Travel is of two kinds; and this voyage of mine across the ocean combined
both. ‘Out of my country and myself I go,’ sings the old poet: and I was
not only travelling out of my country in latitude and longitude, but out
of myself in diet, associates, and consideration. Part of the interest
and a great deal of the amusement flowed, at least to me, from this novel
situation in the world.
I found that I had what they call fallen in life with absolute success
and verisimilitude. I was taken for a steerage passenger; no one seemed
surprised that I should be so; and there was nothing but the brass plate
between decks to remind me that I had once been a gentleman. In a former
book, describing a former journey, I expressed some wonder that I could
be readily and naturally taken for a pedlar, and explained the accident
by the difference of language and manners between England and France. I
must now take a humbler view; for here I was among my own countrymen,
somewhat roughly clad to be sure, but with every advantage of speech and
manner; and I am bound to confess that I passed for nearly anything you
please except an educated gentleman. The sailors called me ‘mate,’ the
officers addressed me as ‘my man,’ my comrades accepted me without
hesitation for a person of their own character and experience, but with
some curious information. One, a mason himself, believed I was a mason;
several, and among these at least one of the seaman, judged me to be a
petty officer in the American navy; and I was so often set down for a
practical engineer that at last I had not the heart to deny it. From all
these guesses I drew one conclusion, which told against the insight of my
companions. They might be close observers in their own way, and read the
manners in the face; but it was plain that they did not extend their
observation to the hands.
To the saloon passengers also I sustained my part without a hitch. It is
true I came little in their way; but when we did encounter, there was no
recognition in their eye, although I confess I sometimes courted it in
silence. All these, my inferiors and equals, took me, like the
transformed monarch in the story, for a mere common, human man. They
gave me a hard, dead look, with the flesh about the eye kept unrelaxed.
With the women this surprised me less, as I had already experimented on
the sex by going abroad through a suburban part of London simply attired
in a sleeve-waistcoat. The result was curious. I then learned for the
first time, and by the exhaustive process, how much attention ladies are
accustomed to bestow on all male creatures of their own station; for, in
my humble rig, each one who went by me caused me a certain shock of
surprise and a sense of something wanting. In my normal circumstances,
it appeared every young lady must have paid me some tribute of a glance;
and though I had often not detected it when it was given, I was well
aware of its absence when it was withheld. My height seemed to decrease
with every woman who passed me, for she passed me like a dog. This is
one of my grounds for supposing that what are called the upper classes
may sometimes produce a disagreeable impression in what are called the
lower; and I wish some one would continue my experiment, and find out
exactly at what stage of toilette a man becomes invisible to the
well-regulated female eye.
Here on shipboard the matter was put to a more complete test; for, even
with the addition of speech and manner, I passed among the ladies for
precisely the average man of the steerage. It was one afternoon that I
saw this demonstrated. A very plainly dressed woman was taken ill on
deck. I think I had the luck to be present at every sudden seizure
during all the passage; and on this occasion found myself in the place of
importance, supporting the sufferer. There was not only a large crowd
immediately around us, but a considerable knot of saloon passengers
leaning over our heads from the hurricane-deck. One of these, an elderly
managing woman, hailed me with counsels. Of course I had to reply; and
as the talk went on, I began to discover that the whole group took me for
the husband. I looked upon my new wife, poor creature, with mingled
feelings; and I must own she had not even the appearance of the poorest
class of city servant-maids, but looked more like a country wench who
should have been employed at a roadside inn. Now was the time for me to
go and study the brass plate.
To such of the officers as knew about me—the doctor, the purser, and the
stewards—I appeared in the light of a broad joke. The fact that I spent
the better part of my day in writing had gone abroad over the ship and
tickled them all prodigiously. Whenever they met me they referred to my
absurd occupation with familiarity and breadth of humorous intention.
Their manner was well calculated to remind me of my fallen fortunes. You
may be sincerely amused by the amateur literary efforts of a gentleman,
but you scarce publish the feeling to his face. ‘Well!’ they would say:
‘still writing?’ And the smile would widen into a laugh. The purser
came one day into the cabin, and, touched to the heart by my misguided
industry, offered me some other kind of writing, ‘for which,’ he added
pointedly, ‘you will be paid.’ This was nothing else than to copy out
the list of passengers.
