I lately took
to my natural enemy the water (but in its placidest
condition), and, scorning to leave the country in
which I was born and in which I hope to die, I
glided for days and nights upon the silent byways
of our inland canals; giving myself up without reserve
to the unrestrained companionship of bargemen;
accommodating my vast bulk to the confined
space afforded by the crowded cabin of a Grand
Junction Canal Company's fly-boat.
Having obtained the very readily accorded consent,
advice, and assistance of the chairman of that
Company, with the active and valuable co-operation
of its obliging manager; one excessively wet evening
in the month of August of the present year, I
placed myself in a cab by the side of a friend and a
large meat-pie, who were to attend me on the journey,
and drove direct to the Company's offices in
the City Road. There was a pleasing novelty in
the earliest commencement of the voyage. Ordinary
tourists start from wharves near the Custom
House, or Saint Katherine's Docks; old-fashioned
inn-yards, or White Horse Cellars; large and noisy
railway stations; and some from their own stables,
with a dog-cart and a fast-trotting mare. I was an
extraordinary tourist, and my point of starting was
a basin. The cabman who was hired for the occasion
seemed to be greatly astonished at the direction
of his drive. He knew I meant travelling by
the portmanteau, the hamper, and the carpet-bag;
and many as were the travellers whom he had
driven in his time to meet conveyances, he had
never been ordered before to a barge-wharf by the
side of a basin, since he first bad the pleasure of
wearing a badge.
Goods, bales, boxes, casks, and cases were the
uniform rule at the Company's station, and passengers
a startling and once in half-a-century exception.
As we entered the large gas-lighted, roof-covered
yard, amongst a group of Warwickshire,
Staffordshire, and Lancashire bargemen, dressed in
their short fustian trousers, heavy boots, red plush
jackets, waistcoats with pearl buttons and fustian
sleeves, and gay silk handkerchiefs slung loosely
round their necks, we were looked upon as unwarrantable
intruders, until received and conducted to
our bounding bark by the attentive manager. We
threaded our way between waggons, horses, cranes,
bales, and men, until we stood before the black pool
of water that ran up from the basin under the Company's
buildings. Here upon its inky bosom was
the long thin form of the fly-boat Stourport, commanded
by Captain Randle, in which it had been
arranged we should make our journey on the canals
as far as Birmingham, or even beyond that town if
we felt so disposed. The captain and his crew, consisting
of two men and a youth, were prepared for
our arrival, and we found a good allowance of straw
in the hold, and a very light cargo of goods on
board-thanks to the vigilant care of the manager.
It was past midnight when we took our places in
the straw - my travelling friend, whom I shall call
Cuddy, myself, the slender luggage, and the great
meat-pie-and were poled out of the Company's
wharf into the broad basin by two of Captain Randle's
boatmen, while the captain steered and the
third member of the crew went overland with the
horse to meet the Stourport on the- towing path of
the Regent's Canal, at the further side of the Islington
tunnel.
It will, perhaps, be proper at this point to
describe our craft, not that she appeared anything
but a shapeless mass by the slender light of a
cloudy night (the rain had ceased), but our position
and prospects will be rendered clearer by anticipating
the knowledge that we gained in the
morning.
The Stourport may be taken as a fair specimen
of the fly-boats which are now employed in the
carrying trade upon the canals that intersect
England in every direction, joining each other;
and covering a length of nearly two thousand five
hundred miles. For the conveyance of heavy
goods that do not require a rapid transit, these boats
still maintain, and are always likely to maintain,
their position, unaffected by railway competition;
and it has been demonstrated that with the application
of equal forces, canal carriage will move at
the rate of two and a-half miles an hour - (the
average speed of the fly-boats) - a weight nearly
four times as great as railway carriage, and more
than three times as great as turnpike-road carriage.
These fly-boats belong to various individuals, firms,
and companies scattered throughout the country;
the largest owners being my worthy hosts, the
Grand Junction Canal Company, who, in addition
to being extensive canal proprietors, are also active
carriers.
The length of the Stourport from stem to stern
is about twenty yards; its breadth eight feet; and
its depth nearly five feet. At intervals, along the
centre of the hold, are upright poles and wedges,
rising to a height of full five feet above the side
edge of the boat; being a little higher in the
middle than near the stem and stern. Along the
tops of these poles are laid several planks which
join each other, forming a slightly bent bow over
the whole length of the hold. This framework is
covered with a thick black tarpaulin passed over
the horizontal planks, fastened tightly near the
edges of the boat, and kept down by ropes, running
across at intervals, like hoops, from one end to the
other. An open space is left near the centre of the
hold, through which the boatmen descend and
ascend when any goods require landing. Here it
was, under cover of this gipsy-like tent, that our
ample bed of straw was spread.
