McNaughten: An Historical Novel

by Siân Busby

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

The winter of 1843 is one of bitter strife for England. The nation is on the brink of ruin and revolution, the government struggling to stand firm against the rising chaos.

Release date: May 27, 2014

Publisher: Octopus

Print pages: 608

Sample

It was the Season of Distress; it was the Age of Famine and Over-populousness; it was the Time of Smoking Chimneys and Railroads; of Slums and Brickbats, Monster Charters and Bread Riots; of New Model Prisons and Poor Law Bastilles. The world was coming to an end, but a thin young man of shabby genteel appearance, Scotch, a wood-turner by trade, had an idea how to save it and make it whole again. An ellipse; a geometric eccentricity; something intricate and beautiful: a new law for a new world. First, though, he had to plane the surface of the old: for one cannot, you see, do good work on a poor surface.


He was standing on a freezing corner at the Centre of the Empire waiting for the portly gentleman to leave the counting-house: ready to do his duty, ready, finally, to be happy. His name was Daniel McNaughten and he was dressed in worn-out Blücher boots, threadbare trowsers and a thin dark overcoat. He looked like one more mechanic out of a situation (which, in a way, he was) – unremarkable in every regard, save for the fact that he was hatless and held the dead-weight of a brace of pistols against his breast.


Charing-cross was freezing: a keen north wind bringing sleet from the river; the light like dirty ice. It was the last business hour of the day, and in the rich warm glow of the counting-house he marked the comings and goings of the gentlemen in their thick-heeled boots; the hiss of their cigar-ends dropped casually by the entrance for the old cigar-end-finder to retrieve. And he marked the people going on – just as they always did – resigned as the steam of horses’ breath, oblivious to the raw imploring palms of the tract-sellers and the sledge-beggars huddled about King Charles’s statue, slumped against the icy palings around the Nelson Column.

He reached into his pocket and brought out a wee token, tossing it up in the air. Heads; tails: he didn’t mind how it came down; it was all the same to him. He no longer believed in fate. He believed in infallible things: the laws of nature, physical, intellectual, moral. He tossed the coin to fill the time, that was all – the time spent waiting.


“Fusee for your cigar, sir?”

A raggit urchin was tugging on his coat-sleeve: just like all the others, barefoot, niddered, pinched blue by cold. McNaughten reached into his weskit pocket and dropped a whole shilling into the wee shivering hand, but he did not take the fusees – he had no need of them. The child blinked up at him in stupefaction, but he was not moved by gratitude. He went back to waiting, waiting for the portly gentleman to leave the counting house. Heads up; tails down.


We can judge the heart of a man, he was thinking, by his treatment of others.

He hunched his shoulders now, cupping his hands in front of his mouth. He was pacing to keep warm, his teeth chattering. He was wishing that he had not lost his hat. He was wishing that he had flitted off – taken the railway to Greenock, slipped on board a barque bound for New York, Jamaica, Shanghai.


Is this, he thought, is this how we might make ourselves happy?

And behind him the steeple of St. Martin in the Field expelled a tell-tale creaking, a hint of rust. Soon it would be four o’clock, and yet no sign of Mr. Drummond. The portly gentleman was a creature of habit: it was not like him to be untimely. A metallic rasp from the bell-tower; an oily grinding: a few minutes more and the peeler would be rounding Scotland-yard and the whole plot fankit. He was thinking how his father was right: how everything he attempted was doomed to end in failure. He was thinking: I am not worthy of happiness.


What might he have done? What could he have hoped for? Now that he knew there was no just God looking down, now that he knew this was all there was, he wished, he wished more than ever that there was a way to plane the surface of the mind so’s ye could start over. He wished, o he wished that he could cease the chug of his thoughts. If only, if only, he thought, he could have stayed the same, and the world made different. On the frozen corner everything was crystallising, hard and cold, frost-bright: so clear it hurt. He clutched the wee token in his fist and wished that he could stop himself from seeing, feeling.


When he looked up, there was the portly gentleman, standing in the doorway of the counting-house, bulbous, red, smoothing his jabot as he looked about him; a crafty wee smile on his chops.

“Fusee for your cigar, sir?”

