Book Three: A Poor Man
at the Gate Series
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Copyright © 2014 by Andrew Wareham
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Contents:
Title Page
Copyright Page
Scene Setter
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Book Four in the Series
Scene Setter
Born to Privilege follows the fortunes of small-time fisherman and petty smuggler, Tom Andrews, who in earlier adventures, escaped from England to avoid the hangman’s noose. He was shanghaied onto a privateering ship. The privateer sailed to the Caribbean and enjoyed success before Tom fled to New York, accompanied by Joseph Star, a part Carib freeman. Carrying a large amount of booty they devised illicit ways to make more money, until they were betrayed and were forced to return to England.
They settled in industrial Lancashire at the beginning of the first great industrial boom; as unscrupulous businessmen they quickly became wealthy. This wealth allowed Tom to buy a landed estate and soon after moving in to his new home, he met the beautiful, Lady Verity Masters, the daughter of an impoverished local aristocrat.
Tom is now married with teenage children and exerts an increasing influence in the corridors of power. Both Tom and Joseph’s offspring go out into the world as part of their passage into adulthood. Tragedy befalls the Star family when two of Joseph’s boys find themselves on different sides of a battle at sea in the Far East. Family members are also involved in dubious adventures in America. Although a land of opportunity, being an Englishman in the States in the years following the 1812 war doesn’t come without risks.
Author’s Note: I have written and punctuated Born to Privilege in a style reflecting English usage in novels of the Georgian period, when typically, sentences were much longer than they are in modern English. Editor’s Note: Andrew’s book was written, produced and edited in the UK where some of the spellings and word usage vary slightly from U.S. English.
Book Three: A Poor Man
at the Gate Series
Chapter One
A polite knock and the library door opened.
Tom looked up in irritation – a servant would not have knocked so it was one of the family come to disturb him in the morning hours he devoted to work – it needed to be something important. He set a ruler across the long column of figures he was checking over, a randomly selected set of accounts for the last month from the South Wales iron works in which he was senior partner. He could not watch everything in his business empire but each month he made a point of thoroughly examining some of the books of one or other of his concerns, as his managers well knew.
It was five years since last he had caught a fraudster. He had used his influence with the government to have him transported to the Van Diemen’s Land penal settlement, the most severe of all, and with his papers marked for him to be carefully watched by the convict authorities, to be given no clemency at all, to go to the flogging post at every infraction, however minor, of the many rules. All of his people knew the tale and trod the straight path of virtue very precisely indeed.
“Yes, Robert?”
“I would like to talk with you, Father, if it is not inconvenient. Privately, sir.”
‘Father’, not ‘Papa’ – that meant it was something important to the boy – young man, rather, he supposed. How old was he now? Quick calculation made him rising eighteen in a couple of weeks. He had been shaving for the better part of two years now which led to one possible reason for the need for privacy – put one of the maids in the pudding-club, maybe? Whatever, best to get it out in the open, especially if that was what he had been doing. Tom grinned, nodded to a chair.
“Sit down, tell me about it, Robert.”
The boy sat, diffident, polite, apprehensive but not physically scared, not frightened, Tom was pleased to see. A good-looking youngster, almost as tall as Tom and with some more growing to do still. Fair as his mother but square in the face, Saxon solid like his father. He was still a stripling but showed evidence of muscle and adult bulk to come – he would be a big man, fat if he wasn’t very careful. Intelligent and strong-willed, as Tom already knew – there had been a number of clashes during his childhood days.
“It’s school, Father. Harrow. I do not wish to return, sir, to be one of the ‘chaps’ any more. They are just silly boys, sir, and they all intend to grow up to be wastrels, young men about Town. I want to be more than that, sir – idleness bores me! I know I am the heir, will one day be the second Baron Andrews, and you and Mama have both explained, and I know that you are right, that I must get to know these people and be known to them. But I don’t want another term at school and then three years at Oxford in their company, sir.”
First reaction was to order the boy to do as he was told – his parents knew better!
He held his tongue, choked the words back – he did not want to provoke the lad into doing something silly like running away to sea. He knew that his father had made his first money on the high seas, might well decide to do the same. If he obeyed and stayed at school and then, ‘went up’, was it, to Oxford then he would be resentful, less willing to fall in line as an adult, and he was trapped in his position – the heir to a rich barony would enjoy a life of luxury but would be forced to conform or be ostracised. Golden chains, certainly, and far less irksome than those grinding down the poor, but nonetheless he would not be at liberty to be his own man, every day he would have to ask himself whether what he wanted to do was what his position demanded that he should do. Give him his liberty now and he could grow into his adult shackles gradually, possibly unaware of what was happening to him.
