1
During the spring after my twenty-first birthday, some of the rich young students, who had so recently seemed like boys to me but were now gentlemen, invited me to go with them down to London. These were young men who had paid no attention to me in the early years of my study, for I was poor and spoke as a poor man and dressed as a poor man. I was from the rustic gutter, in their opinion, and no matter how well I learned the finer turns of phrases, no matter how well my uncle’s old clothes fit me, and no matter that my income from working the accounting books on the rails in the city put pound notes in my pocket, I was somehow lesser.
There was no way around this issue of class. It continues on today, but in my youth, it was at its worst.
The boys who were only just becoming men sneered and strutted, and yet were great fun in their own ways. But they never let me forget my station, and when I saw their servants, who often brought them tea in the common rooms of the university, I realized that my status in life might even be beneath their butlers and maids. And yet, through my limited wit and basic intelligence and no doubt their own natural curiosity about a rustic who got top marks, these rich boys gradually warmed to me, and eventually, two of them spent more and more time with me at the local ale-house, which was slumming for them.
“You’re a jolly fellow,” one said to me one evening, downing a pint. “You aren’t like the others.”
“No, you’re not,” his chum said. “I suppose it’s not true what they say about colliers and their brains—being blackened with soot.”
This passed for wit, and, wanting to get along, I laughed with them, then drank with them, and eventually awoke on the floor of their rooms, feeling as if I, too, were a gentleman. Or, at the very least, passing for one. I was vain and foolish, of course, but I was young and wanting a better life. Their acceptance meant the world to me.
One of my new friends said something that I couldn’t possibly understand at the time, but which seemed important. I heard him in the next room say to his friend, “It’s hard to believe it’s this one.”
“True,” the other said. “But I was there. I heard it said.”
At the time, this just seemed like idle conversation between them, and I didn’t make anything of it.
2
It is pathetic to think this now, but at the time, I wanted to be part of that larger world, the one that would put me as far away from the coal mines as possible. And I felt that I was moving in that direction. With these newfound friends, perhaps I would get there.
3
It was April, and I’d been studying too hard, poring over Latin texts and trying to decipher the medical books I’d just found that dealt with aspects of the human body. Learning about the physical body was the most discouraging part of my education, and after doing so I wished I had remained ignorant, and happy.
I found myself drawn to medicine, perhaps not as practice, but as an area of serious study. I gained access, through professors who believed I would be a credit to them, to the great arenas of the medical school.
I watched as corpses were opened and revealed. It soured my stomach to the smells of the human body, dead or alive, and, fascinated though I was by the human reproductive organs, I did not enjoy seeing them under the carving knife of the local physician whom I passed daily on the streets.
Watching the scientific evisceration of the human corpse made me wonder if all human life was not just some burp of existence with nothing to redeem it. After all, where was God for the body at the center of the room? That man or woman had not risen from the dead to ascend into heaven.
That corpse was just meat on a table, to be flayed and filleted and cut into morsels for the surgeons in attendance, and the curious students, such as myself. It was a butcher shop of humanity, and I could not see in the scissors and saws of the professors of medicine, whose aprons were brown from the blood of countless operations, whose instruments were thick with the congealed blood and bits of hair of the many who had died beneath their learned care, God—anywhere. God or Christ or the Virgin. Merely the utter waste and futility of all human endeavor.
This is what we come to, I thought. My youthful dreams of glory and wealth were nothing, because they would not prolong my life, they would not reduce misery, they would not turn the tide of the greatest problem of all human existence, which is that the only Queen of Heaven (or hell or earth) is Mother Death, Mater Mort, Persephone in her matronly aspect, gobbling pomegranate seeds while she raises her fingernails to slice at the hearts of humankind, throwing back her head to laugh at all human ambition and desire.
Even Uncle Maurice and his young wife (whom he’d just met and married the previous winter) recognized my newfound despondency and perhaps a morbid turn of mind from all the hours of study and examination. Uncle Maurice felt I needed an interlude before my final few courses were complete. “You’re a young man. Being young doesn’t last forever. Go enjoy April. Meet some fine women. Drink, rest, see the world a bit,” he told me. How he could possibly have come from the same family that had produced my father, I still, to this day, can’t fathom. He was the most generous soul, and loving. He was a man among men, happy with his lot, constant in his affection, and never felt that the world was anything but a wonderful place.
I had avoided the pleasures of life in favor of the pleasures of the brain, which I found could have no equal, so I thought, in human relations. But I took the advice, even accepting a few quid from my uncle, and managed to get, through my employer, free fares for my two school chums on the rails that would take us to the great city, which I had not yet seen. I had learned that very rich young men expected to be given things for free.
“Prepare to be humbled,” Wendy, short for Wendell, the older of the two told me, crushing a ten-pound note into my hand, which seemed like a fortune, as the train slowly entered the city proper. “Now run and get us some libation from the platform, will you? I have an enormous thirst.”
We drank much, laughed much, slept, and nearly missed a connection at one point. We ate too many watercress-and-butter sandwiches at a small station buttery when we had a two-hour delay between trains.