Another trick of mine which told against my reputation was my choice of
roosting-place in an active draught upon the cabin floor. I was openly
jeered and flouted for this eccentricity; and a considerable knot would
sometimes gather at the door to see my last dispositions for the night.
This was embarrassing, but I learned to support the trial with
equanimity.
Indeed I may say that, upon the whole, my new position sat lightly and
naturally upon my spirits. I accepted the consequences with readiness,
and found them far from difficult to bear. The steerage conquered me; I
conformed more and more to the type of the place, not only in manner but
at heart, growing hostile to the officers and cabin passengers who looked
down upon me, and day by day greedier for small delicacies. Such was the
result, as I fancy, of a diet of bread and butter, soup and porridge. We
think we have no sweet tooth as long as we are full to the brim of
molasses; but a man must have sojourned in the workhouse before he boasts
himself indifferent to dainties. Every evening, for instance, I was more
and more preoccupied about our doubtful fare at tea. If it was delicate
my heart was much lightened; if it was but broken fish I was
proportionally downcast. The offer of a little jelly from a
fellow-passenger more provident than myself caused a marked elevation in
my spirits. And I would have gone to the ship’s end and back again for
an oyster or a chipped fruit.
In other ways I was content with my position. It seemed no disgrace to
be confounded with my company; for I may as well declare at once I found
their manners as gentle and becoming as those of any other class. I do
not mean that my friends could have sat down without embarrassment and
laughable disaster at the table of a duke. That does not imply an
inferiority of breeding, but a difference of usage. Thus I flatter
myself that I conducted myself well among my fellow-passengers; yet my
most ambitious hope is not to have avoided faults, but to have committed
as few as possible. I know too well that my tact is not the same as
their tact, and that my habit of a different society constituted, not
only no qualification, but a positive disability to move easily and
becomingly in this. When Jones complimented me—because I ‘managed to
behave very pleasantly’ to my fellow-passengers, was how he put it—I
could follow the thought in his mind, and knew his compliment to be such
as we pay foreigners on their proficiency in English. I dare say this
praise was given me immediately on the back of some unpardonable
solecism, which had led him to review my conduct as a whole. We are all
ready to laugh at the ploughman among lords; we should consider also the
case of a lord among the ploughmen. I have seen a lawyer in the house of
a Hebridean fisherman; and I know, but nothing will induce me to
disclose, which of these two was the better gentleman. Some of our
finest behaviour, though it looks well enough from the boxes, may seem
even brutal to the gallery. We boast too often manners that are
parochial rather than universal; that, like a country wine, will not bear
transportation for a hundred miles, nor from the parlour to the kitchen.
To be a gentleman is to be one all the world over, and in every relation
and grade of society. It is a high calling, to which a man must first be
born, and then devote himself for life. And, unhappily, the manners of a
certain so-called upper grade have a kind of currency, and meet with a
certain external acceptation throughout all the others, and this tends to
keep us well satisfied with slight acquirements and the amateurish
accomplishments of a clique. But manners, like art, should be human and
central.
Some of my fellow-passengers, as I now moved among them in a relation of
equality, seemed to me excellent gentlemen. They were not rough, nor
hasty, nor disputatious; debated pleasantly, differed kindly; were
helpful, gentle, patient, and placid. The type of manners was plain, and
even heavy; there was little to please the eye, but nothing to shock; and
I thought gentleness lay more nearly at the spring of behaviour than in
many more ornate and delicate societies. I say delicate, where I cannot
say refined; a thing may be fine, like ironwork, without being delicate,
like lace. There was here less delicacy; the skin supported more
callously the natural surface of events, the mind received more bravely
the crude facts of human existence; but I do not think that there was
less effective refinement, less consideration for others, less polite
suppression of self. I speak of the best among my fellow-passengers; for
in the steerage, as well as in the saloon, there is a mixture. Those,
then, with whom I found myself in sympathy, and of whom I may therefore
hope to write with a greater measure of truth, were not only as good in
their manners, but endowed with very much the same natural capacities,
and about as wise in deduction, as the bankers and barristers of what is
called society. One and all were too much interested in disconnected
facts, and loved information for its own sake with too rash a devotion;
but people in all classes display the same appetite as they gorge
themselves daily with the miscellaneous gossip of the newspaper.
