They showed grateful, carefully hiding any resentment they might have felt at having to beg and effectively mortgage the future of some of their children. They were poor and had no choice but be thankful.
“Have you seen a railway?”
“Not seen, as such, Sir Matthew, but we ‘ave read of the iron roads, in newspapers what do sometimes come to the town, sir.”
“Then we must ensure that you both see and ride upon the railway in the next day or two, gentlemen. For the meanwhile, a meal and then an inspection of the yard here while arrangements are made for your beds for the next few nights.”
A dozen or two of youngsters to be trained, mostly on the job in the yard, the brightest of them picked out to learn engineering; more to be brought in as they became available, to Roberts and perhaps to the Star mills, though preferably not to Mr George Star’s enterprises. The boys might be nervous of coming to the big city at first, but a few enthusiastic letters home, as soon as the first comers had been ‘exposed’ to the pleasures of urban dwelling, should produce a steady flow of young men wanting to earn money and then to enjoy spending it. Matthew decided that he would cheerfully find the investment in slate to keep the people of Bethesda happy, in return for the education their way of life produced.
The Roberts yard and ironworks would gain a massive advantage over their competitors, for a year or two until they discovered where the skilled youths were coming from. In the longer term, they would still benefit from their labour force. It was well worthwhile, and it was not charity; they were not to be giving something for nothing and eroding the spirit of freeborn men. Matthew was very satisfied with his stroke of good fortune.
George Star was happy as well, standing with his wife on his arm and greeting Mrs Nichols of Barton, and her son, the Squire, on their first visit to the Star’s home.
It was a morning call, a formal courtesy between members of the County, intended to do little more than announce publicly that they were joined in their political and economic interests. They might not especially like each other, but they must show a united front against all outsiders, and particularly against upstarts who did not share their particular culture. The widowed Mrs Nichols was the accepted leader of local society and by making this visit, which would rapidly become known in every other significant house in the County – servants talked to each other and to their mistresses – she was announcing that Mr and Mrs George Star had arrived, that they were part of the established order.
It could take most of a lifetime for a mere manufacturer even to receive a nod of acknowledgement from a squire, but Mr George Star possessed the great advantage of a brother who was a peer – no more than a second baron, but that was far better than a first – and of another who had achieved baronetcy. The Star family was rich, known to be so in Lancashire and believed to be so in America; the word ‘millions’ was often used in their conjunction, and that was a vast sum in terms of direct power and background influence. The Stars as well were associated with Viscount St Helens and his brothers, again wealthier than most and with a Minister of the Crown in their number.
Mrs Nichols took tea while her son, the squire, joined George in a glass of wine; they talked of very little but at some length. Morning visits were never an occasion for serious discussion and it was etiquette to avoid politics and business, which left the menfolk with very little to say; the women, correctly, would never have mentioned politics and knew nothing of business, but occupied themselves with local gossip.
It occurred to George that the County were a tedious set of folk; he wondered why he was making such an effort to be recognised as one of them. The children must benefit, of course, and his wife would find herself less isolated in the big country house, not that she had ever complained. For himself, well, a peerage was less of an impossibility if he was known to the right people in the County. A few months, a year or two perhaps, and he would be invited to dine with all of the local families, and that must lead to invitations to the functions hosted by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster two and three times a year when he was resident locally. Once known, his face recognised as one of the right sort, then it would be practical to feed money into the correct hands; a few tens of thousands over the next score of years and a return was inevitable, though it might be no more than a knighthood unless he could muster additional interest. The Andrews family would help there, particularly if he could continue to be a valued business partner.
His wife’s assistance would also be vital; she must cause all of the ladies to suggest to their husbands that Mr George Star was not so black as he was painted. She must as well identify spouses for the children, selected for their behind-the-scenes influence as well as the obvious attributes of land and wealth. The womenfolk were not unimportant in society, George knew; a properly trained and loyal wife was an essential to any man who was to rise in the world. He knew that his own girls would be correctly brought up to be intelligently busy in their place in life, and was thankful yet again for his choice of a wife.
Mr Tonks was as happy as he could be, as it was in his nature to be.
He had a new wife, one of a social status slightly higher than his own, but not too much so, and of unimpeachable sanity, which made a pleasant change; she was intelligent, too, which could be a nuisance on occasion but had its uses. He had already discovered that she learned very quickly and he had given her oversight of some part of his finances; she was becoming a reliable bookkeeper, which was handy as he had no great desire for an outsider to have any knowledge of his money or its sources. She had also and very obediently caught pregnant within weeks of their marriage and showed every sign of being delighted with her state; she wanted children, it would seem, and was pleased to discover that he did as well. She was also delighted to inhabit the house up on the moors next to the lead mine – it was far larger than her father’s place and enabled her to swagger when her parents came to visit.
His business life flourished, both his overt activities as manager and second to Mr George Star, and the less visible firms that were all his own.
