The Vice Of Virtue (A Poor Man At The Gate Series Book 10)

by Andrew Wareham

  “Does that make any sense, Mr Brooks?”

  “It is an interesting theory, sir, though not born out by any facts that I am aware of. Indeed, I am not at all certain that rocks discovered upon the surface must necessarily be younger than those at a depth below them, and, as for the metals being ‘related’ – that seems very strange to my limited knowledge.”

  “So, the old gentleman burrowed in search of gold and found only another seam of lead and silver?”

  Brooks grinned and nodded.

  “Advantageous to us, particularly while silver is high. Did he dig elsewhere, do you know?”

  Brooks had not thought to enquire – he did not have the money-maker’s mind, George regretted.

  “Why was the seam, the rake, not worked, Mr Brooks?”

  “The old gentleman was not entirely sane, one understands, sir. Unusually, his father had been a miner who had prospered and had been able to purchase land around his working – generally the two were quite separate.”

  “You are saying that a mine would not necessarily be the property of the land-owner?”

  “Rare indeed for the two to coincide, sir. I suspect the main reason is that the land is so poor that the landlords themselves lacked the wealth and power to take the mines over. One set of peasants worked the land, another set dug the mines and neither, normally, became rich and the Crown continued to exercise its old feudal rights. Just occasionally a miner might stumble across what they call a ‘pipe’, which is a substantial deposit of good ore. I suspect that where there was a pre-existing cave, the invading minerals filled the space to put perhaps many thousands of tons of high-value material into one location. Such rare and lucky men actually became rich, and could buy land. Most would have sought good lowland acres, but a few bought on the moors.”

  “So Grandfather Parkin owned the mine and chose not to expand it. Why?”

  “I believe he wasted much of his substance on prospecting for gold and other wild endeavours. His son inherited less than he might have expected and was never able to put together the capital required, and after the death of his betrothed lacked the inclination to make any effort at all. We will therefore benefit from their lack of initiative, Mr Star.”

  “You tell me that the old gentleman was insane, Mr Brooks?”

  “So I am informed, sir. Screaming rages followed by periods of lethargy, then normality for months at a time, I believe. From the little the local people remember, he could be a bitter man, bearing a grudge for months. A man who offended him in January might find a hammer thrown at him in June, so they said.”

  “Oh, dear! Poor Mr Tonks!”

  Brooks very carefully failed to hear or understand his response.

  “Now then, Mr Brooks, to business! The mine is set upon a hillside, as one may observe. Does the seam, the rake, follow the trend of the land? Can one expect to reach it by horizontal adit? Does it dip? What of flooding?”

  Brooks calmly turned to his folder and extracted a number of quarto sheets, including some sketches.

  “I believe that a shaft will make more sense than an adit, sir – because the tunnel would need be rather too long. Difficult to ventilate, and that is important in a lead-mine, and expensive to cut. Enlarge the existing shaft and set an engine at its head, both for a winding gear and for pumping water, for the rake will get wetter as we follow it deeper. A narrow trackway to follow the rake and bring tubs of ore back to the shaft will be a sensible investment. At the head here we must build a much greater cupola for refining the ore – the present furnace is far too small. We need a supply of coal or coke as well. It would make sense to divert the stream that runs half a mile away in order to bring a water supply to the workings. All of these proposals are contained in these sheets, sir. I have been unable to append costings, not having access to the appropriate information.”

  “That I can do, Mr Brooks. Do you intend to remain on this site, sir, or are you required to return to Roberts?”

  “I shall make enquiries locally, with the aim of discovering whether the old gentleman made any other diggings. If I can discover any such I shall investigate them. That done, Mr Star, I think I shall have exhausted my usefulness to you, and I shall return to my previous occupation.”

  “You will go with my thanks and a very substantial bonus, sir. What is your previous occupation, by the way?”

  “Coal, sir – searching out the few surface deposits that remain and endeavouring to secure them for Roberts.”

  “If you should happen across zinc or copper or good values of lead, be sure that I shall be very glad to know of them, Mr Brooks.”

  Brooks was no great businessman but he rather liked the idea of the commissions that must come his way in such case; he made an enthusiastic promise not to forget Mr Star.

  “A competition, Matthew! An open and above board examination of the virtues of the steam engines available to us today. Mr Stephenson wishes to demonstrate to his backers that the Liverpool and Manchester Railway will be served only by the best. He could have chosen simply to employ locomotive steam engines of his own manufacture, ignoring all others, but he has decided instead to open the rails to any inventor who has the brash audacity to challenge his genius!”

  “You would seem to have no doubt of the result, Joseph?”

  “There is no room for such in my mind, Matthew. I have had the privilege of assisting Mr Stephenson in the assembly of his ‘Rocket’ locomotive engine and have been amazed by it! Every part is thoroughly made! Nothing has been hurried, all has been built to a specification from the least to the largest. Even the hinges on the firebox door were fabricated to a drawing!”

