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THE BOAT OF ALL-WORK.It didn’t rain “ cats and dogs ” nor “pitchforks; it simply rained very hard, indeed ; likewise it blew very hard; and, having doubts about the stability of the rib3 of my umbrella, I turned into a little archway in the Strand to wait till the bluster abated a bit. Though narrow, it was a ilaap archway—so deep that vision was baulked by the gloom that crept up from the latter end of it, wherever that might be. There was shelter for fifty people at least; and, standing there alone, I could not help thinking what simpletons the drenched pedestrians were not to do as I was doing.“ Now, Sir, the boat !”Full tilt against the notion that I had the archway all to myself, the observation rather startled me ; but, finding that it emanated from no more formidable individual than a wizened old fellow in an overwhelming tarpaulin coat and a sou’-wester with ear-lappets, I at once recovered my self-possession, and addressed the lunatic “ Which boat, my friend P what about a boat ? ”“ Every quarten ’our, and it’s just up, if you’re agoin’,” issued from between the monstrous cav-lappets. Then, seeing that I was still somewhat perplexed, he goodnatnredly explained. “ The Perseverance and the Grasshopper, and them—the ’apenny boats, don’t you know ? Down here takes you to ’em.”Down there ? Absurd! My first impression was the correct one. The poor old gentleman was deranged. ’ Some ancient waterman; once jolly and young, but ousted from his occupation by steam-boats, and devoting the remnaut of his life to the burking of his enemy’s adherents. Gazing awfully down the murky, vaulted lane into which the villain had endeavoured to entice me, I pondered for a moment on my lucky escape, and then, casting up my eyes thankfully, saw—Saw that I had been shamefully unjust to the little man in tarpaulin. This was the road to the halfpenny steam-boat pier; a board at the entrance to the cavern announced it, and, that no mistake might occur, furnished a painted hand, with a finger pointing spectrally into the impenetrable gloom. I no longer regarded the . old man as a dangerous enemy but as a true friend. Thanks to the weak ribs of my umbrella in the first place, and him in the second, there was about to be elucidated a mystery that had troubled me for years.So many years, indeed, is it sijice the matter began to trouble mo that I was still so small a boy as to be unable to look over a bridge .without climbing to one of the recess seats. So elevated, many a .time have I watched the plain, loiv-squatting steam-boats in question, ever dingy, ever slow, ever freighted with men who wore shabby jackets and who smoked short pipes, and by women just so lipladen, and who wore cast off coachmen’s coats in the winter, and . silk pocket-handkerchiefs on their shoulders, and inverted bonnets on their heads, in the summer. Strewn about the decks of the boats, invariably, were big bags of old clothes and boots and shoes, and pyramids of scaly hampers bursting with soles and other fish, and baskets fall of oranges and all sorts of nuts.Of course there was nothing mysterious— nothing remarkable, even—in all this; but what was remarkable (without doubt, it would occur to a child sooner than to a man) was the air of drudgery that pervaded the length and breadth of the vessel. On working days it is, of course, the rule to find the bees of the world’s hive wearing business airs as well as business garments, but work is by no means incompatible with cheerfulness. Moreover, public conveyances are regarded as mediums of pleasure as well as business, or wliy does the ’bus-driver wear a rose at his buttonhole, or steam-boat captains indulge in cigar3 when a pipe of humble hirdseyc would afford them as much gratification and at a much cheaper raLe ? Why is the scraping of fiddles, the twanging of harps, and the dulcet notes of concertinas allowed on board steamers that ply between the bridges, if the proprietors are not aware that idle, aimless pleasure seekers comprise a fair percentage of their passengers ?On board the Perseverance and the Grasshopper, however, things are managed very differently. No harp and violin, no cigar-smoking captain, no busy venders of ‘-'comic broadsheets;” all dull, and dreary, and weary-looking, as men are when unremuneratively “ hard at it.” For all that the “captain ” looks like one, he might be a hardworking lighterman recently pressed into the service; and as he pensively rests liis big, hairy arms on the pipe through which he converses with the sooty man who, buried in the bowels of the vessel, feeds the roaring fire and tends the engine, yon might faucy him pining for a haul at a pair of stout barge-oars. As for the passengers, they are either going to market and full of anxious wonder how they will “ find things/’ and how far their bit of money will go, or else they are returning from market, and, having made good bargains, full of business anxiety to get home and realise; or, not seeing their way very clearly in the matter of their recent purchase, plunged in a slough of arithmetic, and endeavouring to extricate themselves by hideous contortions of countenance and by all sorts