mountain, which was at this time in a burning state, and which was throwing out flames and sulphurous vapour; when the guide taking me by the arm, conducted me over a place where the fire and smoke issued from apertures between the stones we walked upon, and which we could hear crackling under our feet every instant as if they were going to be separated, and to precipitate us into the bowels of the mountain. The sublime description of Virgil did not fail to occur to my recollection.

By turns a pitchy cloud she rolls on high By turns hot embers from her entrails fly, And flakes of mounting flames lick the sky; Oft from her bowels massy rocks are thrown, And shiver d from their force come piecemeal down. Oft liquid fires of burning sulphur glow, Nurs’d by the fiery spring that burns below.

My imagination, I admit, was actively alive to the possible accidents which might have occurred; I followed, however, with all the confidence which my conviction of being under the care of a cautious leader, did not fail to inspire. My guide appeared highly gratified with the incident, asserting that it was the first time one deprived of sight had ever ventured there; and adding, that he was sure it would much surprise the king, when the circumstance became known to him, in the report which is daily made of the persons who visit the mountain The ground was too hot under our feet, and the sulphurous vapour too strong to allow of our remaining long in this situation; and when he thought he had given us a sufficient idea of the nature of this part of the mountain, we retired to a more solid and a cooler footing; previous to which, however, he directed my walking-cane towards the flames, which shrivelled the ferrule, and charred the lower part; – this I still retain as a memorial.

From hence we were conducted to the edge of a small crater, now extinguished, from whence about two months before, the Frenchman, desirous of the glory of dying a death worthy of the great nation, plunged into the fiery abyss. The guide placed my hand on the very spot where he was stated to have last stood, before he thus rashly entered upon eternity.

I was anxious to have proceeded up the cone to the border of the superior and large crater, but our guide objected, indeed refused to conduct us to it, unless we awaited the dawn of morning; the moon, he said, was fast descending, so that we should be involved in darkness before we could attain it; and that consequently it would be attended with risk in the extreme to make the attempt.

This was a check to the completion of my anxious wishes, but our arrangements at Naples neither made it convenient to my friend, or myself, to remain until morning; nor would it have been pleasant to have spent some hours here without refreshment, more particularly as I had left my coat behind near the hermitage, and at this elevation we found it extremely cold.

After spending a short time in examining some of the immense masses of calcined rock, many of them forming solid cubes of twenty feet diameter, and which had been at different times thrown out by the volcanic power; we began to retrace our steps towards the hermitage, distant, as our guide informed us, four miles, but which must have been an over-rated estimate. As we approached this latter place, we met a party ascending the mountain, with an intention of waiting the break of day, so as to enable them to reach the very summit.