Near London, England, September 1791
John White’s boots pinch, but the stink of London bothered him more. On his long trek north through the city, he hopped over clumps of shit, and he could not avoid the piss. He stopped several times to let herds of cattle and sheep find their way across the street to the stench of slaughterhouses and tanneries. An hour ago, in the thick of London traffic, he narrowly missed having the contents of a chamberpot dumped on his head from the second storey of a row house.
Now the countryside opens before him, green fields and the occasional flock of sheep, tended by shepherds sitting nearby. How he envies them, as he plods onwards. Looming before him now is a steep hill. There’s a pub just ahead, thank God, and he’s tempted to have a pint and an hour’s rest with his boots off. But will it make him late for his appointment with the pastor? He reaches the pub and stands by the door, mulling it over. Then he hears the clatter of a cart.
Salvation, though perhaps of a temporary nature, not the eternal sort the pastor might pray for. He gestures to the driver.
“Give ye a ride, matey?”
“Know the way to Bunhill Fields?”
“Bone Hill, I calls it,” the man replies. He’s a red-faced yokel with a twist of chewing tobacco between his teeth and a filthy cap slung low over his forehead. “It’ll cost ye a shilling, matey.”
White fumbles in his vest pocket. Only a few coins left, and he has to consider the return trip to his rented house on the Embankment. He pulls out his pocket watch. A pint or the appointment?
“It’d cost ye lots more in one of them fine hearses that goes up there regular.” The man laughs. “But I guess ye wouldn’t mind if ye was in the coffin, like.”
“Just get me there, please.” And shut up while you’re at it. He hops up beside the yokel. A touch of the reins and the cart horse plods into the road, lifting its tail and discharging a clump of dung as it moves forward.
White tries to keep a lid on his anger. He’s always smouldering these days, as he thinks of his failed legal career in Jamaica and the wife and children dependent on him. But who knows, the pastor may solve his problems. His brother-in-law Sam Shepherd got him the appointment. “I hear they need an assistant at Horsleydown Church,” he told White. “Why not apply? I’ll set you up with John Rippon. He’s usually at Bunhill in the afternoons.” Sam has been White’s staunch friend and patron since they studied law together at the Inner Temple in the seventeen eighties. And for some years, since Sam has become his brother-in-law, they’ve grown even closer together.
Horse and cart plod on for some time. The driver chews away at his plug of tobacco and spits on the horse’s tail. There’s no need for conversation. Dead tired from his long trek, White closes his eyes.
His head snaps forward as they come to a halt. “Here we be,” the driver says. “Where to now, matey?”
White looks around. They seem to be at the top of the hill, and they’ve just come through a spiked gate. Two long rows of huge plane trees line the road forward. Beyond the trees on both sides of the road stretch hundreds of gravestones. How on earth is he to find Rippon in such a vast space? Perhaps there is an office somewhere?
He alights, pays the yokel, and sets off down the road between the avenue of plane trees. He has not gone far when he hears a strong bass voice singing a familiar hymn, “O God, our help in ages past.” Without further thought, he joins in the final lines: “Be thou our guard while troubles last,/ And our eternal home!”
“Over here,” the deep voice calls. White is lost for a moment as he looks about for the man who beckons. No one is visible. Strange. Then he sees what’s up.
A black-clad figure is sprawled on his side between two graves. As White approaches, he notices the man has a pen and a book, and an inkhorn in his button-hole, and he appears to be copying the epitaph on one of the stones. When he sees White, he struggles to his feet.
“Mr. White, I presume? I’m Pastor Rippon. Excuse my informal posture. The inscriptions on these gravestones fade so quickly, and before I am gathered to my fathers, I want to copy all the words on the stones and publish them in several volumes that will in future years pay tribute to the worthies buried here.”
He’s a much younger man than White expected, having heard his friend Sam speak eloquently of his many accomplishments in the promotion of Calvinism. Indeed he’s probably not much more than forty, a decade older than White himself. He is tall and has a shock of black hair and a ruddy complexion.
