Light, Descending

by Octavia Randolph

  And what the devil, John James wondered, had happened with the Lockhart girl? For someone whose stock in trade was words, John could be deucedly closed mouthed when he chose to. Had there been an offer made, or no? He couldn’t bear to ask and learn that his son had been rejected, so ask he did not. He turned his attention back to the Gray’s financial difficulties.

  “Mark my words, my boy, a man can live more happily on £500 a year than £5000, and that the Grays will soon discover. There is no slavery like the slavery of fashion and society––all comes at the expense of domestic comfort.”

  The old man said this despite already having taken a town house for the newlyweds in Park Street, fast by Lady Davy’s, and having made them the gift of their own new brougham and pair. He’d bought the right to a coat of arms––it featured a tusked boar––and had it and his personal motto painted on the door. Age quod agis–– ‘keep your mind on your work’ it reminded all.

  “Of course,” John James went on, “you know I want you to have the advantages you need, the right house in the right part of town where you might entertain all the best men. And Phemy’s so pretty she’d show to advantage dressed as a Quakeress, but she needs frocks and gauds when you go out. And a good cook, and staff, for the dinner parties you’ll be hosting.”

  He wasn’t pleased to see the barely concealed flinch from John.

  “I want––I need––none of that, father, but only time and quiet to do my work. But it is yours to give, and my duty to respond to such generosity with a grateful heart.” His father was lading them with gifts, almost, it seemed to John, in inverse proportion to his initial opposition to the match. And John hadn’t anticipated the additional public exposure a marriage would subject him to. If he fell prey to Effie’s and his father’s myriad expectations his intellectual life would be overwhelmed by social duties.

  John James’ grunt came out almost a sigh. Everything he’d worked for had been for John. His own father had faltered so badly in trade that John James had as a young man worked nine years straight, without a single holiday, to extricate the family from his father’s debts. It had meant giving up his dream to enter law. It had meant, too, a nine year engagement to his son’s mother; they had been middle aged before they could set up their household and produce their child. ‘Keep your mind on your work’, indeed. For forty years he’d crisscrossed the length and breadth of the island kingdom selling his sherry, establishing accounts with public houses, squires, and clergymen, cornering all the best business, and with the finest quality goods to be had out of Jerez. How many endless miles in jolting, filthy coaches had he endured? And he had prospered mightily, yes; but it was all for John, every red copper of it, and the boy had a way of standing here accepting all of it while claiming he liked or needed none of it.

  He looked down and pretended interest in the contents of his son’s travelling trunk. “Your mother and I had no Ruskins at our own wedding, and you’ll have none at yours,” he observed, studying the brass knobs on the numerous little drawers. It was out of the question for Mrs. Ruskin to travel back to Perth; the idea of stepping foot on that property sent her into hysterics. Nor did John James have any desire to revisit the scene of his father’s final horrible act. Their presence would be extraneous to a happy wedding party, a marplot and a nuisance to all. But he felt he was sending John up there––well, unsupported, and he had never not been at the ready for his boy.

  He snorted again. “I’m glad you’re leaving early, ahead of this mob thronging to march on Westminster,” he added. “Better to be well clear of London in case of troubles, but I daresay old Wellington will quell the ruffians if any can. The People’s Charter! Rubbish! They demand the vote, and with no property to their names. It’s all madness.”

  Mr. Ruskin was an old school Tory, and John right behind him, but they’d had a few recent disagreements about just how far government’s ear should be bent by the dissidents. Now his son’s mouth twisted as if in pain, and he realised with a pang that almost everything he said these days elicited some measure of distress from the boy.

  “Madness? Yes,” John said, “for I, who have industry and brains to spend––or to squander––on cataloguing the work of mediaeval stone-carvers, do so when the men of my own day are reduced to human cogs in the gears of Manufactory.”

