London (143 page)

“Lavender Hill, of course,” the girl replied. “It’s out by Battersea Village,” she explained. “Between that and Clapham Common.” The market gardens on these slopes, which were less than three miles away, grew acres of lavender, she told her. It sounded a delightful place.

“This your brother?” the girl asked. “Sickly, is he?”

“He’s getting stronger.”

“Does he know the Lavender song?”

Lucy shook her head and the girl obligingly sang it to him.

“Lavender blue, dilly dilly,
Lavender green -
When I am king, dilly dilly,
You shall be queen.”

“Only”, she remarked, “as it’s me singing it, I suppose it ought to be ‘when
you
are king,’ the other way round really. You should sing it to him,” she told Lucy cheerfully, and moved off.

Lucy and Horatio were just about to start walking back to Charing Cross, when they saw their neighbour’s wife hurrying towards them from the Royal Mews. Her face was sweating; her red cotton dress was sticking to her body. Walking rapidly, she scattered a crowd of pigeons in her path in her anxiety to reach the children.

“You better come along with me,” she said, taking Lucy’s hand.

They had laid Will Dogget on the bed and he was still breathing, but as she held her little brother’s hand, Lucy knew it was death.

That dusty summer afternoon Will had been passing by a scaffolding, where they were working on a line of elegant houses beside Regent’s Park. For no reason he had looked up – just in time to see the great hod of bricks come crashing down.

Will was groaning a little. His breathing sounded strange, rasping. He did not seem to know that the clergyman was there, nor did he see Lucy or little Horatio. By six that evening he was dead.

Lucy’s mother’s face was grey. It was a terrible thing to lose a husband. Because of death in childbirth, women’s mortality rate was high. But a man could marry again and the new wife would look after her children, whereas if a working man died, how was his widow to live?

Will Dogget was buried the next day, in a common grave. There were only three mourners. Lucy had heard her father say that there were some other Doggets, aunts or uncles perhaps, but it seemed they lived far away and her mother did not know who they were. Only one other person turned up, a strange, stocky figure wearing a shapeless old black hat. He watched silently as the work was done, then came over and said a few gruff words before departing. He smelled of the river and he seemed to Lucy a sinister presence.

“Who’s that?” she asked her mother.

“That?” Her mother made a face. “That’s Silas. I don’t know how he discovered about your dad. I never asked him to come here.”

“He said he will come again.”

“I hope not.”

“What does he do?” the girl asked curiously.

“You don’t want to know,” her mother replied.

So what was he worth? As Penny walked across from Meredith’s Bank that October afternoon, it had suddenly started to matter. It mattered because of a pair of wonderful brown eyes and a kindly voice with a soft Scottish brogue, belonging to the person of Miss Mary Forsyth. It mattered rather urgently because he was about to encounter her father for the first time.

In the last eighteen months, Eugene had done rather well. He had managed to put a little money by and started to make some promising investments. A new level of confidence had been growing in the City during the previous two years, led by the swelling market for foreign loans. Meredith’s had already done very well out of Buenos Aires and Brazil and had just joined a huge syndicate for Mexico, though the bank had prudently declined opportunities to lend to Colombia and Peru. Encouraged by these vast and profitable shiploads of money passing through the City, the stockjobbers had been busy selling lesser bond issues and even joined stock companies like a flotilla in the great loans’ wake. A great bull market, in short, was gathering itself together and surging ahead. All investors, since all prices were rising, looked wise. And Eugene Penny, playing steadily as was his nature, had already made himself more than a thousand pounds. But would it, he wondered, as he entered the Royal Exchange, be enough to satisfy the redoubtable Hamish Forsyth?

The Royal Exchange had always been a busy place, but nowadays it was full to bursting. Every few yards of the world trade emporium seemed to be dedicated to some special trade. There was the Jamaica Walk, the Spanish Walk, the Norway Walk, where gaggles of jobbers sold stocks to buyers from every land. Eugene passed through a group of Dutchmen, then some Armenians, before he passed from the noisy and colourful scene to the quieter regions of the mezzanine floor above. There, in a large and impressive hall, Mr Forsyth’s place of business was to be found.

