Sunday, June 21, 2015

John M. Forbes to Sarah Hathaway Forbes, March 4, 1862

Steamer Atlantic, 4th March, 1862.

There is nothing like beginning a journal early, so I take it up where Alice will have left me, on my way to the ship. Cousin Sim1 wouldn't hear of my plan of ordering a carriage for me and my baggage, but would have a wagon for the trunks, and drive me down. So I dispatched all my things, bag included, to wait for me at the Atlantic, and followed soon after. Arrived there, all was bustle and confusion, but our wagon was missing! — gone probably to some other Atlantic at some other Canal Street, existing in the driver's fertile brain! Mr. Cary, and William, and Sim, and little Johnny, and William Russell all started in different directions, while I kept guard in the drizzling northeaster for the wagon. Baggage and miscellaneous heaps of things gradually disappeared into the maw of the monster ship, whose wheels were turning and churning up the water as if impatient for a start. Frantic women, unprotected females, appealed to the captain and to Mr. E. L. Pierce to let them go and teach young nigs; others in despair about their traps, some tearful at parting, the collector busy as a bee swearing in the passengers. Finally he bundled up his papers, the wharf was emptied, and the ship full. The captain mounted the paddle-box, and still my precious trunks came not. I determined to leave them and trust to the captain and Mr. Heard for clothes, — yet lingered on the ladder to the last. Imagine my “phelinks” at the idea of not having even a tooth-brush! and at the vision of what Mary's cake would be when turned out of my trunk a fortnight hence! At last back came Mr. Cary with the wagoner in his clutches, who protested that he brought all and that it had gone on board, deep, alas, into that bottomless pit of a baggage hole, now full to the top. Thankful even for this forlorn hope, I bade our friends good-by, and took refuge in the cabin, where Mr. Heard’s things were snugly stored in our little state-room! I leave you to think of the anathemas uttered against cousin Sim, against the whole race of wagoners, and above all against my own feeble-minded self for trusting any of them!

Once fairly started I seized the head porter and insisted on having my trunks, if the whole had to be turned out of their stowage; then by going down myself I luckily managed to get my sea things, and so that adventure ended in comedy!

Our passengers consist chiefly of the “villaintropic” society, as dear little Sarah's friend, the housekeeper in Miss Edgeworth's “False Keys,” would call it; bearded and mustached and odd-looking men, with odder-looking women.  . . . You would have doubted whether it was the adjournment of a John Brown meeting or the fag end of a broken-down phalanstery! Among others Mr. Mack (Stillman's father-in-law, who says he knew and liked William H.), Ned Hooper and young Phillips of Will's class, and Fred Eustis and son; an officer stationed at Beaufort, Captain Eliot, son of the oculist, introduced to me by or through the Shaws, Tim Walker's sister, whom I have not yet seen; William Bacon and young Brooks, a scattering naval officer or two, and the usual quantum suff. of nondescripts and nonentities, valued doubtless by somebody, but offering no salient points to fix the eye.

We made a grand show at dinner, — a terrible waste of good things for most of them, and then plunged into the fog and drizzle of a dirty northeaster, which doubtless visited you in snow, and gave you some twinges at having let me go! Tea and cards in the evening. Mr. Heard seasick, and only a few of us haunting the long dining-room. A fair night's sleep, variegated with sore throat and some coughing, and then a bright morning with a westerly gale blowing. Passengers very scattering. We had an alarm of a countess, but neither captain nor purser know of her, so it is doubtless a mistake, unless, like a wolf in sheep's clothing she had smuggled herself into Mr. Pierce's troop of fifty! I should not forget to tell you of Whist, who was consigned to a porter, nor of Billy,2 the occupant of a box such as you saw horses hoisted in. As he was much exposed to wind[.] I luckily found an old sail belonging to the little boat Mr. Cary sent on board for me, and went and got one end of his box tented in. The top was already covered, so he seemed pretty well provided for, although the blanket Luther got for him looked mighty thin and cottony!

This morning after breakfast I was forward by the pilot-house, watching the old ship pitch into the sea and the gulls following, and the bright sky and blue and white waves, when an unlucky billow took us at the wrong time, like a boxer hitting his adversary when down, and instantly the whole deck below, nine feet down, was full of water; and even where I stood it came ankle deep, and even found its way, a little of it, down my back as I clutched at a rope and turned to avoid it! The next moment I looked down upon poor Billy. His box had been lifted bodily, turned around, and the iron anchor stock driven through it! Billy had plunged forward and got his fore feet outside, and was struggling violently among the flukes of the anchor to keep his footing, and then, with the intelligence of a pony, tried to get back into his box from the slippery deck, — his box, now shared with the anchor stock and generally knocked into a cocked hat! They got him out with whole legs, and he is now standing, or trying to stand, on the deck, while the carpenter is mending his box. It was for a time a bad sight, and, the water being still surging about below, I could not without thorough ducking help him, except by advice and consolation offered through the singing of the gale!

So I have brought you up to the present time. Alice can well finish the picture, if she remembers our old seat near the captain's end of the table, where I am sitting, with my feet on the warm steam pipe under the table and my outer man guarded by a coat stolen from Mr. Heard to replace my wet one, — the spray still dashing against the saloon square windows, but the sea going down; and now we are sure of good weather for the rest of our trip.
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1 His cousin, Paul Sieman Forbes, of New York.

2 A little Naushon island horse, taken down as a charger for Lieutenant W. H. F. Whist was a setter. — Ed.

SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 294-8

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