The crisis had polarized the nation. At this juncture, the middle-classes, terrified of the prospect of anarchy, made their own move and came down on the side of the Radicals. A tax-strike was declared, to force Wellington from office; there was a deliberate run on the banks, in which merchants demanded and hoarded gold specie, bringing the national economy to a grinding halt.
In Bristol, after three days of major riots, Wellington ordered the Army to put down "Jacobinism" by any means necessary. In the resulting massacre three hundred people, including three prominent Radical M.P.'s, lost their lives. When the news of the massacre reached him, a furious Byron, now calling himself "Citizen Byron," and appearing without coat or necktie at a London rally, called for a general strike. This rally was also attacked by Tory cavalry, with bloody results, but Byron eluded capture. Two days later the nation was under martial-law.
In future, the Duke of Wellington would turn his considerable military genius against his own countrymen. The first uprisings against the Tory Regime—as it must now be called—were swiftly and efficiently put down, while garrison troops ruled all major cities. The Army remained loyal to the victor of Waterloo, and the aristocracy, to their discredit, also threw in their lot with the Duke.
But the Radical Party elite had escaped apprehension, abetted by a well-organized covert network of Party faithful. By the spring of '31, any hope of a swift military solution was over. Mass hangings and deportations were answered by sullen resistance and vicious guerrilla reprisals. The Regime had destroyed any vestige of popular support, and England was in the throes of class-war.
–The Time of Troubles: A Popular History, 1912, BY W. E. PRATCHETT, Ph.D., F.R.S.
Somber Melodies of the Automatic Organs
[This private letter of July 1855 conveys Benjamin Disraeli's eye-witness impressions of the funeral of Lord Byron. The text derives from a tape-spool emitted by a Colt & Maxwell Typing Engine. The addressee is unknown.]
Lady Annabella Byron entered on the arm of her daughter, looking very frail. She seemed a little dazed. Both mother and daughter were very worn and white, at the end of their forces. Then a funeral march was played—very fine—the panmelodium sounding splendid amid the somber melodies of the automatic organs.
Then the processions arrived. The Speaker first, proceeded by heralds with white staves but in mourning-dress. The Speaker was quite splendid. He walked slowly and firmly, very impassive and dignified; an almost Egyptianate face. The mace was carried before him, and he wore a gold-laced gown, very fine. Then the Ministers; Colonial Secretary, very dapper indeed. Viceroy of India looks quite recovered from his malaria. Chairman of the Commission on Free Trade looked the wickedest of the human race, as if writhing under a load of disreputable guilt.
Then the House of Lords. The Lord Chancellor absolutely grotesque, and made more so by the tremendous figure of the Sergeant-at-Arms with a silver chain and large, white silk bows on his shoulders for mourning. Lord Babbage, pale and upright, most dignified. Young Lord Huxley, lean, light on his feet, very splendid. Lord Scowcroft, the shiftiest person I ever saw, in threadbare clothes like a sexton.
The coffin came solemnly along, the bearers holding feebly onto it. The Prince Consort Albert foremost among them, with the oddest gnawing look—duty, dignity, and fear. He was kept waiting, I hear, just in the doorway, and muttered in German about the Stink.
When the coffin entered, the widowed Iron Lady looked a thousand years old.
The Widowed Iron Lady
So now the world falls into the hands of the little men, the hypocrites and clerks.
Look at them. They have not the mettle for the great work. They will botch it.
Oh, even now I could set it all to rights, if only the fools would listen to sense, but I could never speak as you did, and they do not listen to women. You were their Great Orator, a puffed and painted mountebank, without one real idea in your head—no gift for logic, nothing but your posturing wickedness, and yet they listened to you; oh, how they did listen. You wrote your silly books of verse, you praised Satan and Cain and adultery, and every kind of wicked foolishness, and the fools could not get enough of it. They knocked down the bookshop doors. And women threw themselves at your feet, armies of them. I never did. But then, you married me.
I was innocent then. From the days of our courtship, some moral instinct in me revolted at your sly teasing, your hateful double-entendres and insinuations, but I did see qualities of promise in you, and ignored my doubts. How swiftly you revived them, as my husband.
