Buckets From An English Sea 1832 and The Making of Charles Darwin Louis B Rosenblatt Full Chapter PDF
Buckets From An English Sea 1832 and The Making of Charles Darwin Louis B Rosenblatt Full Chapter PDF
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Buckets from an English Sea
1832 and the Making of
Charles Darwin
Louis B. Rosenblatt
1
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the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
Contents
9. And So . . . 178
Bibliography 187
Index 201
list of illustrations
1.1 R obert Baker’s map of the cholera epidemic in Leeds, 1833, from
E. Chadwick’s Report on the Sanitary Conditions, 1842. 8
1.2 William Hogarth’s engraving Reward of Cruelty, plate iv in a series
of four, 1751. 9
1.3 J. M. W. Turner’s Helveotsluys, 1832. 12
3.1 John O’Connor’s Pentonville Road, 1884. 47
6.1 Map of Rye, Romney Marsh, from Cinque Ports by Montagu Burrows,
early sixteenth century. 111
6.2 John Norden’s map of 1595 of the coast of East Sussex, from Cinque Ports
by Montagu Burrows. 112
8.1 Ruins of the Temple of Serapis by Canonico Andrea de Jorio, 1820, and
used by Lyell as the frontispiece of vol. i of his Principles, 1830. 151
vii
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to so many. To all my former students who sought more than I could
readily offer, so I had to push what I knew. To former teachers, like Drs. Hannaway,
Pocock, and the Fabers, who engaged what I offered. And to a myriad of others whom
I only knew through their writings, like Popper and Havelock, who offered clar-
ity of judgment where I had only seen “stuff.” And thanks to those who read early
drafts: Bobby Loftus, Roy Baxandall, Dave Kinne, Marshall Gordon, and especially
Dale Beran. I also want to thank my family, grown now beyond the four of us to include
Shanna, Gabe, and Nora, for all our talks and walks. And finally Bonnie, companion,
critic, and lovely at both.
ix
Buckets from an English Sea
Buckets from an English Sea
1
Prelude: A Word on
Beginnings and Ends
History is mostly clouds and clouds don’t have doors. But every once in a while tran-
sition becomes visible change, a sense that we are passing through a doorway. The
year 1832 was such a moment in England and in the life of the young Charles Darwin.
Hence the two centers of our tale. This is not an almanac of 1832, nor is it a biography
of Charles Darwin, though both are at the heart of things. It is a look at 1832 with an
eye on Darwin and a look at the life and work of Darwin with an eye on 1832 . . . but
let’s go back to clouds and doors.
It is always possible to adjust history’s lens so that any wrinkle becomes a smooth
surface; where the more things change, the more they stay the same. The camera shows
us what is there, but it has many tricks. There’s slow film: transient objects leave no
mark. Take a picture of a crowded street and the crowds disappear. No individual is
“there” long enough for its image to be recorded. Only the buildings, the street, and
sidewalk leave their mark.
There is a photo of a tumbling spring, but the water flows thickly, like treacle. No
ripples or eddies, no splashes or sprays of droplets off of rock and boulder. It is what
the eye would see if time were slower off the mark.
Adjust our lens again and it is all busy-ness. A mote dances quixotically in a win-
ter’s sunbeam, but this only hints at the frenzy that is really there. The molecules of
air are rushing at a thousand miles per hour, careening into one another with a vio-
lence that makes NASCAR look stately, even sedated. The same incessant motion,
the same incessant change is in the crowd that the camera didn’t see. Each individ-
ual is navigating his or her way through the sidewalk, through the minute, through
the day. A young woman, who is deaf, has left the office at the end of the day. She
is happy with her work with the Encyclopaedia Britannica Company in downtown
Chicago. Her first real job. She is walking down State Street or maybe it’s Randolph
and a man catches her eye and asks what time it is. She says “4:25” and sees his face
change; a look of disgust comes over his face. It was her voice, the strangeness of a
deaf person who has spent a lifetime not hearing her own voice. She works hard not
to catch anyone’s eye after that.
1
2 Buckets from an English Sea
The street is full of such scars. Or appointments filled with possibility: lunch with a
new friend, a host of decisions made or postponed. It is Carl Sandburg’s city, as in this
snippet where the city says to the people:
It’s a matter of your lens, the comings and goings, paying the rent, fixing the street.
It is the incessant busy-ness of the city “whistled in a ragtime jig down the sunset.” It
is the incessant busy-ness of history, that busy-ness which carries yesterday forward
to today.
In his rambling commentary England and the English (1833), politician and man
of letters Lord Bulwer-Lytton observed: “Every age may be called an age of transi-
tion . . . but in our age, the transition is visible.”2 It’s a matter of one’s lens.
The sun rises and the sun sets. Seasons give way to one another. However we might
adjust our lens, a unit like the year 1832 must be arbitrary. For sure; yet that does not
mean it cannot have been a year apart from other years. At the start of a lovely essay,
Stephen Jay Gould tells a story about “Skyline Arch” of Arches National Park and about
a pamphlet published by the Park Service. The pamphlet tells us the world changes in
imperceptible ways. Rub a canyon wall and hundreds of grains of sand are dislodged.
This might seem insignificant, but that is how canyons are formed. Indeed most of the
time the pace is slower, the pamphlet goes on to say, but in time you can tear down a
mountain or create a canyon, just a few grains at a time. Yet a few pages later in the
same pamphlet we learn that in 1940 a large block of stone had fallen from Skyline
Arch and it was suddenly twice as large, opening up now to greater vistas.3 A few grains
of sand . . . a massive collapse of rock. Every age may be called an age of transition, but
sometimes the transition is visible.
A large block of stone fell in England in1832—and the young Darwin was struck
by his own metaphorical block while off in the unhappy wilds of Tierra del Fuego, a
barren cluster of islands off the southern tip of South America. For England as a whole
and for Darwin on his own there was a doorway in 1832 and new horizons posing both
threat and promise.
THE PROTAGONIST
I have a story to tell about a young man, but when I mention his name, Charles Darwin,
he ceases to be a young man and becomes the young Charles Darwin—a very different
thing. That difference is really what the story is about. There was a time when Darwin
was a lad: I am tempted to say “just a lad,” with the potential to become a great scien-
tist. What happened so that a young man, perhaps not so different from many another,
became a young Charles Darwin? As it happened, it had a lot to do with events in 1832.
3 Prelude: A Word on Beginnings and Ends
directly to the moment. It’s the act of becoming. It’s the way things were at a moment,
if we were slower off the mark.
things unknown.”7 For sure the history we compose is a poor reflection of the actual
complexity of things, yet it resonates with a need to connect with our past, even as we
know we cannot really know.
We are of the opinion that the streets in which malignant cholera prevailed most
severely, were those in which the drainage was most imperfect; and that the state of
the general health of the inhabitants would be greatly improved, and the probabil-
ity of a future visitation from such malignant epidemics diminished, by a general
and efficient system of drainage, sewerage and paving, and the enforcement of bet-
ter regulations as to the cleanliness of the streets.9
The prevailing theory at the time was that cholera was caused by bad air, a miasma—
perhaps as we might think of the flu. We can see this very clearly in a book that was also
published in 1832 and carried the striking title The Working-Man’s Companion: The
Physician.1.Cholera. This self-help book was written by John Conolly, who had been
appointed Professor of the Practice of Medicine at the newly founded University
College of London in 1828, where he began to revolutionize the care of the mentally ill.
The Working-Man’s Companion was one of the first titles published by the also recently
formed Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. As the preface explains, the
Society was seeking to provide “in a cheap form . . . such plain and useful information
relating to Medicine as may be serviceable to the working-class of readers.”10 There had
been several recent outbreaks of cholera on the continent and now in Britain. People
needed to be alerted to what they could and should do. The Companion begins with
a primer on the human body, skeleton, musculature, internal organs, and so on, and
then proceeds to basic notions about good and ill health, focusing on cholera.
For cholera, as for yellow fever, the plague, and several other diseases, the author
explains: “Something hurtful is supposed to be added to the usual air,—something hurt-
ful, but which science has not yet succeeded in detecting. It cannot be seen, or tasted, or
touched, or smelt; it has neither palpable substance or colour; but we believe that it exists,
because of certain effects which we know not to arise from those parts of the air which
we can see and examine.”11 Conolly’s study offers the prevailing understanding of cholera
before the technology and techniques that established the existence of bacteria and viruses.