Newspaper-reading, as far as I can make out, is often rather a sort of
brown study than an act of culture. I have myself palmed off yesterday’s
issue on a friend, and seen him re-peruse it for a continuance of minutes
with an air at once refreshed and solemn. Workmen, perhaps, pay more
attention; but though they may be eager listeners, they have rarely
seemed to me either willing or careful thinkers. Culture is not measured
by the greatness of the field which is covered by our knowledge, but by
the nicety with which we can perceive relations in that field, whether
great or small. Workmen, certainly those who were on board with me, I
found wanting in this quality or habit of the mind. They did not
perceive relations, but leaped to a so-called cause, and thought the
problem settled. Thus the cause of everything in England was the form of
government, and the cure for all evils was, by consequence, a revolution.
It is surprising how many of them said this, and that none should have
had a definite thought in his head as he said it. Some hated the Church
because they disagreed with it; some hated Lord Beaconsfield because of
war and taxes; all hated the masters, possibly with reason. But these
failings were not at the root of the matter; the true reasoning of their
souls ran thus—I have not got on; I ought to have got on; if there was a
revolution I should get on. How? They had no idea. Why?
Because—because—well, look at America!
To be politically blind is no distinction; we are all so, if you come to
that. At bottom, as it seems to me, there is but one question in modern
home politics, though it appears in many shapes, and that is the question
of money; and but one political remedy, that the people should grow wiser
and better. My workmen fellow-passengers were as impatient and dull of
hearing on the second of these points as any member of Parliament; but
they had some glimmerings of the first. They would not hear of
improvement on their part, but wished the world made over again in a
crack, so that they might remain improvident and idle and debauched, and
yet enjoy the comfort and respect that should accompany the opposite
virtues; and it was in this expectation, as far as I could see, that many
of them were now on their way to America. But on the point of money they
saw clearly enough that inland politics, so far as they were concerned,
were reducible to the question of annual income; a question which should
long ago have been settled by a revolution, they did not know how, and
which they were now about to settle for themselves, once more they knew
not how, by crossing the Atlantic in a steamship of considerable tonnage.
And yet it has been amply shown them that the second or income question
is in itself nothing, and may as well be left undecided, if there be no
wisdom and virtue to profit by the change. It is not by a man’s purse,
but by his character that he is rich or poor. Barney will be poor, Alick
will be poor, Mackay will be poor; let them go where they will, and wreck
all the governments under heaven, they will be poor until they die.
Nothing is perhaps more notable in the average workman than his
surprising idleness, and the candour with which he confesses to the
failing. It has to me been always something of a relief to find the
poor, as a general rule, so little oppressed with work. I can in
consequence enjoy my own more fortunate beginning with a better grace.
The other day I was living with a farmer in America, an old frontiersman,
who had worked and fought, hunted and farmed, from his childhood up. He
excused himself for his defective education on the ground that he had
been overworked from first to last. Even now, he said, anxious as he
was, he had never the time to take up a book. In consequence of this, I
observed him closely; he was occupied for four or, at the extreme
outside, for five hours out of the twenty-four, and then principally in
walking; and the remainder of the day he passed in born idleness, either
eating fruit or standing with his back against a door. I have known men
do hard literary work all morning, and then undergo quite as much
physical fatigue by way of relief as satisfied this powerful frontiersman
for the day. He, at least, like all the educated class, did so much
homage to industry as to persuade himself he was industrious. But the
average mechanic recognises his idleness with effrontery; he has even, as
I am told, organised it.
I give the story as it was told me, and it was told me for a fact. A man
fell from a housetop in the city of Aberdeen, and was brought into
hospital with broken bones. He was asked what was his trade, and replied
that he was a _tapper_. No one had ever heard of such a thing before;
the officials were filled with curiosity; they besought an explanation.
It appeared that when a party of slaters were engaged upon a roof, they
would now and then be taken with a fancy for the public-house. Now a
seamstress, for example, might slip away from her work and no one be the
wiser; but if these fellows adjourned, the tapping of the mallets would
cease, and thus the neighbourhood be advertised of their defection.
