5
It was Rookwood he remembered as he stumped across the sunlit yard that July morning, a month or so after his return to bondage, for somehow Rookwood symbolised the entire experiment; something permanent, promising, and substantial, emerging from a hotpotch of unlikely components, a coming-together in this place of any number of men and boys with no common background, widely separated by the nature of dreams that some called ambition but were more fundamental to his way of thinking. For a man's dreaming proclaimed his essential personality.
He remembered Rookwood because the vanboys were much in evidence at that hour, a few of Keate's originals but a greater number of recruits, for Keate was still dredging along the banks of the Thames. He watched them idly, swinging like monkeys from the tailboard ropes, exchanging the kind of chaff with which the Cockney armours himself against those who trespass on his individuality. Cockneys, he recalled, made excellent private soldiers and good N.C.O.'s but were too gregarious to hold rank above sergeant. Rookwood was the exception. Somewhere along his genetic line there was good blood, possibly the blood of kings. Who knew? Who knew the truth about anyone? Hadn’t he been completely ignorant of the potentialities of a woman who had shared his bed and board for years?
Something alerted him, something in the way they looked at him, as though trying to compose their urchin features into expressions of respect, but only succeeding in looking very artful, and it was the same when he called in at the stables and counting house, finding both Keate and Tybalt missing, and this was strange at nine o’clock on a summer's morning.
He went back across the yard knowing that eyes were following him from several scattered points, gauging no doubt, the effort he was making to conceal evidence of the contraption braced to his thigh but not caring much, for he had seen enough of himself in mirrors to convince him his limp was hardly noticeable. As he approached the belfry door, however, he saw Keate and Tybalt scuttle down the stairway like a pair of guilty schoolboys and dart into the passage that led to the warehouse. He was inclined to hail them and demand to know what they were at but he checked himself. Whatever it was it was clear they did not wish to see him at that moment, so he turned in under the little Gothic arch and mounted the spiral stairs, thankful that it was his left leg and not his right that was artificial for the stairway ran clockwise and he could place his left foot squarely on the broadest section of the tread.
He saw it the moment he opened the door, a shrouded, irregular lump, standing on the map table between the window and Frankenstein, and at once he related it to the glances of the vanboys in the yard, and the furtive haste of Keate and Tybalt in the passage below. He lounged over, his curiosity fully aroused, and yanked the covering free. Underneath, worked in silver, was a scale-model of a frigate harnessed to two Clydesdales, clearly the work of a master silversmith, for every detail of the vehicle was faithfully represented and the horses were superbly modelled, with riffled tails and manes, and every putting muscle visible on their contours. He thought, “By God, but that's a wonderful piece of work! I wish it were mine…” and then he realised that it was, and that Keate and Tybalt had placed it there a moment ago, and that everyone in the yard must know about it, and everyone in the regions too judging by the engraved shield on the starboard side of the waggon.
He was so moved that his eyes misted and for a moment he was unable to read the names engraved on the plaque, or the lines of fine writing below, where the shield merged into the Swann emblem.
He read the tailpiece first—“Presented to Adam Swann by the employers of Swann-on-Wheels, July 1866, on the occasion of his recovery and return.” That was all, save for the initials of the silversmith, a simple, straightforward expression of goodwill and collective satisfaction; in a way a kind of cheer for something witnessed, marked upon, and approved.
And yet it touched and troubled him deeply, for he saw it as the identification of every name on that plaque with everything he had achieved since he set foot in Plymouth more than eight years before, and was given his first, fleeting glimpse of possibilities by that station-master, who had mistaken him for a spy. It had been an essentially private dream then but now it was shared among many and he read the names through very carefully, noting, with a tinge of sadness, that someone had seen fit to give poor old Blubb pride of place at the top of the wedge, so that it read:
Blubb,
Vicary, Goodbody, Horncastle,
Wickstead-Wadsworth, Fraser, Catesby,
Morris, Lovell, Ratcliffe, Dockett, Rookwood, Godsall,
Tybalt, Keate, Stock.
