The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [179]
if only to realise the extraordinary 'Britishness' of this particular route. One sails on comfortably for three or four days and then, when things are perhaps becoming a trifle monotonous, one finds a relaxation in the shape of a port very British-looking (in all but the houses and population [hard to tell then what he does include as being 'British']) and with all the necessary appliances for buying Kodak films, Whisky, Picture Postcards and other British delights. I think it really ought to be called 'the Imperial Piccadilly.'121
The first-class passengers travelled in great style; indeed Isabel Burton complained that her English fellow-passengers on the Austrian ship 'want their huge lumps of beef and mutton four times a day. They eat up the provisions like locusts, and drink the cellar dry almost before we got to Aden.' The well-connected Ruby Madden, from an elite Melbourne family, may have been a typical traveller in the heyday of the empire. Once her ship left Fremantle, bound for Colombo in 1902, 'I always breakfast in bed and then dress at my leisure, and it makes the day not so long and dreary.' Ruby had a new outfit every day, and dirty underwear was simply chucked out the porthole, as washing facilities were minimal. Singing and duets, just as in a country house weekend, helped to pass the time. Her account is mostly about her clothes, and which men paid welcome (or unwelcome) attention to her. She changed ship in Colombo, and rested in the Galle Face Hotel while her luggage was transferred. Arriving in Mumbai, she was met by an important official who further eased her arrival. 'I need not have worried myself at all about the Customs for he left word for everything to be passed and his servant waited to bring it home, and we drove off in a sweet victoria, with rubber tyres and footman and coachman. They look so smart with green and gold livery and broad belts and turbans.'122
Nevertheless, even luxurious first-class travel had its up and downs. Rigid divisions amongst those ruling India began on the voyage out. Military, Indian Civil Service, and planters kept themselves separate. As the boats neared India, Punjab Club members wore white jackets and black trousers, Kolkata Club black jackets and white trousers. The extent of the compartmentalisation is well summed up in a story (possibly apocryphal) concerning a governor's daughter who found her first-class companions stuffy, and had a one-night fling with a handsome second-class steward. Next morning he approached her, but she froze him and said 'In the circle in which I move, sleeping with a woman does not constitute an introduction.'123
Other tales of childish, snobby, behaviour are legion. Captain Sulivan in 1866 was travelling down the Red Sea in a passenger ship, en route to take command of an anti-slave Royal Navy frigate. Some of the passengers had come to Suez via Marseilles, some from Southampton via Alexandria, and the two groups did not get on.
Passengers via Southampton improved their acquaintance by criticising passengers via Marseilles. Passengers via Marseilles played chess &c, together, and always looked as if they knew something the other party would like to, but didn't. . . . Passengers by Southampton steamer laughed and talked together as they had never laughed and talked before the other party joined. The former played croquet on deck, the latter backgammon below.124
Leonard Woolf, a rather precious, though also perceptive, 24-year-old recruit to the Ceylon Civil Service also noticed a change among his fellow passengers. At first there was an 'uncomfortable atmosphere of suspicion and reserve which is at first invariably the result when a number of English men and women, strangers to