Baker’s study of Leeds was a crucial shift. Not because of a new theory about the
causes of cholera, but because of his focus on the community rather than the indi-
vidual. The report contains a schedule of the streets, lanes, and alleys where cases of
cholera occurred. Rather than any link between the disease and the victims’ age, sex,
occupation, diet, or even moral character, a common notion at the time, he linked the
spread of the disease to sanitation. Baker divided the population of Leeds into two
roughly equal portions. In that half where there were sewers, drainage, and pavement,
there were 245 cases of cholera. But in the other part of town, lacking such basic ame-
nities, there were 1,203 cases.12
7 Prelude: A Word on Beginnings and Ends
It is hard to appreciate how unsanitary were the prevailing conditions. Half of Leeds
lived along unpaved streets with no sewers. Commonly dwellings clustered in “yards.”
The Boot and Shoe Yard, for example, was home to 340 people in 34 units. As many
of these houses took in itinerant workers, numbers could swell to over 600. All of
these homes were without any plumbing. The “necessary” or toilet was often a wooden
screen around a hole in the ground, and sometimes no more than a bucket that could
be emptied into a common midden (see figure 1.1).
Later, Baker’s views would be incorporated by Edwin Chadwick in his Report on the
Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain of 1842, and they were
part of the background for Dr. John Snow’s work with a cholera epidemic in London
in 1854. Snow was able to link the outbreak to a particular well, thereby demonstrating
that cholera was carried in the water. Given the importance of these studies, Baker’s
work on the outbreak in Leeds in 1832 played a key role in the rise of the discipline of
public health.
Murder
Drawing our bucket for a second time, we discover the Anatomy Act of 1832. As Baker’s
report effectively marks a new and promising chapter, the Anatomy Act brought to a
close an old and unhappy chapter. There had long been a tension between the pursuit
of medical knowledge and taboos about dissection. Over time a system had evolved
whereby the bodies of executed criminals were given to hospitals. The Royal College
of Physicians had been allotted up to six corpses by Queen Elizabeth, and a royal grant
further allocated up to four to the Company of Barber-Surgeons.13
Public executions were relevant here, as the hanged felon forfeited his claim
on his own body. As a consequence, executions, already quite the spectacle, often
became a battle scene. Francis Place, whom we will come to know shortly, com-
mented: “The whole vagabond population of London, all the thieves, and all the
prostitutes, all those who were evil-minded, and some, a comparatively few curious
people made up the mob on those brutalizing occasions.”14 The families and friends
of the deceased were offended by the ensuing violation of the sanctity of the body.
It was enough that life should be taken away. They felt this so strongly that they
would often rush the gallows to steal away the body from the authorities. Here is
one description from 1740:
As soon as the poor creatures were half-dead, I was much surprised before such a
number of peace officers, to see the populace fall to hauling and pulling the car-
casses with so much earnestness, as to occasion several warm reencounters, and
broken heads. These were the friends of the person executed . . . and some per-
sons sent by private surgeons to obtain bodies for dissection. The contests between
these were fierce and bloody, and frightful to look at.15
To add fuel to the proverbial fire, sensibilities changed within the medical community
across the eighteenth century. Early in the 1700s the format for dissection had been
Figure 1.1 Robert Baker’s map of the cholera epidemic in Leeds, 1833, from E. Chadwick’s Report on the Sanitary Conditions, 1842. Courtesy of British Library.
9 Prelude: A Word on Beginnings and Ends
Here was the issue in a nutshell—he finds no peace, his corpse, no friend.
Figure 1.2 William Hogarth’s engraving Reward of Cruelty, plate iv in a series of four, 1751.
Courtesy of Tate Britain.
10 Buckets from an English Sea
Across the century, the direct experience of the dissection came to be valued over a
mere witnessing. This put a far greater premium on cadavers. The shortage of corpses
in turn meant medical schools did not scrutinize their suppliers too closely. A lucrative
trade emerged in body snatching and grave robbing.
In response, night watchmen were hired. Their stalls or stations can still be found in
older cemeteries.16 Grave robbing was bad enough, but the lure of money in hard times
led to an even more horrific practice. Likely candidates, such as the down and out, were
murdered and their bodies sold for cash!
This was the case in the famous Burke–Hare murders in Edinburgh. Burke and
Hare murdered sixteen victims in 1828. They were caught and their testimony
revealed that they had been supplying a Dr. Robert Knox, a surgeon who regularly
lectured on anatomy for a fee. They were paid 10 pounds sterling on average for these
corpses.
The scale of the problem can be seen from the 1831 confessions of one London
group who admitted to stealing five hundred to a thousand bodies for anatomists,
over a twelve-year career. They received 8 to 10 pounds for each cadaver accepted.
To try to gauge the value of this amount, a tradesman might make 17 shillings
a week. A single cadaver would thus correspond to more than three months of a
tradesman’s pay.17
These practices caused widespread fear and revulsion, and led to a parliamentary
investigation. In February of 1832 a bill was brought to the floor. Among those com-
menting on the bill was Thomas Macaulay. He begins by asking: “What are the evils
against which we are attempting to make provision?” “Two especially,” he continues,
“the practice of Burking, and bad surgery.” Macaulay then offers that the poor alone are
exposed to these two horrors:
• “What man, in our rank of life, runs the smallest risk of being Burked? That a man
has property, that he has connections, that he is likely to be missed and sought for,
are circumstances which secure him against the Burker. . . . The more wretched,
the more lonely, any human being may be, the more desirable prey is he to these
wretches. It is the man, the mere naked man, that they pursue.”
• “Again, as to bad surgery; this is, of all evils, the evil by which the rich suffer
least, and the poor most. . . . The higher orders in England will always be able to
procure the best medical assistance. Who suffers by the bad state of the Russian
school of surgery? The Emperor Nicholas? By no means. The whole evil falls on
the peasantry. If the education of a surgeon should become very extensive, if the
fees of surgeons should consequently rise, if the supply of regular surgeons should
diminish, the sufferers would be, not the rich, but the poor in our country villages,
who would again be left to mountebanks, and barbers, and old women, and
charms and quack medicines.”
And Macaulay concludes: “I think this a bill which tends to the good of the people, and
which tends especially to the good of the poor. Therefore I support it. If it is unpopular,
11 Prelude: A Word on Beginnings and Ends
I am sorry for it. But I shall cheerfully take my share of its unpopularity. For such, I am
convinced, ought to be the conduct of one whose object it is, not to flatter the people,
but to serve them.”18
The bill passed, providing medical schools with an adequate supply of cadavers of
those who were already dead.
Art
Our third bucket comes from the world of art. Constable and Turner were leading
painters of the day, and both were exhibiting paintings at the gallery of the Royal
Academy of Art in 1832. An intriguing practice at the time was that members of the
Academy were invited to set their paintings up and continue to work on them in the
company of fellow members and the public prior to the formal opening of the exhi-
bition. During this period Turner, it seems, added a splash of red paint to one of his
seascapes, and then left without saying a word. Evidently, he felt the painting needed
more focus.
Constable, struck by Turner’s deft touch, remarked: “He has been here and fired a
gun.”19
Turner is a most intriguing character. Across a long life (1775–1851), he painted
and sketched a host of works, perhaps as many as fifty thousand. He began as a lad in
his father’s barber shop, selling portraits of the customers. He trained hard, working as
a topographical draughtsman for an engraver and later as a copyist of other painters’
works. This early training may have been the key, for he was able to immerse himself
in both the careful delineation of beautiful and picturesque views and the more imag-
inative use of landscapes.20
Turner is one of those figures of whom it is often said he was ahead of his time. And
certainly his mature work evokes atmosphere and uses light in ways that speak to the
work of the Impressionists decades later at the end of the century and beyond, qualities
we can see in figure 1.3. Yet we should not see him as out of sync with his day. His art
resonated with the times. He was certainly commercially successful and was a leading
member of the Royal Academy. But he also pushed his art. How should we understand
this push?
We may start with the notion of authenticity of place, acknowledging his training as
a young man in preparing detailed views of particular places at the heart of topograph-
ical works.21 On top of this, we can see Turner working to evoke the authenticity of the
moment as well, with all the vagaries of light on a given day. The topographical painter
brought the clarity of studio light to the landscape. Turner, and later the Impressionists,
went further to render authentically the light of nature. His images became shrouded
in mists and fogs, set at dawns and dusks, even in the middle of the night, midst storms
and squalls. There is detail and structure, but it is now more suggested than delineated,
and so it required different techniques to attract the eye and hold the imagination.
When Turner added that splash of red, we can see him satisfying the demands of an
emerging aesthetic that revolved around authenticity.22
12 Buckets from an English Sea
Figure 1.3 J. M. W. Turner’s Helveotsluys, 1832. Courtesy of Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan/
Bridgeman Images.
