Mr. Dickens declined to agree that the Mississippi steamboatswere 'magnificent,' or that they were 'floating palaces,'--terms which had always been applied to them; terms which did notover-express the admiration with which the people viewed them.
Mr. Dickens's position was unassailable, possibly; the people'sposition was certainly unassailable. If Mr. Dickens wascomparing these boats with the crown jewels; or with the Taj,or with the Matterhorn; or with some other priceless or wonderfulthing which he had seen, they were not magnificent--he was right.
The people compared them with what they had seen; and, thus measured,thus judged, the boats were magnificent--the term was the correct one,it was not at all too strong. The people were as right as wasMr. Dickens. The steamboats were finer than anything on shore.
Compared with superior dwelling-houses and first-class hotels inthe Valley, they were indubitably magnificent, they were 'palaces.'
To a few people living in New Orleans and St. Louis, they werenot magnificent, perhaps; not palaces; but to the great majorityof those populations, and to the entire populations spread overboth banks between Baton Rouge and St. Louis, they were palaces;they tallied with the citizen's dream of what magnificence was,and satisfied it.
Every town and village along that vast stretch of doubleriver-frontage had a best dwelling, finest dwelling, mansion,--the home of its wealthiest and most conspicuous citizen.
It is easy to describe it: large grassy yard, with palingfence painted white--in fair repair; brick walk from gateto door; big, square, two-story 'frame' house, painted whiteand porticoed like a Grecian temple--with this difference,that the imposing fluted columns and Corinthian capitalswere a pathetic sham, being made of white pine, and painted;iron knocker; brass door knob--discolored, for lackof polishing. Within, an uncarpeted hall, of planed boards;opening out of it, a parlor, fifteen feet by fifteen--in some instances five or ten feet larger; ingrain carpet;mahogany center-table; lamp on it, with green-paper shade--standing on a gridiron, so to speak, made of high-colored yarns,by the young ladies of the house, and called a lamp-mat;several books, piled and disposed, with cast-iron exactness,according to an inherited and unchangeable plan; among them,Tupper, much penciled; also, 'Friendship's Offering,'
and 'Affection's Wreath,' with their sappy inanities illustratedin die-away mezzotints; also, Ossian; 'Alonzo and Melissa:'
maybe 'Ivanhoe:' also 'Album,' full of original 'poetry'
of the Thou-hast-wounded-the-spirit-that-loved-thee breed;two or three goody-goody works--'Shepherd of Salisbury Plain,'
etc.; current number of the chaste and innocuous Godey's'Lady's Book,' with painted fashion-plate of wax-figurewomen with mouths all alike--lips and eyelids the same size--each five-foot woman with a two-inch wedge sticking fromunder her dress and letting-on to be half of her foot.
Polished air-tight stove (new and deadly invention), withpipe passing through a board which closes up the discardedgood old fireplace. On each end of the wooden mantel,over the fireplace, a large basket of peaches and other fruits,natural size, all done in plaster, rudely, or in wax,and painted to resemble the originals--which they don't. Overmiddle of mantel, engraving--Washington Crossing the Delaware;on the wall by the door, copy of it done in thunder-and-lightningcrewels by one of the young ladies--work of art which wouldhave made Washington hesitate about crossing, if he couldhave foreseen what advantage was going to be taken of it.
Piano--kettle in disguise--with music, bound and unbound,piled on it, and on a stand near by: Battle of Prague;Bird Waltz; Arkansas Traveler; Rosin the Bow; Marseilles Hymn;On a Lone Barren Isle (St. Helena); The Last Link is Broken;She wore a Wreath of Roses the Night when last we met;Go, forget me, Why should Sorrow o'er that Brow a Shadow fling;Hours there were to Memory Dearer; Long, Long Ago; Days of Absence;A Life on the Ocean Wave, a Home on the Rolling Deep; Bird at Sea;and spread open on the rack, where the plaintive singer has left it,RO-holl on, silver MOO-hoon, guide the TRAV-el-lerr his WAY, etc.
Tilted pensively against the piano, a guitar--guitar capableof playing the Spanish Fandango by itself, if you give it a start.
Frantic work of art on the wall--pious motto, done on the premises,sometimes in colored yarns, sometimes in faded grasses:
progenitor of the 'God Bless Our Home' of modern commerce.
Framed in black moldings on the wall, other works of arts,conceived and committed on the premises, by the young ladies;being grim black-and-white crayons; landscapes, mostly:
lake, solitary sail-boat, petrified clouds, pre-geological treeson shore, anthracite precipice; name of criminal conspicuousin the corner. Lithograph, Napoleon Crossing the Alps.
Lithograph, The Grave at St. Helena. Steel-plates, Trumbull'sBattle of Bunker Hill, and the Sally from Gibraltar.
Copper-plates, Moses Smiting the Rock, and Return of theProdigal Son. In big gilt frame, slander of the family in oil:
papa holding a book ('Constitution of the United States');guitar leaning against mamma, blue ribbons fluttering from its neck;the young ladies, as children, in slippers and scalloped pantelettes,one embracing toy horse, the other beguiling kitten with ballof yarn, and both simpering up at mamma, who simpers back.
These persons all fresh, raw, and red--apparently skinned.
