I could not remember the name of the gentleman who spoke. A banker, I believed.
“One of the greatest of the country merchants, Ainslie, left Bombay some few years since, sir. He sold his merchant house to a Chinese concern. They retain an English face. The Chinese interests found it wise to leave Canton and brought several tons of bullion – not all of it silver – with them. They are, as you will appreciate, powerful, and interested in expanding their trading links.”
“You say ‘several’ tons of bullion, Mr Jackson?”
“I was privileged to sail with the convoy that left Canton, sir. We are speaking of more than one hundred tons, accumulated over a century or more, one understands. The convoy brought silks and porcelain as well, and a tonnage of tea and bronzeware, all to fill the holds of the convoy of large ships. I remember calculating a hold capacity of some eight thousand tons. I sailed in company with heavily armed country ships, acting as escort.”
“You are talking of millions of dollars, sir!”
“I calculated in pounds sterling, sir. The figures were certainly very large. I believe that the hong in question would be well able to purchase fast ships new from the yard. I cannot speak for them, naturally, but am very willing to put my slight knowledge to your use in this next week or two, sir. I have reserved cabins in the Charlotte Mary which sails at the beginning of the month.”
If they wanted an English figurehead, they would have to act quickly. I drank my port and refilled the glass as infrequently as possible and stayed sober. The Americans showed no signs of the huge quantities they drank – their heads for alcohol far stronger than mine.
It was a hard-drinking country in those days. I have not been there these past ten years but I doubt it has changed.
We joined the ladies and spoke a little of England and of myself. I made it clear that I was as yet unwed but that a young lady was waiting for me in England, or so I much trusted. I rather gathered that there were one or two daughters in the wings, themselves in need of eligible husbands. I was not to be one such.
The ladies knew nothing of business and the men would not discuss it before them. Talk inevitably turned to China.
“The country is closed, Mr Jackson.”
“It is, sir, and it will take a war to open it. That war is, in my opinion, inevitable. The Empire is falling to pieces, the process much accelerated by the presence of the foreigners, the gwailos. Warlords are rising in the distant provinces and creating de facto independent states, most of them evanescent. The Silk Road is closed because of internal war, which the Qing will not admit to. Whenever the Emperor appoints a general to lead an army out to put down a warlord, he has the fear that his own trusted man will simply oust the insurrectionist and take his place, using the imperial troops as a private army. The triads are taking an increasing role in government of the cities distant from Peking. China is in decay, it is falling to pieces and we, in part the cause, must profit from that collapse. In the first instance, that will demand war. After that, trade and missionaries will serve to demoralise the land sufficiently to give it to us for a few years.”
“A few years, sir?”
“Ten millions of English and not less than two hundred millions of Chinese, and one hundred millions of Indians already under our hands. It is not a feasible conquest in the long term – though I do not doubt we shall do well there during my lifetime.”
Mrs Hartley was distressed that I might regard missionaries as a demoralising influence, making much of their sacrifice to bring the heathen to the Lord.
I was not to become an habitué of their Society, allowed myself to be sardonic.
“There are missionary societies in London, ma’am, sending their devout workers across the seas to Africa and India and the Sugar Islands. Why do they go so far? Fewer than one in ten of the people of England are ever seen inside a church. I am told of the new towns that have grown in the North Country and in Wales, places that are not formed into parishes and often have not a single church in their midst. Children born in these coal and iron and cotton towns never hear their Saviour’s name, except when it is taken in vain. I know nothing of New York. Is it the same here?”
Mrs Hartley could not imagine it to be so. Theirs was a Christian country.
Mr Hartley shook his head and regretted that he much feared it might be.
“The building of places of worship lags far behind the growth of tenements and rookeries, Mr Jackson. You may well be correct that there are heathen in plenty in this land without need to go overseas.”
I showed a concerned face. I did not give a damn, and nor did Hartley. One had to say the right words in front of the females.
Religion is for womenfolk, of course – they need something to compensate for the life we men lead them. It grieved me much when my daughter took up with the rector. I couldn’t understand it, a pretty girl and brighter than her brother and with a massive portion to hand; she could have had a duke, if she had wanted. Instead, she married a country divine. Happy with him, mark you, and four children, all of them bright little sparks. A disappointment, even so.
Hartley contacted me at the hotel next morning, begged me to do him the honour of visiting his office at the bank. I assented, with pleasure.
Hours of dealing ended up with a three way trade across the Atlantic, wheat going from New York to Liverpool as a minor part of the deal. The bulk of the transactions would simply be mud from Cape Town in exchange for silver. Unspoken but implicit was unlawful trade with the South American colonies of Spain to obtain the ingot metal – I knew of that first-hand.
Additionally, Hartley had wanted me to come up with muskets from the English foundries, in bulk and cheap. He told me they were for use on the frontiers of the States where every man must have his weapon. Later he implied that they would be sold in the Argentine and Peruvian colonies where men were putting arms together against an eventual insurrection against Spain.
