Virtue’s Reward (A Poor Man at the Gate Series, Book 11)

by Andrew Wareham

  He had been paid off at the gangplank in Bristol - the sum of two pounds and ten shillings placed in his hand. Eighteen shillings, he discovered, would take him as an outside passenger on the stage to London, leaving Bristol in the afternoon and reaching London next morning, after dawn but no time guaranteed, all depending on the weather, it seemed. He had never travelled by stage before, was not looking forward to the experience, particularly as he possessed no greatcoat and lacked the time to obtain one.

  Once in Town he could make contact with the lawyer, Michael, and obtain an advance from him sufficient to travel north in some greater comfort, assuming he had not taken a pneumonia first. He was lucky that there were several other outside passengers sat on the roof with him and that the guard was willing to roust out a tarpaulin to rest over their heads and keep their body heat inside and the rain out.

  Michael was in his office and, familiar with the name of Clapperley, gave the young man immediate audience.

  "Robbed in the States and dumped willy-nilly on a small brig to cross the Atlantic? You were in many ways lucky to survive, Mr Clapperley. I will order a post-chaise and four for you, sir, for tomorrow morning, perhaps? You will wish to quickly refurbish your wardrobe, I have no doubt, and take a meal and a good night's sleep before travelling more. My junior clerk, the younger Mr Quillerson from the Thingdon Estate, will be happy to assist you in all of these matters, all on the Andrews account, of course - your family has a claim, sir!"

  Thomas Clapperley made all of the correct noises; he was appreciative of Michael's tact in providing him with at least a travelling valise of clothing so that he did not have to return to his father looking like a complete vagabond.

  "I am in fact not displeased to meet you at this juncture, Mr Clapperley. Travelling in the States as you have been, you will not have been in contact with your esteemed father, Sir Erasmus."

  "I have not heard from him in two years, Mr Michael."

  "Quite! During this last year it has come to my attention that the gentleman has taken to religious observance, that he has, in fact, become a devout follower of his local chapel."

  "How are the mighty fallen! Is he in imminent expectation of looking his Maker in the face, Mr Michael? That would, one might expect, be a very brief contact!"

  Young Clapperley was quite taken with his wit; Michael was less amused.

  "One is given to understand that the local minister is firmly of the belief that, I quote, 'confession is good for the soul'!"

  "Do what?"

  "One believes that the process involves a public display at the altar - or whatever its equivalent may be in such institutions - I am not myself a chapel-goer. Much penitence and cries that one is a sinner, followed by an outpouring of the details of one's many fallings from the path of grace."

  "Jesus Christ!"

  "I believe he is called upon in the proceedings. Rather frequently, in fact."

  "Bloody Hell!"

  "That is also much referred to, sir."

  "It must be stopped! It cannot be permitted! There would be no end to the repercussions!"

  "I believe that I agree with you there, Mr Clapperley. It might well jeopardise your inheritance; a convicted felon may find his estates escheated to the Crown."

  "I am arrived barely in time, it would seem, Mr Michael. How far has this nonsense progressed, do you know, sir?"

  "I understand that your lady mother has had much to say on the matter and has been able, so far, to impede the process."

  That was another cause for worry - his mother had been no more than an insignificant door mat in his memory; things must have come to a pretty pass if she was involved, and aware of what was happening.

  "How is the dear gentleman's health, Mr Michael?"

  "Robust, it would seem, Mr Clapperley."

  "One must bring him to understand how evanescent that state might be, Mr Michael. I shall point out to him the short-sighted nature of his convictions. That latter is a nasty word, thinking on it, sir."

  "'Convictions'? It has a dire ring, Mr Clapperley."

  The young man spent the two days of his travel north considering how best to approach his father. He might have written a Will - he was a lawyer, almost must have done so. There was no entail and he had not been happy that his son had been so maladroit in his business dealings as to have to flee the country; he might have left his property away from the heir to the title. Such being the case it was necessary to discover his Will, and then to ensure that it was written, or rewritten, correctly; only then might he address the question of confession.

  As for the old chap's religious beliefs, recently come upon and certainly with no deep roots in his character - they could be dealt with, he suspected. His reputation was questionable in the world of the bawdy houses, or certainly had been - it should not be too difficult to tempt him back to his lewd old ways. Then it would be a matter of keeping him off the straight and narrow, and that could be achieved best by the removal of the outside influence that had persuaded him first that he had a soul and second that it must be saved.

  The post chaise rattled up the gravel drive to the family home on the estate outside Southport and deposited a young man prepared for battle and with every intention of achieving victory.

  A collier brig, one of the very many in the trade, arrived at a wharf in the East End of London and tied up. She had made a passage direct from Newcastle, as she did fifteen or sixteen times a year. The hatches were opened and a dozen longshoremen with shovels jumped into the holds and began to fill the sacks in the cargo nets that were dropped down to them on whips suspended from the main yards. A ton loaded and the whips were hauled up and the yards braced round to drop the sacks on the quayside or direct into waiting carts. Two shifts, twenty-four hours of labour and the two hundred or so tons of house-coals would be offloaded and the small vessel would make her way out of the harbour on the next tide, back to the north, running empty as too dirty to take any other cargo. The crew, without exception, made their way to the nearest beerhouse and brothel for twenty-four hours of indulgence, as they did every time they made port.

