nicely though quite singularly, to me. Their dress is quite loose and slouching, very loose pants if they can be called such, and a kind of loose cloak with very large sleeves.” She and Thomas admired the sheathed samurai sword and knife each man wore in his belt, and an interpreter explained the use of each, which Eliza wrote down without comment: “They struck with the sword . . . and they cut off the head with the knife, which it seems they do for a small offence.” She and Thomas watched a funeral procession and visited a temple. She found Japanese workmanship “exquisite” and the word “beautiful” is used repeatedly in her descriptions of Japan. She tried some of their food, commenting that the “Pears and Oranges are poor” but “they have a kind of Fig that is very good.”
Eliza and Willie went ashore with Thomas and some of his men in Okhotsk, Siberia, where they experienced the sort of hospitality that was only shown when the world was a much younger, less jaded place:
SEPTEMBER 8TH [1859].
... They appear to be a very nice, kind People and did everything for us that they could. They would take all the care of the Baby, hardly giving me time to nurse him. They took me to all the biggest Families and they all wanted me to stop all night, but the first Family claimed the privilege of keeping us. . . . They had everything nice that could be obtained . . . nice butter, and milk. They make very good tarts but no cake. . . . They have nice berries of several kinds. They treated us to wine, tea, and coffee which they make very nicely. . . . I liked them very much.
Between such Marco Polo adventures, there was the sea in all its states to contend with, ice, storms, the ship and its bits and pieces, and Eliza soon wrote about all this and the business of whaling with the fluency of a seaman; hearing of these things spoken only by whalemen, she knew no other way of describing them. The sights Eliza saw— “the Bears come down from the mountains every night for [stranded] Whale meat” on the Siberian shore, waterspouts, ice floes, tropical islands—and the people she met—the Japanese, Russians, Eskimos, Pacific island kings and queens ( “ The King has a nice new house . . . in the centre of the ground was the place for fire” ), British and American settlers and missionaries, and the common people everywhere—all became the ambient features of Eliza’s, and Willie’s, everyday lives, and she put it all down in her journal without a shred of judgment.
Willie saw all this at close hand and learned much of life from his mother’s example. “I often marveled at my mother’s courage and control of her nerves under real danger or trying conditions,” he wrote, “because in small matters she was timid and dreaded the sight of blood. . . . But when a situation arose that called for the kind of courage that sweeps away all evidences of fear and leaves the mind in calm control, she was superb.” When the lance from a bomb harpoon gun exploded by accident in a whaleboat, it sliced across the face of a mate, James Green:
His wound was sewed up by my father without anesthetic or antiseptics, as they had none, and first, officers and finally my mother held his head while this sewing was done. . . . I cannot overlook . . . the nerve and grit of one little woman compared to the big strong men. First one officer and then another, as they gave up sickened by the sight of blood, held Mr. Green’s head while my father took the stitches but my mother had to take over and finish the job. . . . In my experience, a woman can be depended upon to show true nerves and grit at the crucial moment better than a man.
Willie’s experience of women began with an unusual example, and one wonders what he found later that could have measured up to it.
Willie’s father, whom he idolized, provided an equally high standard of manhood:
I had an intense respect for my father; he has always been to me the finest type of
Eliza and Willie went ashore with Thomas and some of his men in Okhotsk, Siberia, where they experienced the sort of hospitality that was only shown when the world was a much younger, less jaded place:
SEPTEMBER 8TH [1859].
... They appear to be a very nice, kind People and did everything for us that they could. They would take all the care of the Baby, hardly giving me time to nurse him. They took me to all the biggest Families and they all wanted me to stop all night, but the first Family claimed the privilege of keeping us. . . . They had everything nice that could be obtained . . . nice butter, and milk. They make very good tarts but no cake. . . . They have nice berries of several kinds. They treated us to wine, tea, and coffee which they make very nicely. . . . I liked them very much.
Between such Marco Polo adventures, there was the sea in all its states to contend with, ice, storms, the ship and its bits and pieces, and Eliza soon wrote about all this and the business of whaling with the fluency of a seaman; hearing of these things spoken only by whalemen, she knew no other way of describing them. The sights Eliza saw— “the Bears come down from the mountains every night for [stranded] Whale meat” on the Siberian shore, waterspouts, ice floes, tropical islands—and the people she met—the Japanese, Russians, Eskimos, Pacific island kings and queens ( “ The King has a nice new house . . . in the centre of the ground was the place for fire” ), British and American settlers and missionaries, and the common people everywhere—all became the ambient features of Eliza’s, and Willie’s, everyday lives, and she put it all down in her journal without a shred of judgment.
Willie saw all this at close hand and learned much of life from his mother’s example. “I often marveled at my mother’s courage and control of her nerves under real danger or trying conditions,” he wrote, “because in small matters she was timid and dreaded the sight of blood. . . . But when a situation arose that called for the kind of courage that sweeps away all evidences of fear and leaves the mind in calm control, she was superb.” When the lance from a bomb harpoon gun exploded by accident in a whaleboat, it sliced across the face of a mate, James Green:
His wound was sewed up by my father without anesthetic or antiseptics, as they had none, and first, officers and finally my mother held his head while this sewing was done. . . . I cannot overlook . . . the nerve and grit of one little woman compared to the big strong men. First one officer and then another, as they gave up sickened by the sight of blood, held Mr. Green’s head while my father took the stitches but my mother had to take over and finish the job. . . . In my experience, a woman can be depended upon to show true nerves and grit at the crucial moment better than a man.
Willie’s experience of women began with an unusual example, and one wonders what he found later that could have measured up to it.
Willie’s father, whom he idolized, provided an equally high standard of manhood:
I had an intense respect for my father; he has always been to me the finest type of
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