A Parade Of Virtue (A Poor Man At The Gate Series Book 9)

by Andrew Wareham

  “Let me see, brother, if I have this quite right. We are to provide, immediately, all of the technical knowledge you require and in exchange will receive ten parts of the annual profit, when such eventuates.”

  Henry thought that to be a fair description of the project, could not understand why both looked down their noses at him.

  “Not perhaps exactly the sort of undertaking that might ordinarily excite my sense of cupidity, brother.”

  Joseph gravely agreed.

  “Perhaps we should amend your proposal, Henry. Let us suggest that our commitment to you might be expressed as an interest-bearing bond, with a first charge upon your undertaking. We to supply the information that you require, valued at one tenth part of the sum committed as capital and receiving an immediate annual income.”

  Henry was not sure that was so good an idea, thought he might prefer to take advice.

  “Alternatively, Mr Star,” Joseph suggested, “we might simply sell you the technical knowledge you ask for, against cash in, say, three annual instalments.”

  It occurred to Henry that the gentlemen had limited faith in his financial integrity. He was hurt.

  “There are a number of shipyards building in steam in the New York area. I doubt not that they could soon produce a very fine locomotive.”

  “Possibly your best solution, Mr Star – American conditions will not be the same as English and it might well be the case that a uniquely American solution would be better.”

  “Locomotive engines in England will be exclusively coal-burners, Henry. Will that necessarily be so in the States?”

  That was a very good question, one to which he had no answer in the short term.

  “My paddle-steamers on the Mississippi are wood-burners, Matthew, for lack of coal deposits immediately to hand. I know that the steamers on the Hudson are coal-fired, so assume that the same would be the case of land locomotives there. It is the case, I understand, that one must plump for one or the other – a steam engine cannot be designed that will use either fuel quite equally.”

  Joseph had never investigated the problem – coal was so readily available in England that the question simply had not arisen.

  “First thoughts say that you are right, Mr Star. A wood-burner must require far more of a forced-draught to the firebox, hence a larger, broader funnel, amongst other things. It might be an interesting experiment, you know. If one is to extend the railways to Ireland, for example, might one be forced to use brown coal or peat as one’s fuel?”

  Henry neither knew nor cared, but could not say so. He turned the conversation to the topic of small-arms, his other great concern whilst he was in England.

  “We have not yet heard from Captain Hood regarding the question of the percussion cap, Mr Andrews.”

  “He had to drop the enquiry temporarily, due to the loss of a Roberts steamer off the Isle of Wight. He has discovered, incidentally, that the owner of the steamer had almost certainly caused the safety-valve to be interfered with, so as to allow a greater speed to be attained.”

  “I sincerely trust, sir, that the damned fool of an engineer who permitted himself to be bribed or bullied into such a course did not survive the disaster!”

  Matthew agreed with the sentiment, confirming that the greedy, or weak, man had died, in all probabilities extremely unpleasantly.

  “I must ensure that the word of this tragic malfeasance reaches the Mississippi – I want no fools destroying my reputation on the river, sir!”

  “Quite right too, sir! I have let it be known in Liverpool, together with any amount of speculation regarding just how long a man might survive in the presence of live steam. I have sent to our college along the coast to inform them of the exact nature of the disaster. The first of our boys are at sea already and it will do no harm for them to spread the good word.”

  “Greed, greed, all is greed! Little men who make shift to scrounge the odd penny rather than put their minds to their businesses and make an honest fortune. Something for nothing, gentlemen, the fallacy that motivates so many of the small-minded!”

  Neither Matthew nor Joseph could find an immediate response to this. All they knew of Henry said that he would cut every corner known to mankind in his pursuit of an extra-legal penny.

  “You are, I am sure, quite right, brother. To return to the matter of the percussion cap, there is some question of how it should best be made, and of what materials. Captain Hood was proposing to meet with Joseph Egg to discuss the whole procedure – he being the great expert on the matter, and possibly the inventor of the modern device.”

  “Egg?”

  “Swiss, I believe, originally. He is nephew to Durs Egg, the gunsmith renowned for his specials – the breech-loading rifle after Major Ferguson’s invention and his many pistols. Joe Egg, as he is known, has a reputation of his own.”

  “Most percussion caps seem to be made in the workshop, on a small scale, rather than in the manufactury, from the little I have heard in the States.”

  “The same in England, I believe, Henry. Joseph, do you know why this should be?”

  “Fulminate of mercury, chlorate of potash, and, for some reason, ground glass. I imagine the glass is to provide a gritty texture to the mix, but I am no chemist, I fear. I do know that I would be nervous in the presence of a very few ounces of either of the active substances; handling them by the bucket-full would not be for me, I regret to say. The very thought of throwing ten pounds of fulminate on top of twenty of chlorate and then adding thirty pounds of glass and stirring well! Not my idea of a way for a sensible man to spend his days!”

  “It would be possible, perhaps to produce the copper casing in the manufactury, would it not, Joseph?”

  That was a different matter. To roll paper-thin sheets of copper and to punch small indentations to take the explosive charge, that was none too difficult a task.

