Vanity Fair - Page 522/573

The above everyday events had occurred, and a few weeks had passed,

when on one fine morning, Parliament being over, the summer advanced,

and all the good company in London about to quit that city for their

annual tour in search of pleasure or health, the Batavier steamboat

left the Tower-stairs laden with a goodly company of English fugitives.

The quarter-deck awnings were up, and the benches and gangways crowded

with scores of rosy children, bustling nursemaids; ladies in the

prettiest pink bonnets and summer dresses; gentlemen in travelling caps

and linen-jackets, whose mustachios had just begun to sprout for the

ensuing tour; and stout trim old veterans with starched neckcloths and

neat-brushed hats, such as have invaded Europe any time since the

conclusion of the war, and carry the national Goddem into every city of

the Continent.

The congregation of hat-boxes, and Bramah desks, and

dressing-cases was prodigious. There were jaunty young Cambridge-men

travelling with their tutor, and going for a reading excursion to

Nonnenwerth or Konigswinter; there were Irish gentlemen, with the most

dashing whiskers and jewellery, talking about horses incessantly, and

prodigiously polite to the young ladies on board, whom, on the

contrary, the Cambridge lads and their pale-faced tutor avoided with

maiden coyness; there were old Pall Mall loungers bound for Ems and

Wiesbaden and a course of waters to clear off the dinners of the

season, and a little roulette and trente-et-quarante to keep the

excitement going; there was old Methuselah, who had married his young

wife, with Captain Papillon of the Guards holding her parasol and

guide-books; there was young May who was carrying off his bride on a

pleasure tour (Mrs. Winter that was, and who had been at school with

May's grandmother); there was Sir John and my Lady with a dozen

children, and corresponding nursemaids; and the great grandee Bareacres

family that sat by themselves near the wheel, stared at everybody, and

spoke to no one.

Their carriages, emblazoned with coronets and heaped

with shining imperials, were on the foredeck, locked in with a dozen

more such vehicles: it was difficult to pass in and out amongst them;

and the poor inmates of the fore-cabin had scarcely any space for

locomotion. These consisted of a few magnificently attired gentlemen

from Houndsditch, who brought their own provisions, and could have

bought half the gay people in the grand saloon; a few honest fellows

with mustachios and portfolios, who set to sketching before they had

been half an hour on board; one or two French femmes de chambre who

began to be dreadfully ill by the time the boat had passed Greenwich; a

groom or two who lounged in the neighbourhood of the horse-boxes under

their charge, or leaned over the side by the paddle-wheels, and talked

about who was good for the Leger, and what they stood to win or lose

for the Goodwood cup.