  Matthew was impressed – he had observed that no two steam engines constructed in his shipyard were ever perfectly identical, had presumed that to be the nature of engineering and metal.

  “That is because your men work to eye, Matthew – the tenth part of an inch here or there is of little significance to them because they can make allowance elsewhere. You might give thought to an expansion of your draughting office so that you could produce sets of drawings for every part of every engine.”

  It was an interesting concept; quite clearly this could lead to an interchangeability of parts – Adam Smith’s pin making brought to the shipyard.

  Every steamship was constructed from the keel up by qualified engineers, and each ship was unique; assemble them from manufactured parts and the ships would become far more similar, and easier to repair and maintain. Most importantly, the bulk of the work could be done by less skilled men, and there was a great shortage of literate and numerate youths to be trained into engineers, and an even greater lack of colleges and institutes in which they could be educated.

  “All we can find to employ are Paddies with big hammers, or so it seems, Joseph. Give them identical parts to be fixed, each into the same place, and we will be able to produce more and perhaps even better ships.”

  Coastal shipping seemed of less importance to Joseph – the railways would soon cover the whole land and take much of the work from the small ships. Ocean-going steamers still seemed an unlikely prospect in the absence of cheap steel plate to fabricate their hulls.

  “Will you pay a visit to Rainhill, Matthew? The trials will be held there as soon as next week and should be wonderful to see – the genius of the Age on open display!”

  Matthew committed himself – he could not refuse in courtesy to his brother, but he had the gravest of doubts about the enterprise, as he explained to Charlotte later.

  “A competition, my dear, the result of which will be glory for the winner and utter eclipse of the losers. That steam locomotive engine that wins will be the pattern for every one of the thousand or more to be built in the decade, and any that loses will be consigned to the scrapheap, as will be its progenitor.”

  “Why?”

  “What claim to fame will an inventor have? To be a man who lost the competition to discover the best engine – what recommendation is that?”

&nb
sp; She nodded thoughtfully, able to see the ramifications.

  “They must win or be utterly eclipsed. Safety, for example, will be the least of their concerns.”

  “Precisely and literally, ma’am! The safety valves will be screwed down tight and every ounce of power will be delivered to the wheels. I will not wish to stand close to any of these machines on the days of actual display of their capabilities. I will not take the children with me, I think.”

  Many others thought the same – there were crowds present, but they tended to stand well clear of the rails.

  The trials were an awful anti-climax, because only Stephenson’s machine was able to complete the course. The ‘Rocket’ was large, powerful and shockingly efficient; it was also peculiarly commonplace – it worked and very few of the onlookers were surprised, they had somehow expected it to.

  Joseph was supremely content – it was right that Mr Stephenson’s machine should be successful. Matthew was puzzled.

  “Some of the other inventors are highly educated gentlemen, Joseph, and have had access to the universities and the Royal Society. Their theory is far superior to that of Mr Stephenson, and their mathematics much outstrips him. Yet their machines do not perform. You are learned far beyond him, so tell me, why has he succeeded?”

  “Genius, brother. He knows what will work, even if, very often, he cannot explain why. Additionally, he knows his metals – his pipes do not crack; his cylinders do not blow; his bearings do not collapse under the strain. Finally, he is thorough – you will never hear the terrible words, ‘good enough’, from his lips. His locomotive engine is not good enough – it is simply good.”

  “Is it now certain that locomotive engines will be used? There had been thought given to stationary winding engines instead.”

  “In less than a year from now all except the last incline into the terminus in Liverpool will be served by the Rocket and her contemporaries. The final stretch is too steep for our engines, at the moment. That will be remedied within a short time but for the while will use a winding engine.”

  “What next?”

  “Everything! Everywhere! The land is to be covered by railway lines – thousands of miles of them. First must be to link every major city to London; then to each other; then lesser lines must connect towns to cities; finally, every village in the country must have a line within an hour’s walk, or less. Coal and iron, brother – bridges to build and tunnels to cut and the world to turn upside down. Perhaps we shall make a bridge from Dover to Calais, before we are done, or a tunnel – we may then finally be able to civilise the Frogs, though that may be a wild ambition, thinking on it.”

  Matthew reported Joseph’s words when he reached his house that night, expecting Charlotte to be sceptical, at least. Instead she was intrigued.

  “Where will the money come from, my love?”

  “Money? Money does not come from anywhere at all, my dear. The banks print paper and the government borrows from the Bank of England and the money simply comes to exist. While men and women dig coal and weave cottons and woollens and fire pottery and smelt iron, then money does not matter – it is not real. Money is just a way of keeping count, no more than that.”

  “What of gold?”

  “Very pretty stuff. Not much of it about at the moment, so its price is rising. The very fact that gold has a price tells you that it is just another commodity; it has no magic, it is simply uncommon.”

  She was not convinced, would rather far have kept their wealth in gold coins under the bed than in entries in a bank’s ledgers.

  “Did you meet Mrs Joseph Andrews today, Matthew?”

  “No, I do not imagine that steam engines would hold any overwhelming interest for her.”

