Part 10

Their costume is picturesque,--thick red flannel shirts, the collars of which fold over their tightly buttoned blue jackets, and give a tidy, uniform appearance to a group of them. The old stagers still wear huge loose red knickerbockers and pilot boots, but the younger generation are degenerating into the common blue trousers and sabots, the latter almost big enough to come ashore on in case of wreck. Altogether they are the most well-to-do set of fishermen to look at that I have ever seen, though where their money comes from I cannot guess, as they seem to take little but small flounders and skate. There used to be good cod-fishing in the winter, they say, but of late years it has fallen off. The elder fishermen attribute this to the disgust of the cod at an innovation in the good old ways of fishing. Formerly two boats worked together, dragging a net with large meshes between them, but this has been of late superseded by the English bag-net system, which brings up everything small and great, and disturbs the _pâture accoutumée_ of the cod, whereupon he has emigrated.

Disastrous islanders that we are, who never touch anything, from Japan to Blankenberghe, without setting honest folk by the ears and bringing trouble! The “Corporation of Fishers,” a close and privileged body, who hold their heads very high here, are looking into the matter, and it seems likely that this destructive _chalut, d’origine Anglaise_, may yet be superseded. It remains to be seen whether the cod will come back.

We have had abominable weather here, but nothing in the shape of a storm. I confess to have been looking out for a good north-wester with much interest. Assuming that the effect as to breakers and surf would be much the same as elsewhere, one is curious to ascertain whether these fishing boats are left to bump it out on the sands. If so, and no harm comes to them, the sooner our fishermen adopt the Blankenberghe model of boat the better. I fear, however, that with all their good looks and old traditions, the seafaring folk on this coast are wanting in the splendid daring of our own ’long-shore people. On Monday night the mail packet from Ostend to Dover went out in a stiffish breeze, but nothing which ‘we should call a gale, at eight o’clock. By some curious mismanagement both her engines got out of order and came to a dead stop almost immediately. Strange to say, her anchors were down in the hold under the luggage (the boats are Belgian, not English manned), and she had a very narrow escape of drifting right on shore. Luckily the crew, managed to get up an anchor in time to prevent this catastrophe, and there she lay right off the harbour, perfectly helpless, throwing up rockets and burning blue lights for hours. Neither tug, nor lifeboat, nor pilot boat stirred, and she rode at anchor till morning, when the wind went down. I venture to think that such a case is unheard of on our coasts. It occurs to one to ask whether there is such an official as a harbourmaster at the port of Ostend, and if so, what his duties are. There were sailors enough in harbour to have manned fifty lifeboats, for the Ostend fishing fleet of 200 boats had come back from their three months’ cruise on that very afternoon. The contingency of riding out a stormy night in a mail packet within a few hundred yards of a lee shore, in front of a great port full of seamen, is scarcely one of those on which we holiday folk reckon when we book ourselves for the Continent.

Coming out on the Digue one night, soon after my arrival, I was brought to a stand-still by the appearance of the sea. It was low water, so that I was about 200 yards off, and at first I could scarcely believe my eyes, which seemed to tell me that every breaker was a flood of pale fire. I went down close to the water to confirm or disenchant myself, and found it more beautiful the nearer I got. Of course one has seen the ordinary phosphorescence of the sea in a hundred places, but this was quite a different affair. The sand under one’s feet even was molten silver. The scientific doctor says it is simply the effect of the constant presence on this coast of great numbers of an animalcule which can only be seen through a microscope, called the _Noctiluca miliaris_. It looked on that evening as if huge fiery serpents were constantly rising and dashing along. People here say that they have it always, but this is certainly not so. On several other evenings the breaking waves were slightly luminous, but scarcely enough to attract attention. If you could only make sure of seeing sea and shore ablaze as it was on that particular night, you ought at once, sir, to pack traps and off, notwithstanding these abominably high winds. I cannot help thinking that, besides a monster gathering--probably a Reform League meeting--of the Noctiluca miliaris, there must have been something very unusual in the atmosphere on that particular night. It was a kind of “eldritch” night, in which you felt as if you had got into the atmosphere of Tennyson’s _Morte d’Arthur_, and a great hand might come up out of the water without giving you a start. There was light right up in the sky above one’s head, a succession of half luminous rain clouds were drifting rapidly across at a very low elevation from the northwest, not fifty yards high, as it seemed, while the smoke of my cigar floated away slowly almost in the opposite direction. Luckily, sir, my American friend was with me on the night in question, to whom I can appeal as to the truth of my facts, and we had had nothing but one bottle of very moderately strong _vin ordinaire_ at the _table d’hote_. If your scientific readers say that the thing is impossible, I can only answer that so it was.

