Tipping the Velvet (64 page)

‘That's Mrs Costello,' she said, ‘Emma's widowed sister.'

‘Oh!' I had heard of her before, but never expected her to be so young and pretty. ‘How handsome she is. What a shame she ain't - like us. Is there no hope of it?'

‘None at all, I'm afraid. But she is a lovely girl. Her husband was the kindest man, and Emma says she is just about despairing that she will ever find another to match him. The only men who want to court her turn out to be boxers ...'

I smiled dully; I was not much bothered about Mrs Costello, really. While Annie talked I kept glancing over to Florence. She now stood at the far side of the tent, a handkerchief gripped between her fingers but her cheeks dry and white. However long and hard I looked at her, she would not meet my gaze.

I had almost decided to make my way over to her, when there came a sudden clamour: the lady on the platform had finished her speech, and the crowd was reluctantly clapping. This meant, of course, that it was time for Ralph's address; Annie and I turned to see him hover uncertainly at the side of the little stage, then stumble up the steps as his name was announced, and take up his place at the front of the platform.

I looked at Annie and grimaced, and she bit her lip. The tent had quietened a little, but not much. Most of the afternoon's serious listeners seemed to have grown tired and left: their seats had been taken by idlers, by yawning women and by more rowdy boys.

Before this careless crowd Ralph now stood and cleared his throat. He had his speech, I saw, in his hand - to refer to, I guessed, if he forgot his lines. His forehead was streaming with sweat; his neck was stiff. I knew he would never be able to project his voice to the back of the tent, with his throat so stiff and tense.

With another cough, he began.

“‘Why Socialism?” That is the question I have been invited to discuss with you this afternoon.' Annie and I were sitting in the third row from the front, and even we could hardly hear him; from the mass of men and women behind us there came a cry - ‘Speak up!' - and a ripple of laughter. Ralph coughed yet again, and when he next spoke his voice was louder, but also rather hoarse.

“‘Why Socialism?” I shall keep my answer rather brief.'

‘Thank God for something, then!' called a man at that - as I knew somebody would - and Ralph gazed wildly around the tent for a second, quite distracted. I saw with dismay that he had lost his place, and was forced to glance at the sheets in his hand. There was a horrible silence while he found the spot; when he next spoke, of course, it was into the paper, just as he had used to do in our Quilter Street parlour.

‘How many times,' he was saying, ‘have you heard economists say that England is the richest nation in the world ... ?' I found myself reciting it with him, urging him on; but he stumbled, and muttered, and once or twice was forced to tilt his paper to the light, to read it. By now the crowd had begun to groan and sigh and shuffle. I saw the chairman, seated at the back of the platform, making up his mind to step over to him and tell him to speak up or to stop; I saw Florence, pale and agitated to see her brother so awkward - her own griefs, for the moment, quite forgotten. Ralph started on a passage of statistics: ‘Two hundred years ago,' he read, ‘Britain's land and capital was worth five hundred million pounds; today it is worth - it is worth -' He tilted the paper again; but while he did so, a fellow stood up to shout: ‘What are you, man? A socialist, or a schoolmaster?' And at that, Ralph sagged as if he had been winded. Annie whispered: ‘Oh, no! Poor Ralph! I can't bear it!'

‘Neither can I,' I said. I jumped to my feet, thrust Cyril at her, then hurried to the steps at the side of the platform and ran up them, two at a time. The chairman saw me and half-rose to block my path, but I waved him back and stepped purposefully over to the sweating, sagging Ralph.

‘Oh, Nance,' he said, as close to tears as I had ever seen him. I took his arm and gripped it tight, and held him in his place before the crowd. They had grown momentarily silent - through sheer delight, I think, at seeing me leap, so dramatically, to Ralph's side. Now I took advantage of their hush to send my voice across their heads in a kind of roar.