Turner, we may add, returned to the painting a second time and reworked the patch
of red into a buoy. He had first to meet the demands of the aesthetic. Only afterward
did he fashion it into something that might plausibly be a part of the scene. Here was
transition made most vibrantly visible.
tropics of South America. As he waited for the Beagle to set sail, Darwin wrote his
mentor, John Henslow, Professor of Botany at Cambridge, describing his excitement
at the prospect of going to Tenerife in the Canary Islands and visiting the sites and
vistas that Humboldt had so vividly portrayed. As we sample buckets, follow leads,
and trace lines of reasoning we will find ourselves visiting sites and conjuring vistas
across the globe: a shop for the making of leather britches in London’s East End, and a
bookbinder’s off Piccadilly Circus; the beach at Tyneside; an astronomical observatory
in Cape Town, South Africa; the Chapel at Trinity College; the hill country of North
Wales; a bishop’s palace not far away; and the bleak rocky islands of Tiera del Fuego.
All of these are part of the English sea we will sample.
times.24 The central cast of figures in our study presents an intriguing array of profes-
sions, including a tailor, a professor, a banker, and a bishop. Each was an intellectual,
and each confronted the deepest problems England faced in 1832—its institutions and
its core cultural values.
The end of our study, then, is to sample the waters of politics, science, and letters
in England, focusing on the year 1832, with our eye clearly fixed on the events and
scholarship of this year and further, how they led the young Darwin to tackle the
task of forging a powerful understanding of the history of life. In 1832 transition was
palpable: there was political unrest, with riots in Bristol and the streets of London
resounding with marching, charging feet, and there were also powerful new ideas in
scholarship—in the lines and lessons that would be drawn from myth and from fossil
in the effort to make sense of things anew.
And though I hardly expect to avoid the laughter of the living horse, I do hope to set
before you a significant and engaging tale of the effort to cope in an age where the air
was charged with the scent of change.
NOTES
1. “The Windy City,” in Sandburg, Complete Poems, 278.
2. Bulwer-Lytton, England and the English, vol. ii, 108.
3. Gould, The Panda’s Thumb, 194–95.
4. Darwin’s first notebook on transmutation is notebook “b.” Other early notebooks on evo-
lution: “red,” “c,” and “m.” These jottings related to evolution are from 1837–1838. See
Darwin, Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, 1836–1844.
5. Sandburg, Complete Poems, 326.
6. Niebuhr, History of Rome, 5. Cited in Lyell, Principles, vol. i, 74. There is an intriguing issue
here. As it happens, I have studied with three scholars who sought a fictional or hypothet-
ical setting for their critical scholarship. Imre Lakatos wrote a brilliant piece, Proofs and
Refutations (1976), where he brought mathematicians together in an imaginary classroom
for a discussion of a particular hypothesis. In the course of their discussion they each gave
voice to what they had written on the topic, but more richly Lakatos was able to use their
exchange to tease out a powerful set of notions about the growth of mathematical ideas.
Russell MacCormmach wrote a biography of an imaginary German physicist toward the
end of the nineteenth century, drawing attention to both the state of the discipline and the
many pressures within the German scholarly world: Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist
(1982). Lastly, Robert Bakker used his many paleontological studies to pull together a
memoir in the voice of a velociraptor. Raptor Red (1985) was an extraordinary piece, as
were the other two. Each was historical and each author presumably could feel Sandburg’s
horse laughing in the background. They wanted, somehow, to bring their subject more
fully to life.
7. Malamud, The Magic Barrel, 162.
8. Strachey, Eminent Victorians, vii.
9. Baker, Report; Chadwick, Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population;
and Snow, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera.
10. Conolly, Working-Man’s Companion, 7.
11. Ibid., 43.
15 Prelude: A Word on Beginnings and Ends
12. Baker, Report, 14. See also Brooke, “A Tidal Wave of Disease,” 41–44; and also Discovering
Leeds, section on poverty and riches, at www.leodis.net.
13. Linebaugh, “The Tyburn Riot Against the Surgeons,” 70–71. Linebaugh cites both a peti-
tion recorded in the Commons’ Journals and The Annals of the Barber-Surgeons of London,
as well as R. Shyrock’s The Development of Modern Medicine.
14. Place, British Museum, Add. Mss 27,826 Place Collection “Grossness,” fo. 107; cited in
Linebaugh, “The Tyburn Riot,” 68.
15. Linebaugh, “The Tyburn Riot,” 81.
16. Vale, Curiosities of Town and Countryside. Opposite p. 14 is a photograph: “The Regency
Watchman’s shelter, Old Wanstead Church, Essex. A reminder of body-snatching days.”
17. On the Burke–Hare murders see Thomas, The Doctor and the Devils; Rankin, The Falls.
One pound sterling from 1830 is roughly equivalent to $100 in 2010 dollars: see mea-
sureworth.com. Finally, there is a curious link between our first two buckets: Dr. Baker of
Leeds had been tried for paying for a snatched corpse! He was acquitted because it was to
advance knowledge. See Rosenhek, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
18. Macaulay, Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, vol. iv, 425–26.
19. Jones, “Turner and Constable Exhibitions,” Guardian, August 24, 2014. See also Chambers’s
Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, 4th series #234(1868)395.
20. Butlin, “J. M. W. Turner,” 9.
21. Ball, Science of Aspects; Ladd, Victorian Morality of Art; Ruskin, Modern Painters, vols.
i and v.
22. Consider another painting by Turner in 1832, Venice. It is a view late in the evening and
a large building, perhaps a grand home or a warehouse, is really a large block of shadow
marked by a narrow slash of light, along with its reflection in the canal. The effect is more
commanding and I find this painting more compelling, but it was a less public event.
23. De Santillana, Origins of Scientific Thought, 27.
24. See de Santillana, The Crime of Galileo. It is not always the case that scholars will so explic-
itly link their work to affairs of the day; nevertheless, there are many instances where they
have clearly responded to the issues of the day, be it philosophy, as in Karl Popper’s The
Open Society and its Enemies (1945), a reading of the history of philosophy written during
World War II and directed against fascism; or psychology, as in Robert Coles’s The Moral
Intelligence of Children (1997) about racism; or literary criticism, as in Gilbert Murray’s
Aeschylus (1940), aimed at academic freedom.
2
Outrageous to Morality,
Pernicious to Government
Parliament has been around for a long time. Back as early as the seventh century, well
before William the Conqueror and the Norman invasion, kings would on occasion seek
the advice of the landed elite, meeting with a council of leading barons in a meadow at
Runnymede, the same site where the barons would force King John to sign the Magna
Carta in 1215: a key moment in the long-standing struggle between the power of the
king and that of the aristocracy. In 1295 King Edward the first called leading barons
and prelates for advice, but this time he also included elected representatives of smaller
rural landowners and of townsfolk. Over the generations this notion of both landed
elite and elected representatives would go through various transformations, but after
the turmoil of the English Civil War and the return of the monarchy in the seventeenth
century things so settled into place that there would be little change through to 1832.
The system of representation in the House of Commons was fairly elaborate. There
were 658 seats, 514 of those from England and Wales. These were broadly of two sorts.
Most counties had two representatives, the idea being that these members reflected the
interest of the landed gentry and elite. In addition, there were members who repre-
sented boroughs or towns and their mercantile and trading interests. We should note
that the lord of the manor had pervasive influence over adjoining communities, and so
MPs from particular towns would be beholden to the local lord. This is further under-
lined when we note that voting was a public pronouncement and not by secret ballot.
It would have taken considerable courage to vote for someone other than the candidate
favored by the lord of the manor.
The House of Commons had not been envisioned as representing the population
numerically, but rather by leading interests. The bishops of the Church sat in the House
of Lords and both Oxford and Cambridge universities had their own MPs, for instance.
This was an intriguing approach that saw Parliament as an arena for the core institu-
tions of society to safeguard their interests. Though the House of Commons today is
based upon population, we learn from a charming collection of letters to the editor of
the London Times that of the 615 MPs after the election of 1935, twelve represented
universities—a trailing residue of the old ways that persisted until 1950.1
Returning to the state of things on the eve of the Reform Bill in 1832, the system
had accumulated a number of peculiarities. Dunwich, for example, which had been a
leading town in medieval East Anglia, had pretty much fallen into the sea late in the
16
17 Outrageous to Morality, Pernicious to Government
thirteenth century, but still had a seat in parliament. No one lived in Old Sarum any-
more either. Indeed, no one had lived there for a long time. Folks moved out from this
hill top settlement down to the banks of the Avon River early in the thirteenth century.
