It is some years since I addressed you last over this signature--indeed
I should doubt if five per cent of your present readers will remember
the “harvests” of a quiet (ought I to say “lazy” rather than “quiet”?)
eye, which I was wont in those days, by your connivance, to submit to
them in vacation times. Somehow to-day the old instinct has come back on
me, possibly because I happen to be on an errand which should be of no
small interest to us English just now; possibly because the last days of
an Atlantic crossing seem to be so naturally provocative of the instinct
for gossiping, that one is not satisfied with the abundant opportunities
one gets on board the vessel in which one is a luxurious prisoner for
ten days.
We have been going day and night since we left Queenstown harbour at
an average rate of 18 (land) miles an hour. We are more than 1300
passengers (roughly 200 saloon, and the rest steerage), whose baggage,
when added to the large cargo of dry goods we are carrying, sinks our
beautiful craft till she draws 24 feet of water. She herself is more
than 150 yards long, and weighs as she passes Sandy Hook,--well, I am
fairly unable to calculate what she weighs, but as much, at any rate,
as half a dozen luggage-trains on shore. We have had our last, or the
captain’s dinner, at which fish, to all appearance as fresh as if the
sailors had just caught them over the side, and lettuces, as crisp as if
the steward had a nursery garden down below, have been served as part
of a dinner which would have done no discredit to a first-class hotel;
beginning with two sorts of soup, and ending with two sorts of ices.
Similar dinners, with other meals to match--four solid ones in the
twenty-four hours, besides odds and ends--have been served day by day,
without a hitch, in a cabin kept as sweet as Atlantic air, constantly
pumped into it by the engine, can make it.
By the way, sir, I may remark here, in connection with our feeding,
that if we might be taken as average specimens of our race, there is no
ground whatever for anxiety as to the Anglo-Saxon digestion, of
which some disagreeable philosophers have spoken with disrespect and
foreboding in recent years. There were, perhaps, ten persons whose
native tongue was not English, and yet we carried our four solid meals a
day with resolution bordering on the heroic. The racks were never on the
tables, and we had only for a few hours a swell, which thinned our ranks
for two meals; and yet when I look round, and make such inquiry as
I can, I can see or hear of nothing more than a very slight trace of
dyspepsia here and there. The principal change I remarked in the manners
and customs on the voyage was the marked increase of play and betting on
board. When I first crossed, ten years ago, there was nothing more than
an occasional game at whist in the saloon or smoking-room. This voyage
it was not easy to get out of the way of hard play except on deck. The
best corner of the smoking-room was occupied from breakfast till “Out
lights” by a steady poker party, and other smaller and more casual
groups played fitfully at the other tables. There were always whist and
other games going on in the saloon, but of a soberer and (in a pecuniary
sense) more innocent character. There were “pools” of a sovereign or
a half sovereign on every event of the day, “the run” being the most
exciting issue. The drawer of the winning number seldom pocketed less
than £40, when it was posted on the captain’s chart at noon. I heard
that play is rather favoured now than otherwise on all the lines, as
a percentage is almost always paid to the funds of the Sailors’ Orphan
Asylum, for which excellent charity a collection is also legitimately
made during every passage. We were good supporters, and collected nearly
£70 at our entertainment, which I attribute partly to the fact that we
had on board a leading American actor, who most good-naturedly “turned
himself loose” for us, and that the plates at the two doors were held
by the daughters of an English earl, and an (late, alas!) American
ambassador of great eminence. The countries could not have been more
characteristically or charmingly represented, and the charity owes them
its best thanks.
There was the usual mine of information and entertainment, to be struck
with ease by the merest novice in conversational shaft-sinking. Why is
it that folk are so much more ready to talk on an Atlantic steamer than
elsewhere? I myself “struck ile,” in several directions, one of a sad
kind--Scotch farmers of the highest type going out to select new homes,
where there will be no factors. The most remarkable of these appeared to
have made up his mind finally when he had been told that he would not be
allowed a penny at the end of his lease for the addition of three rooms
he was obliged to make to his house, as his family were growing up. Have
landlords and factors gone mad, in face of the serious times which are
on them?
There were quite an abundance of parsons, of many denominations, and all
of mark. Prayers on Sunday were read by a New England Episcopalian,
and the sermon preached by a Scotch Free Kirk minister. All were men of
broad views, in some cases verging on Latitudinarianism to a point which
rejoiced my heretic soul, e.g. a Protestant minister in a great American
western city, whose church had recently been rebuilt. Looking round
to find where his flock could be best housed on Sundays, pending
reconstruction, he found the neighbouring synagogue by far the most
convenient, and proposed to go there. His people cordially agreed, and
despite the furious raging of the (so-called) religious press, into the
synagogue they went for their Sunday services, stayed there six months,
and when they left, were only charged for the gas by the Rabbi. An
intimacy sprung up. It appeared that the Rabbi looked upon our Lord
as the first of the inspired men of his nation, greater than Moses or
Samuel, and in the end the two congregations met at a service conducted
partly by the Rabbi and partly by my informant!--a noteworthy sign of
the times, but one at which I fear many even of your readers will shake
their heads.
There were some Confederate officers, ready to talk without bitterness
of the war, and I was very glad to improve the occasion, having never
had the chance of a look from that side the curtain. Anything more grim
and humorous than the picture of Southern society during those awful
four years I never hope to meet with. The entire want of regular
medicines, especially bark, was their greatest trouble in his eyes. In
his brigade their remedy for “the shakes” came to be a plaster of raw
turpentine, just drawn from the pine woods, laid on down the back.
Some one suggested that pills were very portable, and easily imported.
“Pills!” he said scornfully; “pills, sir, were as scarce in our brigade
as the grace of God in a grog shop at midnight.” Nothing so much
brought out to me the horrors of civil war as his account of the perfect
knowledge each side had of the plans and doings on the other. A Northern
officer, he had since come to know, was leaning against a post within
three yards of Jeff. Davis when he made his famous speech announcing the
supersession of Joe Johnson as the general fronting Sherman. Sherman had
heard it in a few hours, and was acting on the news before nightfall.
The most terrible example was that of the mining of the Richmond lines.
The defenders knew almost to a foot where the mines were, and when they
were to be fired. Breckenbridge’s division, in which he fought, were
drawn up in line to repel the attack when the earthworks went up in the
air, and the assailants rushed into the great gap which had been made,
and which was nearly filled, before they fell back, with the bodies of
Northern soldiers. For the last two years, in almost every battle he had
all he could do to hold his own against the front attack, knowing and
feeling all the while that the enemy was overlapping and massing on both
flanks, and that he would have to retire his regiment before they could
close. And yet they held together to the last!