Lemprière's Dictionary

by Lawrence Norfolk

  Across the street, a man sells oranges, a penny apiece from a barrow with his name upon the side.

  ‘Excuse me, sir?’ he begins.

  ‘You know me sir?’

  ‘No, I….’

  ‘You want oranges?’ He proffers one.

  ‘No, I….’

  ‘Then don’t waste my time.’ The rebuff throws him, but no matter. Other fruit-sellers are further up the street. They will know where the Thames is. They do, but none will tell him. They offer him fruit; persimmons, apples and pears at fourpence, a penny and tuppence. He moves on, chest high upon his shoulder, further into the mart where the crush is at its thickest, buying and selling, bartering and bargaining.

  ‘Could you direct me to the Thames?’ he asks passing strangers. They look at him as if he were mad. He is offered swedes at a shilling the bushel and turnips for the same. Fishwomen carry on a passing trade, jostling him deeper into the market, where a lad urges him to take a box of snuff for a shilling, or three for two. A customer overhears, knows a good thing when he sees it and takes them, catches a woman by the elbow as she passes to give her thruppence for a turbot. Thruppence from a guinea, a guinea for a watch. She cries on, basket on her back from Billingsgate at six. Her companion will sell you a sausage for less but wouldn’t touch a turbot for a shilling, unless to eat it. Passing the matchseller she drops a penny in his box but leaves the matches with him. Both legs off at the knee, by night he dreams of buried treasure, ‘I buried it but thirty paces from here!’ he rages on his stumps at the young man who declines to ask the question that was on his lips. Business is good for the tripe sellers, fourpence the pound and all you need is vinegar. Vinegar from the chandler’s at tuppence a bottle. The soap-boiler’s stench clogs the nose of Mister Gyp, knifegrinder, before that bunter and bellows-mender. He ground the knife that slit Kieran Healey’s throat and appeared before Sir John to explain it. Healey’s widow is destined for the Pox, his son steals perukes from a basket, in contribution to the wigmaker’s business. No commission paid though. Milady Alice de Vere wears them and is carried in her chair, her spaniel trailed from a lead, languid hand out the window, six tarnished pennies from Albemarle to the Piazza, working out at five hundred and two paces the penny. ‘Careful there, boy! Those spectacles for show?’ Alice’s carrier checks his stride for an instant, then on. Guinea punks have the market tight as Millicent Martyn’s whalebone corset from Stapes of Piccadilly, twenty-three shillings by way of Greenland. Guzzling pie and porter makes her the darling of the vintner at a penny a pint, four-pence ha’penny for gammon and bacon. Her father, sign-carver made good at three hundred pounds the year previous, this one better, despairs of a suitor, blanches at the dowry, applications invited from any with polish on their boots. Candidates to see, the scamp Willem (parents unknown, parish unwilling) who’ll fit them for whatever they can afford. Willem’s brushes are manufactured by Simon Kirkby and Sons of Spitalfields. The sons do a roaring trade with the footpads of Deptford fields, pewter a speciality, the proceeds to be speculated at Jonathan’s coffee house and lost in the shadowy columns of figures drawn on the accounts of his numerous clients by Marmaduke Oates who took a bet of a thousand to walk every street in the city within a week, lost, and had his creditor deported. Now he walks Change Alley, playing the market in saltpetre and China tea, no young sir, rivers not my line. Consulting his watch, it is close to a quarter past ten. He fingers the gold of its case. 31l.17s.10½d. per oz., the price that morning. It races towards midday. Soon, the druggists’ and grocers’ factors will do their briskest business between the Turkish merchants and the statue of Charles II in the courtyard of the Royal Exchange. They barter furiously, making the odd foray over to the West India interest on the south side, but the real business is done on the benches lining the walks. Obadiah Walker has taken an option off Ducane for twenty tons of sugar, the balance to be discounted at the bank from the biscuit bakers of Lambeth. Today the run is on tea, the Nottingham is due in, cargo intact. Those who ran with the rumour that it was nine-tenths spoilt and hung on to their stocks are losing tuppence, tuppence ha’penny in the pound. No-one’s interested, except some bewildered idiot asking if the Thames is still in London, and they’ll spend the afternoon upstairs at the Antwerp where the talk will not be of tea, unless the glass-sellers choose that afternoon to spread their interests. An anxious trader sighs, touts for buyers another farthing down and finding no success stalks out the North Gate into Threadneedle Street. Now, down the table at the Jerusalem, a group plying the inland coastal trade cock half an ear as the shopkeeper turns out a gangling joker who, would you believe it, wants to know where the river is, tumbling his baggage down the stairs behind him, the cheeky sod. A woman looks up at the commotion, sucks on her flask and looks down again as her companion walks past to offer the quester his best advice. ‘Go west, young man.’ He points, is understood and marches on, pursued by that fool question about the river, will he never learn? The advice at least is free and the young man takes it, moving through the bewigged crowds of Holborn, towards the Oxford road, along which a lad leads an enormous pig towards its ritual slaughter the Saturday next while his sister herds a goose. An approachable pair, they don’t rightly know where the waterway is, nor the road to it neither. All they know is pig and goose. He turns back towards the maze of alleys running north and east by Charing Cross. His stride has become a trudging pace. His feet are aching. The chest digs into his narrow shoulder and his arm throbs. He moves on, slowly, through the alleys where the cobbles can barely be seen for dirt. Women shriek from tenement windows and common sense tells him not to look back as his feet drag on through Sheath Alley towards the Piazza. Will he ever find the river? Despair courts him as he skirts the square, inching through the crowds to follow a short street southwards. Half-way down he comes to a halt, exhausted as he lowers the chest to the ground and leans back against a door. A man carrying a large blue bag weaves an unsteady path towards him. Lemprière shifts position. The man staggers, then lurches. They collide.