Over time, New Sarum became the cathedral city of Salisbury, but Old Sarum retained
its member of parliament. Such boroughs were called “pocket boroughs” because
the representative in Parliament for that seat was in the pocket of some member of
the landed elite. Further, since no new borough seats had been added after 1661, the
growth of such industrial centers as Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, and Birmingham was
not represented. The system had utterly failed to keep up with the dramatic changes of
the Industrial Revolution.
fighting—‘Fighting!’ would be the answer; ‘they are not fighting, they are pausing.’ ”
And, Sir Charles continued: “ ‘Why is that man expiring? Why is that other writhing
with agony?’ . . . The answer must be, ‘You are quite wrong, sir; you deceive yourself—
they are not fighting—do not disturb them—they are merely pausing!—this man is not
expiring with agony—that man is not dead—he is only pausing! . . . All that you see, sir,
is nothing like fighting—there is no harm, nor cruelty, nor bloodshed in it whatever—
it is nothing more than a political pause.’ ”3
A bullet fired in a holding action would shed blood as readily as any fired in war,
whether it was the continental campaigns of 1798 or Vietnam late in the 1960s.
Charles James Fox was the parliamentary leader of the Whigs in the House of
Commons for a long time, urging not only a true end to the war with France, but a
host of reforms that would transform the character of the government. He sought to
recast English politics, moving its center closer to the people.
There had been a number of efforts to reform parliament over the years, but we
may pick things up on the evening of May 26, 1797, when Fox addressed his fellow
members of the House of Commons in support of Grey’s second effort to initiate par-
liamentary reform. “The whole of this system, as it is now carried on,” he urged, “is as
outrageous to morality as it is pernicious to government.”4 To illustrate the corruption
of the system, Fox referred to a member selling a seat in parliament for four or five
thousand pounds, and then on a later occasion moving to send a poor soul from his
district to prison for having sold his vote for less than two pounds. But an even greater
sin was the way the existing system denied the people a voice in government. Fox then
recalled events some twenty years earlier, when the government had lost the confi-
dence of the people who no longer supported the war against the American colonies.
An election was held. Despite the strength of anti-war sentiment, only three or four
seats were gained by the opposition.
Parliament’s systemic insensitivity to the will of the people was a serious matter and
Fox’s most prescient argument. He described at length more recent events in Ireland,
where the number of radicals had grown dramatically. In 1791 there were, perhaps,
ten thousand men prepared for violence. It was estimated that this number had now
increased tenfold because the government had failed to support moderate elements. As
he closed his speech, Fox asked what should be gained by passing reform. He answered:
I think we shall gain at least the chance of warding off the evil of confusion, grow-
ing out of accumulated discontent. I think we shall save ourselves from the evil
that has fallen upon Ireland. I think we shall satisfy the moderate, and take even
from the violent if any such there be, the power of increasing their numbers and of
making converts to their schemes.5
For sure, the threat of violence would enshroud the events of 1832, like gray skies
before a storm, but as we shall see, it was more complicated than one might have
thought. A key party of reformers had inherited Fox’s view that reform was the best
way to enhance political order and replace the anger and confusion which grows out of
discontent with a more positive civic spirit.
19 Outrageous to Morality, Pernicious to Government
The division that evening was ninety-three votes in support of Grey’s motion
and 258 opposed. That parliament would reform itself, that power would graciously
acknowledge that it did not comply with principle, certainly seemed unlikely. And so
things stood as they had for centuries. Fox died long before the Reform Bill passed, but
he had by then passed his discontent and his clarity on to a new generation.
Just as factories produced steel rails and cloth, so too did they manufacture slums
with cholera and other maladies. Much of England’s population shifted from the estates
of the landed elite to factories and providing housing was a real test for the economy.
Homes needed to be built on a huge scale for a population that would not be able to
purchase them. The result was a system of company towns or developments, most
often featuring “back-to-backs.” Imagine a block of row or terrace houses with two
long rows of homes separated by small gardens in the back and an alley between them.
Now get rid of the gardens and alley. The homes were back-to-back. Two rooms down,
two rooms up, and your back wall was their back wall. The same efficiency that marked
the new factory workplace had been brought to workers’ homes. And it worked, except
for the fact that such density allowed for the rampant spread of disease, as witnessed in
the deadly outbreak of cholera in Leeds in 1832 that was our first bucket.
James Kay makes this point in his pamphlet The Moral and Physical Conditions of
the Working Classes, a study of Manchester in 1832 which echoes Baker’s study of Leeds
in many ways.8 Manchester set up fourteen boards of health across the city with inspec-
tors who examined the city, street by street, taking inventory of conditions and survey-
ing the inhabitants. The poor were generally housed in back-to-backs, which meant
they had no yards, no privies, and no receptacles for trash: “Consequently the narrow,
unpaved streets, in which mud and water stagnate, become the common receptacles of
offal and ordure.” Such are the conditions that coupled with the exhausting work of the
operative in a factory constituted a “predisposition to contagious disease.”9
In 1831, John Stuart Mill began a series of articles titled “The Spirit of the Age.” Here
are a few snippets from his effort to capture the tenor of the times:
The conviction is already not far from being universal, that the times are pregnant
with change; and that the nineteenth century will be known to posterity as the era
of one of the greatest revolutions of which history has preserved the remembrance,
in the human mind, and in the whole constitution of human society. . . .
It is felt that men are henceforth to be held together by new ties, and separated
by new barriers; for the ancient bonds will now no longer unite, nor the ancient
boundaries confine. . . .
The first of the leading peculiarities of the present age is, that it is an age of tran-
sition. Mankind have outgrown old institutions and old doctrines, and have not yet
acquired new ones. When we say outgrown, we intend to prejudge nothing. A man
may not be either better or happier at six-and-twenty, than he was at six years of
age: but the same jacket which fitted him then, will not fit him now. . . .
Worldly power must pass from the hands of the stationary part of mankind into
those of the progressive part. There must be a moral and social revolution, which
shall, indeed, take away no men’s lives or property, but which shall leave to no man
one fraction of unearned distinction or unearned importance.10
and the small group that had worked for him, the Westminster Committee, became the
district’s central political authority. And so began Place’s second career.
Throwing himself into public affairs, Place quickly expanded his work and his con-
tacts. He came to know James Mill well, and through Mill Jeremy Bentham. Place
visited Bentham regularly, becoming one of the central figures within the Benthamian
circle. Though a practical man of affairs, Place was keen on the exchange of ideas
within the circle. One reflection of this is the role he played in the preparation of
several of Bentham’s notes and manuscripts for publication. This was far more than
a matter of sorting out details. Bentham wrote virtually every day of his long life on
a range of topics. By 1820 he had accumulated a host of manuscripts, often including
several different approaches to the same topic. John Stuart Mill reduced a large num-
ber of these to a five-volume work on legal practices, Rationale of Judicial Evidence;
George Grote wrote a work on natural religion from some 1,500 pages of manu-
script; Place worked on several of these manuscripts, including one on schooling,
Chrestomathia, and another titled Not Paul, but Jesus, and he assisted with a third, A
Handbook of Political Fallacies.
The Handbook was quickly and favorably reviewed in the Edinburgh Review by
the editor, Sydney Smith, and the review clues us in on the matter at heart here in a
delightful way: “Whether it is necessary that there should be a middleman between the
cultivator and the possessor, learned economists have doubted. But neither gods, nor
men, nor booksellers can doubt the necessity of a middleman between Mr. Bentham
and the public.” The review goes on: “Mr. Bentham is long; Mr. Bentham is occa-
sionally involved and obscure; Mr. Bentham invents new and alarming expressions;
Mr. Bentham loves division and subdivision—and he loves method itself, more than
its consequences.” And the passage concludes: “Those only therefore who know his
originality, his knowledge, his vigor, and his boldness, will recur to the works them-
selves. The great mass of readers will not purchase improvement at so dear a rate, but
will choose rather to become acquainted with Mr. Bentham through the medium of
Reviews—after that eminent philosopher has been washed, trimmed, shaved, and
forced into clean linen.”17
So one of Place’s activities was as “butler” to Bentham’s writings, along with other
Benthamian projects and everything else he was doing. Place would come to be relied
upon as ex officio staff for a number of Members of Parliament, often with regard
to labor and tradesmen matters. He was a unique figure in this class society. He had
solid footing within the working classes. He had been there, and there is no doubt but
that he always remembered being a breeches maker and how powerless he had been
to secure work. Since those days, he had also come to have a rich array of political
connections with the ruling classes through his electoral organizing, and he was sen-
sitive to the deeper character of political and economic matters. For example, in a two
year stretch in the 1820s he worked toward the repeal of various laws regulating such
trades as curriers, tanners, and hackney coachmen. He devised schemes to improve
the administration of finances, of laws pertaining to debtors and creditors, and crimes
at sea. Meanwhile he also supported the formation of mechanics’ institutes and helped
to negotiate various labor disputes. A charming article in European Magazine in 1826
24 Buckets from an English Sea
captures Place’s reach and his influence with a line borrowed from Archimedes: “Give
me place for my fulcrum and I’ll move the world.”18
Perhaps Place’s single most significant accomplishment across this period was the
repeal of the Combination Acts, laws prohibiting the formation of unions or collectives
for various trades. He wrote letters to trade societies and newspapers, became involved
in disputes, and worked steadily to educate the public. In a letter to Sir John Cam
Hobhouse shortly before he, Hobhouse, became MP for Westminster, Place looked
forward to a parliamentary committee on labor and wages convinced the repeal of the
Combination Laws was at hand, and further that it “would make thousands of reform-
ers among the master tradesmen and manufacturers.”19
Place’s regard for the making of moderates is a recurrent theme, echoing the obser-
vations of Fox in his speech for reform back in 1797. Again and again we find Place
working to steer public opinion toward reform without revolution. A notable example
can be seen in the events of 1819, following the Peterloo Massacre. In July of that year
there had been a large gathering in St. Peter’s Fields, Manchester in support of par-
liamentary reform. Manchester, you will recall, had no representation in parliament,
though it was already a city of two hundred thousand. Though a peaceful gathering,
the authorities had issued a proclamation against seditious meetings. The authorities
moved to arrest the speakers, and within moments the military charged to disperse the
crowd. Eleven spectators were killed and hundreds wounded.20
Reformers across the country were alarmed, fearing that England was losing its
cherished right to hold public meetings. There was a desire right away to rally in
London, but Place urged caution and the march was not held until September 2—a
gathering of one hundred thousand. All “at the risk of military execution and under the
musquetry of the household army,” wrote Hobhouse.21 What an extraordinary event
this march must have been.
