Victorian Dawn (A Poor Man at the Gate Series, Book 12)

by Andrew Wareham

  “We must, in duty bound, make our bows to Her Majesty. It is incumbent upon Peers of the realm and their close kin, to show their respect to the new Monarch. Baronets as well, husband!”

  Charlotte was correct in all such matters; the others accepted her word as law.

  “When and where, sister? I have no overweening desire to travel to Windsor and lose a whole day in the performance of such a ritual. Who is to give us our orders in the matter?”

  It sounded simple, a matter of courtesy performed at the beginning of every reign, but there were currents of complexity surging beneath the surface of this expression of conventional loyalty.

  Tory peers would not generally wish to present themselves to the throne at the shoulder of Whigs, but they might, by way of passing a message to the Party leaders, perhaps choose the company of politically inactive backwoods peers, or of neutral cross-benchers who sat in the House of Lords and voted on issues according to their conscience or convenience. Beyond that, followers of one faction in the party might not wish to be seen talking to those with loyalties to other would-be leaders, or, conversely, they might seek their company to imply the message that their current patron had not yet rewarded them sufficiently. It would not be wise simply to wander into the next levee without much careful forethought.

  They discussed the matter for days, quietly putting out the word that they intended to show their faces at Court and waiting for the Party bigwigs to bump into them, ‘purely coincidentally, my dear chap!’

  The ladies talked as well, and listened carefully to the morning callers who made social visits to them.

  Robert reluctantly agreed to display himself in Peel’s company; Peel was the leader of the Party and had much to offer for the future and it was only right that he should be seen to have the backing of the family.

  “I still do not like the fellow, Rothwell!”

  “He is intelligent and he has ideas, my lord. I shall never be a member of his government, for being too busy these days, but he knows of my allegiance and yours and will not be inclined to forget us.”

  “Then let it be so. Will there be any interesting lions present?”

  “Rumour insists that Melbourne has produced a German princeling out of his hat, trained and tamed and obedient to command. A likely-looking lad with fine muscles and strong thighs, one is informed, capable of performing all of the functions demanded of a Prince Consort and able, probably, to keep a member of that particular family satisfied in her life.”

  “I must see the poor chap! The man selected for stud duties to the niece of Prinny and Silly Billy needs be a paragon indeed!”

  “They say he is being fed a diet of raw steak, pork chops and oysters to ready him for his functions at Court. A few months of that and he will be raring to go!”

  Robert thought that the levee might well be more amusing than he had expected.

  Sadly, the event was tedious in the extreme. Being a levee, only males were present, other than the Queen and the obligatory Ladies-in-Waiting, and there was little in the way of amusing Society scandal to pick up, and the discussion of politics was limited. None of the politicians present wished to talk over matters of significance in the Queen’s presence, for fear that she might hear more than she should, which was effectively nothing.

  It had been explained to Robert that Her Majesty was not being encouraged to concern herself with ‘the less significant details of government’ – which included virtually everything that might ever be discussed in Parliament.

  It could not last, Robert thought, she could not be held completely apart from government, but it was now certain that the throne could never regain the power it had had in the early days of George III, before he went mad, and that was probably not a bad thing. It was a fortunate sequence of events, he mused; one King mad and then his eldest son dissipated and wracked by debt; the second son, York, an able man of some integrity, dying before the eldest and leaving the succession to the idiot boy of the family, Silly Billy, who had been the merest cypher - a nonentity. Queen Victoria, who might, or might not, be of some ability, would be unable to regain the greater part of the lost ground, particularly if married off to a foreigner.

  Robert took pains to identify the lucky man who was tipped to be the Consort to the Queen. He had already been assured that he would not be named King Consort – Prince was the most he would get, and the whole world knew that princes had no power.

  Young Albrecht was a harmless enough lad, Robert supposed. Tedious; constrained by protocol; not unintelligent; courteous – naturally polite and amiable, in fact; very well trained and, importantly, showing no signs of loyalty to his own dynastic house and land of birth. Better far than one of the Devonshire clan, for instance, who would have sought power for themselves. He would do.

  Peel seemed to agree.

  “Not exactly the man I might have chosen, St Helens! But sufficiently sound for the purpose. Add to that, Her Majesty seems to regard him with some degree of romantic affection, which is an unexpected bonus, one might say. It may certainly restrain some of those impulses one might have feared her to have inherited from her deplorable forbears!”

  “Shades of Catherine the Great, sir?”

  “Quite, St Helens. All very well in St Petersburg, but not quite the thing for Windsor Castle!”

  “One might well have been forced to recommend the evacuation of Eton College in such circumstances, sir!”

  They restrained their laughter and parted better pleased with each other than ever before.

  Robert spent some time in the company of young Mr Michael, the lawyer, realising with some amusement that the ‘young’ gentleman was certainly older than him and had a son sat in his offices, reading for the law. They discussed various matters affecting the family and then touched lightly upon less publicly visible aspects of their business dealings.

