The Street Philosopher

by Matthew Plampin

  In the first-class carriage, Charles Norton got to his feet, the springs of the plush red upholstery creaking underneath him. ‘This day will be remembered,’ he announced, his voice heavy with portent, ‘as the day when our Foundry, although successful already, set itself upon a still brighter path. Never before, I believe, have humble people been exposed to improving influences such as those contained in this grand building before us. The drunkenness, the indolence, the vice of our workforce will soon be but a distant, unsavoury recollection. They are, at this moment, but gnomes groping in the earthy darkness, guided by ignorance and instincts purely animal; but this thing, this great thing here, will open their eyes to the light. It will enable them speedily to take their proper rank in the great human family.’

  The managers and wives assembled within the carriage applauded this declaration enthusiastically, some saying ‘hear, hear’ with sycophantic conviction. Jemima rolled her eyes. Her father had been rehearsing his little speech for days. It sounded to her as if he’d lifted the bulk of it from one of his Tory periodicals.

  ‘I wonder what rank that would be,’ whispered Bill, who was sitting beside her. ‘That of idiot children, perhaps?’

  Jemima glanced at her brother. Both were in high spirits. She was to see her friend Mr Kitson after three long weeks; and he simply enjoyed these company excursions, relishing the departure from the ordinary that they permitted.

  Norton raised his hands, bidding his audience to fall quiet. ‘All I ask, ladies and gentlemen, is that you make sure our men and women pass through the Exhibition’s doors. I am quite convinced that once inside, the refining influence of the place, and the elevated glory of the paintings, will ensure their good conduct. You have all visited the Exhibition already, I presume?’ There was a chorus of affirmatives. ‘Well then, you’ll be well equipped to answer any questions they might have. I believe it’s all fairly straightforward, but it never pays to be too confident where the working man is concerned. Now, we dine at one. Our company here will meet in the first-class refreshment room–the rest of the Foundry in the lower-class extension. I shall be visiting the workers as they take their repast, to see how their experiences have touched them, and would gladly welcome any of you who might wish to accompany me.’

  ‘So that will be all of them, then,’ Bill observed archly. ‘The governor is so seldom disappointed by his managers.’

  Realising that her father was about to conclude his address, Jemima cleared her throat loudly.

  Norton looked over at her, and for a second his insufferable patrician satisfaction faltered. ‘Also, ladies and gentlemen,’ he added, ‘my daughter has arranged for a short lecture to be given in the modern galleries. The speaker is an authority on artistic matters, I’m told, and once worked in this capacity for the London Courier magazine. This will commence in one half-hour, and I urge you and however many operatives you can secure to attend.’

  The reluctance with which this postscript was delivered brought a dry smile to Jemima’s lips. After the ball at the Polygon, that same night in fact, Charles had summoned her to his study and ordered her not to have anything more to do with her Mr Kitson–or his friend Mr Cracknell.

  Such tyrannical behaviour invariably provoked Jemima rather than cowed her, and an altercation had ensued. She had informed her father curtly that it was Mr Kitson she knew; and that Mr Cracknell was not his friend, he could be sure of that, and she would not be meeting that person again if she could possibly help it. At any rate, she’d continued, Mr Kitson could not be dropped as readily as he commanded, as he had been generous enough to agree to lecture the Foundry workers in the Art Treasures Exhibition at her request. Striking his desk with his fist, Charles had demanded that this address be cancelled right away.

  Seldom one to tip-toe meekly around a potentially inflammatory subject, Jemima had barely paused before asking him if his objections were rooted in the Crimea. Had he encountered the newspapermen whilst they were working in the theatre of war for the London Courier? Did this have anything to do with the contract he had secured whilst staying in Balaclava?

  Charles would not answer, stating wrathfully that none of this was her concern–that he was her father and she would obey him. She had retorted that she was not a daft girl in petticoats but a grown woman, and although forced to rely on him for food and shelter, she would not have him arbitrarily terminate her friendships without proper justification. The challenge had thus been made: either he explained his antipathy or the lecture would go ahead. She had heard nothing more.

