The Rescue Man Read online

  4th March 1861

  ‘Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes,’ wrote Mr Thoreau, but Ma said that it behoves a gentleman to dress in appropriate fashion when visiting the house of a knighted worthy. Thus I went down to Lockie’s, on Bold-street, to order a suit of clothes. I was accompanied by Dalby, who took leave to offer his advice on my chosen attire. The Lord alone knows why – Dalby is barely qualified to judge as to the rightness of a button – but I suffered his assistance with a show of gaiety. I am to return for a fitting next week.

  12th March 1861

  I am greatly pleased at the tailor’s handiwork, & strut up & down the upper room at Lockie’s like a turkeycock. (Today I came without Dalby.) The green velvet frock coat with silk facings is exceedingly fine, & with the checked trousers & waistcoat I look the very picture of a swell. On returning home and exhibiting this finery I am greeted first with rippling ecstasies of laughter by Georgy & Cassie, & then with a look of painful bemusement by Pa, who likens me to ‘a magsman on his way to Aintree races’. Only Ma is kind, & says I look decidedly the gentleman – though even she owned that the waistcoat might be deemed a little ‘flash’.

  Thursday, Twenty-first March, 1861

  Of a sudden I feel emboldened & eager to get on. Our span upon this Earth is but ‘the summer of a dormouse’, as Byron says – there is no excuse for loafing.

  Today I walked the few miles up to Blundell Sands & introduced myself at Torrington Hall. Its owner is one Sir William Rocksavage, a merchant who made his name (I am told) in the cotton trade. He lived in America for many years, amassed a fortune & a family (four daughters, two sons), then returned to this country some time ago. His manager, Mr Bowcher, conducted me around the estate, which comprises about three hundred acres & includes a lake, an orchard, summer house & stables. The Hall itself is Jacobean, with later additions, the plan E-shaped with four symmetrical bay windows at the ends of the four wings & two towers in the centre. The building is of red brick with stone dressings & ends in an ornamental balustrade. It is quite austere & angular, commodious rather than luxurious – a house that one might admire but not love. I was surprised to learn that the master was absent, despite this being the day appointed for my engagement to begin. I am bidden to return tomorrow – such are the whims of the aristocracy. As I retraced my steps down the long drive, I passed a gardener of such ancient & weathered appearance I fancied he might be a relic of the Jacobean period himself.

  Saturday, Twenty-third March, 1861

  All yesterday spent at Torrington Hall. Had my first audience with Rocksavage, who neither explained his absence on Thursday nor deigned to make apology for it. He is a tall, silver-haired, severely handsome fellow, with a strong square chin on which he wears neatly trimmed whiskers. His eyes are his most distinctive feature, as watchful as a hawk’s even while his expression remains a model of indifference. It is far from a genial countenance, seeming to warn that this man does not suffer fools gladly; one imagines he does not suffer friends much more willingly. ‘Mr Sandham tells me he has sent one of his ablest draughtsmen,’ he said, with a penetrating look. ‘It appears he has also sent me one of his youngest.’ In reply I expressed a hope that my age would not prevent my giving full satisfaction. He only nodded, & then, paying out his words as carefully as a usurer would his coin, showed me around the house & marked which rooms were to be my subjects.

  The hall is two-storeyed, placed at right angles to front & back, & runs right across the building. Above it on the second floor, reached by a wondrously carved staircase, is the saloon, notable for an original plaster ceiling & a grand marble fireplace. Another huge fireplace, this one of stone, stands in the drawing-room, itself dominated by a busy classical frieze. A long gallery, occupying the whole north wing, is hung with gilt-framed portraits – perhaps of Rocksavage’s forebears. On the ground floor more Jacobean fireplaces in library & drawing-room – whatever its owner may lack in warmth, the house will not want for a good blaze. Rocksavage has advised me to start with the summer house, built from a design (he informed me with lofty satisfaction) by Inigo Jones. I doubted the attribution, but knew better than to bandy words with Sir.

