“You don’t remember leaving the deceased upon the ground?”
“No, I cannot remember how I got my hands cut, or the bruise on the back of my head. I found my hat broken in the next morning, and my wife put it right for me.”
X.—ON THE RIVER STEAMERS.
One fine summer day a friend agreed with me to go down the river. Sheerness was fixed on, not on account of its beauty, for that part near the harbour is by no means attractive, and like most of our naval and military stations it is full of low public-houses, which by no means add to its attractions, but simply on account of the fact that the place could be reached and the return journey made in the course of a day; that we could be on the water all the while, and that we should have a pleasant breathing space in the midst of a life more or less necessarily of toil. For people who cannot get away for a few weeks, who cannot rush off to Brighton, or Margate, or Scarborough, or Scotland for a month, it is a great treat to be able to go down to Sheerness and back for a day in a luxurious steamer, where everyone has elbow-room. And on the day in question it was a treat to us all in many respects; the day was fine, the boat in which we sailed was that favourite one the Princess Alice—now, alas! a name which sends a thrill of tragic horror through the land. To us and the public at that time she was known merely as the safest, and fastest, and pleasantest vessel of her class.
We had beautiful views of marshes well filled with cattle, and of fields waving with yellow corn, and with hills and green parks, and gentlemen’s seats and churches afar off; the river with its craft great and small going up or coming down is always a source of interesting study; and as the fine fresh air, to be encountered below Gravesend, gave us an appetite, we had a good dinner on board, well served and at a very moderate price; tea and shrimps at a later period of the day were equally acceptable; and many were the ladies and gentlemen who had come and found what they sought, a pleasant outing. There were also many little children who enjoyed themselves much, and the sight of whose pleasure was an unmitigated enjoyment to old stagers, like myself and my friend. Altogether it was a very agreeable day so far as the outward passage was concerned. It was true that there was an unnecessary demand for beer, even from the moderate drinker’s point of view, before the dinner hour. Bottled ale and stout may not be taken with impunity on an empty stomach; smoking may also be carried to excess, and as there are many persons who dislike the very smell of it, the mixture in the atmosphere was certainly far more than was desirable; but on a holiday on a Thames excursion boat one must give and take, and not be too prone to find fault. People often act differently abroad to what they do at home; we must allow for a little wildness on such an occasion on the part of the general public. It is not every day a man takes a holiday. It is not everyone who knows how to use it when he has it. To many of us a holiday rarely comes more than once a year, and gentlemen of my profession, alas! often do not get that.
Altogether we must have had at the least some seven or eight hundred people on board. They swarmed everywhere; indeed, at times there was little more than comfortable standing room, and the only locomotion possible seemed to be that directed towards the cabins fore and aft in pursuit of bottled beer.
In the morning we were not so crowded, but in the evening we began to experience inconvenience of another kind. It was at half-past ten a.m. that we left the lower side of London Bridge; it was nine o’clock in the evening when we arrived there again. All that time we had been on board the steamer, with the exception of an hour and a half spent at Sheerness, and all that time the demand for beer had been incessant. I never in all my life saw such a consumption. I remarked to a friend enough beer had been drunk to have floated apparently the Princess Alice herself. Everybody was drinking beer or porter, and the bottles were imperial pints and held a good deal. Of course there were music and dancing; and the girls, flushed and excited, drank freely of the proffered beverage, each moment getting wilder and noisier. Old ladies and old gentlemen complacently sipped their glass. It seemed to do them no harm. Their passions had long been extinct. They had long outlived the heyday of youth. All that the beer seemed to do for them was to give them a bit of a headache, or to make them feel a little more tired or sleepy, that was all. On the deck was a party of thirty or forty men who had come for a day’s outing; decent mechanics evidently, very respectably dressed. They kept themselves to themselves, had dined on board together, had taken tea together, and now sat singing all the way home, in dreadfully melancholy tones, all the old songs of our grandfathers’ days about “Remembering those out,” “The Maids of merry, merry England,” and then came a yell in the way of a chorus which would have frightened a Red Indian or a Zulu Kaffir. After every song there was a whip round for some more beer, till the seats underneath seemed to be choked up with empty bottles. They were all a little under the influence of liquor, not unpleasantly so, but placidly and stupidly; and as they listened with the utmost gravity while one or another of the party was singing, you would have thought they were all being tried for manslaughter at least. It is true they had a comic man in the party, with a green necktie and a billycock hat, and a shillalagh, who did his best under the circumstances, but he had to fight at tremendous odds, as hilarity was not the order of the day on that part of the deck.
