Читать книгу Journal of a Residence in America - Fanny Kemble - Страница 8

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Here's a lapse! thanks to head winds, a rolling sea, and their result, sickness, sadness, sorrow. I've been better for the last two days, thank God! and take to my book again. Rose at eight, dawdled about, and then came up stairs. Breakfasted, sat working at my Bible-cover till lunch-time. Somebody asked me if I had any of Mrs. Siddons's hair; I sent for my dressing-box, and forthwith it was overhauled, to use the appropriate phrase, by half the company, whom a rainy day had reduced to a state of worse than usual want of occupation. The rain continued all day; we ladies dined in the round-house, the room down stairs being too close. The Captain and Colonel—— joined us afterwards, and began drinking champagne, and induced us to do the same. As evening came on, the whole of the passengers collected in the round-house. Mr. ——, Mr. D——, and I wrote a rhapsody; afterwards they fell to singing; while they did so, the sky darkened tremendously, the rain came pelting down, the black sea swelled, and rose, and broke upon the ship's sides into boiling furrows of foam, that fled like ghosts along the inky face of the ocean. The ship scudded before the blast, and we managed to keep ourselves warm by singing. After tea, for the first time since I have been on board, got hold of a pack of cards, (oh me, that it ever should come to this!) and initiated Miss—— in the mysteries of the intellectual game. Mercy! how my home rose before me as I did so. Played till I was tired; dozed, and finally came to bed. Bed! quotha! 'tis a frightful misapplication of terms. Oh for a bed! a real bed; any manner of bed but a bed on shipboard! And yet I have seen some fair things: I have seen a universe of air and water; I have seen the glorious sun come and look down upon this rolling sapphire; I have seen the moon throw her silver columns along the watery waste; I have seen one lonely ship in her silent walk across this wilderness, meet another, greet her, and pass her, like a dream, on the wide deep; I have seen the dark world of waters at midnight open its mysterious mantle beneath our ship's prow, and show below another dazzling world of light. I have seen, what I would not but have seen, though I have left my very soul behind me. England, dear, dear England! oh, for a handful of your earth!