It was our fourth train on the voyage. In between trains, we had to catch hansoms to make our connection. I was weary and bleary-eyed, and ready to just sleep when he said, “This is London. This is the place for all-hours debauchery.”
Always an avid sport for debauchery, or so I thought, I imagined beautiful women, magnificent clubs, and smart men with brilliant ideas. I regained my energies and felt renewed as we entered the station.
My first sight of the city had confirmed what I’d read of it in books: It was the center of the growing empire, and seemed to me like Rome in its ancient glory.
But like Rome, it had its filth and squalor.
4
When we left the train, and went to find a hansom, I saw nothing but a cesspool. The train station itself was fashionably kept, but just beyond it began what seemed a human swamp of misery and carelessness, its stench like the terrible river. The sky was not clear, but had become nearly as blackened as the sky of my home. It was a city of greatness and despair, like twins holding hands. One dead, one living; one failing, one advancing. I did not like it at all, and had to be convinced by my companions that there was more to this New Rome than met the eye.
Once further into town, the beauty of it came about again, the palaces and grand apartments, the boulevards and parks, all of which I’d studied. Apartments that seemed like palaces lined the beautiful boulevards, great white buildings and skies above that faded from black to pale blue. It was as if we’d stepped from a museum gallery in which all the paintings were of lepers, into one in which the pantheon of Greek gods suddenly appeared. My companions pointed out the fashionable clubs, the houses of great ladies and gentlemen—many I knew from reading the newspapers, but none of whom seemed human to me, for they were beyond the rabble of mankind I had known all my life. Statesmen and great novelists and war heroes and legendary actors—all living within several blocks of one another, in this mansion of a city that we toured as we went up to my friend’s London home.
But I could not shake those first things I’d seen outside the train station. They put the poverty that hovered in parts of Manchester to shame. They put the hopelessness of Cwthshire and its ash heaps to shame, as well. That this grand whore of a city could have festering syphilitic wounds like this, that on her painted face, a gilded beauty, and her gown was the finest silk, but still tinged with mud at the ragged hem, and beneath her great skirts, dirty underclothes, and fistulas in her private parts from decay and disease.
And yet James and Wendy brought me to a fine townhouse opposite the Regent’s Park, where the sound of carriages arriving, the shiny horses that seemed to have finer lives than the poor of the city, and the laughter of fine young ladies seemed worlds away from the filthy undergarments from which we’d entered. The place was full of servants, some of whom were there to draw the bath, to dress us, to bring us drink, to coddle us in every way that a man is not meant to be coddled. Curiously, the servants were all beautiful, both the women and the men. The men were young and strong with the features of gods, and the women were of heart-shaped face and large bosom, and seemed like beautiful statues brought to life to do the bidding of the rich. It was as if the rich only hired the cream of the crop in terms of looks, breeding, and character. Or so I thought at the moment I was introduced to the employees of the house. One particular maid caught my eye—she was a slip of a girl of nineteen, but looked as if she could’ve been the subject of a great painter, like Vermeer. A young manservant had a face as white as dove’s wings, and spoke a better class of the English language than even I could muster. I felt I should serve both of them tea and shine their shoes, for these servants were truly my betters.
No wonder my school chums had seemed so soft and tender—they had nothing to do other than explore pleasure and mischief and whatever they could dream up. They had no reason not to do as they pleased. I envied them, and yet felt bad that they had not ever done anything by and for themselves. It was as if, despite their youth and minds and athletic abilities, they were helpless babies in the crib.
And yet there was immense beauty and possibility in their world, as well. To be bathed by a maidservant pouring warm water down your back, while a manservant scrubbed your feet—that was as if I had died and gone to heaven—but to add to this, a beautiful young lady at the harp, just beyond the bath, playing soothing dulcet tones on those strings had me wishing that I’d been born to this life rather than to the other one, of struggle and harsh words.
I am sad to say that I soon forgot that darker part of London, and instead, like my companions, bathed and made ready for a night on the town. I could easily take on the life of a fop, if given half the chance.
5
Drunk by six, having Madeira and something they called “malmsey,” I wobbled and laughed too easily and seemed far, far too joyous and excited—“Like a farm boy!” James slapped me on the back, having emerged from his bath half-naked and dripping on the floors of his great-aunt Minnie’s house, a pure white confection that might’ve been a wedding cake. He told me briefly of the house’s history. The place was bought from a dissolute rich French cleric named Alphonse Constant, and thus was called “Constant House” by James’s family, who renovated it within the past decade. He looked at me as if he realized his family history lesson was a bit of a bore. “You drink much more and you shall be sick.”
“I shan’t be sick, because I am too well,” I said, not certain of my own logic.
“We are due at dinner at half past,” James commanded, rapping on the door for Wendy, who had napped. He turned back to me, a broad smile on his face. “You’ve never met society ladies, have you?”
“Not that I’m aware,” I said.
