Nouveau Riche (A Poor Man at the Gate Series, Book 2)

by Andrew Wareham

  “What of quality, Tom? Do we know anything of this cotton, of how long it is in the staple, for example?”

  Tom shook his head – he knew only that it had come in at some three-quarters of the price currently being paid for ordinary grades on dock at Liverpool.

  “Whatever it is, there has to be a profit. If it will go to the mules for fine threads then it will be so much the better; if it is low-grade then the demand for hosiery is growing every month – cotton stockings for both men and women are in huge demand; we cannot lose, Tom. What of Chawleigh? Is he straight?”

  Tom shrugged – it was fundamentally unlikely that Chawleigh was honest, but if he was on the take then he was hiding it well; it seemed most likely that he was using the cotton as a cover for some other enterprise, much as he had used his club as a front, but what he was doing was unknown.

  “What do we import from the States, Joseph? Tobacco; a little of sugar and rum and rice; beaver furs; good timber; dried fish and wheat, the latter growing fastest, I expect. I see no scope for fraud or robbery there, do you?”

  Joseph shook his head – he knew Chawleigh, knew that he would not double-cross them directly but suspected he would have little compunction in using their trade as a cover for his, whatever it was.

  “I have contacted Sir George Jackson, Tom, received a reply inviting us to pay him a visit for a few days. I think he must have had enquiries made and discovered just how well-off I am. It was a very polite letter!”

  “When you go you will wish to return by way of the Hall, I trust, Joseph – we are an easy half-day’s travel from Huntingdon. Lady Verity will wish to display her offspring, I have no doubt, though she is hardly in competition with you!”

  “At the end of the summer, I expect, Tom, we thought August to be a good time.”

  “I shall make sure that we are not planning to be elsewhere, Joseph. I would like you to see the Hall, after all, you will be wanting to buy your own estate before too many years are passed, will you not?”

  Joseph laughed and nodded, it was certainly in his mind, it always had been, that one day he would be a landowner, a ‘big man’ in its real sense.

  A visit to Clapperley and the warehousing for the cotton was arranged – the first cargoes of rum had been delivered in the previous month and a narrow boat had loaded earlier in the week to make the run to London. The navy’s thirst for rum was immense, every ship going foreign took its barrels with it, and the profit was likely to be huge, so much so that it seemed to Clapperley that they might well be able to buy in an equal quantity of aged rum each year and mix the barrels, half and half, at the warehouse, thus forestalling possible complaints about taste and quality whilst still making a very respectable gain.

  Tom agreed that it sounded very wise.

  “What do you know of business in the States, Mr Clapperley? I was thinking perhaps of trying to sell our great guns there.”

  There was no need to tell Clapperley that he was worried about Bob Chawleigh, as wise, if possible, to keep the two villains well apart.

  “Cannon, especially anything larger than four pounds, are in very short supply in the States, Sir Thomas. I doubt there are two foundries producing iron guns and none in brass. Small-arms, of course, are a very different matter – the Americans produce pistols, muskets, fowling pieces and long rifles for all of their own needs and supply very many to Africa in trade; they are cheap, and, I am informed, of good enough quality, though it is not a field in which I have any expertise. They produce their own gunpowder in quantity as well, though buying the bulk of their saltpetre from John Company.”

  Not very helpful, Tom thought – there was no call for smuggled firearms in England.

  “Our accounts are looking especially healthy now, Sir Thomas. The supply of black soldiers has been particularly profitable and we shall look to recruit another full battalion next year. I have placed some five thousands to deposit at Martins and intend to invest the remainder of our surplus from the partnership, probably back into house-building where I have put most of your speculative funds at loan. There are whole new towns a-building, Sir Thomas, the Depression over and demand soaring on the back of the war; nothing like a good war, Sir Thomas!”

  “As long as you are not a soldier or sailor actually doing the fighting, of course, Mr Clapperley!”