Afterward Place picked up on a phrase in a letter to a friend: “You say, ‘the men in
ragged coats have proved by their conduct and their resolutions that they understand the
business they are about.’ This is very true.” Until very lately one might have feared a gath-
ering of five hundred, he continued: “Now 100,000 people may be collected together and
no riot ensue, and why? . . . the people have an object, the pursuit of which gives them
importance in their own eyes, elevates them in their own opinion, and thus it is that the
very individuals that would have been the leaders of the riot are the keepers of the peace.”22
constitutional monarchy under Louis Philippe had replaced the despotism of Charles
X. “This new Revolution produced a very extraordinary effect on the middle classes,”
Place wrote. “Every one was glorified with the courage, the humanity, and the honesty
of the Parisians, and the common people became eagerly desirous to prove they too
were brave, humane, and honest.”23 The Tory majority in the House of Commons was
sharply reduced in this election, but nonetheless they held a majority and the Duke of
Wellington formed a government.
Even so, there was a difference. The system had lost its credibility. Place wrote: “There
never can be a strong government again in England until there has been a change in
its very form.”24
The Duke’s government fell to divisions within the Tory party, and in November of
1830 Earl Grey formed a Whig government with Lord John Russell as the leader in the
House of Commons. The press for reform grew steadily with political unions in the
towns and fires in the countryside. The faculty at Cambridge stopped speaking to those
on the other side of the issue, and Place observed that “their steady perseverance, their
activity and skill, astounded the enemies of reform.”25
1831
On March 1, 1831 a reform bill was introduced, generating widespread excitement. It
was expected the bill might impose new penalties for bribery, and replace such pocket
boroughs as Old Sarum with seats for the likes of Leeds. The Tories were stunned by
the scale of the new bill. It dropped sixty of the smallest boroughs, extended the repre-
sentation of the larger cities, and broadened the franchise to a significantly larger pro-
portion of the population. The Victorian historian Thomas Escott tells us in Gentlemen
of the House of Commons that Lord Russell “resumed his seat amid cheers,” adding
that some MPs could be heard whispering to each other Talleyrand’s recent mot, “the
Reform Parliament was the convocation of the Estates General, which at Paris had
preceded the French Revolution.”26
On March 2, the day after Lord Russell had introduced the bill, Thomas Macaulay,
MP for Calne—a seat “in the pocket” of Lord Lansdowne—rose to encourage its pas-
sage. It was by all accounts an electrifying speech, and one that carries us back to
Charles James Fox and his fear that if we did not reform Parliament, we would nurture
radicalism. Here is part of Macaulay’s closing:
Save property divided against itself. Save the multitude, endangered by its own
ungovernable passion. Save the aristocracy, endangered by its own unpopular
power. Save the greatest and fairest, and most highly civilized community that ever
existed, from calamities which may in a few days sweep away all the rich heritage
of so many ages of wisdom and glory.27
Three weeks later the bill passed its second reading with a majority of one in what was
the largest vote in parliamentary history, with 608 members in attendance. The elation,
26 Buckets from an English Sea
however, was short-lived as the bill suffered in subsequent committees. The Whigs
decided to dissolve their government and seek a greater majority in new elections.
The new parliament met in June of 1831with a solid majority of over a hundred for
reform. The second reform bill cleared the House of Commons easily, only to falter in
the House of Lords by forty-one votes. It had been hoped that the Lords would defer to
popular sentiment, but it was not to be.
Place realized reform was now caught between two dangers. On the one hand, the
Whigs might capitulate in order to secure passage of some bill. On the other hand,
increased agitation—there were riots in Derby, Nottingham, and Bristol—might lead
to armed rebellion. Place opted to support a mass demonstration, a procession in
London to present the King with a clear call for reform. It was successful, but rumors
of compromise continued to float about.
The pressure for reform from both the middle class and the working class was
relentless and in December the Whigs put forward the bill again. It passed the House
of Commons with an even greater margin.
1832
This bill was sent to the House of Lords late in March of 1832. After several weeks of
parliamentary maneuvers, it became clear that the Lords would not pass a bill compa-
rable to that passed by the Commons. Lord Grey resigned and the Tories were given
the task of forming a new government. The Duke of Wellington stepped forward and
over the next several days tried to form a government.
Such are the practices of parliamentary democracy, but they only added fuel to the
flame. As word of these events spread, the intensity of agitation ratcheted even higher.
Place records that on Friday, May 11 he met with a delegation from Birmingham,
reporting that they’d had a spontaneous gathering of a hundred thousand persons and
had determined both not to pay taxes and to arm themselves. While these two options
may seem incongruous—on the one hand civil disobedience, on the other armed
rebellion—what they really signaled was the determination to do something.
The next day at another meeting at Place’s home, it was decided that should the
Duke succeed in forming an administration it was likely he would act at once to put
down the people by force. It was also felt his administration would immediately pro-
voke a general panic. Fearing such a panic would spur an armed rebellion, Place went
back to the notion of withholding taxes. An economic strike of some sort might well
be effective. We can see where this comes from in a comment Place made several years
later as he reflected upon the failure of the Chartist Movement:
All these persons thought as most of the politically associated working men still
do, that—noise and clamour, threats, menaces and denunciations will operate
upon the government, so as to produce fear in sufficient quantity to insure the
adoption of the Charter—they have yet to learn that these notions and proceed-
ings contain not one element of power—that the Government as mere matter of
course will, as every Government must, hold people very cheap who mistake such
27 Outrageous to Morality, Pernicious to Government
matters, as have been mentioned, for power . . . they have not a glimpse of their
own, much less of the actual condition or relation of the several portions of society,
who must concur, before any great organic change can be even put in progress.28
It was not that Place was a pacifist. He felt the threat of force among the working and
underclasses must be accompanied by a clear signal that the middle classes are fellow
travelers, equally discontented. Otherwise, they were simply playing onto the hands of
those who wished to maintain the existing order. The Iron Duke, the victor at Waterloo,
would not hesitate to call out the army.
The special thrust of an economic challenge to the government was very appealing,
but Place was not keen on withholding taxes. He sought something bolder: a run on
the banks. He took a large sheet of paper and wrote out this slogan: “To Stop the Duke,
go for gold.”29
England’s might lay in its accumulated wealth. The empire was essentially a financial
engine. The colonies were there to serve the needs of London’s financial institutions.
But this mechanism was fragile; it depended on confidence. Destroy the reputation of
the banks and it would all crumble.
This was Place’s idea. It would not be the first time anyone deliberately set out to
drain a bank’s reserves. In Old and New London, Walter Thornbury tells of a time early
in the eighteenth century when the Bank of England set out to break the Child and
Co. Bank, one of the oldest financial institutions in England, having been established
in the 1670s. It was the practice in the early 1700s to give a receipt for the deposit of
funds which could then be used in exchange for money. It was somewhat like a check.
The Bank of England decided to collect such receipts and when they grew to a sizeable
amount to go and demand the money, hoping the bank would not have sufficient funds
to cover. The bank caught wind of the scheme and applied to an aristocratic friend, the
Duchess of Marlborough, who gave them a check of ₤700,000 drawn on the Bank of
England. Thus, when a clerk from the Bank of England arrived with a bag of receipts,
Child’s sent one of its own clerks to the Bank of England to cash the Duchess’s check.