With his salary and profit shares in the cotton mills and the lead and zinc mines, he was putting away more than five thousand a year from Mr George Star, and that was as much as fifty of the most skilled factory hands would see. For a man who had started as a boy cleaning round the looms, that was a fortune in its own right. His own ‘little investments’, as he thought of them, were clearing as much as another two thousands, a sum that was to grow every year.
He had a man working for him in Burnley and another in Wigan, neither knowing the other, running money-lending enterprises. Small-scale affairs, dealing with loans of ten and twenty pounds at a time and made to corner shops and their like, never directly to wage-earning men and women. The shopkeeper might find the opportunity to buy cheaply in bulk and George’s men would make a loan for a month, at a rate of interest that took one half of the shopkeeper’s profit on the deal; twenty per cent on the month was commonplace. Payment on time was guaranteed by the methods normal for loan sharks: a day late and the defaulter was offered a warning; two days and he received a pair of broken legs. Very few borrowers discovered what might happen on a third day, almost all finding some way of paying.
Mr Tonks expected to be able to fund a third money-lender within the year, operating in another of the more prosperous mill towns. Within twenty years he thought he might have as many as ten firms, each returning as much as one hundred pounds a month. Then he could expand his activities; he might buy up some pawnbrokers, or perhaps purchase some pubs, not in the slums but out in the respectable, more profitable parts of the towns. There was no end to the possibilities, he thought, and the great bulk of them as nearly lawful as made no difference. Life was good for a man of an enterprising turn of mind.
Book Twelve: A Poor Man
at the Gate Series
Chapter Nine
“A cold December, and yet there is still a whiff coming off the Thames, James.”
/> “Nothing, brother! Compared to August this is odour of a mountain spring, though I will admit the debris floating along does not bear close inspection! The problem is the tide, of course – the ebb takes everything down almost to the sea, but then the flow brings the great bulk of it back again. The new sewers, the few that have been built, do not especially help matters, Robert. That is a pity, for there were those who thought they might provide a solution.”
“I was one of that optimistic band, James. Surely they must have improved the situation. Previously all of a household’s, waste, shall we call it, travelled a few yards and into a cess-pit, which often was located in their own cellars! That was occasionally emptied by the night-soil men, carrying their buckets through the house and out to their carts. Commonly, of course, the garbage contractors being expensive, the cess-pit was left untouched, the fluids draining out into the surrounding soil while the, ah, solids, shall we say, simply compacted and slowly decayed away. Now all is flushed down the drainpipe and into the sewer.”
James shook his head, loath to prick the bubble of his country-dwelling brother’s innocence.
“It don’t quite happen that way, Robert. The problem is, do you see, that the most of London is low-lying, and the sewers are laid almost flat, so that very little actually runs any distance. Much of the detritus sits and festers in the summer heat until it produces a build-up of gas that can blow back up the pipes, sometimes quite literally causing the facilities in the houses to explode! Where it does run slowly away, it trickles into the Thames, often not a hundred yards distant from the points where the water companies collect their supplies. The breweries all take water from the Thames, on the seaward side of the sewer outlets!”
“God help us all!”
“Amen to that, Robert!”
“What is to be done?”
“Deep sewers extending perhaps twenty miles to the east of London, well out into the Thames Estuary. That is the most practical, but hugely expensive, suggestion. If that is not possible, then lagoons must be created where the waste can settle, possibly passing over coke or charcoal, and then be shovelled away by the cartload, taken miles outside of London to those farmers who work thin, sandy or chalk soils that would benefit from the solid additions.”
“In the centre of London, James? Lagoons several acres in extent, open to the air and slowly rotting away, giving off their gases all unchecked?”
“That is so, brother. Perhaps a dozen for central London, quite possibly more.”
The thought appalled Robert again.
“There are medical men who do not scruple to say that the great cholera epidemic was sustained by the insanitary conditions of the streets near the river. Those conditions have grown worse in the six years since the cholera last struck. It will come again, you know, Robert. It must.”
“What is to be done, James?”
“Nothing, I suspect! It will cost too much. There will be Committees and Commissions and Reports by the score, and all will founder on the reefs of the Income Tax. Say to the government the wicked words, ‘one shilling in the pound’, and they will suffer a collective apoplexy of the will and do nothing at all.”
“You live in London, James, and work in offices near the River Thames and attend the House of Commons which is actually built on the river bank. Will you survive the next epidemic?”
“My house is built on a slight rise, nearly fifty feet above the river; that helps. That apart, the family, my wife and children, spend the hot months at Lutterworth, as do I as much as I can. I drink no water that has not been boiled and the housekeeper is rigorous in using water drawn only from our rain butts in the kitchens. I drink no beer that has been brewed in London! More than that one cannot do, I fear.”
“I shall speak to the housekeeper in Mount Street and ensure that she maintains the same regime.”
Robert did exactly as he had pledged, laying down the law most straitly. The housekeeper listened and said ‘yes, sir’, having no choice in the matter, and then wandered off downstairs to the Room, the servants’ communal lounge and eating place.