Lloyd’s of London was not to be taken lightly. The old business of Lloyd’s coffee shop had long since evolved into a carefully regulated partnership of the highest repute. Some of the smaller insurance brokers in town, Eugene knew, were little more than dressed-up barrow boys and card-sharps, but the men of Lloyd’s were of a very different stamp. In this solemn hall, which they leased from the Exchange, was kept the Lloyd’s Register of Shipping. Here, through syndicates rather like those used by banks for the greatest loans, the largest ships, no matter how valuable their cargo, were safely insured by the underwriters sitting at their desks. And of all the hundred or so underwriters, none was more solid or more awesomely principled than the dour figure who now, though he did not rise, granted Eugene a nod.

It was said of Mr Hamish Forsyth that he looked like a Scottish judge who had just passed sentence. His Presbyterian ancestors had been bleak as granite. But, though as stern as they, Hamish had preferred to transfer those feelings from the Kirk of God to the London insurance market. His brow, crowned with a few strands of grey hair, was noble; his nose, beak-like. From time to time he took large pinches of snuff, so that his conversation was punctuated by a series of huge sniffs – which gave to his utterances an air of finality which suggested that no ship
he
had insured would ever dare to sink.

“We’ll go across the street,” he said. Leading Penny out, he made his way to a coffee shop in Threadneedle Street where, with the air of one who confers a favour, he bought him a cup of coffee.

“You’ve met my daughter,” he remarked. Penny agreed that he had. “You’d better answer for yourself, then,” Forsyth declared, taking a pinch of snuff.

Penny felt rather as though he were a vessel being inspected to discover if it is seaworthy. Forsyth asked the questions. He answered. His family? He explained them. His religion? His ancestors were Huguenot. This drew a sniff, it seemed of approval. He himself, he admitted, was Church of England, but even this seemed to pass. “It’s respectable,” said Forsyth. His position? He explained he was a clerk at Meredith’s. Forsyth looked thoughtful, then, like the Presbyterian minister he might have been, announced: “A man who invests in Mexico may be saved. In Peru. . .” Sniff. “Never.”

Required to declare his own fortune, Penny told all, truthfully and, asked to do so, related his dealings in detail. This elicited a sigh. “This market is over-heating, young man. Get out or you’ll be burned.”

Eugene would have liked to argue, but was too wise. “When should I get out, sir?”

Forsyth gazed at him as he might at a man hanging by his fingers over a cliff, before he decided whether to tread on the fingers or help him up. “By Easter,” he said definitively. And then, quite suddenly, as if he considered he had been much too kind: “You wear spectacles, Mr Penny. The truth, man. How bad are your eyes?”

Eugene explained that his father and grandfather had been short-sighted too. “But it doesn’t seem to get any worse,” he added.

Whether this satisfied Forsyth, Eugene could not tell, but he soon found himself asked a series of questions about banking and finance which warned him that the Scotsman’s mind was very sharp indeed. Most he knew how to answer, but the final question made him pause.

“What, Mr Penny, do you think of the return to gold?”

Eugene remembered how he had answered the Earl when he had asked the same question, and he knew how most people in the City still felt, but he also reckoned, if he had judged his man correctly, that another answer was now required.

“I am in favour of the gold standard, sir,” he said.

“Ye are?” For once he had surprised the Scot. “And why, may I ask, would that be?”

“Because, sir,” Penny boldly replied, “I do not trust the Bank of England.”

“Well.” Even Forsyth, for a moment, was speechless. Penny kept a straight face. He had been right. “It is not often,” Forsyth finally confessed, “that a young man can be found in the City with such views.” Eugene had hit. Even the Bank of England, to Forsyth, was a weak and broken vessel. For a moment or two the older man sat thoughtfully, before recovering himself sufficiently to take another pinch of snuff. “So,” he returned to the attack, “you care for Mary? You must admit though, she’s no beauty.”

Mary Forsyth had a slim figure, and a head which some might have thought a little large. Her brown hair was parted in the middle, and she had a somewhat studious look. There was nothing fashionable or coquettish about her. Her beauty lay in her kindly nature and her high intelligence. Eugene sincerely loved her.

“I beg to differ, sir.”

Sniff. A pause. “So then,” Forsyth blandly remarked, “it’s her money you’re after, I dare say.” He watched Penny, almost amiably.