By moving slowly through the receipts, Child’s was able to cover the demand with the
Bank of England’s own money.30
The important difference with Place’s scheme is that its motives were political,
not financial. He didn’t want the Bank of England to fail. He wanted to so scare the
Duke so that he would capitulate and allow the passage of the Reform Bill. Place knew
those who supported reform went far beyond the discontented working classes. The
Industrial Revolution had created great wealth, both industrialists and a rising bour-
geoisie. This new wealth was as disenfranchised as any other resident of London, or
Manchester, Birmingham, or Leeds. Going for gold would make clear the power of
this wealth.
If it worked. Grote was not convinced it would. A run on the banks is so unsettling;
he feared the commercial interests would turn against reform. Place mulled over his
friend’s fears, but decided to stay the course.
Place’s slogan energized the reformers. Money was put on the table and within hours
bills were being printed and posted throughout London and in provincial centers. One
28 Buckets from an English Sea
and a half million pounds were withdrawn in just a few days. And heady days these
were. In short order the House of Lords rejected reform, the Whigs dissolved their gov-
ernment, and the Tories could not form one of their own. It is often suggested that the
Tories ultimately gave way because the King had let it be known that he would create
sufficient new Whig peers to carry a vote through the House of Lords.31 This may have
been the case; it is hard to tell with so many rumors and speculations floating about.
We do know that for over a week neither the Whigs nor Tories could navigate these
turbulent waters. We also know the King was not happy about stacking the Lords. He
demurred, as if such a ploy were too tawdry.
But though one might pause, hoping for some gambit that would unlock the politi-
cal stalemate, the threat of economic turmoil was galvanizing.
The call for gold began on Monday, May 14. On Friday, May 18 a representative of
the Bank of England met with Grey, Wellington, and the King, telling them of his fears
of an imminent collapse of the bank. The Duke withdrew from his efforts to form a
government. Earl Grey formed a new government, the run on the bank ceased, and the
Tory peers of the House of Lords agreed to abstain rather than oppose reform. On June
2 the Reform Bill became law.32
But even before the bill had passed, the government made clear its concerns. On
May 21, the first day of the new Whig government and only three days after the
King had met with the representative of the Bank of England, a secret Parliamentary
committee was set up to examine the condition of the Bank of England and whether
changes should be initiated. The government was riveted by the question: was the
Bank safe?
On July 20 Grote was a witness before this committee. When asked if he had any
suggestions, he replied that the Bank should regularly report on its holdings. That is,
it should make public how it stands during a run against its holdings. After some dis-
cussion of the nature of the reporting Grote thought advisable, Lord Althorp, a leading
Whig minister and head of the committee, then asked the crucial question: “You are
probably aware that in May last there was a considerable draft upon the treasure of the
Bank of England, and the consequence of that demand was that the cash of the Bank
of England became unusually low; do you think if the amount at the time had been
published (that demand arising from political causes) the publication would not have
created a material inducement to withdraw the whole of the treasure of the Bank of
England that remained?”33
What an extraordinary phrase, “You are probably aware.” Grote was widely
known as a Benthamian reformer and had been right in the thick of things; though
he had not been convinced that going for gold would work. Furthermore, on the day
following the posting of the placards across London and key provincial cities, the
Evening Standard accused Grote of having originated them. What an extraordinary
situation. About a dozen witnesses appeared before the committee, including the
governor of the Bank of England and two directors. Grote was the only Benthamian
in the crowd.
Grote, by the way, replied “no” to Lord Althorp’s question; that in a matter of politi-
cal motives the publication of the state of the Bank’s bullion holdings would not matter.
29 Outrageous to Morality, Pernicious to Government
So?
The Reform Bill passed. Seats in the House of Commons were redistricted. Why is this
significant? After all the fuss and bother, why would getting rid of a bunch of small
boroughs matter so much? What sort of changes follow from redistricting?
Certainly trading Old Sarum, Dunwich, and a host of small boroughs for the likes
of Leeds and Manchester was a move toward greater popular representation, but did
this represent anything deeper? One might assume, for example, that the new elector-
ate, coming as it did from more urban quarters, would be more committed to issues
arising from industrialization and that there might be parliamentary commissions and
subsequent legislation to limit abuses, and this was the case. More subtly and perhaps
more importantly, the election for the new reformed Parliament attracted a host of
candidates who had little to do with the aristocracy. More than sixty seats were taken
from the pockets of the landed elite and turned over to an electorate less firmly tied to
the lord of the manor.
There was a new game in town and people were excited. But the changes set into
motion by the Reform Bill were deeper than parliamentary commissions or legislation.
If we go back to Mill’s “Spirit of the Age,” to his call for a social and moral revolu-
tion that would deny unearned distinctions and importance, we can feel that some-
thing more was in the air. The elite felt the challenge. Writing toward the end of the
century, Thomas Escott goes so far as to suggest that herein lay the central push for
one of the more profound changes in English society. The patrician elite redefined
themselves, moving beyond such questions as “Who is he?” and “How much does
he have a year?” to “What has he done?” Prestige by achievement replaced prestige
by position.34 Escott may well have caught that such a change had taken place by his
own day, a new seriousness of purpose among the landed elite, but it is difficult to
locate the moment such changes are set in motion. Doors are hard to find in clouds,
especially in storm clouds.
The early nineteenth century was a period of marked change. Industrialization
disrupted the traditional economy around the lord’s estate and fed the rise of factory
towns. We can see this in population numbers, in literature, in parliamentary commis-
sions on the conditions of the working classes, and in the outbreak of urban plagues.
We can also see it in the realization of a potential for a new kind of political protest: the
mass march, now familiar, but then new. It is oftentimes hard to gauge the onset of the
modern era, especially as so often change is a mixed bag. But the peaceful intimidation
by a hundred thousand souls marching to underline their demand for Reform is cer-
tainly progress over a call to arms. This was a positive step in the practice of politics in
a mass democracy.
At the same time, we need to recall that 1832 was a long time ago. In a charm-
ing book, Age of Scandal, T. H. White suggests that in the general sorting of ages and
epochs in England we have overlooked a distinct era. Rather than see the march of
sensibilities and events as stepping from the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century
to the Industrial Age of the nineteenth, he suggests we interpose England under the
Georges—roughly the stretch from the 1740s to the 1820s—as its own entity. Hume
30 Buckets from an English Sea
and Voltaire notwithstanding, England at this time was still a very Christian nation
with a rather small landed elite of fewer than two hundred titled families who still ran
things very much as they had over the centuries. Quoting G. M. Trevelyan, he observes
that “it was an age of aristocracy and liberty; of the rule of law and the absence of
reform.”35
It was also, White tells us, a time which valued “bottom.” Life was hard, and it was
crucial to be prepared to handle its pains and sufferings. “Bottom” was a nautical term,
in praise of the capacity to hold one’s course, despite the wash of tempest and storm.
And here we see most clearly how distant this world was at bottom. It was an age of
curious elixirs: turnip water, snail tea, or a posset, a drink made with warmed ale or
wine and milk, which became medicinal by adding horse dung.36 We forget how neces-
sary stoic acceptance would have been in an age before anesthetics and modern medi-
cine. Childbirth, for example, was often deadly.
Eighteen thirty-two was a long time ago, but it was also charged with elements of
the modern era. The Reform Bill would seem to mark that moment when people col-
lectively acknowledged a tumble of transformations. They no longer lived in their par-
ents’ England. Recall Mill’s conviction that they had outgrown old institutions and
doctrines, and further that old bonds no longer held. The Reform Bill marked the
public affirmation that this was indeed so. In this sense, we can agree with Escott when
he links an act of parliamentary redistricting to pronounced changes in class norms.
Reform was a statement about old and new ways.
“Old and new ways” seems just the right note to sound as we move from the march-
ing, charging feet of tens of thousands of protesters first to the quiet study of the classi-
cal scholar and then to the fieldwork of the geologist, before we settle on a young man’s
encounter with the cruelty of life in Tierra del Fuego.
And so we turn to the Athenaeum and a meeting of Connop Thirlwall and
George Grote.
NOTES
1. Gregory, Second Cuckoo, 154–56. We may add that Charles Lyell was proposed to be the
MP for the University of London in 1861, but he declined; see Lyell, Life, Letters, vol. ii,
343. This notion of representing leading interests continues to this day in Hong Kong,
where half the seats in the city council are “functional constituencies” linked to industries
rather than population. See Hilgers, “The Rise of Hong Kong’s Democracy Movement.”
2. Trevelyan, Illustrated English Social History, 109.
3. Fox, Speeches, 714.
4. Ibid., 688.
5. Ibid., 676.
6. Smith, Wealth of Nations, vol. i, 6–7. It is worth noting that at this time it was still the case
that most homes were workplaces of one sort or another. Only later with the development
of factories would the home become essentially a residence; see Jackson, The Necessity for
Ruins, especially 116–19.
