Eight Weeks in the Summer of Victoria's Jubilee

by Bob Biderman

  The tiny room was thick with smoke when they came in – smoke of all sorts from cigars, pipes and the new-fangled cigarettes which that very year had fallen drastically in price as the expensive hand-rolling by nicotine stained ‘cigarette girls’ was replaced by the Bonsack machine which spat out 12,000 little white tobacco-filled cylinders in a single hour.

  In the centre of the plain deal table were several bottles of whisky and some small tumblers, most of which had already been partially filled and in the hands of the various men who were seated.

  The meeting was in full swing by the time Z and Maggie had arrived. It was Myers who had let them in and, after discreetly questioning Z about his companion, had introduced them to the others.

  Besides Hayward and his managing clerk there was Greenberg, the organiser of Lipski’s defence committee, whose house Z had gone to some days before; a man named De Souza, who Z recognised as the mysterious figure he had seen the first day of the trial in close conversation with Hayward and Myers; a Scottish MP named Cunninghame Graham and, finally, someone called Krantz who edited a Yiddish weekly.

  No one objected to Maggie’s presence. Perhaps with all the smoke in the air they couldn’t see she was a woman. Or perhaps they were too wrapped up in their heated conversation to care. Despite any secret misgivings, along with Z she was passed one of the tumblers full of whisky and a lacquered box of cigarettes, which she gratefully accepted out of nervousness rather than compulsion, extracting a hand-rolled Turkish Philip Morris which was then lit by De Souza, the corpulent gentleman to her right, from the tip of his amazingly big cigar.

  Hayward was just going over the question of reprieve. He said that, as the law presently read, it could only be determined by the Queen on advice of the Home Secretary but, in reality, it was the Home Secretary, himself, who decided – his office becoming, in effect, the single court of appeal.

  So what were the possible grounds on which to base their plea? According to Hayward there were three main principles the Home Office used in reaching a decision. The first was compassion, the second was the possibility of an unjust decision having been reached in the trial, and the third was a judgement of mercy based on evidence that there was no intention to kill. It seemed to Hayward that the Lipski case could fit easily into any of those criteria. In fact, he seemed to think their chances were good as nearly half of all those condemned to death over the last few years had their sentences commuted.

  But was it as straightforward as all that? Greenberg argued that there were other things they needed to consider. This case, from its very outset, went beyond a simple act of murder. Its ramifications, he told them, reached the very heart of government because of its inherently political nature. The ‘Jewish Question’ had become a major issue over the last few years and was nearing the boiling point. The domestic economy was bad and foreigners – namely the Jews – were being held up to blame. There was a great pressure to legislate some sort of barrier to close England off to the flood of cheap labour pouring in from Russia and Poland. Consequently, the Anglo-Jewish establishment were quaking in their boots, frightened that the loyal, hard working and enterprising image of the Jew which they had been trying so hard to instil into the British mind was being threatened by a situation growing desperately out of control. The government, they feared, could easily go down the route of those who have found it quite in their interest to unleash that primal hatred to detract from real economic and political embarrassments.

  Cunninghame Graham told them he feared that from the government’s standpoint, Lipski’s hanging would be welcomed as a ritualistic bloodletting which was needed from time to time in order that the social pressure valve of pent-up proletarian fury be vented. He, himself, wasn’t as interested in the Jewish question as the human one. There were some serious issues relating to English justice that the trial had raised and he would be happy to direct a question in that regard to the Home Secretary in Parliament.

  Krantz, the man from the Yiddish weekly, suggested that a petition urging the Home Office to grant a stay of execution be immediately drawn up. There may be no great love for Lipski amongst the Jewish workers, he said, but as the dust settled it would become clear that some grave injustice had been done. He had already heard murmurings on the street that led him to believe many in the community would already support a movement for appeal.