“Let’s find a bench,” he says and points towards a wooden seat a stone’s throw away. “Oops, forgot my wig,” he adds, pulling a scalp of white curls from the top of a nearby headstone.
“You have a pleasant voice,” he says to White. “Always an asset to good preaching.”
“It’s one of my favourite hymns.” He’s happy his meeting with Rippon is off to a good start.
The pastor tucks his hair under the wig and points back at the headstone that was its temporary home. “Sir Isaac Watts’s memorial. What wonderful music he wrote. Too bad anyone who’s non-conformist has to be buried out here in the back-country. People like Watts and John Bunyan should be in Westminster Abbey.”
“And Daniel Defoe, too?” White noticed Defoe’s memorial as he walked down the lane.
“Defoe should be put in a charnel pit, in my view. Free up more space here for the worthies of this world, I say.” Rippon scowls.
“You don’t like Moll Flanders then?” White knows he shouldn’t say this, but he can’t stop himself. He enjoyed the book. He loves Moll’s courage in the face of hardship.
“Incest and whoredom? No God-fearing man could like such a book.” Rippon’s words spill from his mouth, flakes of spittle speckling the air between them.
Well, that’s that. I should have kept my mouth shut. He’s spoiled his chances. He’ll have to go through the motions, though. So he takes a seat beside Rippon and waits for the next question.
“I shall say no more about Daniel Defoe whom you evidently admire. Your brother-in-law assures me that you have a strong personal faith. But I must ask you: what inspired you to move from the legal world to a desire for the Calvinist ministry?”
“My time in Jamaica, sir.” And saying this, White gathers strength to make his case. “I went there as a lawyer two years ago. But I was not able to work with the clients who came to me for legal advice. Every one of the devils was the owner of a sugar-cane plantation, and they wanted me to help them with land disputes and contracts with British and African entrepreneurs for buying and selling slaves. And I could not. I could not . . .”
Long pause. Rippon says, “Ah yes, the slave trade. Deplorable in many ways.”
“In all ways, surely.”
“We must not judge. It is for God to judge. He saves some; he allows others to go their own way along the path of sin to eternal damnation. It is possible that some of these slave owners will achieve salvation if they are predestined to do so. It is the same with the slaves. Some will be saved; some damned.”
“If you could have seen what I saw in Jamaica, you would not talk about salvation for slave owners. Every one of them should face eternal damnation. While I was there, the slaves revolted against their tyranny. All they wanted was a small wage for their labour. They burned a few warehouses filled with sugar-cane. They did not kill anyone. But for their transgressions, hundreds of them were hanged in the public square. Others had their limbs mutilated. Some were broken on a wheel, their bodies pulled apart and their bones broken. There were cages in which they were . . .” Remembering the skeletal face of a young boy in one of those cages, White wipes his eyes with his fist.
Rippon reaches over and puts an arm round White’s shoulder. “My dear man, you are upsetting yourself. All is God’s will. He has a purpose. It is not for us to question it.” With his free arm he pats White’s knee. “But you have not yet explained why you have embraced Calvinism.”
“It was a Baptist minister who made me see the light, sir. A brave black man who, from the pulpit of a chapel that welcomed slave congregations, exhorted them to rebel. And when they did, those ‘God-fearing’ plantation owners killed him and burned the chapel.” White stands up suddenly, breaking free of Rippon’s embrace. “I would choose hell rather than give legal advice to such people. Or . . . now that I think of it, preach to such scoundrels. I fear that you and I have differing views on slavery, Pastor. I have wasted your time. Good day, sir.”
He strides down the pathway towards the spiked gate. The cart driver has long departed, but White no longer needs him. He is charged with fresh energy. He must get free of this place, this sanctimonious pastor, his wretched smug certainties.
He breaks into a run down the long hill, past the pub which no longer tempts him. Farther along the road back into London, he collapses with the fatigue of his hike. Seated on a rock by the wayside, he counts the money in his pocket; there is some left. He’ll go to his club in the heart of London. There he’ll seek oblivion. Tomorrow will be soon enough to reconsider his future.