  John James nodded, sorry he’d ever touched upon it. But what was a man of business to do? Mobs and the fear of lawlessness were everywhere these days, what else could a man do but keep clear? The marchers planned to assemble less than a mile away in Kennington Common, and on the very day of his son’s wedding. He’d hired a couple of private duty men to be stationed outside the house for the day, just in case.

  There was one more thing he wanted to say before Hobbs, who could be heard moving about in the adjoining bedroom, re-emerged. John was at an advanced age to be broaching the topic, but it had never arisen before.

  “Huh! Anything you need to––ask––about the coming business?” The term “business” was as close to “conjugal relations” as his own reserve allowed.

  John looked at him in such a way that he could not be certain whether the startle in his son’s eyes was rooted in surprise or discomfiture.

  “Ah––” John said at last, and released his father with a blink. There was nothing he wished to ask of him on this topic.

  “Good. Well then.”

  Chapter Five

  The Lamp of Life

  London: 10 April 1848

  The human cogs in the gears of Manufactory that had distressed John Ruskin were, on the day of his marriage, massing to protest the political machine profiting by their labours. One of the marchers––a young gentleman, and not a cog––would soon command the affection and esteem of the bridegroom, and play a decisive part in his life.

  John Everett Millais pulled his velvet collar up against the drizzle as he made his way to Russell Square. He was eighteen years old, and this day, April 10th, had the markings of being one he might recall all his life. Ahead of him in the Square, under the awning of the tea kiosk––closed against the threat of violence––stood the man he sought. William Holman Hunt was twenty-one and had invited Millais to join him in walking with the Chartists as they marched to present their petition to Parliament. They greeted each other and set out down a deserted Southampton Row. Neither had carried an umbrella––what mattered wet and cold when men’s fates hung in the balance––and instead grasped their brims as sudden gusts made attempts at their hats.

  It was easy to see how seriously the burghers of London were taking the Chartists this Monday afternoon. Houses had their draperies drawn as if it were night. Most shops had failed to open and were securely shuttered. The normally bustling shopping streets of King Street and High Holborn were thus devoid of ladies on their errands, and a mere handful of cabs lingered kerbside. A nearly empty omnibus pulled by a team of greys passed them in the other direction, the driver’s face blank as he scanned for potential passengers waiting at the corner ahead.

  “I wish I had a revolver,” said Millais, as the two progressed towards the Thames.

  Hunt laughed. “I daresay it’s lucky you don’t! I won’t answer for you blowing off those precious fingers of yours.” In truth, Millais with his high colour and a bit of swagger in his walk looked as though he was seeking a fine lark. “Do the old folks know you’re out here?” Hunt asked.

  Millais shook his head rapidly. “Ha! Never. They think I’m up in the attic studio, painting. Even father wouldn’t go to his club today, for fear of running into a rampaging horde.”

  They saw posters, dripping with wet, papered up on walls bearing the bold print heading “Chartist Demonstration!! Peace and Order is our Motto! Working Men of London. Monday April 10.”

  As they walked down Drury Lane to the Strand more people appeared, sometimes singly, but also in clumps of three or four. It was striking that they all moved, as they did, in the same direction––to the Thames
. There were working men of every description ––drovers, cabmen, brick-layers, joiners, dustmen, and many more whose exact work Millais couldn’t guess, but whose respectable lower middle-class attire suggested as an endless number of clerks.

  There were even a few men like Millais, young, well educated, and well dressed, but there was no way of telling if they were mere curiosity seekers or truly supportive of the aims of the marchers. They were surprised at the number of women they saw; not the typical prostitutes lingering on corners with their drooping feathered hats, drawn by the concentration of men, but working women. They might be tavern maids, or egg sellers, milliners or dress makers, all joining the march. Many bore black umbrellas and were cloaked against the rawness of the weather.