Eugene considered. Though not known as a rich man like some of the bankers, there was no doubt that Forsyth had a very solid fortune, and Mary was his only child. To pretend he had no interest in this fact would be absurd and disingenuous. He took stock of his man. “I should never seek to marry a woman,” he began carefully, “whom I did not love and respect, sir. As to her fortune,” he continued, “it’s not so much money I look for. But I desire to marry into a family,” he paused for just an instant, “that is
sound
.”

“
Sound
, do you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sound? I am sound, sir. You may be sure of that. I am very sound indeed!”

Penny inclined his head and said nothing. Forsyth also paused and took a pinch of snuff.

“You are young, Mr Penny. You must get established. And, of course, Mary may get a better offer. But if not, in a few years, we’ll look at you again.” He nodded, apparently with general approval. “In the meantime, you may call to see Mary. . .” Here, a huge and definitive sniff “. . . from time to time.”

Lucy passed the place nearly every day, but she always looked away in case the sight of it brought her bad luck. It was the one place the family had to avoid.

The workhouse was the dread of every poor family, and the parish workhouse of St Pancras was as bad as they came. Lying in the angle between two dingy thoroughfares, it had long ago been a gentleman’s residence. But there was nothing gentlemanly about it now. Nearby stood a broken-down old stocks and a cage once used for prisoners. Its filthy yard was strewn with refuse. They had been obliged to enlarge the old house some years back, for into it were crammed God knows how many poor souls, filling every hole and cranny, making it a sort of rabbit warren of the destitute.

In theory, the parish workhouses were to help the poor. Those unable to fend for themselves were to be housed, the children apprenticed to trades, the adults given work to do. In practice it was different. People had been complaining for centuries about the parish poor: to pay taxes for a fine new church was bad enough, but at least you had something to show for it; whereas when you spent money on the needy, they only seemed to ask for more. In practice, therefore, parishes spent as little as they could. Supervision was perfunctory. Most of these places filled with the sick – and poor folk who came there healthy seldom stayed so for long.

Soon after her father died, Lucy had nervously whispered to her mother: “Could we have to go to the workhouse?”

“Of course not,” her mother had lied. “But we must both work.”

Her mother had found work in a little factory nearby that made cotton dresses. But the hours there were very long, and the owner would not allow little Horatio in there. So each morning accompanied by her brother, Lucy would walk past the workhouse on the way to her new job in Tottenham Court Road.

Whatever he might think about the general state of the world, the furniture business had been good to Zachary Carpenter. “I can sell as many davenports and chairs as I can make,” he would confess. He had taken extra space and employed ten journeymen now and an extra apprentice. His total workforce was twice this number, but the others were neither journeymen nor apprentices: they were little children.

“Their small hands, when properly trained, can make for very neat finishing work,” Carpenter would explain. He did not know of anyone in his line who did not use them. As for whether it was right, that social reformer would say: “They ought to be in schools. But until there are schools, I at least keep them from starving.” Or from the workhouse.

Carpenter, like most masters, did not employ children under seven, but he had made an exception for Horatio. Since the tiny boy was eager to help, he gave him a little broom and let him sweep up the wood-shavings for which, from time to time, he would reward him with a farthing.

It took both Lucy and her mother to replace even the majority of Will Dogget’s wages. He had usually brought home between twenty and thirty shillings a week. His widow earned ten shillings, Lucy five. The picture was the same all over England: woman was paid about half a man’s wage; a child, something over a sixth. These were the economics of avoiding the workhouse.

In the Easter of 1825, Eugene Penny took the advice of Mr Hamish Forsyth and reduced all his investments to cash and safe government stocks. If he’s right and I don’t follow his advice, he’ll never forgive me, he reasoned; whereas if I do, and he’s wrong, it puts me in a slightly stronger position with him.

Whether the dour Scot was correct it was hard as yet to say. The foreign loan boom continued. “We’ve never made such profits!” Meredith declared. But as Penny looked at some of the wilder excesses of the stock market he had to confess it was over-valued. In the commodity market, too, people were borrowing money to buy anything. “Copper, timber, coffee – they can’t all go up for ever.” But spring and summer passed and still the boom went on.