The Victory (29 page)

The longer she remained, the easier it was to forget
Morland Place and James. Here, her consequence derived
from being her father's daughter, and at times she was even
momentarily surprised to hear herself addressed as Mrs
Morland instead of Miss Hobsbawn.

One day at the end of August 1804 she accepted an
invitation to drink tea with Mrs Pendlebury, the widow of the
master builder who had been largely responsible for the
construction of Hobsbawn House. Pendlebury and Hobsbawn
had been friends since the earliest days of their enterprise,
and had risen side by side to wealth and social eminence, a
consequence Mrs Pendlebury still enjoyed in her widowhood.
She lived with her son and three daughters in an imposing
stone villa of her husband's designing.

Mary Ann accepted her invitation with some curiosity, for
Mrs Pendlebury prided herself on being a leader of society,
and always had the most talked-about people of the moment
at her gatherings, which sometimes meant that one met some
very queer folk indeed in her drawing-room. But the widow's
self-consequence was so great that she had no apprehension
that an acquaintance with unsuitable people might affect her own standing or reputation. She considered herself far above
any possibility of taint.

‘
Ah, there you are, my dear,' she cried as Mary Ann was
announced. Now, I think you know everyone here, except the
two gentlemen.' Mary Ann had taken in at a glance the familiar faces, and in some cases the even more familiar hats, of
the leading matrons of Manchester's society; but the two
people on their feet were a grizzled man with a lined, tired
face, who looked vaguely familiar to her, and a younger man,
very tall and dark, with a beak of a nose and high cheekbones,
which gave him a foreign look.

‘
Allow me to present John Ferriar, the physician, you
know, at the Infirmary,' Mrs Pendlebury was saying. 'Mrs
James Morland, daughter of our Mr Hobsbawn of Hobsbawn
Mills.' The older man looked at her with sharp interest, but
merely shook her hand without comment.

‘
And this is Father Thomas Rathbone of the St Anthony
Mission.’

The younger man took her proferred hand. He was so tall she had to turn her face up to look at him. Her eyes met his dark, intelligent gaze, and she felt a warmth and embarrassment rushing through her. It was a long time since any man
had looked at her so intently.

‘
I'm honoured to meet you, ma'am,' he said. 'I beg your
pardon, but I think we have an acquaintance in common, by
the name of Aislaby?'

‘
He is my chaplain at home — in Yorkshire,' Mary Ann
said in surprise.

‘
I thought so. We were at seminary together. Might I
trouble you to give him my regards when you see him?'

‘
There, didn't I say so?' said Mrs Pendlebury, with her
usual magnificent disregard of tact. 'All you Catholics always
know each other. Mr Ferriar here has been fascinating us
with the details of the survey he is taking for the Board of
Health, of the mill-workers' homes. He is quite chilling our
blood with threats of all the plagues of Egypt.'

‘
Prophecy is rather more in Rathbone line, ma'am,' said
Ferriar drily. 'My task is simply to report on what I find.'

‘
I suppose you must often go amongst the mill-workers,
Father?' Mary Ann said politely to Rathbone, as she had been
seated next to him. 'I believe many of them are Irish.'

‘
Ferriar and I stumble across each other daily,' Rathbone
replied. 'Our work overlaps to a great extent, and we have
often been able to help each other — though not, I'm afraid,
the unfortunate objects of our concern.'

‘
Father Rathbone has been telling us about the Peel Act
that was passed through Parliament two years ago,' said Mrs Spicer, the attorney's wife. 'How has it affected your father,
dear Mrs Morland? Do tell us.’

Mary Ann turned her mild gaze on the sharp-faced little
woman, well aware that the question was designed to dis
compose her. Mrs Spicer had a jealous nature, and a smaller
dress-allowance than Mary Ann. 'I have never heard of it,
ma'am,' she said.

‘
It's a law for the protection of pauper apprentices,' Rath-
bone supplied. 'It lays down conditions and hours of work and
so on. Unfortunately, making a law, and implementing it, are
two very different matters.'

‘
I suppose your father must have had to make many
changes because of it,' said Mrs Spicer.

‘
My father does not discuss his business with me,' Mary
Ann said calmly. 'I have never seen his mills, or his appren
tices.'

‘
Of course she hasn't, Emily,' Mrs Pendlebury interposed.
‘You don't think Joseph Hobsbawn would encourage his
daughter to visit that part of town, do you? Ah, here is tea at
last! Mr Ferriar, do go on about the cellars. I am quite fasci
nated by the cellars.’

