A return to England was not possible – the Bensons had no respectable kin there, it seemed, certainly none who mixed with Society. Her father, in fact, seemed somewhat reticent about his birth and upbringing, said only that he had been a ship’s captain in his youth. That sounded respectable, but somewhat plebeian, just sufficiently so to raise doubts in her mind. Perhaps she thought, she should consider the matter of a husband very carefully, especially as her father was, he said, about to marry again, to the Bishop’s niece, of all people!
A rich merchant as a husband was easily possible – several of her father’s acquaintance were widowers, at least one without an heir, the cholera having taken wife and three boys in one monsoon. She could continue in a rich life - with a husband thirty or more years her senior. No doubt she would soon be a widow in her turn and with a handsome jointure, and no way of enjoying it in the provincial respectability of Bombay. There were younger men, to be sure – Company writers and officers thankful to earn two hundred a year that bought them as much in Bombay as two thousand would in London – not an enticing prospect.
That brought her back to Major Wolverstone, an up and coming man, her father assured her, and with connections in England and the chance that he might one day take her to London as a rich man. He was not more than ten years her senior, was a gentleman by birth and a King’s officer, not a mere Company soldier…
Could she do better? What was the chance of a rich, young lord coming to sweep her off her feet?
“Yes, Papa, I would be very pleased if you were to invite Major Wolverstone to dinner again.”
Major Wolverstone dined with the Bensons only three days later, joined, somewhat unusually, by a Senior Writer of the Company, a gentleman not normally to be found hobnobbing with mere Country Merchants and never with the representative of a new competitor.
“Mr Mackworth invited himself, or so you might say, Major,” Benson whispered, introductions once made.
John Company had no means of talking to its competitors – it tended simply to ignore them – so there had to be a very specific reason for Mackworth’s presence, unless, of course, he was simply a pretender to Miss Benson’s hand. Mrs Mackworth, dry and yellow from long residence, appeared from an inside room and ended speculation on her husband’s motives – he had to be on business.
The meal ended, Anglicised chicken and mutton curry in several dishes, and the ladies withdrew and the three men sat to their port, lighter wines also on the table to follow the first, obligatory glass.
“One hears that Roberts is thinking of setting up a foundry, an Iron Works indeed, Major Wolverstone.”
“That is certainly in my lord’s mind, Mr Mackworth. He had thought to build steam engines here, more efficient than transporting them in parts all the way from England, I am sure, sir.”
Mackworth frowned, gently shook his head.
“The Honourable Company gave consideration to this point itself, Major Wolverstone, but concluded that it would be, in effect, to open Pandora’s Box. The locals, you know, have some quite well educated men, the Parsees especially are mathematical, and would very soon latch on to the new ideas. One foundry today would become a hundred by next year, and all serving to make the local people discontented with their lot! Better, the Company believes, to keep India an agricultural sort of place. Our only iron works are to be found in the Company arsenals, and there, we believe, they should stay.”
The Major was shocked almost – the message was too bluntly explicit to be anything other than a threat. If Roberts tried to build an Iron Works then the Company, all-powerful in its own domain, would crush them.
“Of course, Major Wolverstone, the Honourable Company has no desire at all to, ah… cross swords, one might say, with so influential an enterprise as Roberts is in England. The mining of coals for example, might be seen as very useful to us all, and the application of English enterprise to, for example, the production of tea would be much applauded, and minor obstacles could quite easily be swept aside.”
In other words, Wolverstone, realised, as a quid pro quo, the Company would assist in the alienation of all of the acreages Roberts wanted for its tea plantations in Ceylon, and at a very small cost. As well, when steamships reached Indian waters then the Company would not be running them or mining its own coal to refuel them.
“It might well be the case, Mr Mackworth, that the production of iron were better attempted in a cooler clime than ours here, while the demand for tea seems to be growing every year.”
Mackworth smiled his approbation.
“I believe Lord Andrews’ son was here last year, Major. Very sadly, the young man was wounded, I understand?”
“Lost a leg, sir, and him no more than a boy, yet one who would have had a shining career as a soldier. The last letters from England suggest that he may well succeed to a family seat, so giving a voice in the Commons as well as the Lords.”
Mackworth had obviously heard that as well, sought only confirmation of the rumour that Roberts was expanding its political power.
No agreement was made, no deal cut, but by the end of the evening both men knew there would be no great foundry built in India but that there would be a commanding presence for Roberts in the new Indian tea trade, under the protection of the Company. When steamships came to rule the Indian Ocean, then Roberts would command them. If, heaven forfend, the company’s monopoly of Indian and Chinese trade should be queried in parliament, then no doubt the Roberts interest would act appropriately.
It remained only to inform my lord of the new realities of the situation.
Wolverstone found time as well to address a few words to Miss Benson, assisting her with the tea tray later in the evening. She smiled sufficiently to inform him that she would welcome more than a sentence or two on a further occasion and he arranged to see her father in the morning to discuss their partnership further.