  19th April 1861

  Constant occupation has prevented me setting down a record of my progress at Torrington Hall. The drawings pour forth from my pen so prodigiously that even Sir looks taken aback: I have completed work on the summer house (inside & out), the chapel, & the house itself from south & east perspectives. They are – why should I cloak myself in the false apparel of modesty? – the subtlest & finest things I have ever done.

  26th April 1861

  A sudden squall drove me inside the Hall this morning, & as I was lounging in the kitchen (whither Mr Bowcher had directed me) a boy of about fourteen sidled in to stare at me. Shyly he asked ‘wot I was doin’ here’ – the accent, I think, is from Yorkshire – & I showed him the drawing of an orchard wall I had recently completed. He looked from the drawing at me, & then back at the drawing, as if in wonder that such a facsimile could be the work of the fellow before him. Indeed, so round-eyed was his gaze – it had something of Will’s intensity – I could not help myself from laughing, & the young shaver began to laugh too.

  His name is Charley, the younger son of the family, & I confess I found him a good deal more agreeable than his sire. Our talk was interrupted some minutes later by a young lady, perhaps of nineteen or twenty, who scolded Charley for bothering ‘the gentleman’ & begged my pardon for this intrusion. I replied that her brother – for such I surmised was their relation – had improved the hour very pleasantly, & we talked for some while about the drawings. Her name is Emily, second daughter of Sir Wm, & presently she too was examining the case of sketches I laid out before her. While her attention was so rapt I made a study of her – a tall, very finely made girl, with a beautiful firmness of expression, a pale, scholarly brow, chestnut-coloured hair & eyes of a grey-green hue, the shape of the head decidedly architectural. I asked if she would do me the honour of sitting for a portrait – it did not seem a bold request – but she only blushed, & stuttered out some words of regret, & bade me good-day, taking young Charley with her.

  Friday, Tenth May, 1861

  Once more I espied the young lady today. She was walking up the drive when I hailed her from where I sat, sketching a line of poplars, & she obliged me by stopping to talk. I first of all made apology for my previous impudence in asking her to sit for me, & graciously did she accept it. I invited her to rest upon the little seat from which I had risen, while I, still holding my quarto sketchbook, sat on the grass verge some few steps behind her, so that she could not easily address me face to face. From this vantage I diverted her with conversation about her accomplishments – she likes to ride, she plays the piano ‘but badly’, reads French & Italian – & learned something of her personal history. She passed the early years of her life in America, returning to England & her father’s native city of Hull when she was nine; he purchased this house two years ago, having wearied of the noise & tumult of Liverpool. Her older sister is married to a clergyman; the two younger ones are supervised by a governess. Her older brother is a scholar at Oxford, while Charley has lately returned to Harrow – ‘which he hates, poor boy’. I said I was sorry indeed to be deprived of the young fellow’s acquaintance, & she smiled sadly – I think he is the favourite of her siblings. I then delayed her further with idle talk of the weather, & she bore with me patiently, still unaware of my stratagem – for while we were conversing I had, with great stealth, been sketching, & with a flourish presented to her a drawing of her head & shoulders. Once again I begged her pardon for this liberty, but she was too absorbed in the contemplation of my handiwork to respond. Did it please her? Indeed it did, & she thanked me for it with such depth of feeling I was secretly astonished, for was this not a girl whose gilded circumstances might have spoilt her & blunted such niceties as gratitude – especially for a sketch dashed off in ten minutes? It made me think well of her, & as
we parted I made my most courtly bow.