  “Moneys transmitted to the Americas, my lord. Specifically, to Washington as a result of the contacts made with, shall we say, sympathetic gentlemen…”

  Robert nodded cautiously. Mr Michael was referring to sums being passed across to leaders of opinion in the North who were in favour of the Special Institution, the delicate term that they found preferable to use when referring to slavery.

  “We are still wholly dependent on cotton from the Southern States, are we not, Mr Michael?”

  “More than nine-tenths of the bales entering British mills come from the Mississippi and the lesser trading ports of the South, sir. There is an amount from the old Sugar Islands as well, and a very slowly increasing trickle from the Levant, from Egypt and the Soudan, but it is fair to say that an end to slavery would see disaster for the cotton industry, and a check to British power. I see no hope of a great expansion of cotton growing outside of America, my lord, and might well recommend that the family should seek to invest in other forms of enterprise.”

  “A growth in iron and coal and the new railways will make sense, and may protect the whole country from the collapse that might come in the cotton industry. Slavery must end one day, after all.”

  “One is forced to agree, my lord. Despite our efforts, there is a rise in Abolitionist sentiment in the North and it might be that we must not be discovered to be funding the pro-slavery people.”

  Such words from Michael constituted a dire warning; he was worried that they might soon be caught out.

  “We might well wish to reconsider our actions, Mr Michael. Have you received advice from any other source?”

  Robert believed Mr Michael to be in contact with some of the gentlemen and offices who provided intelligence and occasionally performed clandestine actions on behalf of government; they could hardly be referred to as ‘services’ or ‘agencies’, being quite remarkably disorganised, to the extent that they often unwittingly spied on each other, but they sometimes knew things that others did not.

  “The good Mr Smith has finally gone to his reward, my lord, and has been succeeded by a gentleman called Mr Smith, which is only to be
expected in the nature of things – they do like their little games and codes and subterfuges, my lord!”

  Robert smiled, obligingly.

  “There is reason to suppose, my lord, that at least one of our pensioners in the States, stricken by age and in fear of meeting his Maker, has spoken incautiously about the sources of some part of his income, and that we are just to the least degree blown upon. Fortunately, the recipient of his confidences has used them to blackmail us.”

  Robert was puzzled by this comment, could not imagine what might be so fortunate in becoming the victim of extortion.

  “Far better that he should demand money of us, my lord, than disclose all he knows to Abolitionist newspapers or politicians. He has been paid a little and has been informed in no uncertain terms that, should he become greedy, we know where he lives and who are his family. We will pay, he believes, while he is sensible; if he should become incautious in his demands, then we will respond with a horrifying violence.”

  “I was not aware of that aspect of the business, Mr Michael. I suspect I might have preferred to remain ignorant.”

  “There are those who might suggest that ignorance is far the wiser course, my lord, in all clandestine matters. I must, I think, recommend that we wind down this aspect of our relationship with the States. It was a useful policy while it worked; now is time to wash our hands of it. A year or two to distance ourselves and then we may discover that certain newspaper editors have been in the habit of taking bribes to support various political proposals – and we might well be in a position to, ah, ‘blow the gaff on them’, as it were, thus conclusively demonstrating our own innocence in the matter. Those who are in the know will not be fooled, but the great mass of the American voting public will be properly shocked and we shall be in the clear. Leave it with me, my lord – it is not a very important matter, after all!”

  “I might have considered that the prosperity of the cotton industry was vital to the whole country, Mr Michael.”

  The lawyer spread his arms in a wide, all-embracing gesture, more than a simple shrug.

  “It was, my lord; it is still to an extent, but less so. Even ten years ago, perhaps one half of our wealth was tied up in Lancashire’s prosperity, but not now. The railways are enabling the whole country to expand, my lord. Given another ten years and there will be coalfields and iron manufacturies across the whole of Britain, I suspect; there will be steam engines in every town. Cotton will be important, certainly, but not the total arbiter of our prosperity. Times change, my lord, and the rare wealth of yesterday is the commonplace bread-earner of tomorrow.”

  Robert was not at all certain that he liked the idea of unending change, of utter mutability.

  “You are to say that there is nothing certain in our world, Mr Michael? That all may be different next year?”

  “Exactly, my lord. Everything will be subject to alteration, except, perhaps, the need for soldiers and sailors and ships and guns – I doubt that we shall ever dwell in a world of peace and universal love.”

  “A good point! Mr Joseph is examining the possibility of casting great guns in larger bores than at the moment used. He has spoken to me of the possibility of rifled guns throwing a shell of one hundred pounds over a distance of as much as ten thousand yards. Such guns could perhaps be transported on the railway from one part of our shores to another to act as coastal defence pieces, and they could be placed on pivots aboard large steamships. It is not impossible, he says, that they might be towed behind steam traction engines, in support of our soldiers.”

  Mr Michael was impressed, could see many possibilities of profit in such pieces.

  “The manufacture of great guns has long been a profitable endeavour, my lord. The Carron Works, as an example, have made a good living from their cannon and especially the carronade, named for them. It might well be the case that the family should consider the creation of a gun works, my lord.”

