Foreword: Ted Sayles
588 Words
Foreword: Ted
SaylesWhen book 1 ended, my great-grandfather William
Fitzroy Raglan Battles was aboard the SS China headed for
what in 1894 was considered the Mysterious East. His life had taken
a tragic turn for the worst, and his way of dealing with it was to
put distance between himself and the past—even if it meant leaving
loved ones behind.
When I read the tapes, journals, letters, and other
records Great-Grandfather Battles left behind for me, the reasons
for his impetuous voyage to distant lands seemed to me dubious and
ill-conceived. Of course, given the misfortunes that had befallen
him, it is not for me (or anyone else, for that matter) to say that
he made a wrong decision to escape his past.
Who knows how bereavement and torment can influence
and occupy another person’s mind and soul and how it can drive one
to make disputable decisions? In my great-grandfather’s case, his
anguish and grief over losing his wife apparently required relief
that could only come from some distant quarter. In his journals, he
attempted to explain, if not justify his actions.
As I poured through those journals and other
materials Great-Grandfather Battles left for me, it was obvious
that I was witnessing a boy mature into early manhood and then
middle age. I felt a professional kinship with my
great-grandfather—we were both journalists, though he was much more
of a participant in the events he wrote about than I had ever
been.
As Billy grew older, he also became more complex, and
so did the challenges he faced. His writing reflected this process.
As I read through his journals and letters, the torment and regret
Great-Grandfather felt was palpable to me in his writing.
His mood shifted from the wide-eyed, eager, and naive
teenager who left Lawrence, Kansas, in 1878 to that of a man
approaching middle age who had both inflicted and suffered
significant pain. He had survived attempts on his life and had
taken lives. He had lost the woman he loved to a fatal illness, and
he essentially abandoned his five-year-old daughter in an imprudent
pursuit of solace.
Just as Billy did in his journals, I have broken the
one hundred years my great-grandfather spent on this earth into
three parts. Book 1 dealt with approximately the first third of
Billy Battles’s existence in Kansas and other areas of the American
West. Book 2 finds Billy in the Far East, Latin America, and Europe
and ends with Billy approaching what for many men would be a more
sedentary age.
But as I discovered in reading his journals and
listening to the tapes my great-grandfather left for me, retirement
or any notion of retreating into sequestration was never an option
for him.
Life for Billy Battles never slowed down, and I have
a hunch that is why he remained vigorous and healthy for a full
century. My only regret is that when I met him and talked with him
almost fifty years ago, I was barely an adolescent, and he was
already ninety-eight years old. Had I been older and a bit wiser in
the ways of men, I am confident that I could have amplified much of
what Great-Grandfather wrote and told me with added insight,
sensitivity, and depth.
As it is, I have done my best to convey
Great-Grandfather Battles’s temperament and character in the course
of his assorted deeds and exploits with as much truth and passion
as possible given the yawning gulf of time and the disparity that
inevitably separates age and youth.
What follows is Billy’s improbable story in his own
words.
Ted Sayles, Kansas City, Missouri.
- Writer
