“Mr Bulkeley, sir, I’ll tell you,” said Muggins, with a frown: “I shirk your Company, sir, because I can’t afford to lose my property in duck-and-drake fashion among those swindling Yankees. I hate bubbles, sir, and this is worse, for it is a cruel robbery.”
“Sir, sir! Mr Muggins!” said I, choking with anger. What did this remarkable man proceed to say? Just this:
“George Bulkeley, I have known you from a boy, and you are an honest man, though not very bright (I was speechless at his effrontery). When I call this affair a swindle, I don’t impute blame to you, for I am aware that you are a dupe, not a duper. But I don’t pity you for losing some pen-feathers out of your wings, as you will do; I keep my pity for the poor wretches who will be plucked bare, and who can least spare the little savings or capital your fine prospectus has wheedled them into investing,—I mean the widows and old maids, the half-pay officers, the needy clergymen, that your Company is to ruin. I wish I could see your American friends in the pillory, I know! Good-day.”
And off he went, leaving me very angry, but a little dismayed as well. After all, old Muggins passed for an oracle in the city; and seriously, had I examined sufficiently into the foundation of all the alluring statements we had published with the sanction of our names? What Muggins had said about the widows and poor helpless folks gave me an unpleasant twinge in my heart, and conscience came and whispered, “George Bulkeley, the accomplice of rogues, is not very far from being a rogue himself, is he?” I made a bold resolution. I determined to go out myself to America, and, on the spot, thoroughly to investigate the condition and prospects of the line of railway. When I broached this proposal at the next meeting of the Board, Colonel Sling and the Doctor were found to be violently opposed to it, and to be inclined to resent such interference on my part as an insult. And the influence of the two Americans was very considerable with the committee, partly because all our information was derived from the authority of Colonel Sling, and partly because the transatlantic gentlemen had a custom of putting down and pooh-poohing whatever any one but themselves happened to say. But I was firm this time; and besides, as I offered to go out without putting the Company to any expense whatever, the opposition to my departure could not decently be continued. Then, to my surprise, Colonel Coriolanus Sling very kindly offered to accompany me, and to save me all trouble and inconvenience by lending me the aid of his perfect knowledge of the localities. The Doctor, as cashier, must of course remain at his post; but the Colonel could be spared, he felt assured he could be spared, and indeed he proposed that we should go as a deputation, and at the cost of the Company. Why not? Our shares were at a premium. Money was flowing in. All went prosperously with us. Why not? The Colonel’s proposition was carried nem. con., and it was agreed that George Bulkeley, Esq., and Colonel Coriolanus Sling, should proceed at once to Iowa, there to survey, report, and inspect. Mrs Bulkeley’s consent was procured; and indeed, but for the terrors of sea-sickness, she would have insisted on accompanying me. The Cunard packet, Mersey, was to sail from Liverpool on the 17th of the month; our berths were engaged on board her; and it was duly agreed that the Colonel and I were to go down together on the day preceding that of embarkation. I never thoroughly understood why the gallant American officer did not keep his appointment. He wrote me a hurried note, saying that important business detained him in town, and that he would join me in Liverpool; but I believe a dinner at the Star and Garter, at Richmond, was the engagement in question. At any rate I travelled alone; alone I embarked; and though I looked out for the Colonel till the last moment, till the bell rang, and the plank was withdrawn, and the huge paddlewheels began to revolve, no Colonel came. And we went to sea with his name in the roll of passengers, but without his corporeal presence on deck or in cabin. I cannot say that I was altogether sorry. I felt instinctively that I was by far more likely to form an unbiassed judgment when alone. I felt that in company with a man so plausible, so fluent of speech, and so experienced in all the ways of the singular country for which I was bound, I should be in danger of seeing all objects through the rose-coloured haze in which it was the Colonel’s policy to mask them. But, at the same time, I was a little nervous at the prospect of exploring the Far West without a Mentor; and the weight of the responsibility attaching to my report was not exactly reassuring. The packet was crowded, for many were desirous of making use of the last week or two of fine still weather, before the November gales should begin to expend their fury upon the vast breadth of the Atlantic. There were but few Britons on board; but there were Dons in abundance; and great numbers of pallid ladies, with Parisian toilettes and faulty teeth, and of sallow lean-visaged men in tail-coats and varnished boots, returning from a tour of European baths and cities. Also, there were plenty of keen-looking persons, who eyed all mankind with suspicious scrutiny, who had memorandum-books sticking out of the pockets of their black satin vests, and who were probably not unconnected with commercial pursuits and the cotton trade. Aware that I was on my way to a new world in more senses of the word than one, a world whose standard of morality was wholly novel, I took every opportunity of acquiring information which might afterwards prove invaluable. I therefore associated exclusively with natives of the Western Continent, studied their sentiments, and stored up every scrap of information bearing on traffic and transit. I will own that my pride met with frequent abrasions; that my deepest-rooted convictions were rudely assaulted; and that I was unable to avoid observing that my neighbours would have been all the better for a little more attention to the precepts of Lord Chesterfield. We are