The "Samaria "--Across the Atlantic-Shipmates--The Despot of the
Deck--"Keep her Nor'-West"--Democrat versus Republican--A First
Glimpse--Boston
POLITICAL economists and newspaper editors for years have dwelt upon the
unfortunate fact that Ireland is not a manufacturing nation, and does not
export largely the products of her soil. But persons who have lived in
the island, or who have visited the ports of its northern or southern
shores, or crossed the Atlantic by any of the ocean steamers which sail
daily from the United Kingdom, must have arrived at a conclusion totally
at variance with these writers; for assuredly there is no nation under
the sun which manufactures the material called man so readily as does
that grass-covered island. Ireland is not a manufacturing nation, says
the political economist. Indeed, my good sir, you are wholly mistaken.
She is not only a manufacturing nation, but she manufactures nations. You
do not see her broad-cloth, or her soft fabrics, or her steam-engines,
but you see the broad shoulder of her sons and the soft cheeks of her
daughters in vast states whose names you are utterly ignorant of; and as
for the exportation of her products to foreign lands, just come with me
on board this ocean steamship "Samaria", and look at them. The good ship
has run down the channel during the night and now lies at anchor in
Queenstown harbour, waiting for mails and passengers. The latter came,
quickly and thickly enough. No poor, ill-fed, miserably dressed crowd,
but fresh, and fair, and strong, and well clad, the bone and muscle and
rustic beauty of the land; the little steam-tender that plies from the
shore to the ship is crowded at every trip, and you can scan them as they
come on board in batches of seventy or eighty. Some eyes among the girls
are red with crying, but tears dry quickly on young cheeks, and they will
be laughing before an hour is over. "Let them go," says the economist;
"we have too many mouths to feed in these little islands of ours; their
going will give us more room, more cattle, more chance to keep our acres
for the few'; let them go." My friend, that is just half the picture, and
no more; we may get a peep at the other half before you and I part.
It was about five o'clock in the afternoon of the 4th of May when the
"Samaria" steamed slowly between the capes of Camden and Carlisle, and
rounding out into Atlantic turned her head towards the western horizon.
The ocean lay unruffled along the rocky headlands of Ireland's southmost
shore. A long line of smoke hanging suspended between sky and sea marked
the unseen course of another steamship farther away to the south. A
hill-top, blue and lonely, rose above the rugged coast-line, the far-off
summit of some inland mountain; and as evening came down over the still
tranquil ocean and the vessel clove her outward way through
phosphorescent water, the lights along the iron coast grew fainter in
distance till there lay around only the unbroken circle of the sea.
ON BOARD.-A trip across the Atlantic is now-a-days a very ordinary
business; in fact, it is no longer a voyage-it is a run, you may almost
count its duration to within four hours; and as for fine weather, blue
skies, and calm seas, if they come, you may be thankful for them, but
don't expect them, and you won't add a sense of disappointment to one of
discomfort. Some experience of the Atlantic enables me to affirm that
north or south of 35 degrees north and south latitude there exists no such
thing as pleasant sailing.
But the usual run of weather, time, and tide outside the ship is not
more alike in its characteristics than the usual run of passenger one
meets inside. There is the man who has never been sea-sick in his life,
and there is the man who has never felt well upon board ship, but who,
nevertheless, both manage to consume about fifty meals of solid food in
ten days. There is the nautical landsman who tells you that he has been
eighteen times across the Atlantic and four times round the Cape of Good
Hope, and who is generally such a bore upon marine questions that it is a
subject of infinite regret that he should not be performing a fifth
voyage round that distant and interesting promontory. Early in the
voyage, owing to his superior sailing qualities, he has been able to
cultivate a close intimacy with the captain of the ship; but this
intimacy has been on the decline for some days, and, as he has committed
the unpardonable error of differing in opinion with the captain upon a
subject connected with the general direction and termination of the Gulf
Stream, he begins to fall quickly in the estimation of that potentate.
