CHAPTER XV. POLITICAL ŒCONOMY.
By going from home, after so many years, we had not only done ourselves no good—in the opinion of our friends, who could not go—but we had opened the door to a swarm of changes, which came rushing in upon the heels of each other. To me, the greatest change of all appeared to have taken place in Maiden Lane itself; for the houses had turned black, and the windows grimy, and the roadway and the pavement (wherever there was any) seemed to cry aloud for washing, and the people too, unconscious as they were of such desire.
Excitement appeared to be the main thing now, and hurry, and suspicion, and no time to look about; whereas both at Happystowe, and Crowton-on-the-Naze, the chief business of the natives was, to look at one another; and when there was no more to be made of that, to consider the meaning of the sand and sea. And taken on the whole, those folk looked wiser, and a great deal happier than ours did.
But to dwell upon that, would be ungraceful now, when I call to mind that our own boiling, and the agitation of my father's engine had a great deal to do with the ferment around us. No sooner had my father returned to business—with Joe Cowl, and the summons, wiped off his conscience, and Billy Barlow's new devices written in his heart—than he found on his desk, he could never tell how, a sealed invitation to tender for soap, for the heads of all the convicts (with average stated), in six great castles, for the improvement of our race. The consumption of soap, per head was given, and a number of smaller particulars, all in print and proper columns; and then the requirement for samples, to be delivered at six places. And in pencil, very faint upon the margin, there was written, "It must not be soft, and it must be strong. Price not to be too low, like the Rads' stuff. Tallow will be wanted soon. Rub this out." There was something so touching in this, and so full of fine feeling, as between man and man, that my father immediately filled his pipe, and had a good smoke to consider it. At one time, his heart warmed up with thinking of the goodwill remaining in politics yet, and the loyalty every one is bound to show to, and expect from, his own side. And yet again, he could not feel sure, that he ought to have any faith at all in this. Why should there be six samples sent, of a stone weight each, to six different places, and all to be left without the money? It looked like a hoax, with Joe Cowl at the root of it, to get a paltry laugh at him; or else a swindle, to get three-fourths of a hundredweight of soap, for nothing. He resolved to act warily, and so he did. "If they mean well to me," he said, "they will never examine my samples."
They meant so thoroughly well to him, that they sniffed at his samples, and found them shocking—for he sent the worst stuff he could lay hand on, for fear of having it stolen—and then they gave an order for sixty tons, to be furnished at once, and sixty more to follow. Our works had never sent out such a lot before, at one delivery; and no wonder that they could not think of me.
"John Windsor shall not have a finger in the pie;" my father said right manfully; "I am not at all sure that his politics are sound. He would lower my quality, to get the next himself. You know how he wanted to run away, Sophy, when that great bombardment came. Let every vat stand upon its own bottom."
"Bucephalus, you are quite right," mother answered; "as you always are, when you get on. Work double tides, Bubbly, and double your hands. Don't let them have a penny, if you can help it."
So grand was the commodity thus produced, with the help of the lessons at Happystowe, that it is remembered to the present day, and cited as the type of excellence. For sanitary purposes it was needed and it not only met but transcended them. There was not a convict left with a stub of hair, though their hair is always bristly; and very few had such constitution, as to keep any roots for future trouble. Universal satisfaction was expressed, and my father put up the Royal Arms, twice as big as the knacker's across the road, and done in thicker timber. "Thoroughly candid, and straight-forward," he said to every one who spoke of it; "good value for money, good money for value. Public confidence met, by private industry, enterprise, and honour. I serve them exactly as I should serve you. Just to turn five per cent. on my money, and no more. If any man calls that exorbitant, let him come and do it cheaper."
