For a moment Bocton did not answer. Then he permitted himself to look pained. “I do not know,” he replied; and after another brief pause: “Tell me, Mr Carpenter, do you suppose my father would agree with you about Buckingham Palace?”
“I suppose so.”
“Yet he does not. He says the king should spend as much as he likes.” It was perfectly true. Because the monarch was his friend, the pleasure-loving earl didn’t give a damn how much he spent on the palace.
Carpenter hesitated. He was a little shocked, if not entirely surprised about Buckingham Palace. “He may not always be consistent,” he allowed.
“I hope that is all,” Lord Bocton said with filial sincerity. “The truth is, Mr Carpenter,” he admitted, “that his family are worried about him. They have long been concerned that he may not be, nowadays, quite –” he hesitated a last time “– quite sound of mind.” He gazed at Carpenter earnestly. “You observe him often. What do you think?”
“I think that he is well enough,” Carpenter replied with a frown. For a lord, he would like to have added.
“Good. Good. I am so glad to hear you say so. If ever you should have any doubts Mr Carpenter, it would be a kindness, in confidence of course, to let me know.”
Lucy would always remember the day they went to Lavender Hill.
It was pleasantly warm as they made their way down Tottenham Court Road. Lucy had a flask of water, and some food wrapped in a napkin and tied to a stick she carried over her shoulder. Every mile or so, they stopped for Horatio to rest and in this manner they slowly reached the Strand and crossed over Waterloo Bridge.
Years earlier, it would have been a more pleasant walk along the bank of the Thames, with timber yards along the riverside on their right and open market gardens on the left. But many of the timber yards were turning into little factories now, and the gardens disappearing under rows of houses for workmen and artisans. By the time they reached the old wall round the grounds of Lambeth Palace, the day was growing hot. From there they had another long stretch down to Vauxhall, where the old pleasure gardens were still open. A distillery and a vinegar factory on the riverbank in front of them, however, had destroyed the fashionable aspect of the palace.
As they came to Vauxhall, on the hot and dusty road, Lucy noticed that Horatio was beginning to limp.
The noonday bells had finished pealing only minutes before as Mary Penny came past Vauxhall. The pony trap had just begun to bowl up the long drag from there to Clapham when she noticed the two children, hand in hand, at the side of the road.
“Oh, do stop!” she cried to the coachman. “Let’s help those children. They look so tired.”
To her great relief, a moment later, Lucy found herself and Horatio perched beside the kind lady. When she heard where they were going she cried out: “Why, that’s just where I live! It’s an enchanting place.”
“And you mean to walk all the way back to St Pancras?” she enquired, after Lucy had answered her question about their expedition. “That seems a very long way,” she remarked, eyeing Horatio’s legs. “Mind you have a good rest at Lavender Hill first.”
Lavender Hill after noon. The August sun shone down with its great, broad heat. All around, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of lavender bushes had turned the slopes into a vast, bluish haze, over which there hovered the continuous, droning buzz of the numberless bees. The scent was overpowering.
Lucy had been half afraid, as she unwrapped their food, that the bees might bother them. But it seemed they were far too busy attending to the lavender. To keep the sun off, she put the napkin over Horatio’s head.
And there the two children stayed, for an hour, then another, too contented to move, drinking in the warm, sweet, hazy air as if it were a magical elixir that would give them new life. No wonder the lady had said the place was enchanted. As Lucy sat in the lavender, under the blue afternoon sky, it was as if she had entered a dream.
“Sing me the lavender song,” Horatio murmured sleepily. Then, after she did, “You’ll never leave me, will you Lucy?”
“Of course not. Never!”
He dozed for some time after that. “I think I’m getting stronger, Lucy,” he said when he awoke.
“I know you are.”
“Let us go home to mother, now,” he said happily, “and take her some lavender.”
When they reached the edge of the field, they were quite astonished to find the pony trap waiting for them in the lane.