  Seeing that her father’s speech was at an end, Jemima adjusted her bonnet, gathered her skirts and climbed from the train. The Norton workforce had spread along the lengthy platform as they waited for their master. A number had sat themselves upon benches, taken out packed lunches and a variety of bottles, and begun an impromptu picnic. Behind them, plastered on the outer wall of the Palace, was an overlapping mass of lurid commercial posters, each bearing boasts and promises in elaborate script, with dense blocks of text beneath.

  Charles Norton and his entourage of managers emerged from the first-class carriage. They put on their top hats as they stepped down, the spotless jet-black cylinders shining dully in the diffuse light.

  ‘You people!’ bellowed the white-whiskered proprietor, pointing at the picnickers as he strode up the platform. ‘Throw that food away! There’s to be no food taken inside the building, is that clear?’

  Norton swept towards the corridor that led into the Exhibition, his offspring trailing a short distance behind him. Herded by the more junior members of the managerial staff, the workforce slowly followed, reluctantly abandoning their pies, sandwiches and bottles. Jemima watched as her father took up a position just inside the turnstiles, surveying the teeming mass of his employees as they formed into lines and were fed steadily into the Art Treasures Exhibition.

  Then something odd happened. A tall, black-suited man, resembling a low-class undertaker, sidled up to him, tipping his stew-pan hat. They spoke briefly, Charles clearly wishing to dispense with their business as quickly as possible. The man withdrew to the shadows beneath the balcony, where three or four others, all similarly attired, were waiting for him. He relayed his instructions, making a series of efficient gestures with his right hand; and they all walked off purposefully in different directions.

  The workers, once they were past the barriers, drifted into the vastness of the Palace, gaping at its lavish luxury. Slowly, they strolled towards the picture galleries and up to the transept, their conversations growing louder and livelier the further they were from the gaze of their master. The few visitors already in the Exhibition, seeing the Foundry’s noisy approach, retreated to the first-class refreshment room, exchanging indignant looks as they went.

  Bill returned from a book-vendor in the station corridor with two Exhibition catalogues. He handed one to his sister and then sloped away. Jemima studied the weighty volume for a few moments before tucking it under her arm, skirting the crowds of factory people and walking into the nave. The Foundry expedition was running early; Mr Kitson was not due to arrive for another ten minutes. She decided to take a turn through the old master galleries before going to their agreed meeting place in Saloon F. Several dozen of her father’s workers were already wandering through the long, bright row of connected rooms, looking over the many hundreds of paintings they contained. They stared at grappling nudes and mythological beasts enacting alien, incomprehensible scenes; peered at grimy landscapes and discoloured portraits; shrugged before obscure allegories, and tales from the lives of the more esoteric saints. A large group of men and women stood before a cluster of fleshy Venetian pictures, pointing out certain anatomic endowments with lewd, echoing laughter. Seeing their employer’s daughter approaching, they nudged each other and assumed a grinning, unconvincing decorum. But as she passed, their eyes returned to the naked, contorted forms on the walls, and they burst into hilarity once more.

  Jemima went through to the far galle
ry, designated Saloon A, where the most ancient paintings were displayed. On her previous tour of the Exhibition, this was where she had spent the least time, being largely unfamiliar with the artists and schools it represented. As with all the old master galleries, the long, rectangular room had been arranged so that the northern paintings hung on one side, and the southern on the other–the idea being that a visitor could turn around at any moment and compare the productions of the two geographical regions. It was but sparsely populated. There was a single working family present, the husband and wife studying a mystical Botticelli Nativity in a state of sombre confusion whilst their four children played hide-and-seek around the gallery seats.

  And there, quite unexpectedly, was Mr Kitson, neatly shaven and well dressed, clad in a dark suit and hat with a pale grey waistcoat. He was standing, his arms crossed, engrossed in a large panel in the centre of the room. She felt a sudden, pure happiness. Jemima James and Thomas Kitson were together again, standing within the same walls, breathing the same air. Anything else could surely be brushed aside. She said his name, smiling broadly, and crossed the gallery.