not always very fastidious in the city: I am constantly obliged to bargain, dine, and converse, with uncommonly rough diamonds; but I do not think that any Cockney alive can contrive to render vulgarity so glaringly offensive as his Yankee congener. I was most unlucky in my fellow-passengers, some of whose habits were distressing to a degree, and did not show any remarkable improvement since the days when Mrs Trollope and Captain Hamilton crossed the Atlantic. I began to owe Sir Walter a grudge for his discovery of tobacco, since tobacco, chewed to pulp, and lubricating the deck and cabin-stairs with its nicotian extract, became the bugbear of my existence. Besides, I prefer to see gentlemen sit with their feet in a more normal position than an undue elevation of the boot soles can afford. I wish our transatlantic brothers would smoke a little less and wash a little more; and I never could entirely pardon young Mr Tips for whittling my portmanteau. Mr Tips—young Mr Tips, that is—Minos Blackstone Story Tips—was the sharer of what was facetiously called my state-room. The latter was a wedge of a cabin, with two little berths in it, not quite so spacious as the box-beds in an old-fashioned Highland cottage, and was naturally meant to accommodate two passengers. Under ordinary circumstances, Colonel Sling would have held divided empire over this den with myself; and I believe that, in strict justice, the whole should have been mine, seeing that I had signed the cheque in payment for both passages. But berths were at a premium: several passengers had come on board at the last, and had to shift for their quarters as they might, and among them the Tips family. Now, although the “state-room” was rightfully mine, yet I was easily induced to permit the installation of young Mr Tips in the undermost berth, though I admit that my temper was sorely tested when I found him in bed, one rather blusterous afternoon, very sick, and beguiling the tedious hours, by operating with a sharp penknife on the glossy leather of my new portmanteau—Allen’s best, fitted for India and the colonies. Also this delightful youth—a lawyer from the cradle, as his names imply—was fond of using my pet razor, and borrowing my scissors and brushes; was not over partial to soap and water; and sang queer nasal songs at untimely hours, besides smoking in bed. I might have had a pleasanter companion, but I had let him in, and there was no help for it, while, after all, the voyage was but for ten days. Why had I let him in? For two reasons: firstly, because exclusiveness is most unpopular among Republicans; and the old sentiment which dictated the New York proverb, that “A man must be a hog to want a bed all to himself,” still exists in a modified form. Another reason was, that I wanted to make friends, and get letters of introduction to some Western citizens who would be able to tell me all about the Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway, and perhaps a little about Colonel Sling. I knew that Americans, amongst each other at least, were most generous in this respect. I was aware that few retired storekeepers or land-jobbers brought over their charming families without being provided with introductions from ex-ministers and secretaries to half the peers and princes of Europe; that American diplomacy was subservient to any one who could influence an election; and that very queer folks indeed had the honour of figuring at royal levees and state balls under the wing of Franklin’s eagle. I determined, therefore, to be as conciliatory as possible in all my dealings with the citizens and citizenesses of the model commonwealth.
I had the pleasure of making acquaintance with old Mr Tips,—Judge Tips, of Salem, Mass.—his Christian name was Magnentius,—in rather a curious manner. He sat next to me at the general dinner in the best cabin or saloon. The table was crowded, but there were three below me, on the same side of the long board. The dinner was a capital one: the Cunard directors are famous for good feeding; and Judge Tips, father to my young companion, played an excellent knife and fork. A dish of peas came round, the last of the marrow-fats, the latest peas of summer; and indeed I cannot conceive from what remote market the steamboat purveyors had imported them, seeing that Covent Garden had been barren, in respect to this vegetable, for some weeks. I am very fond of peas, and was rejoiced to see my favourites once again; and I anxiously awaited their arrival. Miss Tips, Miss Julia Tips, and Tips mère, as the French would say, had each taken a decorous spoonful from the flying dish, and now the black waiter was offering the delicacy to Tips himself, enough being left for five persons at least. What was my horror to behold the Judge deliberately monopolise the whole—sweep, as I live, every pea into his own plate—and then turning to me, with a greasy smile, remark, “I guess, stranger, I’m a whale at peas.”[[4]] Yes, Mr Bright tells sterling truth. There are some matters in which the most acquisitive of us all are distanced by an American. Judge Tips was obliging enough to favour me with a good deal of his improving conversation, and by meekness and affability I won his heart. He not only invited me to visit him at Salem, but when I hinted that I was on my way to the West, and should be glad to make the acquaintance of any notable citizens of Illinois or Iowa, he gave me the coveted letters of introduction to more than one magistrate, sheriff, and popular preacher. Nor did any accident mar the even tenor of our agreeable passage to New York. We had almost uniform good weather; and before the evening of the eleventh day, we were standing on the wooden landing-places of the Empire City, surrounded by German porters, Irish car-drivers, and Yankee touts. The latter race, wise in their generation, prefer head-work to the toil of actual muscle, and permit old Europe to furnish them with soldiers and foremast-men, stevedores, navvies, and dock labourers; while they supply officers, foremen, mates, and overlookers, to regulate and profit by the exertions of their hirelings.
