The Green Hand: Adventures of a Naval Lieutenant — A Reader’s Guide

George was in his twelfth year when his father was "translated" to Stirling. While the family was settled here, the wish to go to sea seems to have grown in the boy's mind to a settled determination, fostered, it appears, by his reading of novels, of which he was extremely fond. He was sixteen years of age when his father, probably much against his will, allowed him to be apprenticed as a sailor. So it came about that the minister's son, nurtured on the classics and Calvinism with quite different purposes in view, made a voyage to India and back--an eighteen months' affair it turned out--as a ship's boy.

On the nature of his experiences we need not speak here, for whoever reads "The Green Hand" will understand it without further aid. As his biographer strikingly says: "It had a physical effect on him ... made him quiet and still in every expression, in every externality of life afterwards." At all events, the young adventurer returned home perfectly cured of his taste for the sea, petitioned his father to get his indentures cancelled, and declared he would content himself for the future on land.

Resuming his interrupted studies, he proceeded to Edinburgh University, where he took the Arts course. One of the professors was Wilson, the famous "Christopher North," for whom Cupples felt an admiration scarcely short of hero-worship, and of whom he afterwards wrote a "Memorial Sketch." Later on he went through the Divinity course, and had the privilege of sitting at the feet of the great Chalmers, of whom he always writes with enthusiasm.

But though prepared and equipped for the paternal calling, Cupples "recoiled from the stairs of the pulpit," more, it would seem, from a growing inclination to literature than from any heterodoxy in his religious views. He became a contributor to _Blackwood's Magazine_, where his essay on Emerson appeared in 1848. In _Maga_ also was first published "The Green Hand," that magnificent story of the sea which we are now sending forth, to delight and enthral, we feel sure, a new generation of readers. Two opinions may here be quoted of the story, to which each of our readers may afterwards add his own. George MacDonald pronounced it "the best sea-novel I have ever read"; and Clark Russell, whose right to speak on such a subject will scarcely be disputed, declares "it is the colours of 'The Green Hand' that I have nailed to my mast."

Cupples was a constant and unwearied writer. Much of his work was done for newspapers and periodicals, but even the most ephemeral of his productions bore testimony to the earnest and solid qualities of the man. That these qualities were duly appreciated is proved by the frequent kindly mention of him by men of the highest literary repute.

He was married, in 1858, to Ann Jane Douglas, an Edinburgh lady, who, though much younger than her husband, was singularly congenial in her tastes and pursuits. She has written a large number of books, mostly for children.

Even before the time of his marriage, Cupples suffered from the _sequelæ_ of hip-joint disease, and all the remainder of his life he seems never to have been quite free from the burden of ill-health. His home during his literary career was in different parts of Edinburgh or its vicinity, latterly in Newhaven, where he succumbed to heart-disease on the 17th of October 1891. His tombstone testifies to the admiration of his friends for his "varied literary gifts, and his simple, upright, and reverent character."

One of the literary projects which Cupples had long cherished has been happily carried out since his death in the publication, by Messrs Blackwood, of a splendid volume on "Scotch Deerhounds and their Masters." This volume contains a fine portrait of the author, and also an interesting memoir, written by Dr. Hutchison Stirling, which is in itself at once a tribute and a testimony to the lasting impression which both the works and the character of George Cupples made upon cultured and critical minds.

The popularity of "The Green Hand," both among seamen and others, as being true to life, has been wide. It has, however, been thought desirable to issue a revised edition, freed from various expressions now to a certain extent obsolete or otherwise unsuitable, so as to make it more thoroughly fit for juvenile readers.