The Northern Correspondent

by Jean Stubbs

  Ambrose cuffed all their heads and spoke up authoritatively.

  ‘Now, Mr Entwhistle, incredible though this may seem, these boys have been very good all year and deserve especially nice presents on Christmas morning. So if we promise that they will be Extremely Quiet and Polite — unless they want to be taken home at once! — may they choose a gift each?’

  ‘By all means, sir. My sister will be delighted to help you.’

  Ambrose leaned forward and said something in his ear.

  ‘Oh yes, sir. I hadn’t forgotten. It arrived yesterday. Seven shillings and sixpence. And a good selection — like you asked.’

  Order and honour restored, the three boys spent a wonderful hour on the second floor, from which they emerged with a noble fort and a battalion of lead soldiers, an ornate brass bugle and drum, a set of building bricks with pictures on one side and alphabet letters on the other, and a Jack-in-the-box.

  Down the narrow stairs they filed, to have the gifts approved by Mrs Entwhistle, ceremoniously wrapped, and put away to be delivered on Christmas Eve. A very large and mysterious brown paper parcel was then produced for Ambrose. The boys knew better than to remark on this, but Toby spoke up on another issue.

  ‘What about Cressima Dairy’s doll?’

  Miss Entwhistle said gently, ‘Oh, your sister will come and choose that for herself when she is bigger.’

  ‘No!’ said Toby, going scarlet. ‘She has to have a present!’

  ‘It’s not fair to leave her out, Papa,’ said Nathan.

  Jack shouted, ‘Cressa Rary’s doll!’

  Ambrose said, ‘We seem to have forgotten my daughter. Lead us to the dolls, Miss Entwhistle.’

  Previously, the boys had scorned any thought of the first floor. Now they were led into its sacred precincts and asked to stay by the door.

  Miss Entwhistle went over to a deep box without a lid, rummaged inside, and held up a calico doll for approval. Their silence answered her. Unperturbed, she rummaged in another box, and fetched out a jointed wooden doll with round red spots for cheeks and painted black hair. Again, all stared at it dumbfounded. A papier mâché creature with startled eyebrows also failed to move them.

  Nathan said as politely as he could, ‘We mean — a real doll.’

  Miss Entwhistle looked to Ambrose for guidance.

  He said sympathetically, ‘Could you show us your best dolls?’

  ‘Very well, sir, but would the young gentlemen not touch anything as we pass through, if you please?’

  Gingerly they tiptoed after her, through a lane of fragile china tea-services to an inner sanctum. She unlocked the big glass case.

  ‘I can’t hardly breave!’ gasped Jack, holding his stomach.

  But Toby pointed to a sultry beauty on the top shelf, and said, ‘There she is! There’s Chessima’s doll!’

  Ignorant males though they might be, they all recognised her. Her translucent wax face was full of character, her blue glass eyes looked grandly upon them. Her fashionable bonnet and gown were beautifully made, and generously trimmed with lace. Had they been of the feminine gender, Miss Entwhistle would have been delighted to show them the doll’s kid limbs clad in silk stockings, her chemise and petticoats and pantalettes. This being out of the question, she held the gown tightly round the doll’s ankles and lifted her down reverently, showing only the tips of her leather slippers. She was a large doll, perhaps eighteen inches long. Her hands were modelled of wax.

  ‘This is my favourite, too!’ Miss Entwhistle confessed shyly. ‘She was made in Waltershausen, in Germany, by a wonderful doll-maker called Herr Kestner. I think of her as being Isabella — only in play, of course!’ she added hastily, full of confusion.

  ‘Why can’t we call our sister Isabella?’ Nathan asked. ‘That’s a pretty name.’

  ‘I’m going to call her Isabella anyway, and no one can stop me!’ said Toby belligerently.

  ‘I like Isabella!’ said Jack, and in a deep whisper, ‘I hate Isabella.’ Then louder, ‘That’s not me, that’s my Little Voice!’

  Miss Entwhistle dared confide the price to Ambrose.

  ‘Never mind!’ said Ambrose, philosophical to the last. ‘Wrap the lady up. Home, boys!’