At the extreme head of the boat, beyond this
timber and tarpaulin structure, is a heart-shaped
platform, large enough to stand upon; and, like the
boat generally, strongly constructed, to be defended
from the constant concussions against the lockgates,
and the constant wear and tear caused by
friction against the lock-walls. At the stern of
the boat is the smallest conceivable cabin, in
which the four men - captain and crew - contrive
to sleep, to live, and to cook. It runs up shelvingly
from the sides of the boat to nearly the height of
the tarpaulin's back-bone; and is covered with a
flat deck; making it like a box. As you stand up
in the little cabin doorway - which runs in a short
distance, leaving part of this deck on each side of
you - you can place your elbows comfortably on the
top, or drop a coal down into the cabin-fire through
the chimney, which rises to the height of two feet,
close to the left; side of your nose. Between the
cabin-door, and the small, raised, fan-shaped platform,
upon which stand the steersman and the
tiller, there is a little passage, across the boat,
so narrow that it looks like a plank ribbon. This
completes the size and outline of the Stourport,
Captain Randle, which, in every important respect,
is a model of its sister fly-boats. Seen at some
little distance, from a bridge, as they glide slowly
and silently along the waters, these boats look very
like the pictures of attenuated hippopotami floating
down the African rivers.
We glide and bump, and bump and glide away
from the lofty, hollow buildings of the Company,
amidst the sound of echoing men's voices, and the
splashing of poles in the water; slowly past the
wharves, and factories, and tile and whitening
stores that line the sides of the basin; plenty of
time being allowed for observation, as our pace is
very slow-as it will be all through the journey; for we have gone at one bound a
century back in the history of conveyance, and must be satisfied with an uniform
and almost imperceptible rate of from two to two and a-half miles an hour. Our
progress is the result of the poling of the two boatmen who stand on the top of
the tarpaulin structure; upon the ridge of the boards which
continually oscillate over the water. Here - with a
pole several yards long, and of the thickness of a
child's arm, with a hook and spike at the end,
which is planted in the bed of the canal, and with
the other end fixed under the arm - the boatman
leans over the water, at a very dangerous angle,
and impels the Stourport with its precious cargo,
by a strong muscular walking-pressure of the feet
upon the tarpaulin's back-bone.
About one o'clock in the morning we reached
the Islington tunnel, and here we are enlightened
as to another process of barge propulsion, called
legging. A couple of strong thick boards, very
like in shape to tailors' sleeve-boards, but twice the
size, are hooked on to places formed on each side
of the barge, near the head, from which they project
like two raised oars. On these two narrow,
insecure platforms, these two venturesome boatmen
lie on their backs, holding on by grasping the board
underneath, and with their legs, up to the waist,
hanging over the water. A lantern, placed at the
head of the barge, serves to light the operation,
which consists in moving the Stourport through
the black tunnel, by a measured side-step against
the slimy, glistening walls j the right foot is first
planted in a half-slanting direction, and the left
foot is constantly brought over with a sweep to
take the vacated place, until the right can recover
its footing; like the operation known as "hands
over" by young ladies who play upon the piano in
a showy and gymnastic manner. The Stourport,
steered by its commander, Captain Randle, walks through the tunnel in the dead
of the night, by the aid of its four stout legs, and its four heavily hobnailed
boots, that make a full echoing sound upon the walls like the measured clapping
of hands, but disturb not the sleeping inmates of houses and kitchens under
which they pass; many of whom,
perhaps, are utterly ignorant of the black and
barge-loaded Styx that flows beneath them.
We emerge from the tunnel, at last, and tackle
to our horse. Our progress is then slow and steady,
between the silent houses of Camden Town; past
the anything but silent railway carrying establishment
of the Messrs. Pickford; round the outskirts
of the Regent's Park; under the overhanging trees
of the Zoological Gardens; and through Saint
John's Wood, to the termination of the Regent's
Canal, and the commencement of the Grand J unction
Canal, near the Harrow Road, at Paddington.,
About this time my friend and companion, Cuddy,
who is remarkable for an appetite that requires
satisfying at the most extraordinary times and
seasons, could be restrained no longer from attacking
the great meat-pie. A large watchman's
lantern was handed down the hold; and, by its
rather dim light, at exactly two A.M., the frugal
meal began. The picture formed was of a mixed
character; the pie, a bottle, and the grouping being suggestive of Teniers, ,while the lantern-light, and
its effects, were decidedly Rembrandtish. The
picture struck the astonished gaze of a Paddington
lock-keeper, who had been man and boy at that
lock for five and twenty years, and who had never
seen anything like it in the hold of a fly-barge - always
devoted to bales, boxes, and casks - during
the whole course of his long experience. He
gazed in silence, and went away while the lock was
filling with water, only to return and to indulge in
another gaze. No-one connected with the boat
volunteered to enlighten him as to the cause of the
very unusual spectacle; and, after a time, which
the junction of the two locks allowed him for rumination,
he came up to the side of the boat, close to
the opening in the tarpaulin, and delivered himself
of a few words to myself and Cuddy. It may be
that he had been solacing the solitude of his hut
with something of a comforting nature, and had
issued with an over-developed sense of dignity and
authority. It may be that his temper was a little
soured by seeing the bottle, and receiving no invitation
from the eccentric passengers and owners
to partake of its contents. Anyway, his tone was
thick, and his meaning unfriendly.
"I don't know who you are, an' I don't know
who you may be," he began; "you may be all right,
and you may not; but I'm here to do my duty."