Parson Wilbur, when he is considering the question whether the ability to express ourselves in articulate language has been productive of more good than evil, esteems his own ignorance of all tongues except Yankee and the dead languages as “a kind of martello tower, in which I am safe from the furious bombardments of foreign garrulity.” There is something comforting and fascinating in this doctrine, but still on the whole it is decidedly disagreeable to be reduced to signs for purposes of intercourse, as is generally the case here. Not one soul in a hundred can speak French. Their talk sounds like a sewing machine, with an occasional word of English interspersed in the clicking. I am told that if you will only talk broad Durham or Yorkshire they will understand you, but I do not believe it, as the sounds are quite unlike. The names of these people are wonderful. For instance, those on the bathing machines just opposite my hotel are, Yan Yooren, Yan Yulpen, Siska Deneve, Sandelays, and Colette Claes, abbreviated into Clotty by two English schoolboys who have lately appeared, and are the worst dressed and the best bathers of all the young folk here. They are fast friends, I see, with a young Russian, whose father, an old officer, sits near me at the _table d’hôte_. Poor old boy! I never saw a man so bored, in fact he has disclosed to me that he can stand it no longer. Blankenberghe has been quite too much for him. Lest it should also prove so to your readers, I will end with his last words (though I by no means endorse his judgment of the little Flemish watering-place), “_Maintenant je n’y puis plus!_”

AMERICA

_My father in 1870 went to America for the first time. His time was so much occupied there that he could write only home letters. My mother has allowed me to make extracts from these, thinking that they serve to introduce his later letters from America, which were addressed to the _Spectator_._

_It was owing to the fact of my father’s having publicly taken the side of the North in the Civil War that his reception in the United States in 1870 was so particularly warm and hearty._

Peruvian, 6.45 p.m.

Here I am, in my officer’s cabin, a small separate hole in our little world on the water, all to myself. At this moment I look out of my porthole and see the Welsh mountains coming out against a bed of daffodil sky, for though it has been misty all day it is now a lovely clear evening. The sea is quite calm, and there is scarcely any motion in the ship. The tea-bell is ringing, so I must stop for a little, but I shall have plenty of time to tell you all that has happened as yet, as we shall be lying off Londonderry nearly all day to-morrow. The mail does not come off to us till about 5 P.M., and we shall be there about nine in the morning or thereabouts. I may perhaps run up to Derry to see the old town and the gate and walls, etc., sacred to the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and good king William.

8.45 p.m.

Tea was excellent, and afterwards R------ and I went on deck, and saw the sun go down gloriously in the line of our ship’s course; we were steaming right up a great road of fire. The sea gets calmer and calmer, and, in fact, there couldn’t be less movement if we were in Greenwich reach. So now for the narrative of all my adventures since I left you at the window. The moment we got on board, there was the rush and scramble for places at the saloon table, which Harry I------ warned me about. We were on board amongst the first, but agreed not to join the scramble, taking any places that might happen to be going. There is something so ludicrously contemptible to me in seeing people eagerly and seriously struggling about such matters that I am quite unable to join in the worry. I doubt if I could even if the ship were going down, and we were all taking to the boats. It isn’t the least from any virtuous or heroic feeling, but simply from the long dwelling in the frame of mind described in a chapter in _Past and Present_. When every one had taken the seats they liked, we settled down very comfortably into two which were vacant, and which, for all I can see, are as good as any of the rest.

8 a.m., Friday.

Off the north coast of Ireland, and a splendid coast it is. A stout party, on whom I do not the least rely, told me an hour or so ago, when I first went on deck, that we were passing the Giant’s Causeway. The morning is deliciously fresh, and there is just a little roll in the vessel which is slightly discomforting some of the passengers, I see. I slept like a top without turning, for which, indeed, I haven’t room in my tray on the top of the drawers. My only mishap has been that when they were sluicing the decks this morning, the water running down the ship’s side naturally turned into my wide-open porthole to see if I was getting up. The device was quite successful, as I shot out of bed at once to close it up and save my things lying on the sofa below. No damage done fortunately.

9.30 a.m., Friday.

Here we are lying quietly at anchor in Lough Foyle after an excellent breakfast. We wait here for the mails, but as it is nineteen miles I find by road up to Derry, I shall not make the attempt. The plot thickens on board, and I am already deeply interested. There are 150 emigrants from the East End, who are being taken over by their parson and a philanthropist whose name I haven’t caught yet. I have been forward amongst these poor folk, and have won several hearts or at least opened many mouths by distributing some few spare stamps I luckily had in my pocket. Lovely as the morning is, and delicious as the contrast between the exquisite air on deck, where they are all sitting, when contrasted with Whitechapel air, I can’t help looking at them with very mingled feelings. They are a fine steady respectable class of poor. The women nursing and caring for their children with grave, serious, sweet faces, and the men really attentive. All of them anxious to send off scraps of letters to their friends in Great Babylon. There is one slip of the foredeck roped off entirely for nursing mothers and small children, and there are a lot of quaint little plumps rolling and tumbling about there, with some of whom I hope to make friends. A bird-fancier from the East End has several cages full of larks and sparrows, and a magpie and jay in state cabins by themselves, all of which he hopes to make great merchandise of in Canada, where English birds are longed for, but are very hard to keep. He had lost his hempseed in Liverpool, but luckily a boat has gone ashore, and I think there is good hope of getting him a fresh supply. There is a little gathering of the emigrants for service at eight in the evening forward. I didn’t know of it last night, but shall attend henceforth. No thought of such a thing in the state saloon! “How hardly shall they that have riches”!

