Robert warned Joseph to be very careful in his dealings with Mr Rumpage – he was, he said, a different sort of man, one out of the ordinary line.
Mary spoke at length with Miriam, having discovered that certain aspects of the married state required a little more explanation than her mother had given her. It was possible that Joseph was less hampered by conventionality than her father had been and she had a number of enquiries to make. Miriam reassured her that it was all good fun and that most things were acceptable behind closed doors.
Mary was somewhat surprised, disconcerted in fact, to discover that Joseph was far more assertive as her husband than he had been as a suitor and dear friend. It seemed that his dominance, and far greater knowledge, in the bedchamber translated itself into everyday life. He had already informed her that he intended to visit in the Newcastle area, without her company as he would have to stay in various inns and smaller hotels, often quite rough and ready establishments in industrial areas which would be wholly unsuitable for her. He would accompany her back to their new house and stay a couple of weeks while they settled in, but he would have to make the acquaintance of a number of businessmen in the new steam area, a place that would almost certainly become the home of the steam engine.
“Later in the year I must return to London, Mary. Mr Rumpage will need my presence, I suspect. As I shall be staying here in Mount Street I have no doubt it will be convenient for you to accompany me.”
She noted that she would be accompanying him, metaphorically at least a dutiful pace to his rear. It was not what she had expected.
“Of course, my dear, if you are with child by then you would wish to stay at home, which I would quite understand.”
She did not realise that he thought it to be a very good idea that she should become pregnant at the earliest possible moment. He had given much thought to the question of her ruling the roost in their marriage, and had spoken obliquely to a number of his acquaintances. The sum of their advice had been to keep her on her back, or her hands and knees if he preferred, for the first few months until he was able to tie her down to the nursery, where she would, of course, in any case be far happier.
He was his father’s son, had grown up with the knowledge that it was often necessary to quite forcibly persuade people into the way of life that was best for them.
Robert observed and was rather pleased to see that the boy had grown up. He had wondered whether Joseph would ever become his own man but now saw that he had no occasion to worry.
“Do you wish me to accompany you when you first meet Mr Rumpage, Joseph? He is a man who knows his own mind and, while perfectly correct in his dealings with his betters, can be rather forceful. I feel it wise to tell you that he is drawn from the ranks of the navigators.”
A navvy! A group of people that Joseph had seen only at a safe distance, and with a fearsome reputation. Yet the navvies must inevitably shift from their canal and road building to become the track layers for the new age of steam and it must be as well for him to become acquainted with them, preferably without his big brother holding his hand. He was a married man with the responsibilities of the head of a household and he must grow up.
“No thank you, Robert. I suspect I shall meet him rather frequently over the years and I think I should start out on an equal footing with him. If he first meets me as a junior then I suspect that that is how he will see me for all of his existence, or so I believe Papa would say.”
“He would, Joseph, and I am glad you realise that to be the case. Talking of Papa, his marriage seems to have done him good, do you not agree? I was worried that he had aged and become heavier, slower in his ways, but he is quite back to his old self now, I think.”
“Lady Andrews has been a breath of spring to him, Robert. She is very different to Mama, and I suspect can never quite replace her in Papa’s affections, but he clearly has a very great liking for her, and it is certainly good for him. I will confess that I had doubts whether I could accept her in Mama’s place, in her rooms and acting as chatelaine in her stead, but she is a very fine lady, one for whom I can find an easy respect.”
Robert agreed, their father had done very well by the family.
Frances had never seen the new industrial towns before, had never had occasion to enter the great mass of blackened brick terraces, to cough in the smoke-laden air, to sniff distastefully at the overladen sewers and open ditches. Even from the carriage as they passed through St Helens to the Old Works out on the Manchester road the dirt was all-permeating.
“This was countryside when we bought Roberts out, thirty years ago. Green and empty. I never dreamt this would be the result. Most of the people here work in Joe’s mills or in Roberts, though some have jobs in the glass manufacturers or in the other spinning mills. Not many colliers just here, they tend to keep to their own communities, separate from the rest of the hands. I don’t know why, perhaps because many are of Irish descent.”
“No schools. No churches. No green areas for the children to play in. Corner shops, little, one room places, but no town centre with stores and merchants that I have seen. A public house in every street, by the seem of it.”
Tom nodded, that was the way of these places, of the new slums. He ventured a very mild defence.
“Most of these terraces have dry roofs, my dear. They have chimneys and coal is not too expensive, not perhaps dirt cheap but within the means of any man with a job. Most of the streets are paved. Compare them with the villages in Dorset – frequently with blackened, leaking thatch and surrounded by mud, firing by wood, if they can lay their hands on it. Too often the labourers are forbidden to enter the woodlands on penalty of being taken up as poachers and the result is that they shiver under their threadbare blankets all winter long. The towns are bad, my dear, but the villages are rarely any better.”