Cuddy explained to him the very confined limits
of that duty, which consisted in opening and shutting the lock-gates, and seeing that no one threw
dead dogs or cats in the water, to obstruct the
channel. This remark had an irritating effect.
"Sir," he resumed, addressing himself particularly
to-Cuddy, who maddened him by drinking out
of the bottle, "I don't know who you are, an' I
don't know who you may be, but I know my duty;
if I didn't, I hadn't ought to be here."
Something called him away at this point, for a.
moment; but he returned immediately to the attack.
"I see a party in the barge," he resumed, "and
how do I know who they are?"
"How, indeed?" replied Cuddy.
"Very well; I know my duty. I don't know
who you may be--"
Our barge had, by this time, cleared the locks,
and the argumentative, but language-limited lockkeeper
was left behind upon a brickwork promontory,
struggling with his frozen eloquence, and with
many conflicting emotions. He probably thought
that Captain Randle was harbouring visitors without
the knowledge of the Company; or that a secret
mission of observance, a surveying expedition, or a
pleasure-party of eccentric directors was boating on
the canal; and, while he was anxious to assert his
official existence, and to show himself in the eyes of
the great unknown as a. highly vigilant and meritorious
officer, he was mad with curiosity to know
the meaning of the unusual group in the hold of the Stourport; and careful not to say anything that
might be offensive to the ears of probable authority,
travelling in disguise. No one had the charity to
enlighten his ignorance, and he was left to pass the
short remainder of the night, tossing uneasily upon his
couch under the heavy load of a deep, dark mystery.
Before we leave the Regent's Canal, and join
the Paddington branch of the Grand Junction
Canal, to proceed in the direction of Uxbridge, we
are received in the gauging-house of the Grand
Junction Company, and the weight of luggage which
we carry on board is measured by a barometer,
which is dipped in the canal close to the sides of
the vessel, fore and aft, and the results entered in
a book, from which we are rated. This necessary
examination is made in the interest of canal proprietors
at every junction where a barge passes
from one property to another. The Grand Junction
Company charge tolls to their own barges, the
same as to others, the accounts of the carrying
trade, and the canal trade, being kept distinct.
This ordeal concluded, we are fairly launched upon
the inland canals, and our regular round of canal
life begins. In front of us is our butty-barge
(butty being a Staffordshire term for foreman),
destined to be our companion through the journey,
and undertake the duty of sending a man in advance
with a key, to get the water prepared in the locks.
This is done by the driver of the horse, and is no
inconsiderable task, when we know that there are
nearly a hundred locks upon the Grand Junction
property. The barges of all the large proprietors
travel in tandem-pairs and the task of lock-opening
falls to the lot of the foremost barge. Each
boat has a captain and three men, who work in
lengths, or distances, of from six to ten miles; one
man steering while the other drives, and attends to
the locks; the other two sleeping or resting until
their turns come to work the boat. The captain is
responsible to the Company for the barge and the
goods; and he receives a certain fixed payment in
pounds sterling for the voyage. The crew of three
men is employed, paid, and fed by the captain.
The victualling of the vessel consists in shipping a
sack of potatoes, a quantity of inferior tea, and
about fifty pounds of meat at the beginning of the
voyage; while large loaves of bread, weighing upwards
of eight pounds, are got at certain places on
the line of canal. If our pace is slow, it has the
advantage of being incessant; for night or day we
never stop, but keep on the even tenor of two and
a-half miles an hour, except when, for about two
minutes, we are delayed at each lock.
By degrees the novelty of our situation subsides
a little, and we settle down for a few hours upon
our straw bed. Cuddy is restless; and, having the
weight of much historical information concerning
canals upon his mind, which he has hastily crammed
from cyclopaedias, and such books, in anticipation
of our journey, he suddenly finds it necessary that
he should communicate to me an account of early
Chinese, Assyrian, and Roman claims to the introduction
and improvement of this very useful, agreeable,
and economical mode of conveyance. Finding
that I do not feel a proper and intelligent interest in
the early origin and struggles of canals; that I do
not care how the Chinese dug them; what the Egyptians
thought of them, or what the early Greeks called
them; knowing that I am familiar with every step in
the noble history of the energetic, single-minded
Duke of Bridgewater, and his worthy engineer and
companion, Brindley, and all they did for canal extension
in England, - Cuddy (who is not a bore, or
he would not have been invited to join me on this
voyage) changes his ground. Leaving me to wallow
in the ignorance which I seem to covet, he appeals
with more chance of success to the weakest point
about me - my imagination. As a basis of operation,
he explains in a popular manner the nature
and construction of canal-locks. He tells me how
our frail bark, the Stourport, will be admitted into
a deep, narrow, oblong, brick well; and how, as
soon as we are in the dreadful trap, two massive
iron-bound timber gates will close behind us in such
a manner that the more the pressure is increased
from behind, the tighter will they bind themselves
together. Then he draws a fearfully vivid picture
of the two gates in front of us - a single, slender
barrier, that alone opposes the advance of an ocean
- a hundred thousand tons of water forty feet above
our heads, fretting to be at us, like a bear looking
down from his pole upon the tender children outside his pit. Cuddy candidly admits that this barrier
is secured by powerful and well-tried machinery;
but qualifies the admission by his description of the
persons who are supposed to regulate the action of
this machinery. He puts it to me, whether I ought
to feel secure in resting where I am, while a feeble
old man from the lock-house totters out of his bed
in the dead of night, with a glimmering lantern
in one hand, and the fatal lock-key in the other,
groping his way to the awful barrier; or while the
overworked, drowsy, and perhaps headstrong boy,
who travels along the towing-path with the horse,
rushes at the fearful flood-gates to play with the
deluge. What can I expect, but to be dashed backward
and forward in a savage maelstrom; or hurled,
like a straw, with trees, haystacks, cows, and farmhouses,
over the distant meadows?