Then there is the relict of the late Major Fusby, of the Fusiliers, going
to or returning from England. Mrs. Fusby has a predilection for port
negus and the first Burmese war, in which campaign her late husband
received a wound of such a vital description (he died just twenty-two
years later), that it has enabled her to provide, at the expense of a
grateful nation, for three youthful Fusbies, who now serve their country
in various parts of the world. She does not suffer from sea-sickness, but
occasionally undergoes periods of nervous depression which require the
administration of the stimulant already referred to. It is a singular
fact that the present voyage is strangely illustrative of remarkable
events in the life of the late Fusby; there has not been a sail or a
porpoise in sight that has not called up some reminiscence of the early
career of the major; indeed, even the somewhat unusual appearance of an
iceberg, has been turned to account as suggestive of the intense
suffering undergone by the major during the period of his wound, owing to
the scarcity of the article ice in tropical countries. Then on deck
we have the inevitable old sailor who is perpetually engaged in scraping
the vestiges of paint from your favourite seat, and who, having arrived
at the completion of his monotonous task after four days incessant
labour, is found on the morning of the fifth engaged in smearing the
paint-denuded place of rest with a vilely glutinous compound peculiar to
ship-board. He never looks directly at you as you approach, with book and
jug, the desired spot, but you can tell by the leer in his eye and the
roll of the quid in his immense mouth that the old villain knows all
about the discomfort he is causing you, and you fancy you can detect a
chuckle, you turn away in a vain quest for a quiet cosy spot. Then there
is the captain himself, that most mighty despot. What king ever wielded
such power, what czar or kaiser had ever such obedience yielded to their
decrees? This man, who on shore is nothing, is here on his deck a very
pope; he is infallible. Canute could not stay the tide, but our sea-king
regulates the sun. Charles the Fifth could not make half a dozen clocks
go in unison, but Captain Smith can make it twelve o'clock any time he
pleases; nay, more, when the sun has made it twelve o'clock no tongue of
bell or sound of clock can proclaim time's decree until it has been
ratified by the fiat of the captain; and even in his misfortunes what
gran deur, what absence of excuse or crimination of others in the hour of
his disaster! Who has not heard of that captain who sailed away from
Liverpool one day bound for America? He had been hard worked on shore,
and it was said that when he sought the seclusion of his own cabin he was
not unmindful of that comfort which we are told the first navigator of
the ocean did not disdain to use. For a little time things went well. The
Isle of Man was passed; but unfortunately, on the second day out, the
good ship struck the shore of the north-east coast of Ireland and became
a total wreck. As the weather was extremely fine, and there appeared to
be no reason for the disaster, the subject became matter for
investigation by the authorities connected with the Board of Trade.
During the inquiry it was deposed that the Calf of Man had been passed at
such an hour on such a day, and the circumstance duly reported to the
captain, who, it was said, was below. It was also stated that having
received the report of the passage of the Calf of Man the captain had
ordered the ship to be kept in a north-west course until further orders.
About six hours later the vessel went ashore on the coast of Ireland.
Such was the evidence of the first officer. The captain was shortly after
called and examined.
"It appears, sir," said the president of the court, "that the passing of
the Calf of Man was duly reported to you by the first officer. May I ask,
sir, what course you ordered to be steered upon receipt of that
information?"
"North-west, sir," answered the captain; "I said, 'Keep her north-west."'
"North-west," repeated the president; "a very excellent general course
for making the coast of America, but not until you had cleared the
channel and were well into the Atlantic. Why, sir, the whole of Ireland
lay between you and America on that course."
"Can't help that, sir; can't help that, sir," replied the sea-king in a
tone of half-contemptuous pity, that the whole of Ireland should have
been so very unreasonable as to intrude itself in such a position.
And yet, with all the despotism of the deck, what kindly spirits are
these old sea-captains with the freckled hard knuckled hands and the grim
storm-seamed faces! What honest genuine hearts are lying buttoned beneath
those rough pea-jackets! If all despots had been of that kind perhaps we
shouldn't have known quite as much about Parliamentary Institutions as we
do.
