Dear reader, forgive me for while we begin in the filth and decay of East London, it is intended that we end in hope like nodding daffodils showing the misery of winter is over. For here, sits an ancient church as shabby as a wastrel. To its north, a viaduct carries thunderous panting engines laden with manufacture, whilst running from its west, a common, once only subject to the wailing skylark, now despoiled with brickfields and the stench of fires befitting Ba‘al Zebûb’s foulest lair. To its south and east, a pustule of brick houses falling into disrepair even before roofs feel the crack and cry of winter storms.
Yet inside its tumbled boundary lies an old oak, worthy of the Garden of Eden, with rich green leaves and stout trunk. On its gnarled bark, a face that the elderly ignorant Newmanite minister, Rev Norman Horace Lovejoy, reports as an Angel for those in despair. For him, God is a refuge for the needy in distress, a shelter from the storm. Ravings of the solitary, for dear reader, as you know, “God helps those that help themselves”.
At the foot of the oak, sitting as if a collapsed bag of rags, is a decrepit old man with wool grey hair, skin the oak’s match, eyes stove-black, and a mouth empty of teeth bar one lone yellow spike. Blocking him from the sun is Augustus Clarence Worthy, a bear of a man corseted by good tweed. An instrument of the infamous Charles Booth investigation into why the poor exist – as if that was unknown. Augustus, holding a notepad lost in one hand, plucks with cigar like fingers, a gold fountain pen from his pocket chain before scaring the birds by saying,
‘Elijah Thomas Fallen I presume, bone-grubber of this parish,’ to the living rag pile. With a confident cast of the head but a rattle of the chest, Elijah answered, ‘That’s the blessed truth you are tellin sir.’
‘Excellent my good fellow. Now as you converse I will take notes and ask questions. So what is your day? How do you make the ready, the needful?’
Trying to make himself comfortable, Elijah wheezed out,
‘Well sir, I poke into eaps of rubbish turnin scraps and rags, abandoned even by beggars, into farthins and halfpenny pittances. If it’s dry I ave the chance of lodgins as I can sort the rags, but if its wet I ain’t the conveniences for washin and dryin so I sleep out in what corners I can.’
Augustus scratched away, giving of himself as only honest labours can, and encouraged Elijah by requesting he,
‘Shoot it out.’
‘If I unger, sir I go up to the rich neighbourhoods, beggin your pardon, and find what grub been thrown away. When I was a respectable man, it would have turned my stomach eatin the dirty things I do.’
Before we find out the sad and mean details of how Elijah should sink so low, we must now turn to the history of one Emma Flora Goldsmythe whom we meet some seven months earlier just before the first snow of Christmas.
Emma is red cheeked, flamed-haired, and clear, even loud, of voice and used to good walking and hard riding – side-saddle naturally. She married from only £500 a year, for love and the hope for wealth. Fredrick Weatly Goldsmythe proved to be more at home on the racecourse than in the boardroom or her bed, so she reluctantly settled for the pursuit of wealth. She used the flattering wiles of the fair sex, to steer her husband through the sandbanks and storms of commercial life.
All was well until the unsought blessing of motherhood fell upon her. As she said, only last month, to her confidant and friend Madam Stargazy, dark of hair and eye, and much given to the augurs of coincidence,
‘Thanks to my foresight we reside in Rising Street of Belgravia near its eastern fashionable edge with Knightsbridge.’
Madam Stargazy, sipped her tea before agreeing how clever her friend was and added,
‘And my dear, this house has an air of considerable architectural pretention, and all the requirements in the way of modern sanitary arrangement.’
They both laughed at this unexpected spark of practicality.
But today, we meet Emma in the worst of circumstances. Following the French custom of receiving friends without the issuing of formal invitations, she is at home weekdays between three pm and five pm. So at eleven of the clock we find her planning menus with Cook who is large and taciturn to the point of rudeness.
Splendid in bottle green silk, Emma sits at the writing desk glancing at her list. Like any sensible wife she takes care to tread carefully and accept liberties lest a storm drives a seaworthy Cook to ports that are more hospitable. Dear reader, Emma knows that social entertainment keeps a husband happy and a business smiling.
‘As we are in the Christmas week, I am inclined to offer wine and biscuits rather than the customary Indian tea and cake.’
Cook’s nostrils flared. Emma knew what this meant, but before a petticoat battle could flounce off, a loud rat-a-tat-tat boomed through the house. Emma half rose out of her seat before dropping back; Cook did a surprised pig jig.
As Emma collected her wits, a tap on the door to the morning room heralded the entrance of Mary, an Irish parlour maid with none of the charm but all the melancholy of her race, saying,
‘Beggin your pardon madam but the boy has left a telegram and says it urgent.’
Fearing the worse, Emma snatched at the envelope, and dismissed them. On opening and reading, her world stopped, it was the worse: the ship wrecked, her husband dead, and the business lost to her.
