XIX
STEAMBOAT AND STAGE SEVENTY YEARS AGO
In the twilight of my days, seated in my favorite chair, I rock away many a trip from my New Orleans home to the blue grass region of my ancestors. Dream trips they are, but dreams of real trips in the old days when steamboats and stages were the approved, in fact, the only, transportation for travelers.
About the Fourth of July every year our family migrated to the old Kentucky homestead. The Fourth was not chosen with any patriotic motive, but law courts were closed and legal business suspended, and my father’s vacation at hand at that date. Though the steamboats were called palatial, viewed from my rocking-chair trip to-day I wonder how people managed to stand the inconveniences and discomforts they provided.
There was the famed Grey Eagle, “a No. 1 floating palace” it was called. There was the Belle of the West and the Fashion and the Henry Clay. One time and another we churned up the muddy Mississippi water in every one of them. Naturally the boats catered in every way to the predilections of the plantation owners, who were their main source of profit. The picture of Arlington which illustrates this book was originally made to decorate a stateroom door on a fine new river boat built in the ’50’s and adorned in that way with views of homes along the river.
Steamboat on the Mississippi.
(From “Forty Etchings, from Sketches Made with the Camera Lucida in North America in 1827 and 1828,” by Captain Basil Hall, R. N.)
Grey Eagle was the finest and best, and therefore most popular boat. I recall with amusement an eight or ten days’ trip on that palace. The cabins were divided by curtains, drawn at night for privacy. The ladies’ cabin, at the stern, was equipped with ten or twelve small staterooms. The gentlemen’s cabin stretched on down to the officers’ quarters, bar, barber shop, pantries, etc., ending in what was called Social Hall, where the men sat about, smoking and chewing (the latter as common a habit as cigarette smoking is now) and talking—in other words, making themselves sociable.
On that same Grey Eagle I was for the first time promoted to the upper berth, in a stateroom shared by an older sister. The berth was so narrow that in attempting to turn over I fell out and landed in the wash basin, on the opposite side of the room! My sister had to sit on the lower berth to braid my pigtails, then sent me forth so she could have room to braid her own. Trunks and other baggage more unwieldy than carpetbags were piled up in the vicinity of Social Hall. A carpetbag, small enough to be easily handled, was all there was room for in the stateroom. There were no valises, suitcases or steamer trunks in those days of little travel, and unless you are three-quarters of a century old you can’t imagine a more unwieldy article than a carpetbag of seventy years ago. Only toilet articles and things that could not muss and tumble could be safely stored in one.
In the stateroom, where we had to sleep and dress, and, if we could snatch a chance, take an afternoon nap, there was a corner shelf for a basin and pitcher and one chair; two doors, one leading out and the other leading in, transoms over each for light and ventilation—and there you are for over a week. The cabin was lighted with swinging whale-oil lamps, and one could light his stateroom if one had thought to provide a candle.