They passed a group of men, six or seven, leaning against a wall, sheltered from the wind by the brickwork of an end chimney. They were ragged, thinly dressed against the cold drizzle, shoulders hunched, hats pulled down about their ears; two were barefoot.
“There are men clustered at every street corner, Thomas. Have they no work to do?”
“A year ago there were ten times as many idle. Those left are often unwell, unable to work, and the unfortunates, those who for one reason or another cannot get work.”
“What is to be done for them? They do not even have an outer coat to wear.”
“They rely on hand-me-downs, and in town there is little in the way of charity, I am afraid. Any coat good enough to wear will be sold or popped at the pawn shop. The country is going into a boom at the moment, luckily. I do not know why, but quite suddenly there is money about again. Every manufactury is working full out, and taking on more hands and buying in coals and iron. Within three months I would expect there to be a shortage of workers, there always is, and wages will start to climb and more young men will leave the villages and crowd into these terraces. And still you will find some at the street corners, leaning against the walls, hands in their pockets. Why I do not know.”
Frances dropped the topic, reflecting that her husband could not be expected to understand or have sympathy with folk so alien to him. He did not understand the concept of failure, it could not happen to him because he would not let it and he could not conceive that other people might behave differently, still less that they might become so dispirited as to give up.
“Is the fear of revolution past now, Thomas?”
“Mass insurrection is certainly unlikely now, my dear. There are determined Reds however who see our world as so wrong that it must be destroyed by any means available, and I do not know that they are entirely astray in their ideas, in fact. Had I not been lucky as a young man then I could easily see myself taking to bomb and bullet. But I doubt that I would be shouting my mouth off about fairness and justice, even so. Neither exist in this world of ours, nor can they ever, they are no part of the human condition, despite the bleatings of the priesthood. Look at thieves
, for example – if there was justice then they would prey on the rich, but almost all of their victims are the weak, who are inevitably the poor. We live in a nasty world, and all we can do is try to make it a little bit richer and look after our own families. We can help a few of the children perhaps, and probably we should, but I doubt we can make very much difference.”
Frances was conventionally religious, she was a member of the Church of England which made her less than an agnostic but certainly possessed of no crusading faith. She felt she ought to be shocked by Tom’s cynicism, but, looking out of the window wondered if he might not be right. They pulled into the new gatehouse at Roberts before she could muster any argument.
The gatekeepers saluted, more or less, and ushered the carriage inside, one of them running across to the offices with the word that my lord was present. Tom approved, the managers needed to know when he was on site.
McLehose, the replacement for George Mason, appeared in time to welcome them through the door; he took off the apron and cap and heavy gloves he had been wearing, pulled on the frockcoat that established his status before he spoke.
“Good morning, my lord, my lady. I had just been watching the pour for the London plate, sir. We have been endeavouring to improve the quality of the metal to meet the demands of the ship builders, but I have to say that I doubt we have met all of their complaints. It is possible to skim the slag more thoroughly and we have done so in hope of avoiding the weaknesses in the rolled plate, but particles of fireclay are a different matter, my lord. It occurs to me, my lord, that we would be well-advised to build a furnace at the London yard to re-melt the poor quality plates and endeavour to work them in situ rather than barge them back here, at higher cost.”
“Could they be sent as scrap to the furnace at Finedon? Re-working must be a less than satisfactory expedient. What of installing crucibles at the London yard and using the scrap in the production of steel?”
McLehose agreed that either course was possible.
“Good! Cost them out, if you please. Figures to me at the end of next week, I think. Now, sir, Lady Andrews has never seen a works before and would like to know what we do and how. Lead us round, if you would be so good.”
Tom had doubts about McLehose, was sure that he was a competent works manager but wondered whether he could be left to take over the whole enterprise, planning, financial control, oversight of sales, the whole gamut. He would put pressure on him, see what eventuated.
Book Five: A Poor Man
at the Gate Series
Chapter Six
James returned to London, to his empty house. Empty of people, that was, one hardly noticed staff and certainly did not count them as company, or amusement. One of the maids was rather pretty he thought, but he knew just how unwise that could be, he had grown up knowing that, Mama had made it quietly clear to him when he was fourteen and had shown a first interest in females.
He dined with Robert, wondered, indirectly, as subtly as he knew how, just how one could come across entertainment in London. Robert directed him to Mrs Hubbard, knowing her house to be scrupulously clean and her discretion to be absolute.