  There was such excitement after tea that the monthly nurse found it necessary to remind them not to be noisy, for Mamma’s sake, before she disappeared to the kitchen for a gossip. Joseph moved the furniture away and fixed up an old white sheet on one wall of the nursery. The children’s table was moved to the opposite end of the room, and their chairs placed in audience. He lit a candle to show him his way and drew the curtains against the winter evening.

  ‘Now everybody is to keep looking at the sheet, and nobody is to turn round!’ called Ambrose from the door of the nursery, holding the mysterious parcel.

  The three boys held their breath, trying to guess what was to come. Metallic bumps and clinks. The scratch and flare of matches. A smell of hot oil. Then a light focused and shone upon the sheet.

  Ambrose said, ‘Who would like to see the Swiss mountains?’

  And there before them, out of nowhere, came a wonderful grey-green snow-capped Matterhorn against a bright blue sky, with little red climbers toiling up its face.

  Nathan clapped both hands over his mouth. Toby shook his head from side to side violently. And Jack held his sides and said, ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ Then with one accord they ran towards the picture to grasp its reality. The mountain rippled as the sheet moved. The colours ran over their arms and faces. They shouted and jumped for joy.

  They sat carefully round the edge of Naomi’s bed, clad in their nightshirts, and watched Jessica sleeping in the bassinette. At their request, Isabella had been placed next to her for a few minutes. Infant and doll were almost the same size. The boys looked on both of them with a satisfied and proprietary air, before returning to the task of educating their mother.

  ‘It’s called a magic lantern,’ cried Jack, trying to explain the wonder, ‘because it’s — it’s — it’s magic!’

  ‘You didn’t think of calling Jemmasirary Isabella, did you?’ said Toby pityingly. ‘You ought to of asked us, didn’t you?’

  Nathan was puzzling over the question of justice. ‘Mamma, you know we get smacked if we swear? Well, when the matches burn his fingers, Papa always says “God dammit!” He does. He always says, “God dammit!”’

  ‘That’s his Little Voice!’ said Jack.

  PART FOUR: BY-LINES, 1847-1850

  TWENTY-FOUR: THREATS AND PROMISES

  November, 1847

  Ambrose laid down his pen and looked up at the clock on the wall of his office. This Thursday was notable for two events: one being his birthday, and the other the first meeting of the Oddities Club since typhus fever struck Lower Millbridge. That morning’s breakfast had been a festive affair, with Naomi and the children bestowing gifts upon him. That evening he would dine with good friends and celebrate the passing of an epidemic as savage as the cholera.

  Outside, there was such a fog that the haloes of the gas lamps seemed smeared. But inside, his own lamps provided a certain amount of warmth as well as light, and emitted a soft hissing sound which was distinctly comforting. The major source of heat came from the fire in the grate, which the office-boy replenished with coal every few hours.

  Ambrose had most sternly resisted Naomi’s attempts to make a second home of this room, turning aside offers of velvet curtains and Axminster carpets, a clock in a glass dome, and watercolours of the Lancashire countryside. So it was a plain and businesslike place, furnished with deep buttoned leather chairs, a broad pedestal desk, and mahogany shelves and cabinets, in which a man could work and talk and sit undistracted.

  He loved this season of year. He felt that his mother must have been happy, carrying and bearing him, for him to walk so lightly through life: so lightly, and for such a length of time. He had been born, Charlotte told him, just before six o’clock on a foggy London morning, and then wrapped in a soft cloth and a piece of old blanke
t and laid in her arms. But as soon as the local church clock struck the hour, he had widened his eyes and moved his head, to stare at her in wonder.

  Now St Stephen’s clock began to chime a different hour in another century and a new age. And Ambrose said quietly to himself, with the same wonder which must have seized him when he entered the world, ‘Good Lord! I am growing old!’

  It seemed to him that life was having a joke at his expense, to put him in such a harness.

  He added, lest the fates be misled by this admission, ‘And I have never felt better!’ Then to the knock on the door, ‘Come in!’

  Frank Ormerod had put on a great deal of weight in the past fourteen years, and the climb up the stairs always robbed him of breath for a minute or two. So he usually wrote his opening comment on a sheet of paper, and put it in front of Ambrose for consideration. Most of the time it was a routine remark. Today it was a bombshell.

  ‘I have confirmed that W. H. Smith of London got The Times, The Daily News, The Herald and The Morning Post from London to Manchester the same day, by means of a special express train.’

