"Steam Excursion — Pt. 1" (1839) (original) (raw)

Passage Illustrated

Mr. Hardy, in a blue jacket and waistcoat, white trousers, silk stockings, and pumps — in full aquatic costume, with a straw hat on his head, and an immense telescope under his arm; and there was the young gentleman with the green spectacles, in nankeen inexplicables, with a ditto waistcoat and bright buttons, like the pictures of Paul — not the saint, but he of Virginia notoriety. The remainder of the committee, dressed in white hats, light jackets, waistcoats, and trousers, looked something between waiters and West India planters. — "Tales," Chapter 7, "The Steam Excursion," p. 296.

"Now," said Mr. Percy Noakes, who had just ascended from the fore-cabin, where he had been busily engaged in decanting the wine, "if the Misses Briggs will oblige us with something before dinner, I am sure we shall be very much delighted."

One of those hums of admiration followed the suggestion, which one frequently hears in society, when nobody has the most distant notion what he is expressing his approval of. The three Misses Briggs looked modestly at their mamma, and the mamma looked approvingly at her daughters, and Mrs. Taunton looked scornfully at all of them. The Misses Briggs asked for their guitars, and several gentlemen seriously damaged the cases in their anxiety to present them. Then, there was a very interesting production of three little keys for the aforesaid cases, and a melodramatic expression of horror at finding a string broken; and a vast deal of screwing and tightening, and winding, and tuning, during which Mrs. Briggs expatiated to those near her on the immense difficulty of playing a guitar, and hinted at the wondrous proficiency of her daughters in that mystic art. Mrs. Taunton whispered to a neighbour that it was "quite sickening!" and the Misses Taunton looked as if they knew how to play, but disdained to do it.

At length, the Misses Briggs began in real earnest. It was a new Spanish composition, for three voices and three guitars. The effect was electrical. All eyes were turned upon the captain, who was reported to have once passed through Spain with his regiment, and who must be well acquainted with the national music. He was in raptures. This was sufficient; the trio was encored; the applause was universal; and never had the Tauntons suffered such a complete defeat.

"Bravo! bravo!" ejaculated the captain; — "bravo!" — "Tales," Chapter 7, "The Steam Excursion," pp. 300-301.

Commentary

The expanding incomes of the rising middle classes enabled them to become suburbanites with private gardens and "villas" in such developing areas as Norwood and Camberwell. Moreover, these same newly affluent merchants and professionals could begin to spend money on leisure travel or "the vacation," as we now know it. A number of previous illustrations deal with how the middle class used this new "leisure time," going to seaside resorts such as Ramsgate, spending Sunday afternoons in pleasure gardens, and attending outdoor concerts at Vauxhall and The Eagle. Here, Dickens takes a group of bourgeoisie on river-boat excursion down the Thames, the chief organizers being a young law student named Percy Noakes (who bears some resemblance to Dickens) and his stocky friend with the deep laugh, Mr. Hardy (who resembles Dickens's confidant and legal adviser John Forster, whom Dickens met in 1836). The original plan involves steaming "down to the Nore, and back" on a single day, but the vessel runs into rough weather on the return leg, so that the company are not deposited back at Steam Packet Wharf, near the Custom House (London), until 2:00 A. M. the next day. The day begins auspiciously, with a flurry of activity as passengers arrive for the regularly scheduled boats to Margate and Gravesend:

And then the bell at London-bridge wharf rang; and a Margate boat was just starting; and a Gravesend boat was just starting, and people shouted, and porters ran down the steps with luggage that would crush any men but porters; and sloping boards, with bits of wood nailed on them, were placed between the outside boat and the inside boat; and the passengers ran along them, and looked like so many fowls coming out of an area; and then, the bell ceased, and the boards were taken away, and the boats started, and the whole scene was one of the most delightful bustle and confusion. — "The Steam Excursion," p. 295.

The steam excursion organized by Percy Noakes with the General Steam Navigation Company begins and ends off the Custom House, between Billingsgate Market and the Tower of London. The destination of Percy Noakes' afternoon excursion is neither a port nor a seaside resort, but a lightship (established in 1732) on a sandbank known as The Nore at the mouth of the Thames Estuary. Until 1964, the Nore marked the seaward limit of the Port of London Authority, for it is the point at which the river meets the North Sea, about midway between Havengore Creek in Essex and Warden Point in Kent.

Brighton, England's first seaside resort, began its transformation from sleepy fishing to "London by the Sea" about 1750. Other 19th c. Channel resorts include Folkestone, Eastbourne, Bournemouth, Torquay-Paignton, Hastings, Newhaven, Worthing, Bognor Regis, resorts on the Isle of Wight, Margate, Broadstairs, Weymouth, Exemouth, and, of course, Ramsgate, the destination of the noveau-riche Tuggses in the 1836 Chapman and Hall "Library of Fiction" short story. As early as 1824 regularly scheduled paddle-wheelers provided faster service than the previous sailing packets between the Port of London and the Channel resorts, making the trip in as little as eight hours under steam, as opposed to anything up to 72 hours on the old sailing hoys. The Margate Steam Packet Company was the first new firm set up to exploit the new technology, offering regular service in 1815. Marc Isambard Brunel's 112 ft. Regent, built by Henry Maudsley on the Thames, entered the London-to-Margate run as a mailboat in 1816. The next year, the Gravesend Steam Packet Company began regular service. However, the growth of British seaside resorts really began in the 1840s, when relatively cheap railway fares granted even the working classes access to the seaside, in particular Blackpool in the north of England, although the southern resorts were not connected to the metropolis by railway until the 1860s.

