Tuppenny Times

by Beryl Kingston

  He had advised her on the number of papers to buy too. ‘For the usual day, two score of the Morning Chronicle and two score of the Morning Post for the gentry, who will be your most valued customers, of course. I daresay it would be politic to purchase an equal number of Daily Advertisers for cooks and coachmen and suchlike. It is a class of person that appears to wish to read these days, I cannot imagine why. You might also care to take a few copies of that new paper The Times. It purports to be a news-sheet and advertiser combined, although how that may be accomplished I cannot imagine.’ There seemed to be rather a lot that was beyond the imagination of this legal gentleman. ‘It is only 2d a copy, a trifling paper in all conscience, so even if it did not sell as you would wish, your loss would not be insupportable.’

  She’d felt quite sorry for the tuppenny Times, listening to his disparagement. And now as she trudged up Whitehall past the rustling trees of the Privy Gardens and the sleeping bulk of the Admiralty towards Eleanor’s lacy cross at Charing and the printing houses in the Strand and Fleet Street, she made up her mind to buy at least a dozen copies, just to show him.

  Printing House Square was the last newspaper office on her route that morning and quite the most welcoming. The publishers of the Chronicle and the Post and the Daily Advertiser were merely names upon a door, and had long since delegated sales to their clerks, who were variously harrassed, preoccupied or half asleep, but Mr Walter, the printer and publisher of The Times came out to greet her in person. He was a most untidy man, and looked as though he had been sleeping in his clothes, with his hair uncombed, cravat rumpled, waistcoat unbuttoned and a quill pen sticking out of his back coat-pocket, but his friendliness and enthusiasm more than made up for his unorthodox appearance.

  ‘You join a most select company, you know,’ he told her cheerfully. ‘I have eight newsmen and you will make nine. Allow me to bid you welcome. We dine together once a year, you know, on the first of January, for the pleasure of each other’s company and to talk trade and suchlike affairs. I trust you will join us.’

  She said she would be delighted.

  ‘I’m glad on it,’ he said, beaming a dishevelled smile at her from above the wreckage of his cravat. ‘Now may I make so bold as to beg a favour?’

  ‘Beg it,’ she said, intrigued.

  ‘My other newsmen are so kind as to take in advertisements for me, you know, and letters and essays and suchlike articles. They allow me to print their names and addresses on the paper to that end, you know. Would you consider such a service? For tuppence a week retainer?’

  ‘’Course,’ she said, and was immediately shaken by the hand, with such a firm pumping action that her fingers were numb for several seconds afterwards.

  And so she set off for her first day as a newsman.

  It was very hard work and there was a lot to learn, but she worked with a will and learned quickly. At the end of that first chilly day, her back ached and her feet were sore, she had a raw throat from calling her wares so incessantly and what was worse, she’d only managed to sell half her stock of Chronicles and Advertisers, although all the tuppenny Times had gone bar one, and that at least was gratifying.

  The next day it was drizzling with rain. First she adjusted her hat, then her order, taking fewer Chronicles and more Times, then her street cry. By the time she had covered half the walk, ‘News! Newspapers!’ had become ‘Nu! Nu-pape-AH!’ which was a deal easier to sing and seemed to be just as recognizable. This time she had fewer papers left over at the end of the day although her sales remained much the same.

  ‘That en’t good enough, gel,’ she scolded herself as she sat at her desk back in Cheyne Row that afternoon, checking her takings. She’d made two shillings and fourpence, three farthings, which was barely enough to cover the cost of the family’s meals, and left nothing over for rent or any other expenses. Something would have to be done to increase sales. She ate her dinner pondering it, and went to bed pondering it, and woke several times during the night pondering it, but she was no nearer a solution when she left the house at dawn the next morning.

  By now she was beginning to recognize some of her regular customers, and to have the paper of their choice ready in her hand before they reached her. In St James’ Square one of her gentlemen commented upon it. ‘You’re quick, ma’am.’

  ‘Thank ’ee, sir.’

