The Flight of Sarah Battle (12 page)

‘In other words you are in need, my friends.'

‘Yes.'

‘You bring nothing tangible with you, but you have talents, so that any man who helps you may anticipate a return, eh?'

‘As Baldwyn says in his letter, my business was similar to yours. Printer at the British Tree of Liberty. 98, Berwick Street, Soho. Although,' looking about him, ‘much less prosperous.'

‘Ah prosperity! Philadelphia is certainly prospering; printing, publishing, bookselling are all doing mighty well. Everything else, too. Roads are being laid, canals cut. Masons and wrights won't take less than two dollars a day. This is as good a time to flee the old world as any. And,' he suddenly stares at them, ‘I perceive you are newly married.'

They look at each other.

‘Is it so obvious?' Tom asks.

‘Och, yes! You even blush in harmony. Now let's talk business. I take it that's what you want. You have not come to beg for money, eh?'

‘I hope you might have work for me. And Sarah does not want to be idle.'

‘Come through into the back of the shop and we'll toast your arrival. You'll soon notice how we find any excuse for a toast in this city.'

Robert's office is dominated by a huge desk spread with papers. Cupboards round the walls, some with doors, some without are stacked with yet more paper in piles, rolls and boxes. On shelves to one side stand numerous earthenware bottles of ink with neat labels:

Robert Wilson's Patent Indian Ink

or

Robert Wilson's Patent Writing Ink

Sepia

Or blue, green, red.

Beyond the office they glimpse two printing presses. Robert pours out three glasses of Madeira.

‘Here's a welcome to you, Mr and Mrs Cranch! You're supposed to drain your glass, Mrs Cranch.'

‘I have lived with drinkers all my life,' she says. ‘I have filled hundreds upon hundreds of glasses. I find I can only sip it.'

‘Och well, all the more for Tom and me, eh?'

‘Here's to you, Robert!' Tom proposes. Sarah raises her glass, the men drink another and Robert refills.

‘Here's to the future!'

They drink, Sarah sips. The future has arrived.

‘If you'd remained in London would you have continued with your business, Tom?'

‘I was printing more and more of my own pamphlets. You shall see some shortly. I was hoping to shuffle off the printing, move to publishing purely.'

‘The very thing! How remarkable! We are of one mind on that. Look now, sit down both of you and let me tell you about myself, so you know what you're in for, eh? I came here fifteen years ago, in ‘81. Began in quite a humble way.'

‘Why ‘81?'

‘Oh, did I see the writing on the wall, eh? Well, no. But too many printers were crowding the market in Edinburgh. As a Scot I preferred to keep out of England. A wholly new place pulled me to it.'

‘I can understand that.' It's Tom's way: he can't resist a life story.

‘I started in South Street making ink and printing; then I graduated to Front Street and finally to here. Perhaps it's the wrong end of Chestnut Street, too near the docks, but the books sell well. However, printing makes little money. There's always trouble with journeymen: they're unreliable and forever demanding more dollars.

‘So I've begun to publish and put out the printing to others. Let them have the headache! The presses are up for sale. I shall keep the bookshop and publish. Much more lucrative!'

‘And what do you publish, what do you sell?' Tom asks.

‘Whatever makes money of course! But I favour a Democratic Republican view whenever I can. That's what we are here now: Democratic Republicans. I even sell Jacobin stuff, far too extreme, but there are folk who'll buy it. We publishers sell each other's work: I'll take something I wouldn't read myself if they take my new guide books.'

‘What do you think of these?' Tom jumps up, produces the pamphlets he had on him when he was arrested, pamphlets for which the Corresponding Society had failed to pay him.

Robert reads rapidly, his eyes blue hoverflies darting, probing.

‘We could put them out in a matter of days, Tom. We've an election this year: republican readers will be pleased to hear a radical London voice. They'll buy them in armfuls.'

‘Then there are these.' He hands over
King Killing
,
The Reign of the English
Robespierre
,
The Happy Reign of George the Last
.' Remains on his feet, too excited to sit again.

‘By God, you're a Jacobin yourself!'

‘I published them, I didn't write them, Robert. Bloodletting is not my line.'

‘They're damned provocative, all the same. You put yourself in danger. Och, no wonder you fled!'

‘The place was thick with spies! You couldn't mutter in an eating house without being reported. But, good Lord, there are plenty of Jacobins in Scotland, Robert.'

‘Not me, man!'

‘Well, I anticipate a purity and simplicity here I've never yet seen.'

‘Don't count on either. But I'll take you to meet every Democratic Republican I know and that's a good many. Then you'll quickly learn how to identify the enemy, the Federalists. There's a lot going on. And now, Mrs Cranch, shall you be content to sit at home and sew and instruct the cook, eh?'

He turns his buzzing blue eyes on Sarah and suddenly she sees how huge his hands and feet are, long and broad. As if he should be wielding a mattock in a field, not a pen at a desk. When he speaks he's sometimes a Scot, sometimes an American. He disconcerts her.

‘I have worked all my life: I cannot sit at home.'

‘Robert, Sarah has great understanding. I know this perfectly, for once we were over our sea-sickness, we talked to each other every day for eight weeks.' He moves next to her, discreetly strokes the back of her neck.

‘Och, and your marriage survived! I admire you.'

They look at each other as he speaks. Their ‘marriage' will never be mere survival.

‘She has great ability. Don't mind my saying this, my dearest! I've watched her in Battle's enough times, managing scores of customers, unfazed. But she was wasted there, I strongly believe. She will find a new way in this new world.'