  Clapperley considered that to be a very silly comment – who cared about soldiers and sailors?

  Martin confirmed that Tom’s accounts had returned to robust health, there would be no need to sell any of his assets. Tom set off immediately for London, taking the road to Manchester and then across the Pennines to Sheffield and the Great North Road – it was much slower, two days longer at least, but carried him through the bulk of the new manufacturing areas of the North Country, let him see for himself the growth in business and trade generally. There were hundreds of four- and six-horse wagons, grossly overloaded and jamming the streets of every town, houses building on every hillside, warehouses and mills being thrown up along the canals, new wharfs in construction, plumes of coal smoke blackening the skies; there was noise and dirt and the stench of sulphur in the air; there was wealth again.

  Tom sent his card in to the Marquis’ small townhouse as soon as he reached the Metropolis.

  “All is well, my Lord, Verity when I last saw her, a sennight ago, was flourishing, young Robert equally so. I have been in St Helens, with Mr Star, of course. He is doing very well indeed and wishes to bring himself to the attention of Mr Dundas – he wondered if it might be possible to make a loan of two thousands and then, say, another thousand every year, to assist in the expenses of running the government. I would, it goes without saying, be very happy to contribute my mite as well.”

  “The House is not sitting at the moment but Dundas is in town – he is rarely anywhere else, the while. I know that he is at his wits’ end for hard cash; he always is, but it is soon after the election, the expenses are still high and the sympathetic pockets have already been emptied and he will fall upon your shoulders. I shall see him tomorrow in the normal course of things – between you there will be some four thousands immediately available?”

  “Say five, my Lord.”

  They met again next afternoon.

  “Mr Star might well become Sir Joseph, if he wishes, Sir Thomas. The new industry has very few members, of course, since most of the constituencies are old rural boroughs – but where there was a predominance of manufacturers they would seem to have returned Whigs almost exclusively.”

  “That is a problem in more ways than one, my Lord. I know you are no great friend to change, but many of the new towns are almost wholly ungoverned and something must be done. St Helens is an old borough, with Mayor and Corporation, but fully one half of the mills and manufacturies, like Roberts and Star Spinners, are outside its old boundaries and so pay no rates and have no laws. The town of Salford, I am told, the whole town, is not even a parish – there is not so much as a constable!”

  Both men were aware of the extent of the difficulties that a reform would create – make the new towns into boroughs with mayor and corporation to run them and they would in the nature of things expect to return a member to Westminster, and that member might well not even be a Whig – the Radicals were strong in the north. Without reform, and the local control of affairs that came with it, the government must keep order, which meant Militia and Dragoons and the suppression of riot by naked force, which was expensive and could generate a resentment that would allow revolutionaries to flourish. There had to be an alternative, such as trying to persuade the manufacturers that their interests lay with the old order rather than with an uncertain new.

  “I know, Sir Thomas, only too well! Mr Star is a prominent figure, I believe – your Mr Clapperley tells us he is highly respected – a good man, Clapperley, by the way, will do very well in the party, I think. Mr Star to become Sir Joseph as a baronet, not a knight, the local press to applaud the honour, very loudly, and the message made clear to other
mill owners in the whole area. Would he take the honour, do you know?”

  “He would, I believe, be very proud to, my Lord.”

  “Then I will send a messenger to the Lord Lieutenant, or is it the Duchy? Damned nuisance these feudal hangovers, Sir Thomas – nothing is the same in any two counties! Whichever and whatever, ‘twill be better to be put through the local channels so that all may know that government is smiling on one manufacturer and will be very pleased to extend the favour. What of my son? Have you met Rothwell yet, Sir Thomas?”

  “Not yet, my Lord, he was due from Portsmouth at any time, I believe, but I received news from the States that made it necessary for me to go up to St Helens immediately.”