The only thing at all mysterious was the requirement for six samples, to be delivered at six places far apart. But that was explained most pleasantly, so that my father rubbed his hands, and chuckled, while he was reading the debates, in the early part of the following session. A figuresome member of the Opposition, who thought himself fit to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, had given notice of a question, concerning a certain contract for soap, to be supplied to Her Majesty's penal establishments, etc., with dates, and other insinuations. And he made a very hasty speech about it, confounding the post, and the propter hoc; quite as if my father, whom he dared to call a "wholly unknown manufacturer," had been preferred for a lucrative contract, because of his behaviour at election-time! So far as wickedness can be good, this man spoke well, having got up all his facts; and he sate down in triumph, as he thought.
But before he had time to digest his cheers, the gentleman, who was to reply got up, with a beautiful smile, and a very pleasant glance at a paper laid before him, "I am furnished with particulars, from the head of the department, concerning this heinous transaction, sir," he said; "and I find that large samples were delivered in six quarters, widely apart, and wholly unconnected; the names of which I will read, if desired." Loud cheers followed from every corner of the House—for nobody likes to have his own rights interfered with—and the speaker concluded, "I will ask for no apology. From the Honourable Member for Clap-trap, it would be of no more value than his imputation."
"Well," said my father, when he had read this twice; "I call that something like a Government. If we only get a few more contracts, Sophy, we'll send Tommy into the House to see about them. There might be a stranger thing, my dear, than a long blue paper for ten thousand pounds, with "Thomas Upmore" signed for Her Majesty above, and "Bucephalus Upmore," for himself below. What a rage John Windsor will be in, when he reads about those six samples, and not one of them gone out of his gate! I had sense enough to keep the whole of that inside my own waistcoat."
Now, it would have been good, and even pleasant for the public—lustily though they condemned us, at the time—if the only increase of activity shown in those parts had come out of our chimneys. But there always is a mob of people, who never will leave well alone; and these had got up deputations, petitions, memorials, circulars, indignation meetings, committees, commissions, and worst of all missiles, concerning the wholesome smell we made, and had made before some of their fathers were born. When the unenlightened mass of minds falls into this bubonic fever of excitement, the right thing to administer is gruel, in the form of general promises, a desire to hear all that can be said, and a thoroughly unselfish gratitude towards those, who have made the worst of you. But my father had never possessed this wisdom, which belongs of sweet right to the Liberals; and whether on the ground of true British principle, or the Royal Arms, or the money coming in, he took a firm stand, with his hands in his pockets, and his legs well apart, and defied the public.
"Every blessed flue of mine," he said, "have gone ten feet higher, since I were a boy; and with present foundations, can't go no higher. Before folk grumble, their place is to stump up. If every cantankerous fellow, who don't know a wholesome smell by the touch of it, would put down a half-crown, if he has got one, instead of signing lies against me, I don't know but what I might lay foundations, and change my insurance, and go twenty foot higher. Though a heap of disease would break out, I expect. Look at the plants in my bed-room window, scarlets, and blue things, and lilies of the Nile! Is there any man, or woman, round these parts, half so good-looking, or so sweet to come by? They like it rarely, and so would you, if you understood what is good for you. And who was here first, you, or I, and my fathers, for three generations of boilers? We didn't want the houses; they came round us; every brick of them was laid, with my smoke to set it. And very good neighbours they have always been, till this scientific stuff came up, about cur-bones, and oxen, and the Lord knows what! I tell you what—if you don't like it, budge yourself, but you won't budge me."
Such speeches only made the fuss grow louder; until the authorities felt themselves compelled to do something sanatory. There was no "Metropolitan Board of Works," as yet, I believe; or if there was, it never came up our way. But the Vestry of St. Pancras had many stormy meetings, which my father deigned not to attend; but his workmen were there in great force, and made more noise than our new steam-engine. In short, the matter came (as every matter does now, and the practice already was beginning) to what is called "a reasonable and satisfactory compromise, conciliating all interests." The complaint of the public had been about the air, and the noxious exhalations, and vile odours, as they chose to call them. But who can see the air? Who can tell what is in it? It varies with every puff of wind. Let us turn to something tangible. The earth is a thing that can be dealt with, and the earth is at the bottom of every mischief on the face of it. So, to cure the smell of our chimneys, they ordered a four-foot culvert down our valley, where the course of the old Fleet-stream had been; and the voice of the public went off to it.
