Born To Privilege (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 3)

by Andrew Wareham

  “Yes, my lord… No, my lord… I fully appreciate that, my lord… I do feel I should say, my lord… Quite, my lord.”

  Fraser hunched his shoulders, subsided into silence as it became clear that he was not to be summarily dismissed, that his lordship was, if anything, very slightly amused by the whole affair, was rating him more for form’s sake than from any sense of outrage.

  “I am very sorry, my lord – I feel that I have betrayed my trust.”

  “Obviously, you have, to an extent, Mr Fraser, but young men will be what they are and I have no doubt you were put under some pressure – ‘a standing prick has no conscience’, as we have all heard.”

  Fraser had not heard, put the expression away into his memory.

  “Now then, enough of this business – I shall set young Joseph up in rooms of his own, in Wigan, I think – a little away from the immediate locality but within very easy travel – a bare hour up over the hill, less on horseback in good weather. What of your progress, sir? I know of your steam but what about iron ships? Have you advanced there?”

  Fraser had – there was a set of plans for barges with wooden frames and wrought iron plating and for a paddle steamer to work ships in and out of the docks, to pull them when there was no good wind, to tug them to and from their moorings. He had, however, been unable to locate a building slip in the area.

  “The creeks, my lord, are all taken by long-established works and yards, none of which appear to be for sale. I have spoken to the young man in Mr Clapperley’s office, as your letters instructed, and believe he has the matter in hand, but progress is very slow.”

  Tom said that he would talk with the gentleman himself, discover what the problem was. It was generally the case that something could be done.

  “Ship-building is generally depressed, my lord, just now, with the end of the long war, and such yards as have been sold have gone for a song, as the saying is, so no sensible man is selling if he can possibly avoid it – only the most ramshackle places are to be had, more trouble than they are worth, I believe.”

  Tom cocked an eyebrow, set a quizzical expression in place – Clapperley’s deputy would not have been chosen for qualities of naïve honesty and personal integrity.

  “Of course, my lord, there are one or two owners who might be open to, persuasion, let us say, men who have sound but run-down facilities, for one reason or another. Young Mr Upton comes to mind…”

  “He does? Why might that be, Mr Farlow?”

  Farlow smiled – Mr Fraser had shown not the slightest glimmer of understanding when he had ventured similar comments but my lord evidently knew what time of day it was.

  “He is in debt, my lord, and not to reputable bankers – I believe that failure to meet one month’s payments may result in broken legs whilst a second might well put his neck at risk! He has, I know, borrowed rather heavily to meet losses incurred at the races and at cards, and has, I am quite certain - from information received, shall we say - used his firm’s funds to make repayments of the interest and, quite possibly, some of the principal. He is part owner, his late grandfather – his father died very young – leaving the firm equally between him and three spinster aunts, trustees holding for them, they to take an income only, all reverting to him at death. He cannot sell up, of course, without the full consent of the trustees for his aunts, and they would be upset, to put it very mildly, if they were to officially discover that he had been converting the firm’s capital to his own illicit use. The normal story, of course – he is reporting false profits and is paying their incomes from capital, thus digging himself deeper and deeper… Was he to go into bankruptcy then he would be criminally liable and his personal creditors would snatch what they could of his stock-in-hand, his skilled men would all be dispersed and there would be nothing usable left and him quite possibly facing the noose for fraud, the trustees losing everything. He would be very happy to sell up and flee the country with a thousand or two in his pocket, but the trustees would never consent to a sale except their interests were met, so he is unable to escape with so much as a penny. Poor fellow – he made much of his wish to get out, to leave the country, when last we dined together, but I fear it will not be possible.”

  Tom thought for a few seconds, reading between the lines, establishing what had not been said.