There was music in the names and if their respective territories had been defined the plaque would have resolved itself into a litany or a prose poem. His fancy played with this for a moment—
Vicary of The Bonus,
Wadsworth of the Crescents,
Ratcliffe of the Western Wedge,
Rookwood of the Square…
and as he did this he saw them all as segments not of his private enterprise but of the tribe to which they belonged, so that they and their territories assumed a national significance, symbolising all he felt about the country and the era and his personal involvement with it. Their diversity was immense but in that, he supposed, lay their value to him and to the age. Three things they had in common. Courage, an obstinacy that some would call cussedness, and a queer, grumbling loyalty to the thing he had conjured out of that Ranee's necklace when he first set foot in this seedy little tower overlooking the busiest river in the world. And this led him to reflect upon the two functions of the place where he stood, the old one, that had been to summon cloistered women to acknowledge the majesty of God, and the new one, concerned with the worship of Moloch. Most people, he imagined, would regard this as an incongruous change of usage, but today he did not, perhaps because it occurred to him that traffic in money was only an in-significant aspect of their collective strivings here in this place, where the prayer bell had once clanged. Their real purpose, as individuals and a team was more interesting and more human, an exercise in comradeship and interdependence, a pooling of talents, a collective contribution to the creativity of the race to which all of them belonged. His idle thought on the quay at Calais returned to him and he smiled, telling himself that if God was an Englishman, then Swann's Yard had as much right to be recognised as a temple as Wren's church across the river, and this was not really such an extravagant thought, of the kind that would be likely to find favour among a thousand counting-house Christians within slingshot range of where he stood. It was dedicated to the making of money certainly, but it had a deeper, broader significance. You could, if you wished, regard it as a staging-post between a whole range of extremes—progress and laissez-faire, splendour and squalor, ignorance and expertise, affluence and grinding poverty. If it and its like closed their doors then the wheels of this teeming city would cease to turn and beggars would swarm in their thousands in those streets, spilling out into the countryside and carrying their indigence with them like a plague. Before long, in a year or so, Britain would return to the anarchy that had reigned for six centuries after the Legions went home, everyone awaiting the arrival of that cropheaded Norman, with his passion for public order, to move in and build that square tower across the Thames. There were people who liked to sneer at money even as they spent it but he was not one of them. Progress was the daughter of trade and how could the trading instinct, almost as deeply rooted in man as the sexual urge, find articulate expression without the unrestricted flow of gold and silver from one pocket to another?
He read the names yet again, recalling something specific about each of them, and this time they subdivided into companies, each company standing for a different England. The Headquarters’ trio marched under the banner of the metropolis. Vicary and Edith Wadsworth stood for the green, flat river lands, where Baltic sea-raiders had called to pillage and stayed to colonise. To the north and north-west men like Catesby appeared to him as relative newcomers, milking a profit from farmlan
ds that had been sacrificed to mill and foundry, whereas Fraser and Lovell were proof that the Celt had never been conquered or even absorbed by thrusters from the south and across the sea. East, from the Lizard, a fifth company plied their trade across an unspoiled landscape, where men had been lifting fortunes from the soil for a thousand years and one would have thought it was asking altogether too much of a man to look for harmony and a net profit from such a polyglot assembly. And yet harmony of a kind was there and the silver model on his desk was proof of a unity forced on these stubborn men by French kings and German princelings, who had themselves been absorbed into a way of life peculiar to this offshore island. It was all that had emerged from this process of absorption that was so astounding, so improbable—a race of men with as many facets as a giant diamond, projecting aspects of national character that seemed at first to be in direct contradiction to one another and yet were not. There they were, displayed for all to see any day of the week including Sunday—piety and high jinks, an intense love of personal freedom and a willing submission to laws, old and new; kindness and compassion, laced with an occasional streak of cruelty and intolerance; honest trading bedding down with sharp practice, and experimentation living side by side with a profound distrust of everything new and useful. It added up, to his mind, to a singularity that could be sought in vain anywhere else on earth, and the sheer unpredictability of what would emerge at any one time made working here a great adventure. A dictum of Napoleon returned to him, something about bad troops not existing, only bad officers. It certainly applied here, where his officers held his fate and fortune in their hands.
He decided to whistle down the tube for Tybalt and order a general assembly for drinks all round, but before he did he clumped across to the window of his eyrie and looked down on his favourite view of the Thames, watching the never-ending procession of barges and wherries, then shifting his stance to take in the forest of masts on the right, and the bridge and bridge approaches jampacked with crawling traffic. It was strange, he thought, that a man who professed to love the open air, and had cherished movement from boyhood, should feel more at home here than anywhere else in the world.
How has Adam's military background affected his approach to business? Why is he so eager to start his own business?
“I’ll make it with dignity and, so long as it doesn’t involve detours, observing some kind of standards as regards the use I make of people.” How does Adam make good on his promise? Are Adam's aims different from other business owners?
When Adam returned to England, industry was rapidly changing the face of society and commerce. Yet he saw the hypocrisy and double standards everywhere as, “evidence of a signal failure on the part of Western Man to match his technical achievements with self-knowledge and a real, rather than fraudulent, civilization.” What is “civilization” as Adam defines it? In what ways is our civilization real? In what ways is it fraudulent?