Very true, indeed, Cuddy, very true, indeed - but
do not, for mercy's sake--be so--shocking-
Ly--graph-ic. Sleep came at last. A fitful,
feverish sleep. A very inferior balm, and nothing
like great Nature's second course.
It had lasted, perhaps, an hour, when it was abruptly broken
by a violent bump, which caused
the devoted Stourport to tremble from stem to
stern. Cuddy awoke, and sat Upright; while I
started instantly upon my legs. Everything was
pitch-black. Not a gleam of light was visible.
The rushing, hissing, sound of bursting waters
was all I heard. I realized our position in a moment;
we had settled down in the bed of a lock,
and the canal-flood had already closed over our
heads. I flew to the spot where there had been an
opening in the tarpaulin before we went to sleep,
and tore it open. The moon was shining dimly in
the sky, for it was now near daybreak. Our bark
was certainly in the bed of a lock, rising gradually
to the upper level close to the brick wall. The
water was pouring in at the lock-gates; and the
bump that had aroused us was the result of a more
than usually violent concussion of the head of the
boat against the 'upper gate timbers. The pitchblack
darkness of the hold was caused by the
fatherly tenderness of the boatman on duty; who,
finding we were sleeping under the open tarpaulin,
with a heavy dew coming down upon our unprotected
heads, had drawn the rough and humble
curtain without disturbing us, and had innocently
added to the horrors of our nightmare.
"Cuddy," I said to my friend and companion.,
with something of severity in my tone, "let us have
no more of these graphic descriptions, just upon the
eve of slumber."
STAGE THE SECOND.
FURTHER sleep that night or morning, sound or
unsound, on board the Stourport was impossible.
We had experienced the effect of passing through
our first night-lock; and, while comparing notes,
we passed through a second, and then a third, until
we decided that a bargeman's life was one continual
bump.
Cuddy was aloft at half-past four, A.M standing
outside the opening in the tarpaulin upon the edge
of the boat, holding on to the side ropes, examining
the slow moving panorama of country, exchanging
salutations with Captain Randle at the
tiller, chirping popular airs from the "Barber of
Seville," and glancing ravenously down at the great
meat-pie. I arose, took my place at the opening
on the other side, and found the morning fresh and
cloudy; though giving promise of a fine day. Captain Randle's son was standing upon the narrow
roof of the little cabin, beginning his toilet for the
day, by combing his hair, that had been turned to
a straw colour by much exposure to the air and sun.
He was a light-eyed, full-blooded, red-cheeked,
good-tempered, clean-looking young man of twenty-three. Presently he dipped a mop into the canal;
drawing it carefully round the edges of a pair of
remarkably heavy boots, that had never known
brush or blacking in this world, and never would.
A bargeman's boot looks more as if it had been
turned out of a blacksmith's forge, than a shoemaker's
stall. It differs from a navvy's boot in
being very loose. The navvy's boot is a laced-up
article binding itself very close round the ankles - so
close, in fact, that it seems a marvel how such
powerful and gigantic bodies can be supported upon
such frail props, without causing them to snap short
off like pieces of tobacco-pipe. The bargeman's
boot is an easy, full-sized blucher; with upper
leather as thick as a moderate slice of bread and
butter, and with soles like those worn by short
performers who personate giants upon the stage.
There is none of that finish, none of that rounding
off, none of that dandy coarseness about them,
which distinguishes the shooting-boots displayed
for show in Regent Street windows, or which
gentlemen drag after them when they go upon the
moors. Rude, uncultivated strength is the main
feature of the bargeman's boot. The sole absolutely
bristles with a plantation of gooseberry-headed
hobnails; the toe and heel heavily strengthened
with massive bandages of iron. Twelve shillings a
pair is paid to makers, who reside upon the canal
banks, for these boots, and they must be dirt-cheap
if only to sell for old metal. The bargeman's
stocking is another peculiar manufacture, worsted
in material, bright, clear blue in colour, ribbed and
knitted by village hands. It is twice the thickness
of domestic worsted; serving perhaps as a shield
to protect the foot from the attacks of the heavy
boot. In other respects, the bargeman dresses
chiefly in fustian. His trousers are always loose,
short, .and Dutch-built, and his jacket is a red or
brown plush waistcoat with fustian sleeves. He
wears a cap, a sailor's leather hat, or a brown hair
structure, with a cloth top and a bright peak.