  “Thus, Mr Farlow, was the gentleman to be taken up for some unrelated matter then the trustees would step in, before the personal creditors became aware, I would imagine, and they would very rapidly discover the nature of his defalcations, assuming they did not already know. They would wish to keep all quiet if they could so as to sell the business as a going concern, avoiding a bankruptcy which would lose them everything. Mr Upton need receive nothing, not a penny, being in custody and unable to look after his affairs himself, so the yard becomes available on the market at about three quarters of the price it might have fetched, and his personal debts would be no concern of the new owners, the creditors having no claim on the firm, it no longer being his… Can we make contact with the trustees? Do we know who they are?”

  Farlow bowed and smiled in his turn – the firm of Clapperley and Pitt had that honour.

  “Pitt? Has Mr Clapperley taken a partner?”

  “No, my lord, but it is a very respectable sounding name and people expect attorneys-at-law to be in chambers together.”

  “I am, it goes without saying, very willing to purchase a yard against immediate cash, Mr Farlow, and buyers cannot be easy to find just now. I think we could dispense with the presence of the young gentleman, what was his name, now? Upton? No relatives of any sort, I presume?”

  Farlow assured Tom that Upton had no sources of influence to his name, his family was insignificant.

  “In that case, Mr Farlow, would it perhaps be possible to locate a badger in this general area?”

  Farlow, no innocent, knew exactly what Tom meant.

  “It is not impossible that one might be able to lay one’s hands upon such a beast, my lord.”

  “For a fee, of course – I shall leave the matter to you, Mr Farlow.”

  Mr Upton was invited to the races at Newmarket just two weeks later. A friend of his friend Mr Farlow had a house on the Heath there and he could join the company, would be very welcome, especially as the friend was a very knowing man and they could expect a profitable race or two. It was a two day meeting and Upton backed two favourites on the first day and put the stakes he had won onto a tipped outsider on the second, his fifty guineas becoming four hundred in the space of seven furlongs. He set off back to Liverpool in celebratory mood, Mr Farlow remaining in Newmarket for a while longer, stopped for his first night in the old city of Peterborough, putting up, at his friend’s most earnest recommendation, at the Bear and Ragged Staff, ‘not the largest of inns but very welcoming and comfortable and particularly concerned to see to the comfort of unaccompanied gentlemen’.

  His beefsteak was accompanied by a bottle of claret, and port and brandy followed it to the extent that Mr Upton was quite mellow as the boots led him upstairs, handed over a crown by way of a tip on his assurance that his bed was being warmed for him. There was only the one candle in the bedchamber but that gave a sufficiency of light to show a slender blonde figure, back to him, wrapped in a dressing gown and standing at the far side of the four-poster. He stripped and stood proudly in the centre of the chamber and then his world turned upside-down in a second. The blonde dropped the dressing gown and turned to him, transpired to be a boy of immature age, quite hairless and still soprano, as he showed by screeching loudly in protest.

  “No! No! Leave me alone! I don’t want to!”

  The door flung open in instant response and a distraught middle-aged gentleman made a theatrical entrance, followed by a crowd of onlookers.

  “My son! My son! What has happened? What has he done to you?”

  “Papa! Oh, thank God you came! I went down the corridor, Papa, to use the place, and he took hold of me and pulled me into here and took my
clothes off!”

  The boy pointed to nankeens and shirt thrown on the floor in artistic disarray, burst into tears as emphasis.

  Two of the onlookers grabbed Papa as he advanced bent on vengeance while the others raised loud shouts for a constable, a magistrate, the Watch. By now a crowd of guests and staff had appeared and they took up the cry, some adding demands for a noose. Upton was seized, his hands tied behind him, one of the onlookers conveniently having a length of rope about him, and he was dragged downstairs and given, still naked but much less proud, into the hands of the Law.

  In the morning Upton, roughly covered in a blanket, was hauled before the bench and was committed for trial on charges of abduction and assault on the person of a minor. He was led off to the common gaol, given none of the privileges of private accommodation normally offered a gentleman prisoner on remand – his sort of criminal was not liked by the authorities. A messenger, conveniently present on his way to Liverpool, took the news cross country and two days later, Farlow, as Trustee, entered the yard and inspected the books, discovering all that he already knew. A message went south to the Thingdon Estate and Tom came north and made his offer for the business, all open and above board.

