There was a barber’s shop, full of tatty customers being shaved by candlelight, a very sour beer-shop doing a raucous trade, and a fish shop offering dollops of fried fish bloated with batter, but every other house was selling scarves. They hung from poles on either side of the alley, lit by lamps hung above the doors and windows, dangling just above the level of the tallest top hat, pegged out like washing. And very expensive washing, for these were silk scarves and paisleys, embroidered and fringed and inappropriately beautiful in such a setting.
Will raised his eyebrows in enquiry.
‘Stolen,’ Jimmy explained succinctly.
‘But who would buy such articles, here in this poverty?’
‘Merchants,’ Jimmy said, ‘small shopkeepers, all manner of people, but mostly those who have had their scarves stolen. They come from miles around to buy them back. Look about you. It’s a recognized trade.’ And sure enough there were plenty of well-dressed customers among the jostling poor.
‘It’s a scandal,’ Will said. ‘Why, that is tantamount to giving thieves a licence to steal.’
‘Now you see what it is I face,’ Jimmy said, watching as two gentlemen carefully examined a row of silk scarves, pulling them towards the nearest light. ‘Most of my parishioners live outside the law, outside society. They do not belong, either to the church or the city. They are pariahs. Matty and I have rescued four of them by training them up as housemaids and giving them somewhere decent to live. I realize it could be said that they are only four among so many, but at least we have made a start. And great oaks from little acorns, you know.’
That night Will wrote his article, describing the charter and advertising the petition. ‘Each signature will be an acorn dropping upon the ground of parliamentary indifference,’ he wrote. ‘What oaks will grow of them we cannot tell. But any man who walks in Field Lane after dusk must surely recognize the need for the changes they request.’
The article was edited, as he expected, but enough of it survived in Wednesday morning’s paper to make Nan pat him on the back on his way in to the stamping. ‘A fine piece,’ she said. ‘Your mother would be proud of you.’
‘I do my best to spread the word,’ he told her cheerfully.
‘You and Mr O’Connor both,’ she said.
All through that winter and the following spring, Mr Feargus O’Connor’s powerful newspaper, the Northern Star, kept his readers informed about the progress of the petition, which had a million signatures before Christmas, and was supported by torchlit processions and passionate meetings up and down the country, some of which Will reported. And the great firm of A. Easter and Sons sold the Northern Star in all their shops, to the considerable agitation of the regional managers. Or to be more accurate, to the considerable agitation of Mr Hugh Jernegan and his new ally Mr Joshua Maycock, who was manager of the region of Middlesex.
‘I do question,’ Mr Jernegan said towards the end of the March meeting, ‘I do question whether we are altogether wise to be seen as the purveyors of such debasing opinions as those expressed in the Northern Star, especially at a time like this, with the likelihood of violence in the streets when this wretched petition is presented.’
‘T’en’t for us to question the politics of what we sell,’ Nan said briskly. ‘We’d be here all night if we started that sort of caper. The Northern Star is a legal newspaper, stamped by the Post Office and selling better every week. Forty thousand copies en’t to be sniffed at, gentlemen. That’s all need concern us.’
‘I feel I should point out,’ Mr Maycock smoothed, ‘that the sale of such violently radical opinions might well have an adverse effect upon trade, given the government’s feelings upon the matter.’
‘If the government have feelings upon the matter,’ Nan said coolly, ‘then I daresay the government will take action, that being their business. Our business is to sell newspapers.’
‘But what if our sales were affected?’ Mr Maycock said. ‘I only ask out of concern for the firm. That is my one and only concern, Mrs Easter, as I’m sure you appreciate.’
‘This month’s figures are uncommon healthy,’ Nan said. ‘I don’t see many signs of adverse influence there. Meantime there’s the matter of the Bradford shop. Is that roof mended yet?’
‘She thinks revolutionaries may be dealt with in the same way as roof-tiles,’ Mr Maycock muttered to his friend.