  “In England, or overseas?”

  “Strictly in Great Britain, my lord. It is in the highest degree unlikely that there will be war between England and America, so it might be possible to create a works on one of the American coalfields, but there could be an embarrassment even so, was, for example, there to be a conflict between the States and Spain.”

  Spain had almost no industry and little prospect of any developing; any modern ships or guns in the hands of the Spanish would have been sold to them by another of the European powers, very probably England.

  “We would not wish to build manufacturing facilities in Russia, and Austria would have no welcome for such excrescences of modernity while the little states of the Germanies lack the stability one might look for…”

  “Quite, my lord. As for the Ottomans – well, they are a laughing-stock! Denmark is too small and Sweden is still mired in feudalism. That would leave only the French – and a war with France is always a possibility. An armaments manufacturer must remain firmly based in England, my lord.”

  Mr Michael’s words undoubtedly mirrored the opinion of those government servants who were listened to; he could not be ignored.

  “We are to have a family meeting here in London over Christmas, Mr Michael. I suspect we may well take the opportunity to set our course for the next few years while we are all here. I think we shall perhaps give serious thought to the creation of a manufacturer of great guns, exclusively for sale in England.”

  The clan arrived in London, those from Lancashire sweeping in by train while the family from Thingdon Hall made a two-day journey by chaise of less than half the distance. There was much complaint about the winter roads and an acceptance that the railway had some virtues.

  “Was they to provide heating in their carriages one might be even happier with a journey by rail, gentlemen!”

  The point was noted and would be raised with the proprietors.

  They assembled in Mount Street for the formal dinner, the occasion that was to celebrate and reaffirm the closeness of the family ties, attendance at the dining table limited to the three brothers, both sisters and the Dowager, together with wives and husband. The juveniles were gathered together in the ballroom wing, eating and partying in the dining room reserved for company; the piano had been tuned and the adolescents would be permitted to dance after dinner, a high treat for the females among them though the young males were less enthusiastic.

  All was of the most formal for the adults: a footman, acting as a personal waiter, was to stand behind each chair, the butler, Mortimer, to one side, observing all and in unobtrusive command, watching the temporary staff particularly. The most senior of the existing footmen was placed in the scullery where the used plates and dishes would be returned, his function solely to count in the silver cutlery; a fish-knife could easily fetch sixpence from a fence and many of the agency waiters were lucky to see three days of work in a week.

  The chef scurried around his kitchen, endeavouring to watch at each range and preparation table and allow nothing to leave that did not bear his personal touch; he was nearing the point of nervous hysteria, his normal state on any out of the ordinary evening. The housekeeper, far less involved than butler or chef, managed simply to make a nuisance of herself, in the way of those who were actually busy, but it suited her sense of self-importance. The additional menservants and maids did all that they could to be seen to be willing and efficient – there was always the possibility that if they stood out then they might be offered a permanent place, a position with a room to share with only two or three others and regular meals and no rent to find. For casual staff a place for life was their dream, and they all knew of a few fortunates who had found one.

  The agency staff lived in the rookeries, in the tenements, ancient houses often with whole families sharing a single room or cellar; they tried to keep a clean uniform in conditions of squalor, the dwelling place of lice, fleas and rats uncounted, the breeding-ground of every disease known in the capital. It was inevitable that they could not be wholly successful.

  Soap
was expensive and water hard to come by; most of the rookeries were served by standpipes which ran at most for two or three hours of a day, sometimes only on one or two days of the week.

  There was an undercurrent of pestilence in London; at any given moment there was an outbreak of infectious disease somewhere among the million and more people crowded together without access to medical treatment. Typhoid and scarlet fever were never wholly absent; diphtheria killed children every year; influenza was present every winter; the mass of the population seemed to have a degree of resistance, sufficient that the ordinary killers never quite became epidemics, but sometimes plagues arose and the death rates rose to noticeable levels.

  This year it was the turn of epidemic typhus, the gaol fever, carried by lice and brought into the house by a temporary maid hired to assist with the extra bedrooms upstairs. Her brother had been taken up after an outburst of drunken brawling on the streets and was awaiting trial in the common cell of the parish clink; he might be left three or four months, lucky to see a bowl of skilly a day from the parish funds. In common with all other remand prisoners who had a family, a meal was brought in every day so that he might not, literally, starve. The food went in; the lice came out…

  The dinner was a success, the chef excelling himself and none of the temporary staff failing in their duties. Soup was served without spills; none of the fish slipped from their plates; the plump partridges had been hung to perfection; the venison was precisely on the gamey side of rare; none of the cream was off and the trifles and other confections were of the finest. The butler had selected his wines exactly and the port that followed for the menfolk was agreed to be as good as any had imbibed.

  All was well with a world that could feed them so lavishly, so they all agreed.

  Conversation as the port circulated was light, all business eschewed, the main topic the new Queen and her court; there was a general agreement that she was a dullard and that her regime would tend towards the respectable.