What did the Colonel mean when he said to Henrietta, “A wife's first duty as I see it is to put a sparkle in a man's eye, and everything follows from that…”? Did Henrietta fulfill this role, or did she do something else entirely?
Is Henrietta manipulative in her early marriage to Adam, using sex to get her way? Or is it the only mode of persuasion open to her since he doesn’t take her seriously? Are there situations in which it is acceptable to use sex as a bargaining chip or a tool of manipulation?
Why does Adam force Henrietta to help clean the dead chimney sweep's body? Is Henrietta's indifference to the boy's plight a sign of her lack of education or of a cold heart? Is sympathy or compassion something that can be taught?
What are some of Adam's strengths and weaknesses as an entrepreneur? In general, what are some of the qualities that make a successful businessman? What qualities would make your ideal businessman?
Look at the relationship between morality and economics throughout the novel; does the one ever detract from the other? For example, Adam backs Catesby when he refuses to deliver illegally shipped cotton from the American Confederacy. Was this the right thing to do, or is good business a strictly amoral enterprise?
Is Henrietta the only one to blame for the incident with Miles Manaton in the bower? Do you see her decisions as an act of vanity, a need for attention, a passing whim got out of hand?
Swann-on-Wheels becomes more than just a business to everyone involved. Outside of financial considerations, what did the people involved receive in return for their work? What should someone get out of their job beyond a paycheck?
Was Henrietta really as immature as Adam suspected during the first part of their marriage, or was she simply responding to what she thought was expected of her? How did changing expectations affect Henrietta's life and view of the world?
Why does Edith give up her job to marry Wickstead? Is it simply because he told her she had to if she wanted children, or would she have done it anyway? Do you agree with her decision? Do women face the same decision today in some measure?
How did Adam and Henrietta's marriage change throughout the novel? What caused the changes in their relationship? What things have caused changes in your own relationships?
Responsibilities let characters such as Adam, Edith, Henrietta, and even Rookwood and Ratcliffe develop and flourish as individuals. Do people need that weight of responsibility and expectation to bring about a sense of fulfillment?
There are many different types of faith in the novel. There are men with religion and ethics like Keate and Tybalt, as well as the deep, calming devotion of Deborah. Then there is Adam's kind of faith that has nothing to do with God. How does each person's faith affect him or her and those around?
If Edith had not been romantically attracted to Wickstead, would she have gone to such great lengths to catch him stealing? Did she just want to prove herself an able manager or did she act from a curiosity about the man himself ? Have you ever done something far above and beyond what is usual because you were attracted to someone?
Consider Wickstead's background. Does poverty ever justify crime? Is it possible to blame society for shaping the man he became, or do you think each individual should be held to the same standards of morality regardless of circumstances?
Look at the various reactions to the news of Adam's accident and possible death. What does this say about his role in people's lives?
Edith and Henrietta, despite vastly different backgrounds and experiences, turn out to be more similar than they first appear. What are some of the things they have in common? How are they still very different women?
Various characters balance business and family life in different ways. How do you balance your own business and family/social life? How does the one affect the other?
“Change. Movement. Speed. Money. Expansion. Innovation.” Has business changed all that much since Adam Swann's time? Would Adam be as successful today?
Born in South London in 1912, R.F. Delderfield was a journalist, playwright, and a highly successful novelist, renowned for brilliantly portraying slices of English life. He has remained one of England's most beloved novelists, with many of his novels being adapted into television and film, including the landmark BBC miniseries of To Serve Them All My Days.
Table of Contents
MAN WITH A CASKET: 1857–1858
PART ONE Encounter: Summer, 1858
1 Fugitive in a Crinoline
2 The Black Dwarfs
3 Pillion-ride
4 Bride-in-Waiting
PART TWO The Cygnet Years: 1858–1861
1 Cicerone
2 Novitiate
3 The Big City
4 Whim of a Carriage-horse
5 Assignation with Shires
6 Death of a German
PART THREE Cob at Large: 1862–1863
1 Swann Treble
2 Study in Soot
3 Riverside Confessional
4 Skirmish on Shallott
5 Truce Terms
6 Flight of a Sleeping Partner
; PART FOUR Sortie Torrentielle: 1864–1865
1 Council of War
2 Byblow
3 Valentine's Day Breakout
4 Advance on Most Fronts
5 Edith as Thief-taker
PART FIVE Towards the Weir: 1865–1866
1 Apogee
2 Tumult
3 Thaw
4 Conspiracy
5 Vicereine
6 Petticoat Government
EPILOGUE Re-Encounter: 1866
Reading Group Guide
About the Author
God is an Englishman Page 89