And now, while we have been talking thus, the "Samaria" has been getting
far out into mid Atlantic, and yet we know not one among our
fellow-passengers, although they do not number much above a dozen: a
merchant from Maryland, a sea-captain-from Maine, a young doctor from
Pennsylvania, a Massachusetts man, a Rhode Islander, a German geologist
going to inspect seams in Colorado, a priest's sister from Ireland going
to look after some little property left her by her brother, a poor fellow
who was always ill, who never appeared at table, and who alluded to the
demon sea-sickness that preyed upon him as "it". "It comes on very bad at
night. It prevents me touching food. It never leaves me," he would say;
and in truth this terrible "it" never did leave him until the harbour of
Boston was reached, and even then, I fancy, dwelt in his thoughts during
many a day on shore.
The sea-captain from Maine was a violent democrat, the Massachusetts man
a rabid republican; and many a fierce battle waged between them on the
vexed questions of state rights, negro suffrage, and free trade in
liquor. To many Englishmen the terms republican and democrat may seem
synonymous; but not between radical and conservative, between outmost
Whig and inmost Tory exist more opposite extremes than between these
great rival political parties of the United States. As a drop of
sea-water possesses the properties of the entire water of the ocean, so
these units of American political controversy were microscopic
representatives of their respective parties. It was curious to remark what
a prominent part their religious convictions played in the war of words.
The republican was a member of the Baptist congregation; the democrat held
opinions not very easy of description, something of a universalist and
semi-unitarian tendency; these opinions became frequently intermixed with
their political jargon, forming that curious combination of ideas which
to unaccustomed ears sounds slightly blasphemous. I recollect a very
earnest American once saying that he considered all religious, political,
social, and historical teaching should be reduced to three subjects: the
Sermon on the Mount, the Declaration of American Independence, and the
Chicago Republican Platform of 1860.
On the present occasion the Massachusetts man was a person whose nerves
were as weak as his political convictions were strong, and the democrat
being equally gifted with strong opinions, strong nerves, and a tendency
towards strong waters, was enabled, particularly after dinner, to obtain
an easy victory over his less powerfully gifted antagonist. In fact it
was to the weakness of the latter's nervous system that we were indebted
for the pleasure of his society on board. Eight weeks before he had been
ordered by his medical adviser to leave his wife and office in the little
village of Hyde Park to seek change and relaxation on the continent of
Europe. He was now returning to his native land filled, he informed us,
with the gloomiest forebodings. He had a very powerful presentiment that
we were never to see the shores of America. By what agency our
destruction was to be accomplished he did not enlighten us, but the ship
had not well commenced her voyage before he commenced his evil
prognostications. That these were not founded upon any prophetic
knowledge of future events will be sufficiently apparent from the fact of
this book being written. Indeed, when the mid Atlantic had been passed
our Massachusetts acquaintance began to entertain more hopeful
expectations of once more pressing his wife to his bosom, although he
repeatedly reiterated that if that domestic event was really destined to
take place no persuasion on earth, medical or other wise, would ever
induce him to place the treacherous billows of the Atlantic between him
and the person of that bosom's partner. It was drawing near the end of
the voyage when an event occurred which, though in itself of a most
trivial nature, had for some time a disturbing effect upon our party. The
priest's sister, an elderly maiden lady of placidly weak intellect,
announced one morning at breakfast that the sea-captain from Maine had on
the previous day addressed her in terms of endearment, and had, in fact,
called her his "little duck." This announcement, which was made
generally to the table, and which was received in dead silence by every
member of the community, had by no means a pleasurable effect upon the
countenance of the person most closely concerned. Indeed, amidst the
silence which succeeded the revelation, a half-smothered sentence, more
forcible than polite, was audible from the lips of the democrat, in which
those accustomed to the vernacular of America could plainly distinguish
"darned old fool." Meantime, in spite of political discussions, or
amorous revelations, or prophetic disaster, in spite of mid-ocean storm
and misty-fog-bank, our gigantic screw, unceasing as the whirl of life
itself, had wound its way into the waters which wash the rugged shores of
New England. To those whose lives are spent in ceaseless movement over
the world, who wander from continent to continent, from island to island,
who dwell in many cities but are the citizens of no city, who sail away
and come back again, whose home is the broad earth itself, to such as
these the coming in sight of land is no unusual occurrence, and yet the
man has grown old at his trade of wandering who can look utterly
uninterested upon the first glimpse of land rising out of the waste of
ocean: small as that glimpse may be, only a rock, a cape, a mountain
crest, it has the power of localizing an idea, the very vastness Of which
prevents its realization on shore. From the deck of an outward-bound
vessel one sees rising, faint and blue, a rocky headland or a mountain
summit-one does not ask if the mountain be of Maine, or of Mexico, or the
Cape be St. Ann's or Hatteras, one only sees America. Behind that strip
of blue coast lies a world, and that world the new one. Far away inland
lie scattered many landscapes glorious with mountain, lake, river, and
forest, all unseen, all unknown to the wanderer who for the first time
seeks the American shore; yet instinctively their presence is felt in
that faint outline of sea-lapped coast which lifts itself above the
ocean; and even if in after-time it becomes the lot of the wanderer, as
it became my lot, to look again upon these mountain summits, these
immense inland seas; these mighty rivers whose waters seek their mother
ocean through 3000 miles of meadow, in none of these glorious parts, vast
though they be, will the sense of the still vaster whole be realized as
strongly as in that first glimpse of land showing dimly over the western
horizon of the Atlantic.