Here, as elsewhere, the truest and deepest life, because the simplest, lies amongst those who have little of the things of this world lying between them and their Father and this invisible world, with its realities.

On board the Peruvian.

We are well out on the broad Atlantic, which at present we are inclined to think a little of an imposture. There is certainly a swell of some kind, for the ship pitches more or less, but to the unpractised eye looking out on the waste of waters it is quite impossible to account for the swell, for, except for the better colour, the sea looks very much as it does off the Isle of Wight; great waves like the slope of a chalk down, following one another in solemn procession, up which the long ship climbs like a white road. However, it is early days to grumble about the want of swell, and when it comes I may not like it any more than another. After finishing my letter to you this morning, I went ashore to post it, and found that after all it wouldn’t reach London till to-morrow night. So I sent you a telegram, which I hope you got before bed-time at any rate, and redirected my letter to Cromer. To pass the time I took a jaunting car with two other passengers, and we drove to an old castle looking over Lough Foyle, formerly a stronghold of the O’Doherty’s till it was sacked and knocked about their ears by an expedition of Scotch Campbells, who did a good work for the district by destroying it. We found lots of shamrock in the ruins, and enjoyed the drive and still more a bathe afterwards. The country seems very prosperous. The people, strapping, light-haired, blue-eyed Celts, handsome and well-to-do; in fact, evidently much better fed and better educated than almost any English country district I know. The mails came down from Derry in a tender, which brought us the news of the first battle and the Prussian victory, which I for one always looked for, and we got away by seven, two hours later than we expected. However, the wind is fair and we are making famous way, and by the time I get up in the morning I expect we shall be 200 miles from the Irish coast.

9.30 p.m., Saturday.

A long calm day and we have made a splendid run--shall be in Quebec in good time to-morrow week if this weather holds; but knowing persons say it won’t, and that we have seen the last of fine weather, and must look out for squalls--for why? the wind has gone round against the sun, and it has settled to rain hard with a barometer steadily going down. The Roman Catholic bishop (who is not very expert in weather that I know of, but is a very, jovial party, who enjoys his cigar and gossip, and was one of the first to go in for a game of shovel-board on deck this morning) declares that we shall have it fine all the way, as he has made the passage six times and has never had bad weather yet. In any case I hope it won’t be rough to-morrow, for we are to have a real treat in the way of spiritual dissipation. First, the bishop is to have some kind of mass and preach a short sermon at nine (N.B. a time-table conscience clause is to run all day, so that only latitudinarians like me will go in for it all). Then the captain who is a rare good fellow, with a spice of sentiment about him, which sits so well on such a bulletheaded, broad-shouldered, resolute Jack-Tar, has his own service at eleven, in which he will do the priest himself, an excellent example, with a sermon by the emigrant parson, whose name is H------, afterwards. These in the saloon; then at 2.30 a service in the steerage by H------, or G------, the other parson, and a final wind up, also in the steerage at 7.30. G------is the clergyman of Shaftesbury, George Glyn’s borough; was formerly in the Navy, and was in the Ragged School movement of ’48, ’49, when I used to go off twice a week in the evening to Ormond Yard, when poor old M------ had the gas turned out, and his hat knocked over his eyes by his boys. He knew Ludlow and Furnival, but I don’t remember him. However, he is a right good fellow, and gave us a really good _extempore_ prayer last night at the midships’ service. The steerage is certainly most interesting. There are now nearly 500 emigrants on board there, and the captain says they are about the best lot he has ever had. Going round this morning I was struck by a dear little light-haired girl, who was standing with her arm round the neck of a poor woman very sick and ill, and such tenderness and love in her poor little face as she turned it up to us as almost brought tears into one’s eyes. Of course I thought the woman was her mother. No such thing; she was no relation at all. The little dear had never seen her till she met her on board, but was attracted by her misery, and had never left her side since she had been so ill. The poor woman had two strapping daughters on board who had never been near her. How strangely folk are fixed up in this queer world.

Monday.