  ‘Damn you!’ Lemprière’s frustrations are suddenly heaped upon his drunken assailant, who falls at his feet. Lemprière thrusts his map before the man’s face.

  ‘The river,’ he demands. ‘I want the river.’ The man looks up at him fearfully.

  ‘Where on the river, sir? Where exactly did you want?’ he asks, as he is pulled upright. The hand-drawn map is brandished.

  ‘There,’ the young man stabs at it, ‘Southampton Street.’

  ‘Ah now, there’s no need to mock me, sir. I’m in my cups and I’ll own it, but there’s reason enough for that….’

  ‘Tell me!’

  ‘I had no mind to knock you like that, you know….’ The young man raises the chest.

  ‘Just tell me,’ he repeated, slowly, with what he hoped was cold menace. His captive looked from side to side, hesitated, was this an excuse for violence?

  ‘Why sir, this is Southampton Street. You’re in it!’ he blurted desperately.

  ‘In it?’

  ‘This is it, sir. It is.’

  He had found it, better, was in it! He let go the man and let his breath out slowly, feeling nothing but relief.

  ‘Thank you, my man,’ he said as he bent to brush absently at the mud on his breeches. The other made no reply and when the young man looked up to discover the cause of his silence, found that he had fled. He glanced quickly up and down the street but the unfortunate was nowhere to be seen. A little way down, on the far side, he could see his lodging-house. He crossed, took the pavement in his stride and knocked upon the door. Footsteps thudded down the stairs and the bolt flew back.

  ‘Welcome, Mister Lemprière!’ exclaimed the old woman who opened the door and led him in. He followed, dragging his chest and abandoning his search to the mercy of the street outside. Where was the Thames? He could not have cared less.

  The currents met in confusion about the dead water marking the mouth of the estuary. The waves threw up brief, white crests and on
the choppy surface a gull bobbed uneasily. Its wings grabbed the air in exploratory fashion, hauling itself into flight as the tide began to heave the thoughtless currents into its channel and the sea’s agitation ceded to a deep, purposeful swell. The waters stirred vaguely at first, then, catching the insistent tug, united in a determined flow towards the city.

  On the half-defined horizon, just visible in the winter light, a royal-sail signalled the approach of a ship under full sail before the light wind, cutting through the water in an effort to catch the tide. The gallants, then mainsails appeared as she entered the estuary and the currents began to draw her into the mouth of the river. Tamasa, dark river, Tamesis. The Thames.

  Twelve-hundred tons unladen, her maiden voyage. Aboard, the lascars worked quickly to slacken sail as the flow of water began to draw her on. She progressed, the Indiaman Nottingham, late of China and the cape of Comorin. The caulkers, carpenters and joiners of Thomas Brown’s yard had done their work well, she looked untouched by the voyage, tackle mostly stowed and ports sealed. Pride of the East Indian fleet, the Nottingham sat low and profitable in the water which carried her inland. Her timbers were sound, had weathered well, the futtock hoops still tight, pumps barely used. With little tumblehome, the Nottingham’s topsides grew sheer out of the water. She wore her size grandly as she progressed in mute pomp up the Thames.