  The purchase went through rapidly, the lawyers involved all knowing each other and having to work together day in, day out and being unwilling to cause offence to a brother in distress, distress being defined as a desire for money, and Fraser walked in within a month, soon after the news arrived that Mr Upton was no more. The villain had succumbed to gaol fever, exacerbated, no doubt, by rough handling and poor diet in the common cell of the prison – a genteel accent was a passport to ill-treatment in such a place. He was felt to be no loss – word had spread, from what source none knew, of his incarceration and the reason for it and a great number of people had remembered that they had long harboured doubts about him and agreed that he was much better gone from amongst them.

  There was greater interest in the business community in the fact that the name Roberts had gone up on the board by the gate and that a furnace was building and substantial quantities of wrought iron plate were coming in by dray and barge. Skilled hands were turning iron bolts and nuts to fit them on a pair of Maudslay’s lathes and the wooden frames of half a dozen hulls – five barges and a larger ship of about two hundred tons – were building, but there was no sign of wooden planking at all. Most manufacturers had heard of proposals for iron ships and they were all agog to see the reality, the bulk of them looking forward to watching the launch and instant sinking of the first. It could be very entertaining and none would be too averse to seeing Roberts taken down a peg.

  The barges were ordinary dumb lighters, to be towed, but it soon became clear that paddle-wheels were being built into the larger hull, one on either beam. There was much rubbing of hands and bets were laid in the club, most being whether the new ship would sink or take fire first. One or two go-ahead gentlemen sought entrance to the yard and were welcomed by Alec Fraser and drooled upon by his increasingly famous dog. He had no new inventions as yet unpatented and had nothing to hide, was pleased to display the fruits of his genius and to explain just how strongly my lord was supporting him. In addition he was very happy to discuss all that he was doing and to listen to the ideas of others, that was the way, he believed, to advance.

  Joseph Andrews, still chagrined by his father’s comments on his personal habits and indiscretions, took little interest in the shipyard, having become engrossed in the problems of producing pistons and cylinders for his steam engines. Too much steam pressure was lost because the pistons could not be milled to a tight tolerance – there was often a play of more than a quarter of an inch between the head and the cylinder and the best packing with leather and grease was still insufficient to prevent steam leaks and produce efficiency. He had decided that the way forward was to develop a more accurate lathe, operating at higher speeds and precise to one tenth of an inch, and he was well on the way to producing his new machine, but Frederick Mason was showing very little interest in it, it seeming to him to be expensive and of limited use, and his father tended to follow Mason’s advice. Fortunately, he believed, he made the acquaintance of a Mr Farlow, a man of considerable discernment and intelligence, who was able to provide a solution.

  The firm of Joseph Andrews and Partner opened its doors in a discreet location near the canal side in Wigan, a small enterprise employing no more than a dozen men at first, running cast and wrought from its own furnace and buying in the steel it needed in billets as well as brass and bronze for bearings. Technical knowledge was supplied by Joseph, funds by his partner, Mr Farlow, who had recently had a windfall of four hundred guineas as well as access to bank loans. By working on the Sabbath Joseph was able to meet his commitments to Roberts as well as to his own, secret, enterprise. His young lady friend, coincidentally located in rooms immediately adjacent to his, saw a little less of him, but he was youthful enough to do her justice without his work suffering. He had a first lathe running within two months, producing to his specifications, and was able to sell cylinders and pistons in three and then found, to his amazement, that he could make a far greater profit by manufacturing and selling the lathes themselves – the demand for machine tools was unlimited, it seemed, so much so that some were already being imported from the States.

  Joseph took counsel of Mr Farlow, asked whether he should look to expand his premises, borrowing more funds.

  “With respect, Mr Andrews, no! You have shown that your ideas are profitable and you should now go to your father and ask him to take your enterprise under his wing. Why borrow when there is capital available in Roberts?”