  “Bloody Americans! They will do all they can to do us in the eye, yet expect us to keep the French out of the Atlantic, to their benefit as much as ours. Still, while they are not at war with us we can ask for no more, I expect, there is a legacy of bitterness that will take generations to overcome. Like Ireland! I wish we had ships enough in the navy to tow the damned place out into the Atlantic and sink it! Make an offer of peace and representation to the Protestants and the Catholics protest; give the Catholics anything at all and the more rabid Protestants scream outrage; the Established Church has little to offer and the Puritan sects wish only to take and the Catholics trust no one, probably rightly. The Catholics themselves are split into pro- and anti-French, peaceful and revolutionary and opportunist, and now there are muskets coming into the country, though only a few as yet – from France, I presume. There will be a rising, almost of a certainty, and it will probably fail, if the local garrisons do their duty and hold long enough for reinforcements to arrive, but there is no guarantee at all that they will do anything.”

  “Treachery, my Lord?”

  “Corruption and drunkenness more like, Sir Thomas! Too many regiments have found little liking for duty in Ireland, their officers exchanging out, the best going and lesser mortals replacing them – drunks, lechers, debtors, cowards, louts who have found themselves unwelcome in their own messes and have been willing to go into the Irish bogs, where they have indulged themselves disgracefully, I understand. Johnnie Cope will be nothing to the way some of these gentlemen will run!”

  Tom nodded, the story was all too familiar – he had talked with his own people in the collieries on occasion, asked about conditions in Ireland, had been told tales of abuse and vice which he had hardly believed at the time, discounting them as obvious exaggerations – perhaps he should have believed every word of the stories. He wondered if he should go back to St Helens immediately, he employed so many Irishmen there, what would they do if it came to rebellion in their home country? On reflection he decided that he had been too long away from home, St Helens and the Irish could wait.

  A visit to Rundell and Bridge seemed essential before they returned to the Hall; Mr Bridge suggested pearls to be an appropriate gesture, had a necklace he was sure would be just the thing and offered his congratulations to Tom, enquiring in passing whether he expected Sir Joseph to be in Town soon, demonstrating just how up-to-date he was with the gossip of Whitehall.

  “I believe, Sir Thomas, that Sir Joseph has never been seen in London – possibly that should be amended?”

  “I had not considered the point, Mr Bridge. I know that Sir Joseph intends to be in the Midlands in August, visiting with myself and with his wife’s uncle at Huntingdon, Sir George Jackson.”

  Tom smiled quietly as Bridge dug into the rarely used recesses of his memory and found the minor baronet, Sir George, and assessed his position in the fashionable world – related to a dozen or so of families from the Midlands and the East of England, all respectable, none rich or especially politically active. It did Sir Joseph no harm to be connected with the Jacksons, made him much less the parvenu in fact. He should not be encouraged to come to London in the Season, not yet, but should certainly make himself known, Bridge suggested.

  “By the way, Sir Thomas, you had remembered that your first wedding anniversary must be due very soon?”

  Tom had not, confessed as much, dug deep into his wallet for a ‘rather elegant’ diamond brooch that would, if Mr Bridge’s memory served him, go very well with the necklace purchased as a wedding gift.

  Frederick, Viscount Rothwell, had reached Grafham House a day earlier, was settling in, causing some slight stir for having brought his two followers with him, his coxswain and his body servant. It was normal enough for a naval officer to have retainers who served him personally, formed a retinue, and a captain, whether he be Post or merely Master and Commander, was expected to keep his coxswain and steward with him until he died, pensioning them in his Will, and that was accepted, but the Viscount’s man was black! The coxswain, Norton, was a quiet thirty year old seaman, a respectable man who would serve as general factotum in the house and estate and would undoubtedly settle down and become an important local figure, but the valet, the gentleman’s gentleman to be, was a different matter entirely. Northamptonshire, especially in the iron and leather areas, was strongly chapel, and the chapels without exception were loud in their condemnation of Papists, Jews, Freemasons and Blacks – all servants of the Devil himself; in normal circumstances none of their congregation would ever come across any of these bugbears and could hate them at a comfortable distance and to have one in the village was something entirely new and, probably, unacceptable.