Opposite, in gilt frame, grandpa and grandma, at thirty andtwenty-two, stiff, old-fashioned, high-collared, puff-sleeved,glaring pallidly out from a background of solid Egyptian night.
Under a glass French clock dome, large bouquet of stiffflowers done in corpsy-white wax. Pyramidal what-notin the corner, the shelves occupied chiefly with bric-a-bracof the period, disposed with an eye to best effect:
shell, with the Lord's Prayer carved on it; another shell--of the long-oval sort, narrow, straight orifice, three inches long,running from end to end--portrait of Washington carved on it;not well done; the shell had Washington's mouth, originally--artist should have built to that. These two are memorials ofthe long-ago bridal trip to New Orleans and the French Market.
Other bric-a-brac: Californian 'specimens'--quartz,with gold wart adhering; old Guinea-gold locket, with circletof ancestral hair in it; Indian arrow-heads, of flint;pair of bead moccasins, from uncle who crossed the Plains;three 'alum' baskets of various colors--being skeleton-frame of wire,clothed-on with cubes of crystallized alum in the rock-candy style--works of art which were achieved by the young ladies; their doublesand duplicates to be found upon all what-nots in the land;convention of desiccated bugs and butterflies pinned to a card;painted toy-dog, seated upon bellows-attachment--drops itsunder jaw and squeaks when pressed upon; sugar-candy rabbit--limbs and features merged together, not strongly defined;pewter presidential-campaign medal; miniature card-board wood-sawyer,to be attached to the stove-pipe and operated by the heat;small Napoleon, done in wax; spread-open daguerreotypesof dim children, parents, cousins, aunts, and friends,in all attitudes but customary ones; no templed portico at back,and manufactured landscape stretching away in the distance--that came in later, with the photograph; all these vague figureslavishly chained and ringed--metal indicated and securedfrom doubt by stripes and splashes of vivid gold bronze;all of them too much combed, too much fixed up; and all of themuncomfortable in inflexible Sunday-clothes of a pattern whichthe spectator cannot realize could ever have been in fashion;husband and wife generally grouped together--husband sitting,wife standing, with hand on his shoulder--and both preserving,all these fading years, some traceable effect of the daguerreotypist'sbrisk 'Now smile, if you please!' Bracketed over what-not--place of special sacredness--an outrage in water-color, doneby the young niece that came on a visit long ago, and died.
Pity, too; for she might have repented of this in time.
Horse-hair chairs, horse-hair sofa which keeps sliding fromunder you. Window shades, of oil stuff, with milk-maidsand ruined castles stenciled on them in fierce colors.
Lambrequins dependent from gaudy boxings of beaten tin, gilded.
Bedrooms with rag carpets; bedsteads of the 'corded' sort,with a sag in the middle, the cords needing tightening;snuffy feather-bed--not aired often enough; cane-seat chairs,splint-bottomed rocker; looking-glass on wall, school-slate size,veneered frame; inherited bureau; wash-bowl and pitcher, possibly--but not certainly; brass candlestick, tallow candle, snuffers.
Nothing else in the room. Not a bathroom in the house;and no visitor likely to come along who has ever seenone.
That was the residence of the principal citizen, all the way fromthe suburbs of New Orleans to the edge of St. Louis. When he steppedaboard a big fine steamboat, he entered a new and marvelous world:
chimney-tops cut to counterfeit a spraying crown of plumes--and maybe painted red; pilot-house, hurricane deck, boiler-deck guards,all garnished with white wooden filigree work of fanciful patterns;gilt acorns topping the derricks; gilt deer-horns over the big bell;gaudy symbolical picture on the paddle-box, possibly; big roomyboiler-deck, painted blue, and furnished with Windsor armchairs;inside, a far-receding snow-white 'cabin;' porcelain knob and oil-pictureon every stateroom door; curving patterns of filigree-work touchedup with gilding, stretching overhead all down the converging vista;big chandeliers every little way, each an April shower ofglittering glass-drops; lovely rainbow-light falling everywherefrom the colored glazing of the skylights; the whole a long-drawn,resplendent tunnel, a bewildering and soul-satisfying spectacle!
In the ladies' cabin a pink and white Wilton carpet, as soft as mush,and glorified with a ravishing pattern of gigantic flowers.
Then the Bridal Chamber--the animal that invented that idea was stillalive and unhanged, at that day--Bridal Chamber whose pretentiousflummery was necessarily overawing to the now tottering intellectof that hosannahing citizen. Every state-room had its coupleof cozy clean bunks, and perhaps a looking-glass and a snug closet;and sometimes there was even a washbowl and pitcher, and partof a towel which could be told from mosquito netting by an expert--though generally these things were absent, and the shirt-sleevedpassengers cleansed themselves at a long row of stationary bowlsin the barber shop, where were also public towels, public combs,and public soap.
Take the steamboat which I have just described, and you have herin her highest and finest, and most pleasing, and comfortable,and satisfactory estate. Now cake her over with a layerof ancient and obdurate dirt, and you have the Cincinnatisteamer awhile ago referred to. Not all over--only inside;for she was ably officered in all departments except the steward's.
But wash that boat and repaint her, and she would be about thecounterpart of the most complimented boat of the old flush times:
for the steamboat architecture of the West has undergone no change;neither has steamboat furniture and ornamentation undergone any.
The House Beautiful
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