  “No, they would not. I had merely wondered whether she would have wished to be seen at her husband’s side.”

  Matthew shook his head; it was not in her character as he had read it.

  “Mary would have been there, to provide Joseph with the right words and ensure that he greeted the right people and did the right thing. The second Mrs Andrews will not play the superior being whose role it is to guide her husband to greater glory – that is not her way. She admires and respects Joseph, that I am sure of, but it is not in her to play the Hector – probably because she does respect him. It is a pity that she does not love him, perhaps, but an untrammelled romance did him little enough good last time round!”

  Mrs Joseph Andrews agreed - romance was all very well in books, and she very much enjoyed a good novel, but real life was not bound in leather at eighteen shillings. She had both liking and respect for her husband and had discovered that the marital bed was far more enjoyable than the spinster's lonely couch, but she had better things to do than seek true love in her daily life. There would be a child within a few months, if all went well, which she confidently expected it to, and she looked forward to being a mother. For the while there was a house to make into the order that she demanded, and a garden to be made from nothing and to reflect her taste and artistic genius and a husband to be persuaded to dress and present himself as he should. Mr Andrews was a man of ability and importance and that must come to be properly recognised in the greater world - and that meant that he must be seen occasionally in society at her side.

  Joseph's sister Charlotte agreed with her assessment, though insisting that she herself had married for love and had been rarely fortunate in her man.

  "Joseph is a very different man to Sir Matthew, as you will appreciate, my dear. He is far more a man of his intellects than is my husband, and hence is a designer rather than a maker in his daily life. Sir Matthew lived an adventurous existence as a sailor for many years - he is, indeed, at his happiest when a new ship is launched and he can stand behind her wheel, on what he now calls a 'bridge', calling his orders to engineers and seamen, master for the day. He does tend, perhaps, to imagine himself as 'captain' of his shipyard, which can be undesirable on occasion, but that is another matter, my dear ma'am!"

  "Sir Matthew is a leader of men, I believe, Lady Star. Joseph, on the other hand, is far more at home with his machines than with the men who make and use them. In the same way, Joseph has little appreciation of the need to cultivate the men of power who can be of advantage to his own advancement..."

  "I do agree, my dear. Take this matter of the Lord Lieutenant's Ball - Sir Matthew will, of course, be pleased to escort me; you might perhaps join our party if Joseph is too busy?"

  "I am quite sure that my husband will be brought to an understanding of his own best interests, Lady Star! Perhaps we might both join your company? Will yours be a large party?"

  "Lord Star, my husband's brother will be present, but will be bringing Mr George Star with him so will not be part of our little group. I understand that Mr James Andrews, MP, my younger brother, will be present with his lady - I believe that the government wishes to be seen to approve of industry. Mr Jonathan Quarrington is also to be seen, one is told - I believe because of his West Indian interests in Liverpool."

  "What of Lord St Helens, ma'am?"

  "He has not yet confirmed his presence, though I believe it more likely than not."

  It would be a very powerful group, one that would attract much interest; Joseph would very definitely be brought to an understanding of his duty.

  "We shall certainly be in your company, ma'am!"

  "We travel directly to London thereafter, ma'am, to bow to His Majesty - will you join our company?"

  "I am sure we shall - Joseph has already committed himself to the excursion."

  Book Ten: A Poor Man

  at the Gate Series

  Chapter Seven

  Farlow closed the office door behind him, locking it carefully; top, bottom and then the main mortise by the door handle, each with its own keys. He sighed in relief, task complete, before walking the four paces to the alley leading back to the mews. As he turned the corner he stopped, looked back, searched for the keys, checked each pocket three times before realising
that he had hung them round his neck on their thick silk riband, as he always did. He took a few more paces, came to a halt, dithered for a few seconds before running back to the door and turning the handle and pulling it to make sure it was locked; he pushed the door as well, in case he had forgotten which way it opened. He made it almost to the carriage-house before he had to check again that the keys were in their proper place.

  "Home, Gribbin!"

  The groom, who had been counting how many times his master would run back to check on this occasion, was quite surprised - he normally stopped four times and ran back three. Perhaps the old loony was having a good day, he thought; he tried to remember whether the moon was coming towards full.

  The carriage was still quite new, the pair of horses bought out of Wales within the year; it was an impressive equipage for a provincial lawyer, but Farlow believed it was worth every penny of the four hundred or so he had paid out for it. He had discovered walking through town to be increasingly distressing, crossing the roads a particularly difficult task - he had several times found himself hesitating on the kerb, stepping forwards and backwards, for as much as ten minutes before being able to make his mind up to walk out. He leant forward in his seat, called up to Gribbin, told him to turn round - he could not recall locking the office door.

  "I checked it meself, Mr Farlow, sir! All right and tight, sir!"

  Gribbin had on one memorable occasion obeyed his master three times, had taken two hours to get him home; now he lied automatically. He carried spare sets of house and office keys, waved them as proof that he had done his duty. Farlow thanked him – he tried always to be polite to the menials - and sat back.