Today at lunch I was overcome by a quite irresistible fit of laughter.
I choked on a crust of bread, began coughing and simply could not calm myself. The pathetic coxcomb Renier (I wrote to you about him, he is the Leviathans first lieutenant) inquired with feigned interest what was the cause of my merriment and I was seized by an even stronger paroxysm, for I certainly could not tell him about the thought that had set me laughing: that the French had built the canal, but the fruits had fallen to us, the English. Three years ago Her Majesty’s government bought a controlling block of shares from the Egyptian khedive, and now we British are the masters of Suez. And incidentally, a single share in the canal, which was once sold for fifteen pounds, is now worth three thousand! How’s that! How could I help but laugh?
But I fear I must have wearied you with these boring details. Do not blame me, my dear Emily, for I have no other recreation apart from writing long letters. While I am scraping my pen across the vellum paper, it is as though you are here beside me and I am making leisurely conversation with you. You know, thanks to the hot climate here I am feeling very much better. I no longer remember the terrible dreams that haunt me in the night. But they have not gone away. In the morning when I wake up, the pillowcase is still soaked with tears and sometimes gnawed to shreds.
But that is all nonsense. Every new day and every mile of the journey bring me closer to a new life. There, under the soothing sun of the Equator, this dreadful separation that is tearing my very soul apart will finally come to an end. How I wish it could be soon! How impatient I am to see your tender, radiant glance once again, my dear friend.
What else can I entertain you with? Perhaps at least with a description of our Leviathan, a more than worthy theme. In my earlier letters I have written too much about my own feelings and dreams and I have still not presented you with a full picture of this great triumph of British engineering.
The Leviathan is the largest passenger ship in the history of the world, with the single exception of the colossal Great Eastern, which has been furrowing the waters of the Atlantic Ocean for the last 20 years. When Jules Verne described the Great Eastern in his book The Floating City, he had not seen our Leviathan - otherwise he would have renamed the old G.E. ‘the floating village’. That vessel now does nothing but lay telegraph cables on the ocean floor, but Leviathan can transport 1000 people and in addition 10,000 tons of cargo. This fire breathing monster is more than 600 hundred feet long and 80 feet across at its widest. Do you know, my dear Emily, how a ship is built? First they lay it out in the moulding loft, that is to say, they make a full-scale drawing of the vessel directly onto the smoothly planed floor of a special building. The drawing of the Leviathan was so huge that they had to build a shed the size of Buckingham Palace!
This miracle of a ship has two steam engines, two powerful paddle wheels on its sides and in addition a gigantic propeller on its stern. Its six masts, fitted with a full set of rigging, tower up to the very sky and with a fair wind and engines running full speed ahead the ship can make 16 knots! All the very latest advances in shipbuilding have been used in the vessel. These include a double metal hull, which ensures its safety even if it should strike a rock; special side keels which reduce pitching and rolling; electric lighting throughout; waterproof compartments; immense coolers for the spent steam - it is impossible to list everything. The entire experience of centuries of effort by the indefatigably inventive human mind has been concentrated in this proud vessel cleaving fearlessly through the ocean waves. Yesterday, following my old habit, I opened the Holy Scriptures at the first page that came to hand and I was astonished when my eyes fell upon the lines about Leviathan, the fearsome monster of the deep from the Book of Job. I began trembling at the sudden realization that this was no description of a sea serpent, as the ancients believed it to be, nor of a sperm whale, as our modern-day rationalists claim - no, the biblical text clearly refers to the very same Leviathan that has undertaken to deliver me out of darkness and terror into happiness and light. Judge for yourself: ‘He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment. He maketh a path to shine after him: one would think the deep to be hoary. Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear. He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.’
The pot - that is the steam boiler; the pot of ointment - that is the fuel oil; the shining path - that is the wake at the stern. It is all so obvious!
And I felt afraid, my darling Emily. For these lines contain a terrible warning, either to me personally or to the passengers on the Leviathan, or to the whole of mankind. From the biblical point of view pride is surely a bad thing? And if man with his technological playthings ‘beholdeth all high things’, is this not fraught with some catastrophic consequences? Have we not become too proud of the keenness of our intellect and the skill of our hands? Where is this king of pride taking us? What lies in store for us?
And so I opened my prayer book to pray - the first time for a long, long time. And there I read: ‘It is in their thoughts that their houses are eternal and their dwellings are from generation to generation, and they call their lands after their own names. But man shall not abide in honour; he shall be likened unto the beasts who die. This path of theirs is their folly, though those that come after them do commend their opinion.’
But when, in a paroxysm of mystical feeling, I opened the Book once again with a trembling hand, my feverish gaze fell on the boring passage in Numbers where the sacrifices made by the tribes of the Israelites are itemized with a bookkeeper’s tedious precision. And I calmed down, rang my silver bell and told the steward to bring me some hot chocolate.
The level of comfort prevailing in the section of the ship assigned to the respectable public is absolutely staggering. In this respect the Leviathan is truly without equal. The times are gone when people travelling to India or China were cooped up in dark, cramped little cubbyholes and piled one on top of another. You know, my dearest wife, how keenly I suffer from claustrophobia, but on board the Leviathan I feel as though I were in the wide open spaces of the Thames Embankment. Here there is everything required to combat boredom: a dance hall, a musical salon for concerts of classical music, even a rather decent library. The decor in a first-class cabin is in no way inferior to a room in the finest London hotel, and the ship has two hundred such cabins. In addition there are 230 second-class cabins with 600 berths (I have not looked into them - I cannot endure the sight of squallor) and they say there are also capacious cargo holds. The Leviathan 5 service personnel alone, not counting sailors and officers, numbers more than 200 stewards, chefs, valets, musicians, chambermaids.
Just imagine, I do not regret in the least not bringing Jeremy with me. The idle loafer was always sticking his nose into matters that did not concern him, and here at precisely 11 o’clock the maid comes and cleans the room and carries out any other errands I may have for her. This is both rational and convenient. If I wish I can ring for a valet and have him help me dress, but I regard that as excessive - I dress and undress myself. It is most strictly forbidden for any servant to enter the cabin in my absence, and on leaving it I set a hair across the crack of the door. I am afraid of spies. Believe me, my sweet Emily, this is not a ship, but a veritable city, and it has its share of low riff-raff.
For the most part my information concerning the ship has been garnered from the explanations of Lieutenant Renier, who is a great patriot of his own vessel. He is, however, not a very likeable individual and the object of serious suspicion on my part. He tries his hardest to play the gentleman, but I am not so easily duped. I have a keen nose for bad breeding. Wishing to produce a good impression, this fellow invited me to visit his cabin. I did call in, but less out of curiosity than from a desire to assess the seriousness of the threat that might be posed by this swarthy gentleman (concerning his appearance, see my letter of 20 March). The meagreness of the decor was rendered even more glaringly obvious by his tasteless attempts at bon ton (Chinese vases, Indian incense burners, a dreadful seascape on the wall, and so forth). Standing on the table among the maps and navigational instruments was a large photographic ponrait of a woman dressed in black, with an inscription in French: ‘Seven feet under the keel, my darling!