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Authors: Barry Unsworth
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no less than six voyages since, on the regular circuit. “I was talking to Ned Wyatt only last week,” Kemp said. ‘It brought the family return enough on those six voyages to stock another dozen vessels in the West Indies with rum and sugar.” He raised his hands to make a quick shape of wealth. “Now I ask you, where else can you get profits like that?”’
In part it was superstition; much of that talking was like the babble of a spell to keep off demons. He was not desperate, however, during these days, merely rather feverish and talkative. Those who afterwards asserted otherwise did not know him. Poverty was distant, his success had been complete. His life was miraculous to him. He had limped into Liverpool as a boy of twelve, barefoot and penniless, and picked up a sort of living along the docks until he was big enough to get work as a labourer. He had put his pennies together. With his first five pounds he had bought a share in a consignment of hayforks and scythe-blades for the colonists in Virginia. The profits from this bought sugar in Jamaica which was then resold on the Liverpool Exchange. This trebled his capital. He repeated the venture with a larger stake and went on repeating it until he was strong enough to go into cotton. Markets for English printed cottons were opening everywhere. With luck aiding energy he had grown rich beyond his dreams. Perhaps it was this, the sense of his career as miraculous, that was ultimately his undoing. Miracles are not subject to reversal. Crutches can be thrown away, the wine will not run thin again; Kemp had been raised from the pit and he could not believe he would fall back into it, any more than Lazarus into his.
He could fear it but he could not believe it. And so he could not adapt to the losses he had taken, the blockades of the war years, the plunge in prices, his heavy expenditure on attempts to find a fast red dye that could compete with Indian cottons.
The Liverpool Merchant was part of the miracle.
It fascinated and consoled him to watch the building of it from day to day, to see the gaunt-ribbed hulk wrought to a shape of beauty and purpose. He had other interests; his dealings were diverse, like those of most Liverpool merchants of the day. In Welsh quarries men toiled to bring out the dark slate for him; colliers under his charter shipped coal down from Carlisle for the Birmingham furnaces; settlers in remote places boiled their water in kettles he had exported. But the ship was something of his own.
For Erasmus too this was a time unlike any other. Changes he noticed in his father seemed to reflect his own state, symptoms of his own—and Ferdinand’s—disorder. His life during these days was lived at quite distinct levels of intensity. There was the business, in which he had as yet a relatively small part, being mainly responsible for the transport by mule train of various manufactured goods from Warrington to the Mersey docks and for buying up small lots along the route against the day, which he felt sure could not be long delayed, when the present track would be made fit for coaches. Then there was home, his mother’s complaints and his father’s certainties, fencing practice at the academy, nights on the town with friends, drinking bouts which he did not enjoy greatly, disliking the sensation of being other than himself-it was this that made him such a bad actor. Nevertheless, it was the acting, the scene of his rehearsals, where his true life lay at this time—the lakeside, the pale sand of the shore, Caliban’s cave, Prospero’s cell: these formed a territory where Erasmus endured for love’s sake what was worse than any labour, the twice-weekly parade of his ineptitude, the ache of not knowing who Miranda’s smiles were for.
Once or twice at the beginning the rehearsals had to be held indoors because of rain; but then the weather settled down to a long succession of warm, clear days, identical save for the gradual advance of spring,
In part it was superstition; much of that talking was like the babble of a spell to keep off demons. He was not desperate, however, during these days, merely rather feverish and talkative. Those who afterwards asserted otherwise did not know him. Poverty was distant, his success had been complete. His life was miraculous to him. He had limped into Liverpool as a boy of twelve, barefoot and penniless, and picked up a sort of living along the docks until he was big enough to get work as a labourer. He had put his pennies together. With his first five pounds he had bought a share in a consignment of hayforks and scythe-blades for the colonists in Virginia. The profits from this bought sugar in Jamaica which was then resold on the Liverpool Exchange. This trebled his capital. He repeated the venture with a larger stake and went on repeating it until he was strong enough to go into cotton. Markets for English printed cottons were opening everywhere. With luck aiding energy he had grown rich beyond his dreams. Perhaps it was this, the sense of his career as miraculous, that was ultimately his undoing. Miracles are not subject to reversal. Crutches can be thrown away, the wine will not run thin again; Kemp had been raised from the pit and he could not believe he would fall back into it, any more than Lazarus into his.
He could fear it but he could not believe it. And so he could not adapt to the losses he had taken, the blockades of the war years, the plunge in prices, his heavy expenditure on attempts to find a fast red dye that could compete with Indian cottons.
The Liverpool Merchant was part of the miracle.
It fascinated and consoled him to watch the building of it from day to day, to see the gaunt-ribbed hulk wrought to a shape of beauty and purpose. He had other interests; his dealings were diverse, like those of most Liverpool merchants of the day. In Welsh quarries men toiled to bring out the dark slate for him; colliers under his charter shipped coal down from Carlisle for the Birmingham furnaces; settlers in remote places boiled their water in kettles he had exported. But the ship was something of his own.
For Erasmus too this was a time unlike any other. Changes he noticed in his father seemed to reflect his own state, symptoms of his own—and Ferdinand’s—disorder. His life during these days was lived at quite distinct levels of intensity. There was the business, in which he had as yet a relatively small part, being mainly responsible for the transport by mule train of various manufactured goods from Warrington to the Mersey docks and for buying up small lots along the route against the day, which he felt sure could not be long delayed, when the present track would be made fit for coaches. Then there was home, his mother’s complaints and his father’s certainties, fencing practice at the academy, nights on the town with friends, drinking bouts which he did not enjoy greatly, disliking the sensation of being other than himself-it was this that made him such a bad actor. Nevertheless, it was the acting, the scene of his rehearsals, where his true life lay at this time—the lakeside, the pale sand of the shore, Caliban’s cave, Prospero’s cell: these formed a territory where Erasmus endured for love’s sake what was worse than any labour, the twice-weekly parade of his ineptitude, the ache of not knowing who Miranda’s smiles were for.
Once or twice at the beginning the rehearsals had to be held indoors because of rain; but then the weather settled down to a long succession of warm, clear days, identical save for the gradual advance of spring,
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