  22nd May 1861

  My mother, who used often to attend the theatre as a girl, at times recovers her predilection for a drama. Pa, on the contrary, has a mortal aversion to it, which in consequence put me under the obligation yesterday evening to accompany Ma to the Theatre Royal – a happy chance, for what transpired there I should have been greatly sorry to have missed. The play was Macbeth, which in its earliest scenes was admirably got up & well acted by Mr Trombley as the Thane & Mrs Jennings as his Lady – the audience seemed quite enraptured. But once the play entered into its metaphysical dimension I noticed their mood begin to change, for nothing in it held the smallest shiver of dread – the witches seemed merely a coven of ill-kempt drabs, the thunder & lightning too plainly the mechanical contrivances of workmen in the wings. From the stalls came ripples of laughter which – on the appearance of Banquo’s rather substantial ghost – gathered into a roaring torrent of derision. The players, bewildered by this mutiny, looked uncertain as to how they should proceed. At that moment Mr Trombley walked to the front of the stage & with all the dignity at his command stared down the audience – which became quieter. He then took leave to address us in a tone of majestic disdain: ‘I have visited this city of Liverpool for many years, have performed in most of its theatres, & have come to know well the proud character of its citizens. This evening, however, has unmasked that other face of the Liverpolitan people, for I see in the jeering mob before me’ – & here his eyes flashed with fury – ‘all the low, brutish, unprincipled instincts that once motivated your forefathers – so when you dare to condemn & abuse, have a care to remember that every brick of your fine city has been purchased with the blood of a Negro.’ Here was boldness. The whole theatre, on an instant, was stunned into silence. I turned to Ma, who looked as if she might truly have seen a ghost – Banquo’s or otherwise. Then, as Mr Trombley led his actors from the stage, a very pandemonium broke out, the shouts & catcalls rose up far louder than before, & one or two stout fellows sought to clamber upon the stage with a view to expressing their personal displeasure at this performance. A few minutes later police-men had entered the building & the audience, now a riotous assembly, were baying for the actor’s blood. I quickly led Ma away, neither of us quite able to account for what we had seen – though we later agreed that in lieu of drama it may well have surpassed the Bard himself.

  Thursday, Twenty-third May, 1861

  The theatrical riot of Tuesday evening is reported in today’s Liverpool Mercury. This Macbeth shall be seen no more at the Royal – ‘untimely ripped’ by the management after Mr Trombley’s disobliging address to the Liverpolitan citizenry. I fancy the fellow was lucky to escape with his life, for this city is a powder-keg around the subject of slaving, and only a spark will rouse it to blazes. The report was much on my mind when I encountered Miss Rocksavage in the long gallery, & we fell to talking of the event. She recalled from her childhood in Georgia the slaves toiling in her father’s cotton fields, & confessed she was troubled by the memory of those shackled souls. (I thought of Frank and what he might have seen in the West Indies.) But she had hopes that their wretched lot would presently be relieved by Mr Lincoln’s fortitude – his refusal to accept the expansion of slavery or the right to secede of the Confederate States has fomented civil war. I privately wondered if her father harboured such sympathy for the cause, his own prosperity being so closely entwined with the South. Their embargo on cotton may prove calamitous for Lancashire mill owners. We thus talked half an hour or more, & for all the gravity of our theme I never felt the time more charmingly beguiled.

  6th June 1861

  Spoke with E.R. again today – we are now in the habit of talking to one another whenever I am at the Hall.

  Friday, Fourteenth June, 1861

  Walked today from Abercromby-sq. down to the docks. Such is the pace of building now that the whole city resembles a gigantic construction site. Old Liverpool seems to tumble in the blink of an eye. There is a name to be made as an architect, if only one is shrewd enough to seize the moment.

  Yet I find myself preoccupied with Torrington Hall & the drawings, production of which has slowed for reasons I hardly dare admit even to myself. A commission that ought to have been finished in weeks (it nearly was!) has now extended into months; I continue to find pretexts for visiting the Hall, ostensibly to revise earlier drawings that I no longer deem satisfactory. Does Sir Wm suspect what lies behind my dragging? More importantly, does she suspect?