  On this occasion their jollifications were interrupted as one after another they succumbed to violent upsets of the bowels. An apothecary was called as it became obvious that they were seriously ill. By evening the word was spreading that the Cholera had arrived. Attempts were made to intercept the other colliers on their way south, but several had already docked; more than five thousand tons of coal arrived in London every day of the year - how much had never been accurately counted, but at least two dozen colliers made port during the daylight hours, unfailingly.

  "English Cholera or Asiatic?"

  The question was asked anxiously and could not be answered until the progress of the disease was observed.

  For the while the desperately ill seamen were carried to the sickhouses and hospitals, such as they were, and were given that minimum of care that the parishes and vestries could afford. Isolation was not possible - there were no quarantine facilities.

  By week's end more than half of the sailors had died and the infection had begun to show in the ordinary population of the docks. The death rate made it clear that this was the Asiatic Cholera in its most virulent form - and there was no treatment known, and very few doctors and apothecaries to give even palliative care. The Plague had returned to the Great Wen and was fully as inexorable as it had been a century and a half before.

  Those who could fled. Those who had no place to go, stayed - and closed their doors and prayed they might be lucky.

  The cause of the disease was unknown; the means of infection could only be guessed; there was no known cure.

  London life came to a halt as businesses and schools and shops closed. The churchyards, already overcrowded by the fast-growing metropolis, reached bursting point, corpse after corpse pushed down into the same grave, often at intervals of a very few days. The reek of the charnel house was added to the stink of the Thames.

  The illnes
s confined itself primarily to the poorer areas of Town on this occasion, sweeping through the rookeries that lay within one half of a mile on either side of the River and wiping out whole families at a time.

  Parliament went into recess and the Lords and members departed from the banks of the Thames, and mostly survived. The great houses of the West End, mostly on slightly higher ground, were almost entirely untouched, though their owners were in any case fled to the countryside.

  The medical profession observed the progress of the disease and saw that it was an ailment of the poor, generally confining itself to the lowest parts of society. It seemed clear to them that the blue-blooded tended to possess a natural immunity to the disease - 'breeding would out', they said, with a degree of satisfaction. Many of them had read their Malthus and accepted his proposition that the human population would regulate its own size, that an excess of children over generations would lead, somehow - the mechanism was not entirely clear - to a reaction by Nature that would reduce the numbers to a more sustainable level. To attempt to cure this illness therefore seemed to be to go against Nature.

  The majority of practitioners simply kept well clear of the diseased - there was nothing, they said, that they could do, which was in fact true enough. They knew of no medicines to assist the suffering. There was also to be considered that the great bulk of the sufferers were poor, had very little money even when able to work; the penniless were not renowned for paying their doctors' bills.

  A few dedicated souls worked day and night among the destitute victims; most of them took the illness themselves and died.

  There was a debate conducted in the columns of the newspapers on the causes of the disease - some doctors argued that the poor were vulnerable to the plague because of the conditions in which they lived. Improve the living standards of the poor and the disease would not return, they said. That view was not accepted by the great bulk of the learned - it was clear to them that the penniless were inherently, naturally of a poorer quality of humanity.

  'Why are they destitute?' The question was asked time and again and answered by almost all in terms of natural virtue and vice.

  Rothwell read the papers anxiously and was forced to agree - if they possessed natural virtue then by their own exertions they would cease to be poor, they would enrich themselves. They remained poor, he was sure, because they lacked the Will and the Enterprise that made other men wealthy - their fate, appalling though it might be, was of their own making.

  He contributed to the funds for the relief of the widows and orphans inevitably left by the epidemic, but he wondered if he might not be subverting the Purpose of Nature by so doing. It was very difficult, but he gave his ten pounds and was sustained by a feeling of virtue.

  He was amazed when James came to him and suggested that he might wish to interest himself in a Committee of Public Health that was in formation and would discuss, among other issues, the question of the cleanliness of the Metropolis.

  "Town smells, Rothwell - and that cannot be good for those of us forced to dwell here for much of the year. Also, and of some significance, my brother Joseph has asked me to involve myself; his Sir William Rumpage is in some way involved, I believe, and made the proposition to him - all to be by the back door, it seems. I believe that if the proposal is made to build drains and sewers, then he intends to be an early contractor."

  "Family! I shall certainly play my part on this committee, James. Indeed, my much respected father suggested very much this sort of thing to me quite recently. You mention Joseph: has his lady been delivered yet?"

  "Any day, I understand, Rothwell. I await a message from them. My own lady is also to oblige me again, she tells me!"

  "You will match the Stars at this rate, James!"

  "I hope so, Rothwell - I could ask for little better than to have to build another wing on the house! Your own lady is well, I trust?"