The sunset of a very beautiful evening in May was making bright the
shores of Massachusetts as the "Samaria," under her fullest head of
steam, ran up the entrance to Plymouth Sound. To save daylight into port
was an object of moment to the Captain, for the approach to Boston
harbour is as intricate as shoal, sunken rock, and fort-crowned island
can make it. If ever that much talked-of conflict between the two great
branches of the Anglo-Saxon race is destined to quit the realms of fancy
for those of fact, Boston, at least, will rest as safe from the
destructive engines of British iron-clads as the city of Omaha on the
Missouri River. It was only natural that the Massachusetts man should
have been in a fever of excitement at finding himself once more within
sight of home; and for once human nature exhibited the unusual spectacle
of rejoicing over the falsity of its own predictions. As every revolution
of the screw brought out some new feature into prominence, he skipped
gleefully about; and, recognizing in my person the stranger element in
the assembly, he took particular pains to point out the lions of the
landscape. "There, serais Fort Warren, where we kept our rebel prisoners
during the war. In a few minutes more, sir, we will be in sight of
Bunker's Hill;" and then, in a frenzy of excitement, he skipped away to
some post of vantage upon the forecastle.
Night had come down over the harbour, and Boston had lighted all her
lamps, before the "Samaria," swinging round in the fast-running tide,
lay, with quiet screw and smokeless funnel, alongside the wharf of New
England's oldest city.
"Real mean of that darned Baptist pointing you out Bunker's Hill," said
the sea-captain from Maine; "just like the ill-mannered republican cuss!"
It was useless to tell him that I had felt really obliged for the
information given me by his political opponent. "Never mind," he said,
"to-morrow I'll show you how these moral Bostonians break their darned
liquor law in every hotel in their city."
Boston has a clean, English look about it, peculiar to it alone of all
the cities in the United States. Its streets, running in curious curves,
as though they had not the least idea where they were going, are full of
prettily dressed pretty girls, who look as though they had a very fair
idea of where they were going to. Atlantic fogs and French fashions have
combined to make Boston belles pink, pretty,-and piquante; while the
western states, by drawing fully half their male population from New
England, make the preponderance of the female element apparent at a
glance. The ladies, thus left at home, have not been idle: their
colleges, their clubs, their reading-classes are numerous; like the man
in "Hudibras,"
"'Tis known they can speak Greek as naturally as pigs squeak;"
and it is probable that no city in the world can boast so high a standard
of female education as Boston: nevertheless, it must be regretted that
this standard of mental excellence attributable to the ladies of Boston
should not have been found capable of association with the duties of
domestic life. Without going deeper into topics which are better
understood in America than in England, and which have undergone most
eloquent elucidation at the hands of Mr. Hepworth Dixon, but which are
nevertheless dlightly nauseating, it may safely be observed, that the
inculcation at ladies colleges of that somewhat rude but forcible home
truth, enunciated by the first Napoleon in reply to the most illustrious
Frenchwoman of her day, when questioned Upon the subject of female
excellence, should not be forgotten.
