The Amateur Emigrant Chapter 4 - Steerage Types

Robert Louis Stevenson (0:00)

CHAPTER IV of THE AMATURE IMMIGRANT This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. THE AMATURE IMMIGRANT by Robert Louis Stevenson STEERAGE TUCK We had a fellow on board, an Irish-American, for all the world like a beggar in the Prince Bickelo. One eye with great splayed crow's feet around his sockets, a knotty squab nose coming down over his moustache, a miraculous hat, a shirt that had been white a-ages ago, an alpaca coat in its last sleeves, and without hyperbole no buttons to his trousers. Even in these rags and tatters the man twinkled all over with impudence like a piece of sham jewellery, and I heard him offer a situation to one of his fellow passengers with the air of a lord. Nothing could overlie such a fellow. A kind of base success was written on his brow. He was then in his ill days, and I can imagine him in Congress with his mouth full of bombasts and sorder. As we moved in the same circle, I was brought necessarily into his society. I do not think I ever heard him say anything that was true, kind, or interesting, but there was entertainment in the man's demeanour. You might call him a half-educated Irish tig. Our Russian made a remarkable contrast to this impossible fellow. Rumours and legends were current in the steerages about his antecedents. Some said he was the nillest approaching. Others set him down for a harmless spend-fifth, who had squandered fifty thousand roubles, and whose father had now dispatched him to America by way of penance. Either tale might flourish in security. There was no contradiction to be feared. For the hero spoke not one word of English. I got on with him lumberingly enough in broken German, and learnt from his own lips that he had been an apocrythery. He carried the photograph of his betrothed in a pocket-book, and remarked that it did not do her justice. The cut of his head stood out from among the passengers with an air of startling strangeness. The first natural instinct was to take him for a desperado. But although the features to our western eyes had a barbaric and unhomely cast, the eye both reassured and touched. It was large and very dark and soft, with an expression of dumb endurance, as if it had often looked on desperate circumstances, and never looked on them without resolution. He cried out when I used the word. No, no, he said, not resolution. The resolution to endure, I explained.

And then he shrugged his shoulders and said, Ah, ya, with gusto, like a man who has been flattered in his favourite pretensions. Indeed, he was always hinting at some secret sorrow, and his life, he said, had been one of unusual trouble and anxiety. So the legends of the steerage may have represented at least some shadow of the truth. Once and once only he sang a song at our concerts. Standing forth without embarrassment, his great statue was somewhat humped, his long arms frequently extended, his calmic head thrown backward. It was a suitable piece of music, as deep as a chaos-bellow and wild like the white sea. He was struck and charmed by the freedom and sociality of our manners. At home, he said, no one on a journey would speak to him, but those to whom he would not care to speak, thus unconsciously involving himself in the condemnation of his countrymen. But Russia was soon to be changed. The ice of the Neva was softening under the sun of civilization.

The new ideas, the I'm-a-fine-a-ve-o-lin, were audible among the big empty drum-notes of imperial diplomacy, and he looked to see a great revival, though with a somewhat indistinct and childish hope.

We had a father and son who made a pair of jack-of-all-trades. It was the son who sang the death of Nelson under such contrarious circumstances. He was by trade a shearer of ship-plates, but he could touch the organ and lead two choirs, and played the flute and piccolo in a professional string band. His repertory of songs was beside inexhaustible, and ranged impartially from the very best to the very worst within his reach. Nor did he seem to make the least distinction between these extremes, but would cheerily follow up Tom Bowling with around-her-splendor form. The father, an old cheery small piece of manhood, could do everything connected with tin-work, from one end of the process to the other, use almost every carpenter's tool, and make picture-frames to boot. I sat down with silver-plate every Sunday, he said, and pictures on the wall. I have made enough money to be rolling in my carriage. But, sir, looking at me unsteadily with his bright, roomy eyes, I was troubled with a drunken wife.