Captain Randle, who is still steering the Stourport,
is a short man, between fifty and sixty years
of age, with brown hands, a brown, honest-looking
face, scanty light hair, small twinkling eyes, and a
round lump of a nose. He looks fresh and clean,
although he is yet unwashed, and has been up nearly all the night. Fifty years of his life have been
spent upon the canals of his native land; and fifty
years of a boatman's life means fifty years of
boat. His land-home is in Stoke, in Staffordshire;
and, although his chief line of route is now from
London to Birmingham, and from Birmingham to
Manchester, he does not leave his boat-home to pay
it a visit above three times a-year. When he
arrives at his destination he unships one load of
goods, and takes in another, to return, without
stopping, along the same road he came. Every
tree, every bridge, every lock or house on the line
of march is familiar to him as his own hands, and
his reflections are not disturbed by the dangerous
and troublesome gifts of reading and writing. His
son, the straw-haired young man, has been taught
to steer through a printed book; but the old man
constantly laments the fact that he is not "a scollard." Like many wiser and greater men, Captain
Randle has a. strong tendency to overrate that
which he does not possess; and he fully believes
that, grant him but the mysterious and to him unknown arts of reading and writing, and there would
have been nothing to prevent him, when he was a
younger man, from becoming the Lord Mayor of
London.
The other boatman, who is sleeping in the cabin,
and the youth who is driving the horse, are hearty
creatures, with cheerful dispositions, large appetites,
and little else to distinguish them.
After making a. rough toilet with a bowl of
water, a piece of yellow soap, and a coarse towel,
we manage, with some dexterity, much exertion,
and a little danger of falling overboard, to reach
the small deck of the little cabin. This limited
platform is the breakfast-table, dinner-table, teatable,
and sitting-room of the bargemen and their
visitors during the summer months. If size is
sometimes a luxury, smallness is sometimes a convenience;
and as we take our breakfasts upon this
poop--as Captain Randle calls it, in ambitious nautical
phrase - we seem to have everything within
our reach, and to be in the midst of everything. The captain stands in the doorway of the little cabin,
with the upper half of his body visible above the
deck, and the lower half roasting in close contact
with the cabin fire. He makes tea in a large tin
teapot standing on the poop, which holds two
quarts; and it is no trouble for him to stoop down
and bring up the steaming kettle from the cabin
stove. We sit on the edge of the deck, with our
feet dangling over the water; and, while I am
patiently waiting for the brewing of the refreshing
beverage, Cuddy is preparing for a ferocious attack
upon the once great, but now rapidly-diminishing,
meat-pie. The whole crew is assembled upon the
deck and the tiller platform, the horse being left to
tow the boat unled, with his head deeply buried in
a small tin milking-can full of provender - a novel
kind of nose-bag specially provided for barge-towing
horses, that they may move, and eat, and breathe,
at one and the same time. The tea, a weak and
curiously-flavoured drink, is served out in basins
without saucers, and, above all, without milk, this
luxury being unknown in the victualling department
of an ordinary fly-boat. It is sweetened with light-coloured
moist sugar, ladled out of a drawer in the
cabin, and is stirred with some of the rudest spoons
ever made. The knives and forks are worthy of
their companions the spoons, and they must have
come from Sheffield when that distinguished town
was first struggling with the earliest rudiments of its staple manufacture. The knife that Cuddy holds in
his right hand, wherewith to demolish the pie, is a
slice of iron, not unlike a Dutch razor in shape, and
about half the size of a stage scimitar. It is stuck
or wedged into a dark square wooden handle, that
is indebted for any polish and smoothness it possesses
to half a century's use, and the friction of
Captain Randle's hard and bronzed hands. The
fork has two prongs, one shorter than the other, and
both black with the action of many years' grease
and rust. The handle is much chipped and very
discoloured, looking like a very dirty piece of dark
yellow soap. These appearances must be taken
as representing inherent defects in the cutlery, and
not a want of cleanliness on the part of Captain
Randle and his crew.
The boat, considering its limited space, and its
four inhabitants (now swelled to six), is a model of
tidiness; and in the intervals of sleep, or the pauses
of work, the youth with the straw-coloured hair is
always dusting everything about him with a short
hair-broom. He takes a pride in the cabin department of the Stourport, as anyone can easily see, even
if the father did not constantly draw their attention
to the fact; and if any brass knob could not have
been kept bright; if the full-sized teapot would not
have done for a. looking-glass; or, if anyone by
spilling oil, or dropping any other filthy fluid, had
soiled the virgin purity of that spotless poop or deck,
the young boatman with the straw-hair must have
knocked somebody down or broken his heart.
It was well for us that the deck was kept clean,
for our bread and butter had to rest upon it, with.
out the usual domestic conveniences of plates.
New as we were to our situation, we managed pretty
well, although we occasionally suffered from a
giddiness caused by the gliding motion of the boat,
and a strong desire to drop over into the water.