I was unable to assist there, however. If there was to be a rising against Spain then I suspected the British would want it to be with their help, not America’s. Add to that, all too many cheap muskets ended up on the Slave Coast, sold to the Kingdoms in exchange for bodies. I preferred not to be involved and I knew Ainslie wanted clean hands.
I explained that we dwelt in the south of England and that the ironfounders were now almost all to be discovered in the North Country, a foreign land to us. It wasn’t much of an excuse; it sufficed.
Mr Hartley wanted the trade to Liverpool to be covered by bills of exchange, pointing out that the cotton trade was increasing and already vast and that American paper discounted as readily as English in Liverpool. It seemed reasonable and I was aware of a shortage of bullion in the States. Paper money in all of its forms was the norm in New York, down to very low values – there were such things as dollar bills, worth no more than four shillings English. I could imagine the reaction in England if one tried to offer paper for so trivial an amount.
I accepted the stipulation but emphasized that the trade in foreign mud could only take place against silver.
It was a considerable restriction and that led me to wonder whether it might not be possible to use the Levant Company, which worked the Mediterranean trade, to purchase Persian mud out of Aleppo or even Stamboul. The western end of the Silk Road was still open and likely to remain so, I believed. I made a note that I must investigate the possibility. Business in opium promised to continue to be profitable – even the legitimate use of laudanum for relieving pain must grow in wartime and the whole of Europe was in flames.
That led to a consideration of the French, who might be a nuisance in the Mediterranean. I would deal with that problem if it arose. It might be possible to run a low bulk, high value cargo from Stamboul across the Black Sea and through the Russias to the Baltic – that would be an interesting journey in itself, I thought.
None of that was meat for Mr Hartley.
I tidied up our business there and left for England with a portfolio o
f papers for Sir Alexander’s perusal. A highly satisfactory little excursion, I believed.
Chapter Thirteen
Liverpool was, still is to my knowledge, a deeply unpleasant town; I haven’t been there this last five years but it was still one of the least attractive locations in England then.
Slaving had moved from Bristol to Liverpool over the second half of the century and the disgusting business cast a pall over the whole town, no small part deriving from the newly rich who distinguished the trade and took vast pleasure in displaying their vulgarity. I am nouveau riche myself, effectively speaking, but I do not venture forth dripping in gold rings and diamond pins and surrounded by sycophants and bodyguards. Nor do I sport a belly fit for three and a set of drooping toper’s chins and red cheeks and bloodshot eyes. The bulk of the Liverpool traders, and their banker sons, do just that. Funny how much money made from black ivory ended up as the capital of country banks. All very respectable institutions these days, their scions to be met in Society; talk to one of the Barclays about their slaving grandparents and you will get a truly frosty answer!
Additionally, it was a seaport with all of the vileness of London’s dockland and none of the mitigation of the West End or the City. Not an ancient building in sight and nothing striking or even well-built in the new. Red brick at its least attractive denominated Liverpool architecture. The streets were full of mendicant Irish, dumped off the boat and left to make their fortunes, often not even speaking the English. There was a whore beckoning from every alley and seamen queueing up in front of them. Fortunately, it was not a naval port so the worst, most extreme perversions were not displayed on the pavements – it was not like Portsmouth where one had to watch where one stepped when the fleet was in.
Canton was a haven of order and decorum compared with Liverpool, though I supposed Liverpool lacked the lepers begging on street corners – or perhaps I looked in the wrong streets.
Fred and I disembarked and took a brief glance around us and then eased our pistols in their holsters before whistling up a growler. We needed a four-wheeled cab to carry our baggage but it also announced that we had the bags to carry and the money to pay for them.
It was mid-morning and I had intended to remain in an inn overnight and set off south next day. I changed my mind.
“Biggest posting house, cabby.”
“Aye, sir.”
The cabby raised his whip to his forehead in acknowledgement and in the same movement flicked the lash across the shoulders of a small boy who was trying to clamber inside the baggage trunk at the rear of the cab.
“Keep an eye out for them, mister. Get inside, slash your bags open and throw what you’ve got out the back as we goes along, their mates running behind us to pick it up. Mind your mouth, little shit!”
The last was aimed at the boy, who was swearing vilely, and was accompanied by another cut of the whip, lashing across the child’s face this time. The boy yelled in pain and pulled out a knife, came running forwards, was grabbed by others in his gang and held back, dragged away screaming in outrage.
A pair of dock constables came running, too late to lay hands on the malefactors, none of whom could have been ten years of age. The cabby sneered.
“Too bloody late! Nine times out of ten, so they are. If they nabbed him with a knife it’s the nubbing cheat for the lot of them, but they don’t pick up one in a twelvemonth – useless, they are.”
“Hang them all, do you say, man?”
I was still not used to the practice of justice in England.
“And right too, mister; clear the streets of the scum! Get in, now. No sense waiting for them little sods to come back.”
It seemed somewhat extreme.