  De Souza cautioned everyone about stirring up a hornet’s nest (though his words were meant primarily for Krantz). Things needed to be done quietly. An open campaign that pitted Jew against Jew and Jew against Christian would be counterproductive.

  Maggie, for her part, was intrigued. She was fascinated by these exotic men – especially Krantz, with his impassioned eyes smouldering, darkly, in the wake of something she could never know or even hope to understand. He seemed far more interesting than De Souza who might have been from the tedious English upper classes (except for something swarthy, almost Latin, about his appearance), though she, herself, felt that De Souza’s plea for prudence was not entirely mistaken.

  These impressions of Maggie’s were somewhat intensified by both the urgency of the situation and the stimulation of the rich tobacco coupled with several sips from her tumbler of flavoured liquor. Not that she was pure as the driven snow with regard to those particular vices (or pleasures, depending on which direction one was coming from). She and her cousin Beatrice had been known to put their feet up and share a smoke and a glass of gin together on occasion. Certainly she was not one of those who were known in 18th century France as prudefemmes – those seemingly virtuous women who cast a disapproving eye on the wayward ways of the world whilst harbouring a bevy of secret lusts. But observing the effects of alcohol on family relations in the dismal streets and alleys of the East End had made her cautious about that substance which was capable of inflicting so much misery. (Although she found it of interest that Jews were rarely the ones who seemed to suffer from it – except as the brunt of a drunken mob.)

  Z agreed with Greenberg that there was a larger story being played out and to comprehend the Lipski case one needed to look further and deeper into the miasma of great events sweeping across Europe. But there was also a real life at stake and the hands of the great celestial clock were moving inexorably toward the zero hour when all life on earth would cease – at least for Lipski. So what to do in the few days that remained? A petition was all well and good as was a question in the House of Commons. But it would take something more dramatic to stop the Death Angel in its tracks.

  It was Myers who said it, for Myers was indeed a natural organiser. Z was right. It would take something forceful and dramatic to halt the dreaded juggernaut. But that needed to be coupled with a campaign at the highest of levels to convince those in power of the facts. Myers then suggested a dual approach: letters would be written to those in authority pleading for a respite and outlining the main issues which indicated a miscarriage of justice and, at the same time, a campaign would be launched immediately to gain public support – through petitions, a pamphlet and articles in the press. Time was short, so things would have to happen fast. Greenberg would be in charge of the defence committee – raising funds to keep the investigation going and, hopefully, bring more facts to light regarding the case. Krantz would lead the petition drive. De Souza would attempt to mobilise support amongst the community leaders and those who might have some influence behind the scenes. Cunninghame Graham would organise a Parliamentary opposition.

  And for Maggie and Z? For them Myers had something special in mind.

  .

  CHAPTER 24

  THE CAFÉ ROYAL stood rather pompously like a regal icon on Regent Street – though the iconic nature of this garish rendezvous had more to do with Louis XIV than Victoria. It was, most definitely French in both food and fashion. That its back door opened out onto the fringes of Soho, however, meant there was another side to the place perhaps a bit more disreputable – appealing to th
at combination of opposites, the Bohemian Prince or the High-minded Pauper. The Café Royal catered to both of them, the rich and the raffish, upstairs in its elegantly expensive restaurant or down below in the madcap bar where the prices were cheap (or, at least, cheaper). So it was not unusual on the same night to have General Boulanger, the despised traitor of the Republican cause, dining upstairs with his retinue on truffles while downstairs in the aptly named Domino Room, exiles from the days of the Commune were downing bottles of cheap claret while plotting to de-trufflize the Boulangers of the world.

  The fact that a Gallic Grand Café could be both royalist and republican was not something that the traditional English mind could easily absorb. However, there it stood, defiantly, in the middle of London’s West End as a magnet to the new class of intelligentsia spewed out by the overheated engine of late Victoria and its unrealised (and ambivalent) quest for Modernism. Is it any wonder then that artists like James Abbott McNeill Whistler, fresh from Paris and imbued with a heady mixture of Courbet and Baudelaire, should have used the Royal as a base in his battle against the Ruskinites and their visceral horror of the dreaded Impressionists. (Or, for that matter, why the Marquess of Queensbury could so easily have confronted Oscar Wilde over his son’s love that dared not speak its name – because where else would that paunchy boozed-up reprobate be having his dinner?)