There were a few people in town, mostly members and others with government business, and cards were directed to James, inviting him to various quite possibly convivial gatherings. Murphy recommended him to attend all he could – he should get to know folk, build a circle of acquaintances, vital to a man in the political way.
James went to dinner with a dozen different notables, one of thirty or forty or fifty guests at very large tables, never the intimate gatherings of the elite, the company always older than him and sedate, though rarely sober. He met most of the leading politicians and was invited, more or less subtly, to become part of their factions. To each he smiled sympathetically and said that he would consult with the family – he was, of course, bound to the Andrews interest. To his surprise this answer was always acceptable, probably because it made him predictable, his hosts knew exactly what and who he was, could find a pigeonhole for him.
The young men about town tended to avoid James – he could not partake of their athletic sports and was a member and hence cursed by respectability, a status that the young bloods tended not to achieve. James was not distressed by their cold shoulder, they were idlers, drunks, gambling fools, and he had grown up despising their hedonistic sort.
One card he received that at first surprised him. The Prince Regent bade him attend a dinner at Carlton House. He sent immediate acceptance, one could not refuse a Royal Command and delay would imply that one had wished one could.
He sought Robert’s advice.
“The King, poor old fellow, cannot last much longer, James, two or three years at most is the whisper from the seclusion of his apartments. He is said to be losing sight and hearing as well as remaining obdurately mad. None of the cures have worked, we are reliably informed, and the Prime Minister will not countenance whipping, which is the only remedy yet untried. Apparently it was much favoured in Bedlam in the old days and occasionally stimulated the depressed into activity. One hears that the Prince Regent was in favour of the extreme course until he was given to understand that there was a chance that it might be successful in returning His Majesty to the command of his faculties, at which point he forbade it. He had wished to be present as an observer, it seems, had promised some of his cronies that they could see the treat as well – it was not every day that one might watch a King be flogged, after all!”
“What a disgusting brute he is, Robert!”
“He will be King, James. His Britannic Majesty King George the Fourth. We must not lose sight of that, and we must not forget that he will wish to accede to real power, yet will not be permitted to say a word in public that his Ministers have not approved first. He will know, in his heart of hearts, that he will never be significant in the political process as currently organised, and he will resent it and plot to build a faction of his own followers in Parliament who could produce change, a movement towards greater power for the Lord’s Anointed. It is almost unbelievable that a man of his habits should nonetheless imagine himself to be the intimate of God! He must not succeed in turning back the clock, for he would destroy the country, unable to control his own passions and maintain a consistent course for two days at a time.”
“So, he will try to bring me to his side, you think?”
“He must, he needs every vote he can get, especially at the present time. He is heavily in debt again, and wishes Parliament to make him a grant-in-aid, because the banks will not lend to him without security and he is finding it difficult to persuade any commercial person to accept his note of hand. So, he must have his accounts brought back into the black and cannot wait until he succeeds to the throne and has access to the family wealth, which is quite considerable but all held by reasonably honest trustees appointed during his father’s madness. More important to him - because he knows that in the end he cannot be cast into bankruptcy, he must be rescued short of debtor’s clink - he wishes to divorce Caroline. He might look to take another wife to give him a son, though that is unlikely, bearing in mind the disease he probably carries, but she is an absolute disgrace, parading about the Continent with a train of lovers who are quite blatant in their attentions to her. If she was to return to England she would make Royalty into a laughing stock, a circus for the lower orders.”
“Then, surely, Parliament would raise no difficulties in getting rid of her.”
“He has offended so many of both Houses that they might well enjoy seeing him humiliated, driven even to put a period to his existence. As well, the House of Hanover is a grubby sort of beast now – the successor to Prinny, whoever he or she may be, is unlikely to be a lot better than him, the madness is there, and the perverse appetites might be a family inheritance as well. Was he to be driven to abdication then it might be possible to cast around amongst the distantly related princelings of Europe, of whom there are scores, to find one who was Protestant, sober, unpoxed, modera
tely intelligent and willing to set an example of virtue to the country. England is ruled by the King in Parliament, James, and Parliament has removed unsuitable kings before and is quite capable of doing so again. His advisors know that.”
“So, he will be seeking to make me part of his circle, you think?”
“Of a certainty, James. He will probably extend an invitation to the Pavilion at Brighton, which you must accept, but will be unable to actually put into effect. Your leg offers the perfect excuse. The journey too far, the weather inclement and causing the wound to play up… there will always be a way to avoid actually going to Brighton.”
James nodded. Like everyone else, he had heard the rumours about the Prince’s doings in his Pavilion, and he had no wish to discover the truth at first hand.
He visited his tailor as a matter of urgency, demanding civilian court dress of him.
Privilege Preserved (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 5) Page 14