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"Steam Excursion — Pt. 2"
George Cruikshank
1839
Copper engraving
10.5 by 8.9 vignetted
"The Steam Excursion" — the seventh chapter in "Tales," by Charles Dickens in Sketches by Boz, facing p. 303.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
"I beg your pardon, sir," said the steward, running up to Mr. Percy Noakes, "I beg your pardon, sir, but the gentleman as just went on deck — him with the green spectacles — is uncommon bad, to be sure; and the young man as played the wiolin says, that unless he has some brandy he can't answer for the consequences. He says he has a wife and two children, whose werry subsistence depends on his breaking a wessel, and he expects to do so every moment. The flageolet's been werry ill, but he's better, only he's in a dreadful prusperation."
All disguise was now useless; the company staggered on deck; the gentlemen tried to see nothing but the clouds; and the ladies, muffled up in such shawls and cloaks as they had brought with them, lay about on the seats, and under the seats, in the most wretched condition. Never was such a blowing, and raining, and pitching, and tossing, endured by any pleasure party before. Several remonstrances were sent down below, on the subject of Master Fleetwood, but they were totally unheeded in consequence of the indisposition of his natural protectors. That interesting child screamed at the top of his voice, until he had no voice left to scream with; and then, Miss Wakefield began, and screamed for the remainder of the passage.
Mr. Hardy was observed, some hours afterwards, in an attitude which induced his friends to suppose that he was busily engaged in contemplating the beauties of the deep; they only regretted that his taste for the picturesque should lead him to remain so long in a position, very injurious at all times, but especially so, to an individual labouring under a tendency of blood to the head. — "Tales," Chapter 7, "The Steam Excursion," pp. 304.
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.
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.
Accordingly, Cruikshank has depicted the inconveniences and vicissitudes of steamship travel, with Noakes (centre) trying to preserve order even as the rest of the company experience severe discomfort. A first edition copy of the print, dated 1836, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is catalogued as "An etching of figures gathered around two tables laden with dishes which appear to be tilting. Many of the figures are holding their heads and mouths. There are baskets with dishes on the floor and two portholes are visible in the background." Cruikshank contrasts the utter chaos in the ding-room with the previous, tranquil scene of the guitar concert on the downward leg, on the rear deck of the steamer. In this second scene, set in the cabin below decks as the storm hits on the return leg, Cruikshank focuses on the general effects of seasickness as young men are about to throw up in their hats, a middle-aged husband comforts his wife (down left) and plates on the table are about to slide off as the tilts towards the left.
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 Nore upriver — 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.
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.]
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.]
See also "The Development of Leisure in Britain, 1700-1850:
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