  It was hard for the two friends to speak freely, surrounded as they were by the actual petitioners. Millais wished there was some emblem he could wear, a sign he could give that he was in sympathy with their goals and demands. He and Hunt had had long discussions about the Chartist’s position, and both were solidly behind it. Hunt himself was the son of a warehouseman, and keenly and personally felt the correctness of Chartism. All men should be able to vote, irrespective of whether or not they owned property. Those votes should be cast in secret, without the coercion of watching landlords or employers. And if members of parliament received a salary as the Chartists wanted, then poorer men could serve; as it was, only the rich could stand for parliament because no salary was attached. And where was the justice in the big new manufacturing cities like Manchester, Liverpool, and Sheffield having no representation at all?

  When they got to Somerset House Millais’s jaw fell.

  “Maybe there will be three hundred thousand people there!” he breathed to Hunt, as the extent of the crowds streaming across Waterloo Bridge was revealed.

  The Chartist leader, Fergus O’Connor, had called for the working men of London to meet south of the Thames, in Kennington Common. After a rally there, he would present the gigantic petition with, he claimed, five million names on it to Parliament. But the group had been strictly ordered not to cross the river from Lambeth and approach Westminster itself. Any attempt to do so would be met by one hundred thousand police and soldiers who had been called on duty to protect the governmental seat.

  Revolution was roiling Paris; and Austria, the German states, Denmark, and Poland were in uprising. There were riots in Glasgow. Ireland was starving. An outpouring of this scale might end in bloodshed this very day, and the beginning of revolution here in Britain.

  They crossed the Thames packed shoulder to shoulder, the rain picking up and the dull sky darkening overhead with each step. The crowd moved down Kennington Road. Six blocks away in a large square Georgian house, a rich sherry merchant who had stayed away from his office for the day emerged from his study. The hall clock chimed three and the merchant noted that his son up in Perth would be married in an hour. The merchant crossed to the front door and through the flanking sidelights saw the two policemen stationed outside under the dripping entranceway facing the empty street. One turned and saw him and raised his hand in a sort of salute.

  On the Kennington Road Millais, despite his now-sopping clothing, felt a mounting heat and excitement as they neared the assembly point. The crowd stopped. Millais could see a ring of buildings beyond, but nothing but the expanse of his fellow marchers before him. A few cabs were drawn up nearby, their driving seats giving the men who jostled there a view, Millais imaged, of some sort of platform that he and Hunt could not see. The buzz of the crowd and the noise of the increasing wind made him uncertain if anyone were attempting to address them or not. They stepped back and disengaged themselves in an effort to find a vantage point. Two nearby men with a Daguerreotype apparatus fought to hold a protective oilskin above it.

  The sky became dramatically darker, and was of a sudden rent by a brilliant, arcing fork of lightning. A breathless moment later brought its terrific explosion of thunder. At the retort the crowd erupted in a gasping wail. Women shrieked. The skies opened in a drenching rain that pelted all with the fury of natural and unbridled violence. Millais and Hunt turned away with the rest of them and fled for any shelter they could find. There would be no revolution that day; English weather had seen to that.

  Chapter Six

  The Lamp of Life

  Scotland: 10 April 1848

  Mr. and Mrs. John Ruskin were alone in the coach for the first stage taking them to Blair Atholl for their wedding night. The rain had stopped and George Hobbs sat atop with the driver and their trunks as they headed north to the Highlands. They had been sent off in a shower of satin slippers after having tasted the fruited brides-cake, leaving the two score guests to sit down to dine and toast the new couple in their absence. Six-year-old Robert Gray had kissed his sister goodbye so affectionately, and shaken hands so gravely with the bridegroom, that it had seemed an additional benediction. The newlyweds had settled into the tufted seat cushions, and John slipped his arm around his bride’s shoulders. He kept it there until it was uncomfortable for them both, and then withdrew it with a little cough.