  It was partly masked by the larger ship, partly it seemed to merge with the undistinguished grey of the sea. Even lightly laden the vessel wallowed in the swell. Half the tonnage at most, it steered a guileful course along the wake of the Nottingham, a spent prodigal trailing the acknowledged heir. Aboard, there were no lascars, but the weather-tanned faces of the crew might have been taken for them. They worked hard and in ill-humour at the demands of the antiquated rigging. The shiny ropes afforded little purchase, sliding quickly through blocks worn thin with use. Straining timbers creaked and this, along with the slapping of the water on its hull, was the only sound to be heard on board for the men worked in silence. The two ships continued on.

  Captain Pannell of the Nottingham was already looking forward to a brag in the Jerusalem. He assembled his crew on deck to deliver the customary homily. Tars and lascars listened respectfully, the former accepting it for what it was, part of the homecoming ritual. The lascars, whose command of the language of lanyards and hawsers, fore topsails and mizen moon-rakers might have put the Clerk of Cordage to shame, listened without comprehension as veiled allusions to the Pox and reminders of the pickpockets’ cunning drifted aimlessly down from the quarter-deck. Only one of their number had the least idea of the point of the speech, but for him it was superfluous in any case. Nazim-ud-Dowlah kept his thoughts to himself and attended to Captain Pannell’s words passive as the rest. The lascars shivered in the raw breeze which cut across the deck. As the great ship moved serenely through the water and the banks of the river on either side grew in definition, trees and fields became visible from the deck. Soon, the first few houses could be seen. At Gravesend a long-boat met the Nottingham, ferrying the pilot who would guide her draught the last stage of the voyage through the channels of the Thames to Deptford. And down the conduit Lud’s Town now sent other tokens of its welcome, ruined spars, offal, rags. An occasional turd bobbed malodorously like a miniature monastic tonsure.

  Even in November the river-stench was strong; Pannell breathed it in appreciatively, thought of typhus. As they approached Deptford the fields on either side began to be punctuated by houses and hovels, people waving. Nazim noticed how welcoming they looked. The pilot favoured the left bank now. At times they were only fifty feet from the shore. Men and women could be made out quite plainly. An argument was being conducted on the left hand bank. Bierce, James, discharged of Rowlandson’s Glass-house that morning, sought entrance to his own front door without success. His wife leaned from an upstairs window to hurl abuse and his possessions down upon the hapless miscreant below. Earthenware, clothes, pans, the usual rained down. Some missiles overshot their mark and landed in the river. Amongst these a pamphlet, cheaply bound, signed only “Asiaticus”, its pages fluttered before plummeting into the swell which upheld its claim to float only for a moment. The leaves breast-stroked downwards, the ink dissolving in part and contributing in small measure to the surrounding murk of the waters. The river grew populous. Bloated bodies, dogs and cats, a pig, mingled with small islands of foaming scum, nameless things without shape or colour, only their reek identified them to the crew. The city sent its virulence as emissary, Cloacina his gracious consort.

  The Nottingham and its shadow moved out to mid-stream now. The pacquets, pleasure-boats, and ketches which crowded the upper reaches of the river acknowledged the draught of the great Indiaman and cleared the deepest channel. As the Nottingham neared the Upper Wet Docks the watermen working out of George Stairs checked their wherries, paddling slowly against the current. Their passengers balanced the spectacle against their impatience. Pannell thought of his lading, fifty tons from a cargo over fifteen hundreds, pounds per pound, ratios of weight to volume, and his ship moved on. The turn was made and the Nottingham eased through the narrow entrance-channel of the dock, the water seeming to rise, volume displaced equal to the weight or the mass, somesuch. Balance the boat against the ocean, the ocean rises by fractions of fractions. How many ships equal an inch? The whole fleet of ninety or more, aggregate of eighty-seven thousands of tons, not enough. The fleet manned and laden, the same ships, aggregate of… he calculated … perhaps one hundred and eighty thousands, still not enough.

  ‘Hove to!’

  The mooring lines were thrown and the ship made fast. The long voyage was at an end.

