The Prince of Eden (81 page)

He'd not asked for it and had considered not taking it. But there had been seventy-three children in the Ragged School on Oxford Street. And with the enrollment in his other schools already burgeoning he'd accepted both the house and the money in the name of the children, and life had proceeded, little changed from before, though considerably more spartan.

Then three months ago, while taking an early morning canter down Rotten Row, Sir Claudius Potter had urged his horse to daring speed, not taking into consideration the night's moisture still heavy on the mossy lane. The front left hoof of the horse had slipped and Sir Claudius, elegant in his black and crimson riding habit, had flown over the beast's head, his brittle old bones cracking upon impact with earth, his brittle old neck in particular. Not until the horse, uninjured, had wandered back to the stables had anyone thought to go back and look for the hapless rider.

The first month after the funeral when the allotment did not arrive, Edward had thought little of it. But in the second month, they had been forced to farm the children and the volunteers out to the other Ragged Schools, now under the protective subsidy of the Union. And only last month when Elizabeth had confronted him with a debit sheet that defied argument, he'd placed the Oxford Street property in the hands of an estate agent, had accepted his first bid of four thousand pounds, had taken one thousand pounds and had purchased a small one-story timber-frame house in the slum of Bermondsey near Jacob's Island. Of the remaining moneys, fifteen hundred pounds had gone to creditors, and the rest had been divided equally among the other seventeen Ragged Schools, a meager attempt to repay the Union for its financial aid.

Now for the past week, the three of them, Edward, Elizabeth, and John, had worked night and day whitewashing the walls of the tiny structure in Bermondsey, a spirit of fun pervading their activities despite the grim turn of affairs, all except for John, who, while cooperative, seemed to keep to himself.

Edward's purpose in purchasing the old structure was to open a "Common Kitchen." "If we can no longer fill their heads," he'd laughed, "at least we can try to fill their bellies. Perhaps that's where we should have started all along."

Now, with the exception of the natural pain associated with saying goodbye to the house that had been in his family for over three hundred years, Edward was not suffering any great loss. He had the sense at last of being perhaps where he should have always been, not straddling two worlds, but planted firmly in the one that seemed to need him most.

"Say goodbye," he suggested now to the two who were looking back with him at the house on Oxford Street.

Elizabeth, seated next to him, drew up the hood of her worn cloak against the chill November mist. "It was always a cold place, it was," she said lightly.

John, seated on the other side of Elizabeth, at thirteen, more man than boy, was maintaining his usual silence. Edward gazed at the back of his head and wished with all his heart that he could penetrate through to the place where thought resided.

Now Edward leaned across and lightly touched his son on the knee. "Did you check the upstairs rooms? No need to leave any furnishings for the wrecking crew."

John nodded. "There was nothing there. It's all in the back of the wagon, everything that was left."

"Well, then," Edward said at last, "if no one feels the need for parting words, we'll depart." He waited a moment to see if anyone did. Apparently not, though long after he'd flicked the reins and the wagon had moved slowly down the street, Edward was aware of John, still looking back.

Apparently Elizabeth saw the concern on Edward's face and leaned close with a whisper. "Leave him be. It's the only home he's ever known. He'll settle in right enough."

Edward nodded and turned his attention back to the complicated traffic. About an hour later as they approached the low-lying area of Bermondsey, Edward looked ahead to the small timber-frame house and saw a dozen or so men milling about in front on the pavement, their caps pulled low in meager protection against the rain, some stamping their feet in an effort to keep warm.

"Our first customers," he murmured.

Elizabeth sat up, a willing soldier. "And the fire not even started. John, fetch in firewood from the shed, then help your father unload. At least we can let them in and keep them warm while they're waiting."

Now for the first time during the entire dreary journey, John spoke. "Are they really customers. Papa? Will they be required to pay for the food which Elizabeth cooks for them?"

"They'll pay what they can," Edward replied, guiding the horses close to the pavement. The waiting men looked up. A few tipped their hats. Most were old, all thin and cadaverous.