  The coach was soon free of suburban Perth and open country met them. The trees were coming into leaf, and the air was mild for early April. The couple’s heads were turned, looking at the damp landscape out their respective windows. The bridegroom was more than content with the silence and the scenery passing by. John had been at the Gray’s two weeks, and nearly every hour it had rung with children’s laughter, tears, or shouts. He had had to share a room with Effie’s brother George, and had been made aware of the preciousness of coal and candle-light. He had wanted to be out of the house, and remembered almost nothing of the ceremony, and now they were rocking steadily toward their first night together. John did not like to think of that just now, and to distract himself reached for his watch, only stopping when he realised it might seem rude to check the time. He sensed that at Denmark Hill his parents would have stood up from the table. His father might be reading aloud Don Quixote’s adventures to his mother, and if he had been home he would listen and laugh too, and then head up to his large and familiar study to continue his thinking on early church architecture. That Chartist gathering was to have been today, and he hoped the neighbourhood had been spared any disturbance.

  Effie brought her eyes from the window to her new husband. The fortnight past had been an immense strain on the entire household, and on John, too, she imagined. She knew he must have found Bowerswell uncomfortably cramped compared to Denmark Hill. And at times John had seemed less than happy with her. He had scolded her in writing, and again when he was there, for taking on too much care, for not hewing to her Balzac, for wearing herself out writing letters, even for playing her beloved piano too much.

  Your best conduct would have been a return––as far as might be––to a school-girl’s life––of early hours––regular exercise––childish recreation––and mental labour of a dull and unexciting character...Now––you know I mentioned French, Italian, and Botany as subjects––two of which it was necessary and the other expedient––that you should learn––and I thought that you would endeavour to occupy your mind––and–– (forgive me the impertinence) to please me––by giving some time each day to these healthful and unexciting studies...

  Then the demands of producing a small wedding with the family in such straightened circumstances––her dressmaker charged her an unlooked-for £9 extra for her trousseau, which her father could ill afford to pay, and which caused Effie extraordinary distress to ask for––had tested even so strong a resolve as her own.

  John sniffled, and Effie spoke in response.

  “Is your cold any better, my love?’ she asked. She took his hand and sat back next him.

  “I think so,” he said. She had pulled off her glove to touch his bare hand, and her skin was warm.

  She nestled by him. “I won’t catch it; I never get colded,” she proclaimed. She turned her face to him, and then lowered her eyes.<
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  Her arm and side were pressed against his, and she was still holding his hand. He felt her as warm and solid and insistent, and he lowered his own eyes and tilted his head down and away.

  John did not kiss her. He had never kissed her, except upon the brow, as he had before the Minister of Kinnoull who had officiated at the ceremony in her drawing room a few hours ago. After waiting a moment with lowered eyes Effie sat back, abashed at her expectation. John was, like her, tired; he had a head cold, and besides, he had warned her about public displays of affection. Alone as they were, a coach was a public conveyance.

  I have great horror of showing such feelings to others––my manner to you shall be habitually quiet––respectful––attentive––but cold, and just, or nearly just, what it would be to any person whom I respected and regarded––

  But she also remembered the letters that teazed her with his fantastical longings.

  A letter from you has just come––ah, the sweet little mortar-coloured seal of wax, stamped with an E––one kiss––and then––No, I won’t break it––I couldn’t––I’ll round it with my penknife to preserve it...When we are alone––You and I––together––Mais––c’est inconceivable––Oh my own Love––what shall I do––I shall not be able to speak a word––I shall be kneeling to you...Soon, soon you shall be mine, Deo Volante...God Willing!

  Effie thought of the seal he didn’t dare to break. “It was a lovely wedding, and grand to see Mama and Papa happy,” she offered.

  “Yes, a good end of it,” he agreed.

  “End?” Effie twisted to look at him more fully. “It’s no end, my love––but a beginning. The beginning of you and me.” His remark was not meant to be hurtful, she thought, but it was––dismissive, somehow. “Our whole lives begin now,” she asserted, squeezing his hand.