  “Filling them, and then closing them over; that would be another matter – a task for very steady hands.”

  “Better done in England, Joseph. We have too few workers in America, so few indeed that we must rely upon the machine to a far greater extent than must the English.”

  There was always a surplus of labour in Liverpool – every boat from Ireland, it seemed, brought more families in search of a living.

  “Clean-living youngsters who have not yet taken to the booze would be ideal for the job, Joseph. Older peasants, used to digging potatoes and knocking back the poteen might be of small value to us.”

  “Or to anyone else, Matthew! I have had any number of them beg for work in the manufactury, have taken them on from compassion for their wretchedness and have dismissed them within the month as wholly useless to me. Life as a starving share-cropper is no preparation for the discipline of the work bench. It is not hereditary, not an inborn inadequacy – their children can become valued and skilled hands, earning a very high wage – but an Irishman over the age of thirty is quite valueless, I find.”

  “The railways may find an answer to them as well – there will be ditches to be dug and stone to be carried and a peasant should be in his element there!”

  Henry had listened quietly, the Irish being outside of his experience, few of them ever appearing in the Deep South, but was moved to comment on the last statement.

  “Much the same with plantation hands, I believe, gentlemen. In my shipyard on the river we sometimes find freed black men coming for work. Youngsters, not yet full grown, can learn and be the most useful of hands; adults who have hoed cotton and done little else for twenty years are as nearly worthless as you can find. We take on some of them for the most menial tasks, those that demand muscle and nothing else, and they perform them well; but just ask them to take a decision, to make a choice of what is to be done, and nothing happens at all, for they cannot think as free men must. The Irish are, I believe, treated much as field hands are on the plantations, except, of course, that slaves have a value, so they must never be allowed to starve.”

  Famine on a
small scale was ever-present in Ireland. The followers of the Reverend Malthus had made much of the Irish experience in pointing out that population increase made starvation a necessary part of human existence. Given the opportunity humanity would always increase beyond the ability of the soil to feed them; famine was the natural means of control of the human community. Even so, it was not tactful to suggest that slaves might be better treated than the Irish, particularly if the premise was correct.

  “One wonders to what extent the potato has been a blessing to the Irish, Henry.”

  “What is their number now, Matthew?”

  “Close to seven millions, I believe.”

  “If they lived on rye and oats then I doubt their fields would support one half of that number. One might therefore suggest that the potato is their saviour.”

  “If ever the crop fails then it will be their curse, of course.”

  Joseph returned to his workshop, his mind exercised by the matter of the percussion cap. It seemed that they must be produced quite literally by the million each year – there were to be hundreds of thousands of guns in the American West, almost all of them to use cap and ball loading, the old flintlock already obsolete and discarded by all who could.

  ‘A million pennies is more than forty thousand pounds, nearly two hundred thousand American dollars, which is a sum not to be sneezed at. A profit of a penny on each cap is surely not too great a sum to imagine. The Army will not take them yet – the generals need at least twenty years to assimilate anything new – but ordinary shooters already demand them in England.’

  A few hours of thought made it clear that he needed the services of a chemist. Conversation with his local apothecary suggested that the ordinary medical man was not what he was looking for. There was only one solution.

  “Mr Fraser, I find myself quite at a stop in my search for a learned man with a knowledge of the science of chemistry…”

  Book Nine: A Poor Man

  at the Gate Series

  Chapter Seven

  Major Wolverstone discovered that he was well-loved by the powers in Bombay.

  John Company was thankful for the end to the destruction of its plantations and the killing of its labourers. After the great cholera epidemic production of all of its major money earners had been cut and it had been financially hit by the outbreak of disorder and had, in fact, feared that it might be the precursor to a general uprising – a terror always at the back of the old hands’ minds. Any man who crushed unrest could be sure of the Company’s good offices thereafter.

  The Governor had been shown to be an effective leader in a time of great trouble; he had every expectation of word being sent back to London of his virtues and a response of an early knighthood, possibly a higher honour. As much as ten million pounds a year in the way of silks and rice and wheat and saltpetre and a hundred other valuable products passed through Bombay on the way to England and successful protection of that trade was worthy of a mark of distinction, one that was not to be forgotten. He had expected to remain in Bombay, in itself one of the most significant of posts, for the rest of his life, but this outstanding success meant that he might be invited to accept an even more important position, possibly even on the Board in London.

  Indian values were somewhat less sophisticated than those of Whitehall. In England a man who served the government well would be spoken of kindly, might find his sons or brothers given preference, would eventually himself be honoured. In Bombay, favourites made money.

  “Not so far from Poona, Major Wolverstone – or do you prefer ‘Colonel’ now?”

  The colonelcy was only a temporary rank, Wolverstone intimated, ‘Major’ would be in better taste.

