A FLOATING HOME
·
CYRIL IONIDES · J. B. ATKINS
ARNOLD BENNETT
A FLOATING HOME
A BARGE PASSING THE MAPLIN LIGHT
A FLOATING HOME
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1918
All rights reserved
To
THE MATE
PREFACE
The authors owe to their readers an explanation of the manner of theircollaboration. The owner of the Thames sailing barge, of which thehistory as a habitation is written in this book, is Mr. Cyril Ionides.‘I’ throughout the narrative is Mr. Cyril Ionides; the ‘Mate’ is Mrs.Cyril Ionides; the children are their children. Yet the other author,Mr. J. B. Atkins, was so closely associated with the eventsrecorded—sharing with Mr. Ionides the counsels and discussions thatended in the purchase of the barge, prosecuting in his companyfriendships with barge skippers, and studying with him the Essexdialect, which nowhere has more character than in the mouths of Essexseafaring men—that it was not practicable for the book to be writtenexcept in collaboration. The authors share, moreover, an intenseadmiration for the Thames sailing barges, to which, so far as theyknow, justice has never been done in writing. Mr. Atkins, however,felt that it would be unnecessary, if not impertinent, for him toassume any personal shape in the narrative when there was littleenough space for the more relevant and informing characters of SamPrawle, Elijah Wadely, and their like.
The book aims at three things: (1) It tells how the problem ofpoverty—poverty judged by the standard of one who wished to give hissons a Public School education on an insufficient income—was solvedby living afloat and avoiding the payment of rent and rates. (2) Itoffers a tribute of praise to the incomparable barge skippers whonavigate the busiest of waterways, with the smallest crews (unless thecutter barges of Holland provide an exception) that anywhere in theworld manage so great a spread of canvas. Londoners are aware that themost characteristic vessels of their river are ‘picturesque.’ Beyondthat their knowledge or their applause does not seem to go. It ishoped that this book will tell them something new about a life attheir feet, of the details of which they have too long been ignorant.(3) It is a study in dialect. It was impossible to grow in intimacywith the Essex skippers of barges without examining with carefulattention the dialect that persists with a surprising flavour within ashort radius of London, where one would expect everything of thesort—particularly in the va-et-vient of river life—to beassimilated or absorbed.
As to (1) and (3) something more may be said.
One of the authors (J. B. A.) published in the Spectator before thewar a brief account of Mr. Cyril Ionides’ floating home, and wasimmediately beset by so many inquiries for more precise informationthat he perceived that a book on the subject—a practical and completeanswer to the quest