The hundred locks, which were destined to break
our sleep, were also destined to disturb the even
course of our meals. Every time we reached a gate
- sometimes once - in fifty yards-it was necessary
to give up all considerations of eating and drinking,
and to poise the basins of tea carefully in our
hands, to prepare for the inevitable series of bumps
and avoid a total spill. Curious as was the flavour,
and mild as was the stimulus conveyed by this tea, it
was the favourite and only drink, night and day - except
water - not only of our own sturdy boatmen, but
of all other sturdy boatmen, as far as my observation
went. Beer and spirits were little used, and a pipe
seemed to be a rare indulgence. Melancholy pictures
of drunken brawls, improper language, constant
fights, danger to life and property, hordes of licensed
ruffians beyond the pale of law and order, which my
cheerful friends had drawn the moment they heard
of my intention to make an unprotected barge
journey, all proved false before the experience of a few hours, and shamefully false before the further
experience of a few days. We were inmates of a
new home and friends of a new family, whose members
were honest, industrious, simple, and natural
- too independent to stoop to the meanness of
masquerading in adopted habits and manners,
with a view of misleading the judgment of their
guests.
As the morning developed, the promise of a fine
day was fulfilled; and, passing through a brickkiln-looking
country near Brentford, we proceeded in a
zigzag direction towards Uxbridge and Rickmansworth.
The further we went, the more did our
long-cherished notions of the dry, utilitarian character
of canals disappear, to give place to a feeling of
admiration for the picturesque beauty of the country,
and the artificial river, lying and running unheeded
so near the metropolis. Now we were floating on a
low level, deeply embowered in trees, which, in some
places, nearly closed over our heads; now we were
on a high level, commanding a view of woods and
meadows, stretching away for miles; now we came
to long avenues of stately trees, the valued heirlooms
of ancient families and the growth of centuries; now we came to smoothly-shaven lawns, to
parks, and gardens running down to the water's
edge; now we came to long armies of tall, spear-shaped
reeds, half rising from the water, and bowing
with slow dignity and reverence as we passed by;
now we came to distant red-bricked mansions, playing
at bo-peep amongst lofty trees; then, as the
graceful windings of our river carried us further
into the bosom of the parks, we saw them for a
few minutes standing boldly out upon the brow of a
hill, and then we lost them at another turn in the
stream; now we came to little side brooks, which
broke musically over small sparkling waterfaIls,
gliding into our silent by-way, which carried them
gently away; now we came to old rope-worn bridges
that stood out against a lofty background of rustling
poplars, whose tops were only familiar to the cloud-loving
sky-larks; now we came to other bridges,
the arches of which seemed half full of shady water,
and closed in with banks of shrubs and flowers,
through which it would be cruel to force a passage;
and now we passed little Ophelia-loved pools, overhung
with willows, tinted with weeds, and silent as
roadside graves.
Reclining here and there upon the rich grass
banks, or standing solitary, or in groups of three or
four, upon the towing path, were patient anglers, all
having the stamp of dwellers in the closest portions
of the metropolis. They were common men to look
at-unshaven, unwashed; with ragged clothes and
with dirty shirts. The railway had brought them in
an hour, and for a few pence, from Whitechapel or
Bethnal Green; and whatever they may have been
in their own lives, and their own homes, they could
scarcely fail to gain a little improvement from the
short communion with the country, to which they
had been led by the allurement of their favourite
sport. One man, who fished by himself, was a
middle-aged Jew, bearing every appearance of days
passed in some yellow back-parlour, behind a store
of mouldy second-hand furniture up an Aldgate
court.
Our horses are as docile, intelligent, and well-behaved
as the trained steeds of the circus; and,
for many miles, they are left to go on unled, chewing
their provender in their milking-can nose-bags.
When they are free from this encumbrance, and they
stop too long at a broken part of the bank to drink
out of the canal, they are urged on by a shouting
of their names and a cracking of the short whip
by the steersman thirty yards behind them. At
bridges, where the towing-path does not pass under
the arch, the mere unhooking of the rope is sufficient,
and the horse, freed from the weight of the
barge, walks quickly up the incline, over the bridge,
and down to the path, even when, as is frequently
the case, it changes to the other side of the canal.
There he patiently waits until his burden floats
through, and the rope is again hooked on.
The Grand Junction Canal, passing in a zigzag
direction through parts of Middlesex, Hertfordshire,
Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, to Braunstont in
Northamptonshire, is about forty-three feet in surface breadth, upwards of ninety miles in length,
and, with one or two falls, is on a gradual rise from
Paddington, where it ends in a branch, to Braunston,
where it begins in a guaging-house. The locks are
expensive structures, costing, when double, two
thousand pounds a-piece; and many of them are so
close together, that they form a series of steps in
a waterfall staircase. These lock-stations furnish
nearly the only examples of land-life that we come
in close contact with; for the general course of
canals is to avoid, where it is possible, passing
through the large towns and villages, and wind
round the extreme ends, and distant outskirts of
such places. Many of the lock-houses are very
pretty. All of them are neat and clean. In some
of the most important lock-houses, the keeper is
seated in a little counting-house amongst his books
and papers; in some of the smaller ones, rude
accounts are kept in mysterious chalk signs upon the
doorway or the walls. This is a favourite mode of
recording business in broad open barges, engaged
in carrying bricks, or other cargoes requiring to be
reckoned by numbers; which numbers appear, not
in numerals, but in broad chalk lines, marked on
the sides of the hold. At all the lock-houses, coy
little gardens peep out, and many of them are profusely
decorated with flowers both inside and outside.
