University of Virginia Library

STEAM.

—Byron

—Anon

I have a bilious friend, who is a great admirer and
imitator of Lord Byron; that is, he affects misanthropy,
masticates tobacco, has his shirts made
without collars, calls himself a miserable man, and
writes poetry with a glass of gin-and-water before him.
His gin, though far from first-rate, is better than his
poetry; the latter, indeed, being worse than that of
many authors of the present day, and scarcely fit even
for an album; however, he does not think so, and
makes a great quantity. At his lodgings, a few
evenings ago, among other morbid productions, he
read me one entitled “Steam,” written in very blank
verse, and evidently modelled after the noble poet's

“Darkness,” in which he takes a bird's-eye view
of the world two or three centuries hence, describes
things in general, and comes to a conclusion with,
“Steam was the universe!” Whether it was the
fumes arising from this piece of “written” vapor, or
whether I had unconsciously imbibed more hollands
than my temperate habits allow of, I cannot
say, but I certainly retired to bed like Othello, “perplexed
in the extreme.” There was no “dreamless
sleep” for me that night, and Queen Mab drove
full gallop through every nook and cranny of my
brain. Strange and fantastical visions floated before
me, till at length came one with all the force
and clearness of reality.

I thought I stood upon a gentle swell of ground,
and looked down on the scene beneath me. It was
a pleasant sight, and yet a stranger might have
passed it by unheeded; but to me it was as the
green spot in the desert, for there I recognised the
haunts of my boyhood. There was the wild common
on which I had so often scampered “frae mornin
sun till dine,” skirted by the old wood, through
which the burn stole tinkling to the neighboring
river. There was the little ivy-covered church with
its modest spire and immoveable weathercock, and
clustering around lay the village that I knew contained
so many kind and loving hearts. All looked

just as it did on the summer morning when I left
it, and went wandering over this weary world.
To me the very trees possessed an individuality;
the branches of the old oak (there was but one)
seemed to nod familiarly towards me, the music of
the rippling water fell pleasantly on my ear, and
the passing breeze murmured of “home, sweet
home.” The balmy air was laden with the hum
of unseen insects, and filled with the fragrance of a
thousand common herbs and flowers; and to my
eyes the place looked prettier and pleasanter than
any they have since rested on. As I gazed, the
“womanish moisture” made dim my sight, and I
felt that yearning of the heart which every man
who has a soul feels—let him go where he will, or
reason how he will—on once more beholding the
spot where the only pure, unsullied part of his existence
passed away.—Suddenly the scene changed.
The quiet, smiling village vanished, and a busy,
crowded city occupied its place. The wood was
gone, the brook dried up, and the common cut to
pieces and covered with a kind of iron gangways.
I looked upon the surrounding country, if country
it could be called, where vegetable nature had
ceased to exist. The neat, trim gardens, the verdant
lawns and swelling uplands, the sweet-scented
meadows and waving corn-fields were all swept
away, and fruit, and flowers, and herbage, appeared
to be things uncared for and unknown. Houses
and factories, and turnpikes and railroads, were
scattered all around, and along the latter, as if propelled
by some unseen, infernal power, monstrous
machines flew with inconceivable swiftness. People
were crowding and jostling each other on all
sides. I mingled with them, but they were not
like those I had formerly known—they walked,
talked, and transacted business of all kinds with
astonishing celerity. Every thing was done in a
hurry; they eat, drank, and slept in a hurry; they
danced, sung, and made love in a hurry; they
married, died, and were buried in a hurry, and
resurrection-men had them out of their graves before
they well knew they were in them. Whatever
was done, was done upon the high-pressure principle.
No person stopped to speak to another in the
street; but as they moved rapidly on their way, the
men talked faster than the women do now, and the
women talked twice as fast as ever. Many were
bald, and on asking the reason, I was given to understand
they had been great travelers, and that
the rapidity of modern conveyances literally scalped
those who journeyed much in them, sweeping whiskers,
eye-brows, eye-lashes, in fact, every thing in
any way moveable, from their faces. Animal life
appeared to be extinct; carts and carriages came
rattling down the highways horseless and driverless,
and wheelbarrows trundled along without any
visible agency. Nature was out of fashion, and
the world seemed to get along tolerably well without
her.

