London (150 page)

Young Meredith however was an unknown quantity. Only recently out of school at Eton, he had asked his father to let him have a year of travel before he joined a regiment; and since Barnikel was shortly to make a voyage to India, the banker had asked the sea captain if he would take the boy along. Today was their first meeting and already Barnikel had allowed himself a few shrewd glances to size the young man up. He was a handsome fellow, a good height, auburn hair, and with an athletic figure. A fine young gentleman certainly: but what was he really made of?

“We are going over to dine with my father-in-law shortly,” he remarked. “Perhaps Mr Meredith would like to come with us?” It was an impromptu suggestion.

“Well,” the young man hesitated and glanced enquiringly at the earl, who nodded. “I shall be delighted. If you’re sure your father-in-law wouldn’t mind.”

“Oh, the Guv’nor won’t mind,” Barnikel predicted confidently. “He always likes to see new faces.”

Half an hour later, the Barnikel family, together with Meredith, were sitting comfortably in their carriage as it rolled up the old Kent road towards Blackheath when the young man drew their attention to an object in the sky. Charlotte Barnikel put her hand to her mouth and exclaimed: “Oh, Jonas! It must be Mary Anne!”

There was only the lightest breeze, just enough to make the journey. Mary Anne’s fingers tightened on the side of the basket which lurched and creaked terrifyingly as the grounds of Vauxhall Gardens started to shrink in the most alarming way below them.

“Are you frightened?” her husband called in her ear.

“Of course not!” she lied. The operator gave them both an encouraging grin while, with a silent rush, the huge blue and gold balloon above them rose, imperious and unstoppable, into the clear sky towards the sun. For several moments more, Mary Anne experienced the awful terror of those who for the first time realize that they are soaring into the air with nothing underneath them. For horrible seconds she wondered if the bottom would fall out of the basket. Her hands were gripping the edge so hard now that they were probably permanently clamped, and she could only smile wildly as Bull shouted gamely: “Well, this is what you wanted!”

The scene below at Vauxhall Gardens was unattractive. It was not just the mean streets which had spread all round the gardens with the evident intention of choking them; but the iron tracks of the railway line raised on a brick viaduct had now arrived, its rattle, clank and smoke shattering the former quiet of the place. Vauxhall Gardens was in its last, dingy decline. But it was still the place from which balloons took off, and they frequently did. People used them to sketch panoramas of the city, to make daring journeys, with many bets being laid, to places as far off as Germany. Recently one man had insisted on going up not in the usual basket but sitting on his horse. Quite a crowd had turned out to see that. And today, watched by only a few curious locals, Mary Anne and Bull were making a short ascent which would terminate, if all went well and the wind did not change, somewhere on Blackheath.

The idea had been a whim. When, months ago, her husband had asked her what she would like for her birthday, which fell just after the Guv’nor’s, and she had said, “a balloon ride”, it had been a joke. In fact, she had quite forgotten about it. So she had been completely taken aback three days ago when he had casually announced: “I’ve arranged your balloon ride, Mary Anne. Wind and weather permitting, we’ll go up on Saturday morning.” He had grinned. “If you still want to, that is.” She could hardly draw back after that.

Her sisters had been horrified. “How can you be so fool-hardy? What will people say?” they cried. And finally: “Why do you always have to be different, Mary Anne?” She had made them promise not to tell their husbands. Nobody had told the Guv’nor.

It was also very expensive. But then, as they all knew, that was not a problem, for Edward Bull was going to inherit the brewery. Mary Anne was the only one of the Guv’nor’s daughters who had married young. But Mary Anne was pretty. Slim, vivacious, with wonderful hazel eyes and a flash of white in her curly brown hair that made her look rather distinguished, she had an elegance and style that her sisters lacked. Edward Bull, just a year older than she, had no need of her money, though the Bulls certainly liked their wives to be women of fortune.