The portly gentleman scowled, muttered, waved the wean aside. He set his old-fashioned wide-brimmed hat upon his bald pate, and with a complicit nod began to walk down Charing-cross towards Downing-street.


You can judge the heart of a man. You can judge the heart…


McNaughten tossed up the token one last time, and set off after him. To be is to do, he told himself as he wrapped his long, delicate fingers about the first pistol.

A brilliant flash knocking him back a step or two, resolving into a broken star of sparks; a crack clear and flat, hanging in the brief silence before the noise of the traffic cascaded once more: the cries, the whinnying, the peeler shouting from the other side of the carriage track. The portly gentleman spun in surprise at a flame licking at his coat-tails. He put one hand to his side and a small curl of smoke, rising like a feather on a breath, slipped from beneath his palm.


And as McNaughten reached for the second pistol it was as though one precise line was gradually declining into another right before his eyes. The graceful ascent of the curves, the subtle eccentricity: the manufacture of a new order. And in that moment he truly believed that he was witnessing, in the intricate beauty of a new beginning, the unfathomable architecture of belonging. 


Eight years had elapsed since the destruction by fire of the old Palace of Westminster, and yet those ancient, noble precincts of public life were still nothing more than a ramshackle affair of burnt ruins and tipsy scaffoldings: a fitting symbol, as it were, for the Condition of England in January 1843. Certainly it seemed so to Samuel Warren, L.L.D., (Barrister-at-law, Inner Temple) as he passed them by on his way to dine with the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary at Bellamy’s chop-house.


He was at that time a handsome and ambitious man of five-and-thirty, who had long since recovered from the inebriation of the Conservative triumph of ’41. He had waited so long for the Toryism to which he cleaved to be a term of reproach no longer, sitting out those wearisome years of Whig jobbery and Utilitarianism. But now that Tory government had been a hard fact for a full nineteen months, Mr. Warren had discovered how laced with bitterness were triumph’s libations.


The country was in a mess, but it was our mess now, not theirs. It was not possible to turn back the clock and pretend that Parliamentary Reform and all the wretchedness that had ensued from it had never happened. The Whigs had enfranchised a quarter of the nation’s householders, who were not all like us. Of course Mr Warren understood that nobody now in government wished to return to the rancour, the tedium, the sheer despondency of the Opposition Benches; this was why popular necessities – bread and butter matters, if you will – had become the order of the day. Whether you called yourself Whig, Tory, Liberal, Ultra, or Radical, the futility of your promises, the insincerity of your opinions, were all that was true and certain – that is, so long as they satisfied the whims of the lowly ten-guinea voter and mollified the dangers of democracy.


Mr. Warren mulled upon this as he walked on, marking with disapproval the skeletal figures raking through the icy rubble, the workmen leaning on their shovels, idle, listless. The new St. Stephen’s Tower had been so long under suppositious construction that it was by now more dilapidated than the structure it sought to displace. The quicksands kept claiming the foundations; the architects kept running out of money; the masons kept downing tools. Nothing progressed, ever. It was all so dispiriting. For a gentleman such as he, one who nursed ambitions in respect of public life, there was an objectionable whiff of hopelessness in wondering (as he always did whenever he found himself in the vicinity of Westminster) whether he should live long enough to see the new Palace from the vantage point of a seat in the Chamber.


He shuddered: breathing in that claggy gloom that perpetually cloaks old Thorney Island; regarding with dismay the drab hoardings with their fly-posted advertisements for Holloway’s pills and Tussaud’s wax-works shoring up the whole rackety enterprise. He sighed to see the crooked exhortations to ATTEND TO THE END OF THE WORLD and STICK NO BILLS, and he thought: That’s everything that’s wrong with the country; that’s the whole sordid mess right there.


He was waiting to cross the carriage-way. It was snowing, as it always seemed to be. On a patch of frozen ground near to St. Margaret’s Church, a tatterdemalion party were crowing against the “Bread Tax”. One of them, a stunted grubby fellow in a decrepit shovel hat, such as an old-fashioned country parson might wear, was waving a blood-smeared loaf atop a sort of pike. He was so begrimed it was impossible to tell if he was a black or a white, yet he was not the worst of that feckless assembly that had somehow escaped transportation to Van Diemen’s Land with all the others of that ilk. The best that could be said of them was that they did not look drunk, though they were certainly idle. They were meagre types: small tradesmen defeated by the numerous distresses of the times, a miscellany of moleskin and kerseymere, and nine-and-four-penny Wellington boots.


