By the Great Horn Spoon!

By the Great Horn Spoon! establishes its tone and themes in the first few pages, which describe a ship, the Lady Wilma, heading to the California Gold Rush in the epochal year of 1849. Historically, this was a year of mass migration and self-invention. Fittingly, two of the passengers on the Lady Wilma are stowaways. The older stowaway, a classic “fish out of water,” sets the story’s humorous tone: Praiseworthy, an English butler from a reputable Boston household, has been forced by circumstances to hide in a potato barrel. Emerging from his hiding place, he clings to his professional sense of decorum by dusting off his bowler hat and placing it on his head as soon as he can. This comic touch suggests that, throughout the story, he will wage a (losing) battle with various affronts to his comfort zone.

The younger stowaway, a 12-year-old boy named Jack, is less discomfited by his rough surroundings. Away from home for the first time, he feels a sense of adventure. The novel’s limited omniscience, with rare exceptions, follows his perspective, and his first thoughts reveal his excitement at the life-changing challenges that lie ahead. Jack is the classic untried, but avid, protagonist of a coming-of-age story.

Praiseworthy’s meeting with Captain Swain, to turn himself and Jack in, is the first minor problem that the heroes face. Each chapter will introduce another problem; the episodic nature of the plot not only provides constant suspense but also allows the two heroes to challenge themselves and discover what they’re capable of. It also brings them closer together, which contributes to a larger, overarching conflict.

Captain Swain, “the wild bull,” turns out to be a comically gruff man with problems of his own: He’s caught up in a race to San Francisco with a rival ship that carries lighter cargo, a disparity that threatens his dream of winning command of a state-of-the-art clipper ship. This lengthy race introduces another of the story’s problems, a longer-term one that will unfold over the first half of the novel.

Praiseworthy’s eloquence (somewhat) resolves the first problem: Captain Swain allows the two heroes to work off their fare in the boiler room, shoveling coal. But Jack’s thoughts reveal a larger conflict, the one that put the plot into motion: His formerly rich aunt, who raised him and his sisters, stands to lose her mansion within a year. So, Jack and Praiseworthy are in a race of their own, to make a fortune in the Gold Rush and return to Boston before the year is out.

However, a yet deeper problem emerges at the end of the first chapter: Jack often feels “a great emptiness, a loneliness, that not even Aunt Arabella could dispel” (36). Though he considers Praiseworthy his closest friend, and longs to see him as a surrogate father, the butler’s professional aloofness has long dismayed him. Praiseworthy tells Jack that Jack’s father was “nothing” like himself—a subtle rejection of the role of father figure, which would blur the lines between master and servant that define his traditional calling, whether in England or in class-conscious Boston. The pair, now far from Boston and sharing the same labors and perils, are “partners,” but the butler persists in calling him “Master Jack.” Whether or not Arabella’s financial problem is resolved, the orphaned Jack’s longing for a father strikes closer to his heart, and thus is the heart of the story.

Praiseworthy himself says that, whether or not him and Jack “strike it rich,” he wouldn’t like to change his life at all: “It will please me to go on serving your Aunt Arabella” (37). This is the first hint of a possible romantic interest between Praiseworthy and Arabella, one that the butler struggles to conceal. An English butler from a long line of butlers, Praiseworthy finds himself trapped not just by lineage and tradition, but a form of forbidden love. He can’t bear to leave Arabella’s service, for he loves her; however, he can never reveal his love, for it wouldn’t be “proper.” As he says later in the novel, Arabella would be ridiculed should she marry someone beneath her station. He knows Boston has an unforgiving social hierarchy, not unlike his native country of England.

When Praiseworthy roots out the thief who stole his and Jack’s money, the stratagem he uses shows that he’s beginning to learn and adapt to his new circumstances. His plan involves coal dust, with which he likely had scant acquaintance in his old life as an elegant butler. But even in his moment of inspiration, he retains the modesty and deference of a butler, pretending that it was “Master Jack’s” idea. Later in the story, Jack seeks to rectify this by giving Praiseworthy credit for his idea of planting vine cuttings in the rotten potatoes.

The ship thief, Cut-Eye Higgins, is quickly signified as the story’s antagonist. Praiseworthy confronts Cut-Eye with a “fierce look in his eye” (27), abandoning his amiability for the first time. This is just a taste of things to come, as the long-suppressed butler gradually adapts to his new life among chancers and ruffians. It is 1849, a year of bold changes, and the untamed West will be much different from Boston.