Dance of the Years

by Margery Allingham

  James saw William’s sudden adherence to the Dissenters with misgiving. He himself had paid dearly for his social position, such as it was, and he looked on with astonishment and even envy as William threw away a plank of his own position so casually. However, on second thoughts, James was amused and remote, for William, of course, was not his son.

  He felt very differently about Deborah. She was growing up, and after three years with a third cousin of Jinny’s, who kept a small private school, had gone on to another more fashionable boarding establishment on the South Coast. James wrote to the Head Governess insisting that she should be kept rigidly Church of England. He received a startled, even horrified assurance from the lady, who reacted as though he had written admonishing her to keep his daughter chaste.

  With William, then, James was tolerant, but he laughed so much at the account of the young man’s baptismal immersion that he had to take himself off on one of his trips to see Whippy and Bessie at “The Golden Boar” to get away from William’s reproachful eyes. And in that he was old Will Galantry as much alive as ever he had been.

  William found Jinny more sympathetic. She often accompanied him to his private pew in the Chapel, and because she loved him so she did not admit that when the preacher spoke of the difficulties of the journey to understanding, she could appreciate what he meant quite well without him climbing up the outside of the pulpit like a monkey, to show her; and knew most certainly that it was even more arduous than that.

  William remained impressed by the Movement and the crowds fascinated him. He became one of the Leader’s “Good Young Men,” a band of enthusiasts who went about doing evangelical work. He supported the new Tabernacle which Spurgeon was building, and he made many earnest acquaintances. In all this he was quite sincere, but he was following a formula and not a star, and all the time his idea was gestating.

  One day as he watched the crowds thronging the Gardens outside the Surrey Music Hall, and thought of the panting mass of humanity in the aisles, and the eager eyes fixed hopefully upon the vision which the earnest East Anglian evoked, it occurred forcibly and even reverently to William that here was a subject which would appeal to a great many more people than the venerable game of chess.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Twenty-three is a magical age; then failure is excusable and triumph magnificent.

  When William was twenty-three he started The Converted World, married Miss Julia Cole, grew his first honey-coloured beard, and walked out in his first frock coat and high silk hat. A splendid figure of baroque manhood, looking more like Edwin Castor than ever.

  The top hat made him at least six foot ten high, and Miss Julia looked up at him from her own four foot eleven and a half with respectful adoration.

  It would have been a considerable year’s work for anybody; The Converted World alone was one of those brilliant pieces of organization which appear afterwards something of an accident, a miraculous fall downstairs into the hallway of success, and which at the time feel like a day dream journey conducted by angels and driven by one’s own staggering genius.

  William collected the two Mellishes at a moment when The Elbow Chair had just died in its sleep, and when father and son were prepared to exchange chess for Christianity, or cheese if it came to it. He also collected Counsellor Percy Greatpiece, and that other extraordinary person, Clemmie Johns.

  The Counsellor derived his title from the Hackney Corporation, and was a wealthy man. He backed William when he was in the throes of a terrifying conversion which strangely enough never seemed to do the Counsellor the spiritual or even moral good one might reasonably have expected from such a painful upheaval. At the time it reduced him to a grovelling mass of weeping fat who took up the carpet in his front room so that his naked knees might surfer the mortification of bare boards. But afterwards it left him much as before, but with a dreadful sanctimonious excuse for every dirty little thing he might take it into his wicked head to do.

  However, at the time he backed William, and put the money on the credit side of the account he was so fearfully drawing up for some vague, but terrible heavenly auditor.

  Clemmie Johns was an entirely different person. He was a pale wisp of a man some seven or eight years older than William who, until they met, was never in a job for more than a month at a time. He had drifted so far and so often that he had no clear recollection of the country pedagogue who was his father, and when William found him he had only two real interests in life—beer and the Bible. His passion for Holy Writ was neither spiritual nor intellectual; he approached it from a peculiar angle of his own taking a delight in simply knowing it as one might know a dictionary or, say, the Crystal Palace Exhibition. Even at that age, and he grew far more proficient later, he was a walking concordance. He had an apt text with chapter and verse for everything that came in front of him, and never so far as the Galantry’s saw, and they knew him well for forty years, read anything else, not even a daily newspaper, save, as it were, as a side reference. He attended Spurgeon’s meetings to hear the quotations, which were many, and to give himself the exercise of recognizing their context, any slip in the words delighted him. He admired William because he said he was like Og, King of Bashan, “of the remnant of the giants. Josh, xii, 6.”

  William saw his usefulness at once; he took him out and bought him beer, and in the end gave him a trifling salary so that he should not starve. He sat in a corner of The Converted World office for the rest of his life.

  Doubtless it was William’s youth and ignorance which made it possible for him to bring out his journal at all. This was not an arid time in popular literature; on the contrary, the cheaper variety was in its early flower, and George Augustus Sala and his coterie were at their vituperant best. There was nothing stodgy about these writers, little even sober; they were rioting colossi and they expressed the full-blooded arrogance of a nation on top with acid sophistication in their pens.

