Born To Privilege (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 3)

by Andrew Wareham

  On land there had been a number of atrocities, including the burning of Washington. It was conveniently forgotten in America that this had been in retaliation for the American burning of cities in Canada during their brief invasion and public opinion amongst the newspaper reading classes was outraged.

  The moneyed men, obviously enough, were very happy to do business with the British, but this could only be achieved from any of the larger cities. Showing a British face out in the backwoods would be unwise and Robert intended therefore to make his way to New York where he was assured he would be able to make all the deals he wished.

  It occurred to Tom that New York was still not that vast a town and that the Honourable Robert Andrews might just be prominent enough to draw the attention of Colonel Miller, the noted political boss, his wife and his eldest son, a young man in his thirties at a quick count, no doubt with a family of his own and prominent in some way in the community.

  “Will he be safe, Thomas?”

  “I do not know, my love, but he must make his own way out there – I cannot order him home like a little boy being told to come out of the rain. He has been told that he has reached man’s estate, so, like it or not, he must take a man’s responsibility for himself. All we can do is worry. Talking of which, what has James decided?”

  “Rifles – he is only fifteen, of course, and the law now states that a young man may not become cornet or ensign before he reaches sixteen years, but that does not matter to us and he may join at any time. The sooner the better, I suspect, for he will do no good at school now.”

  Tom nodded and made a brief note for Michael.

  “What of Joseph, Thomas?”

  Tom was not aware that there was any question to be answered relating to his third son. An intelligent, quiet boy, forever tinkering in his little workshop, he hardly noticed him from one day to the next, apart from a companionable grin when they bumped into each other.

  Verity explained her son’s ambitions and hopes, making clear her qualified support for them.

  Tom was shocked to discover that he was not immortal – he would die one day and the world would carry on without him and appropriate arrangements should be made for this eventuality. His first thought was to say that there was plenty of time still, he did not expect to die quite yet, but it occurred to him that he had known several men in his lifetime who had not expected to pass away on the day they did. He wondered for a fleeting moment whether he would meet his late antagonists again when he reached the afterlife, if there was such a thing – he hoped not, they might still be rather cross.

  “Robert will be familiar with both the money and land sides of the estate, I would expect. James will be separate, a soldier knowing nothing else. Joseph to be a manufacturer and inventor and manager of the firms, you say? It would make good sense in several ways – otherwise, as you say, the family will have no knowledge of the source of its wealth, and would very soon lose it. On the other hand, he would have to stand in line to inherit a substantial proportion himself to be fair to him.”

  They debated the question of carving up the estate – neither wholeheartedly approved. Power and wealth were inseparable and to reduce Robert’s inheritance was to lessen him in the short term at least, though he would still be far richer than most. His sons, however, would probably thank them for their forethought…

  “What exactly does Joseph want, Verry?”

  They decided to talk to the boy before they made any hard and fast decisions, regarding themselves as very enlightened and modern-thinking parents for doing so.

  “What do I want to do, sir? You mean, sir, that I might make a choice of my own?”

  Joseph’s voice cracked, slipped from baritone to soprano in mid-sentence. All three laughed.

  “Yes, my son – you are growing up now, must soon start thinking about your future. Indeed, I understand you have done so?”

  “Steam, sir! I wish to become an engineer, and then a manufacturer of steam ships and barges and steam coaches on rails. You have heard of Trevithick, sir?”

  Tom had – with interests in coal and iron in Wales due to a partnership with his wife’s uncle, Lord Frederick Masters, he had observed Trevithick’s endeavours there with sceptical interest. Steam locomotion demanded higher pressures than the current boiler could safely supply so the engineer had a choice of an under-powered, slow, unreliable locomotive or of one which would travel much faster and explode at frequent intervals. He was unconvinced. He said as much.

  “Yes, sir – that is my point, exactly! We need a new sort of boiler, we must invent one! I am sure, sir, that the answer is to bring smaller amounts of water to the boil in a number of separate boiling compartments. The boiler we use at the moment is no more than a big kettle, sir. What if we had twenty or thirty of little kettles, sir?”

  “I do not know, Joseph.”

  “Neither do I, sir. But if I learnt about iron and steel and how best to use them, and the nature of steam and how to calculate its strength, sir, then I would know, or could find out for myself.”

  “You are taught nothing of this at school, Joseph?”

  “No, Mama!” James sneered contemptuously at the tiny-minded schoolmasters, showing all of the normal respect of youth for the passé. “Latin and Greek, and if you are very clever, Hebrew. I will start Hebrew lessons next year, they tell me, a great source of delight to me and them! There is nothing else to be learnt, so they say, or, if there is, it is not worth knowing – not fit for a gentleman!”

  He was third son, Tom reflected, he did not have to be a gentleman, he could make his own way in the world instead.

  “A man from Scotland, then, Joseph,” Verity said. “They have a different system of education there, I am told. It is possible to learn the Mathematics and be taught the sciences there.”

  Tom had not heard that to be the case, but he knew that the great bulk of engineers and road-makers were from Scotland.