  ‘Why bless me, if you were any quicker I should be readin’ me paper at breakfast time, so I should, instead of carryin’ it off to me club.’

  ‘Well now, sir, should you care to read your paper at breakfast time, that en’t outside the bounds of possibility.’

  ‘Ain’t it, though?’ He was clearly interested.

  ‘For an extra penny a week, I could deliver it through your door, sir, every morning, ready for breakfast, if that’s what you require.’

  ‘When should I pay you?’

  ‘Of a Saturday morning?’

  ‘Start tomorrow, pray do,’ he said, and went off through the drizzle, whistling like a bird.

  Nan made a note of their arrangement in the little notebook she kept hanging from her belt. An assured sale, she thought, that’ll cut out a bit of guesswork, and she made up her mind that she would tout for such custom whenever she could. At first it was easier than she imagined it would be. By the end of the day, she had twenty more such regular deliveries. By the end of the week when Sophie came to take tea for the first time since her return from Switzerland, it was nearly a hundred.

  Sophie was tearfully sorry to hear of Mr Easter’s death and said how kind and patient he had always been and how entirely fitting it was that he should have died defending a woman. But she expressed herself ‘quite amazed’ by Mary Wollstonecraft’s kindness. ‘I do believe we misjudged her, my dear,’ she said. ‘There is a kind heart a-beating after all beneath those unbecoming clothes.’

  ‘I am sure on it,’ Nan said. ‘She couldn’t ha’ been kinder had we been sisters born.’

  ‘And now you are a business woman, I hear,’ Sophie went on. ‘Who’d ha’ thought it? You must tell me how you fare.’

  It was pleasant for Nan to be able to brag to her old friend that she was doing rather well.

  However, her success nearly doubled her work, for now she had to walk the squares twice, once very early to deliver and again a little later to call and sell. Soon both pairs of her walking shoes were badly in need of mending. If only they’d all take deliveries, she thought, as she took the worst pair down to the cobblers. I shall have to do something to persuade ’em.

  The next afternoon she left her handcart at Printing House Square and walked to St Paul’s Churchyard to see Mr Johnson.

  ‘How much would it cost to have a quantity of small cards printed for advertising purposes?’ she asked, when they had exchanged commiserations and pleasantries.

  He was intrigued. ‘How big, pray, and for what purpose?’

  ‘To slip through a letterbox and persuade them ol’ mawthers down St James’ Square and such places that they ought to take their news with their breakfasts.’

  ‘Prettily put,’ he said. ‘Eight by six inches would be ample. How many would you require?’

  They settled for a gross, which he assured her would come out a deal cheaper than a smaller quantity, ‘in the long run’. And because she was the widow of his dear friend, he would take a down payment of a shilling and postpone the remainder of the price until such times as she had earned it. ‘A good man, your husband,’ he said, sighing quite dolefully. And then returning to business, ‘Now as to the wording.’

  They were attractive cards, pointing out with Mr Johnson’s careful tact that Mrs Nan Easter was now happily placed to offer a special delivery service to members of the gentry who resided in Mayfair.

  It certainly sounded persuasive. So she was disappointed, when having delivered a card to every household in every street and square, the response was so sluggish. Only ten new orders in as many days. She delivered another set of cards, this time marking them �
��For the attention of the master of the house’. But the orders still didn’t materialize.

  ‘What’s the matter with ’em?’ she said to Bessie when the girl was helping her dress for church that Sunday.

  ‘Don’t know, I’m sure, mum,’ Bessie said pinning her mistress’s dark hair into a neat chignon on the crown of her head.

  ‘Wretched critturs,’ Nan said, examining her reflection in the dressing table mirror. ‘They en’t men of sense an’ that’s a fact, or they’d ha’ jumped at it. How am I supposed to pay the rent if they won’t order more papers?’

  ‘Perhaps you’re being at bit too – well – impatient mum,’ Bessie suggested timidly.

  But Nan would have none of it. ‘I’m the most patient soul alive,’ she declared, stamping her foot. ‘Oh, hasten you up, do. We shall be late for the service.’