  Tuesday, Eighteenth June, 1861

  Set out very early this morning for Blundell Sands, my nerves in a queer flutter of anticipation. As I walked I imagined what dress she might wear today, & pictured in my mind’s eye that delightful hesitancy of manner whenever a difficulty is posed – such modesty being quite out of proportion to her wit & good sense. With my step buoyant from these imaginings I entered the Hall (by the tradesmen’s door – which I do not disdain) & asked one of the servants as to Miss Rocksavage’s whereabouts. ‘Gone,’ she said – & my high spirits fell more precipitately than a stone dropped down a well. Gone?! To my confused enquiries came answer that the lady, & indeed the whole family, had removed to the Highlands for the summer (I remembered that hunting & shooting were among Sir’s favoured pastimes). Mr Bowcher later handed me a letter, which for one rapturous moment I believed had been left for me by E.R., but on examination proved to be from her father’s hand – a terse note advising of his absence & prospective return, by which date (he trusts) the drawings will be complete & my engagement at an end. But why no word of this from her? Perhaps I have deluded myself in fancying an intimacy where only friendliness existed – & yet my recollections of the hours we passed in conversation strongly argue that it had been she who sought me out as often as I did her. No word of unguarded affection ever passed between us, but I must be grievously mistaken if I did not discern the shadow of it across our intercourse. I write these few lines late at my desk, between long periods of sorrowful contemplation – the lamp almost out. Today I have thought only of Emily Rocksavage, & I longed – longed – that she too might have thought of me.

  The journal broke off temporarily at this point, and Baines decided to leave Eames to his forlorn lucubrations. His throat was sore from inhaling the Victorian dust. Having returned the journals to the assistant at the desk, requesting that they be kept to hand – he would be back for them later in the week – he emerged into the afternoon sunshine, his head still astir with the hurrying tempo of the architect’s prose. He didn’t presume to understand Eames’s character from these few pages, but he had caught glimmers, like sparks from a bonfire, of his energy and self-belief. He was struck, too, by intimations of the city’s vaunting imperial pride. He had never heard the story of that Shakespearean actor, but he could readily believe the audience’s outraged response to his denunciation, for slavery was still, eighty years later, a dangerous subject to raise among Liverpudlians.

  He walked across William Brown Street and on to the plateau where St George’s Hall stood. If the Pier Head was the heart of the city’s romance, here was the purest expression of its majesty. Begrimed with nearly a hundred years of soot, it was nevertheless – to Baines’s eyes – the greatest classical monument of the nineteenth century, and the most impressive work of architecture in the north of England. He had sketched it several times, yet never quite managed to capture its soaring, unimpeachable grandeur. Dickens had given readings here several times during the 1860s, and had called the Small Concert Room where the crowds flocked to hear him the ‘most perfect hall in the world’. At the foot of the steps, equestrian bronzes of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert flanked the Cenotaph, whose unveiling Baines and Jack had attended some years before. It was a hauntingly simple horizontal block, suggestive of a tomb, with a bronze relief stretching along each side. The relief facing Lime Street depicted mourners in front of a military cemetery that receded into infinity. The other side pictured lines of soldiers on the march, bar
ely individualised, destiny drawing them on. He gazed at it now, waiting for an epiphany – which of course refused to come.

  He wished he had brought his sketchbook with him – he felt ready to have another crack at the place. He glanced at his wristwatch. The sultry July temperature was almost inviting him to settle in for the afternoon. But no, McQuarrie was right, urgency was required. He was going to break this maddening habit of procrastination if it killed him. What was the name again? He thought of gin. Tanqueray. Now he’d remembered it, so he had no excuse. He hopped on to a wheezing tram that carried him along Lime Street and into Renshaw Street. The sun was obliging shopkeepers to pull the awnings over their windows, and sweltering pedestrians loitered in the shade. He felt the city stretching out in the heat like a lazy old dog on a doorstep. It was about this time last year they had been bracing themselves for war; he could remember the same brooding atmosphere of anxiety, and beneath it the ill-disguised onset of despair. He alighted at the top of Bold Street and walked down to where Slater Street made a right angle. He patrolled its length without seeing the name – no shopfront appeared to advertise a photographer. It was unlike Jack to have got it wrong – and indeed he hadn’t, for there, by a doorbell at the end of a Georgian terrace, he spotted a discreet brass plate: R. Tanqueray Esq., Photography Studio. He pushed open the door, setting off a tinkling bell, and entered a room that was empty but for a large canvas screen, a chaise longue and a tripod. Was this it?