The Astor House is not what it was. It has been distanced by more gigantic competitors; and as for the Tremont, it is left high and dry, like a stranded whale, by the tide of fashion. Nevertheless, I bestowed my patronage on the latter, perhaps for Sam Slick’s sake, and spent a couple of days under its hospitable roof while recovering from the sensation of cramp, tedium, and nausea quite inseparable from a sea voyage. Then I set out for the West. The journey, as far as Fort Madison, on the western boundary of the State of Illinois, I performed by railway, expeditiously perhaps, and not very uncomfortably, in spite of the amount of rocking and swinging due to a carelessly-metalled “permanent way,” if I may employ the phraseology of engineering. But I could not, with a clear conscience, agree with the enthusiastic comments of my fellow-travellers, as to the immense superiority, in speed and accommodation, of American railroads over those of Britain. After being jolted and swung till one’s bones ached, all the time, perhaps, being at a net speed of thirty miles an hour, it was rather provoking to listen to such remarks as the following:—
“Wall, mister, I expect our flying locomotives do rayther astonish you. They kinder take the conceit out of Old England, I some think.” Or, more gravely, “I believe, sir, it’s pretty universally admitted that America whips the world for speed. We have beaten your yachts, we have licked your racers, and our trains must make you think small beer of your expresses. We go ahead, we do!”
I take great praise to myself that I was always able to keep my temper, and to abstain from polemics. But argument would have been useless. I had to do with a people who saw the outer world through the spectacles of their journalists, and who would no more admit the imperfections of America than a lover will see a blemish in his mistress. To them America was all in all; and the mightiest countries in Europe were esteemed by them as rotten and worthless, only existing by the sufferance of the Giant Republic. As for my praise of the British Constitution, they simply laughed at it, assuring me that I knew nothing about the matter, and that there could be no liberty where a plain man was not allowed to go to court in his working dress if he chose. But I had not crossed the ocean to argue: I had come to pluck out the heart of the mystery concerning the Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway. And I was very careful at dinner-tables, bars, cafés, and railway cars, to elicit all available information with respect to the resources of the West. What I heard was, of course, vague; but on the whole it contained some comfort. It appeared certain that a great trade was carried on by land and water; that towns started up with incredible quickness in the midst of desolate prairies, or, like Chicago, on piles in a swamp; and that hardy men were taming the wilderness. So far so good. But it did not appear to me that security to life and property went in exactly the same ratio as the increase of wealth. I heard odd stories about regulators, vigilance committees, and Judge Lynch. Mob-law seemed paramount to written statutes; and the fiat of a legal court required to be backed by the good pleasure of a majority before its execution could be guaranteed. Besides, the moral standard of the community did not rank as high as perhaps a very delicate sense of honour required. Commercial tricks were spoken of as “clever,” or “ingenious,” which in other lands would have engaged the serious attention of the law-officers of the Crown; and the most unprincipled ruse was mentioned with laughter and indulgence, if not with approbation. All this augured badly, methought, for the prospects of the Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway. And yet I did not despair, and still less did I drop a hint of my suspicions to any casual acquaintance. It was not for me, a managing director, to denounce the project with which my name was, alas! inextricably linked, until it should be proved a bubble on the very clearest evidence. I reached Fort Madison, the most remote point to which the steam-horse could convey me, and had, at any rate, the satisfaction of knowing that I was within a few miles of Nauvoo. I hired a mule-waggon for the journey, and sitting down to dinner at the public table of the hotel, I inquired what sort of a place Nauvoo might be?
“Nauvoo, mister,” said a tall gaunt man whom his friends addressed as “Major,” “Nauvoo is a pretty considerable sprig of a city. It is a tall place, sir. There air good points and great developments about Nauvoo. Do you settle down there, stranger? I could sell you a lot of land awful cheap.”
“Thank you,” said I, “I have no intention of becoming a resident at Nauvoo; I merely wish to visit it.”