  But patient or no, there was nothing she could do to hurry her customers. A cold April passed into a showery May, and summer came suddenly blazing upon them in the middle of June, but whatever the weather, orders for deliveries increased at the rate of little more than a dozen a month and although she was gradually moving to the point when she would only need to walk the great squares once a day, she was moving at a snail’s pace, and that didn’t suit her temperament at all. She was full of impatient ambition. She wanted to employ a cook, and run a pony and trap to carry her rapidly from place to place for deliveries, and train up an assistant for the walk, that boy Thiss if he was still willing. But how could she do that if the blame fools wouldn’t order more papers? She hadn’t even got enough money to pay the annual rent, and the landlord was pressing.

  The business preoccupied her to the exclusion of almost everything else. It was the first thing she thought about when she opened her eyes in the morning, checking on the weather and trying to estimate what effect it would have on sales, and the last thing she puzzled over before she drifted off to sleep at night, dredging her tired brain for new ways to increase trade.

  Occasionally, when she found the time to consider it, she was upset that the children were growing out of their babyhood, and that she was missing it all because she was so busy. She grieved when little Annie had her fourth birthday and there was no money at all to buy her a present. She baked a special cake covered in sugar icing, and sewed a set of clothes from odd scraps of material for her French doll, and there was no doubt that the birthday party held in the little girl’s honour was an uncommon happy occasion, but it wasn’t enough. She was a dear, patient child and she deserved better than that.

  However, by August Nan was making a steady enough profit to be able to pay three months’ wages to all three of her equally patient servants. But that wasn’t good enough either. There was still the annual rent to pay, and she knew she couldn’t put it off for very much longer. In fact, at breakfast time the very next Monday she had a final demand from the landlord. The full amount of the rent, which he need hardly remind her had been ‘outstanding these four months’ was to be paid ‘forthwith’ or she would lose her tenancy.

  ‘Now what’s to be done, Bessie?’ she said tossing the offending letter at the toast rack. ‘I en’t a-losing this tenancy and that’s for certain. ’Tis my home so ’tis, Mr Easter’s home, the children’s, a family home where all’s safe and secure, and everything ship-shape and orderly and how we likes it, so there’s an end on it. But I can’t for the life of me see how I’m to find the money. Oh, drat the man. ’Twouldn’t hurt un to wait a while longer.’

  Bessie was most concerned. For this was her home too, the only home she’d ever known, and she didn’t want to lose it either. She cleared the breakfast things, thinking quietly, and presently, while her mistress was upstairs putting on her straw bonnet, she came creeping into the bedroom with an old leather purse in her hand and an anxious expression on her face.

  ‘If you please, mum,’ she said, dropping a curtsey, ‘you can have my wages for a while longer if yer like. Not meaning no disrespect, mum. What I mean ter say is, ’tis my ’ome too, mum. I been uncommon ’appy ’ere, yer see. If ’twould help …’

  But she didn’t get any further because her mistress had darted across the room to hug her with furious affection, and call her a dear, kind girl and the best friend a woman ever had and thrust the purse back into her hands. ‘You keep your wages, Bessie. You’ve earned ’em. We shall manage, never you fret.’ For by now Bessie’s tender emotions had brimmed into tears. ‘We shall manage. I en’t seen the landlord yet could get the better of Nan Easter.’

  There were always ways of raising necessary cash, but it riled her to have to go cap in hand to Mr Tewson and beg a loan. He allowed it, but at an exorbitant rate of interest and only with the provision that it was repaid within six months. ‘Perhaps you need to consider whether you are not living a little beyond your means,’ he said, oozing a smile at her.

  ‘You will allow me to be judge of that,’ she said coolly, stopping him before he could deliver a homily. But it made her more determined than ever that somehow or other her business affairs must be improved.

  Meantime a foggy autumn was already giving way to winter and soon there was a combination of cold weather and the concomitant falling sales to occupy her.