  When Z had come there after his first sojourn in France, soaking up the language and the culture (a requirement for any would-be writer in those days), he both loved and hated it. What he loved about the place was the buzz and the energy and the fact that somebody who was anybody in the arts was always there in the flesh to see and be seen. What he hated about it was exactly the same thing. There was, of course, a great deal of posturing and pretence – of cocks showing their cockades. There was also wit and brilliance and viscous verbal bantering that often gave lie to the soft and succulent words reserved for the vellum of the page. And Z could partake in this tournament of male vanity, valour and vulgarity along with the best of them. But afterwards he often felt an ache both in his stomach and in his head. Sometimes he found it easy to go along with the game, seeing it as young men doing what young men do, letting off steam and having good fun. But other times he found the whole charade abhorrent – feeling a moral revulsion to this daily bout of ubiquitous consumption and of drunken knives being sharpened on slobbering tongues. (This virtuous nausea was best summed up to him by the sight of a minor poet who was noted for his routine of taking a small golden cross from his waistcoat pocket and dipping it ceremonially into each successive glass of absinthe prior to drinking it – until, as often happened, he would slide slowly from his chair to end up, legless, underneath the table whereupon someone would complete the ritual by placing the absinthe-soaked cross onto his forehead.)

  Not that Z came here very often. He preferred the smaller cafes around Soho and the British Museum. They were quieter and the artists and writers he knew who went there were more down-to-earth people. Perhaps they weren’t blazing stars hoping to ignite the heavens, but they were serious about their work and they all, in their own manner, had something important to say – or, at least, thought they did.

  But he was at the Royal today on a mission. Through Myers a meeting had been arranged and Z held in his hands an envelope that contained the peculiarly grotesque item of trade that clinched it. It was a rather macabre deal, Myers had told him, but it had to be done. So he – or rather Hayward – had seen to it. And that was that.

  Now Z held the envelope in his hand and waited. He held it firmly between his thumb and forefinger as if, somehow, it could escape if he didn’t hold it tight enough. It felt leaden and cumbersome even though it only contained a single sheet of paper. And he wished the gentleman it was meant for would come soon so he could get rid of it.

  Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait for long. When the gentleman from Society Magazine finally arrived he wasn’t alone. He had with him another man, somewhat older and far more serious-looking. The older man was introduced to Z as W. T. Stead, but the introduction, though formally required, wasn’t really necessary as Z already knew who he was. In fact, judging from the number of heads that turned when the two men entered the Domino Room of the Café Royal, there were many more than Z who recognized him.

  Stead, however, was the type of person who would have turned heads even if no one knew him. He had that curious presence that tends to disrupt the delicate balance of a tranquil universe. What was it about him that caused such a response? His eyes? Yes, he had amazing eyes – eyes that could penetrate flesh and burrow deep into the soul (or so, at least, some of his sycophants thought). But no one saw those eyes when he walked into the Domino Room that day. His face? It could have been seen as a face of a biblical prophet -or that of a madman (one in the same said the cynics). But others saw it as the face of a dealer in snake oils. His stance? He carried himself as one sure of his ground, unlikely to give way to anything less than the hurricane winds of a force nine gale. Did he strike terror into the heart of his fellow man? It depended on who you were and what you thought. He was a person who treated others with deep respect and set a tone of high moral standards (said some), a fanatical head-thumper (said others) or a sinister newspaperman capable of anything that would further his ambitions (said the rest) but not one to make people quake in their boots, if boots they wore, or shiver in their socks if their toes weren’t bare. (Though, if boots they had none and toes, indeed, they had bare, he probably would have written an editorial on the dire poverty that denied people the right to boots and socks in the blistering frosts of winter – even though it was summer – and then would sell some clothier on the idea of putting an advert in the very same issue advising people of their stylish and quite reasonably priced footwear.)

