The Voyage Out 1858-59
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[Page 17 omitted as it remains in copyright]
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I went into their berths on board, and they seemed to me pretty good. Uncle E. could stand up in them; there was accommodation for his legs also; and they had a porthole to themselves. He seemed very well satisfied with them.
They both started in as good health & spirits as could be expected.
How Mary was feeling as the shores of England receded, she shares with her family in Wells where she had spent the previous Christmas before her wedding. She writes one final letter from England on that last Sunday morning after they had come on board the Teviot.
'Teviot', Dec 11, Sunday mng
One line more dearest Harriet, before I begin my Sunday, for I cannot reckon it begun though you all are doubtless just assembled in your dear Cathedral. We are just settling in our places on board and losing sight of Southampton. I looked the other day in my last year's Diary (which I cannot make up my mind to burn) and found the entry for this very day, the 12th, was 'alighted in peaceful Wells'. How different from today - I cannot help wishing one could make it last year again! Yet this year has been full of blessings for which I cannot be too thankful. I trust that by and bye I may see more clearly what work there is before me and feel more zealous as to the discharge of it.
Opposite Suez - Sunday Dec 28
My dearest Harriet
This time of year you may well believe takes me in thought to dear Wells & makes me think with longing of short dark winter days, though we are enjoying the light & warmth of the Red Sea. Every day now as it widens my separation from home deepens the sense of it. I trust the pain of feeling oneself so cut off from actual visible intercourse will be made the means of bringing me closer to dependence on God, & enabling me also to realize the higher & more lasting communion with those I love which is apt to be overlooked whilst one has the daily & hourly pleasure of communication.
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Christmas Day 1858
[To Eliza]
I made no effort to write to you before setting out dear Eliza because I thought I should write to you on the voyage in such comfortable leisure, & now to my great disappointment I find that I can neither write nor read for many minutes together without first my head & then my stomach suffering.
Near Malta, Wed Dec 22d
[To Mrs Arthur Hobhouse, Mary's sister-in-law]
I was beginning to enjoy Mansfield Park when the gale came & forced me to shut my eyes on it and the whole world. Indeed at my present rate of reading the 3 stories I have will last me the voyage, so you need not regret that Edmund frustrated your good intentions towards me with regard to the others.
We passed Gibraltar in a mist that let us see nothing but its outline, and I fear we shall only be 6 hours at Malta, to be divided between antiquities and lace. I believe the barbarians will whirl us past Cairo in the same way.
'Emu off Perim. Jan. 3. 59
[To Eliza]
It is hard to believe this is the New Year. I long for a little frost, & would even be content with a frosty fog to put us a little more in sympathy with home feelings & associations. This change of seasons is a thing to which I shall never be reconciled.
On the 1st we could write no letters for it was the first of two days of head wind which implies much more than I had any idea of. Most of the passengers even those who had undergone a previous seasoning, disappeared or were laid prostrate, & yesterday there could be no service, from the impossibility of clergy or congregation keeping their legs.
We are sitting now writing in the only place where writing is possible (after dark) - the saloon. The noise of that horrible screw is so stunning that though other people sitting at the same table are talking to each other at the top of their voices we do not hear a word. 2 kettle drums in one's drawing room
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would I really believe not adequately represent it. The piles of plates & cups ready for tea at my elbow are rattling an accompaniment.
Edmund gave you our history up to the embarkation at Suez. There we lay the whole of one day with the recollection of having been hurried through Cairo where a few hours would have been invaluable the day before, & with such unimaginable stinks (excuse the word) assailing our noses that I was persuaded we had a cargo of guano or some oriental equivalent for it on board. It has since turned out only to be our livestock wh so perfumed us, & of which whenever the wind is a head we have refreshing hints. The only thing of any interest that has since happened was our view of the Sinai which was near, & clear, & grand, quite beyond my hopes. And now we are looking forward to the blessings of dry land for a few hours at Aden tomorrow. Considering how doubly nasty & disagreeable everything looks & smells on one's return on these occasions, I think it is surprizing that we all do come back to the ship. I believe if I set out on a voyage alone I should make my escape at the very first landing place.
When we left Malta it really seemed as if one was driven forth from Paradise - rushing as we did from one of the palaces of the old Knights with its grandeur & stillness, into the din & closeness & prison-like compartments of our steamer. The Captain is a very pleasant person. Edmund by an exercise of his genealogical skill has discovered a Scotch connexion between him & me, & so he is particularly obliging to us. I suppose the specimens of colonists we have on board are very favourable. One is Sir Charles Nicholson whom you wd acknowledge to be remarkably agreeable & well-bred. Another is a family of Hoods (border-country not Somersetshire) who are much above the ordinary run of country neighbours in their manners & speech - & a third sample of a different class, strikes me much, because the gentleman of the family being of humble origin & now exceedingly rich, they are just the people I expected to find forward & vulgar, whereas they are so unpretending & civil that if he was even much more homely one could not take offence at it. But then to be sure the 2 last-named are Scotch, which, believe me, accounts for many excellencies.