‘So you don't care for mathematics?' I cried, picking up the speech where Ralph had let it falter. ‘Perhaps it's hard to think in millions; well, then, let us think in thousands. Let us think of three hundred thousand. What do you think I am referring to? The Lord Mayor's salary?' There were titters at that: there had been a bit of a scandal, a couple of years before, about the Lord Mayor's wages. Now I gratefully singled out the titterers and addressed myself to them. ‘No missis,' I said, ‘I'm not talking of pounds, nor even of shillings. I am talking of persons. I am talking of the amount of men, women, and children who are living in the workhouses of London - of London! the richest city, in the richest country, in the richest empire, in all the world! - at this very moment, as I speak now ...'

I went on like this; and the titters grew less. I spoke of all the paupers in the nation; and of all the people who would die in Bethnal Green, that year, in a workhouse bed. ‘Shall it be
you
that dies in the poorhouse, sir?' I cried — I found myself adding a few little rhetorical flourishes to the speech, as I went along. ‘Shall it be you, miss? Or your old mother? Or this little boy?' The little boy began to cry.

Then: ‘How old are we likely to be, when we die?' I asked. I turned to Ralph - he was gazing at me in undisguised wonder - and called, loudly enough for the crowd to hear, ‘What is the average age of death, Mr Banner, amongst the men and women of Bethnal Green?'

He stared at me dumbfounded for a second, then, when I pinched the flesh of his arm, sang out: ‘Twenty-nine!' I did not think it was loud enough. ‘How old?' I cried - for all the world as if I were a pantomime dame, and Ralph my cross-chat partner - and he called the figure out again, louder than before:
‘Twenty-nine!'

‘Nine-and-twenty' I said to the audience. ‘What if I were a lady, Mr Banner? What if I lived in Hampstead or - or St John's Wood; lived very comfortably, on my shares in Bryant and May? What is the average age of death amongst such ladies?'

‘It is fifty-five,' he said at once. ‘Fifty-five! Almost twice as long.' He had remembered the speech and now, at my silent urging, kept on with it, in a voice that was soon almost as strong as my own. ‘Because for every one person that dies in the smart parts of the city, four will die in the East End. They will die, many of 'em, of diseases which their smart neighbours know perfectly well how to treat or prevent. Or they will be killed by machines, in their workshops. Or perhaps they will simply die of hunger. Indeed, one or two people will die in London this very night, of pure starvation ...

‘And all this, after two hundred years in which - as all the economists will tell you - Great Britain's wealth has increased twenty times over! All this in the richest city on earth!'

There were some shouts at that, but I waited for them to die before taking up the speech where he had left it; and when I did speak at last, I did it quietly, so that people had to lean, and frown, to hear me. ‘Why is this so?' I said. ‘Is it because working people are spendthrifts? Because we would rather use our money to buy gin and porter, and trips to the music hall, and tobacco, and on betting, than on meat for our children and bread for ourselves? You will see all these things written, and hear them said, by rich men. Does that make them true? Truth is a queer thing, when it comes to rich men talking about the poor. Only think: if we broke into a rich man's house, he would call us thieves, and send us to prison. If we set a foot on his estate, we would be trespassers - he would set his dogs upon us! If we took some of his gold, we would be pickpockets; if we made him pay us money to get the gold back, we would be swindlers and con-men!

‘But what is the rich man's wealth but robbery, called by another title? The rich man steals from his competitors; he steals the land, and puts a wall about it; he steals our health, our liberty; he steals the fruits of our labour, and obliges us to buy them
back from him!
Does he call these things robbery, and slave-holding, and swindling? No: they are termed
enterprise;
and
business skill; and capitalism.
They are termed nature.

‘But is it natural, that babies should die for want of milk? Is it natural, that women should sew skirts and coats long into the night, in cramped and suffocating workshops? That men and boys should be killed or crippled to provide the coal upon your fires? That bakers should be choked, baking your bread?'

My voice had risen as I spoke; and now I bellowed.

‘Do you think that's natural? Do you think that's just?'

‘No!' came a hundred voices at once. ‘No! No!'

‘Neither do socialists!' cried Ralph: he had crushed his speech between his fingers, and now shook it at the crowd. ‘We are sick of seeing wealth and property going straight into the pockets of the idle and the rich! We don't want a
portion
of that wealth - the bit that the rich man cares, from time to time, to chuck at us. We want to see society quite transformed! We want to see money put to use, not kept for profit! We want to see working women's babies thriving - and workhouses pulled to the ground, ‘cause no one needs 'em!'