I fear dear reader it would be indelicate to stay longer; we must leave Emma to the consolation of privacy and prayer and return to the sorry tale of Elijah Thomas Fallen.
Augustus, in a voice worthy of the rugby pitch, said, ‘So good sir how was it that you came into this sorry state.’
Elijah pondered and then painfully and slowly said, ‘Once I was artisan livin in Kent turnin out gentleman’s sticks of the best quality, but machine turned wood made my skills of nought. I struggled on ‘til May my wife died of the work and I was left with the two livin children. My Sam kind earted and stout went to sea and never came back. I fear he drowned. I even lost Polly, my blonde hair red-cheeked angel by bein’ on the road seekin work. It was no place for child so her grandfather took her in and moved to Liverpool so I would not see her agin.’
Dear reader, Sam did indeed drown but left a family in New York wondering of England. And Polly was as lost to her father as her brother was. Cast up in Manchester, she became a pale, pinched, peevish mother with a lout of a husband that enjoyed the gin and not the Lord. Both children loved and prayed for Elijah to the end.
At last, tired by the effort of talking for so long he comes to his final remarks, ‘Yes, mine’s an ard life. I’m out grubbin on Sundays as well as weekdays. I reckon that God won’t be ard on me when my time comes, by my way of thinkin, as I am tryin to earn an onest penny instead of goin on the parish or lettin myself starve.’
Moved, Augustus scares the birds again by exuberant expression of,
‘You sir, are clearly a chap that is up to snuff. Let me slip you some tin,’ giving Elijah a silver shilling which is respectfully accepted as Augustus leaves to return to the comforts of Knightsbridge in what for him passes as a reflective mood.
Now night has fallen and alone in the cemetery Elijah looks up at the oak tree and stares at the Popish image caught in some beam of light. Defiant but low, he whispers,‘There isn’t a soul in the wide world that cares a snap o’ the finger for me – cept it’s the sparrers if I have crumbs to give them, but you,’ before falling in to a fitful sleep against the bedlam of the darkness.
Let us leave him at peace and return to Emma who tonight will know the pain and joy of motherhood. Forgive me dear reader, as our tale now requires intrusion into matters that are not for public gaze.
Emma is still in widow black for her business – and to her painful surprise also for her husband. Her feelings were reborn when the Will reading in late January disclosed matters of import. Alone with Madam Stargazy she listened with care as the family lawyer, Gustavus Jewell Ripov, a shrivelled man even in his youth, explains,
‘In Common Law as amplified by Statute you transfer your property rights on marriage and regain what your husband jointure assignment returns should death occur. In this case, the household contents, and an annual allowance of a £2000 a year to continue even on remarriage.’
Expecting no less, her husband’s generosity still moved Emma. Mr Ripov continued,
‘The Freehold and the company will be held in trust,’ Gustavus fidgeted, and looked away, ‘for appropriate issue.’
Emma caught Madam Stargazy eye and signalled, as only the fair sex can, that her hard work and thrift depended on the fruitfulness of her womb.
Mindful of this and under the promptings of Madam Stargazy, Emma turned to the masses and Popish pomp of Newmanite Ritualists. Her house, like her Church, was full of images of Saints bleeding and pleading. It is a sorry sight to see a woman as full of manly commonsense as Emma fallen in with this quackery. Even now, the bedchamber blazes with candles and the walls are bare but for a picture of her husband and some angel mawkishness.
Dr Silas Simon Bodger, dark but not handsome due to a cast of humour, attends the confinement and has to be content that he has managed to clear out the chamber of its attendees, including the elderly vicar of some low Church in the East of London. Dr Bodger did not hold with the old custom of household and woman relatives attending the birth.
‘It will be the fathers next if we do not make a stand for professional practice,’ he had joked at his Lodge meeting.
Emma suffers less of the burden of Eve for she has a bottle of the blessed Chloroform – named by no less a personage than Queen Victoria. As pain overwhelms she can soak a handkerchief to ensure bliss. A release for the household as she has no maidenly modesty on screaming.
Not all was well. Dr Bodger looking at Emma’s face felt under the cloth to see if the mysteries of the body were permitting a birth or if he would have to use forceps. To his alarm, it was clear that the child’s life was in danger unless he acted to bring about the birth.
Under the oak tree, another life was failing. Elijah awoke to find the moon risen making the cemetery and Church a silvery echo of its glory days. The tree breathed and fluttered and he found a silence within him that was the herald of his passing. Looking up at the face smiling from the tree, he cried out.
Emma knowing, as women do, that life within was fading, struggled to assist. When the coldness of metal touched her, she knew a child was seeing the light of the world. But from the face of the doctor, she saw a tragedy was unfolding; in her agony, she looked at the Angels and cried out.
Together they made a common plea to God of,
‘Do not forsake me; let not my life be in vain.’
And in that moment of death, life renews, as a boy with stove-black eyes cries in the dark.
So now our tale ends, perhaps with the moral that love, rather than thrift, is the measure of God’s presence. But without thrift, have we a world we can love?
