Respectable Trade (10 page)

J
OSIAH
’
S ATTEMPTS TO BUY
the house at 29 Queens Square were not at first successful. The building was owned by Mr. Stephen Waring, a Merchant Venturer and a member of the corporation of the city. He was building a grand new house halfway up Park Street in a new road to be called Great George Street. Josiah approached him as he sat in the coffeehouse with his brother-in-law—another Merchant Venturer—on one hand and his cousin standing behind him.

“Good day,” Josiah said. He tried not to sound deferential, but he could hear the hint of inferiority in his voice—a tinge of Somerset, a trace of servility. He sounded like a man who had been born on the floor of a warehouse. “Good day, Mr. Waring.”

The man looked up. “Cole?”

“I wonder if I might speak with you on a matter of business?” Josiah’s plain, three-cornered hat was in his hand. He felt himself turn it and tap the points, like a servant fidgeting before a master.

“Yes?”

Josiah glanced at the other men. They were staring at him with open curiosity. No one made any movement away from the table; they did not even trouble themselves to turn aside. His business would have to be done before them all.

“I am interested in your house in Queens Square,” he said. “I understand that you may be selling it? I am newly married, and my wife—”

The man laughed gently. “I do not think you would like it, Cole,” he said. “It is the wrong side of the river for your little warehouse, and you would find my neighbors very poor company.” He smiled at his brother-in-law and turned his back on Josiah. The meeting was concluded.

Josiah flushed with embarrassment. There was nothing he could do but sketch a bow and go back to the table where he usually did his business, with the smaller traders and the unemployed captains. They had been watching him; everyone in the coffee shop had seen him rebuffed. Josiah pulled out a chair and seated himself, trying to look jaunty and hide his mortification. “I have mentioned my interest in the house at Queens Square to Mr. Waring,” he said to the table generally. “I shall write him a letter with my offer.”

“He’s a warm man,” Captain Legge warned. “I’ve heard that he paid more than two thousand pounds for his new house off Park Street.”

Josiah blinked. “That is a new house, though,” he objected. “New built and according to his specifications. The house in Queens Square must be nearly seventy years old!”

“And his father and the rest of the landlords made profits enough in the first year!” a small merchant commented. “The leases on those houses were an extortion. Many a tenant was ruined in the first year if he was not a member of the Merchant Venturers, who had insiders’ terms.”

Another trader nodded. “How convenient it was that the corporation chose to build in brick when the Waring family owned the brickyard,” he remarked slyly.

“That’ll do,” Josiah said swiftly, glancing toward the top table, where Mr. Waring had summoned one of the masters of his ship and was examining a cargo manifest. “The Corporation of Bristol and the Merchant Venturers have together brought this city to the highest prosperity. We all know that.”

“It’s joining them that’s the challenge, eh, Josiah?”

Josiah Cole flushed. “Gentlemen,” he said, “my future plans
are my own concern, I think. Now, I heard that you were interested in my sugar, Mr. Williams. Shall I send you a sample?”

F
RANCES WAS SEATED AT
the parlor table, the ledgers of the company spread before her. Sarah was teaching her the business, showing her the books of the ship
Daisy
due home in December.

“This page shows the cost of fitting out a ship,” Sarah explained patiently. “See, here is every item, and along the line”—her finger traced the row of ink dots—“here is what it cost. At the foot of the page is the total cost.”

“I see,” said Frances wearily. Outside the window the
Rose
was being fitted with new ropes and newly mended sails. There was a continual bellow of orders and screams of quayside sellers. They had a pulley rigged on the mast, which screeched every time it took the weight of a load, and then the crew started a chant to help them pull the ropes together. The sun burned in at the parlor window, and the reflected light on the ceiling danced a dizzying ballet. The tide was coming in, and the filth and sewage that had been draining downriver were now washing up and down the quayside wall. The wind blowing up the gorge brought the acrid stink of burning lime from the Clifton Woods to mingle with the pervasive smell of Bristol: boiling fat for soap, smoke from the furnaces. The window was tightly shut as usual. The parlor was hot and stuffy, the sun beating in through the glass of the panes. Frances had a headache; she sat very still and straight and did not complain.

“So the total cost of repairing and fitting out the ship was £907.2s.”

Sarah Cole nodded. “Correct. On the next page, we show the trade goods supplied.”

Frances passed her cool fingers over her eyelids. “What are all these names?”

“These are our four partners. Merchants and tradesmen who joined with us for this voyage. Here you see that they supply
the trade goods themselves. Here is a cutler—he supplied the knives and forks and tin dishes. We show the goods and the value of them. Here is a haberdasher. He supplied cloth and lace and some hats. The other things—some beads, Italian blue beads, and the guns—we bought direct. The other partners supplied the money to buy them.”

Frances looked down the page. There were many things listed, but the greatest quantity of money had been spent on muskets, Bonny muskets at nine shillings each, gunpowder and flints. “What a lot of guns,” she said.

“They are the most popular trade goods,” Sarah Cole said. “And a great cost to us. They can only be bought from Birmingham, and no Birmingham firearm maker will come in with us as a partner. They are quick enough to make a profit from us, but they will not share the risk. Now, Frances, can you see how much it cost to send out the ship?”

Frances looked wearily to the foot of the page. The shifting light in the room seemed to be beating on her eyes. “Yes, £5,692.16s.0d,” she said. “What a great deal of money!”

“Now you see!” Sarah exclaimed. “Now you begin to understand. This is why I don’t want a grand house. This is why I don’t keep a carriage. I daresay Lord Scott himself could not find such a sum, and find it three times every two years! Every time we send out a ship!”