The first ever wheat crop came in five days before the frosts, to the delight of the settlers and their American mentors. Much of the maize – they must get used to calling it ‘corn’, they told themselves – could now be made over to the hogs to keep them over winter and build a much bigger breeding herd for next season.
The wood stacks were high against the cabin walls and White had been able to clear the top spoil off of a shallow coal seam so that they had access to a small open-cast working no more than two miles from the village. The men had all taken turns to put a few hours into the digging and the village’s two carts had been put into use before harvest had taken them out to the fields and every house had a couple of tons of coal stacked under cover for use in any especially cold snap.
Local hunter Caleb Witherspoon was satisfied that the greenhorns had prepared themselves thoroughly for their second winter, was worried only that they might not have occupation enough to keep them busy and ward off the dreaded cabin fever. Large families on top of each other in small houses could soon turn to bickering, sometimes even to mutual violence as the weeks turned into months, but he had made no allowance for the Methodist worship of busyness.
The children had worked in the fields during the warm months, in winter they did their learning, writing on their slates in painstaking copperplate, reading from their Bibles, setting dollars and cents into columns and adding them precisely. In between times they spun the wool of their few sheep and cut up worn out clothing to knot rugs or sew patchwork quilts. In any daylight hours that remained they helped their parents carpenter furniture or dust and polish every piece of wood in the house – there was no end to the tasks that could be found for busy hands.
The sole worry was that there seemed to be an epidemic cold amongst them, any number of the children snuffling and wheezing, some occasionally being seized by vomiting as well.
Book Five: A Poor Man
at the Gate Series
Chapter Three
James decided that he must visit Lutterworth despite the presence of Miss Fielder, it was only courtesy to Mudge that he should do so, eve
n if it must be a single day affair – if the convenances did not permit him to stay overnight, then so be it, he would make the tedious return journey. He was strong enough to travel fifty miles in a day, he was sure, and he could always rest up later; he must not, he assured himself, ever fall into the habit of allowing weakness to rule him.
He had met Mudge occasionally when they had been boys, growing up on the estate it had been inevitable, the son of the manor and the offspring of a large tenant, and he had never particularly liked him, which made it even more important to be polite.
The problem was that Mudge was clever and had sometimes smiled when James had said something that was less sensible than it might have been. Thinking on it, he had smiled quite often, laughed once or twice.
James knew that he was not the sharpest flint in the tinderbox – no bright flashes of genius from him – but he thought he had common sense at least, and there was no real need to make a mockery of him. He was still a little upset. There were, he believed things more important than mere intelligence; decision taking and judgement, for example. He wondered how Mudge would react in battle, whether he would be able to instantly see what had to be done or would need to stand and think about it.
He would have to come to an accommodation with Mudge if he was to be tenant at Lutterworth, there were too many chances of a clash between them. Mudge would still be reporting to my lord, and would expect to take directions from him in all matters of broad policy, but James as tenant would have requests to make and some instructions to give and neither man would be well advised to contradict the other in public. Disagreements between them would soon be exploited by the tenantry, one would be played off against the other and the estate would suffer.
Murphy agreed, and suggested James should forget his childhood grievances and meet Mudge anew as a pair of adults. It was very sensible advice, but James was not at all sure how to go about it.
In the event there was no initial problem to overcome. Mudge quite obviously felt the same as James, knew they disliked each other but had to work together, and, as the more able, in his own mind at least, and certainly the inferior in status, felt obliged to take the lead in making peace between them.
“Good morning, Mr James! My lord informed me that you had become the lifetime tenant at Lutterworth and that I should look to you for instructions from now on, sir. I believe that Thingdon will remain the source of additional funds for the next few years but the intention is that Lutterworth shall stand on its own feet before too long, so I think it best perhaps if I make you familiar with the estate and all we have been attempting to do with it since my lord inherited. There were a number of unusual elements to be observed, many of which we have been able to remedy, some of which still remain, for lack of time, as much as anything. The estate, though enclosed at an early date, was very much run down, and we found that it lacked almost all of the improvements one might expect to discover as a matter of course. Were you familiar in any way with the late lord, sir?”
James confessed to almost complete ignorance, said only that he had heard that he had been an eccentric sort of chap.
“Mad as a March hare, sir! And, I understand, possessed of some very unsavoury habits!”
Mudge told James of the early visit from a lady of the town and the itemised bill for her services that she had presented, thinking that a little of bawdy was always a good way to crack the ice.
James was inclined to be appalled, but, thinking on it, he mentioned that he had wondered once or twice about one of his contemporaries at the Shorncliffe barracks. The young gentleman had gone out of his way to be present whenever there had been a flogging, had seemed rather to enjoy watching. He said as much to Mudge, received a grimace of shared incomprehension.
“My lord said it was not that uncommon a thing, certainly not unheard of, especially among those who have been to one of our schools. Apparently there are houses in London which offer whipping as well as their more ordinary bill of fare. But I’m damned if I fancy it!”