One cottage on the canal bank, connected
with the canal traffic, is such Or complete nosegay,
that the word Office, and the City arms painted over
its doorway, are scarcely visible for roses.
While the Stourport is working slowly through
the foaming, eddying locks, and we are reclining
upon its poop, or sitting astride of its tarpaulin's
back-bone, we are objects of interest and curiosity
to the lock-keepers, who salute us with "Good
morning," or remarks about the day, while their
wives and daughters peep slyly at the two unusual
strangers from behind the thin shelter of their
cottage curtains. . . . . . . Man cannot be fed upon scenery and the outpourings
of character, and in due course we find it
necessary to take another meal. Dinner it ought
to be called, according to the rotation in which it
comes; but the meat-pie having been devoured
(chiefly by Cuddy), and the fifty pounds of beef taken
in at London, and all boiled off at once to insure its
keeping fresh, not being to our taste, we are obliged
to put up with a substantial tear-Cuddy officiating
in the cabin as boiler of eggs and preparer of
coffee. I go down to witness this interesting operation,
paying my first visit to the small cabin, and
gaining an opportunity of examining its fittings and
dimensions. The kettle has boiled for some time,
so the fire is low, and the heat is what the boatmen
call moderate-like an oven about an hour after the bakings have been withdrawn. There can be no
doubt that the cabin of the Stourport is the smallest
place of its kind in the whole world; yet one half
of it is divided off for the bed, which rests under a
wooden arch at the end of the cabin, immediately
opposite the doorway. This bed, with close packing,
accommodates two men during their short
turns-in for sleep, who lie under a piece of rope, a
whip, a scrubbing-brush, an old umbrella, and a
saw, all hooked on to the low roof. The bed rests
in a perfect nest of cupboards, large and small, the
doors of which are fitted with hooks that hold caps,
brushes, and various small and necessary articles.
The bed and clothes are very clean, and the painted
decorations round the edge of the arch and on the
doors were once gaudy, but are now faded. From
the foot of the steps, running up to the arch, on the
right-hand side of the cabin as you enter, is a low
seat, large enough for two persons, and, of course,
constructed with a lid to form a box. Opposite this
seat, also close to the arch, is a piece of furniture
not unlike a compressed old-fashioned book-case.
The upper part consists of crowded shelves placed
in a gothic-arched framework, which is closed
with a. door whose hinges are at the bottom, and
which fastens at the top with a. spring. When this
door is closed, it displays upon its surface a small
round looking-glass, in which a boatman may shave,
or comb his hair; and, when it is opened, it turns
down upon its hinges, standing out, self-supported,
at right angles, and forming the only table of the
cabin. Close against the doorway of the cabin
comes the stove, a. substantial structure, with a low
grate, a deep blower, a. round fender and a narrow funnel passing upwards through
the low roof. Against the wall, near this stove, is
a small oil.lamp; and over the cabin seat are more
cupboards and shelves. Swinging from the roof is a
water-can, which strikes your head when you stand
upright; and near your feet is a tub, into which it is
almost impossible to prevent stepping. The ship's
papers are strapped on to the ceiling, and every
inch of space is carefully economized. Everything
is scrupulously neat and clean, and wherever a piece
of metal is visible, that metal is sure to shine. The
Stourport is rather faded in its decorations, and is
not a gay specimen of the fly-barge in all its glory
of cabin paint and varnish; but still enough remains
to show what it was in its younger days, and what
it will be again when it gets a week in dock for repairs
at Birmingham. The boatman lavishes all
his taste, all his rude, uncultivated love for the fine
arts, upon the external and internal ornaments of
his floating home. His chosen colours are red, yellow,
and blue: all so bright that, when newly laid
on and appearing under the rays of a mid-day sun,
they are too much for the unprotected eye of the
unaccustomed stranger. The two sides of the cabin,
seen from the bank and the towing-path, present a
couple of landscapes, in which there is a lake, a
castle, a sailing-boat, and a range of mountains,
painted after the style of the great teaboard school
of art. If the Stourport cannot match many of its companions in the freshness of its cabin decorations,
it can eclipse every other barge upon the canal in
the brilliancy of a new two-gallon water-can, shipped
from a bankside painter's yard, at an early period
of the journey. It displayed no fewer than six
dazzling and fanciful composition landscapes, several
gaudy wreaths of flowers, and the name of its
proud proprietor, Thomas Randle, running round the
centre upon a background of blinding yellow.
Small as the Stourport cabin is for four fullgrown
boatmen (leaving out its two present visitors), cabins just as small, and furnished in most
respects in the same manner, are made to accommodate
large families that spring up amongst the
river population.
The Grand Junction Canal Company do not
allow any of their barges to be turned into what are
called family-boats; but amongst the small proprietors
there is no such restriction; while the slowboats,
or boats that only travel during the day,
resting at night, because towed without a change
of horses, belong, in most cases, to the men who
conduct them, and who, of course, are free to act as
they think proper. The way this freedom is exercised
is shown by the pictures of family-barges, and
their internal economy, which pass us at every turn.