  Farlow had spoken to Mr Clapperley, had expatiated on his cleverness in bringing young Mr Andrews under his wing and had been very shortly informed that he might expect his wings to be thoroughly clipped if he did not immediately regularise the affair – they were not in the business of treading on my lord’s toes. My lord, as Mr Farlow might have been expected to appreciate, was a generous, kind-hearted gentleman, to his friends, but to those who crossed him he was a relentless enemy, and seducing his son away from him was not an amicable act.

  “In brief, Farlow, I know of one man he has killed with his own pistol in this country – and you will make no mention of the killing or of my awareness of it, I believe! In America I am quite certain that he invested in a graveyard of his own so as to profit from his endeavours, and in the Sugar Islands – who knows? I have never quite been able to tie down the rumours, though I have little doubt that the expenditure of a few hundreds would bring interesting results – but I would not dare use any knowledge that came into my hands, so why so spend out for it? He is a dangerous man, sir, and if he decided that his interest would be best served by putting a period to your existence then that further existence would be measured in hours, not even days – and he might well choose to make a clean sweep of it, removing me as well in case I was privy to your endeavours! I understand you are a betting man, Mr Farlow. I can assure you that you would get very good odds against enjoying a long and healthy life if my lord should become aware of your current activities! I will expect to hear, this week, of young Mr Joseph’s triumph, of his going proudly to his father with the evidence of his profitable genius.”

  Farlow, who had been dabbling with the idea of encouraging Joseph to expand rapidly and lose everything, very profitably, became an honest man on the instant. Despite my lord’s display of ruthlessness when removing Mr Upton, he had not realised that he had been considering suicide.

  Joseph took a chaise and four and headed to Thingdon Hall, his books in hand – it was time he saw his mother in any case, and received the telling-off that was his due, not for any immorality but for upsetting his Papa.

  Major Wolverstone was at that time sweltering in the heat of the Red Sea. He had taken a Levanter to Alexandria and then ridden camel-back in one of the caravans heading south to the Gulf, picking up an East Indiaman there – a regular enough procedure for those
without families in their company and willing to accept an amount of hardship in order to save a month or two in transit. There was also, of course, an element of adventure, and Wolverstone had found civilian life to be unexciting – not boring, as such, but rather placid – and had been pleased to enter into one of the wilder parts of the world. The wild Bedu tribes had been unaccommodating, had not raided their caravan, but they had seen the sights, had shaken scorpions out of their boots and felt the heat of the desert, a pleasant enough change after Lancashire.

  Arrived in Bombay he found that he was expected, eagerly awaited, that the factor desired nothing more than to bask in the glory of his presence, and that quarters were awaiting him and his people. He had thought to dwell in rooms, as he had in England, was amazed to be escorted to a large bungalow of his own and to discover it to be swarming with servants, each with his or her own strictly defined function and set in a hierarchy that made a Servants’ Hall in an English house seem positively democratic. He was entertained to discover that his own people, brought out from England, also had servants assigned to them, the functions of his bat-man valet being open to much dispute. The Indian servants seemed to believe that he should do no more than oversee them in their performance of all the necessary duties; he was not actually to dirty his hands, very demeaning for a sahib!

  Roberts’ factor in Bombay was relatively newly established and had been concerned primarily to discover a market for imports from England. He was becoming dispirited as he found that very few English goods were actually competitive in the Indian market, other than the cheapest of coloured cottons and plain calicos for which the demand was huge. Mr Barker was not at all sure that Roberts had a place in India at all, was interested to discover just what Major Wolverstone expected to do.

  “Coal, Mr Barker, and iron, primarily, to establish mines and quarries here, then a furnace of our own, I expect, running cast for construction and wrought for the manufacture of steam engines, for which, I am assured, there will be a need. Coal will be required by the thousands of tons within a very short space of time, Mr Barker, and I very much wish to make my lord the leader in the fields. A great man, Lord Andrews – have you met him, Mr Barker?”