The Amateur Emigrant Chapter 7 - Personal Experience and Review

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Chapter 7 of The Amateur Immigrant. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Amateur Immigrant by Robert Louis Stevenson. Chapter 7 PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND REVIEW Travel is of two kinds, and this voyage of mine across the ocean combined both. Out of my country and myself I go, as sings the old poet, and I was not only travelling out of my country in latitude and longitude, but out of myself in diet, associates and consideration. Part of the interest in a great deal of the amusement flowed at least to me from this novel situation in the world. I found that I had what they call fallen in life with absolute success and verisimilitude. I was taken for a steerage passenger. No one seemed surprised that I should be so, and there was nothing but the brass plate between decks to remind me that I had once been a gentleman. In a former book describing a former journey, I expressed some wonder that I could be readily and naturally taken for a pedlar, and explain the accident by the difference of language and manners between England and France. I must now take a humble of you, for here I was amongst my own countrymen, somewhat roughly clad, to be sure, but with every advantage of speech and manner, and I am bound to confess that I pass for nearly anything you please except an educated gentleman. The sailors called me mate. The officers have jest me as my man. My comrades accepted me without hesitation for a person of their own character and experience, but with some curious information. One, a mason himself, believed I was a mason. Several, and among these at least one of the seamen, judged me to be a petty officer in the American Navy, and I was so often set down for a practical engineer that at last I had not the heart to deny it.

From all these guesses I drew one conclusion, which told against the insight of my companions. They might be close observers in their own way, and read the manners in the hand, but it was plain they did not extend their observation to the hands. To the saloon passengers also I sustained my part without a hitch. It is true I came very little in their way, but when we did encounter there was no recognition in their eye, although I confess I sometimes courted it in silence. All these, my inferiors and equals, took me, like the transformed monarch in the story, for a mere common human man. They gave me a hard dead look, with the flesh about the eye kept unrelaxed.

With the women this surprised me less, as I had already experimented on the sex by going aboard through a suburban part of London simply attired in a sleeve waistcoat. The result was curious. I then learned for the first time, and by the exhaustive process, how much attention ladies are accustomed to bestow on all male creatures of their own station. For in my humble rig, each one who went by me caused me a certain shock of surprise and a sense of something wanting. In my normal circumstances, it appeared every young lady must have paid me some tribute of a glance. And though I had often not detected it when it was given, I was well aware of its absence when it was withheld. My height seemed to decrease with every woman who passed me, for she passed me like a dog. This is one of my grounds for supposing that what I call the upper classes may sometimes produce a disagreeable impression in what I call the lower. And I wish someone would continue my experiment and find out at exactly what stage of toilette a man becomes invisible to a well-regulated female eye.

Here on shipboard the matter was put to a more complete test, for even with the addition of speech and manner, I passed among ladies for precisely the average man of sestirige. It was one afternoon that I saw this demonstrator. A very plainly dressed woman was taken ill on deck. I think I had the luck to be present at every sudden seizure during all the passage. I on this occasion found myself in a place of importance supporting the sufferer. There was not only a large crowd immediately around us, but a considerable knot of saloon passengers leaning over our heads from the hurricane deck.

One of these, an elderly managing woman, hailed me with counsels. Of course I had to reply, and as the talk went on, I began to discover that the whole group took me for the husband.

I looked upon my new wife poor creature with mingled feelings, and I must own she had not even the appearance of the poorest class of city servant maids, but looked more like a country wench who should have been employed at roadside inn. Now was the time for me to go and study the brass plate.