“The lady gave orders that I’m to take you home,” the coachman explained. “Up you get now.”
On the way back, the two children sang to each other all the songs they could think of. And especially the lavender song, again and again.
It was the good fortune of reformers like Zachary Carpenter that 1830 turned out to be a cataclysmic year. In Europe, the political order which had been re-established after the mighty upheaval of the French Revolution and the career of Napoleon was by no means stable. The churning forces of democracy unleashed by the French were still active just beneath the surface; and now, in one country after another, eruptions began to occur.
In England, the boom market of recent years had suddenly halted; the harvest of the previous summer had been a disaster; and Wellington’s revision of the Corn Laws had not been nearly enough to meet the case – the price of bread had soared. Then in June the king died, his extravagant London palace still unfinished, and was succeeded by his brother, a bluff sailor who became William IV. And in July, came the news from France. After over a decade under the putrid rule of the restored royal regime, the French had had enough. They revolted. Within days, it was all over and a new liberal monarchy had been set up. As always, Europe looked to France. Signs quickly appeared of more revolts in Italy, Poland and Germany. It was at this point that, as if on cue, the riots in England began.
In fact the Swing Riots, which so terrified England that August, did not touch the cities. Named after one Captain Swing (the gentleman, it later turned out, never existed) they broke out in the south and east where the high prices of basic food that year had hit especially hard. The rioters were blaming everything: the government; agricultural machinery; the landowners. Week after week the trouble broke out, first in one place, then another, with great gangs roaming from village to village.
For Carpenter, however, the year brought growing excitement. In the early months he had been intrigued by a development in the north of England, where several attempts were now being made to bring together organizations of small masters and working men into unions who could, in effect, lobby for their interests with the political class. The purposes of these newly born unions was not clear yet. “But the fact that men are combining at all, in an orderly fashion, can only mean change in the long run,” he judged.
But the real boost to his morale came with the election he fought with his new ally Bocton, that summer. It was a matter of convention that when a monarch died and a new king succeeded, an election should be held. So Wellington called one. It was not even a very significant affair since most of the seats were unopposed. But for Carpenter and Bocton the case was different. The St Pancras seat was contested. A well-spoken lawyer, supported by the gentlemen of the vestry, was standing and had assumed he would carry the day. The surprise candidacy of that gloomy Tory Bocton, standing on a Whig platform of reform, seemed an incongruous intrusion.
The tactic Bocton and Carpenter worked out was extremely simple. Whenever the candidate spoke at a public meeting, Bocton would do so too. First, he would agree with every word the Tory candidate had said. Then declare: “But unfortunately, it won’t work.” And then – he did this so well because it was what he truly believed – he would paint them a harrowing picture. Revolution in France, unions forming in the north, huge gangs of starving labourers sweeping over London Bridge at any moment; and finally he would cry: “Is that what we want? I have represented the aristocratic interest all my life, but I tell you it can’t go on. Revolution or reform. The choice is
yours.”
Carpenter’s speeches to the reformers and radicals who were his own constituency boiled down to an even simpler formula. “Bocton’s a Tory but he’s seen the light. He’s our best bet. Vote for him.”
Carpenter had seen less of the sporting earl in the last few years, but when they had met he had noticed, regretfully, that St James, now in his mid-eighties, did not quite look his old self. His clothes seemed loose. His hands looked reddish-blue and were swollen. In his eyes, there was a certain irritability.
It was in the middle of one of Bocton’s speeches that Carpenter saw the earl. He was standing with his grandson George, a little removed from the crowd, watching intently. Bocton’s voice carried clearly to where they were standing. He was speaking rather well. With a cheerful smile, therefore, Carpenter went over to greet the old man and casually remarked: “So my lord, have you come to support your son?”
For a moment, he thought the earl had not heard him, and was about to repeat the question when St James suddenly burst out: “Support Bocton? That traitor? I’m damned if I will!”