“And I fancy that they will be damned for their part in it, Mr Mudge!”
“Well said, Mr James!”
Mudge explained that the whole of the rental income, and more, of the Lutterworth estate was being ploughed back into the land, an investment to re-establish its fertility and create a future income. They had set up the pig meat enterprise which was bidding fair to produce a more than agricultural sort of profit and could be expected to be a valuable additional source of income within five years.
“We shall need that income from it as well if things do not take an upturn soon, Mr James. The estate is bearing most of the burden of the soup-kitchen in the village – every man and woman of the elderly and infirm relies on us for their main meal of the day, and a goodly number of the children as well.”
“But can their own kinsfolk not look after them, Mr Mudge? Why do we shoulder their burden?”
Mudge explained that most of the local farmers had cut their wages in each of the past two years, while the price of bread had continued to rise. The worst of it was that the farmers were, generally speaking, becoming better off, had been able to reduce their wage bills solely because of the return of the soldiers from the wars which had brought a flood of unemployed men competing against each other. The Corn Laws had come into effect and grain had held up almost to wartime levels as a result, the price of imports being forced up to match the home-produced costs. The ordinary people were being squeezed from both ends, Mudge said, and there were some nasty whispers circulating.
“They don’t like it, sir, and that’s small wonder when you think of it. There have been meetings and attempts to organise combinations of the farm labourers, and, as well, more than one agitator has been calling for riot and rick-burning. Not against us, because we put our hands in our pockets for charity and provide as well almost every job in Lutterworth – not just the pig meat, but work for the builder and the thatcher and the smithy and the cobbler and half a dozen others besides. It costs us, Mr James, but less than not doing it would. I have heard word from neighbouring counties of gangs roaming at night, their faces blacked up with soot so as not to be known, and shouting threats and throwing stones at farmers’ windows, and worse feared.”
“Will there ever be work for them all, Mr Mudge? Or will we have to keep them in enforced idleness till they die?”
Mudge did not know, suspected that farming could not on its own employ the great mass of people there seemed to be nowadays.
“Then they must be encouraged to leave the villages, Mr Mudge. How, I wonder?”
Mudge had no answer, other than starvation to force them to the factory towns or the emigration ships – and that had the disadvantage that the dispossessed might turn to revolution instead.
“What of these… agitators, you called them. Cannot they be taken up? Will the courts not deal with them?”
“Not without evidence, Mr James, and not without informers to name them. It would not be easy to live in your village after standing in court and getting a local man transported or even hanged as a troublemaker.”
“So… That would mean a lot of money. We would have to pay the witness enough to go away and make a living elsewhere.”
“And what if the judge discovered that we had paid the witness enough money to buy a small farm of his own or to set up as a shopkeeper at far away? Do you think his evidence would be trusted?”
Impossible to secure a conviction without an informer, difficult to use a paid informer with any hope of success. Was there any other sort of informer?
James decided that he must discuss the question with his father, made a note in the book labelled ‘Public Order’.
Mark Star sat in Thomas’ study at Freemans, awkward and ill-at-ease under his brother’s stern stare.
“So, Mark, let me be quite clear about this. You have a… paramour, shall we say, a young man drawn from the dangerous classes, a gentleman who is, at minimum, in converse with the bloodiest-handed of the Reds, a
nd you wish to continue in your relationship with him whilst trying to limit the harm that he may do. Is that a fair statement, brother?”
It was, though Mark might not have been inclined to express the matter so boldly.
“You are my brother, and what you choose to do behind the locked door to your bedchamber is your own business. I would, however, be distressed was there to be any public knowledge of your habits, and the firm might well be harmed by such. So… any action we take must be limited by the need for secrecy. You would agree, I trust?”
Mark nodded – his own career demanded that his personal indiscretions be kept out of the public eye. The Lord Chancellor would not be inclined to see him made silk or become a judge if he was known to intimately consort with revolutionaries; the matter of unorthodox affections would not concern him, of course.
“Thus, we cannot go overtly to the local authorities and give them the names of your Christopher’s co-conspirators.”
Mark protested that ‘conspirators’ amounted to an overstatement; there was as yet no evidence of any plot.
Thomas acknowledged his demurral, made mental note that uncovering such plots as undoubtedly existed was certainly necessary.
“This Christopher already has a conviction standing against him, you say, Mark. Hardly ideal company for an Officer of the High Court, one might have thought!”
“Yes, Thomas.”
It was clear to Thomas that his unfortunate brother was besotted, unable to think clearly for himself. He would have to take the necessary action to protect the poor lad. He made soothing noises, told Mark that he would have to think the matter through and take advice from knowledgeable sources. Not from their father, the less he knew the better, but from Lord Andrews perhaps, he would be the best man to see a way out of their dilemma, he had always been available to them in times of need.
Privilege Preserved (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 5) Page 6