There is the boatman, and his wife, a stout, sunburnt
woman, and children, varying in number from
two to ten, and in ages from three weeks to twelve
years. The youngest of these helpless little ones,
dirty, ragged, and stunted in growth, are confined
in the close recesses of the cabin (the tarpaulin-covered
part of the boat is inaccessible to children),
stuck round the bed, like images upon a shelf;
sitting upon the cabin-seat; standing in pans and
tubs; rolling helplessly upon the floor, within a few
inches of a fierce fire and a steaming kettle; leaning
over the edge of the boat in the little passage between
the cabin-doorway and the tiller-platform, with their
bodies nearly in the water; lying upon the poop,
with no barrier to protect them from being shaken
into the canal; fretful for want of room, air, and
amusement; always beneath the feet of the mother,
and being cuffed and scolded for that which they
cannot avoid; sickly, even under their sunburnt
skins; waiting wearily for the time when their little
limbs will be strong enough to trot along the
towing-path; or dropping suddenly over the gaudy
sides of the boat, quietly into the open, hungry
arms of death. When these helpless creatures reach
five or six years of age, they are intrusted with a
whip, and made useful to their thoughtless parents,
by night and day, as drivers of the horse that tows
the boat. There are little tender girls, in heavy
boots, slouched sun-bonnets, and dusty clothes,
running on either side of the rope, or under the
horse's legs; tugging at the harness; maddening
the animal with all a child's impatience; and imitating the coarseness and violence of a boatman's
voice and gesture, with all a child's exaggeration
and power of mimicry. Not a week passes but
what one of these canal-childreu is drowned in
the silent byway upon which they were were born; and, painful
as the incident is, it is too common to excite
observation. . . . . . . . The boatmen were preparing for the
passage of the Blisworth tunnel (nearly two miles in length),
an underground journey of an hour's duration. The
horses were unhooked, and while standing in a
group upon the towing-path, one of the child-drivers,
a girl about six years of age, got in between them with a whip, driving them, like a young
Amazon, right and left; utterly disregarding the frantic yells of a dozen
boatmen, and nearly half
a dozen family-boatmen's wives. At the mouth
the tunnel were a number of leggers, waiting to be
employed; their charge being one shilling to leg
the boat through. We engaged one of these labourers for our boat to divide the
duty with one of our boatmen; while the youth went overland with the horse. A
lantern was put at the head of the boat; the narrow boards, like tailors' sleeve-boards, were
hooked on like projecting oars near the head; the
two legging men took their places upon these
slender platforms, lying upon their backs; and, with
their feet placed horizontally against the wall, they
proceeded to shove us with measured tread through
the long, dark tunnel.
The place felt delightfully cool, going in out of the
full glare of a fierce noon-day sun; and this effect was
increased by the dripping of water from the roof;
and the noise caused by springs which broke in at
various parts of the tunnel. The cooking on board
the boats went on as usual, and our space being
confined, and our air limited, we were regaled with
several flavours springing from meat, amongst which
the smell of hashed mutton certainly predominated.
To beguile the tedium of the slow, dark journey - to
amuse the leggers, whose work is fearfully hard,
and acts upon the breath after the first quarter of a
mile, and above all to avail themselves of the atmospheric
effects of the tunnel, the boatmen at the
tillers nearly all sing, and our vocalist was the captain's
straw-haired son.
If any observer will take the trouble to examine
the character of the songs that obtain the greatest
popularity amongst men and women engaged in
heavy and laborious employments, he will find that
the ruling favourite is the plaintive ballad. Comic
songs are hardly known. The main secret of the
wide popularity of the ballad lies in the fact, that it
generally contains a story, and is written in a measure
that fits easily into a slow, drawling, breathtaking
tune which all the lower orders know; and
which, as far as I can find, has never been written
or printed upon paper; but has been handed down
from father or mother to son and daughter, from
generation to generation, from the remotest times.
'The plots of these ballad stories are generally based
upon the passion of love; love of the most hopeless
and melancholy kind; and the suicide of the heroine,
by drowning in a river, is a poetical occurrence
as common as jealousy.
There may have been a dozen of these ballards
chanted in the Blisworth tunnel at the same time;
the wail of our straw-haired singer rising above the
rest. They came upon our ears, mixed with the
splashing of water, in drowsy cadences, and at
long intervals, like the moaning of a maniac chained
to a wall. The effect upon the mind was, in this
dark passage, to create a wholesome belief in the
existence of large masses of misery, and the utter
nothingness of the things of the upper world.
We were apprised of the approach of another
barge, by the strange figure of a boatman, who
stood at the head with a light. It was necessary
to leave off legging, for the boats to pass each other,
and the leggers waited until the last moment when
a concussion seemed inevitable, and then sprang
instantaneously, with singular dexterity, on to the
sides of their boats, pulling their narrow platforms
up immediately after them. The action of the light
in front of our boat produced a very fantastic shadow
of our recumbent boatman-legger upon the side
wall of the tunnel. As his two legs stuck out horizontally
from the edge of the legging-board, treading,
one over the other, against the wall, they threw
a shadow of two arms, which seemed to be held by
a thin old man-another shadow of the same substance - bent nearly double at the
stomach, who worked them over and over, as if turning two great mangle-handles
with both hands at the same time.
John Hollingshead, Odd Journeys In and Out of London, 1860