‘It was a dark, drizzly, melancholy night; a fair specimen of Gravesend weather and the parts adjacent; no ‘star that’s westward from the pole’ to point my destined path, and furnish food for speculative thought; and, after sliding five or six times up and down some twenty feet of wet deck, I groped my way to the cabin. The captain was not on board, and I found myself a stranger among men. Of all gregarious animals man is the most tardy in getting acquainted: meet them for the first time in a jury-box, a stage-coach, or the cabin of a ship, and they always remind me of a little lot of specimen sheep from different flocks, put together for the first time in the same pen; they walk about and round and round, with all their heads and tails in different directions, and not a baa! escapes them; but in half an hour some crooked-pated bell-wether perhaps, gives a south-down a little dig in the ribs, and this example is followed by a Merino; and before the ending of the fair their heads are all one way, and you’ll find them bleating together in full chorus. Now, in the case of man, a snuff-box instead of the sheep’s horn, is an admirable introduction; for, if he refuses to take a pinch, he’ll generally give you a sufficient reason why he does not, and that’s an excellent chance to form, perhaps, a lasting friendship, but to scrape an acquaintance to a certainty; and if he takes it perhaps he’ll sneeze, and you can come in with your ‘God bless you!’ and so on, to a conversation about the plague in ’66, or the yellow fever on some other occasion, and can ‘bury your friends by dozens,’ and ‘escape yourself by a miracle,’ very pleasantly for half an hour. But in this instance it was a total failure: one said ‘I don’t use it;’ another shook his head, and the third emptied his mouth of half a pint of spittle, and said ‘he thought it bad enough to chaw!’’
When the vessel is fairly at sea, the social ice is gradually broken. It being just after the war, the rationale of the following brief dialogue between Mr. Cowell and the mate will be readily understood:
‘The mate was a weather-beaten, humorous ‘sea-monster;’ upon asking his name, he replied:
‘‘If you’re an Englishman and I once tell you my name, you’ll never forget it.’
‘‘I don’t know that,’ I replied; ‘I’m very unfortunate in remembering names.’
‘‘Oh, never mind!’ said he, with a peculiarly sly, comical look; ‘if you’re an Englishman you’ll never forget mine.’
‘‘Then I certainly am,’ I replied.
‘‘Well, then,’ said he drily, ‘my name’s Bunker! and I’m d——d if any Englishman will ever forget that name!’’
Mr. Cowell’s arrival, début, and theatrical progress and associations in this and other Atlantic towns, compose a diversified and palatable feast for the stage-loving public. His sketches of actors, male and female, native and foreign, are limned with an artistical hand. His picture of Kean’s fleeing from ‘the hot pursuit of obloquy’ is exceedingly vivid; and ‘old Mathews’ American ‘trip’ is well set forth. We find nothing so good, however, touching that extraordinary mime, as the following illustration of his sensitiveness to newspaper criticism, from the pen of the dramatic veteran, Moncrief:
‘‘Look here,’ he would say, taking up a paper and reading: ‘Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.—We last night visited this elegant theatre for the purpose of witnessing the performance of that excellent comedian, Mr. Belvi, as Octavian, in the ‘Mountaineers,’ for his own benefit. We hope it was for his own benefit, for it certainly was not for the benefit of any one else; for a more execrable performance we never witnessed. This gentleman had better stick to his comedy!’ Grant me patience; Heaven! There’s a fellow! What does he know about it? I suppose he would abuse my Iago—say that is execrable! Isn’t this sufficient to drive any body mad? Because a man happens to have played comedy all his life, ‘we’ takes upon himself to think as a matter of course he can’t play tragedy, though he may possess first rate tragic powers, as I do myself! I should have been the best Hamlet on the stage if I didn’t limp; but let me go on: ‘We have seen Elliston in the character.’ A charlatan, a mountebank; wouldn’t have me at Drury; and yet ‘we’ thinks he has a syllable the advantage of his competitor in this instance. We! we! as if the fellow had a parcel of pigs in his inside; we! we! Who’s we? Why don’t he say Tompkins, or whatever his name is, Tompkins thinks Elliston better in Octavian than Belvi; Belvi could kick Tompkins then; but who can kick we?’ etc., etc. And yet poor Mathews had no warmer admirers, no truer, no more constant friends than those whose occasional animadversions would thus excite his ire.’