Martin Chuzzlewit
Martin, ‘I lie here because I don’t wish to be recognized, in the better
days to which I aspire, by any purse-proud citizen, as the man who came
over with him among the steerage passengers. I lie here because I wish
to conceal my circumstances and myself, and not to arrive in a new world
badged and ticketed as an utterly poverty-stricken man. If I could have
afforded a passage in the after-cabin I should have held up my head with
the rest. As I couldn’t I hide it. Do you understand that?’
‘I am very sorry, sir,’ said Mark. ‘I didn’t know you took it so much to
heart as this comes to.’
‘Of course you didn’t know,’ returned his master. ‘How should you
know, unless I told you? It’s no trial to you, Mark, to make yourself
comfortable and to bustle about. It’s as natural for you to do so under
the circumstances as it is for me not to do so. Why, you don’t suppose
there is a living creature in this ship who can by possibility have half
so much to undergo on board of her as I have? Do you?’ he asked, sitting
upright in his berth and looking at Mark, with an expression of great
earnestness not unmixed with wonder.
Mark twisted his face into a tight knot, and with his head very much
on one side, pondered upon this question as if he felt it an extremely
difficult one to answer. He was relieved from his embarrassment by
Martin himself, who said, as he stretched himself upon his back again
and resumed the book he had been reading:
‘But what is the use of my putting such a case to you, when the very
essence of what I have been saying is, that you cannot by possibility
understand it! Make me a little brandy-and-water--cold and very
weak--and give me a biscuit, and tell your friend, who is a nearer
neighbour of ours than I could wish, to try and keep her children a
little quieter to-night than she did last night; that’s a good fellow.’
Mr Tapley set himself to obey these orders with great alacrity, and
pending their execution, it may be presumed his flagging spirits
revived; inasmuch as he several times observed, below his breath, that
in respect of its power of imparting a credit to jollity, the Screw
unquestionably had some decided advantages over the Dragon. He also
remarked that it was a high gratification to him to reflect that he
would carry its main excellence ashore with him, and have it constantly
beside him wherever he went; but what he meant by these consolatory
thoughts he did not explain.
And now a general excitement began to prevail on board; and various
predictions relative to the precise day, and even the precise hour
at which they would reach New York, were freely broached. There was
infinitely more crowding on deck and looking over the ship’s side than
there had been before; and an epidemic broke out for packing up things
every morning, which required unpacking again every night. Those who had
any letters to deliver, or any friends to meet, or any settled plans of
going anywhere or doing anything, discussed their prospects a hundred
times a day; and as this class of passengers was very small, and the
number of those who had no prospects whatever was very large, there were
plenty of listeners and few talkers. Those who had been ill all along,
got well now, and those who had been well, got better. An American
gentleman in the after-cabin, who had been wrapped up in fur and oilskin
the whole passage, unexpectedly appeared in a very shiny, tall, black
hat, and constantly overhauled a very little valise of pale leather,
which contained his clothes, linen, brushes, shaving apparatus, books,
trinkets, and other baggage. He likewise stuck his hands deep into
his pockets, and walked the deck with his nostrils dilated, as already
inhaling the air of Freedom which carries death to all tyrants, and can
never (under any circumstances worth mentioning) be breathed by slaves.
An English gentleman who was strongly suspected of having run away from
a bank, with something in his possession belonging to its strong box
besides the key, grew eloquent upon the subject of the rights of man,
and hummed the Marseillaise Hymn constantly. In a word, one great
sensation pervaded the whole ship, and the soil of America lay close
before them; so close at last, that, upon a certain starlight night they
took a pilot on board, and within a few hours afterwards lay to until
the morning, awaiting the arrival of a steamboat in which the passengers
were to be conveyed ashore.
Off she came, soon after it was light next morning, and lying alongside
an hour or more--during which period her very firemen were objects of
hardly less interest and curiosity than if they had been so many angels,
good or bad--took all her living freight aboard. Among them Mark, who
still had his friend and her three children under his close protection;
and Martin, who had once more dressed himself in his usual attire, but
wore a soiled, old cloak above his ordinary clothes, until such time as
he should separate for ever from his late companions.
The steamer--which, with its machinery on deck, looked, as it worked its
long slim legs, like some enormously magnified insect or antediluvian
monster--dashed at great speed up a beautiful bay; and presently they
saw some heights, and islands, and a long, flat, straggling city.
‘And this,’ said Mr Tapley, looking far ahead, ‘is the Land of Liberty,
is it? Very well. I’m agreeable. Any land will do for me, after so much
water!’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MARTIN DISEMBARKS FROM THAT NOBLE AND FAST-SAILING LINE-OF-PACKET SHIP,
‘THE SCREW’, AT THE PORT OF NEW YORK, IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
HE MAKES SOME ACQUAINTANCES, AND DINES AT A BOARDING-HOUSE. THE
PARTICULARS OF THOSE TRANSACTIONS
Some trifling excitement prevailed upon the very brink and margin of the
land of liberty; for an alderman had been elected the day before;
and Party Feeling naturally running rather high on such an exciting
occasion, the friends of the disappointed candidate had found it
necessary to assert the great principles of Purity of Election and
Freedom of opinion by breaking a few legs and arms, and furthermore
pursuing one obnoxious gentleman through the streets with the design of
hitting his nose. These good-humoured little outbursts of the popular
fancy were not in themselves sufficiently remarkable to create any great
stir, after the lapse of a whole night; but they found fresh life and
notoriety in the breath of the newsboys, who not only proclaimed them
with shrill yells in all the highways and byways of the town, upon the
wharves and among the shipping, but on the deck and down in the cabins
of the steamboat; which, before she touched the shore, was boarded and
overrun by a legion of those young citizens.