  "Large and flourishing, James. I could have wished to take her out of Town, but we neither could be persuaded that she should bump over the roads to Kettering, or even farther to one of the Massingham mansions. She is a strong girl, in mind and body, and will do very well, I think."

  Lady Rothwell thought the same and having established herself in London was damned if some disease among the hoi polloi was going to drive her out.

  Book Eleven: A Poor Man

  at the Gate Series

  Chapter Five

  "The world of railways, Mr Tonks, has much to offer the man of enterprise."

  "It has indeed, sir. Yet, I must confess, Mr Star, I know very little of them."

  "'Ignorance is bliss', I have heard said, Mr Tonks. I suspect the man who coined that saying waxed satirical - for the man of affairs must know all if he is to rest in content."

  Tonks agreed, though it sounded much like pompous nonsense in his opinion. Mr Star was occasionally given to high-flying sentiments, however; generally when endeavouring to persuade himself that a proposed course of profitable and out of the ordinary action was both honourable and unavoidable. He wondered just what was in the wind, and what his own share might be.

  "There are coal mines in Derbyshire and to the south in Leicestershire, Mr Tonks, and room for more. Mr Robert Stephenson, the great man's son and no mean engineer in his own right, one understands, has already commenced to dig another. The coal will be transported by canal in the first instance. How much more appropriate were it to be moved by railway!"

  "A line of our own, sir, to join the coal field to Manchester, say, to connect with the line built to Liverpool. In the same way that there are branch canals joining onto the main trunk, so ours could be a branch line. A noble idea, Mr Star, sir! The first of many - for every cotton town must wish to be connected to Liverpool."

  George Star accepted his satellite's plaudits with becoming modesty then suggested that they should voyage to Manchester, there to purchase tickets to Liverpool, and back again, to observe the new phenomenon for themselves.

  They gravely ensconced themselves in the railway carriage, a four-wheeled box slightly bigger than a stage-coach and offering only a roof as shelter, the sides open above a panel little more than three feet high. The train itself was made up almost wholly of passenger accommodation, although the proprietors had expected the line to be used far more for goods traffic.

  “People demand speed, Mr Tonks. A wagon load of coal does not have business to perform at the other end.”

  They rattled and bumped to Liverpool, passing two other trains running in the opposite direction.

  “Thirty miles of rail in both directions, Mr Star. Was they to put in small passing places then they could have saved on at least twenty-eight miles of track. It does not need to be doubled for the whole distance.”

  “A major reduction in expenditure, Mr Tonks! Well observed, sir.”

  “Flat, sir.”

  George had already observed that problem. Coal mines were very often to be found in hills. Reaching the outskirts of Liverpool, he observed the solution. The carriages were uncoupled from the locomotive engine and attached to a winding rope from a stationary engine to be winched down the slope to the terminus.

  “I have read of the Canterbury and Whitstable line in Kent, sir, which uses a locomotive for little more than two miles. The bulk of their traction is performed by winch, sir.”

  “Hills, then, are not conducive to locomotive power – which is a nuisance, for Derbyshire is a county of many virtues, but flatness is not one of them, particularly in the northern parts.”

  The first idea, a locomotive engined railway line in Derbyshire, was not practical. A pity. If there was to be a branch line then it must be built in Lancashire, it seemed.

  “We must examine the possibilities, Mr Tonks. A railway from our cotton mills to join up with the existing line will carry cotton and coals almost exclusively – for ours is not a town to attract large numbers of passengers, after all. An alternative would be to construct a line for the use of people, let us say from Liverpool to Southpo
rt, or to the towns along the coast to North Wales, destinations attractive to many.”

  “Possibly, sir. I suspect we may be too early on the scene. When the connecting line to Birmingham is in place, and followed by the next link to London, then such branch lines will be vastly more useful. We sell the bulk of our cotton cloths to London and there is small gain in using a railway line for just twelve or fifteen miles of the journey. People as well who have used a post-chaise for more than a hundred miles will have small interest in making a change for the last few leagues.”

  George reluctantly agreed; he very much wanted to float a joint-stock company as chief shareholder. The opportunities for profit seemed immense, and they might possibly actually construct a railway line as well.

  “How does the mine progress, Mr Tonks?”

  “High values of silver, sir, at least as great as any to have been discovered in the whole of Derbyshire. The lead production is also of some worth to us, especially as there is an increasing call for lead sheets for roofing purposes. The spread of the water closet is also of utility to us, for each such must have its lead water pipes and its cistern in the roof. The sale of the silver causes a little concern, sir, because the price we receive deep in the provinces is noticeably lower than that of London. Could we make a direct contract with, say, the East India Company, then we could show an increase in our profits.”

  George had no relationship with John Company, and knew of no businessman in his circle who had.

  “I shall speak with my brother, Mr Tonks. It would be surprising if we had no contacts at all with so great an undertaking.”

  Lord Star was pleased to entertain his brother to dinner and to talk business with him; he was always glad when they came to him, the head of the family, with their problems.