  “There is an opportunity near the town of Walgaon - Amravati, I believe it to be called, not especially important, but rich, one of the semi-independent little places. The old maharajah is dead, and has left several daughters but only one son, and him little more than an infant. The boy would expect a strangler’s cord round his neck in the normal way of things and an uncle or cousin or sister’s husband to sit in the high seat. But, the old man knew that, and he has left the boy in ward to the Crown. Crafty move – generally it would be to the Company, and the boy would be looked after and given the title and be tucked away in a little palace somewhere with a big enough income to keep him in idle luxury for the rest of his days, forgotten and powerless. The Company has taken over any number of tiny states that way, very profitably indeed. This one will actually keep his freedom as an adult, because the old chap was bright enough to organise it.”

  Wolverstone raised an eyebrow, unable to discern any point to the Governor’s rambling.

  “Thing is, Major, that I must appoint a Trustee to look after the lad and his incomes until he is of age, say sixteen or so, when he inherits everything. Rather like a Ward in Chancery. The Trustee takes the income until the lad is adult, using it to maintain the original value of the estate and ensure that all is in good condition, and retaining any residue as a fee and recompense for all of his work.”

  “Me?”

  “If you would be so good as to accept the burden for the next ten years, yes, sir.”

  Wolverstone was quite happy to accept the charge. He would need to live out at Amravati for perhaps half of each month, and he would be well-advised to maintain a strong bodyguard, but the demands of the post would otherwise be minimal, and the profits quite possibly enormous.

  “What do you know of this place, Amravati, Mr Mostyn?”

  Bankers were expected to be repositories of financial knowledge, to have an insider’s intelligence about anywhere vaguely within their sphere.

  “Wealthy, even by the standards of the local lords, Major. It lies in an area of hills in which there are small deposits of gemstones in the local river gravels – not especially rich or of the highest quality, but sufficient to provide a handsome income. Besides that, the local agriculture is within reason comfortable as there is some rain outside of the regular Monsoon – rarely a famine in those parts – and there is an iron deposit that keeps a goodly number of smithies active. It all makes an income for the local people, which is very well taxed, of course.”

  “I am surprised that they kept their independence. Their wealth must have been an attraction to the Marathas.”

  “They habitually hired on a good few mercenaries from the north, and bought cannon from the Portuguese donkey’s years ago. Enough to make themselves just too tough a nut to crack. Add to that, a succession of able men holding the throne and making sensible alliances, spending a proportion of their wealth to buy friends.”

  Wolverstone was surprised – it was rare for talent to be handed down through the generations.

  “Some families are fortunate, it would seem. I suspect that they adopted in any nephews or cousins who were above average bright as well.”

  “A disaster for them that there was no adult son to hand for this generation. There is a possibility that the ruling family will come to its end.”

  “They lost most of the youngsters in the cholera. There was a favoured boy of fifteen or so who could have continued their tradition, possibly better than many of his predecessors, but he died, together with all except one of his whole brothers. I am told that two of the girls who survived are still unwed due to their selected husbands falling to the disease. Both girls are said to be clever and well-educated, which makes them very dangerous to their young brother – and to you. It is by no means unknown for an able young lady to marry a nonentity and place him on the throne as a puppet. I do not know whether either of them is ambitious, but I would strongly advise you to watch your back, Major.”

  Wolverstone thanked him for the information and took the appropriate steps. His own cooks were to accompany him at all times and he would eat only from their very well-paid hands.

  “Mr Patel! The family in the small state near Walgaon, are they Hindu or Muslim, do you know?”

  “Warrior-caste Hindus, sahib, Kshatriyas all. They a
re men of excellent standing in their faith, very well renowned for their virtues, sir!”

  “Then I would be wise to hire a bodyguard of Muslims, I believe.”

  Patel was most upset at such a suggestion, was quite certain that it would be regarded as a wanton provocation, a deliberate insult in fact.

  “Then…”

  “Better, sahib, to hire foreigners, of whom there are many to be found. There are men from the mountains, the Nepalese, as an example; many a rich man will have a retinue of Nubians, sahib – black men out of Africa; a few have hired men from Burma. All have no kinsfolk in this part of the world, sahib, and will be of good faith, for if you die they will have no protector, will not live very long themselves.”

  “Nubians, they would surely be slaves, would they not?”

  “Oh, most certainly not, sahib, the Honourable Company having forbidden slavery most absolutely!”

  “Then how do they come to be here?”

  “They will have been taken from their villages, of course, sir, and brought across the sea. But they will not be slaves, not sold like animals – there will be a payment made to the ship-owners for their costs in obtaining them, of course, but that will not be to own them, far from it, sahib!”

  Wolverstone was aware that he was being mocked, that the sahib’s law was regarded with contempt in this instance, and possibly in many others.

  “They will, I would imagine, be obliged to work for their first employer until they have paid off the costs of being shipped across the sea?”

  Patel agreed that that was very probable.

  “And it might take a lifetime of labour to clear the debt?”

  That was a certainty.

  “So… they are not slaves, it is merely that they are not free.”

  Patel admired his perspicacity.

  “Can you find me some?”

  “Trained men with their own muskets, sir. It will not be easy to come across such, or not for most men; it does so happen, sahib, that I was recently told, by a friend, of where some of these people might be found. How many would you desire me to acquire, sahib?”