“Well, the protocol is set. Wen and I are the third-tier suitors in their world, and they are a class above us in many ways.” He said this all with a serious air.
“There is actually a class above you?”
He snorted with laughter. “They think so. They have more money and better blood. But we have charm. We entertain them, allow them to charm us, we charm them, and then afterward all the men go to the drawing room or, in this case, the library, for important talk.”
“Sounds dreadful.”
“It can be. But it’s necessary for the evening’s entertainment. Say, you’ll need to dress better for these ladies.” He went through the giant wardrobe in the room that he claimed had been his since childhood. He began throwing shirts and shoes and trousers all around the floor. I watched his disregard for the fabrics, for the exquisitely tailored clothes and nearly wept.
“Whatever’s the matter, old boy? Why so glum?”
“I . . . I just think they’re beautiful. And too good for me.”
“Clothes? These clothes? These are nearly ready for the rubbish heap,” he said.
But I had never seen such fine clothing in my life, all in one wardrobe.
“Your Aunt Minnie won’t like all this mess,” I said, chiding him.
“Minnie lives here by my good graces. She has an allowance that comes from my father’s estate, and if she isn’t good to me, she is out on her bum. She knows this is my home first, hers second,” he said it all breezily, as if the welfare of his great-aunt were simply a whim. Going through all the stiff white shirts and hanging collars, he drew one out and threw it to me. “That about should fit you, and here,” he said, a pair of dark trousers sailing my way, landing on my head. “If those don’t quite fit, we can pinch them in with a hatpin or something.”
I dove into the clothes, and felt every inch a rich gentleman just holding them in my hands. Two servants were called in to help me dress, which, for better or worse, aroused my “sleeping soldier,” as James called it. But this was the strangest sensation of pleasure I’d ever experienced: to be touched simply while being dressed, as if I needed a staff of two to make sure all buttonhooks were fastened, cuffs and collar in place. It excited me just to feel that power over someone else. And I felt guilty, as well, for this way of living seemed wrong. I imagined my mother and father in their home, patching together clothes, sewing into the night, taking charity from the church to make sure they had enough blankets in the winter. Yet, I suppose, being a young man, and prone to pleasure and idleness, I was able to dismiss my guilt and my thoughts of my own beginnings. I was in a different milieu now.
James offered me quick lessons in etiquette: the knives, the forks, the way to eat peas, the way to slice the meat, and then added, “You’ll meet several eligible young girls. You are not to mention snooker, only billiards. Nothing of rugby—too uncouth. You must not talk of Manchester, for it will bore them. Instead . . .” he paused, conjuring a thought. “Well, see here, Justy, they want to be wooed. Listen to their gossip. Nod your head when they feel they have a point to make about which neighborhood has become less fashionable. They’ll adore you, I daresay. Do not give in to the temptation to make love to them. They will consider you beneath them. They are looking for suitable catches. You are not one for them—now, don’t be hurt. You don’t want these girls. None of them are pretty in the least. They’re rather plain, in fact. Plain but rich.”
“Don’t you find this charade despicable?”
He raised an eyebrow, considering. “Not in the least. I was raised for this, just as you,” he swatted me lightly on the nose. “Well, just as you don’t find the life of a collier despicable. It’s just how we live.”
“Then why dine with them?” I asked. “Why go through with this?”
“I intend to marry one of them,” he said. “Her name is Anya. Her father is first cousin to the Czar, and her mother is one of the Greys, one of the old fashionable families of London. She is richer than I shall ever be. She is young now. Too young. But when she is of a more reasonable age, with girlish foolishness behind her, I will ask for her hand and be given it. She has an allowance that can keep us enjoying our holdings for both of our lives. And her breasts are like melons.” He saw my slightly lost look. “Don’t look at me like that, mate.” He said the word “mate” with a tincture of venom, and it was his way of making fun of my background. It stung. I’d heard it before from the other students who came from money. They were slumming to be in college with those of us who were out of our class. They never let us forget it. “She’s pleasant,” he continued, “and I very much enjoy being with her. But I don’t worry that it’s that kind of love that the poets go on about. It’s breeding, Justy. She’s a virginal heiress with little world experience. She was raised to marry someone like me, and I have spent considerable time ensuring that she will be mine. We’re different from you and your people. You have liberties in your daily life, but men like Wendy and I, we have to think about our families and our traditions. There’s more to life than just love and chance. There’s my great-aunt Minnie to think of, and I support my brother’s wife, since he abandoned her. And my father’s business needs building. Marriage is not about that passion idea. It’s a union that serves the empire, and creates wealth and supports the lower classes as well.” He said this all with rehearsed conviction, the way one might overhear someone in church reciting the Nicene Creed.
“Ah,” I said, refusing to argue with my jolly companion. “Perhaps I should not drink so much. It may lead me to believe as you.”
“Socrates said that bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live. Therefore, we must be good men, for we shall eat and drink to live tonight. But do not worry,” he said, coming over to put his hands on my shoulders. He looked at me quite seriously. “We’ll abandon the old men and the virgins and go see the whores after dinner.”