‘She will learn better when they present that foolish petition of theirs,’ Mr Jernegan muttered back, smoothing his mutton-chop whiskers with the back of his hand,. ‘There’ll be bloodshed on that day, I can tell you, and then where shall we be?’
‘A black-hearted lot!’ Mr Maybury agreed. ‘And it will be a black-hearted day, you mark my words.,’
The black-hearted day began with a symphony of church bells and birdsong. The chorus in Bedford Square was so loud that it woke the household. Nan smiled at it, and turned on her side to sleep again. But Will got out of bed and walked to the window to see as well as hear, excited now that the great day had arrived, and particularly as Jeff Jefferson was being sent to London to report the event too and they planned to watch the procession together as soon as his morning’s work was done.
The stamping that morning took for ever. It wasn’t until eleven o’clock that his father said he could cut off if he wanted to, and by then Jeff had been waiting in the coffee house for ‘more than half an hour, old thing’. He was twitching with impatience and the minute he saw Will he rushed out into the Strand to call a cab and take them to Regent Street.
They found the new avenue packed with people waiting for the procession. Will paid their cabbie his exorbitant sixpence and he and Jeff eased themselves into the throng, standing right on the edge of the pavement despite the complaints of two rather seedy gentlemen who were now behind them. They were determined to get the best possible view. And their determination was rewarded.
After thirty minutes or so, they heard the bray of a brass band above the noise of the crowd and the outriders turned into Regent Street from Langham Place with the marchers close behind them.
‘That’s Mr Feargus O’Connor on the grey,’ Jeff said, squinting up the road at them, ‘and the fat fellow on the mare is Bronterre O’Brien.’
Not very imposing, Will thought, glancing at Mr O’Brien, whose face looked too babyish for the leader of such a demonstration, but Mr O’Connor was a man with an air, tall, grey haired and handsome on his bold white horse. I’ll interview him when they get to the House. No wonder Nan speaks well of him. And the marchers were equally impressive, all immaculately dressed in their Sunday best, their jackets in suitably sober colours, dark blue, brown, magenta, bottle green, their hats black, their trousers fawn or grey or dark brown tweed, their expressions serious. They marched like soldiers, keeping firm step across the column, but as each man followed the drumbeat a fraction of a second later than the man in front of him, the march had acquired a rhythmically rippling effect that made the approaching column look like some huge pale-legged centipede.
Even if the marchers’ clothes were sombre, they were spotlessly clean, and the banners that streamed above their heads were dazzling, huge sheets of scarlet, orange, purple and sky-blue with the words ‘Liberty’ and ‘Reform’ written on them in bold black letters.
And then suddenly the petition itself was upon them, its vast bulk neatly folded and cloud-white above the dark hats of the marchers. It was carried in a wooden cage like an enormous orange box mounted on two long stout poles that were supported shoulder high by twenty-four bearers, twelve before and twelve behind. And as it passed the crowd grew silent and some bowed their heads or removed their caps and even children who had been noisily bowling hoops and playing tag were stilled and overawed.
‘Over two million signatures,’ Will said, ‘and three miles long! It’s a wondrous thing, Jeff. The government must accept these reforms now, surely.’
The petition was passing, the crowd beginning to murmur again. And behind the bearers was a wide red ban
ner bearing the inscription ‘Murder demands justice: 16 August 1819’.
‘16th of August 1819?’ Jeff wondered.
‘The battle of Peterloo,’ Will explained. ‘In Manchester. When the local militia attacked a peaceful demonstration and massacred eleven people. That was for universal suffrage too. You must have heard of it. My mother was there.’
‘At a massacre?’ Jeff asked.
‘Yes,’ Will said proudly. ‘She helped tend the wounded. She and a weaver called Caleb Rawson. I think that’s one of the reasons why everyone says she was a saint.’
‘Well, good for her,’ Jeff said, much impressed. ‘So that’s the reason you’re reporting all this now. Following in mother’s footsteps and all that sort of thing, eh?’