You cruelly used my innocence; you made me a party to sodomy before I even knew the nature of that sin; before I learned the hidden words for the unspeakable. Pederastia, manustupration, fellatio—you were so steeped in unnatural vice that you could spare not even the marriage-bed. You polluted me, even as you had polluted your own hare-brained fool of a sister.
If society had learned the tenth of what I knew, you would have been driven from England like a leper. Back to Greece, back to Turkey and your catamites.
How easily, then, might I have ruined you, and very nearly did, to spite you, for it vexed me sorely that you did not know, or care to know, the depth of my conviction. I sought refuge in my mathematics, then, and kept to silence, wishing still to be a good wife in the eyes of society, for I had uses to which to put you, and great work to do, and no means with which to do it, save through my husband. For I had glimpsed the true path toward the greatest good for the greatest number, a good so great it made a trifle of my own humble wishes.
Charles taught it me. Decent, brilliant, unworldly Charles, your opposite in every way; so full of great plans, and the pure light of mathematical science, but so utterly impolitic, so entirely unable to suffer fools gladly. He had the gifts of a Newton, but he could not persuade.
I brought you together. At first you hated him, and mocked him behind his back, and me as well, for showing you a truth beyond your comprehension. I persisted; begged you to think of honor, of service, of your own glory, of the future of the child in my womb, Ada, that strange child. (Poor Ada, she does not look well, she has too much of you in her.)
But you cursed me for a cold-hearted shrew and retired in a drunken temper. For the sake of that greater good, I painted a smile on my face and descended open-eyed into the very Pit. How it pained me, that vile greasy probing and animal nastiness; but I let you do as you liked, and forgave you for it, and petted and kissed you for it, as if I liked it. And you wept like a child, and were grateful, and talked of love undying and united souls, until you tired of that sort of talk. And then, to hurt me, you told me dreadful, shocking things, to disgust me and frighten me away, but I would no longer allow you to frighten me; I was steeled to anything, that night. So I forgave you, forgave and forgave, until at last you could find no further confession even in the foulest dregs of your soul, and at last you had no pretense left, nothing left to say.
I imagine that after that night you became frightened of me, perhaps, a little frightened, and that did you a great deal of good, I think. It never hurt me so again, after that night. I taught myself to play all your "pretty little games," and to win them. That was the price I paid, to put your beast in harness.
If there is a Judge of Men in another world, though I no longer believe that, no, not in my heart, and yet at times, evil times, times like these—I fancy I sense a never-closing, all-embracing Eye, and feel the awful pressure of its dreadful comprehension. And if there be a Judge, milord husband, then do not think to gull him. No, do not boast of your magnificent sins and demand damnation—for how little you knew, over the years. You, the greatest Minister of the greatest Empire in history—you flinched, you were feeble, you dodged every consequence—
Are these tears?
We should not have killed so many…
We, I say, but it was I, I who sacrificed my virtue, my faith, my salvation, all burnt to black ashes on the altar of your ambition. For all your bold trumpery talk of Corsairs and Bonaparte, you had
no iron in you; you wept even at the thought of hanging miserable Luddites, and could not bear to chain away vicious mad Shelley, until I forced your hand. And when reports came from our bureaux, hinting, requesting, then demanding the right to eliminate the enemies of England, it was I who read them, I who covertly weighed lives in the balance, and I who signed your name, while you ate and drank and joked with those men you called your friends.
And now these fools who bury you will brush me aside as if I were nothing, had accomplished nothing, simply because you are gone. You, their sounding-brass, their idol of paint and dyed hair. The truth, the dreadful slime-entangled roots of history, vanish now without trace. The truth is buried with your gilt sarcophagus.
I must stop thinking in this manner. I am weeping. They think me old and foolish. Was not every civil evil we committed repaid, repaid ten-fold for the public good?
Oh Judge, hear me. Oh Eye, search the depths of my soul. If I am guilty, then you must forgive me. I took no pleasure in what I had to do. I swear unto you: I took no pleasure in it.
The Master Emeritus Recalls Wellington
The reddish glow of enfeebled gas-light. The rhythmic, echoing clank and screech of the Brunel Tunneling Torpedo. Thirty-six cork-screw teeth of best Birmingham steel gnaw with relentless vigor into a reeking seam of ancient London clay.