  “I shall send a letter to the school, Joseph, thanking them kindly and informing them that neither of Lord Andrews’ sons will be returning to their care. It will take a few weeks to arrange a tutor for you – what do you propose to do for the while?”

  “Visit at St Helens for a month or two, sir, if I may. Sir Joseph will be happy for me to inspect his mills, I am sure, sir.”

  “Not ‘Sir Joseph’, Joseph – your godfather will be Lord Star within the month.”

  “Oh, good, sir! I know he will be very pleased, and Thomas will be happy as well.”

  “A letter from Patrick Plunkett, Thomas, announcing his intention of ‘doing himself the honour’ of paying us a visit, if we should be in residence next week.”

  “We shall be, I have no plans to be elsewhere, my dear. Where is he? Was his regiment at the battle?”

  She passed the letter across, shaking her head sadly.

  “Brevet-major – ‘dead man’s shoes’, he says. Forced to send his papers in however, invalided as a result of wounds, he can no longer sit a horse for any length of time or ‘at more than a careful walk’.”

  Tom read through the brief note, winced in sympathy.

  “Left leg, trapped in the stirrup when his horse was shot underneath him and broken inside the knee. That hurts! And probably will never stop hurting for the rest of his life, poor chap. Still, he would have sent his papers in when he inherited, no doubt. Now he must do everything a year or two earlier than he had intended. He must marry, of course, and soon – wounded, he must accept that he may die young like poor Major Hunt.”

  Hunt had caught a cold of a winter ten years earlier, had died within days of a congestion of the lungs, his constitution enfeebled by his injury in service. His eldest son had only recently entered into his inheritance, the largest landed income in the county, it was thought.

  Patrick had been in London for a few weeks, selling his commission and disposing of his string of hunters at Tattersalls horse sales – he would no longer ride to hounds. He did not quite know what he would do with hi
mself, in fact, and it was clear that he would welcome advice, that that was in substantial part why he had come to them.

  A soldier in his mid-thirties, he had no interest in the political world, had in fact a strong contempt for all of the breed that inhabited it, but he wondered if perhaps he should not take some part in the governance of Ireland, that sad, benighted country that was to a great extent his own. As a scion of the Ascendancy he was a Protestant, could be nothing else, and so saw himself as English by interest and inclination. He suggested that he might be able to do some good in encouraging the peasantry to learn a civilised language and eschew the superstitions of Rome.

  It was very tactfully pointed out to him that this would be the work of generations, should be undertaken very gradually indeed for fear of triggering another rebellion. Eventually the Romans would bring about their own fall, so out of tune with the Modern Age as they were. Perhaps he could assist the process best by bringing modernity to the backwaters of the Celtic bogs.

  Canals to bring the markets to the countryside, to make it possible to grow wheat and beef and bring cheese, for example, fresh to the ports to sell in England. Shipyards, perhaps, certainly mills for the linen cloth, possibly saddleries and tanneries to add value to their hides. There were many things that could be done with even a few thousands invested and every working-man with a well-paid job was another voice for peace and stability.

  He limped with his stick from gig to the iron-works on the Thingdon Estate, stared uncomprehendingly at the apparent chaos of men and machinery. Tom explained to him how the ironstone came from the quarry, the coke from the trackway and met at the puddling furnaces, the resulting iron then going under the hammer to produce good quality wrought which in turn was then worked into iron ploughs and harrows and hay-rakes and wagon furniture.

  “Working night and day, Major Plunkett, six full shifts and a part-crew in on the Sabbath to clean and tidy and keep the furnaces warm as necessary. Hard work, but well-paid – not a man takes home less than sixpence an hour, and the most skilled see twice that! On the farm they can earn, all told, tied cottage included, a pound a week at most, and that only in the sixteen hour days of harvestide. There is a list of thirty names in the book at the office of young men who wish to take a place here when one comes available. All done strictly above-board – a boy’s father will bring him along when he is twelve and leaving Dame-school and introduce him to Mr Cairncross who runs the works. Provided he is fit and healthy and well-mannered and not too stupid, his name is then written in and when his turn comes he will be called in and given his chance.”

  “Any father, my lord?”

  “Well, he must be known to us, be from the estate or the works or one of the tenants of Grafham or Hunt or Parker. We look after our own, obviously.”

  “And that also helps create stability amongst your people, my lord. What will you do when the soldiers and sailors start coming home, my lord? I have heard the figure of two hundreds of thousands of men under arms and in excess of the peace-time establishment, and that is just the beginning, I understand.”

  Tom whistled. “So many!”

  “And a hell of a lot of them Irish, my lord!”

  “They must emigrate, Major Plunkett – there is no choice. They must take up new land in America or Canada or Botany Bay.”

  Plunkett left to visit his estate at Ely, intending then to travel cross-country to Holyhead in the north of Wales and then make the shorter sea-crossing. It was time, he said, that he went home – he had been about to take his first leave in three years when ‘Boney’ had escaped from Elba and his parents would have almost forgotten his face, and his sister.

  “She has not remarried, Major Plunkett?” Verity asked.