"And if they can't pay anything?" John demanded.

"We'll feed them anyway."

"How?"

Feeling mild annoyance at the boy's difficult questions, Edward tightened his grip on the reins. One of the horses spooked, veering to the left.

As soon as he'd brought the animal under control, John was there again. "How?" he asked a second time.

Sensing the pressure of the waiting men and the chill November rain, Edward muttered vaguely, "We'll find a way," and started to jump down from the wagon.

"Find a way where?" John shouted back. "You know as well as I that all credit is closed to us, that our empty pockets are likely to be as empty tomorrow as they are today."

Stymied and laboring under a weight of confusion, Edward was on the verge of shouting at the boy again when suddenly Elizabeth stood up between them.

"Please," she begged softly. "They're watching." She waited a

moment for the tempers to cool. "We have food—for a while. I lived the first sixteen years of my life under such conditions—food for a while. It isn't so difficult."

Abruptly she pushed passed Edward and swung herself down to the pavement. "If you two choose to sit here in a cold rain and bicker, that's your business. One of these gentlemen will help me with the firewood." And so saying, she turned, and within a few moments had enlisted the aid of four of the strongest men. As she led the way across the pavement, they followed dutifully behind her until at last all disappeared beneath the low door of the house.

Edward stared after them, still slightly shaken with anger. "John, I'm—" But as he turned to offer an apology, he saw that John had jumped down on the other side and was already at work loosening the ropes and canvas which held the furnishings in place. "We can always go to work, you know," Edward shouted toward the back of the wagon.

"So can they," John replied, jerking his head toward the front of the house where another small group had gathered, women this time, their heads covered with rain-soaked shawls, a few children clinging to their skirts.

Still standing atop the wagon, Edward looked first at the newly gathered crowd, then back toward John. A sudden wind gusted and threw a sheet of rain across his face. In spite of the wet cold and the activity going on about him, he felt a profound silence, as though something deeper than winter had just passed over him.

His son was right, yet he too was right, and that huddled gathering of men and women and children on his stoop, they also were right.

At that moment, he was aware of John looking up at him as though he were seeing an idiot or a fool, or both. And perhaps he was. All Edward knew for certain in that moment was that there was strength to endure everything, and that, lacking a sign from Heaven, the heart must persist. And he also knew that perhaps somewhere there was Infinite Mercy and Divine Guidance, but not here.

Here on this wretched road in Bermondsey, there was no God, not even a good imitation of Him. Here there was only Edward Eden, flawed, weak, human, cold, and now in doubt.

Yet in spite of these confusing thoughts, he jumped down from the wagon and held out his hand to the rain-drenched women and in a gentle voice urged them to go inside the house. Then he hurried to the back of the wagon and confronted John, not with words or logic, for John could defeat him there, but rather with action, hurling himself at the heavy canvas coverings where, beneath the collection of furnishings from the house on Oxford Street, was a carton of foodstuffs. It was a paltry supply and would soon be gone.

But it was a beginning, and on that Edward would gamble, acknowledging his feebleness, yet trying the best he could to lighten the burdens of others.

One half of London learned of the remarkable event which would shortly take place in their midst on the morning of June 29, 1849, when at a meeting of several gentlemen at Buckingham Palace, Prince Albert, His Royal Highness, communicated his plan for the formation of a great collection of works of Industry and Art in London to be scheduled for 1851. He also described the advantages of a site which had been selected in Hyde Park along the Serpentine at the end of Rotten Row and recommended an early application to the Crown for permission to appropriate it.

In the beginning no one treated the scheme with complete seriousness. Queen Victoria said pretty things about the idea which had been fostered by the man whom she loved almost as much as her throne.

But when a wildly unimaginable design was selected to house the Great Exhibition, domes of glass stately enough to encompass and shelter full-grown trees, then the clubs and salons of the city began to snicker. "Al's glass house," Punch called it, and the jokes about throwing stones grew tedious and monotonous. Still, Joseph Paxton, the creator of the design, persisted, aided and abetted by Albert and his commission of dreamers.