  In truth, he was a complex man. Adored by some, vilified by others, Stead was the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, a rather quiet weekly he had taken charge of some years before and had turned into a bullhorn for his various causes and enterprises. In his charge the Gazette had been transformed from a stolid, mid-Victorian journal read by people as unimaginative as its print to an entertaining, lively and audacious periodical that gloried in crusades, gossip and scandal and rejoiced in shouting about it from the rooftops. Like the ‘New Humorist’ rubric inflicted on Jerome, the movement Stead had come to represent was that of ‘New Journalism’. (Reinforcing the notion that this was indeed a novel age by plugging in the required fresh and shiny adjective before any noun that seemed to have grown tired and worn in Victoria’s reign of the first fifty years.)

  Like most people, Z had mixed feelings about Stead and the Gazette. As a writer he appreciated that Stead seemed to give his journalists their head. As a Londoner, he approved of Stead’s populist campaigns. However, as a Jew, he found Stead’s romance with Russia and its xenophobic Tsar a little hard to stomach.

  After making his formal introduction, the gentleman from Society Magazine accepted the envelope Z had handed him and opened it, carefully, so as to inspect the goods. It had seemed a fair trade; an introduction for an autograph which would be used on the cover of his next issue underneath a drawing of Lipski dressed in fashionable clothing, looking like a young roué, a man-about-town, a celebrity pin-up, perhaps to be posted on a bedroom wall with a caption reading ‘the man who had a date with destiny.’

  Displaying his prize to Stead, the gentleman from Society Magazine smiled the smile of a contented entrepreneur, for he knew the sales of his little journal would skyrocket the following week due simply to this autograph from the condemned man that he had just received. He assumed a man like Stead would appreciate this minor coup in the progressive yellowing of journalism, but Stead seemed strangely put out. Was it that Stead, for all his cunning tricks at boosting circulation, still had something of a moral code forbidding him to mock the dead – or those who would soon be? Or perhaps it was that he thought the ploy a bit too cheap even for the Gazette and more
appropriate for a penny gaff on Whitechapel Street.

  The gentleman from Society Magazine thought Stead’s frown was simply sour grapes because he wished that grotesque scrawl for his own. And with such a delightful belief percolating in his belly like a recently swallowed canary, he pocketed his bizarre artefact, made his excuses and left while Z, who seemed very uncomfortable at being part of this ridiculous ruse, looked at Stead with dolefully apologetic eyes.

  However Stead, though he might have been beyond accepting autographs from soon-to-be executed convicts, needed no apologies for doing whatever was necessary to set up an important interview. Indeed, he would have expected it from any of his reporters – he may have even demanded it of them. But even more, he actually wanted a chance to speak with Z himself.

  CHAPTER 25

  STEAD, THE GREAT crusading editor, was interested in the Lipski case for reasons of his own. He had come up against the brute force of government before: several years back he had used the Gazette to launch a searing campaign to expose the shadowy trade in young children that was rife in the dark heart of London and he still had the scars to show for it.

  In what came to be known as ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’, Stead had lead a secret team of investigators into back street bordellos to prove how easy it was on any given night to procure a child for less money than it would cost to purchase a pair of riding boots. The series of reports which resulted was brutally honest, shocking and direct. It laid bare the gruesome truth of the link between poverty, pandering and the trafficking in young children which was so rampantly ignored by the Victorian moralists.

  Pressures from reformers had earlier pushed forward a Criminal Law Amendment Bill, but the threat of abandonment due to the government’s belief that the public at large wasn’t really interested in the subject, had given Stead the powder to fire his cannons up.