As the servants handed cups and plates, the physician said,
‘I am quite serious, ma'am, when I say that the cellars present
a grave problem. Many have no windows, nor any form of
ventilation. Most are so damp that they are unfit for
habitation. I have seen those in which there is actually a sheet
of water across the floor, so that beds have to be raised up on
rafts or platforms to keep them dry. Of course, it is not so bad
at this time of year, but in the winter many useful, indus
trious families are carried off in consequence of living in such
damp conditions.'

‘
That is a sad waste,' Mrs Pendlebury said, directing a
maid by a sharp glance to offer Mrs Morland the macaroons.

‘
At this time of year,' Rathbone interposed, 'it is the privies
and dunghills which present the gravest problem.' A sharply
indrawn breath of affront from the company made him look
around defiantly. 'They are left open to the air, outside the
very windows of the workers' houses. The effluvia, the
noxious vapours, cannot be described. And the consequence is
the most virulent fevers, which pass rapidly from one person
to another in those crowded tenements, and carry them off
like flies.'

‘
The lower orders are always suffering from something,' said Mrs Ardwick plaintively. 'I'm sure I am always dosing
my servants for one thing or another. They do it on purpose to annoy, the tiresome things. It's getting to be quite impossible to find decent servants in Manchester these days,' she
added to a murmur of sympathetic agreement from the other
ladies. 'And the price of things is more than I can understand.
Why only the other day —'

‘
I tell you, we shall have an epidemic of fever very soon if
nothing is done about these conditions,' Rathbone said
desperately, as the conversation threatened to slip away from
him. 'A plague of such proportions that you will all have to
take notice.’

But it was no use. Mrs Pendlebury had begun a private
interrogation of Mr Ferriar, which left the rest of the gather
ing to go on to the much more interesting subject of the
iniquities of servants and the terrible rise in prices since the
war began.

Mary Ann eyed the young priest with sympathy. 'They will
not listen,' she murmured. 'You cannot expect them to be
interested in what they have no knowledge of.'

‘
But if they listened, I would give them knowledge,' he
said burningly. 'I expect everyone to be interested in what is
vital.'

‘
Vital to them?' Mary Ann said. He turned to look at her.
His dark, hawklike face was more full of life and feeling than
anyone's she had ever seen. She compared him briefly with her cynical husband, laughing at everyone and everything,
caring for nothing but his own comfort. I could admire a man
like this, she thought.

‘Vital to everyone,' he said.

‘Tell me,' she said. 'Tell me what it is I must know.’

He looked at her for a long time, as if gauging her mettle,
and she returned his look steadily, hardly knowing why she
wanted him to trust her, knowing only that she wanted him to understand that she was not like the others.

‘
You said that you knew nothing of the mill-workers and
the conditions they live in — no more than them.' He
gestured towards the other women in the room, but his eyes
never left her face. 'How can you be interested?'

‘
I'm different,' she said. And so began the strangest
conversation of her life.

*

On 2 December 1804, Napoleon's coronation took place in
the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. It was reported to be a ceremony of the utmost pomp and splendour. Although Pope
Pius VII was present, his role was restricted to that of onlooker, since the new Emperor, magnificent in ermine and
velvet, chose to crown himself with the crown of Charle
magne, to signify that no-one else was high enough to do it.

On 12 December, Spain delcared war on England, in
consequence of a naval action in the Atlantic, when a small
squadron under the command of Captain Gordon Moore, the general's brother, captured a Spanish treasure flotilla bound
for Cadiz, and confiscated a vast quantity of silver coin.
Though Spain had been officially neutral until that time, it
was perfectly well known that she was supplying Napoleon
with money, and the huge consignment of treasure would have been so valuable to the Emperor that it was decided
Spain would be less dangerous as an open enemy to England
than as a secret ally to France.

Pitt meanwhile, though on the brink of a treaty with
Russia and Sweden, and with the hope of stiffening Austrian
resistance, was finding his fellow countrymen harder to
handle. With a strong opposition of Foxites and the Grenville 'cousinhood', he was forced to a confusing reconciliation with
Addington, and throughout December, the clubs were filled
with shrill dispute and the clamour of pension- and place-
seekers.

Chetwyn was saved the unpleasantness of being driven out
of his own club by quarrelling factions, for he was down at
Wolvercote. He had spent most of the year there, ever since it
had become clear in May that the King was recovering and
there would be no regency, and in December he wrote to
Lucy asking particularly that she spend Christmas at Wolver
cote, where he intended to assemble a large party.

‘I can't imagine what he has found to do down there,' Lucy
remarked to Wiske and Brummell as they rode in the Park.
'He was always such a Town bird. And why isn't he going to
Morland Place? He always spends Christmas at Morland
Place. Edward will be most put out.'