‘Can you teach?' Robert asks, overriding Sarah's embarrassment. ‘There's a charity school, begun in ‘94, at the Second Presbyterian church where I worship.'

‘I have some education but I've never taught. I'm not sure I'd be good at it. I'll try if need be.'

‘Well then, here's another idea. See what you think. There's a great appetite for guides among book-buyers these days. Of course almanacs and bibles are still the most popular books, the bread and butter of the business, but there's no doubt small, informative volumes that fit into a pocket are in demand. I'm bringing some out.
Every Man's Pocket Guide to the Law
, for instance.
Every Man's Pocket Guide to Travel
.
Every Man's Pocket Guide to Books;
or Building your own Library
. I'm writing that one myself. Mrs Cranch. May I call you Sarah? Sarah, I'd be glad if you could write
Every Man's Guide to the Coffee House in London and Philadelphia
. Would you do that, eh? I reckon there'd be a real interest. Your book could even help establish more coffee houses here. As it is we have not enough of them, and rather too many squalid taverns.'

*

‘What luck!' Tom says to her that night. They keep each other warm in the freezing room, laugh at the sound of husks and straw crackling beneath them.

‘What do you say to stealing out to the stable and spending the night in the hay loft?' Tom says. ‘Hay makes its own heat and it's much softer than straw.'

But it's too cold to get out of bed. Dobson is jovial but mean with fuel. Lush ice leaves flourish inside the window.

Nor will he provide soap. ‘The English do always demand soap,' he says. ‘You have a towel: rub off the dirt with that.'

‘What do you think of Robert?' Tom asks her.

‘I like him well enough. How could I not when he's offering us work just like that! But do you think he really wants me to write the guide? I'm not sure that I trust him.'

‘Of course he does! He's plain speaking, says what he means. A frank Scot, that's what I like about him. Dear Baldwyn. We have him to thank. I shall write to him immediately, not least so that he will put Cranch's up for sale with all that's in it. Then I shall have capital to put into Wilson's business.'

‘Will you become partners?'

‘We could, though I mustn't act too fast. Are you ambitious for me, Sarah?'

‘Of course I am, my darling.'

‘To be cautious goes right against my inclination. But I must let him suggest it. We may agree on many things: he's a republican after all, though he wasn't happy that I might be a Jacobin. He's also a respectable Presbyterian and I'm not. I don't know how significant that may be yet. Partners must agree a great deal.

‘But dearest Sarah, look out, for I am ambitious for you. Once you've written your
Guide
, who knows what else you may turn your pen to! I won't have you running home with pies all wrapped in cloths for me, like you did for Wintrige.'

‘You won't have it!' She laughs too loudly: his face falls. She kisses his brow. ‘I'm teasing you. I think you really do believe in women. I've never met a man who thinks as you do.'

‘If any country will let its women shine it's this one. Surely! It was too bad the Corresponding Society was nothing but men.'

‘There were plenty of women at the big meetings.'

‘Yes, but not on the committees, not in the debates. Not writing pamphlets. We'll write something together. We'll write a book together!'

They know no bounds.

*

Robert has a further proposition. One evening he invites them to his house in Zane Street where he lives alone, his wife having died three years earlier in the yellow fever epidemic of ‘93.

‘I am lonely here. Martha cooks and washes for me but the house is too empty. I should like it greatly if you would live on the upper floor. It's unfurnished, so you must buy yourselves some sticks of furniture. I'll need rent but you can pay me in arrears.'

Sarah says, ‘It is a good offer, Robert. I'd like it and I should think Tom would. Yes?'

‘Yes, an excellent idea.'

‘Let me loan you a few dollars today as an advance against production of pamphlets and the book. You'll be wanting a few more clothes no doubt, though we've only two tailors to choose from here. Try Watson's, off Water Street.'

‘I don't intend to abandon my scarlet neckerchief,' says Tom.

‘Och Lord, no! How would anyone recognise you else, eh? Now, until you've bought a bed, you should move to Moore's hotel. Much nearer here than the Bell.'

In Robert's house they will share the services of Martha, who can certainly cook for three as easily as for one, he says. Indeed, she'll probably prefer to do so.

That same evening Martha is visiting her sisters somewhere in the city and has left a chicken pie and a baked pudding.

‘There are apples in this pudding,' Sarah says, ‘but something else I don't recognise.'

‘Crookneck,' Robert explains. ‘Winter squash. It's my favourite dish, for enough of it reminds me of home and yet it tastes of Pennsylvania too. Whoever heard of crookneck squash in Scotland, eh? Martha knows what I like.'

The men smoke and make their way through a bottle of peach brandy. Robert quizzes them about London.

‘It's Pitt's terror,' Tom says. ‘The government fears the people, not just in London but all over the country, especially in the cities.'

‘I read the Tricolour was raised on the Tower.' Robert puffs and drinks, puffs and drinks.

‘That was nothing. The chaplain's son! No doubt he got a thrashing, nothing worse.'

‘Poor boy,' says Sarah. ‘Yet the people will never turn to blood like in Paris. I'm sure of it. They meet in huge numbers and cheer and weep and listen in silence. Thousands of people. I was there. I'll never forget that silence in St George's Fields.'

Robert stares at her as she speaks. It makes her uneasy.

‘It's reasonable that you should think so, my dearest,' Tom says quietly. ‘But I'll tell you what I heard the night of the attack on the King's coach when he went to open Parliament.'

‘I read something of that,' says Robert. ‘Were you there, eh? Vast mobs, according to the report.'

‘Not in the crowd, but I have friends who were and they told me about it, the hissing, hooting, groaning. Down with George! No King! No Pitt! No War! Peace, Peace. Bread! Bread!'