This being settled, my father was enabled to make tenfold the smells he had ever made before, without any one hoisting a handkerchief. An inquisitive stranger would sometimes ask, whether this neighbourhood was always choked with vapours, which he coarsely stigmatized. A piece of valuable advice, common (yet neglected universally) about the prior claims of his own affairs, was the only reward for his sympathies. What right had a fellow, with a walking-stick, to come grumbling against our rate-payers, and their engineers, and contractors? Measures were being taken, or at any rate were in contemplation; and every man with a horse and cart would get fifteen shillings a day for them.
But alas, how little do we forecast, while we vindicate, our own welfare! It would have been better for my dear father—as upright and downright a man as ever lived—to have gone to the expense of a new chimney-stack one hundred feet high, or even to have put out all his fires, than to have helped to bring that drain, down our hitherto Maiden valley. The soil in the bottom was of concentrated essence, combining all the density of bygone generations with the volatile relics of their labours. It would grow almost anything, if only scratched, and no healthier place for a walk could be found; but wisdom is not justified of her fathers, when she goes to turn them up.
In happy ignorance of woes impending, I went back to the Partheneion, and found the whole establishment turned upside down. Grip came with me, as a thing of course, and found his old barrel standing on its head, and a notice upon it in large letters—"No dogs allowed." If anything rouses the juvenile spirit, such rude breach of prescription does it. With the help of Jack Windsor, who was quite of my mind, I replaced the barrel in its old position, which was snug in a corner impregnable to guns, and I fastened him there with his own long chain, and said, "Now defend yourself, old boy. I have got lots of money, and you shall not starve." He fully understood the situation; and if any demand for sympathy arose, it would be on behalf of the individual attempting to dislodge him.
Then all of us were summoned to the hall, to hear an oration from the "Principal"—as he styled himself, to start with—our new schoolmaster, Ernest Mauleverum Crankhead, a short brisk gentleman, quite young, with a pale square face, a yellow moustache, and very quick bronzy eyes, which never took two seconds' rest upon anything. Accustomed as we were to the long grave countenance, waving white locks, and calm abstracted gaze of our simple old Dr. Rumbelow, we could not believe that we saw the new man; until he stood up at what he called the rostrum, and hit it three times, with an ivory hammer.
"Going, going, gone!" Jack Windsor whispered; and gone was the glory of the Partheneion. We knew it, we felt it, without a word uttered, our hearts fell into the heels of our socks; and no boy thought twice of the things in his pocket. Our account would be with a sharp hand now, a resolute, and a malignant one; and what was worst of all, and which a boy descries at the very first glance,—we should not have to deal with a gentleman. "I shall never go up any more," thought I.
I remember very little of what Crankhead said; and none of it is worth repeating. But he gave us to understand, that the sooner we forgot everything we had learned hitherto, and began on lines entirely new, the better it would be for our own minds, and what mattered far more, our success in life. For the few, whose parents might still be benighted enough to insist upon Greek and Latin, a Classical Master would be kept, but the College—for such he had the cheek to call it—would henceforth aim at a loftier mark. Science was the noble, and simple distinction, the all-absorbing element of this age. Mankind had been lying on their backs till now, looking up at the stars, and at imaginary Powers; now they arose, and asserted their rights, and their kinship to every organic being, and the interchangeability of everything. Classes for science would be formed to-morrow, under the charge of the four most eminent Professors of the period, Professors Brachipod, and Jargoon, Chocolous, and Mullicles!
At the sound of their names, these gentlemen appeared. Conscience, and prudence, alike induced me to push Jack Windsor in front of me, because he was both broad and thick.