  ‘Happy birthday!’ said Ambrose ironically.

  Frank had got his breath back by now, and loyally echoed the sentiment, adding, ‘They sent them to Birmingham and Liverpool, too. Now, I don’t know how you feel about it, but this worries me.’

  ‘I’m not exactly delighted, myself!’ Ambrose replied.

  ‘Of course, the threat’s been hanging over us for a long while now,’ said Frank, ‘but they’ve got the edge on us at last. Who’s going to read The Correspondent on Tuesday and Saturday — with most of its outside news rehashed from London papers anyway! — when they can read The Times six days a week, fresh off the press?’

  Ambrose leaned back in his chair, fingertips together, thinking.

  ‘I’ll give you one good financial reason, for a start,’ he said, after a while. ‘It costs our readers only ninepence a week to read all the news in The Correspondent. It would cost them half-a-crown to read The Times every day. So we come a great deal cheaper!’

  ‘Aye.’ Reluctantly. ‘There is that.’ He was unconvinced. ‘But the Whigs are back in, and you know what they’re like for reform.’ Frank was strictly conservative in outlook. ‘What if they lift the duty off advertisements and paper and reduce the stamp? Why, London dailies could be coming up on an express train at a penny or two pence a copy. And then we’d be out o’ business!’

  ‘Not quite!’ said Ambrose. ‘If they can publish daily at a penny or two pence, then so can we. And why should Lancastrians care what happens in London? Most of them never go there. The Manchester and Liverpool markets are more important to a Lancashire businessman. And the rest of our readers want to know the local news.’

  He looked closely at his colleague.

  ‘You’re in the doldrums today, Frank!’

  ‘Aye, well, we’re printing close on nine thousand copies an issue now. And that’s not funny, by any account.’

  ‘Oh, I see. It’s prosperity that worries you!’

  ‘Nay, it’s not. And I’m not feared of responsibility, neither. But if you’ll come downstairs and take a look, you’ll see what we’re up against.’

  ‘I’ll come downstairs and take a look anyway!’ Ambrose said amicably. And as they descended to the lower depths, he added, ‘Oh, and there’s something else in our favour. I presume you checked the W. H. Smith news by Electric Telegraph?’

  ‘I did. And that’s another thing! You can’t be sure that you’re getting the information right. That Cooke and Wheatstone’s machine ain’t exactly fast and it’s not always accurate. Remember the trouble we had, checking up, when they thought the French King was murdered in the summer? Besides, telegrams come expensive — I’ll bet Mrs Longe raises her eyebrows when she sees the bill!’

  ‘Yes, but I hear someone’s working on a new sort of teleprinter, which records the message in dots and dashes…’

  ‘Aye. A chap called Bain. Let’s hope it’s an improvement.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Frank, it’s bound to improve. Look at the progress the telegraph system has made over the last four years. It was only good enough for railway signalling when they first started using it.’

  The door at the bottom of the second flight of stairs divided the working from the thinking section of The Northern Correspondent. As soon as it was opened, their ears would take the brunt of their Applegath-Cowper four-feeder printing press going full-steam ahead. Ambrose paused, with his hand on the door knob.

  ‘Well, the Electric Telegraph will be our saving grace. So far, London news has only been able to travel as fast as the London newspapers. But when news travels nationally and internationally by telegraph, we shall receive it at the same time as the London papers!’

  Frank nodded reluctantly, for his real worry lay within himself. He felt he was slowing down, whereas the newspaper world was speeding up, and he wondered sometimes how he could cope with it.

  ‘We’ll manage!’ Ambrose said cheerfully, answering the unspoken fear, and smiled, and opened the door.

  In the past four years, The Correspondent had already enlarged its offices by taking over the adjacent house. They were thinking of a new site and new premises altogether, but in the meantime Nos 21 and 23 Middleton Street were adequate. And Millbridge Electric Telegraph Company were occupying No 25, so they were next door to incoming news as well as publishing it.

  The two men entered the composing room. The work of compositors had not changed fundamentally in four centuries.