7. Schweber, “Scientists as Intellectuals,” 4.
31 Outrageous to Morality, Pernicious to Government
8. Kay, Moral and Physical Condition. Kay’s study, we may add, was cited by Friedrich Engels
in his Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.
9. Ibid., 25, 13.
10. Mill, “The Spirit of the Age,” Collected Works, 228–29, 230, 245. There were four instal-
ments of this essay in the Examiner, all of them collected in vol. xxii of the Collected
Works. See also Himmelfarb, Spirit of the Age.
11. Grote, “The Essentials of Parliamentary Reform,” in Bain, Minor Works, 17.
12. Ibid., 12–13.
13. Ibid., 11.
14. Ibid., 15.
15. Ibid.
16. Wallas, Life of Francis Place, 13–14.
17. Smith, “Bentham on Fallacies,” 209.
18. Wallas, Life of Francis Place, 186–89.
19. Ibid., 206.
20. Ibid., 141.
21. Ibid., 144.
22. Ibid., 145–46.
23. Ibid., 244.
24. Ibid., 250.
25. Clark, Old Friends, 108–09; Wallas, Life of Francis Place, 256.
26. Escott, Gentlemen, vol. ii, 274.
27. Macaulay, “Parliamentary address of March 2, 1831,” 162.
28. Place, “Letter to Harrison,” in Rowe, London Radicalism, vol. v, 228.
29. Wallas, Life of Francis Place, 310.
30. Thornbury, Old and New London, 461.
31. For example, in Fraser’s Perilous Question.
32. Wallas, Life of Francis Place, 320–21.
33. Report from the Committee of Secrecy, 368.
34. Escott, England, 318–19. There is an echo of Escott’s thesis in a story Jerome Bruner
tells about the historian Sir Alan Bullock, who found himself seated alongside Queen
Elizabeth. Knowing of her disdain for small talk, Sir Alan asked her when the Royal
Family had decided to become respectable. She replied, “it was during Victoria’s reign,
when it was realized that the middle class had become central to Britain’s prosperity and
stability.” Bruner, Culture of Education, 128.
35. White, Age of Scandal, 30.
36. Ibid., 38–40.
3
A Meeting at the Athenaeum
Imagine two young men, old friends, have arranged to meet at the Athenaeum, a
London club. Such clubs already had a long history by 1832, providing a home away
from home for the landed elite who would come up to London for the season. The
Athenaeum was somewhat different, founded only a few years earlier for individuals
distinguished in science, literature, or the arts, as well as those who were patrons of
such efforts: a meeting place for the mind. As such it signals the rise of the public intel-
lectual and the rise of a London season for scholars, most notably scientists and their
many new societies, including the Geological Society, whose annual meeting was the
prompt that brought Thirlwall to London this February.
Both Grote and Thirlwall have gained their stride since their school days together,
accomplished significant things with the promise of more to come. Connop Thirlwall
is thirty-four in February 1832, and George Grote is thirty-seven.
Thirlwall had been a most precocious child; he had learned to read so well at so
young an age that he was taught Latin at three and Greek at four. It was said that at
Charterhouse, an old red brick public school that had been founded in the early sev-
enteenth century, the young Thirlwall did not care to join in on the games of the other
boys, but would withdraw to some corner with a pile of books. The child was father to
the man, and all his life he carried books with him wherever he went. But more than
this, Thirlwall retained a certain freshness and gentleness across his many years, and
with it the capacity to enjoy life’s more simple pleasures.
Ironically, a collection of his letters begins with one written when he was twelve,
in which he confidently affirms both that Oxford was much the better university and
that classical studies are no longer relevant to men of affairs. Despite such sentiments,
Thirlwall would leave Charterhouse for Trinity College, Cambridge and a career
much indebted to classical studies. Thirlwall sparkled at Trinity, earning a fellowship
which enabled him to travel. He spent just over a year on the continent, living “the
most enchanting of my day-dreams.” When he returned he began study at Lincoln’s
Inn Fields, hoping that law would enable him to pass “a quiet but not indolent life,
obscure but not useless,” and looking forward “to contemplating the sights and sounds
of nature and the finest productions of the human intellect.”1
There was much to occupy Thirlwall in London in mid-1820. John Stuart Mill tells
of hearing Thirlwall in a debate at the Co-operative Society, finding him to be much the
best debater he had heard till then and indeed ever. These debates proved to be so stim-
ulating that a small coterie formed a debating society of their own, including not only
32
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Señora Vallejo’s hand went out, but there flashed from the eyes of
Anita Fernandez a warning, and the hand was withdrawn. The
caballero arose and tendered the handkerchief again, to have
Señora Vallejo turn her back and face the girl.
“Perhaps, Anita dear, we should return now,” she said. “Evening
approaches, and there will be a fog rolling up the valley.”
“As you please, Señora Vallejo.”
The girl turned from the creek and started walking up the slope. The
caballero stood in the path before her, determined. Anita Fernandez
stopped, and seemed to look through him and at the mission
beyond. From the adobe wall hurried Pedro, the giant neophyte, who
had been watching and feared an affront to the women.
“You are being annoyed, señorita?” he asked.
“How could that be?” she demanded, laughing lightly. “There is none
here to annoy me, unless it be Señora Vallejo.”
“I beg your pardon, señorita. I thought I heard someone speak.”
“’Twas but the distant barking of a coyote, Pedro. You may follow us
to the guest house, if you wish. I will give you something for your
little girl.”
They started toward the caballero again and for a moment it seemed
that they must recognise his presence. But Anita Fernandez had a
subterfuge to prevent that. Just before reaching him, she turned
aside, and the others followed.
“I must speak to the padre about the neophytes allowing rubbish to
collect so near the mission,” she said. “It always should be burned.
Look at the stuff here!”
She pointed to the caballero’s cloak, and with one tiny foot she
kicked scornfully at the guitar. Then she swerved back toward the
path again, and the others followed her toward the plaza. The
caballero picked up the guitar and pressed his lips to the place
where her foot had struck, knowing well that Señora Vallejo was
watching him, though she pretended not to be.
He looked after them until the girl and woman had passed around
the end of the adobe wall and Pedro had gone to his own hut.
Darkness was gathering rapidly now; lights appeared in the
buildings; before the door of the storehouse sat a circle of men,
talking and laughing, sipping bowls of wine. Sitting on the ground, his
back against a rock, the caballero watched the scene.
“A beautiful woman,” he mused. “Proud, spirited, kind though she
does not suspect it, naturally intelligent, very much to be desired.”
One by one the lights in the buildings disappeared. The men before
the storehouse crept away to rest. A fray called to a neophyte
standing guard. And then there was no noise save for the singing of
the breeze through the orchard, and the distant howling of a coyote.
Presently the caballero arose and picked up his guitar, and crept up
the slope until he reached the adobe wall. He followed it to the end
of the plaza; made his way slowly through the darkness to the guest
house. There he stationed himself below an open window and began
playing softly. Several minutes he played, knowing a neophyte stood
a score of feet away, watching; and then he began to sing a love
song of Old Spain, a song of strong men and fair women. Between
two verses he heard the voice of Señora Vallejo.
“Anita, child, do you hear?”
“Yes, Señora Vallejo,” the girl replied, clearly. “The coyotes are
growing bold again. One is howling now beneath my window.”
CHAPTER V
VISITORS
The fire died down for lack of fuel, until only a small bed of coals
remained to glow like a great red eye in the black night. There was
no moon. The caballero, warm and dry, had spread his cloak on the
ground and was stretched upon it, half asleep, listening to the
rushing of the creek and the screeching of the wind that swept up the
valley from the sea.
He sensed the presence of human beings near him, and without
changing his position on the cloak he let his right hand slip slowly
along his side until it gripped the butt of his pistol. And there he
remained, trying to pierce the black night with his eyes, ears strained
to catch the slightest sound.
His horse snorted in sudden fear; the caballero gripped the pistol
tighter, half minded to spring to his feet, yet declining to do so for
fear it might be some prowling neophyte attempting to frighten him
and carry a tale back to the huts in the plaza of how the caballero
had been stricken with fear in the night.
“Señor!” The warning hiss seemed to come from a great distance,
borne on the raging wind. He knew it was an Indian who spoke; and
the inflection of the single word expressed that the speaker was
merely trying to attract his attention, not threatening, not warning of
some imminent peril.
The caballero rolled over slowly and sat up, yawning behind his
hand, like a man displeased at an interruption. Though every sense
was alert, there was nothing in his manner to indicate to a watcher
that he had been startled or that the unknown voice out of the night
had carried fright to him.
He looked across the bed of coals, and saw nothing. He glanced at
either side, but no leering face came from the blackness, no dark
form slipped toward him, knife in hand to attack, or finger on lips to
caution silence. The horse snorted again.