  Verity explained the problem to Tom, anxious that a solution be found for Frederick had made it clear that his people were to stay with him for life and would not be pleased were his man to be assaulted, stoned, tarred-and-feathered even. She was quite happy that Tom would have an answer, had complete faith in him.

  “What the hell do I do, Brown?”

  “The Minister in Finedon, thir, Mr Nugent, might well be amenable to a thuggestion that Mr Jack Crow, who had been a thlave and ith now a freeman, might be theen as a victim of great evil who hath been rescued from thervitude vile. The Trade in Black Ivory hath long been theen ath an evil here, thir.”

  “So, we shift their anger to the traders from whose vile hands he has been rescued – highly sensible. I should speak in person to Mr Nugent, you suggest?”

  “It would become known and be very popular, thir.”

  Mr Nugent was of a type familiar, at a distance, to Tom – ministers of the various chapels were thick on the ground in the industrial towns, were almost the only divines to be seen in fact; they tended to be lean, keen and enthusiastic and were dressed uniformly in austere, virtuous black and they were often very loud in their condemnation of various evils, though no two of them seemed to concentrate on the same set of divagations from their norm of decency. Tom had sent a note to Mr Nugent informing him that he intended to do himself the honour of visiting the minister and trusting that he would be available at eleven o’clock next morning; had he not been available he would have needed a very good excuse, preferably on the order of dying not later than ten o’clock.

  Tom entered the minister’s study, accepted the offer of tea, brought by his very quiet wife, black wool from toes to chin; he glanced round the small room, saw shelf after shelf of devotional works, a massive, open Bible on the desk, a hand-coloured print of a fair-haired Jesus on his cross. He smiled at Nugent, observed with approval that he did not flinch; a strong-looking man in fact, almost as tall as Tom and straight-backed with piercing blue eyes, wide-open and boldly assessing Tom in his turn.

  “We have a problem that should be solved quickly if we are to keep the peace in this area, Mr Nugent. As you know, I will not tolerate disorder, but I have no wish at all to use the bullet and the noose to keep the people down. The Viscount’s man, Mr Crow, who he rescued from slavery, is the potential cause of our troubles, of course. Let us be clear immediately that he will remain in the Viscount’s service and make his dwelling here, sir – our aim must be to make his life peaceful and comfortable.”

  The minister took a deep breath, sipped at his tea, gave himself time to thin
k – he had been intending to demand that the Son of Ham be expelled from the company of decent, God-fearing folk but it now seemed that that would be an unwise course. He was well aware that in other villages where there had been a conflict between Chapel and Squire the forces of righteousness had been very thoroughly defeated; he knew, indeed, of one pastor who was now on his way to Botany Bay due to the discovery of poached pheasants in his kitchen – the magistrates had taken no notice of his plea that he possessed no fowling piece, had known nothing of the birds before the parish constable had appeared with them in his hand. He knew as well that Sir Thomas was no friend to the violent suppression of disorder, that he would much prefer to find a peaceful solution to any potential unrest – it was only sensible to cooperate with him.

  “The Slave Trade is a great evil, Sir Thomas, and those unfortunates wrested from its clutches must be given sanctuary, must be haled to a safe haven and found work to do. I am sure that my flock may be brought to appreciate this – perhaps lessons in Sunday School may be used to reinforce this understanding, to supplement my sermons; I believe there are books that could be used as texts and illustrations for this purpose…”

  “I would be very happy to assist with the purchase of improving works for the Sunday School, Mt Nugent – I am a great friend to education, believe that every man and woman should be given the benefits of literacy.”

  ‘A cat for a hat, or a hat for a cat, but nothing for nothing’, Tom reflected – was there anyone who did not demand to be bought? Still, if money bought peace, it was better than blood, generally speaking…

  “How do I address your brother, Verry?”