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Updated: June 22, 2025
Like some great marsh creature herself, Gadabout followed the winding way, puffing along contentedly. Sometimes, when the turns were too sharp for her liking, she swung to them lazily, with a long purr of water at bow and stern, and seemed about to wallow off through the rushes. Now something of a bank developed along our starboard side.
And that is the way we did it. But with all the affection that could be put into the matter, we could not find along that shore any such water as the chart indicated; and Gadabout was beginning to need it sorely. So, we sent the sailor out to see where it had gone to. He found it over on the other side of the creek. Our confidence in the chart had been betrayed.
However, we did not subject them to the experiment. Instead, we suddenly reversed our engine; Gadabout tried to stop in time; the ladies tried to look pleasant; the Commodore tried to shun over-expressive speech. There, just ahead, was a row of close-set pilings, blocking the stream from shore to shore.
Hope I've chosen to please you." "Indeed you have," she replied. "I feel quite the aristocrat. I ought not to do this sort of thing.... But I'm glad to do it once. I abhor the rich," she said, laughing, "but some of the things they do and have are mighty pleasant." After a while she said: "If I were a rich man's wife I'd be something more than a society gadabout.
As a young matron of seventeen or eighteen she was evidently a lively, unconventional, opinionated gadabout fond of the company of similar She-romps, who exchanged verses and specimen letters with the lesser celebrities of the literary world and perpetuated the stilted romantic traditions of the Matchless Orinda and her circle.
Our houseboat would have had to have a church-boat for a consort to make it otherwise. Yet, as Sunday after Sunday Gadabout lay in her quiet creek harbours, the spirit of the day seemed to find her there without the call of church chimes.
To Gadabout and her crew, add anchors, chains and ropes, small boats, poles and sweeps, parallel rulers, dividers and charts, anchor-lights, lanterns and side-lights, compasses, barometers and megaphones, fenders, grapnels and boathooks until the landlubberly owners are almost frightened back to solid land; and then all is ready for a houseboat cruise.
And thus it was that the houseboat Gadabout left her moorings in the outskirts of old Norfolk, and went spluttering down the Elizabeth to find Hampton Roads and to start upon her cruise up the historic James River. But to tell the story we must begin before that summer morning. It was this way.
Our plan was to sail up this stream to a point where the chart showed a roadway and a bridge, and to tie up the houseboat there. That would be convenient for us and for Gadabout too. The roadway we should use in crossing the island to visit the chief points of interest, which were on the James River side; and Gadabout would have a more protected harbour than could be found for her in front.
The English wife of tradition, so thoroughly a femme covert, is being displaced by a gadabout, truculent, irresponsible creature, full of strange new ideas about her rights, and strongly disinclined to submit to her husband's authority, or to devote herself honestly to the upkeep of his house, or to bear him a biological sufficiency of heirs.
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