  The deep distraction with which he turned away from the panel, however, made her remember the many questions that remained unanswered. There was much she still didn’t know–about him, and her father, and the disturbing interest that Mr Cracknell had in them both. This situation, she saw, could not reach an easy resolution.

  Nonetheless, when Mr Kitson saw her, a genuine, slightly awkward delight suffused him, dispelling his anxiety. They spoke warmly for a few minutes, discussing the hanging scheme; he attempted to extract praise for the curators’ achievements from her, having not forgotten her scepticism about the Exhibition on the day they met. She acknowledged that it was a remarkable feat of organisation, but said that the great cliff-faces of art towering over them on either side left her feeling overwhelmed rather than inspired. He chuckled, and went on to point out some of the more impressive loans that had been secured. Beneath his light-hearted conversation, though, lay something of the tender yet determined evasiveness that had characterised his letters. Jemima could not decide if he was trying to protect her somehow, or if that which he concealed was simply too painful for him to contemplate. She had read of the great difficulties encountered by those returning from the Russian campaign. Workhouses and asylums across the country had admitted scores of former soldiers who were utterly unable to resume ordinary lives–men reduced to vagrancy or madness by what they had experienced.

  For he was certainly a veteran of the Crimea. After the Polygon, she’d gone back to her pile of old Couriers. It had not taken long to find mention in an editorial of both a junior correspondent and an illustrator dispatched by the paper to the peninsula at the outset of the invasion, before its coverage came to focus on the controversial Mr Cracknell. The illustrator remained an enigma, but Jemima was convinced that the junior correspondent had been Mr Kitson. She tested this with some oblique references in their correspondence; to which he did not respond directly, of course, but neither did he deny what they implied.

  Abruptly, Jemima realised that he was trying to hide something from her even then–that the locations of the paintings he talked about were being carefully chosen so that he could stand between her and the work he had been examining when she had entered the saloon. She immediately peered around him, noted the number on the frame and looked it up in her catalogue.

  ‘What of this one?’ she said, pointing out the entry with her finger. ‘Pontius Pilate Giving Christ up for Crucifixion by Raffaello Sanzio, from the collection of Brigadier-General Nathaniel Boyce?’

  As she read the name of the owner, she understood something of the painting’s significance. This was the officer who had been so censured by the London Courier during the Russian War–the villain of the Tomahawk’s reports. Mr Kitson paled slightly at the mention of Boyce. Seeing that he had failed to distract her attention from the panel, he moved away, saying nothing, raising his face up towards the band of blue sky visible through the gallery’s glass roof. Jemima looked at the Pilate. The subject was profoundly unsettling, certainly a league away from the sweetly pious works that had been positioned around it. Even a nearby depiction of the crucifixion itself by the same painter could not match its disturbing power.

  ‘I have read of this work,’ she murmured. ‘It is attracting a good deal of attention, is it not?’

  He made no reply. She realised that Mr Kitson, in his coverage of the Exhibition for the Manchester Evening Star, had not so much as mentioned its presence. Ever since that night on Mosley Street, Jemima had been an avid reader of the Star’s street philosopher. In recent weeks, he had touched upon every aspect of the Exhibition, from the character of the crowds to the bill of fare available in the refreshment rooms. The collection itself had been described in detail, both in terms of individual exhibits and the rigorous educational principles on which they had been arranged. Raphael’s Pilate, however, the painting Jemima had found Mr Kitson so transfixed by, the painting owned by Mr Cracknell’s Crimean nemesis, had been omitted completely.

  Also, rather more disconcertingly, despite the confident claims in the leading art journals that this panel had emerged from nowhere to appear in the Exhibition–almost as if Raphael had risen from the grave, executed one last commission and then dropped straight back in–Jemima found that it was distinctly familiar. The shape of the wringing hands, the tone of the purple toga, the terrible guilt in those haunted eyes: all were known to her. An impossible conviction gathered in her mind. She had seen Raphael’s Pilate before.

  Mr Kitson’s voice cut through her confusion. ‘Mrs James, I believe the hour of the lecture is approaching.’