of nervous outspreading and handling of their dirty fingers and thumbs—it being no uncommon thing when the numbers by reason of their exceeding !en become embarrasing for a man to borrow a digit or so of his neighbour, or for himself to mark farthings and fractions with a bit of chalk on his various knuckles. The good ship, meanwhile, as though conscious of the dead weight of work— of the sweating and boae-grindtilg for bread ever burdening her— seems to have altogether lost her spirits and tfie buoyancy natural to the boat tribe, and to have settled down a hard-working cobbler (no, not a cobb’er; cobblers whistle at their work and play skittles on Mondays), a hard-working tailor of a steamer, bending low at its work and content to fag from morning till night for the small consideration of a boiler full of water and an occasional feed of coals.The melancholy aspect of the business alone at first occurred to me; its wonderful feature did not strike me for some time; when it did, this was it. The Perseverance and the Grasshopper, and one or two other drudges of the same family, were ever busy, ever humbly wriggling their way .with their heads to the east or to the west; but whither wore they bound? At what poin* on the Thames coast did the fish and fruit mongers take ship, and where did they disembark P : My inquiries on the subject led to nothing definite. I learnt that the ‘apenny” ones owned but two piers on the river, and that one of them was near Hungeiford,” and the other “just a sine’sthrow from London-bridgc.” So instructed, I have sought diligently for the places in question, but never could discover them. About London-bridge were steam-boat piers enough ; but the cheapest of them had the fare—one penny—so conspicuously displayed as to make inquiry mere impertinence ; “ near Hungerford ” my explorations were equally diligent and equally fruitless. Having so far explained the business, the reader will the better understand the pleasure it gave me to find myself fairly on the track of the mysterious vessels.Adopting the guidance of the spectral finger, I plunged into the gloomy alley, bat, alas ! speedily wished myself in the open Strand again ; for/by-and-by, tiring of the length of the dismal lane, and fearing that I had mistaken the road, I turned off into the first opening that presented itself, an i went blundering on till 1 found myself involved in that horrid vaulted maze formed by the “dark arches” of the Adelphi. There, looming through the foul murk that enveloped the dreadful place, were the carts and waggons in which slept till ousted by the police the tramps and the houseless beggars- In sly nooks and corners were little heaps of straw and tan wiiere the “regular” dark-arch lodgers slept. Here and there upon the arch-walls were green brands left by the l’iver at its last rising, and more than once the squeaking and scrambling of rats was plainly audible. Thankful was I presently to arrive at a gap between the arches where the blessed light of day shone down, and there I resolved to wait till somebody happened to pass, and of whom I could inquire a way out of the pretty pickle I had got into.I had not tp wait long. First came the footsteps and voices, and then the forms of a troop of men and women with fish-baskets and fruit-baskets, and crockery such as is bartered for old clothes from door to door. “ Pray,” aked I of a man who, having but a little load of fish, could afford to pause for a moment, “ Pray, is this the way to the halfpenny steam-boat P” .“ Well, this is one way,” replied he. “ This is the way we coves comes, ’cos it’s a near cut. ’Spectable coves, like you, comes down Ivy Bridge-lane, side of the clockshop in the Strand. Ilowsomever, ’taint worth while to go back. You keep straight down, and turn to the left, and you’ll get to where they takes the ’apence.”Following his injunctions, I finally arrived at a mite of a public-honse propped, as it were, on stilts out of the river mud, and embowered in some sort of verdant mass that probably was ivy, but it was so enveloped in the substantial fog peculiar to certain parts of the Thames shore that I could not see very distinctly. I could just make out the sigu of the house, however. It was the “ Fox under the Hill. ”Nearly opposite to the Fox was the hutch where sat the man who took the steam-boat halfpence. If the business stirring that morning might be taken as a fair sample of halfpenny steain-boat trading it might without hesitation he quoted as “ brisk.” It quite dazzled the sight to watch the dirty paw of the cashier within the hutch ever darting like a nimble fine-legged spider at the halfpence pitched with that air of freedom that distinguishes the British costermonger on to the little board fronting the pigeon hole. Likewise, if the passengers about to embark in the Endeavour represented a fair average, the charwqmauish aspect of that worthy vessel at once ceased to be wonderful. Starting on the service in the most cheery way, and with every plank and spar about her as lithe and elastic as the sole use of ash and yew could render them, a score of trips could not fail to bring her to her knees, spiritless and jaded as the most elderly “slop hand” in