‘Here’s this morning’s New York Sewer!’ cried one. ‘Here’s this
morning’s New York Stabber! Here’s the New York Family Spy! Here’s the
New York Private Listener! Here’s the New York Peeper! Here’s the New
York Plunderer! Here’s the New York Keyhole Reporter! Here’s the
New York Rowdy Journal! Here’s all the New York papers! Here’s full
particulars of the patriotic locofoco movement yesterday, in which
the whigs was so chawed up; and the last Alabama gouging case; and the
interesting Arkansas dooel with Bowie knives; and all the Political,
Commercial, and Fashionable News. Here they are! Here they are! Here’s
the papers, here’s the papers!’
‘Here’s the Sewer!’ cried another. ‘Here’s the New York Sewer! Here’s
some of the twelfth thousand of to-day’s Sewer, with the best accounts
of the markets, and all the shipping news, and four whole columns of
country correspondence, and a full account of the Ball at Mrs White’s
last night, where all the beauty and fashion of New York was assembled;
with the Sewer’s own particulars of the private lives of all the ladies
that was there! Here’s the Sewer! Here’s some of the twelfth thousand of
the New York Sewer! Here’s the Sewer’s exposure of the Wall Street
Gang, and the Sewer’s exposure of the Washington Gang, and the Sewer’s
exclusive account of a flagrant act of dishonesty committed by the
Secretary of State when he was eight years old; now communicated, at a
great expense, by his own nurse. Here’s the Sewer! Here’s the New York
Sewer, in its twelfth thousand, with a whole column of New Yorkers to be
shown up, and all their names printed! Here’s the Sewer’s article
upon the Judge that tried him, day afore yesterday, for libel, and the
Sewer’s tribute to the independent Jury that didn’t convict him, and the
Sewer’s account of what they might have expected if they had! Here’s
the Sewer, here’s the Sewer! Here’s the wide-awake Sewer; always on the
lookout; the leading Journal of the United States, now in its twelfth
thousand, and still a-printing off:--Here’s the New York Sewer!’
‘It is in such enlightened means,’ said a voice almost in Martin’s ear,
‘that the bubbling passions of my country find a vent.’
Martin turned involuntarily, and saw, standing close at his side, a
sallow gentleman, with sunken cheeks, black hair, small twinkling eyes,
and a singular expression hovering about that region of his face, which
was not a frown, nor a leer, and yet might have been mistaken at the
first glance for either. Indeed it would have been difficult, on a much
closer acquaintance, to describe it in any more satisfactory terms than
as a mixed expression of vulgar cunning and conceit. This gentleman wore
a rather broad-brimmed hat for the greater wisdom of his appearance; and
had his arms folded for the greater impressiveness of his attitude. He
was somewhat shabbily dressed in a blue surtout reaching nearly to
his ankles, short loose trousers of the same colour, and a faded buff
waistcoat, through which a discoloured shirt-frill struggled to force
itself into notice, as asserting an equality of civil rights with
the other portions of his dress, and maintaining a declaration of
Independence on its own account. His feet, which were of unusually
large proportions, were leisurely crossed before him as he half leaned
against, half sat upon, the steamboat’s bulwark; and his thick cane,
shod with a mighty ferule at one end and armed with a great metal
knob at the other, depended from a line-and-tassel on his wrist. Thus
attired, and thus composed into an aspect of great profundity, the
gentleman twitched up the right-hand corner of his mouth and his right
eye simultaneously, and said, once more:
‘It is in such enlightened means that the bubbling passions of my
country find a vent.’
As he looked at Martin, and nobody else was by, Martin inclined his
head, and said:
‘You allude to--?’
‘To the Palladium of rational Liberty at home, sir, and the dread of
Foreign oppression abroad,’ returned the gentleman, as he pointed with
his cane to an uncommonly dirty newsboy with one eye. ‘To the Envy of
the world, sir, and the leaders of Human Civilization. Let me ask you
sir,’ he added, bringing the ferule of his stick heavily upon the deck
with the air of a man who must not be equivocated with, ‘how do you like
my Country?’
‘I am hardly prepared to answer that question yet,’ said Martin ‘seeing
that I have not been ashore.’
‘Well, I should expect you were not prepared, sir,’ said the gentleman,
‘to behold such signs of National Prosperity as those?’
He pointed to the vessels lying at the wharves; and then gave a vague
flourish with his stick, as if he would include the air and water,
generally, in this remark.
‘Really,’ said Martin, ‘I don’t know. Yes. I think I was.’
The gentleman glanced at him with a knowing look, and said he liked his
policy. It was natural, he said, and it pleased him as a philosopher to
observe the prejudices of human nature.
‘You have brought, I see, sir,’ he said, turning round towards Martin,