There were cheers at that, and he raised his hands. ‘You are cheering now,' he said; ‘it is rather easy to cheer, perhaps, when the weather is so gay. But you must do more than cheer. You must
act.
Those of you that work - men and women alike - join unions! Those of you that have votes - use 'em! Use ‘em to put your own people into parliament. And campaign for your womenfolk - for your sisters and daughters and wives - that they might have votes of their own, to help you!'

‘Go home tonight,' I went on, moving forward again, ‘and ask yourselves the question that Mr Banner has asked you today:
Why Socialism?
And you will find yourselves obliged to answer it as we have. “Because Britain's people,” you will say, “have laboured under the capitalist and the landlord system and grown only poorer and sicker and more miserable and afraid. Because it is not by charity and paltry reforms that we shall improve conditions for the weakest classes - not by taxes, not by electing one capitalist government over another, not even by abolishing the House of Lords! - but by turning over the land, and industry, to the people who work it. Because socialism is the only system for a fair society: a society in which the good things of the world are shared, not amongst the idlers of the world, but amongst the
workers
” - amongst yourselves: you, who have made the rich man rich, and been kept, for your labours, only ill and half-starved!'

There was a second's silence, then a burst of thunderous applause. I looked at Ralph - his cheeks were red, now, and his lashes wet with tears - then seized his hand, and raised it. And then, as the cheers at last died down, I looked at Florence, who had moved to join Annie and Cyril, and was watching me with her fingers at her lips.

Behind us, the chairman approached to shake our hands; and when this was done we made our way off the platform, and were surrounded at once by smiles and congratulations and more applause.

‘What a triumph!' Annie called, stepping forward to greet us first. ‘Ralph, you were magnificent!'

Ralph blushed. ‘It was all Nancy's doing,' he said self-consciously. Annie smirked, and turned to me. ‘Bravo!' she said. ‘What a performance! If I had had a flower, I would have thrown it!' She could not say any more, however, for behind her had come an elderly lady, who now pushed forward to catch my eye. It was Mrs Macey, of the Women's Cooperative Guild.

‘My dear,' she said, ‘I must congratulate you! What a really splendid address! They tell me you were an actress, once ... ?'

‘Do they?' I said. ‘Yes, I was.'

‘Well, we cannot afford to have such talents in our ranks, you know, and let them lie unused. Do say that you will speak for us another time. One really charismatic speaker can work wonders with an indecisive crowd.'

‘I'll gladly speak for you,' I said. ‘But you, you know, must write the speech ...'

‘Of course! Of course!' She clasped her hands together and raised her eyes. ‘Oh! I foresee rallies and debates, even - who knows? - a lecture tour!' At that, I gazed at her for a second in real alarm; then I felt my attention sought by a figure at my side, and turned to find Emma Raymond's sister, Mrs Costello, looking flushed and excited.

‘What a wonderful address!' she said shyly. ‘I felt moved almost to tears by it.' Her lovely face was indeed pale and grave, her eyes large and blue and lustrous. I thought again what I had thought before - what a shame it was that she was not a tom ... But then I remembered what Annie had said about her: how she had lost her gentle husband, and sought another.

‘How kind you are,' I said earnestly. ‘But, you know, it's really Mr Banner who deserves your praises, for he composed the entire speech himself.' As I said it I reached for Ralph, and pulled him over. ‘Ralph,' I said, ‘this is Mrs Costello, Miss Raymond's widowed sister. She very much enjoyed your address.'

‘I did,' said Mrs Costello. She held out her hand, and Ralph took it, then gazed blinking into her face. ‘I have always found the world to be so terribly unjust,' she went on, ‘but felt only powerless, before today, to change it ...'

They still held hands, but had not noticed. I left them to it, and rejoined Annie and Miss Raymond, and Florence. Annie put her hand upon my shoulder.

‘A lecture tour, eh?' she said. ‘My word!' Then she turned to Flo: ‘And how should you like that?'