There exists a very generally received idea that strangers are more
likely to notice and complain of the short-comings of a social habit or
system than are residents who have grown old under that infliction; but I
cannot help thinking that there exists a considerable amount of error in
this opinion. A stranger will frequently submit to extortion, to
insolence, or to inconvenience, because, being a stranger, he believes
that extortion, insolence, and inconvenience are the habitual
characteristics of the new place in which he finds himself: they do not
strike him as things to be objected to, or even wondered at; they are
simply to be submitted to and endured. If he were at home, he would die
sooner than yield that extra half-dollar; he would leave the house at
once in which he was told to get up at an unearthly hour in the morning;
but, being in another country, he submits, without even a thought of
resistance. In no other way can we account for the strange silence on the
part of English writers upon the tyrannical disposition of American
social life. A nation everlastingly boasting itself the freest on the
earth submits unhesitatingly to more social tyranny than any people in
the world. In the United States one is marshalled to every event of the
day. Whether you like it or not, you must get up, breakfast, dine, sup,
and go to bed at fixed hours. Attached upon the inside of your bedroom-door
is a printed document which informs you of all the things you are not to
do in the hotel-a list in which, like Mr. J. S. Mill's definition
of Christian doctrine, the shall-nots predominate over the shalls. In the
event of your disobeying any of the numerous mandates set forth in this
document-such as not getting up very early-you will not be sent to the
penitentiary or put in the pillory, for that process of punishment would
imply a necessity for trouble and exertion on the part of the
richly-apparelled gentleman who does you the honour of receiving your
petitions and grossly overcharging you at the office-no, you have simply
to go without food until dinner-time, or to go to bed by the light of a
jet of gas for which you will be charged an exorbitant price in your
bill. As in the days of Roman despotism we know that the slaves were
occasionally permitted to indulge in the grossest excesses, so, under the
rigorous system of the hotel-keeper, the guest is allowed to expectorate
profusely over every thing; over the marble with which the hall is
paved, over the Brussels carpet which covers the drawing-room, over the
bed-room, and over the lobby. Expectoration is apparently the one saving
clause which American liberty demands as the price of its submission to
the prevailing tyranny of the hotel. Do not imagine-you, who have never
yet tasted the sweets of a transatlantic transaction-that this tyranny is
confined to the hotel: every person to whom you pay money in the ordinary
travelling transactions of life-your omnibus-man, your railway-conductor,
your steamboat-clerk-takes your money, it is true, but takes it in a
manner which tells you plainly enough that he is conferring a very great
favour by so doing. He is in all probability realizing a profit of from
three to four hundred-per cent. on whatever the transaction may be; but,
all the same, although you are fully aware of this fact, you are
nevertheless almost overwhelmed with the sense of the very deep
obligation which you owe to the man who thus deigns to receive your
money.
It was about ten o'clock at night when the steamer anchored at the wharf
at Boston. Not until midday. On the following day were we (the
passengers) allowed to leave the vessel. The cause of this delay arose
from the fact that the collector of customs of the port of Boston was an
individual of great social importance; and as it would have been
inconvenient for him to attend at an earlier hour for the purpose of
being present at the examination of our baggage, we were detained
prisoners until the day was far enough advanced to suit his convenience.
From a conversation which subsequently I had with this gentleman at our
hotel, I discovered that he was more obliging in his general capacity of
politician and prominent citizen than he was in his particular duties of
customs collector. Like many other instances of the kind in the United
States, his was a case of evident unfitness for the post he held. A.
socially smaller man would have made a much better customs official.
Unfortunately for the comfort of the public, the remuneration attached to
appointments in the postal and customs departments is frequently very
large, and these situations are eagerly sought as prizes in the lottery
of political life-prizes, too, which can only be held for the short term
of four years. As. A consequence, the official who holds his situation by
right of political service rendered to the chief of the predominant
clique or party in his state does not consider that he owes to the public
the service of his office. In theory he is a public servant; in reality
he becomes the master of the public. This is, however, the fault of the
system and not of the individual.