“Avenge the plundered poor!” cried one.

“The Bread Tax murders trade and hope,” cried another.

“Why should the starving pay to the aristocracy a penny on every pound of bread?”

Mr. Warren sighed. The specious arguments put by the Anti-Corn Law League had wreaked havoc upon the public understanding of complex matters; playing up common fears and hazy assumptions to such a swell that, in truth, Mr. Warren rather pitied the ragged democratists. He considered engaging them in a purposeful debate. Cheap Bread and Cheap Wages will be found together! he would have proclaimed. But back then, on that fateful day, he was a young man in a hurry, and so he contented himself with raising a critical eyebrow at the crew as he crossed the road.


The events soon to be related occurred (it will be recollected) but a few months after the Holiday Insurrection of ’42 – the so-called “legal revolution”. Mr. Warren had written extensively, in Blackwoods and The Times &c., &c., of how this rascally contrariety had been contrived at by a coterie of rapacious Northern factory-owners – every one of whom was a subscriber to the Anti-Corn Law League – who had compelled their labourers by gross tyranny (with factory lock-outs and threats to reduce wages) to promote agitation in every town in the land. In an attempt to preserve the rule of law, the Office of Home Affairs under the command of the Home Secretary had caused to be established a secret police network, and spies – the agents of governmental vigilance – were now everywhere to be found. Or so it was rumoured, for no official notice was ever made of this retributive measure; and in the majority of instances, this rumoured existence was sufficient prohibition in itself.


Mr. Warren’s considerable and considered reportage of all of the above – under the alias FIAT JUSTITIA – had attached something of a reputation to himself. He thundered against the plainclothesmen with the same strenuous argument he had previously mustered against the incompetencies of the Scotland-yard bobbies (who now assumed a more benign aspect than they had previously enjoyed). And he blazoned everywhere that the Anti-Corn Law League was not (as might popularly have been supposed) a kindly organisation dedicated to bringing cheap bread to the starving masses, but rather one of the greatest threats yet faced by a civilised nation. In truth there was scarce any man alive who knew more of the nefarious intentions of that devillish combination than did he. And Mr. Warren doubted not that it was this that had caused the invitation to dine with the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary to be issued.


Yet, as he approached the shop-house steam of Bellamy’s, that earnest and principled young man found his thoughts assuming a somewhat anxious cast. He had no doubt that his reputation preceded him, and yet he could not help but wonder what true purpose lay behind the request. He was not nearly worldly enough, but he knew enough of the world to understand that in the political sphere not so much as a pinch of snuff is ever given freely and unstintingly. What then, would be the due recompense of sharing a spot of dinner with one who sat at the very hub of power?


Having no family connections of which to speak and none of the advantages of an expensive education to draw upon, everything Mr. Warren had he had made for himself. At that time the tally was thus: letters after his name; a practice in a dismal attic chambers, honoured with but a very few briefs, and those only in cases slightly productive of fees; pupils, not many; and a clerk, neither smart nor particularly able. He had long been constrained, therefore, to nib his pen in the interests of economic survival at a level commensurate with getting on. But in the eyes of the benchers of the Inner Temple, writing was a trade and a damnable low one at that, and noms de plume a necessary precaution against debarment. FIAT JUSTITIA was his just-respectable-enough mask; and when it came to earning money, he depended upon his far less acceptable alter ego: “The Author of Diary of a London Physician”, the recounter of bits of “flash” nonsense (murder, madness, hauntings, body-snatching) and creator of a popular periodical novel. It will be appreciated that such a man as Mr. Warren had little enough to do or say with the judgements which others formed of him and his usefulness to them; had even less to say or do with what they might ask of him, or what he might ask of them in return. In short, he was enslaved to the task of getting on as surely as any poor plantation nigger.


