Rough Passage to London(90)

At lunch that day, Morgan had looked over at her. She and Harriet Leslie were chatting away like sisters or old friends. They talked about gardens and recipes, laughing at the antics of young Robert, who was pretending a bootjack was a vicious dog. He overheard the two women comparing notes about life aboard an American packet ship. They were chuckling as they traded stories, announcing that the lack of fresh bathwater was the most serious of the many privations women were expected to endure on board ship, but that lack of privacy was a close second.

After lunch, Leslie showed the Morgans around his small cramped studio, where he hung paintings from some of his friends, including John Constable and J. M. W. Turner. Tea, hot muffins, and crumpets were served in the small garden. Charles Leslie told them the latest social gossip he had collected from some of his wealthy patrons, while Morgan recounted the details of their harrowing voyage. Both Leslies showered Eliza with much praise for her courage to be sailing with her husband.

That same day, as late afternoon tea drifted into presupper drinks, they met some of Leslie’s artist friends, most of whom Morgan had met earlier at the Sketching Club meeting. Eliza had played some Bach and Mozart on the Leslies’ piano. The ever-smiling Clarkson Stanfield with his wiry, muttonchop whiskers, bulldog face, and wide girth reminisced about his time at sea as a boy. Morgan told some amusing sea tales, including the story of an American ship captain by the name of Preserved Fish who was almost arrested by a government tax collector because he claimed to be carrying a cargo of pickled fish on board his ship, Flying Fish. Leslie’s friends stared at him with disbelief. “Yes, gentlemen, this was his real, God-given name. That revenue man couldn’t believe it either. He had to make an apology to Captain Fish.” The small group at the Leslie house roared their approval at this tale and demanded more “Down East” stories from the American captain. Morgan warmed to his appreciative audience and the sea tales he’d heard in the fo’c’sle for years began pouring out.

“There was an old ship captain on the China run by the name of Grimshaw. He always seemed to know when a storm was brewing so the other captains would try to anchor next to his ship. They knew he would start making preparations a day or so before a storm would roll in. ‘Close to Grimshaw was close to God,’ they used to say. No one knew his secret until he retired from the sea. He became knarled and crippled. Every day he began shouting, ‘Weigh anchor, typhoon’s comin’!’ No one could figure it out. There weren’t any storms. That’s when they discovered Captain Grimshaw’s secret.”

“What was it?” cried Stanfield.

“It was his arthritis.”

Leslie’s friends roared with laughter. The evening had ended with another round of charades and some drunken refrains from the sad sea chantey called “Tom Bowling” in honor of Leslie’s new friend from the sea.

Over the next year, the Morgans were invited several times to Pine Apple Place, as the Leslies’ house was called. They were introduced to more of his artist friends, including Constable and Turner. Morgan remembered how Leslie whispered to him in confidence that Constable was his best friend, but Turner was the greatest painter he had ever known. He thought of that first visit to Turner’s Queen Anne studio with Leslie. They had walked into the dusty, dilapidated studio and there in the far corner of the room was the gray-haired Turner with his well-worn beaver hat perched on his head. He was standing by his easel and canvas, his brush and palate in one hand, hair askew, dressed in an overcoat and baggy trousers covered with paint. He had immediately wanted Morgan’s opinion about one of the misty seascapes he was working on. Morgan had invited Turner to visit him on the Philadelphia.

He laughed to himself as he remembered the short, stout Turner walking the decks of the Philadelphia, duck footed, talking to himself distractedly like a drunken fisherman. The man had been so taken with the details of the rigging Morgan invited him to come with them on the voyage back to New York.

“Sometime you must come with us, at least as far as Portsmouth,” Morgan said. “We’ll give you a sea cruise.”

To his surprise, just prior to embarking on this voyage, Turner had showed up at St. Katherine’s Docks, asking for a berth. They had taken on a load of flannels, velvet, and carpeting in the upper hold so there were no steerage passengers to distract the painter. Turner had the ship’s deck to himself, and he wandered back and forth from bow to stern. On the river journey, he continued showing interest in the sails and the rigging. Eliza bragged that she had been up the ratlines and seen the views from the topmast. The painter was so intrigued that after they dropped the pilot off at Gravesend and were approaching Margate, he insisted he be allowed to climb the ratlines as far as the main topmast so he could feel the sway and roll of the ship just as Mrs. Morgan had done. Two sailors had to pull the barrel-shaped Englishman around the futtock shrouds because he was too large to fit through the narrow lubber’s hole. They actually tied a rope around him and used a block and tackle to get him up to the topmast.