I went down into the cabin in search of it there, but was equally unsuccessful. Every table was crammed with bottles of beer. Opposite me was a picture indeed; a respectable-looking man had drunk himself into a maudlin state, from which his friends were in vain endeavouring to arouse him. He was a widower, and was muttering something unpleasant about her grave, which did not seem to accord with the ideas of two gaily-dressed females—one of them with a baby in her arms—who hovered around him, as if desirous to win him back to life and love and duty, his male friends apparently having got tired of the hopeless task of making him understand that he had been brought out with a view to being agreeable, and to spending a happy day, and that he had no right to finish up in so unreasonable a manner. Now and then he appealed to me, declaring that he had no friends, or promising in reply to the playful appeal of his female friends to be a good boy and not to give them any more trouble, that it was no use trying. It was the women who stuck to him alone, now and then suggesting lemonade, and then forcing him up on deck with a view to a dance or a promenade. Some of the passengers around, as tipsy as himself, interfered; one of them, evidently a respectable tradesman, with his wife and children around, requesting the widower to sing “John Barleycorn,” assuring him that as he had lost his teeth it would have to be sung with a false set oh, a joke which the widower could not see, and the explanation of which at one time seemed about to end in a serious misunderstanding. Other parties besides interfered, and the confusion became hopeless and inexplicable. It ended in the weeping widower wildly embracing the female with the baby, and then making a mad rush on deck with a view to jump over—a feat, however, which he was easily prevented from accomplishing; and as I landed I saw the would-be suicide with his male and female friends contemplating a visit to the nearest public-house. It was really a melancholy spectacle, and one that ought not to have been permitted in the cabin of a saloon steamer. Quite as pitiable in its way was the sight of a couple who had unwarrantably intruded into that part of the steamer which is presumed to be kept solely for the use of those who pay first-class fares. One of them was indeed a study; he had been out for a day’s pleasure, and he showed in his person traces of very severe enjoyment; his clothes had been damaged in the process, and an eye had been brought into close contact with some very hard substance, such as a man’s fist, and the consequence was it was completely closed, and the skin around discoloured and swollen. He had never, so he said, been so insulted in his life, and once or twice he reascended the stairs with a short pipe in his hand, a picture of tipsy gravity, in order that he might recognise the ticket collector, with a view apparently to summon him before the Lord Mayor. His companion was a more blackguard-looking object still. A couple of the officers attached to the ship soon sent him forward, to mingle with a lot of men as disgusting in appearance and as foul in language as himself, but who had sense enough not to intrude where they had no right, and to keep their proper places. And thus the hours passed, and the sun sank lower in the horizon, and we rushed up the mighty river past outward-bound steamers on their way to all quarters of the globe, and found ourselves once more in town. The day had been a pleasant one had it not been for the indulgence in bottled beer, which seems to be the special need of all Londoners when they go up or down the river. If this state of things is to be allowed, no decent person will be enabled to take a passage on a river steamer on a St. Monday or a Saturday, especially if he has ladies or children with him. It does seem hard that people on board river steamers may drink to excess, and thus prove a nuisance to all who are not as beery as themselves. It may be, however, that the steam-packet companies promote this sale of intoxicating liquor in order to promote the cause of true temperance; if so, one can understand the unlimited activity of the ship stewards, as it becomes at once apparent to the most superficial observer that he who tastes the charmed cup has
Lost his upright shape,
And downwards falls into a grovelling swine.
If anyone doubts this let him proceed to Sheerness in a river steamer on a people’s day.