In his published musings upon the topic of Corn, Free Trade and Protectionism, Mr. Warren had been not one iota more tolerant of the government than he had been of the Anti-Corn Law League. This had seemed to him to be a necessary, not to say lucrative, stock-in-trade; but now he was wondering how sensible he had been. Was he, he wondered, about to be chastised for his disloyalty to the party of his choice? He considered the likelihood that the gentleman with whom he was about to dine – Mr. Drummond of the Treasury – might share his own low opinion of the Prime Minister whom he served as Private Secretary. Certainly, Mr. Warren was not alone amongst respectable Tories in regarding Sir Robert Peel as a Janus, a low ambidexter, who dined at the Carlton with a protectionist peer on a Tuesday only to take tea at the House with Mr. Cobden of the League and a party of northern millocrats on a Wednesday.


Mr. Warren had once considered the Prime Minister to be a great man – a very great man – even an honest one; but since his return to power, Sir Robert Peel had kept his political principles as finely balanced between Whig and Tory as the celebrated Indian Juggler balanced balls on his chin. The introduction of the Income Tax at 7d in the £ had come like the booming of a knell; but the unforgiveable tampering with the Sliding Scale on foreign corn imports had given rise to grave concerns that the Prime Minister was now poised to do the unimaginable, to whit: dispense with the Corn Laws altogether!


It was occurring to Mr. Warren that he had been summoned to Bellamy’s in order that he might be persuaded to view the Corn Laws as an unjust monopoly &c., &c., the surrender of which would mitigate the sufferings of the masses at a pinch, and other such humbugs. He fancied that he understood the ways of Westminster – its laws and amenities the same as any other calling in which dirty work and back-stair influence must be paid in kind – and he wondered what inducement Mr. Drummond might offer to him in exchange for which he might assume a stance more acceptable to the Prime Minister. All men desire fame, power, wealth, and as he prepared to enter Bellamy’s, Mr. Warren knew that he had never before been so close to those things – nor so far from them. A decisive hour awaited him. And crossing the threshold into the habanah-fugged domain of influence he felt a quickening in his breast.


Bellamy’s was busy, but with the new Parliamentary session almost a fortnight off, and most of the Honourable Members still at their country retreats, it was nothing like the ruthless crush of rumour and gossip it would become in but a few days’ time. No clusters of committee witnesses; no lawyers and their clients; no agents looking shifty; no Members lounging in reprehensible disarray as they waited for the division bell to summon them: just a few of the more incorrigible Westminster types partaking of a tender smoking steak and full-bodied Madeira.


Mr. Warren came upon the Secretary quite by accident: an unpresumptuous man of rather full figure, ensconced in a secluded corner and intent upon a large Nankin plate of saddle of mutton with a glass of sherry at his elbow. Mr. Drummond, for his part, had already spied out his guest. He had half-risen from his seat, wearing the same convivial half-smile he almost always wore in public; he smoothed his jabot and proffered a hand in greeting. He was dressed very old-fashioned, as was his custom: a little like a Quaker, in a suit of sober black knee-breeches, below which sat worsted stockings of the same colour, ending in a pair of wide-buckled shoes – all of which lent to him the faded, neglected appearance of something put away in an Exchequer cupboard thirty years before. He appeared quite mild of manner and was quite bald, apart from two surprising profusions of jet-black hair running either side of his round head and meeting at the back; an olive complexion, offset by ruddy smudges upon each cheek, mirrored in a queer symmetry by two thick dark rectangles that appeared to be have been stuck just so above his eyes; eyes that were dark and welcoming, even kindly at first, giving less and less away the longer one tried to engage them.


“How do you do,” he said in the manner of one who wishes to come straight to business. “I’m delighted to meet you. Delighted.”


A deft, subtle raising of one jet-black eyebrow immediately summoned the waiter from the other side of the busy room: the only hint at the influence delitescent behind the amiable smile.


“No-one could accuse you of being a latitudinous thinker, Mr. Warren,” the Secretary began in a perfect mildness of tone. He had taken his seat and was giving all of his benign attentions to his mutton. His guest made a little acquiescent bow, presuming this to be a compliment, and requested of the waiter one of Bellamy’s excellent clarets and a bowl of mock-turtle. “It appears that when you speak in your essays of Tories, you mean those Honourable Members who will brook no further tampering with the price of corn – no matter what the cost to the nation.”