“Easter is upon us, you will be back to school next week unless we take a decision now. You are too old for the Navy, of course. Do you want a pair of Colours?”
“No, thank you, sir, not the Army – too much like school, especially now that the wars are come to an end. I would like to go overseas, sir, to America, perhaps? Have we any interests abroad, sir, where I could go to work for a few years? I would like to pay my way, sir. I know I must not go to the foundries or pits in England, sir, must not dirty my hands where it can be seen, but abroad is different.”
Tom had been about to enquire just how he had intended to keep himself if he did not intend to take up a profession, swallowed his words. The boy wanted to become a man, it would seem – he had no objection at all to that, but his mother might be unhappy.
“It might be possible, R
obert, and I am glad you wish to stand on your own feet, I will certainly back you in that. I will not, however, take the decision without consulting your mother. As well, take a closer look at my face, my son – that knife missed my eye by a hair’s breadth, my throat by little more. There is another scar on my chest that would have killed me if I had ducked to the other side. I was lucky – I lived. Go to the wild places and you might not be so fortunate. You want to become a man, but you might become a corpse instead!”
“Yes, sir – but I will risk it, with your permission. I have no great wish to go to war, but I do want to grow up, sir, not like the little boys at school who want to do nothing at all!”
“So be it, my son. I would prefer to keep you safe, but I want you to grow up as well, and that means you must leave your mother’s apron-strings behind, as you say. I will speak with your mother now, but I tell you straight, Robert, if I am forced to a choice then I will find it hard indeed to gainsay your mother’s wishes!”
“He really ought to spend his terms at Oxford, Thomas – getting to know young men from the other schools who he would not have met otherwise. After that, perhaps four or five years with the embassies in Vienna and Paris or St Petersburg would give him an insight into world affairs, as well as meeting some interesting people. That done, he could become a member and would be invited to join the government before he was thirty and would be well-placed to be First Lord of the Treasury and claim his earldom at an early age.”
Tom sat back in his wing chair in Verity’s sitting-room, stretching his legs in front of the fire, choosing his words with some precision.
“Has he discussed politics with you, my love? I have never noticed him to be interested in the greater government of the country. I have talked long with him about our businesses and the farms on the estate, and I know he has frequently ridden out with Quillerson on his daily affairs as the estate’s agent, but I do not recall him ever saying a word about the wars, for example, or about Reform and revolution. That he must be active, I certainly agree – we do not want him to become a Bond Street Beau, a lounger about Town – but I see no gain in setting his nose to the wrong grindstone.”
Neither mentioned her dead elder brother, broken by the pox before finally, wisely, putting a bullet through his head – but the thought was there.
“He should not go into the business, Thomas, not as heir to the title. Eccentric we may be, as a family, but that would be seen as excessive, as crazy as old Lord Cochrane.”
“The sailor? The one who rigged the Stock Exchange?”
“No, his father – a mad inventor who bankrupted the family. It was, by the way, more likely his uncle the governor who actually worked the fraud on the Exchange, but he would not admit to his part in it, and Captain Cochrane was not well-loved by the government or Admiralty, Papa tells me.”
“Cochrane-Johnstone? I had some dealings with him soon after we were wed – a nasty, untrustworthy man. I believe that my man Clapperley had to speak very sternly to him at one stage.”
She wondered just what had been the story there, but knew that he would say no more unless she very specifically asked him, and she was not entirely sure she wanted to know too much about the threats that Clapperley, a very nasty little lawyer, politician now, had evidently made.
“You are right, of course, my dear – he must be acceptable to all, unlike me. I can, and sometimes do, stand in the House and speak about steam or coal or iron or the supply of great guns, and they listen to me with great, indeed flattering, attention, and I believe government has once or twice amended its policy as a result of my words. Was I, however, to turn my mind to foreign affairs then I would address deaf ears, for I would be out of my place, ‘not the right sort’. He must be careful not to be tarred with my brush, but experience overseas is a different matter – an English gentleman may do anything in the company of foreigners.”
She nodded seriously, knowing him to be correct. Foreigners were different, lesser beings and even the comparatively civilised ones amongst them, such as the French and Austrians, were inferior to the English.
“My cousin by marriage, Cavendish, is Governor-General of Bengal, and he would be pleased to take Robert as an aide-de-camp, I know. But it would take a year to send a letter out and receive a reply, and then another six months at sea for him; a long delay.”
“He wants to be doing now, he tells me. He mentioned America. Now that that silly war is over he could be of great use to us there.”
“Cotton?”