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The moment we leave Aden my hopes will settle on Ceylon, where we are to spend 2 days. See palms, eat bananas, & get our clothes washed - & then we must prepare for the great gulf - 21 days without touching anywhere - so we must hope for smooth weather & heads that will allow one at least to read, if not to write. I cannot yet at all realize the fact of our distance constantly increasing - or its consequences - & I am always expecting to hear fresh news from home.
[Next day she was writing on shore at Aden]
... now I sit under the verandah of some house at Aden (there being no Hotel) whilst the rest of the party are exploring the rocks, for there is nothing else to explore. I am surrounded by chattering half naked negroes, & here & there a smart Parsee giving them directions but I feel very much at home nevertheless, the privilege of English ladies to stay by themselves & go where they like being apparently acknowledged even in this odd corner of Arabia. I was very much surprized by the swarm of regular negroes who must have colonized from the opposite coast & who have the whole boating & donkey driving trade of this place.
Saty Feb 5. 1859 S.S. Emu
within 36 hours of Melbourne
My dear Eliza
The remembrance of the miserably illegible scrap that I posted at Ceylon 3 weeks since for Catherine still dwells painfully on my mind. The deciphering must have been like that of an antient MSS, but I hope you will have gathered this much for it, that we were spending four & twenty hours of bliss on shore, & enjoying our liberty like birds let out of their cage. Anything more strange & delightsome than the transition from the ugly and business-like English steamer with its cramped space & unsavoury smells to the stillness of Oriental life, the beauty & verdure out of doors & the grandeur of vast rooms within, cannot be imagined. And when the Colonial Chaplain took us up to a lovely spot on a hill overlooking both the coast and the interior, where there is a little Christian school, & entertained us in the house of the late foundress in the midst of palm trees
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& bananas & tropical flowers, I certainly envied him his post & wished he cd have taken our cabin & Edmund's prospects & left us in his place. From Ceylon to Melbourne is much the most serious part of the voyage. One is 3 weeks without seeing land, or having anything to divert one's mind from one's condition. Then do the passengers fall to playing quoits, cards & chess with unremitting vigour & devise all sorts of means to solace their weariness. Amongst the best of these means were evening lectures of wh we had some half dozen - Several on Antient Egypt from Sir Charles Nicholson who is well up in the subject & even aspires to a small collection of antiquities. And Edmund delivered one of his friend Mr. Laurell's on London in the 16th Centy. with annotations of his own.
My unlucky head has forced me to almost complete idleness - reading writing & working proving equally impossible to me. This has been a terrible disappointment to me, as I shall not soon again have such leisure for reading. As for what people say of the impossibility of carrying on any regular occupation on board a ship, it seems to me nonsense. There are many people here who read enormously, & I believe everyone who reads on shore, will read at sea, provided they are not physically disqualified. Conversation would be a great resource if one could talk down the screw, and even in spite of the screw if one makes the best of one's opportunities there is a good deal to be had that is both pleasant and profitable.
Off Melbourne, Feb. 7 1859
We paid a pleasant visit to the Bishop and Mrs. Perry & saw all that the time admitted of the Town, under the Bp's guidance. To anyone but an American, such a town, as the result of only 20 years, is a perfect marvel. A few years ago one heard that the Bp was reduced to grooming his own horse, & had not a servant in his house, & as no change in this state of things had been announced, one might suppose that it continued. However we found them in a very nice house, with a highly respectable English butler, & all the niceties of an English establishment, so far as one could see. I do not mean powdered footmen, or French cookery, but something much more comfortable than the parish clergymen's houses [and] the Colonial
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people on board agree in saying that they have never had any trouble in getting and keeping good servants, & that in their recent visits to England they heard much more complaint there, than out here.
In the course of the voyage I have made up my mind that I must put myself into a dentist's hands. I was afraid all last year to undergo any operation [as she was pregnant] or of course I should have had it done before leaving England, but we find that there is an excellent dentist at Sydney, especially commended for the operation I most require, gold stopping. Edmund thinks he shall certainly have to go on at once in the mail steamer, so I shall have to stay behind him for a month. As, however, he will probably have to go on almost immediately to Wellington, & will be there 3 weeks or a month, I don't at all regret being in Sydney rather than Nelson without him. In fact I infinitely prefer it. I should not like to make acquaintance with all the Nelson people whilst he was away.