Mr. Warren stroked his top lip circumspectly. “I suppose,” he replied, “you could say that my concern is for the Old Party, sir.” At which the Secretary pursed his smile. “I consider,” continued Mr. Warren, “Toryism to be the only bulwark against the revolutionary effects of the Reform Bill.”


“Eight years in the political wilderness,” Mr. Drummond said, turning a piece of gristle over with his fork, “has had its effect upon the Old Party. I am not at all sure that things are precisely the same as they were – or will ever be so again.”


“But protection of the Landed Interest by means of the Corn Laws, surely, that is still an article of faith among Tory gentlemen…”


“You are certainly very orthodox for such a young man,” said Mr. Drummond. “Where were you at school?”

Mr. Warren ran a hand through his thick dark curls.

“Manchester,” he confessed.

The Secretary glanced up from his plate. “The grammar school…!”

“My father had at the time the living at Ancoats.”

Mr. Drummond pulled a little face. “Well, then you are to be commended.”


The soup arrived, but not the claret, and the Secretary returned his attentions to the mutton, attacking it with relish now. After a few moments he said, “I presume you’ve heard about the Parliamentary Radicals… we learned just last week that they intend to commence the new session with a demand for nothing less than the free import of foreign corn.”


Mr. Drummond, his bald head bent over his plate, spent some time chewing over a forkful of mutton, leaving Mr. Warren to consider his response. “Doubtless,” he observed at last, “Lord John Russell and the Whigs shall side with Mr. Cobden and the Radical flank.”

The Secretary did not look up. He dabbed at his mouth with his napkin.

“O, they will start baying for Repeal as soon as Her Majesty’s Speech from the throne is over,” he said, with no trace of irritation. “They will do everything they can to embarrass the government and put it in a tight spot. Everything they can to foster discord in our ranks.” He looked up, his large dark eyes levelled with those of his guest. “Nothing,” he said, “nothing is more divisive than corn.”


Mr. Warren felt a slight prickling, as though he were being challenged. He took a desultory mouthful of the soup and wished the waiter would hurry up with the wine. “Is it true,” he said, “that Sir Robert Peel has agreed to lead a coalition of interests with the liberal Tories and the Whigs?”


Mr. Drummond smiled at his mutton. “Is that what’s being said? Tut tut: the utter nonsense that is put about the place! The Prime Minister is of the opinion that we must make this a cheap country in which to live, that is all. The People, you see, my dear FIAT JUSTITIA, the People are starving.”


It had become quite the fashion to affect sympathy for the poor: it was, for instance, regularly put about that Sir Robert Peel made donations from his own pocket to the relief of Paisley. Mr. Warren considered inquiring whether the Secretary gave to every beggar he passed on the streets.


“Three failed harvests,” Mr. Drummond continued matter-of-factly, “industry in decline; a serious diminution of consumption in those articles which contribute to the public revenue; a falling off in the Excise equal to two millions and a half; a total deficiency of five millions and a half. A fourth part of the population of Carlisle dying of famine. The town of Paisley entirely bankrupt. In Stockport five thousand working men and their families in distress. In Leeds the pauper stone-heap standing at 150,000 tons. D’ye know, my dear sir, the guardians are giving the paupers six shillings per week for doing nothing, rather than seven shillings and sixpence for breaking any more stones? Imagine! In manufacturing centres all over the country the Poor Rate stands at upwards of fifty per cent, and every week tradesmen who might in better times have sustained it, must now resort to it in order to support themselves and their families. It is chaos,” said Mr. Drummond, pronouncing the verdict with perfect equanimity of tone. “Chaos. And it occurs to me that something must be done – and done soon. Protectionism has had its day. Repeal is inevitable – a question of when, not if.” He tapped with his knife the clean line he had created down the middle of his plate. “The Centre, you see, the Centre demands it.”


“But Repeal of the Corn Laws will split the Party,” said Mr. Warren.


“Poor Party,” said Mr. Drummond with considerable feeling. “And how are we to save her?”

It was very fortunate that the wine arrived just at that moment. Mr. Warren took a long draft and the opportunity to think out his next move. He set his glass down with great purpose and said: “What, precisely, do you want of me?”