  Stevedores ran in a gang along the dockside. They, their fathers and grandfathers had seen a thousand such ships. Their ancestors would have unloaded the first of the line that stretched back through the centuries to the Susan, the Hector and the Ascension. Men hardened by labour, agents of Copia, millet, rye and wheat. Amalthaea’s horn, fruits and raisins, flowers and pearls. Silver and gold. All the goods and spices of the fabled East had passed through their hands. Portingales, English and Hollanders had opened the routes, right enough. But it was here, down in the stink of the hold, that stevedores grasped the real weight of the venturers’ tales: ratios of mass to value, pounds per cubic foot, the specific dimensions of the horn of plenty. They barked their shins on the crates, cracked their heads on the beams. They cursed. The oil-lamps swung and cast strange shadows. The gang worked hard, each man anticipating the movements of his workmates. From above, it looked as though all their labours were directed at the square of light through which, at the last, the final crate would be passed. Yet they worked away from it. The layered goods were their strata and each group mined its seam. Had they been asked what they sought as they worked deeper into the ship, not one could have replied. Yet about their work was an unfulfilled expectation that had nothing to do with the long hours or the short pay. Crates began to pile up on deck as the men sweated below. They worked in parts of the ship that its commanders would never see, but the cargo was their business. Time and time over the stevedores had stripped the vessel bare and found nothing. No ship had a secret, they had proved it a hundred times.

  But still, in the temper of their work, as they uncovered what had been laid down months before and hauled it to the surface, there remained something of a search. As if they were peeling away those months, working back through the years, the decades. The centuries even. The eyes of the pullers and pushers, the lifters and luggers maintained a focus, always behind the next case. What more lay back there? And how much below? They of all people knew that brute weight was all the story, and still they sought the tale, the old line that there had ever been more than profit in it. A romance of other and distant places, when the first adventurers were scraping the gilt from the treasure chest, this is what drives them deeper into the hold. Deeper and further back, through the cases crammed with dark tea to spices by way of Ormus, Babylon and Tra-pizond
. Yielding Caffa and the Euxine, Cabo Correntes, Soffala and Mosambique, whence north to Querinba, Mombasa, Melinde, east to Musaladay, Asaday, the whole of Madagascar and then the jewel, Goa, omphalos of the Portingale trade. And from them gold, ivory, negroes, tobacco, the first trickle becoming a flood, the Red Sea covered in sail-cloth as the markets of Aden, Arabia, Egypt and Palestine opened their doors to the pallid interlopers with their bleeding gums from across the seas. Men bearing gifts of calico and beads. Ships and their sailors bearing charters and letters of marque. On they went to Comoro, Mohilla and Mauritius, deeper and further to the Maldives and Malmallas, Ceylon rich in cinnamon, Nicobar, Sumatra and Java, the Moluccas, further to the Banda islands and beyond them to Japan and China for sugar, green ginger, pearls, alum and amber, radix, musk and raw silk, enough to set a sail over the Indies and steer them back to clamorous England. For milady wants new perfumes and John Company’s always been a ladies’ man: civet, ambergreise, sandal-wood and myrrh she shall have. For her fair neck, diamonds, rubies, pearls and spinells, bracelets of amethyst and emerald, rings of all these, jasper and lapis lazuli. Her cook wants pepper. And nutmegs, cloves and ginger. And cinnamon and powder-candy…. And the country is in want of gold, silver, copper and tin. And tea, saltpetre and silk. And indigo to dye it with. John Company’s an obliging fellow. Persia, China, the Carnatic, none hold fears for him. The voyage out, the voyage back. A commander could retire on the proceeds of five.

  Three more for Pannell, who watched as the first of the dunnage, bamboo and raffia, was lifted from the hold. Blacked and lacquered it would fetch eighty guineas at sale or he’d be damned. Seventy Indiamen in the year, averaging eight hundreds of tons, cargoes averaging, what, nine hundreds, totalling three and sixty thousands of tons. Fifteen hundred of them mine, he thought, as the stevedores manhandled the tea-chests from the hold. The Company’s, he corrected himself. The cases went on and on, they would be unlading the rest of the week. By which time the Albion will have arrived, and after her the Belvedere, the Princess Charlotte, Earl Howe and Sulivan and eighty-six others. Each disgorging its cargo to the quays, the warehouses and markets of the city.