“Poor old chap, got another bee in his bonnet! Water, of all things! London water is not pure, so he tells me, and we must take the greatest of care in the kitchens to use only the finest rainwater from the butts!”
The butler shook his head gravely – my lord was a well-meaning gentleman, but precious short of knowledge when it came down to it.
“Two breweries; five great manufacturies and fifty and more of small; a copper smelter; all within a quarter of a mile of Mayfair! Each one with chimneys throwing out smoke and smuts and Lord knows what! The rainwater butts carry a skin of soot and dirt and have all sorts floating inside them! Pure water, indeed!”
“Besides that, Mr Mortimer, have you not seen the pigeons roosting on the gutters, and the starlings in winter?”
“I have indeed, ma’am! Water from the Company’s pipes cannot be worse than that!”
“My lord has ordered that every drop of water used in the kitchen shall be boiled first, and set aside in clean and covered buckets. We are to fill the kettles with once-boiled water, and the cauldrons and sauce-pans – and what chef will say to that, I do not know! Even the washing-up water must first have been boiled, and the tea-towels as well!”
“Quite mad, ma’am! You must do as the gentleman says, of course, but it will create mayhem in the kitchens, especially with a great dinner for the whole family next week.”
“The dinner, Mr Mortimer! You will never know what he has laid down for the dinner!”
“I cannot imagine, ma’am!”
The dinner would make great demands on the permanent staff; there was a chef and junior cooks and kitchen maids and skivvies sufficient to my lord and lady and their great horde of children when they resided in London, but now Mr James and Mr Joseph and Lady Star and their spouses and children were to be fed. More than that, there was to be at least one reception, though fortunately the largest party was to be held at Lord Rothwell’s great mansion, but they would need to feed eighty at least in a formal supper. The demands were impossible and must be met by the hiring of temporary staff: cooks and cook-maids and footmen-waiters must be brought in for the occasion, from one of the Agencies. That was all normal enough, but my lord had gone mad, or so it seemed.
“All staff are to be inspected and refused entry to the house if they are not dressed clean in spotless, laundered linen and clean pinafores and dresses and breeches and coats! Add to that, they must show recently washed, and smell of soap!”
“And where are these paragons to be discovered, ma’am?”
“The Agency has been told that my lord will pay no less than six shillings a day to those who meet his demands.”
“That is three times the going rate for the maids and footmen!”
“Exactly, Mr Mortimer, and they are to be told the conditions on employment. The sight of a single fresh flea-bite is to be sufficient to refuse them.”
“Ridiculous, ma’am!”
Fleas were a part of the human condition, as inevitable as rats in a cellar, as both knew.
“I must tell the girls that they are to meet the same conditions, every day. I am sure that my lord will wish you to speak to the menservants, Mr Mortimer.”
“Lunacy! They will not tolerate such a nonsense. All will be gone at the end of their year!”
“My lord said that I could tell the girls that there was to be an extra nine pounds in their quarter. Two shillings a day more. And he will pay for soap and laundry soda.”
For the bulk of the maids, the eight youngest and least-skilled, that meant a doubling of their wages; that would be a very persuasive argument.
The housekeeper had kept the best till last.
“My lord informs me that he is to have the builders in. They are to construct two bathrooms, one for male, the other for female staff, and every one of them is make use of the facility at least once a week!”
“Beyond belief, ma’am! A bath at
birth and another at death – quite sufficient for the ordinary person in a clean occupation! One might imagine that a farmer, as an example, might wish to wash his person on occasion, but for the general run of folk such extremes are wholly unnecessary!”
“My lord was so good as to inform me that certain medical men believe that human dirt may be the cause of many of the epidemic diseases. Contaminated water, he says, is dangerous.”
“Ridiculous! How can human beings carry in themselves the source of their own ailments? It is a nonsense – my lord has been listening to quacksalvers and the purveyors of expensive patent medicines, unscrupulous but persuasive individuals, ma’am, determined to line their own pockets with other men’s gold.”
They shook their heads gloomily, knowing that they could not afford to lose their posts; my lord might be verging on the eccentric, but he paid well. Mortimer made his stately way to his butler’s pantry and unearthed his private bottle of best cognac; he had second thoughts, put it away again and opened the whisky instead – brandy was for celebrations.
Snow began to fall early in the month, creating, in some minds, the Christmas spirit; the many thousands of street-dwellers thought differently, but their opinions were never consulted.
The family came together in London, soon after the first flakes fell, all having decided quite separately to spend a few extra days in the capital. There was shopping to do and relatives by marriage to visit and old acquaintances to look up, as well as useful business that could be performed face to face with lawyers and such. They met and met, formed parties and patronised the theatres together, and regretted that the Opera House was closed, glad however that there was a circus for the children.
They saw the new queen at a distance, travelling in her carriage; possibly, they thought, progressing to Windsor.
Victorian Dawn (A Poor Man at the Gate Series, Book 12) Page 21