Mr. Drummond was smiling at the gravy. “We are gentleman,” he said. “We understand each other. Yes?”

“But of course…”


“Facta non verba,” said Mr. Drummond. “A precipitous occurrence – some discrediting event that will damage the reputation of the League – you follow my meaning, yes?”


Mr. Warren dabbed at his nose and brow with his napkin, and poured himself another glass of claret. He was feeling rather queasy.

“You mean – like the Holiday Insurrection?” he dared to venture.

“O dear me no! No, no,” said Mr. Drummond, aghast, laying down his knife and fork. “No more Monster Mobs. Far too costly. Besides, it seems the Radicals may foment discontent all they wish by now: the People are having none of it.” Mr. Drummond withdrew into his seat, smoothing his jabot. “The People want Free Trade,” he continued benignly. “The People want cheap bread. The People want things to appear to be fair and decent. They do not wish to destroy society! Why, this isn’t France! You see, my dear young fellow, in this country, political trouble is never truly alarming. Far from it: in general it is all rather good for government. Why, look at the unfortunate Spencer Perceval as a case in point: there never was a more despised Prime Minister until, that is, he was assassinated by that madman Bellingham in the lobby. I tell you, sir, when it comes to it, the vast majority of English people like to see the government deal harshly with madmen and rabble-rousers.” Smiling, Mr. Drummond momentarily resumed his repast. “Economical discontent, however,” he said, suddenly lowering his fork, “any trouble boiling out of taxes or bread or unemployment, ah now; that is a wholly different order of danger. What is required in such cases is a useful distraction: a straightforward outrage to common decency – something that will remind the People of England how much they love and respect the Law.”


Mr. Warren ran a hand through his thick mop of dark curls. They were rather damp. It was stultifyingly warm in the close interior of the chop-house. He reached for the decanter and poured himself another glass of claret.

“What if I were to tell you,” said Mr. Drummond, “that since the summer Sir Robert Peel goes in terror of his life?” Mr. Warren did not wish to appear obtuse. He mopped his brow with his napkin. It was an effort not to perspire. “Were you aware that at the League’s convention last summer it was suggested that lots be drawn in order to see which of a hundred men might kill him?”


Mr. Warren said he was very shocked to hear it.

The Secretary continued, “And did you know that during the Queen’s visit to Edinburgh in October, a Mob crying for cheap bread attacked the Prime Minister’s carriage? O yes. I saw it with my own eyes. Why, perhaps you might care to write something of that. I can supply you with all the details. What is more, it is part of my official duty to open all of the Prime Minister’s correspondence, and I can tell you, sir, he receives a good many vile threats of the blackest shade. As a matter of fact, I keep a file about me containing the most dreadful. Only this morning we received a choice example! Would you care to see it?”

Mr. Warren nodded mutely.

The Secretary smacked his lips and wiped his chin, then, discarding his napkin with a flourish, reached into his coat and withdrew a copy of Malthus’s Essay on Population, bound in dark green hard grain. He placed it upon the table between them and patted the marbled sides.


“The security of anything contained within these pages is vouchsafed, my dear fellow,” he said, “for the simple reason that nobody in his right mind would ever think of looking there!”


“It is certainly a very dreary volume,” said Mr. Warren.

Mr. Drummond chuckled lightly as he took up the book by its spine and gave it a little shake. The uncut pages fell away in a sort of fan, revealing a series of little pockets into which a number of documents had been slipped. “Only economic scientists and Whigs could possibly see any merit in this worthless essay,” he said. “Not to say build an entire system for managing the population on the basis of a fundamental error in calculation factors.” He withdrew a thin, slippery sheet of writing paper from one of the pockets. “Dominus providebit, Mr. Warren,” he was saying; “the one non-variable: the Lord will Provide. I wonder how the Reverend Dr. Malthus could possibly have overlooked that.”


He passed the sheet across the table. In a crooked, spidery hand were written the words: Let us kill him and we’ll have corn at our own price. Coriolanus, I i. Mr. Warren swallowed hard as Mr. Drummond slipped the letter back inside the uncut pages of the volume.


“Tut tut,” he said, withdrawing his watch from his fob. He shook it vigorously a couple of times, and held it to his ear. “Is that the time?”