Tom nodded; they had frequently discussed the possibility of buying their own plantations to supply their own mills and the Star empire, perhaps more cheaply, certainly more reliably than at present. Tom owned only a pair of spinning mills, picked up by default from a bankrupt speculator and retained more by accident than intent, but they provided a steady income and demanded very little of his time and kept him in regular contact with his old friend Joseph Star. Now, the wars over, the ex-Emperor immured on Elba, it was time to take the idea forward.
“A good suggestion in some ways, Thomas, though we should remember that the Quarringtons have not acknowledged us since their young Jonathan went to the plantation States!”
Both chuckled, the young gentleman having been sent out to the States at Tom’s urging, to make a man of him, and having returned two years later sporting moustaches, wearing fancy clothes, smoking cheroots and drinking whisky and very loath to return to the bosom of his Quaker family. He had not become formally estranged from his parents, was still their heir, but dwelt in Bristol where he was understood to have become a very successful merchant, importing tobacco and sugar and cocoa from the Americas generally and, it was suspected, deeply into the now-illegal slave trade which was much more profitable since it had been banned. They had seen him many times since his return, had made him a standing invitation to the Hall where he visited at least annually and corresponded very frequently, seeming to feel a great deal of gratitude to them.
“Have they spoken to Miss Hawker since your sister’s wedding?”
Verity laughed out loud, shook her head.
“Miss Hawker – Mrs Plenderleith as she now is – visits Bristol quite frequently, but she has not been seen in the vicinity of Jonathan’s parents, I understand. One is informed that she goes to see her old bed-fast aunt. I am quite sure that a bed comes into the matter somewhere!”
“Still?” Tom’s eyebrows raised as he wondered again just what Jonathan had got that had made him so attractive to the adventurous young lady. He could imagine but refused to indulge in gross physical speculation in his wife’s company – the topic would be more appropriate over port with the men-folk.
“Plenderleith – must be seventy if he’s a day! Married her last year, did he not? I remember hearing something in the club.”
“The wedding settlements were rather interesting, I understand.”
Tom had not heard that, looked hopefully.
“According to the on-dits going about Town, reported to me by three separate sources, her father put twenty thousands in Plenderleith’s hand and the doting bridegroom then wrote his Will leaving all to his nephew, not a penny to his widow. Apparently they parted outside the church, which makes it all the more surprising that she was delivered prematurely of a daughter some six months later.”
“A thriving, healthy child, one presumes?”
“Remarkably so – one suspects the little girl would have topped the scales at fifteen pounds had she gone to term. Most unusual!”
“Plenderleith was one of those who lost greatly in the Crash of ’95, I remember. I know that I bought a coal mine that had been his and Joseph Star took up his mortgaged estates some five years later on his default. His wife died quite young and childless, I believe, and he never remarried and had speculated wildly in the year or two thereafter. An unfortunate gentleman, but no doubt he was glad to be put in the way of a partial recovery at least.”
Tom grinned, rubbing at the scar pulling at his cheek.
“Does the little girl bear any resemblance to the Quarringtons, do you know?”
Verity shook her head. “Much too early to tell, Thomas. Jonathan has certainly shown himself fertile – three children, one of them a boy, in the four years since he married – one of the Minchinhamptons, very respectable, a younger daughter of course.”
“That young leopard certainly changed his spots given the opportunity.”
“The opportunity you wish young Robert to have, Thomas?”
Tom laughed, shamefacedly, sought for tactful words, then for any words at all. He was unwilling to say all that was in his mind, to say that he preferred the boy to leave his bastards, if any should eventuate, in foreign climes, not as an embarrassment on his own doorstep, so to speak.
“He is growing up, my love, and I had much rather he did so and made his mistakes, which are inevitable, at a respectable distance. Young men always make fools of themselves; if they are lucky, they make a recover and correct their errors sufficiently to survive to be old men. The greater their wealth and prominence, the bigger the opportunity to be foolish; so for that reason alone I would prefer him to go overseas for a year or two. Additionally, there is the problem that we present him. We are neither of us meek, unassuming souls, my dear, and I suspect that, quite unintentionally, we overpower him. He must grow up to be his own man, and if he does so elsewhere he does not have to fight us to prove himself.”
She accepted Tom’s message – she would not be able to live her political ambitions vicariously through her son, he must go his own way.
“When do we tell him, Thomas?”
“Tonight, at dinner?”
“What did Papa say, Robert? Was he cross with you?”
Robert sat at the big table in the school-room, opposite to his sister. His two brothers, both at school with him, stood to the side, anxiously looking on and remembering the rare occasions when Father had been cross with them and wincing in sympathy.
Born To Privilege (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 3) Page 1