it was a fairly cheerless homecoming. Elspeth seemed pleased enough to see me, all right, but when I tried to bundle her into bed she would have none of it, in case the child was harmed. So instead of bouncing her about that evening I had to listen fondly to her drivelling about what name we should give our Little Hero — for she was sure it must be a boy.
'He shall be Harry Albert Victor,' says she, holding my hand and gazing at me with those imbecile blue eyes which never lost their power, somehow, to make my heart squeeze up inside me, God knows why. 'After you, my dearest love, and our dear, dear Queen and
'Capital choice,' says I. 'Couldn't be better.' Not unless, I thought to myself, you called him Tom, or Dick, or William, or whatever the fellow's name was who was in the hay with you. (After all, we'd been married a long while and made the springs creak time without number, and devil a sign of our seed multiplying. It seemed odd, now. Still, there it was.)
'You make me so happy, Harry,' says she, and do you know, I believed it. She was like that, you see; as immoral as I was, but without my intelligence. No conscience whatever, and a blissful habit of forgetting her own transgressions — or probably she never thought she had any to forget.
She leaned up and kissed me, and the smell and feel of her blonde plumpness set me off, and I made a grab at her tits, but she pushed me away again.
'We must be patient, my own,' says she, composing herself. 'We must think only of dear Harry Albert Victor.'
(That, by the way, is what he is called. The bastard's a bishop, too. I can't believe he's mine.)
She cooed and maundered a little longer, and then said she must rest, so I left her sipping her white-wine whey and spent the rest of the evening listening to old Morrison groaning and snarling. It was the same old tune, more or less, that I'd grown used to on the rare occasions when we had shared each other's company over the past eight years — the villainy of the workers, the weakness of government, the rising cost of everything, my own folly and extravagance (although heaven knows he never gave me enough to be extravagant with), the vanity of his wife and daughters, and all the rest of it. It was pathetic, and monstrous, too, when you considered how much the old skinflint had raked together by sweating his mill-workers and cheating his associates. But I observed that the richer he got, the more he whined and raged, and if there was one thing I'll say for him, he got richer quicker than the only sober man in a poker game.
The truth was that, coward and skinflint though he was, he had a shrewd business head, no error. From being a prosperous Scotch mill owner when I married his daughter he had blossomed since coming south, and had his finger in a score of pies — all d––d dirty ones, no doubt. He had become known in the City, and in Tory circles too, for if he was a provincial nobody he had the golden passport, and it was getting fatter all the time. He was already angling for his title, although he didn't get it until some little time later, when Russell sold it to him — a Whig minister ennobling a Tory miser, which just goes to show. But with all these glittering prizes in front of him, the little swine was getting greedier by the hour, and the thought of it all dissolving in revolution had him nearly puking with fear.
'It's time tae tak' a stand,' says he, goggling at me. 'We have to defend our rights and our property' — and I almost burst out laughing as I remembered the time in Paisley when his millworkers got out of hand, and he cringed behind his door, bawling for me to lead my troops against them. But this time he was really frightened; I gathered from his vapourings that there had been recent riots in Glasgow, and even in Trafalgar Square, and that in a few days there was to be a great rally of Chartists — 'spawn of Beelzebub' he called them — on Kennington Common, and that it was feared they would invade London itself.
To my astonishment, when I went out next day to take my bearings, I discovered there was something in it. At Horse Guards there were rumours that regiments were being brought secretly to town, the homes of Ministers were to be guarded, and supplies of cutlasses and firearms were being got ready. Special constables were being recruited to oppose the mob, and the Royal Family were leaving town. It all sounded d––d serious, but my Uncle Bindley, who was on the staff, told me that the Duke was confident nothing would come of it.
'So you'll win no more medals this time,' says he, sniffing. 'I take it, now that you have consented to honour us with your presence again, that you are looking to your family' (he meant the Pagets, my mother's tribe) 'to find you employment again.'