“Señor!” Once more the hiss, and it seemed nearer.
“Well?” the caballero demanded, half angrily and in a questioning
tone.
“It is a friend who would aid you.”
A handful of dry grass and leaves remained near the fire; now the
caballero arose slowly, picked up the fuel and took a quick step
toward the glowing coals.
“Not that, señor!” came the sudden warning. “Guards about the
mission will see!”
The caballero hesitated, not knowing whether to treat the man in the
darkness as friend or foe. Then he laughed lightly and dropped the
grass and leaves.
“Approach, then, so I may see you!” he commanded.
He heard someone slipping through the mud. Gazing across the bed
of coals he saw an Indian face come from the darkness, just the bare
outline of a face half seen in the night—thick black hair bound back
from the forehead, two piercing eyes, an aggressive chin. The Indian
stooped so that the reflection from the dying fire illuminated his
features for an instant.
At the point of speaking, the caballero felt his tongue seem to grow
paralyzed. Beside the face of the Indian another had appeared—and
another—another, until six faces peered at him from the darkness
and six Indians squatted in the mud on the other side of the bed of
coals.
“We have come, señor,” the spokesman said.
“That is plainly to be seen.”
“At first we were not sure, and then word came to-day by a runner
from an old man at San Luis Rey de Francia, who said he had given
you lodging for a night, and, also, we saw how you were treated by
the people of the mission and the presidio. So we came.”
“And now—?” the caballero asked.
“What is your wish, señor? In a cañon five miles away there is a
comfortable camp, and if you desire we’ll guide you to it.”
“I am of the opinion I’d much rather remain where am.”
“We do not understand your ways, señor, yet we trust you. If it is
your desire to remain here beneath the mission walls, undoubtedly
you have some good reason. But you must have a camp, señor—
shelter and food and drink—and those of the mission will give you
none.”
“You speak truth there,” the caballero admitted.
“Thinking, perhaps, you may decide to remain near the mission, we
carried with us material for your camp. We can pitch it for you beside
the creek in a very short time, señor. When the dawn comes, those
of the mission will find Captain Fly-by-Night in a comfortable teepee,
with skins for his bed, an abundance of food and wine, cooking
vessels, a heap of fuel. Every night one of us will fetch fresh meat
and other food, and hear what you may have to say in the way of
orders.”
“This kindness will be the death of me,” said the caballero.
“We cannot do too much for Captain Fly-by-Night. We may build your
camp?”
“I always accept what Heaven provides. On the level spot half a
hundred feet from the creek would be an acceptable place.”
The six Indians bowed before him and merged into the darkness.
Chuckling to himself, the caballero sank back on his cloak and
listened, but he did not release his grip on the butt of his pistol.
Sounds came to him through the night from a short distance away—
muttering voices, flapping skins, the squashing of wet moccasins in
the mud. Half an hour passed, and then he heard the voice of the
spokesman again:
“Señor.”
“Well?”
“The camp is prepared; everything is ready. It is best that we slip
away before being heard or seen. At midnight each night some one
of us will visit you, señor, and bring provisions. And now—is there
anything you would command this night?”
“Nothing. You have done well, it seems.”
“You will be guarded, señor. There are friends of Captain Fly-by-
Night inside the mission walls, but they must move carefully.”
“I should think so.”
“Everything is in the teepee, even to food for your horse. The fire is
laid before it, and you have but to strike flint and steel. Adios, señor.”
“Adios!”
The Indian’s face disappeared again, the caballero heard the
slipping steps retreating, another fragment of language, and then
silence except for the rushing wind and the roaring creek.
For half an hour he waited, smiling, fumbling at his pistol, listening,
and then he got up and stepped away from the bed of coals to be
swallowed up in the darkness. He was taking no chances with the
unknown, however. Step by step, and silently, he made a wide circle
and approached the teepee. Standing beside it he listened intently,
but heard nothing.
Before the crude habitation was a heap of dry grass and wood, as
the Indian had said. He sent sparks flying among the fuel, fanned
them to a blaze, and waited back in the darkness a few minutes
longer. Then he hurried forward and threw back the skins from the
door of the teepee.
The work had been well done. Boughs were on the ground, skins
spread upon them. In a corner was a jug of wine, another of water, a
quarter of mutton, a quantity of wheat-paste. Two rabbits, skinned
and cleaned and spread on forked sticks, were beside the mutton. A
dirty, ragged blanket, folded, was against the wall.
There was no fear of treachery in the heart of the caballero now. As
quickly as possible he got his cloak, sword and guitar, and carried
them into the teepee; he found grain and hay where the Indians had
left them—near the fire—and carried a generous amount to his
horse. Then he returned to the teepee, threw himself upon the
blanket facing the fire, and slept.
Slept—and awoke to find the bright sun beating down upon his face,
that the creek had fallen until it was scarcely more than its normal
size, that neophytes and frailes were at work again repairing the
base of the abode wall, and that now and then one of them looked
with wonder at the teepee that had been pitched during the night.
“Curiosity will do them good,” the caballero mused.
It was a royal meal he prepared that bright morning. Steaks of
mutton, one of the rabbits he broiled over a bed of coals, cakes of
wheat-paste were made, and, sitting out where all could see, the
caballero ate his fill and washed down the food with wine so rich and
rare that he knew no Indian had taken it from his own store. It was
good mission wine such as no Indian possessed unless he had
purloined it in a raid.
He stretched a skin and poured half the water on it for the horse, for
that in the creek was not yet fit for drinking. He gave the animal
another measure of grain and wiped his coat smooth with a skin, and
polished the silver on saddle and bridle, singing as he worked so that
his voice carried to the plaza.
At an early hour he observed a neophyte ride away in the direction of
the presidio, to return within a short time with the comandante. In the
plaza the officer held a consultation with a fray, looking often at the
teepee down by the creek, and then the man in uniform stalked
down the slope, swaggering and twirling his moustache. The
caballero arose as the other approached.
“It appears that you have a habitation, Captain Fly-by-Night,” the
lieutenant said.
“As a temporary refuge, it will do.”
“The manner of your getting it is mysterious, to say the least.
Teepees do not sprout overnight from the mud.”
“Yet it came during the night, señor.”
“From whom?”
“That is a question concerning myself, officer.”
“Perhaps it concerns others at San Diego de Alcalá. The frailes at
the mission seem to know naught of it.”
“There are many things the frailes of the mission do not know,” the
caballero replied. “There are things, also, unknown to the soldiers of
the presidio.”
“You are over bold to say it, señor. Is your hand so strong that you
can throw secrecy and pretence aside?”
“When you speak of secrecy and pretence, officer, I do not know
your meaning. It is my own business how I acquired a habitation and
food. I am a man of resource, señor. And are you not afraid that
you’ll be ostracized if you are observed speaking to me?”
“It is a part of my business to investigate suspicious characters,” the
lieutenant said.
“Have a care, officer! The score I hold against you already is a heavy
one!”
“Your presence here, and your manifest determination to remain, are
annoying, señor.”
“Were you at your post at the presidio, it would not annoy you, allow
me to say.”
“Those of the mission——”
“I have been given to understand, señor,” the caballero interrupted,
“that I do not exist for those at the mission. As for yourself, if you
seek hospitality I have none to offer you. Suppose you give me the
pleasure of your absence.”
“Señor!”
“Señor!” the caballero mocked, sweeping sombrero from his head
and bowing low.
The comandante snarled in sudden rage and his blade leaped half
from its scabbard. Taking a step backward, the caballero put hand to
hilt again, and waited. Thus they faced each other beside the creek,
while frailes and neophytes watched from the wall, expecting the two
men to clash. But the rage died from the officer’s face, and he
snapped his sword back in place again.
“You are a clever rogue, Captain Fly-by-Night,” he said. “Almost you
taunted me to combat. An officer of his excellency’s forces cannot
stoop to fight with such as you.”
“You fear such a thing, perhaps?”
“Señor!” the officer cried.
He looked for a moment at the smiling face of the caballero, ground
his teeth in his rage, whirled upon his heel, and strode away up the
slope, anger in the very swing of his body. Before the teepee the
caballero picked up guitar and began to play and sing.
Mud flew from beneath the hoofs of the comandante’s horse as he
galloped back toward the presidio. Frailes and neophytes resumed
their work. Two hours passed—and then there appeared two
soldiers, mounted, who stopped at the plaza, spoke to the frailes,
handed their horses over to Indians, and strolled down toward the
creek.
They did not approach near the teepee, nor did they seemingly give
the caballero more than a passing glance. Yet he knew that he was
to be under surveillance, that he would be watched by these men
night and day, others from the presidio relieving them from time to
time. And he expected guests at midnight!