  Fleet Street was alive and history was being made there. It was a sixth form of a company, witty and violent and cruel and enthusiastic.

  William sailed into the midst of it with next to no money, half a dozen hacks, one crank and an Idea, and he made a small fortune. Edwin Castor and Alfred Timson in their strange living partnership did none so badly as far as actual money was concerned.

  The Converted World was naïve, even at that time of day, and it is possible that in that lay the secret of its popularity. The front page was always devoted to a single wood block which illustrated one of the items of violence in the news; one week there would be a picture of a railway smash, perhaps, on another, arson in a timber yard, or an interesting robbery with menaces. Always the title beneath was a text, produced by the indefatigable Clemmie. Sometimes this was suitable, sometimes it was only verbally relative. “He made in Jerusalem engines, invented by cunning men. Chronicles II, xxv. 15” might caption the rail accident, or “I will prepare destroyers against thee, and they shall cut down they choice cedars and cast them into the fire. Jeremiah xxii. 17” the timber yard outrage.

  Inside the place of honour was given to a sermon of the more provocative kind purchased from some popular pastor who agreed to preach it the following Sunday. On the other pages were young Mellish’s “Notes” and old Mellish’s serial; both lifted bodily from The Elbow Chair, with the single difference that now the news in the Notes concerned Chapel personalities and the hero of the serial was a dissenting Minister and not a chess player.

  A very popular item was the article based on the front picture. This was a rehash of the news item considered from a hand of God angle, and decorated with many quotations. William always “saw to” this himself. He could not write it but he knew what he wanted, and he told young Mellish what to say. The rest of the paper contained advertisements of the two-inch box variety, a story for children about a family of youthful saints who anticipated the Boy Scout Movement, and a competition conducted by Clemmie, in which prizes were given for six unfamiliar texts tracked down to their sources. T
his was a little daring, and great care was taken to ensure that no charge of gambling could be brought against it. The prizes were always religious books acquired at a discount or sent in for review.

  William had left Timson’s half-way through his second apprenticeship, a circumstance only made possible by loopholes in the special articles which Willitimson had drawn up out of the generosity of his heart. Now he made somewhat arrogant amends by giving Morland and Jones his printing.

  Willitimson promised James that this unexpected behaviour of his nephew would not prejudice his sister’s children in his eyes, but he never again felt any responsibility for William although ever after he had a genuine admiration for him.

  James was astonished by The Converted World. He thought it very clever, but when he said so he really meant that he thought the whole thing was clever; the manufacture of the paper, the printing, and the drawing on the front page. He read the news article and thought that interesting. The rest, he supposed, was a little beyond him, and he dozed over it. The profit struck him as fantastic. To a man who had never permitted himself to make money openly this magical way of doing it was staggering. He smelled success in the venture and was convinced that his impression of Edwin Castor must have been shrewder than he knew, for William had certainly not got his brains from “poor Jinny.” Jinny received the first copy off the press; it was carried to her by William himself and she laughed with him in the flush of triumph. Later, after she had studied it, she gave him her verdict.

  “It’s wonderful, Will. So very clever, my dear. But not religious.”

  “Not religious, Mama?” He stood looking at her, so good looking and so bewilderingly like Frank. His head was on one side like an interested terrier’s, and for once his eyes were not assured but vulnerable, and almost blank with non-comprehension.

  “No, dear,” said Jinny, “not religious.”

  It was all she could tell him, and when he argued with her and pointed out the name of the Almighty in every other paragraph, let alone on every page, she stood her ground helpless and without the means of expression.

  It was an important moment for William since he was as near loving Jinny as he ever did anyone, and he saw, just for an eyelid’s flicker like a door opening and shutting a long way off, a gleam of something that was outside his vision. He did not follow it up, though, for many things were demanding his attention, and he kissed her and told her she was silly before he dashed away to see Mellish, who had just sent the boy down to report that he had had “an idea.”

  As soon as it became clear to William that The Converted World was going to sell in quantities, he felt himself not only justified, but chosen. It is difficult to convey this without his appearing slightly blasphemous, which he was not, but he did feel reassured, divinely rewarded for his own perspicacity in taking up religion at all. It was a good thing, he had proved it. Ever afterwards he swore by it.

  A great many people believed he was a most arrant young humbug the world had yet produced. That disgraceful journal, Toby, printed a globe, or “World” converted into a chamber pot, out of which ran rivulets labelled ‘Cant,’ ‘Humbug,’ ‘Insincerity,’ ‘Sensationalism,’ ‘Hypocrisy’ and ‘Balderdash.’

  William ignored this; it was a tough age, and he did not want the office wrecked. Spurgeon himself had had one of his meetings reduced to a shambles by malicious cries of “Fire,” and the best part of a hundred of the Faithful killed and wounded in the stampede.