'I'm in no hurry, thank'ee,' says I. 'I'm sure you'd agree that in a time of civil peril a gentleman's place is in his home, defending his dear ones.'
'If you mean the Morrisons,' says he, 'I cannot agree with you. Their rightful place is with the mob, from which they came.'
'Careful, uncle,' says I. 'You never know — you might be in need of a Scotch pension yourself some day.' And with that I left him, and sauntered home.
The place was in a ferment. Old Morrison, carried away by terror for his strong-boxes, had actually plucked up courage to go to Marlborough Street and 'test as a special constable, and when I came home he was standing in the drawing-room looking at his truncheon as though it was a snake. Mrs Morrison, my Medusain-law, was lying on the sofa, with a maid dabbing her temples with eau-de-cologne, Elspeth's two sisters were weeping in a corner, and Elspeth herself was sitting, cool as you please, with a shawl round her shoulders, eating chocolates and looking beautiful. As always, she was the one member of the family who was quite unruffled.
Old Morrison looked at me and groaned, and looked at the truncheon again.
'It's a terrible thing to tak' human life,' says he.
'Don't take it, then,' says I. 'Strike only to wound. Get your back against a brick wall and smash 'em across the knees and elbows.'
The females set up a great howl at this, and old Morrison looked ready to faint.
'D'ye think … it'll come tae … tae bloodshed?'
'Shouldn't wonder,' says I, very cool.
'Ye'll come with me,' he yammered. 'You're a soldier — a man of action — aye, ye've the Queen's Medal an' a'. Ye've seen service — aye — — against the country's enemies! Ye're the very man tae stand up to this … this trash. Ye'll come wi' me — or maybe tak' my place!'
Solemnly I informed him that the Duke had given it out that on no account were the military to be involved in any disturbance that might take place when the Chartists assembled. I was too well known; I should be recognised.
'I'm afraid it is for you civilians to do your duty,' says I. 'But I shall be here, at home, so you need have no fear. And if the worst befalls, you may be sure that my comrades and I shall take stern vengeance.'
I left that drawing-room sounding like the Wailing Wall, but it was nothing to the scenes which ensued on the morning of the great Chartist meeting at Kennington. Old Morrison set off, amidst the lamentations of the womenfolk, truncheon in hand, to join the other specials, but was back in ten minutes having sprained his ankle, he said, and had to be helped to bed. I was sorry, because I'd been hoping he might get his head stove in, but it wouldn't have happened anyway. The Chartists did assemble, and the specials were mustered in force to guard the bridges — it was then that I saw Gladstone with the other specials, with his nose dripping, preparing to sell his life dearly for the sake of constitutional liberty and his own investments. But it poured down, everyone was soaked, the foreign agitators who were on hand got nowhere, and all the inflamed mob did was to send a monstrous petition across to the House of Commons. It had five million signatures, they said; I know it had four of mine, one in the name of Obadiah Snooks, and three others in the shape of X's beside which I wrote, 'John Morrison, Arthur Wellesley, Henry John Temple Palmerston, their marks'.
But the whole thing was a frost, and when one of the Frog agitators in Trafalgar Square got up and d––d the whole lot of the Chartists for English cowards, a butcher's boy tore off his coat, squared up to the Frenchy, and gave the snail-chewing scoundrel the finest thrashing you could wish for. Then, of course, the whole crowd carried the butcher's boy shoulder high, and finished up singing 'God Save the Queen' with tremendous gusto. A thoroughly English revolution, I dare say.1
You may wonder what all this had to do with my thinking about entering politics. Well, as I've said, it had lowered my opinion of asses like Gladstone still further, and caused me to speculate that if I were an M.P. I couldn't be any worse than that sorry pack of fellows, but this was just an idle thought. However, if my chief feeling about the demonstration was disappointment that so little mischief had been done, it had a great effect on my father-in- law, crouched at home with the bed-clothes over his head, waiting to be guillotined.
