“Er… will your Aunt Norris help you with the management of this enterprise?”
Edmund laughed. “I rely upon my aunt condemning the scheme altogether, as being beneath the dignity of the family. If she takes an interest in running my school, I should think the enterprise would be sunk before it begins. In only one respect will I take her advice. This table” —and he rapped his knuckles on the large dining table— “goes to the breakfast room.”
Richard looked at the table. “It is a very fine table. Are you prepared to have your pupils carve their initials into it?”
“Of course. That reminds me—we ought to offer penmanship as well. Your sister writes an excellent hand. And she could teach music and drawing.”
“There is a lot of work goes into starting a school, Edmund. You must get in some uncomfortable narrow beds, and take care to hire the worst cook in Northamptonshire,” Richard advised with mock-seriousness.
“Oh, depend upon it,” Edmund nodded, “the school will be run upon traditional lines. Everyone will get chilblains in the winter, and so forth. But come with me, let us go up to the great house together, and walk about the rooms, and consider how it is all to be done with the least expense.”
* * * * * * *
Edmund placed only one small advertisement “To Parents & Guardians” in the Northamptonshire papers. Diffidence held him back from explaining how he intended his school to serve those pupils whose friends, for various considerations, did not wish to send them to a public school. He was better able to explain his intentions by letter to his fellow clergymen. And so the news was carried through the district and beyond, and chiefly spread by those who were best placed to recommend Edmund Bertram’s character and intentions, and heard by those most in need of such an establishment.
The earliest applicant was a Mr. John Shepherd, a Somersetshire attorney, who delivered his two grandsons to Mansfield while Christopher Jackson and his son Dick were still installing plain board panelling to protect the wallpaper from the depredations of the expected tenants.
“My grandsons’ surname is Clay,” Mr. Shepherd told a rather astonished Edmund, “Their mother has left them on my hands, and she is now living under the protection of a gentleman in London. I venture to predict that at most schools, they would suffer exceedingly from the taunts of their school-mates. Henry and John are… somewhat rebellious little fellows, but I should not like to see them punished for the transgressions of their unworthy parent.”
Edmund promised Henry and John would be treated with every consideration; and he was reasonable (unreasonably reasonable, thought Mrs. Norris) as to the amount of the boarding fees. The next to be enrolled was a boy who was the natural son of a wealthy merchant, the next was the son of a disgraced vicar, and then came two poor orphaned boys whose step-mother had no use for them, and before a month had passed, young Thomas and Cyrus had eight new playfellows, and Anna Imogen had eight new brothers.
Edmund, Mr. Owen and his sister took it in turns to instruct them.
* * * * * * *
When he first exited the prison walls, Gibson was afraid that his time in confinement had damaged him, perhaps irreparably. The noise and frenzy of the streets of London had been overwhelming to his senses; his heart pounded in his throat, and he almost wanted to turn and bolt back into his quiet rose-bowered prison cell. For weeks afterward he was dizzy, he started at loud noises, and he could often not distinguish what people were saying.
His retreat to the wilds of Cumbria with his friend William Price had helped to soothe him, and fill him with a nostalgic pain concerning Fanny was which almost a pleasure.
Once away from England, William Gibson experienced that strange but not uncommon sentiment which assails an Englishman abroad—however censorious he might have been of his country and his government, he bristles at hearing derision from foreigners.
The French had turned the world upside down with their revolution, followed by Napoleon’s endless wars of conquest. Europe would still be under his thrall, but for the British navy and army. Thousands of men had died to put an end to his despotic rule. But wherever Mr. Gibson travelled--to the German states, or Spain, where English soldiers had dislodged the French--he heard nothing but abuse of the English. He heard Lord Castlereagh denounced for insisting that other nations give up the slave trade. His time in Europe, in addition to mollifying his hostility toward his own nation, helped to restore him to his usual peace of mind and gentle optimism.
One of the first calls Mr. Gibson made upon his return to London, was to the office of Mr. Orme, to discuss the Luddite Benjamin Walker, the man who had escaped the noose. Mr. Gibson had learnt from his friend William Price, who learnt of it from his wife Julia, who learnt of it from her sister Maria, who had been informed by her husband, Mr. Orme, of Gibson’s suspicions that Walker had been paid for his testimony at York. The intelligence which travelled from Mr. Orme to Maria to Julia to William Price to Mr. Gibson that Benjamin Walker in fact had not received government monies, was worth further enquiry.
Accordingly, Mr. Orme asked Maria to tell Julia to tell her husband to tell Mr. Gibson that Mr. Orme would be honoured to meet Mr. Gibson, of whose works he was a great admirer.
Of the Prices, Mr. Orme