Here the nations of the world would exhibit their swords beaten into plowshares—if possible mechanical plowshares—by the new industrial processes. "All history points," said Prince Albert, "to the Unity of Mankind." At the "Crystal Palace," as it was now called, Albert intended to achieve on a worldwide scale that "reciprocity" which Palmerston had prevented in Europe. At home, inspiration would flow from the liberated minds of a thousand independent, self-reliant creators.

Clever England! While for over a decade the rest of Europe had been involved in senseless, bloody revolution, she had pacified her band of lunatic revolutionaries by calling cabs for them on rainy days, by opening her arms wide and even providing a desk and lamp for the little German Socialist named Karl Marx. If the English were a quiet people, they were also a polite people, for politeness meant peace, and peace enabled her industrial lions to proceed, uninterrupted, with the greatest revolution of all, the sort that invented a machine to replace a dozen men, one process to take the place of four, brave trophies of a bloodless war. That she now wanted to exhibit the spoils of her miraculous conquest was understandable.

Thus it was that one half of the nation learned of the Great

Exhibition over warm fires, in the soft purple velour of private clubs, while trying on a new bonnet, or when the conversation lagged at a country house party.

The other half of the nation, the miners burrowing in the coal pits, the farmers toiling behind a team of ailing horses, the thieves and pickpockets and costermongers of the London streets, this half of England had not the slightest knowledge that anything remarkable was taking place in their capital city. How could they? Most did not read or write, and even for those who did, newspapers cost money and as practical objects served only to insert inside a tattered coat as extra protection against the chill wind.

A few learned about the Great Exhibition in much the same way as Edward and John did, cutting through Hyde Park on a December evening, having delivered a trunk to a house on Edgware Road after they had put in a day's labor on the great covered platform of Euston Station as porters, carrying baggage of all shapes and sizes. They had reported for work at six in the morning and had spent the day hauling luggage up and down the platform of Euston.

Still the employment was welcome, for it meant that they took home fourteen shillings a week between them, and with no rent to pay and with Elizabeth's skillful planning, which amounted at times to genius, they could feed themselves and about thirty regulars for whom the Common Kitchen meant the difference between dying and living.

So it was that in the dusk of this bitter December evening, Edward walked quietly alongside John, trying to think of something suitable to say to ease the silence between them. Fatigue of course had taken a toll as always. Added to the day's labor was the walk of several miles home. Still he longed for communication, for some way to convince the boy that manual labor did not diminish him, that they were doing very well, in spite of everything. Elizabeth had miraculously converted the small house in Bermondsey into a sheltering warmth. Why couldn't John share his pleasure at seeing the old men and women, and many young ones as well, seated along the low benches, their heads bent over their bowls of hot soup, a good fellowship springing up between all of them.

But apparently he couldn't and while he was no longer openly hostile, as he had been that first day after they'd left Oxford Street, the silences between them were growing deeper.

For Edward, the loss of his son's support and affection was a deep wound. And compounding this pain was the realization that as the winter deepened, the shillings would have to be woefully stretched to include firewood and fuel.

Now, on this evening, as they cut across the edge of Hyde Park, Edward looked up from his assortment of worries and saw a remarkable sight, the land beyond the Serpentine cleared, one enormous column fixed on the right and an army of workmen dragging heavy ropes along pegs which had been driven into the ground as though marking off a vast area.

In the dusk of evening, the sight had appeared before him with the suddenness of a mirage. He observed that John, walking a few paces ahead, had seen it as well. Now, though no words were spoken, they both cut across the newly scraped earth, heading toward a cluster of low-lying sheds which seemed to be the center of activity. Edward saw a burly, black-haired man wearing a corduroy jacket and leathern gaiters standing over a small coal fire. He was at that moment shouting instructions at a group of workers with coils of heavy rope wrapped about their necks. "Watch the cut, you bastards," he shouted angrily. "You! There! Your fill is too heavy. Back off! Back away!"