  “No. She was wed three months when her husband received his sailing orders and went off to the Mediterranean station and never returned. He was twenty years older than her and the marriage was more of the two estates than of her heart, as far as I could tell from the letters I received. She bore her son some eight months after he left and seems to have been quite content to have brought him up, wanting no other to bear him company. The little I have heard of Captain Nash suggests him to have been a hard man to his tenants and little liked among the rest of the county. I suspect she may have discovered small love for the married state in the company of such a one.”

  “Joseph, a letter from Lord Star who looks forward to welcoming you in his house as soon as you can get there. Wilkins’ second groom, Archibald, will go with you for the journey and will arrange post-horses and changes. Overnight in Stafford if possible, that will depend on the weather, of course. Lord Star will arrange for you to spend time at Roberts and at the New Works as well as in his spinning and weaving mills and at the docks. You have not been down a mine yet – this will provide you with the opportunity. Talk to everyone while you are there – but listen more than you speak! I want you to write a diary every night of your visit – not just a record but your thoughts as well – deal with the interesting things you come across, not just steam but people. What will Thomas do now that he is heir to a barony? How is Bob getting on as a farmer – you know he invalided out of his regiment, his chest letting him down and campaigning too much for him; is he well now? Jenny is married to her squire, and I believe very happily so, and you probably will not see Matthew, he was expecting to take his frigate to India and then to China, but Mark is a barrister in practice in the north and living in Manchester and Luke is minister to a chapel in Wigan and George is working for his father in Star Spinners. Elizabeth is the local belle, I understand, and Mary is about the same age as you and at home, of course.”

  “You did not mention John and Henry, sir.”

  “And neither will you, my son, unless Lord Star or Lady Star should speak of them.” Tom surveyed the puzzled face in front of him, realised he would have to explain.

  “John is what, twenty-three or so, and has not been seen at home for the past five years. I do not know the exact cause of the breach with his parents but believe that he borrowed a hundred pounds from Thomas and took passage overseas – what to do, I know not, though I assume he went to America. Henry is some three years the younger and did much the same a couple of years ago – again, I do not know why. Possibly he went to join his brother, his parents certainly hope so, but perhaps he took off on his own. Obviously, you must be tactful in such circumstances, and you must know nothing except Lord Star chooses to tell you.”

  Joseph nodded, very pleased to be treated as an adult, his discretion recognised.

  A note arrived from Michael, attached to a letter that had been refolded and sealed and marked, ‘Personal to Lord Andrews’ in Michael’s own handwriting. He said that the enclosure was self-explanatory.

  The letter was addressed from Corfe and the writer, Thomas Burley, regretted to inform Mr Michael that on his return from Flanders he had found his mother on her death-bed. She had been ill for two years, as he knew, but was still wholly sound in mind, though much reduced in body. She had, at the end, made a certain disclosure to her son, as a result of which he was anxious to know more of his parentage. He was also somewhat disturbed by the lack of any Will and the uncertain nature of her private income, and therefore his. Clearly, if his mother’s income had died with her, then he must consider his own future.

  Bastards were debarred from commissioned rank in Army or Navy – officially. In practice, of course, the Officers Messes were full of them, but not acknowledged, the Army being a very convenient place to dispose of potential embarrassments. Captain Burley would not expect any public recognition from his father, and his acquaintance in Dorset might also be upset by such an event. His rank suggested that he might soon be considering marriage and the ‘bar sinister’ might well be seen as a handicap by a bride’s father. Additionally it was almost impossible for a soldier to live on his pay, particularly when posted in England in peacetime.

  From Tom’s personal point of view, while he had never seen the young man and the
re could be no link of affection, yet he was beyond question his responsibility, he must at least regularise his financial obligations. It would be better, probably, for Verity to remain unaware of his existence, it might upset her, but Robert must be informed, if only because he would, sooner or later, become aware of the regular payments out of the family coffers.

  It would only be fair to Captain Burley to meet him, to discuss his future face-to-face and to make arrangements that might be better uncommitted to paper. The young gentleman might, for example, need a family tree on some occasion and, whilst a very good one could easily be invented and attested, Mr Michael might prefer there to be no reference to his creativity that could be unearthed on an inconvenient later day. They would need a discreet location, a place where both would be unknown – he wrote a brief instruction to Michael.

  Tom sat by the bow-window of his private sitting-room in the County Arms at Winchester, watching the figures walking up the hill and wondering whether his boy would be instantly recognisable – a resemblance to Mary, perhaps, though he could hardly remember her face after so many years. There! Just crossing the road.

  A much stronger likeness to himself, in fact – there would be no question of their relationship if they were put together in public. Tall, powerfully built, a bull chest and narrow waist, heavy thighs; upright, military bearing; auburn hair, like his mother, fair colouration – he must have sunburnt easily overseas; square face and strong chin. Not conventionally handsome, certainly, but a man who would draw attention whatever company he was in. A good thing they had not met in London!

  A waiter brought the young man upstairs, passed him into Brown’s hands to announce.

  “Captain Burley, my lord!”