In seconds the balloon was at three hundred, then four, five hundred feet and climbing. But then the balloonist checked the pace, the balloon seemed to hover, and to her surprise Mary Anne felt her panic begin to leave her. She managed to stare outwards, across London, and was greeted with a magnificent view. The pace of building in the last twenty years had not slackened. On the south side of the river, the houses swept in an almost unbroken swathe from Southwark up to Clapham; to the north, the villages of Chelsea and Kensington were completely swallowed up in an endless succession of mock-Georgian terraces, and further off, above the City, the woods of Islington were going under even now. Yet these growths, seen from above, only seemed like so many stubby fingers from London’s grimy palm, stretching into the green country all around. Lavender Hill was still a scented field; most of Fulham was still orchard and market garden; above Regent’s Park, it was open country up to Hampstead.

Only as she glanced down again did she notice something a little alarming. Their journey was based on their belief that the breeze was coming from the west, and so should take them clean across south London towards Blackheath on whose huge open spaces they could easily land. But now she realized something else. “Edward! We’re drifting north!”

Indeed they were: their path, directly over the Thames at this point, had already carried them to Lambeth Palace. If nothing changed, they would finish up looking for a place to land in the fields past Islington. “And then we’ll be really late for the Guv’nor,” Bull groaned.

But Mary Anne, as she overcame her fright, suddenly felt a surge of wild exhilaration. “I don’t care!” she cried. “This is wonderful!”

Her husband laughed. Their route, he saw, was going to provide them with another unexpected benefit. “Look,” he remarked. “We’re going directly over Parliament.”

The Houses of Parliament, in 1851, were an interesting sight. Seventeen years before, some functionary had decided that the records of the ancient English Exchequer should be tidied. Finding in the musty cellars, neatly bundled, the tens of thousands of little wooden tally sticks – stock, foil and counterfoil – some of which had lain there since the days of Thomas Becket, he decided they should be burnt. His minions obeyed his order with such thoroughness that they set the whole Palace of Westminster on fire and by the next morning it was all, except for sturdy old Westminster Hall, burned to the ground.

In its place, built round the old Norman hall, a palace now arose that was really much finer than the one that had burned down. Designed in honey-brown stone by the Londoner Barry, its gorgeous medieval-style interior by Pugin, the Gothic-inspired building was a fitting companion for the Abbey beside it. Already the House of Commons was completed; work was proceeding on the House of Lords; and at the eastern end, nearest Westminster Bridge, Mary Anne could look down upon the empty socket of the great clock tower which would soar above the rest.

From Westminster, they floated north over Whitehall up to Charing Cross. A few years ago, the area where the Royal Mews had stood had been completely cleared to form a huge piazza called Trafalgar Square, with a tall column supporting a statue of Nelson in the middle; and they were just about to sail over the great naval hero when the wind obligingly shifted and began to carry them back to the river again.

“We may be in time for the Guv’nor after all,” Bull grinned. Sure enough, a few minutes later, they were floating lazily across Bankside and over Southwark in the general direction of Blackheath. “Look,” he nudged her, “there’s the brewery.”

In fact, it would have been hard to miss it. For if the essential process of brewing had remained the same since the days when Dame Barnikel had stirred her huge brews beside the George Inn, the scale of the operations had altered out of all recognition. The Bull Brewery was huge. The high, square chimney stack of its boilerhouse towered over the roofs of Southwark. The main building, where the malt was mashed, the beer brewed, cooled and fermented, was seven storeys high, its big square windows staring out with a solid self-satisfaction from the high redbrick walls. Then there were sheds containing the brewery’s massive old vats, large yards where the casks awaiting shipment were stacked in pyramids, and enormous stables for the mighty horses that pulled the drays. And over it all presided the family of Bull – cheerful, prosperous, rock solid.

They sailed over Camberwell and continued eastwards until the balloonist was able to set them down, with only a modest bump, on the wide expanse of Blackheath, not half a mile from the Guv’nor’s mansion.

It was a happy and excited Mrs Bull who stood again on firm ground, kissed her husband and remarked triumphantly: “I do believe we’ll be the first there!”

It was mid-afternoon when one other person set out. Leaving the district of Whitechapel in London’s East End, this solitary traveller passed down on the eastern side of St Katharine’s Dock, where the tea clippers came, and continued along the waterfront down to Wapping. From there, this lone East Ender meant to cross the river and proceed towards Blackheath. For the Guv’nor was to receive an unexpected visitor that day.