But Will was already looking for another cab to take them to Parliament Square. He wanted to see the petition arrive, and to find out when it would be presented to the House, and to interview Mr O’Connor.
Their second cab was speedy because the driver was eager for dinner and had no time to waste in detours or conversation, so the two young men arrived in Westminster long before the procession. Neither of them had realized what a long time such a march would take to walk from the West End, nor what a business it would be to accommodate so many people in a small square crowded with builders’ carts and gangs of navvies and all the paraphernalia that was required to clear the ground for the building of the new Houses of Parliament.
It was late afternoon before the petition finally arrived at the portals of Westminster Hall only to discover that its container was too big to be carried through the door. There was a passionate argument, which Will duly noted, while the crowds milled about inside the enclosed space, craning their necks to see what was going on, and at last reason prevailed and the petition was taken out of its box and divided into sections small enough to be carried into the House.
‘Now what?’ Jeff said, as the last pile of paper disappeared.
‘We wait,’ Will said. ‘I will interview Mr O’Connor as soon as he comes out again, and then we’ll wait.’
The interview was short and lively, the wait was very long and very boring. The marchers gradually drifted away, more and more reporters arrived, lounged about with diminishing patience, took themselves off for food and sustenance, and returned to lounge again. From time to time members of the House emerged to announce that various debates were being conducted, but that no date had been set for the presentation of the petition. Lights were lit inside the building; Will and Jeff took it in turns to cut off for a bit of dinner; the debates continued; it was nine o’clock, ten, half past eleven.
Finally just before midnight, there was an eruption of excited MPs striding out into the square bellowing for carriages, and all of them hot with the latest news. Instead of receiving the petition and promising to present it, the Prime Minister had resigned.
Will made rapid notes, scanning the crowd for Frederick Brougham, and darting off to collar him the moment he saw him strolling out of the door.
‘A poor business, Will,’ he said, easing on his gloves.
‘Has he truly resigned?’
‘I fear so.’
‘What will happen now?’
‘We shall have a new government.’
‘And the petition?’
‘The petition will be delayed, I fear. It is the reform crisis all over again.’
‘That won’t please the Chartists,’ Jeff observed.
‘Indeed,’ Mr Brougham said. ‘To dash their hopes at the very moment of their great success is ill-judged, to say the very least. No good will come of it. We shall see heads broken for this.’
But the Chartists maintained their patience for a very long time, waiting for Mr Peel to form his new government, which took until the middle of June, and debating what further steps should be taken if that government too refused to consider the petition. Their disappointment was acute when the date set for the debate of the petition was not until mid July, but there were no riots and no hint of any until the beginning of that month, when the Chartist Convention suddenly decided that London was no longer a fit place for their assemblies and decided to reconvene in Birmingham.
‘Follow them there,’ the editor of the Morning Advertiser instructed Will Easter. ‘This peace can’t last. Not when feelings are running so high.’
‘How long do you want me to stay?’ Will asked.
‘Until something happens.’
‘What if it doesn’t?’
‘It will.’
Papa won’t like this, Will thought, as he made his way homeward. An indefinite leave of absence always annoyed his father.
But this time he got an easy reception. For a start Caroline and Euphemia were in Fitzroy Square when he arrived, come up to London to buy materials for their new summer dresses and consequently full of excitement. And far from raising objections his father said he thought a visit to Birmingham was a capital idea.
‘It’s high time you saw the Birmingham end of the business,’ he said. ‘We dispatch papers from our warehouses there to every city on the north-west, you know. I daresay you could fit in a visit to the warehouse now and then, could you not? When do you want to go?’
‘Well, as soon as possible really.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
‘Travel by railway train,’ John said. ‘They’re not exactly comfortable, but they’re a deal more dependable than the roads, especially in wet weather. Tom shall go with you. He knows the place. Stay at the Golden Lion in Deritend.’
‘Well, you’re a pretty beastly sort of brother!’ Caroline pretended to complain. ‘Rushing off to Birmingham the minute we get here. Pheemy thinks you’re beastly too, don’t you Pheemy?’