Master Sapper Joseph Pearson, at his ease at the mid-day meal, feeds himself a congealed wedge of gravy-thick meat-pie from a hinged tin box. "Aye, I met the great Mallory," he says, voice echoing from arching whale-ribs of riveted cast-iron. "We warn't exactly introduced, like, but he was Leviathan Mallory, right-enough, for I seen his phiz in the penny-papers. He stood as close to me as I am to you now, lad. 'Lord Jefferies?' the Leviathan says to me, all surprised and angry, 'I know Jefferies! The fookin' bastard should be censured for fraud!' "
Master Pearson grins in triumph, red light glinting from a gold earring, a gold tooth. "And damme if that savant Jefferies didn't catch every kind of hell, once the Stink had passed. Leviathan Mallory took a proper hand in that chastisement, sure enough. He's one of Nature's noblemen. Leviathan Mallory is."
"I seen that brontosaur," says 'Prentice David Waller, nodding, eyes bright. "That's a fine thing!"
"I myself was workin' the shaft in '54, when they dug up them elephant teeth." Master Pearson, rubber-booted feet dangling from the second-story platform of the excavation-shaft, shifts on his damp-proofed mat of coir and burlap, and yanks a split of champagne from a pocket of his excavation-gear. "French fizz, Davey-lad. Your first time down; ye got to have a taste of this."
"That ain't proper, is it, sir? 'Gainst the book."
Pearson wrenches the cork loose, no pop, no gush of foam. He winks. "Hell, lad, it's your first time down; won't never be another first time." Pearson tosses sugary dregs of strong tea from his tin cup, fills it to the brim with champagne.
"It's gone flat," 'Prentice Waller mourns.
Pearson laughs, rubbing a burst vein in his fleshy nose. "It's the pressure, lad. Wait till ye get topside. It goes off right inside yer. You'll fart like an ox."
'Prentice Waller sips, with some caution. An iron bell rings, above them. "Chamber coming down," Pearson says, hastily corking the bottle. He stuffs it back into a pocket, gulps the rest of the cup, wipes his mouth.
A bullet-shaped cage descends, passing with cloacal slowness through a membrane of heavy waxed leather. There are hisses, creaks, as the cage touches bottom.
Two men emerge. The Chief Foreman wears a helmet, digging-gear, and leather apron. With him, carrying a brass dark-lantern, is a tall, white-haired man in a black tailcoat and black satin cravat, a kerchief of black silk crepe about his polished top-hat. In the red light of the tunnel, a pigeon's-egg diamond, or perhaps a ruby, glints at the old man's throat. Like the Chief Foreman, his trousered legs are swathed in knee-high boots of india-rubber.
"The Grand Master Miner Emeritus," Pearson gasps in a single breath, and scrambles at once to his feet. Waller leaps up as well.
The two of them stand at attention as the Grand Master strolls beneath them, up the tunnel toward the Torpedo's massive digging-face. He does not glance up, takes no notice of them, but speaks with cool authority to the Foreman. He examines bolts, seams, and grouting with the stabbing beam of his bull's-eye lantern. The lantern has no handle, for the Grand Master carries the hot brass caught in a sleek iron hook which protrudes from an empty sleeve.
"But that's a queer way to dress, ain't it?" whispers young Waller.
"He's still in mourning," Pearson whispers.
"Ah," says the 'prentice. He watches the Grand Master walk on a bit. "Still?"
"He knew Lord Byron dead-familiar like, the Grand Master did. Knew Lord Babbage too! In the Time o' Troubles—when they was running from Wellington's Tory police! They warn't no Lordships then—not proper Rad Lords, anyway, just rebels and agitators, like, with a price on their heads. The Grand Master hid 'em out down a digging once—a reg'lar Party headquarters, it was. The Rad Lords never forgot the great favors he done for 'em. That's why we're the greatest of Radical unions."
"Ah."
"That's a great man, Davey! Master of iron, a great master of blasting-powder… They don't make 'em like him, today."
"So—he must be nigh eighty now, eh?"
"Still hale and hearty."
"Could we get down, sir, d'ye think—could I see him up close, like? Maybe shake his famous hook!"
"All right, lad—but on your dignity now. No bad words."