“I don’t know,” Frances said unwillingly. “I have never learned about money before.”

Sarah smiled in triumph. “Well, you are a merchant’s wife now,” she said. “It is right that you should know where the money comes from. When you hire the carriage or want a new silk dress, it all has to be paid for.” She smoothed the pages lovingly with the flat of her hand. “It all comes from here.”

She turned the page. “Now, this is the record for the transactions in Africa,” she went on. “I compose the books when the captain shows me his log on his return. See here: purchased over six months on the Africa coast—three hundred and twelve—at
an average of fourteen pounds each. Wastage on voyage—sixty-two. Price in Jamaica, average fifty pounds each. First profit—£12,500, minus the cost of buying—£8,132.” She waited for Frances to speak.

“Very profitable,” Frances said.

“Apparently so,” Sarah said sourly. “From this profit we buy sugar, tobacco, and rum to the cost of £4,830. We extend credit to the planters to the cost of £1,750, and we pay off half of the crew at a cost of £130.” She ran her finger down the columns, Frances followed it with her eyes. All she could see was the neat fingernail and the black-ink numbers spooling away.

“Now you see,” Sarah Cole went on. “When the ship comes into port, she has to pay for a pilot up the Bristol Channel and then another pilot up the Avon. She has to pay a fee to every lighthouse, she has to pay a fee for the new bridge, she has to pay the rowing boats to tow her up the gorge, she has to pay a fee to the mayor and to the quay warden, and a docking fee.”

“Gracious,” Frances said weakly.

“No wonder the Liverpool merchants steal our trade,” Sarah Cole muttered to herself. “They sail straight into a deep-water dock with cheap quay rates. No wonder they build bigger and bigger ships.” She turned her attention back to Frances. “So can you see the profit which is made at the end of the voyage?”

Frances looked wearily at the final page. “Here, £2,513.”

“Divided among the partners—five partners including ourselves,” Sarah prompted.

Frances looked at the final figure. “That’s £502 each.”

Sarah Cole nodded at her, waiting for some response.

“After all that work and worry?”

“And we own the ship and keep the warehouse and allow credit to the planters in Jamaica and all the other costs that the partners do not see,” Sarah added.

“It does not seem very much for us when you put it like that,” Frances said.

Sarah got up from the table and went over to the window. “It’s a good profit on a two-year investment for the partners,” she said. “For a little man with little savings, it is good business. But the scale of it is not big enough for my brother now. He can double his money every five years on these figures, but he wants to advance in six months, by tomorrow. I do not see how we are to do it. I show you these figures because you should know our business, but you can see for yourself that we are not making the profits we need.”

“Why not?”

The woman shrugged. “Rising prices all around us. It costs more and more to repair and equip a ship. The price of sugar is falling as more and more planters increase their land and grow a bigger crop each season. The American war made it dangerous even for civilian shipping and increased the cost of insurance. The French can import their own sugar from their own colonies, and now they are selling in England. I heard that a man is finding a way to make sugar from vegetables called beets. When they make sugar from carrots, we are ruined indeed.”

She stepped toward the table and shut the ledger gently, passing her hand over the ship’s name,
Daisy,
engraved on the front of the leather-bound book. “The Liverpool merchants have ships twice the size of the
Daisy,
” she said. “And they do the trip in half the time. That means they can make four times our profits. Just think of it! Twice the amount of trade in half the time!

“The big Bristol merchants are members of the Royal Africa Company, and they do not have to wait off the coast, trading up and down at all the little stations, buying here and selling there. They anchor at a Royal Africa Company fort, and they load food and water that is waiting for them, and the trade that is ready and waiting for them. They halve the loss of life for the crew because they are away from West Africa within a month, while we delay for six months gathering cargo.

“When they arrive in the West Indies, they have an agent waiting on the quayside to greet them. He has already bought the cargo for loading, he has already arranged the sales. He has agreed prices while they were still at sea. They deal with the best planters, and they have contracts arranged. When they give credit to the planters, they bring home bills which are honored in London at once, by the planters’ agents, as soon as they are presented. So they get their money within the quarter. But
we
have to give credit and then wait until our ship is in the West Indies again, sometimes as long as two years before we are paid! The people we trade with do not have a London agent. They are the smaller planters, and they demand credit from us. It is no business for the little men anymore.”

“Yet Josiah seems so confident,” Frances demurred.

Sarah’s face was grim. “Yes,” she agreed. “He is very confident. He sees sugar in the storerooms of the Redclift; his bond is filled with tobacco and rum. He can see the gold coming in from one little sale after another, and he is down on the quayside doing as well as other small traders. But I spend my day with the books, and I can see that the profits are slowly falling as the costs rise. The world is changing, and we will have to change, too.”

“My uncle thought that Josiah was a prosperous man,” Frances protested, clinging to hope.

Sarah shrugged her shoulders. “What would
he
know?” she said disrespectfully. “I imagine he has never seen a set of accounts in his life. He would see his rent rolls and nothing more. But I have spent my life with these books, and I can read them as you would read a novel. And I can see that each voyage out, and each voyage back, is less and less successful. It costs more every day; the risks are greater all the time.”

“What can we do?” Frances asked. “Can’t we build a bigger ship? Or take up a different trade?”

Sarah Cole measured Frances. “No,” she said with a little smile. “We can never leave the trade. It is the only thing we
know. It is the foundation of our fortunes, and it is our inheritance. Whatever anyone says, I will never countenance that we leave the trade. We must stay with it—but do it in a new way.”