Hence the career of the tapper. He has to do the tapping and keep up an
industrious bustle on the housetop during the absence of the slaters.
When he taps for only one or two the thing is child’s-play, but when he
has to represent a whole troop, it is then that he earns his money in the
sweat of his brow. Then must he bound from spot to spot, reduplicate,
triplicate, sexduplicate his single personality, and swell and hasten his
blows, until he produce a perfect illusion for the ear, and you would
swear that a crowd of emulous masons were continuing merrily to roof the
house. It must be a strange sight from an upper window.
I heard nothing on board of the tapper; but I was astonished at the
stories told by my companions. Skulking, shirking, malingering, were all
established tactics, it appeared. They could see no dishonesty where a
man who is paid for an hour's work gives half an hour’s consistent idling
in its place. Thus the tapper would refuse to watch for the police
during a burglary, and call himself a honest man. It is not sufficiently
recognised that our race detests to work. If I thought that I should
have to work every day of my life as hard as I am working now, I should
be tempted to give up the struggle. And the workman early begins on his
career of toil. He has never had his fill of holidays in the past, and
his prospect of holidays in the future is both distant and uncertain. In
the circumstances, it would require a high degree of virtue not to snatch
alleviations for the moment.
There were many good talkers on the ship; and I believe good talking of a
certain sort is a common accomplishment among working men. Where books
are comparatively scarce, a greater amount of information will be given
and received by word of mouth; and this tends to produce good talkers,
and, what is no less needful for conversation, good listeners. They
could all tell a story with effect. I am sometimes tempted to think that
the less literary class show always better in narration; they have so
much more patience with detail, are so much less hurried to reach the
points, and preserve so much juster a proportion among the facts. At the
same time their talk is dry; they pursue a topic ploddingly, have not an
agile fancy, do not throw sudden lights from unexpected quarters, and
when the talk is over they often leave the matter where it was. They
mark time instead of marching. They think only to argue, not to reach
new conclusions, and use their reason rather as a weapon of offense than
as a tool for self-improvement. Hence the talk of some of the cleverest
was unprofitable in result, because there was no give and take; they
would grant you as little as possible for premise, and begin to dispute
under an oath to conquer or to die.
But the talk of a workman is apt to be more interesting than that of a
wealthy merchant, because the thoughts, hopes, and fears of which the
workman’s life is built lie nearer to necessity and nature. They are
more immediate to human life. An income calculated by the week is a far
more human thing than one calculated by the year, and a small income,
simply from its smallness, than a large one. I never wearied listening
to the details of a workman’s economy, because every item stood for some
real pleasure. If he could afford pudding twice a week, you know that
twice a week the man ate with genuine gusto and was physically happy;
while if you learn that a rich man has seven courses a day, ten to one
the half of them remain untasted, and the whole is but misspent money and
a weariness to the flesh.
The difference between England and America to a working man was thus most
humanly put to me by a fellow-passenger: ‘In America,’ said he, ‘you get
pies and puddings.’ I do not hear enough, in economy books, of pies and
pudding. A man lives in and for the delicacies, adornments, and
accidental attributes of life, such as pudding to eat and pleasant books
and theatres to occupy his leisure. The bare terms of existence would be
rejected with contempt by all. If a man feeds on bread and butter, soup
and porridge, his appetite grows wolfish after dainties. And the workman
dwells in a borderland, and is always within sight of those cheerless
regions where life is more difficult to sustain than worth sustaining.
Every detail of our existence, where it is worth while to cross the ocean
after pie and pudding, is made alive and enthralling by the presence of
genuine desire; but it is all one to me whether Crœsus has a hundred or a
thousand thousands in the bank. There is more adventure in the life of
the working man who descends as a common solder into the battle of life,
than in that of the millionaire who sits apart in an office, like Von
Moltke, and only directs the manœuvres by telegraph. Give me to hear
about the career of him who is in the thick of business; to whom one
change of market means empty belly, and another a copious and savoury
meal. This is not the philosophical, but the human side of economics; it
interests like a story; and the life all who are thus situated partakes
in a small way the charm of _Robinson Crusoe_; for every step is critical
and human life is presented to you naked and verging to its lowest terms.