Passage Illustrated: A Bout of Sea-sickness aboard the Liverpool Steam Packet

"And is it there ye're lying on the broad of yer back, and me as sick as a dog fornent ye?"

"I concede, ma'am, the fact; the position is a most irksome one on every account."

"Then why don't ye come over to me?" and this Mrs. Mulrooney said with a voice of something like tenderness — wishing at all hazards to conciliate so important a functionary.

"Why, really you are the most incomprehensible person I ever met."

"I'm what?" said Mrs. Mulrooney, her blood rushing to her face and temples as she spoke — for the same reason as her fair townswoman is reported to have borne with stoical fortitude every harsh epithet of the language, until it occurred to her opponent to tell her that "the divil a bit better she was nor a pronoun;" so Mrs. Mulrooney, taking "omne ignotum pro horribili," became perfectly beside herself at the unlucky phrase. "I'm what? repate it av ye dare, and I'll tear yer eyes out? Ye dirty bla — guard, to be lying there at yer ease under the blankets, grinning at me. What's your thrade — answer me that — av it isn't to wait on the ladies, eh?"

"Oh, the woman must be mad," said Sir Stewart.

"The devil a taste mad, my dear — I'm only sick. Now just come over to me, like a decent creature, and give me the dhrop of comfort ye have. Come, avick."

"Go over to you?"

"Ay, and why not? or if it's so lazy ye are, why then I'll thry and cross over to your side."

These words being accompanied by a certain indication of change of residence on the part of Mrs. Mulrooney, Sir Stewart perceived there was no time to lose, and springing from his berth, he rushed half-dressed through the cabin, and up the companion-ladder, just as Mrs. Mulrooney had protruded a pair of enormous legs from her couch, and hung for a moment pendulous before she dropped upon the floor, and followed him to the deck. A tremendous shout of laughter from the sailors and deck passengers prevented my hearing the dialogue which ensued; nor do I yet know how Mrs. Mulrooney learned her mistake. [Chapter IX, "The Road — Travelling Acquaintances — A Packet Adventure," pp. 68-69]

Commentary: On the Mail Boat from Liverpool to Kingstown Harbour Prior to 1823

The pair of sailing ships that plied the route between the Pigeon House Pier at Kingstown and Clarence Dock in Liverpool overnight offered limited accommodation for well-to-do passengers: Lever describes them as being "vessels of small tonnage, and still scantier accommodation." By the 1830s Royal Mail steam packets Arrow and Dasher could accommodate up to twenty affluent cabin passengers. Other steam paddle-wheelers connecting Ireland and the island of Great Britain in this period were Sibyl, Vixen, Crocodile, and Aladdin (1835). By the time that Lever wrote The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer some twenty-seven H. M. Mail Steamships plying various routes. By 1839, four wooden paddle-wheel vessels provided mail service between St. George's Pier Liverpool and Pigeon House Pier in Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire). They would leave 5:00 P. M. daily for the overnight passage. Charles Wye Williams & Company initiated a Dublin to Liverpool service in 1823, and Lever would have made this journey frequently in youth. The anecdote, however, takes readers back to the days before steam packet service. Rather than accompany his regiment to its new posting at Halifax, Lorrequer has acquired a six months' medical leave, and is determined to follow the Collonbys to London to make his marriage proposal to Lady Jabe.

On board the mail packet Alert, Lorrequer sails for England. Almost immediately among the passengers the narrator makes the acquaintance of Sir Stewart Moore, "a gentleman holding high official appointment in the viceregal court, either comptroller of the household, master of the horse, or something else equally magnificent" (69). Lorrequer for some explicable reason decides to play a practical joke on the exalted Stewart Moore, who, he tells the verbose Mrs. Mulrooney, wife of an Irish pig-farmer, is the head steward. Moreover, confides Lorrequer, Moore has highly efficacious drops for seasickness. When she starts to feel queazy, she demands that Moore give her the seasickness medication. Terrified, he dashes up the steps to the deck above as Mrs. Mulrooney determines that, if he will not come to her, she will come to him. The illustration effectively juxtaposes Lorrequer (right), the florid Mrs. Mulrooney (centre), and Moore dashing up the stairs from the sleeping quarters.

Bibliography

Buchanan-Brown, John. Phiz! Illustrator of Dickens' World. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978.

Lester, Valerie Browne Lester. Phiz! The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.

Lever, Charles. The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablot Knight Browne]. Dublin: William Curry, Jun. London: W. S. Orr, 1839.

Post Office Packet Steamers Accessed 16 April 2023.

Steig, Michael. Chapter Two: "The Beginnings of 'Phiz': Pickwick, Nickleby, and the Emergence from Caricature." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 24-85.

Steig, Michael. Chapter Seven: "Phiz the Illustrator: An Overview and a Summing Up." Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978. Pp. 299-316.

Stevenson, Lionel. Chapter V, "Renegade from Physic, 1839-1841." Dr. Quicksilver: The Life of Charles Lever. London: Chapman and Hall, 1939. Pp. 73-93.

_______. "The Domestic Scene." The English Novel: A Panorama. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin and Riverside, 1960.

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