They climb down to the bare planks at the base of the tunnel.
As they follow the Grand Master, the gnawing rumble of the Torpedo changes abruptly. The Torpedo's crew leaps up, for such a change means trouble—quicksand, a vein of water, or worse. Pearson and his 'prentice break into a shuffling run toward the digging-face.
Shavings of soft black filth begin to pour from the sharp iron spirals of the thirty-six twisting teeth, falling in greasy clods to the flat-carts of the carriage-ramp. From within the black soil of the digging-face come little muffled pops of old embedded gas-pockets, weak as Pearson's enfeebled champagne-cork. No deadly rush of water, though; no slurry of quicksand. They inch forward warily, gazing after the sharp white beam of the Grand Master's lantern.
Knobs of hardened yellow show amid greenish-black muck. "Bones, is it?" says a workman, wiping his nose at a smell of soured dust. "Fossils, like…"
Bones pour forth in a broken torrent as the Torpedo's hydraulics lurch in reaction, pressing it forward into the softening mass. Human bones.
"A cemetery!" Pearson cries. "We've hit a churchyard!"
But the tunnel is too deep for that, and there are too many bones, bones tangled thick as the branches of a fallen forest, in a deep promiscuous mass, and mixed of a sudden with a thin and deadly reek, of long-buried lime and sulphur.
"Plague pit!" the Chief Foreman cries in terror, and the men fall back, stumbling. There is a lurch, and a hiss of steam as the Foreman shuts down the Torpedo.
The Grand Master has not moved.
He stands quietly, regarding the work of the teeth.
He puts his lamp aside, and reaches into the heap of spoil. He dabbles in it with his shining hook, and has something up by one eyehole. A skull.
"Ah, then," he says, his deep voice ringing in the sudden utter silence, "ye poor damn' bastard."
The Gaming Lady Is Bad Luck
"The Gaming Lady is bad luck to those that know her. When a poor night at the wagering-machines has emptied her purse, her jewels are carried privately into Lombard Street, and Fortune is tempted yet again with a sum from my lady's pawnbroker! Then she sells off her wardrobe as well, to the grief of her maids; stretches her credit amongst those she deals with, pawns her honor to her intimates, in vain hope to recover her losses!
"The passions suffer no less by this gaming-fever than the understanding and the imagination. What vivid, unnatural hope and fear, joy and anger, sorrow and discontent, burst out all at once
upon a roll of the dice, a turn of the card, a run of the shining gurneys! Who can consider without indignation that all those womanly affections, which should have been consecrated to children and husband, are thus vilely prostituted and thrown away. I cannot but be grieved when I see the Gaming Lady fretting and bleeding inwardly from such evil and unworthy obsessions; when I behold the face of an angel agitated by the heart of a fury!
"It is divinely ordered that almost everything which corrupts the soul, must also decay the body. Hollow eyes, haggard looks, and pale complexion are the natural indications of a female gamester. Her morning sleeps cannot repair her sordid midnight watchings. I have looked long and hard upon the face of the Gaming Lady. Yes, I have watched her well. I have seen her earned off half-dead from Crockford's gambling-hell, at two o'clock in the morning, looking like a specter amid a flare of wicked gas-lamps—
"Pray resume your seat, sir. You are in the House of God. Is that remark to be taken as a threat, sir? How dare you. These are dark times, grave times indeed! I tell you, sir, as I tell this congregation, as I will tell all the world, that I have seen her, I have witnessed your Queen of Engines at her vile dissipations—
"Help me! Stop him! Stop him! Oh dear Jesus, I am shot! I am undone! Murder! Can none of you stop him?"
Gentlemen, The Choice Is Yours
[At the height of the Parliamentary crisis of 1855, Lord Brunel assembled and addressed the members of his Cabinet. His remarks were recorded by his private secretary, using the Babbage shorthand notation.]
"Gentlemen, I cannot call to mind a single instance in which any individual in the Party or the Ministry has spoken, even casually, in my defense within the walls of Parliament. I have waited patiently, and I hope uncomplainingly, doing what little I could to protect and extend the wise legacy of the late Lord Byron, and to heal the reckless wounds inflicted on our Party by over-zealous juniors.
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