  Even in this modern industrial age, new type was still hand-cast. Still the typesetter, holding his composing stick in the left hand, picked capital letters from the upper case of type, and others from the lower case, and set them in the composing stick to form sentences of looking-glass language. Carefully, he justified the margins, spacing individual letters so that the edges of the printed page would be even. And to and fro he walked across the room, putting each batch of lines into the galley tray until it was full.

  On the other hand, printing-presses had moved with the times.

  An archway had been cut through the dividing walls of the two houses, and stacks of paper and stone jars of printing ink stood on either side of it. Beyond the arch, the room was dominated by the Applegath-Cowper machine which resembled two four-poster beds standing on top of two others. It towered to the ceiling, dwarfing its minions who were working on different levels. The bed of type alone weighed three quarters of a ton, and the floor beneath it had been reinforced.

  Rhythmically, mechanically, in the constant roar, four men laid four sheets of blank paper on to the flat bed of the press. And every three and half seconds, four boys removed four sheets of newsprint. At top speed, four thousand impressions could be produced in an hour. Tonight, they were printing the outside pages of advertisements and entertainments. Tomorrow night, they would perfect the process by printing political and business news on the other side of the sheet.

  The sound of the press moved Ambrose as much as Beethoven’s Eroica symphony moved Naomi. It was simply a different kind of music. He stood watching and smiling, wholly entranced.

  ‘It’s not funny when we break down!’ Frank bawled in his ear.

  Ambrose shook his head in sympathy. It was not his business to cope with mechanical troubles. In any case, this was the finest printing-press of its kind they could buy.

  ‘The old Napier still earns its living!’ he shouted back. ‘You can use that at a pinch!’

  It was Frank’s turn to nod. He put his mouth close to Ambrose’s ear again.

  ‘I suppose if we lived in America, we’d be having one of them Hoe type revolving presses? They say it’ll turn off eight thousand impressions an hour.’

  ‘I daresay Applegath’s eight-feeder rotary press will do the same when it’s finished,’ Ambrose yelled back. ‘I hear that The Times is having one! They must be doing even better than I thought!’

  ‘The Times is a national daily!’ Frank r
eminded him, at top pitch. ‘The Correspondent don’t need that sort of press.’

  Ambrose thought, ‘She will. But perhaps not in my lifetime.’

  Aloud he cried, ‘You’re doing a grand job, Frank!’ which was the encouragement the man needed.

  They walked out of the room, and resumed their normal tones.

  ‘And that’s another thing,’ said Frank, but his voice had lost its note of despair. ‘I’ll bet Sam Pickering’s smiling like a cat with a saucer of cream over printing The Lady’s Hour for Mrs Vivian. That magazine’s never looked back. A good steady circulation, with a marginal increase. Very popular among the ladies in the valley. And to give Sam credit his Cornmarket Press do a lovely job, and all. I said right from the first that we should print it, Mr Longe!’

  But Ambrose smiled and shook his head, and put his hand on Frank Ormerod’s shoulder.

  ‘Believe me, it would always have been too much trouble!’ he replied, grinning.

  TWENTY-FIVE: AN HOUR WITH THE LADIES

  March, 1848

  ‘Mrs Vivian, madam,’ said Dollie, and retired to fetch the tea-things.

  It was Mary, of course, looking particularly ravishing in a new ensemble. Having an eye, as well as an ear, for what interested both sexes, she had made herself into a fashionable living advertisement for The Lady’s Hour.

  ‘Oh, look!’ her readers cried, seeing a new confection floating along on the other side of the road, ‘there goes Mrs Vivian. You know — the magazine lady!’

  Today it was a blue-grey satin gown and a matching bibi bonnet trimmed with white feathers tipped in paler blue.

  ‘My dear Lady Editor!’ cried Naomi, embracing her.

  ‘My dear Lady Director!’ cried Mary, laughing. ‘Goodness me, what famous people we are these days.’

  ‘Yes, it is good,’ said Naomi simply, ‘and we are fortunate.’

  ‘I don’t know so much about fortunate!’ Mary began, in her usual headlong manner. ‘I do believe that the whole valley is being dug up for drainpipes! Do you know that Alfred had to stop the carriage in the middle of the High Street? And I could only reach the pavement by means of a plank, and had to pretend not to notice all sorts of insulting compliments from the navvies about my ankles! And it’s no use complaining to Hal about those creatures. He worships them!’