Young George, Carpenter noticed, said nothing.
“Damn you all,” said the earl, presumably to Carpenter, and stumped off with George following.
When the St Pancras election was held Lord Bocton was returned with a large majority. In almost every one of the contested seats reformers had been easily returned. “I do believe,” Zachary declared, “the tide is turning.” Many of the Tories were wavering now.
The state of the country, however, remained volatile. The Swing Riots continued, breaking out in one locality after another, without warning, so that the government was unable to control them. The Whig opposition derided the government daily and told them the middle classes wouldn’t stand for this much more. And as for the waverers: “They are starting,” Bocton reported from Westminster, “to get jumpy.”
The Duke of Wellington, however, held the line. The sole concession his government made to the people that year was to allow formerly unlicensed small producers to make cheap beer. This would compensate, he reasoned, for the higher cost of bread. But to the less battle-hardened waverers in the Commons, the riots in the countryside still seemed terrifying. Bocton was amused when, one day, a flustered member came up to him and, unaware he was the author, assured him: “It’s reform, now, Bocton, or revolution.”
At the start of November, apparently supposing that it was time to form a square, the gallant Duke of Wellington coolly informed the country that, as far as he was concerned, there would be no reform at any time in the foreseeable future. Even some of the Tories thought this was going a bit far. Two weeks later, in the House of Commons, the government was defeated on a vote; and Bocton, as a matter of courtesy, rode over to Carpenter’s workshop to tell him: “The king is sending for the Whigs, Mr Carpenter. You have your reform.”
For Lucy, the year brought pain. Even the warm weather that spring did not seem to improve Horatio’s condition. Tired though he often was however, whenever he felt up to it during the hot days of summer, he would struggle down to the Thames and wander about on the mud while she and Silas worked. Once, as a treat, she took him from London Bridge, where they had been working, up to the Bank. From there, the previous summer, an enterprising man had started a new mode of transport: a huge carriage seating twenty passengers and pulled by three strong horses, it made the journey from the Bank to the western village of Paddington. An omnibus, the fellow called it, and the two children took it all the way back to the bottom of St Pancras. It cost them sixpence.
But still, she could tell, Horatio was getting weaker. In her heart she knew that in their dreary lodgings, and down by the damp, dirty old river, and in the terrible London fogs he would never be well. And though she could scarcely bear the thought of parting from him, she told Silas: “He must get away from here. He must.”
Silas said nothing.
Several times, trying to think who could help them, she begged the boatman: “Can’t you think of any family, any friends who might help him? Have we no relations anywhere?” To which the answer always came, in his deep gruff voice: “No.”
Once, on a bright October day, as Horatio was wandering on the mud flats by Blackfriars, she and Silas heard him give a cry, and then saw him waving to them. Silas, with a quiet curse, finally agreed to row back and Lucy, fearing something was amiss, ran over the damp mud to him so that her legs were speckled black by the time she reached him. He was not hurt though, but in his hand, which he now proudly held out, were no less than five golden sovereigns.
“Five sovereigns!” He smiled. “Are we rich, now?”
“Oh, yes!” cried Lucy.
“Does this mean you could stop working? At least for a little while?”
“We shall have a fine feast,” she promised him instead.
For another hour Lucy and Silas plied the river that afternoon, and whenever Lucy looked back she could see the little boy standing there, smiling at her, a strange, unhealthy glow upon his pallid face and she thought, with a tremor of fear, how ethereal he looked, like a person from another world.
The most famous House of Commons vote in the history of modern England took place on 23 March 1831. The great Reform Bill, introduced by the new Whig ministry, had gone through amid stormy sessions. A hundred seats, after all, were to disappear. The entire political establishment was to be drastically rearranged. “I think, even now,” Bocton had warned Carpenter, “that the vote will be close.” He was right. The historic measure which ushered in modern democracy to England, passed by exactly one vote.