If the West End had been expanding for two centuries, the development of the East End was more recent. Immediately east of the Tower, the docklands began with St Katharine’s and extended downstream through Wapping and Limehouse to where the great loop of the river formed the promontory of the Isle of Dogs, in which the huge basins of the West India Docks had been created. Above this line of docklands, starting out from Aldgate in the city wall, there had always been a succession of modest settlements: first Spitalfields, where the Huguenot silk-weavers had congregated, then Whitechapel, Stepney, Bow and Poplar above the Isle of Dogs. But nowadays all these were joined into an untidy, sprawling suburb of docks, little factories, sweatshops and mean streets, each with their own particular community. It was to the East End that poor immigrants usually came. And few were poorer than the latest influx of folk who had crowded into the streets of Whitechapel.

There had always been an Irish population in London. Since the previous century, a thriving community, mostly of labourers, had existed in the rookeries of St Giles’s parish just west of Holborn. But this was nothing compared to the great wave of immigration that had taken place in the last seven years.

It was caused, as much of the western world now knew, by the failure of a single crop. For years a large and relatively dense population, living on some of the best agricultural land in Europe – much of it in the hands of absentee English landlords – had subsisted on that highly nutritious American native vegetable, the potato. When, for several years running, that crop had failed, the people of Ireland had faced a sudden and terrible crisis. And when the efforts at relief had proved utterly inadequate, the option had been stark: emigrate or die. So had begun that huge and terrible exodus from which Ireland would not recover for over a century and a half. To America, to Australia and to the English ports they had fled. To London also, of course. The largest group in London had settled in Whitechapel where there was work in the nearby docks. It was from a street of mostly Irish folk that the Guv’nor’s unexpected visitor had started out.

The Guv’nor liked to have all his family round him. With his white beard and his rosy old face he looked like a benevolent monarch. He favoured, even in summer, a heavy frock coat, a white silk cravat fastened with a pearl pin, and his shoes were so polished that they twinkled. His Georgian mansion at Blackheath was beautifully run by a butler with a staff of eight. It was said that he had an income of ten thousand pounds a year. Quiet, kindly to all his sons-in-law, the Guv’nor asked nothing except that people should be punctual. If they were not, he could grow cold. But only a fool would fail to show proper affection and respect to a father-in-law with ten thousand a year.

It was five o’clock, after the grandchildren had all been taken away by their nannies, when the butler announced dinner. The Guv’nor, being old-fashioned, liked to dine at an early hour. Apart from this, however, everything was done in the modern manner. The gentlemen led the ladies into the big dining room. The Guv’nor said grace and then they all sat down, a lady between each pair of gentlemen. The huge table, covered with a white damask cloth, was a noble sight. In the centre stood a huge, ornate silver épergne – an object like a massive, five-branched candlestick except that it supported not candles but bowls of fruit. At each place, in the new and fashionable manner, there was an array of different wine glasses and of knives and forks – silver for the fish and fruit – all heavy and elaborate. The first course was a simple choice of soups:
julienne
of vegetable and vermicelli. This was followed by fish: boiled salmon, turbot, sole
à la Normande
, trout, mullet, and lobster rissoles. The salmon had been brought by train from Scotland.

Because he was a widower, the Guv’nor would usually ask one of his daughters to take the other end of the table and act as hostess, and today his choice had fallen upon Mary Anne. Accordingly, she found herself with an elderly gentleman neighbour on her right, and on her left, the boy whom Barnikel had brought along. During the soup she had made polite conversation with the old gentleman. Only when the fish arrived did she turn her attention to young Meredith.

Mary Anne was in a cheerful mood: in fact, she did not think she could remember a happier day in her life. She was still flushed from the triumph of her balloon ride. There had been no question of keeping it from the Guv’nor once it was done, and indeed she and Edward had met the old man, walking across the heath with his ebony stick to inspect the balloon as soon as it came down. He had been much surprised to see them, and had given Edward a rather old-fashioned look, but by the time the rest of the family arrived, he seemed to find the whole affair amusing. “I’m glad to see you all,” he announced, “and very glad that Edward and Mary Anne could ‘drop in’.” As Harriet had remarked to her with a sigh: “He always did let you get away with anything, Mary Anne.”