  Other men more credulous, or perhaps more obstinately charitable, thought William must be a “Tool of Providence,” and it is just possible that in some hands his product did more good than harm. He certainly meant very well, and, in fact, went just as far in the matter as his very good head alone would take him. He assumed that because his brains were sound his heart was also, and thus did not observe how often his desires and inclinations cheated him and made him not so much a villain as a silly ass.

  He was delighted with himself, and congratulatorily affectionate towards the Deity. Ten months after The Converted World first appeared, he paid off Counsellor Greatpiece (who never forgave himself for not taking up an interest in the business, or William for not pressing it), and married Miss Julia Cole without the customary two-year betrothal.

  With earnest solemnity William explained to James that he had made the decision to marry after reading the instructions on the subject in the seventh chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. James looked it up afterwards and was as deeply shocked as ever he had been in his life, not, of course, by what he read there, for he thought it all very sensible, but by William. That any young man of twenty-three should enter grimly into marriage to save himself from sin horrified James. The idea embarrassed him, and he found himself praying to his own God, who was a countryman too, that the boy might prove to be just a hypocrite. However, whatever William’s motives were he married Miss Julia, and by the social notions of the times, he condescended.

  Miss Julia was petite and plump and angel-faced. Her eyes were blue saucers and her ringlets had a gilt gleam on them. Her hoops were modest, and were usually covered by a good French plaid, and when she raised her skirts to step out of a hired brougham, gay blue and white ringed stockings showed for a second above her tiny black boots.

  It is quite possible that William did marry to save himself from carnal sin, and probably James was wrong and he was right, for against such a battery of suggestiveness few normally sexed young men could have hoped to stand.

  All the same Miss Julia was charming. She was shy, but courageous, and when she stood in the chapel aisle where William first saw her, she looked like a dear little tea-cosy. But, and at that time it was a big but in Penton Place, she was the daughter of a greengrocer with several shops in the City. They changed it to ‘dry-grocer’ when speaking of it, but even that did not make it good.

  To James’s surprise, William not only failed to object to this social disability, but it appeared to please him since it put him in the position of the one who conferred. James reacted towards the news in much the same way as he had to William’s Non-conformity. He consoled himself with the recollection that William was not his son, anyway, and privately envied the young man because it seemed that he could do what James could not. In this, of course, he was simply in the position of the mug at the fair who buys back his own pound note in a fake auction, but he did not see that.

  Jinny only cared if Julia was fond of William. By that she meant an utter generosity, which was a tall order. But Julia guessed something of this and did her best to reassure the older woman. Miss Julia was nobody’s fool. Behind that baby face was intelligence. She sized up the situation accurately, save that she gave William’s social position far more importance than it warranted. She was the daughter of a long line of London “cits.” who were sharp and narrow but also as kindly and sensible as had been Dorothy’s forefathers, to whom they were after all urban cousins. Julia was far more used to luxury than Jinny when it came to downright creature comforts, but she honestly believed that the next class division above her own was the best in the world, and would make any sacrifice to convince any mortal person she met that she belonged to it. She considered her own family was “trade,” and those beneath it entirely inferior. She believed William belonged to the desired social order and was elated to marry him. Indeed, that was the main reason why she did marry him, and if from modern standards it seems an extraordinary thing to have done, then a lot about the mid-Victorian age was extraordinary.

  The basic man and woman were engaged in a curious experiment just then, and were getting rich and “going grand,” and had yet to find the snags in that programme.

  As the Dance of the Years led Miss Julia into the Galantry cotillion, other peculiarities of her temperament began to be observed. There were three ingredients in her recipe which flavoured all the rest: she had brains, she was a snob, and she was jealous.

  James always thought about people in the same way as he thought about horses, and he
noticed this last as a sign of vice and it disturbed him quite as much as would a sign of stifle trouble. But otherwise she seemed sound enough and certainly had good strong legs, a point on which he was very particular, and then once again after all, William was not his blood.

  He gave the young people a cheque, a carved oak sideboard, and a mirror with apples and pomegranates round the frame, and Julia wept because the furniture was not in mahogany, which was a choice wood.

  William rented a large, ivy-covered house inconsequentially named “Laurel Lodge,” in the decent suburb of Shepherd’s Bush. He installed his wife there in a nest of silk plush and silver and crocheted antimacassars, and ever afterwards if he was half an hour late home from the office, he found her in hysterics.

  The Converted World prospered; it seemed as if nothing could go wrong with it. William profited by the Mellish’s experience and kept expenses down. The office consisted of two extremely dirty rooms on the first floor of one of the old houses on the left-hand side of Fleet Street: a large one in front, and a small one at the back. In the front room sat “the staff” on high stools at big double desks, and in the back, sat William and young Mellish.

  In those days the Town was the London of popular conception; pea-soup fogs were the rule in winter, and in a yellow gaslit world of adhesive dirt the little paper was made out every week, and the Smike-like boy rushed round to the printers with parts of it every half hour or so on press days.

  William was responsible for its success, for it was he who organized the distribution, which was excellent. Young Mellish admired him immensely and did not find him ungenerous.