As Frederic G. Kitton notes, Cruikshank had to re-engrave this illustration for the Chapman and Hall serialisation, and the subsequent 1839 anthology:

During the following year (1837) Macrone published a Second Series of the "Sketches" in one volume, uniform in size and character with its predecessors, and containing ten etchings by Cruikshank; for the second edition of this extra volume two additional illustrations were done, viz., "The Last Cab-Driver" and "May-day in the Evening." It was at this time that Dickens repurchased from Macrone the entire copyright of the "Sketches," and arranged with Chapman & Hall for a complete edition, to be issued in shilling monthly parts, octavo size, the first number appearing in November of that year. The completed work contained all the Cruikshank plates (except that entitled "The Free and Easy," which, for some unexplained reason, was cancelled) and the following [twelve] new subjects: "The Parish Engine," "The Broker's Man," "Our Next-door Neighbours" [sic], "Early Coaches," "Public Dinners," "The Gin-Shop," "Making a Night of It," "The Boarding-House," "The Tuggses at Ramsgate," "The Steam Excursion," "Mrs. Joseph Porter," and "Mr. Watkins Tottle." — "George Cruikshank, p. 4.

Dickens mentions that the musical entertainment is a central aspect of the planning directed by Percy Noakes, with a guitar concert winning out in committee:

If Miss Sophia Taunton learnt a new song, two of the Miss Briggses came out with a new duet. The Tauntons had once gained a temporary triumph with the assistance of a harp, but the Briggses brought three guitars into the field, and effectually routed the enemy. [291]

Accordingly, Cruikshank has depicted the three Miss Briggs playing a "Spanish composition" on their guitars, with Hardy (dressed as a sailor and holding a telescope) to the right, and the helmsman, left rear, suggesting that the concert is on the rear deck. A first edition copy of the print, dated 1836, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is catalogued as "An etching featuring a group of figures watching a group of three woman play stringed instruments. A man in the background holds a steamship wheel." Cruikshank provides two contrasting scenes, the first for the concert on the downward leg, on the rear deck of the steamer, the second in the cain below decks as the storm hits on the return leg. In the concert scene, Cruikshank focuses on the guitar-playing Misses Briggs and the "facetious" Hardy "in a blue jacket and waistcoat, white trousers, silk stockings, and pumps" (296).

Originally published in the Monthly Magazine for October 1834, the story is a young man's narrative — one can well imagine the agreeable "young-man-about-town" with rooms at Gray's Inn in Holborn, one of the old Inns of Court, as being an extension of twenty-two-year-old Charles Dickens himself, who had worked in the offices of Ellis and Blackmore at Gray's Inn in 1827. Later, attorney Tommy Traddles in David Copperfield has his bachelor lodgings here. However, the second half of the story occurs not in Noakes's bachelor rooms, but on the General Steam Navigation Company vessel on the downward leg, and then returning from The Noreupriver — and encountering extremely rough weather.

Whereas Fred Barnard in the equivalent Household Edition illustrations of forty years later captures precise moments in the text (although the first is given in narrative rather than in dialogue), George Cruikshank has provided prolonged scenes — the Misses Briggs' giving their musical performance — "a new Spanish composition, for three voices and three guitars" (190), and the guests' suffering from seasickness as cabin is turned topsy-turvey by the rising wind, prior to their staggering on deck for air:

The party had by this time reached their destination, and put about on their return home. The wind, which had been with them the whole day, was now directly in their teeth; the weather had become gradually more and more overcast; and the sky, water, and shore were all of that dull, heavy, uniform lead colour. . . .— p. 302.

Relevant Illustrations from the Household Edition (1876)

Left: Fred Barnard's depiction of the nautically-garbed Hardy's teasing one particularly obnoxious, overdressed little boy, The facetious Hardy, in fulfilment of his promise, had watched the child to a remote part of the vessel, and, suddenly appearing before him with the most awful contortions of visage, had produced his paroxysm of terror. Right: Fred Barnard's depiction of the accident involving a startled waiter and a seasick gentleman in the dining-room, "One gentleman was observed suddenly to rush from table without the slightest ostensible reason, and dart up the steps with incredible swiftness: thereby greatly damaging both himself and the steward, who happened to be coming down at the same moment. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Three Other "Entertainment" Illustrations by Cruikshank

Left: Cruikshank's far more animated and engaging musical entertainment, Greenwich Fair. Centre: Cruikshank's view of the leisured middle classes ar a Sunday tea-garden, London Recreations. Right: Cruikshank's depiction of the an afternoon's musical entertainment at Vauxhall on the south bank of the Thames, Vauxhall Gardens by Day. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

See also "The Development of Leisure in Britain, 1700-1850:

• The Development of Leisure in Britain, 1700-1850
• The Development of Leisure in Britain after 1850
• Technology and Leisure in Britain after 1850

Bibliography

Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.

Bentley, Nicholas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens: Index. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z. The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1998.

Dickens, Charles. "The Steam Excursion," Chapter 7 in "Tales," Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Chapman and Hall, 1839; rpt., 1890. Pp. 288-305.

Dickens, Charles. "The Steam Excursion," Chapter 7 in "Tales," Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876. Pp. 182-94.

Hawksley, Lucinda Dickens. Chapter 3, "Sketches by Boz." Dickens Bicentenary 1812-2012: Charles Dickens. San Rafael, California: Insight, 2011. Pp. 12-15.

Schlicke, Paul. "Sketches by Boz." Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1999. Pp. 530-535.

Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing. New Haven and London: Yale U. P., 2009.

Last modified 27 May 2017