‘No,’ Euphemia said in some confusion, ‘you know I don’t, Caroline. Oh dear! You shouldn’t say such things.’
‘You can both come to Euston to see me off, if you like,’ Will promised, rescuing her, ‘and the minute I get home we’ll all go to the theatre. How will that be?’
‘A partial redemption,’ Caroline allowed. ‘What is Euston like?’
Chapter 7
It seemed peculiar to Will Easter to begin his journey in a high, echoing barn chilled in the middle of a meadow instead of a crowded inn-yard snug and low in the middle of the City. Euston station was a bleak place, even at three o’clock on a summer’s afternoon. It had been built in the fields just north of Euston Square, with long bare platforms where the passengers waited to board their train, a disconcertingly high glass roof supported by narrow steel pillars, designed to accommodate the steam from the locomotives, and one end of the building left completely open to the wind and rain.
Will wasn’t sure whether he liked the place or not, but Caroline was thrilled with it, declaring that the locomotives were ‘splendid’, and so they were, chuffing along their impossibly narrow rails towards him, belching steam like dragons through their long stove-pipe chimneys.
When Will and the two girls arrived, with Bessie and Tom Thistlethwaite in attendance, the train to Birmingham was waiting by the platform. It consisted of a long line of open carts like empty farm wagons smartly painted in magenta with gold trim, and behind them, at a good distance from the smoke and smuts of the engine, two first class carriages, each one built exactly like three stage-coaches stuck together.
‘There y’are, Mr Will sir,’ Tom said, opening the door of the second one. ‘Seat number 4, by the winder. I shall be in the next coach back should yer want me for anything.’
‘May we get in too?’ Caroline asked, one foot already on the step.
‘I suppose so,’ Will said, helping her up, ‘or I shall never hear the last of it. What do you think of it?’
‘It’s much better than a stage-coach,’ Caroline said, bouncing up and down on the upholstery. ‘Sit there, Pheemy, and you can see out of the window. Do those curtains pull?’
Euphemia was just settling into the corner seat when there was a commotion at the far end
of the platform, a tramp of marching feet and a harsh voice shouting commands. The two girls had their heads out of the window at once to see what it was, and Will looked back too, from his vantage point on the step.
There was a company of Bobbies marching down the platform, about sixty of them in all, and as formidable as an army in their dark blue uniforms.
‘Are they policemen?’ Caroline said, hanging out of the window to stare at them as they climbed into two of the open carts labelled ‘3rd Class’.
‘Yes,’ Will told her. ‘They are.’
‘What are policemen doing on a train?’ Euphemia wondered rather anxiously.
‘Never you mind about policemen,’ Bessie scolded. ‘And put your heads back in the carriage, do, or you’ll fall out.’
‘I don’t know,’ Will said, stepping back onto the platform again, ‘but I’ll soon find out.’ And he was off at once, notebook in hand to find their sergeant.
‘Yes, sir,’ that gentleman said stolidly. ‘Off ter Birmingham we are, sir. We been sent for on account a’ the Chartists. They’re a-meeting in the Bull Ring you see, sir, an’ the magistrate sez that ain’t allowed.’
‘Much obliged to you, sir,’ Will said, writing rapidly. He realized that he was excited by the information. It roused a sense of impending danger that was alarming, but invigorating too, so that he was suddenly full of energy, trembling with a recklessness he could neither control nor deny. It was as if he’d lost all sense of balance and self-preservation.
He ran back to his carriage, eyes shining.
Bessie was urging the two girls out of the train. ‘It’ll go with you on it, and then where will you be?’
‘Is there going to be a fight?’ Caroline asked, alerted by his excitement.
‘I shouldn’t wonder.’
She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him. ‘How thrilling!’ she said. ‘I wish I could go with you.’
‘Well, you can’t,’ Bessie said. ‘And thank the Lord fer that. You just come on home and be a good girl.’
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