the employ of those celebrated merchant “ clippers”—A 1, and copper-hearted—Noses and Sons.As I expected, I found no nonsense on board the Endeavour. The fittings were painted an appropriate lead colour; the forms were square, thick-legged, and substantial; no absurd caution decorated the base of the funnel concerning the impropriety of smoking abaft it; while-as for any announcement advising you to abstain from conversation with the man at the wheel, it was rendered quite unnecessary by the sullen and melancholy that characterised the steersman’s purple visage. Looking down into the engine-room, you at once saw that the frivolities of rottenstone and polishing rags were despised. The Endeavour’s engine, as the stoker who came up for a moment’s breath of fresh air informed me, was meant for work, not to be laughed at by old women and bumkins from the country, when I mentioned to him the fact that the day before I hail seen on board a penny boat the engine rods and valves lustrous as plate-glass, and wearing in a handy chink a sprig of sweetivilliam, as a well-got-up and ponderous swell might wear a flower in his coat buttonhole. The stoker growled a derisive laugh, and remarked that lie expected soon to see the captains of “ they boats a wearing of cocked-hats, and the callboys with we!wet tights and calves.”To return, however, to the passengers. There were big, brawny men, with their garments spangled with the stale i cules of fish, and wearing broadwise deep baskets likewise scaly, but speckled red by yesterday’s strawberries, the owners, as it will happen when there is “nothing at the gate” (Billingsgate), being driven from his customary fishy path to invest his market-money at the “garden” (Covent-garden). There were big, brawny women, with great baskets, bound for Shorter street, Spitalfields, the chief mart for all sorts^of flawed and damaged crockery, to be bartered for “old elo ! ’ “ Old clo!” made its appearance in tremendous quantities in casks, and bags, and bundles, from the fashionable bonnet shapelessly crushed, but still brilliant, to mildewed castors, boots, and slipshod dancing-shoes. Beside the blousy and freckled traffickers in these and other sorts of goods, there were others scores of them, who surely had no money to take to market, nothing to buy, nothing to sell, but who, tattered, torn, and hungry, were hound to the docks or thereabouts to see if a job might be picked up. Being hungry, say you, why not avoid the luxury of riding and tramp it afoot, comforting the belly with a little bread the. while? Because, after calculations as profound as those of men who buy and sell money as though it were taken m nets at sea, or who dabble up to their chins—up to the very steps, and over and above the chimneypots of their Brompton villasfn tallow or palm oil; because, having pondered on their empty condition, and on the inability of man to hoist and cirry huge weights when foot-weary as well as empty, they resolve that to part with the precious halfpenny, is to be a gainer; or, perhaps, having regarded the approaching dissolution of their patch-fretted boots, it is evident economy to ride in a steam-boat at the rate of a farthimr n mile. - ~ J. G.Foresters’ Fsra at the Crystal Palace.—The Foresters have this Week had a grand iGto at the Crystal.Palace. On Tuesday momin?, long b.fore the hour appointed for the firtt trains to leave the London-bnqge terminus, the platform of the London and Brighton Railway was crowued with Foresters an 1 their friends anxious to proceed to the scene of festivity. The first trains started ut about eight o’clock, from which hour the trains continued running, without intermission, both from the London-budge and Victoria Stations, each being crowded-almost to sutiJCAAon. The road to the palace from the Elephant and Ciatle presented an equally animated appearance, being crowded with vehicles of every description, tided with those who preferred the excitement and pleasure of the road to the crushing ond discomfort of.the overcrowded trains. Up to twelve o clock it was computed that -10,000 persons had entered the palace and grounds, and crowds wore then pouring in from all quarters; indeed, the London see.ions of the Foresters were only just beginning to make their appearance. At one o’clock a general procession of the brethren of the o*der tor* place, headed by scvorol bands of music, the officers of the order wearing their regatia. Immediately after the termination of the procession the vauous sports and pastimes of the day commenced, and were entered in to with great sp nt by the immense concourse of persons assernb! od.Bisnornic of the Sandwich Islands.—A new bishopric of these island9 has just been created, and the Rov. Thomas Nettleship Staley, M A . ofQ ieen s Codege, Cambridge, appointed to the new see.A zealous Conservative i-i stated to k.ve travelled 100 miles to vote for Turner at the Srnth Lancashire election, and cn reaching Liverpool found h® b ‘J been taking very unnecessary trouble. Hi* friends had paired him on with a Liberal.
Newspaper Details
Illustrated Times
London, Middlesex, GB
Sat, Aug 24, 1861
Page 7
Full Page
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