We know what a good swell in mid-Atlantic means at last. We were pitching when I went to bed, finding it hard to get on with my penmanship. Off I went as fast as usual, and never woke except for one moment to grunt and turn round, or rather, try to turn round, in my tray on top of the drawers at something which sounded like a crash. In the morning we were swinging and bowing and jerking, so that I had to wait for a favourable moment to bolt out of bed for fear of coming a cropper if I didn’t mind.

As soon as I was out I saw what the crash had been in the night. My big portmanteau, which had been set on its end the night before, had had a jumping match with my water-jug in the night. Both of them had thrown a somersault across the cabin against the door, but the jug being brittle (jugs shouldn’t jump against portmanteaus), and coming down undermost, had gone all into little bits, and the water, all that wasn’t in my shoes at least, had soaked my carpet at the door end. But it was a glorious bright morning and the dancing hills of water and the bounding ship sent me up dancing on the deck. My high spirits were a little subdued after breakfast, for I had scarcely got on deck when parson H------ came to me to say the emigrants wanted me to give them an address. Well, I couldn’t refuse, as my heart is full of them, poor dear folk, so down I went to get my ideas straight, and put down the heads on paper. I thought I wouldn’t miss the air, though, so set open my porthole window, which as I told you is about a foot across, and set to work--as I write, this blessed porthole is about a yard away from my right ear, and perhaps two feet above my head. Well, I was just getting into swing with my work, when suddenly a great pitch, and kerswash! in comes all of a wave that could squeeze through my porthole, right on to my ear and shoulder, over my desk, drenching all my papers, lucifer-match boxes, hair-brushes, wideawake, tobacco-pouch and other chattels, and flooding all of my floor which my water-jug had left dry. I bolted to the porthole and closed him up before another curious wave could come prying in, and soon rubbed everything dry again with the help of the Captain’s cabin-boy, and no harm is done except that I have to sit with my feet up on my portmanteau while I write. This sheet was dowsed in my shower-bath this morning, but I laid it on my bed, and it seems all right now and doesn’t even blot; I shall however envelope it now with another sheet for safety, as I’m not going to keep my porthole shut notwithstanding the warning, and I don’t want my letters to you floated again.

Peruvian, 9th August 1870.

Since I put my last sheet into No. 1 envelope, everything in the good ship _Peruvian_ has been dancing. The long tables in the saloon, at which we are always eating and drinking, have been covered with a small framework, over which the cloth is laid, and which has the effect of dividing them into three compartments; a sort of trough down each side in which are the dishes. Notwithstanding these precautions there are constant catastrophes in the shape of spoons, forks, tumblers, and sometimes plates, jumping the partitions suddenly as the ship heels over. The story of the Yankee skipper saying to the lady on his left, “I’ll trouble you, marm, for that ’ere turkey--” the bird in question having fled from the table into her lap as he was beginning to serve it--becomes quite commonplace. How the steward’s men get about with plates and dishes, goodness knows; but though there is a constant clatter and smash going on all over the ship I haven’t seen them drop anything. I am almost the only passenger who hasn’t even had a twinge of squeamishness, but we muster pretty well considering all things. The Captain is one of the cheeriest fellows alive, and keeps up the spirits of all the women. If he sees any one of them who is still about looking peeky, he whisks her off under his arm and walks her up and down the deck, where they stagger along together, and the fresh breeze soon revives the damsel. He is a sort of temporary father to all the girls, and constantly has, it seems, three or four entrusted to him to take over or bring back.

Of course there is a great deal of discomfort on board, but I have visited the steerage and am delighted with the arrangements for feeding, ventilation, etc. To poor seasick people, however, it must be very trying. This morning I carried off to my cabin a poor forlorn young married couple, whom I had noticed on shore at Moville, and afterwards on board. I am sure they hadn’t been married a week, and they were evidently ready to eat one another. When I saw them settling down on a large bench in a covered place amidships where were twenty or thirty folk, mostly ill, and several men smoking, she with her poor head tied up tidily in a red handkerchief nestling on to his shoulder, I couldn’t stand it, and took them off to my cabin, where they could nurse one another for a few hours’ in peace. We have had a birth too on board, and mother and child, I am glad to say, are doing well. She is a very nice woman, I am told by one of the ladies who visits her, the wife of a school teacher. The baby is to have Peruvian for one of its names. I have really enjoyed the rough weather much; it has never been more than half a gale, I believe, though several men have been thrown from the sofas to the cabin floor, and more or less bruised. The cheery Captain has comforted us all by announcing that we shall be through the storm before midnight.

Up the St. Lawrence they say we shall want light summer clothing. If the weather settles down we are to have an amateur concert on board, which will be, I take it, very lame on the musical side, but amusing in other ways.

R------ was entrusted by the Captain with the task of getting it up, and before we got into rough weather had booked some six or seven volunteers. I daresay he will be well enough to-morrow morning to go on with it. My address is of course postponed for the present.

Wednesday.