  It was a very difficult season. Even without Mr Tewson’s interest, she was hard put to it to pay her household bills without dipping into what little remained of her capital, with the price of sea-coal up, and good meat in short supply, and potatoes frozen black more often than not. February came and went and she’d been at work for a year but she was so busy she hardly noticed it. It would be Billy’s third birthday in a day or two and she wasn’t even sure she could afford an iced cake this time. Trade was improving, marginally, but she still hadn’t saved any money towards next year’s rent, and she still hadn’t solved the problem of how to achieve the big sales increase she really wanted.

  And then one afternoon late in March when she was plodding wearily home pushing her empty cart before her, she saw an elderly couple standing beside the blackened ramp that led down to the Horseferry in Westminster. They had a newscart beside them, still containing far too many papers, and they stood meekly, she with her shoulders drooping and her face downcast, he leaning forward onto an ancient walking stick, and gazing dejectedly at the river.

  The sight of them gave her a desperate idea.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mr and Mrs Peabody had been selling newspapers from their self-selected post at the Horseferry for nearly eighteen months. It was not a comfortable trade nor a particularly lucrative one, expecially when north-east winds chilled them to the bone and sent their potential customers scurrying by. So on that blustery afternoon, when that strange young woman came striding purposefully into their lives, they were surprised and intrigued and Mrs Peabody was secretly just a little relieved.

  ‘How’s trade?’ the young woman said, looking at the news-sheets that still lay unsold under their tarpaulin cover.

  ‘Fair to middlin’,’ Mr Peabody answered, guardedly. It was too direct an approach and it made him feel threatened. He looked at the fine, red coat and the man’s beaver hat that the young woman was wearing with such style and knew instinctively that if she were an adversary, she would be a formidable one.

  ‘’Tis an uncertain trade,’ the young woman said and she sounded sympathetic. ‘Yesterday I had more than a dozen over, today I could have sold twice that number.’

  ‘Where do you walk?’ Mr Peabody asked, relieved by the thought that she was only a fellow worker after all.

  ‘Mayfair.’

  ‘You’ve a good clientele thereabouts, I daresay.’

  ‘Fickle. There’s no dependin’ on ’em.’

  ‘Aye,’ Mrs Peabody sighed, ‘fickle’s the word. We can’t keep pace with ’em neither. Never the same mind two days together to my way of thinkin’. Is it any wonder we make a loss? Sometimes, I mean,’ for she had caught her husband’s warning frown.

  ‘Well now, as to that,’ Nan said, ignoring the f
rown and directing the information towards the greater eagerness of the weaker vessel, ‘I have a plan in mind that would reduce risk and cut losses in this trade of ours. How say you to that?’

  Mrs Peabody was enticed before her husband could intervene to warn her. ‘If ’twere a goodly plan, what a blessing ’twould be.’

  ‘Come to Galloway’s coffee house at two of the clock a’ Thursday and you shall hear more, I promise you.’

  Then and a little late, Mrs Peabody thought to defer to her husband. ‘What think you, Mr Peabody?’

  Being slightly more worldly-wise and considerably more timid than his wife, that gentleman was now alarmed. ‘Many’s the plan I’ve seen an’ heard,’ he said, ‘which, when it all come down to it, was nought but a matter of buying an’ selling. I should warn ’ee I ain’t exactly thinking a’ selling.’

  ‘I en’t exactly thinking a’ buying,’ the young woman said, smiling at him. ‘Come to Galloway’s a’ Thursday and I’ll tell ’ee what I have in mind.’

  When she’d gone swinging away towards the Five Fields, her bright redingote flapping behind her in the breeze, Mrs Peabody tried to make timid amends. ‘There could be scant harm in hearing what she got to say?’ she suggested. ‘You must admit, Mr Peabody, trade is mortal bad these days, what with the war an’ all. Listenin’ don’t commit us, do it?’

  ‘I will decide a’ Thursday,’ he said, trying to exert what little marital authority remained to him after a lifetime struggling to make ends meet. ‘How if ’twere a Smithfield bargain?’

  ‘She looked honest enough to me,’ Mrs Peabody said. ‘That coat cost a pretty penny, I can tell you.’