I discovered later, on enquiry, that relatively few children actually hanged, it was uncommon to see them dangle under the age of twelve. Apparently, it offended the sensibilities of their betters - to quote one sheriff’s man, ‘they cried so bitterly when they felt the noose’. The problem was that there was no alternative punishment available – no point to fining a thief; no prisons to keep them for years at a time, the gaol was for remand and for debtors; no schools to send them to. If the child felon was not hanged then he was sent back to the streets he had come from, with perhaps a beating if the judge was amused that way. Things have improved with the introduction of transportation, though I have heard that relatively few of the juvenile survive the six months at sea to Botany Bay; less distressing to the onlooker to kill them that way, one must say. ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ – a wholly true truism, one might say.
It sounds as if I am a Reformer, one who cares about his fellow man, or child in this case. Not so – I don’t like to see street children in their misery. Better far they should be kept out of my sight. Better still if they were never born.
We were ensconced in a pair of post chaises by midday.
The first problem of the shay was the absence of space for luggage. A traveller required a second for his trunks if he had been overseas.
The second great drawback was travelling through Liverpool which, outside of the town itself, was distinguished by the absence of highways. There was a canal heading inland to the east, into the cotton spinning and weaving lands, and any number of narrow, potholed roads and trackways serving those mills, all of them overburdened with traffic. There was the merest set of lanes for the man wishing to go to London.
Not, I would point out, that I had any great desire or need to visit the Metropolis, but there was no alternative if one wished to reach Winchester. The roads to London were bad; those heading anywhere else were non-existent. I was almost tempted to take to the canals, faster and more convenient in many ways, but exclusively the province of the mob. The common cabin of the express boats was the domain of farmers going to market, often surrounded by pigs and chicken, and of petty clerks going about their masters’ business. Not for the gentry, of whom I was now one. I would have been embarrassed and an embarrassment, out of my place and awkward. Fred would have been horrified at my lowering myself so far.
We bumped and rolled worse than the sea passage we had just endured and spent two days reaching Birmingham and another two slightly more comfortably, for there being better posting inns to stop at for a meal or to stay overnight, to London itself.
Six days after landing, we came back to the house at Shawford, greeted in finest fashion, the Master returning from his travels. I noticed one of the upstairs maids smiling most kindly at Fred and turned my eye away – none of my business.
Pillings was anxious to wait on me with his ledgers in hand, to demonstrate his diligence in my affairs. In all kindness, I had to find time for him first, sat him down in my work room, the Library as he insisted it must be.
“All is well, sir, the harvest coming in this year in good amount. It did not rain this season, the first time in years, sir, though only in these parts. Word is that the West Country was wet and that the East of England came close to drowning! The price of wheat has risen five shillings over last year!”
Looking at his books, that meant an increase of some ninety pounds in the net takings from the cornland; we had to retain our own foodstuffs and only part of the corn could be sold. There were turnips as well, and beans and pease which went at a good price, so he told me. The net effect was to give me a clear income of seven hundred pounds on the year from my four hundred and fifty acres. Trivial, I thought, but the farmhands saw one twentieth of that in cash.
I have never been comfortable on the estate as a result of that gross difference in wealth. I have no objections to bringing home twenty and thirty times as much from trading – funny, ain’t it? The poverty of the men scraping a living from my farms is an irritation to me while the equal despair of the townsfolk surrounding the warehouses hardly impinges, except when they get in my way by dying in local gutters.
I have never claimed either to be consistent or especially honest, and I really do not give a damn for my fellow man… I suppose it is a matter of ownership.
The farmhands belong to me and need to be protected like any other of my possessions.
I enquired of Pilling’s domestic content and discovered he was happy indeed, his wife in the family way and the new house a delight to her. His life had taken a turn for the better, one that he could not have imagined before I came. The poor little man gushed, in fact – and was totally trustworthy, then and ever. I much recommend practical charity to one’s employees, by the way – it returns far more than the few pounds it costs.
After Pillings, Valet and Barber inspected me and deplored American ways and habits of dress. Both exerted all of their powers to turn me out correctly, in their opinion making a great improvement in my appearance.
I reported to Ainslie next day, confirming that his sons were content, indeed most grateful, in his generosity.
“They are honest young men, sir, and happy in their new lives and pleased that you gave them the chance to live as Southern gentlemen. I should correct that, sir – they are ‘gennelmen’. It is a debased part of the world, slovenly in speech and habits, but they are a complacent part of it. The additional funds were wholly unexpected and reduced them close to tears of gratitude – they believed they had no claim of you, sir, for having disappointed you, being unable to carry on the firm. Each is wed, by the way, on the same day last year, being the closest of friends and brothers, and their ladies are all carrying their bellies before them. You are to be a grandfather thrice over, sir.”
Ainslie did not seem to be entirely delighted at the prospect. He was relieved that he would never see the grandchildren, all sure to be dullards and to grow up under-educated.
“What of business, Mr Jackson? Are we to be involved in cotton or tobacco?”
I explained why not.
“No place for an English factor, ye say? Sensible of them to keep the profits to themselves.”
“I suspect the bulk of the profits go to the dealers in Liverpool, sir, and to the tobacco merchants of Bristol. There might be a return from investment in those firms, perhaps.”
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