At the foot of the street my attention was attracted
by a house they were building of prodigious
dimensions, being no less than seventeen stories
high. On the top of it several men were at work,
when, dreadful to relate, the foot of one of them
slipped, and he was precipitated to the earth with a
fearful crash. Judge of my horror and indignation
on observing the crowd pass unheeding by, scarcely
deigning to cast a look on their fellow-creature, who
doubtless lay weltering in his water, and the rest of
the workmen went on with their various avocations
without a moment's pause in consequence of the
accident. On approaching the spot, I heard several
in passing murmur the most incomprehensible observations.
“Only a steam man,” said one.
“Won't cost much,” said another. “His boiler
overcharged, I suppose,” cried a third, “the way
in which all these accidents happen!” and true
enough, there lay a man of tin and sheet-iron, weltering
in hot water. The superintendent of the
concern, who was not a steam man, but made of

the present materials, gave it as his opinion that
the springs were damaged, and the steam-vessels a
little ruptured, but not much harm done, and
straightway sent the corpse to the blacksmith's
(who was a flesh-and-blood man) to be repaired.
Here was then at once a new version of the old
Greek fable, and modern Prometheuses were actually
as “plentiful as blackberries.” In fact, I
found upon inquiry, that society was now divided
into two great classes, living and “locomotive”
men, the latter being much the better and honester
people of the two; and a fashionable political economist,
of the name of Malthus, a lineal descendant
of an ancient, and it appears rather inconsistent
system-monger, had just published an elaborate
pamphlet, showing the manifold advantages of
propagating those no-provender-consuming individuals
in preference to any other. So that it appeared,
that any industrious mechanic might in
three months have a full-grown family about him,
with the full and comfortable assurance that, as the
man says in Chrononhotonthologos, “they were
all his own and none of his neighbors.”

These things astonished, but they also perplexed
and wearied me. My spirit grew sick, and I longed
for the old world again, and its quiet and peaceable
modes of enjoyment. I had no fellowship with the

two new races of beings around me, and nature
and her charms were no more. All things seemed
forced, unnatural, unreal—indeed, little better than
barefaced impositions. I sought the banks of my
native river; it alone remained unchanged. The
noble stream flowed gently and tranquilly as of
yore, but even here impertinent man had been at
work, and pernicious railroads were formed to its
very verge. I incautiously crossed one of them,
trusting to my preconceived notions of time and
space, the abhorred engine being about three quarters
of a mile from me, but scarcely had I stepped
over, when it flew whizzing past the spot I had
just quitted, and catching me in its eddy, spun me
around like a top under the lash. It was laden
with passengers, and went with headlong fury
straight towards the river. Its fate seemed inevitable—another
instant and it would be immersed
in the waves, when lo! it suddenly sunk into the
bosom of the earth, and in three seconds was ascending
a perpendicular hill on the opposite bank
of the river. I was petrified, and gazed around
with an air of helpless bewilderment, when a gentleman,
who was doubtless astonished at my astonishment,
shouted in passing, “What's the fellow
staring at?” and another asked “if I had never
seen a tunnel before?”

Like Lear, “my wits began to turn.” I wished
for some place where I might hide myself from all
around, and turned instinctively to the spot where
the village ale-house used to stand. But where,
alas! was the neat thatched cottage that was wont
so often to

Gone! and in its place stood a huge fabric, labelled
“Grand Union Railroad Hotel.” But here also
it was steam, steam, nothing but steam! The
rooms were heated by steam, the beds were made
and aired by steam, and instead of a pretty, red-lipped,
rosy-cheeked chambermaid, there was a
cursed machine-man smoothing down the pillows
and bolsters with mathematical precision; the victuals
were cooked by steam; yea, even the meat
roasted by steam! Instead of the clean-swept
hearth
there was a patent steam-stove, and the place was
altogether hotter than any decent man would ever
expect to have any thing to do with. Books and
papers lay scattered on a table. I took up one of
the former; it was filled with strange new phrases,
all more or less relating to steam, of which I knew
nothing, but as far as I could make out the English
of the several items, they ran somewhat thus:

“Another shocking catastrophe.—As the warranted-safe
locomotive smoke-consuming, fuel-providing
steam-carriage Lightning, was this morning
proceeding at its usual three-quarter speed of one
hundred and twenty-seven miles an hour, at the
junction of the Hannington and Slipsby rail-roads
it unfortunately came in contact with the steam-carriage
Snail, going about one hundred and five
miles per hour. Of course both vehicles with their
passengers were instantaneously reduced to an impalpable
powder. The friends of the deceased have
the consolation of knowing that no blame can possibly
attach to the intelligent proprietors of the Lightning,
it having been clearly ascertained that those
of the Snail started their carriage full two seconds
before the time agreed on, in order to obviate in
some degree, the delay to which passengers were
unavoidably subjected by the clumsy construction
and tedious pace of their vehicle.”

“Melancholy accident.—As a beautiful and accomplished
young lady of the name of Jimps, a
passenger in the Swift-as-thought-locomotive, was
endeavoring to catch a flying glimpse of the new
Steam University, her breathing apparatus unfortunately
slipped from her mouth, and she was a

corpse in three quarters of a second. A young
gentleman, who had been tenderly attached to her
for several days, in the agony of his feelings withdrew
his air tube and called for help; he of course
shared a similar fate. Too much praise cannot be
given to the rest of the passengers, who, with inimitable
presence of mind, prudently held their breathing-bladders
to their mouths during the whole of
this trying scene,” &c.

A Liverpool paper stated that “The stock for the
grand Liverpool and Dublin tunnel under the Irish
channel, is nearly filled up.” And a Glasgow one
advocated the necessity of a floating wooden rail-road
between Scotland and the Isle of Man, in order
to do away with the tiresome steamboat navigation.
I took up a volume of poems, but the similes
and metaphors were all steam; all their ideas of
strength, and power, and swiftness, referred to
steam only, and a sluggish man was compared to
a greyhound. I looked into a modern dictionary
for some light on these subjects, but got none, except
finding hundreds of curious definitions, such
as these:

“Horse, s. an animal of which but little is now
known. Old writers affirm that there were at one
time several thousands in this country.”

“Tree, s. a vegetable production; once plentiful

in these parts, and still to be found in remote
districts.”

“Tranquillity, s. obsolete; an unnatural state
of existence, to which the ancients were very partial.
The word is to be met with in several old
authors,” &c. &c.

In despair I threw down the book, and rushed
out of the house. It was mid-day, but a large
theatre was open, and the people were pouring in.
I entered with the rest, and found that whatever
changes had taken place, money was still money.
They were playing Hamlet by steam, and this was
better than any other purpose to which I had seen
it applied. The automata really got along wonderfully
well, their speaking faculties being arranged
upon the barrel-organ principle greatly improved,
and they roared, and bellowed, and strutted, and
swung their arms to and fro as sensibly as many
admired actors. Unfortunately in the grave scene,
owing to some mechanical misconstruction, Hamlet
exploded, and in doing so, entirely demolished
one of the grave-diggers, carried away a great part
of Laertes, and so injured the rest of the dramatis
personæ that they went off one after the other like
so many crackers, filling the house with heated vapor.
I made my escape, but on reaching the
street, things there were ten times worse than ever

It was the hour for stopping and starting the several
carriages, and no language can describe the
state of the atmosphere. Steam was generating
and evaporating on all sides—the bright sun was
obscured—the people looked par-boiled, and the
neighboring fisherman's lobsters changed color on
the instant; even the steam inhabitants appeared
uncomfortably hot. I could scarcely breathe—
there was a blowing, a roaring, a hissing, a fizzing,
a whizzing going on all around—fires were
blazing, water was bubbling, boilers were bursting
—when, lo! I suddenly awoke and found myself
in a state of profuse perspiration. I started up, ran
to the window, and saw several milkmen and bakers'
carts, with horses in them, trotting merrily
along. I was a thankful man. I put on my
clothes, and while doing so, made up my mind to
read no more manuscript poems, and eschew ginand
water for the time to come.