“Mine,” Bocton claimed, with a wry smile.
Not that the thing was done yet. Within days, a wrecking amendment had got through and the Reform Bill lay in ruins. This last stand by the die-hards did not distress Carpenter much. “The Whigs will go to the country now,” he judged. “And they will win.” Sure enough, the Whig prime minister, Lord Grey promptly called an election. The Whigs were returned with a large majority. Reform was now inevitable.
One small event did puzzle both men. Carpenter had just gone for a meeting with Bocton at the start of the new election. Finding him in a large, crowded lobby beside Westminster Hall, the craftsman remarked with total innocence: “I see your son George is standing now, as well. For a pocket borough.”
Bocton gazed at him in astonishment. “Is he?”
A moment later, walking stiffly by in the company of several other elderly peers, they caught sight of the old Earl of St James, whom Bocton now approached.
“Did you know, father, that George was standing for a rotten borough?”
“That’s right, Bocton. I bought it for him.”
“You did not tell me.”
“Didn’t I? Must have slipped my mind.”
“I shall look forward to walking through the Aye lobby with him. Father and son,” Bocton remarked drily.
The fact that a man was standing for a rotten borough, of course, was no indication that he supported the system. There were plenty of Whigs who had got into Parliament via rotten boroughs who were committed, as a matter of principle, to voting their own seats out of existence.
“Really?” The old earl shrugged. “I’ve no idea which way he’ll vote.”
For a moment Carpenter thought he had misheard. “He’ll vote for reform like you and me, my lord,” he coaxed the cross old man. “That’s why you put him there.”
“Oh.” Did the old earl look a little vague, now? Had he lost the thread of what they were saying, or was this just another little game to annoy his son? He stared at Carpenter. “What sort of odds can one get on this election?” he suddenly demanded. “Who’s making a book? Any idea?”
“No, my lord.”
“I suppose I’d better go and find out.” The earl paused. “I don’t think,” he remarked with a frown, “that I’ve been to the races for some time.”
September fog, thick and brown, smothered the river. Had the boat been going round in circles? Were they opposite
Blackfriars, or down by the Tower, or out in the reaches by Wapping? Used as she was by now to the river, she had no idea; and when, after an hour, she asked Silas, he only grunted.
How he expected to find anything in this brown miasma, she could not imagine; yet still, from time to time, he would give her an instruction: “Pull to port. Hold her steady.” So that she could only wonder what he knew in the opaque, undivided firmament of water and fog, that other men did not.
As the boat drifted, Lucy’s thoughts drifted also. For a time, after he had found the gold, Horatio had seemed to be better. At Christmas, he and Lucy had prepared a splendid feast for their mother, and he had even sung his family a carol he had learned. But in January he began to cough up phlegm, and in the first week of February he was so racked by a raging fever that at times Lucy wondered if his frail body could stand it. The infection that had taken over his lungs was as thick and evil as the London fog. For two months he had sat at home, his chest wrapped up in shawls. Sometimes his mother would try hot compresses to draw the infection, and he would thank her with tears of pain in his eyes. But only in May had the evil presence seemed to withdraw, for the time being at least, leaving him weak all through the warm months of summer; and now, with the chill and fog of September beginning again, she trembled to think of the sickness’s awful return.
“Keep away from him, or you’ll catch it,” Silas would say.
“He must get away from this place,” she repeated, though Silas gave her no encouragement.
She could see Silas well enough as he sat a few feet from her, and as he rested his chest thoughtfully on the oars it seemed to her that even he might be thinking of calling it a day. They seldom exchanged more than a few words but, sitting alone in the fog, Silas for some reason decided to be more companionable.
“You’ve got pluck. I’ll give you that. Out here in this fog and you never complain.”
“It’s nothing,” she said. And then, encouraged by this unusual turn of conversation she ventured: “How can you tell how to find things, Silas? Even in this?”
London Page 113