  He was holding a pocket-watch in his hand. As he replaced it in his waistcoat, he winced; the injury in his chest that she had noticed in the Polygon was clearly troubling him again. His main concern, though, was to remove them both from the presence of the Pilate.

  ‘Do allow me to apologise for my strange mood,’ he added with sudden earnestness. ‘You caught me by surprise–that is all. Seeing you again, madam, is truly a tonic for the soul. You–you look very lovely, may I say.’

  ‘Why, thank you, sir.’ Jemima, caught off guard, blushed a little.

  ‘And you know that I would stay alone with you all day if I possibly could. But we should not keep your father waiting.’

  Jemima nodded, and cast a final bewildered look at the Pilate. She then slid her fingers into the crook of his arm and held on to him tightly as they walked together into the nave.

  * * *

  A party of Foundry men, thirty or so strong, emerged from the old master saloons. Bill lowered the catalogue he’d been pretending to read and studied them. Their intention was plain–they were leaving. He’d noticed that as the morning progressed, and their feet became sore, the novelty of the Palace had begun to wane for many of his father’s employees, and its manifold, unfathomable glories had started to feel somewhat oppressive. Barely forty minutes in, and they were already streaming for the exits, not even held back by the prospect of their free lunch. Those who were going–and there were hundreds–were heading off past the collegial spires of the Blind Asylum, on to the Stretford New Road and back into the centre of the city.

  The men he was watching were among this number. ‘The stupidest exhibition that ever I saw!’ declared one gruffly.

  ‘There’s nowt here but pictures,’ another agreed. ‘Let’s off to the Belle Vue.’

  This proposal appeared to meet with the approval of the group. They strode down the nave, shoving their way through the turnstiles and out through the main doors. Bill, still grinning at their remarks, caught the eye of a straggler, a sinewy youth with a downy beard and a wide, sensuous mouth. Both stood still for a moment, holding the connection; then, with deliberate slowness, they looked each other up and down. Lingering yet further behind his comrades, the boy turned right before the doors, going down towards the second-class refreshment room. A hit, thou
ght Bill triumphantly as he started after him. A palpable hit.

  As he strolled along the wide red carpet towards the turnstiles, however, he noticed a familiar figure lurking around a marble Magdalene on the northern side of the nave. It was the black-bearded, shabbily dressed Irishman–Richard Cracknell, the one-time Tomahawk of the Courier, who had introduced himself so forcibly at the Polygon.

  Bill stopped dead. His immediate fear was that the fellow might have seen his mute exchange with the factory boy, and have realised what was transpiring. He could tell that the infamous war correspondent was the sort who might well decide to stir up a bit of trouble just for larks. But no, Cracknell’s attention was thankfully directed towards one of the modern saloons, where the exodus from the Exhibition seemed to have been halted, to some extent at least. Bill heard his father within, droning away through the partition wall; and then another voice took over, a voice altogether kinder on the ear. It was Jemima’s friend Mr Kitson–his lecture was beginning.

  Cracknell edged from behind the knotted stone tresses of his Magdalene and sauntered towards the saloon entrance. This brought him some yards closer to Bill; flashing him a reptilian smile, the Tomahawk tipped his dented topper and wished young Mr Norton a perfectly splendid morning.

  3

  As he began to speak, the last trace of Kitson’s nervousness left him. Nothing, he thought, absolutely nothing restores presence of mind like having to address an audience.

  Being reunited with Mrs James whilst standing before the Pilate, hearing her say Nathaniel Boyce’s name and stare so intently at the panel he had stolen, had been severely disorientating. Kitson had been beset by an alarming sense that the two things he should be striving to keep apart were becoming inextricably tangled together. When he saw Charles Norton, however, standing in Saloon F with his managers flanking him like a royal bodyguard, and the loose crowd of perhaps two hundred and fifty working people assembled behind them, all this promptly vanished from his mind. Something awakened in him–an old assurance dating from his life as an art correspondent in the Metropolis, back when he would have been unable even to find the Crimean peninsula on a map.