Read Online The Trouble with Tom by Paul Collins - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Paul Collins
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light becomes dimmer and the roar of Fleet Street slightly muffled; in the emptied courtyard, cold metal scaffolding crawls up the whitewashed face of an old building. I pace around, searching for number 11.Projecting out from one are are what might once have been old gas lanterns, now made electric; between them and an iron railing is the sign:
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A fitting enough use for 11 Bolt Court, I supposeâfor Cobbett brought himself and his box of bones home to this building upon his return from abroad. Throughout the nineteenth century this courtyard echoed with the clatter of various printing presses, and teemed with apprentice printers and students at its engraving school; and for many years, too, it counted Cobbett as an occasional resident in this building. Newly arrived in London and gazing out from the entrance to Bolt Court, Cobbett could see Carlile's shuttered bookshop just up the street. He'd already visited Carlile in jail, where he found his fellow radical mooning over the country Cobbett had just left.
"Ah,"sighed Carlile, "had I been in America, they would not have thrown me in prison!"
"No,"countered Cobbett. 'They would have tarred and feathered you."
But Carlile's fate had indeed been harsh here. Within an hour of the court ruling, authorities swept into the 'Temple of Reason" at 55 Fleet Street and impounded L600 worth of books and cash; the next morning, when beadles arrived to pull down rebellious placards surreptitiously placed on the closed-down shop, they were roundly booed and jostled by an angry crowd. But eventually the crowd dispersed, and the shop kept locked up by authorities until, with its rent hopelessly due a few weeks later, Carlile's remaining family and friends had to clear out the pitiful remains of the Temple.
Cobbett had his own problems. Even before he'd arrived in London, he found himself and his box of bones being attacked incessantly in the press and Parliament speeches. 'Was there ever any subject treated with more laughter, contempt, and derision than the introduction of these miserable bones?" one member of Parliament sneered. Writing to his son, Cobbett complained how "to cry out against CARLILE, PAINE and 'blasphemy,' was the order of day amongst all enemies of freedom." But he was ready to fight back.
PAINE'S BIRTH DAY, a notice proclaimed in the January 22 issue of his Political Register: "There will be a Dinner at the Crown and Anchor, in the Strand, on Saturday the 29th." Admirers of Paine, clutching five-shilling tickets for the dinner would gather at seven P.M. to watch Cobbett ring in a new era of political reform. There might even be Paine Clubs founded in various cities. In any case, the dinner would make a fine start for his efforts to raise money for Paine's grave, and it would give Cobbett a chance to hawk his latest notion in monument fund-raising: selling gold rings containing locks of Paine's hair. Cobbett vowed that the rings would be made directly under his own supervision as he handed each lock of hair to the goldsmith, and that he would personally sign a parchment of authenticity for every ring.
It was all a splendid planâexcept, Cobbett wrote glumly a few days later, "Envy, hatred, malice, revenge, fear; but above all, Envy, mean black, dastardly Envy interfered to prevent the triumph of reason and of truth." And the cause of the downfall of Reason and Truth? Well . . . the pub . "The Landlord refused us his house," Cobbett reported. Exasperated, he moved his dinner at the last minute. But, walking down Fleet Street when the great day arrived, Cobbett might have noticed some rather bad omens. People were suddenly dressing in black; flags were lowered; church bells were tolling. And by the time he made it to the dinner, Cobbett would have known that he'd picked quite possibly the worst day of the entire nineteenth century to celebrate the birth of King George's greatest enemy. As if in one last act of
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Registered Immigration Advisors
A fitting enough use for 11 Bolt Court, I supposeâfor Cobbett brought himself and his box of bones home to this building upon his return from abroad. Throughout the nineteenth century this courtyard echoed with the clatter of various printing presses, and teemed with apprentice printers and students at its engraving school; and for many years, too, it counted Cobbett as an occasional resident in this building. Newly arrived in London and gazing out from the entrance to Bolt Court, Cobbett could see Carlile's shuttered bookshop just up the street. He'd already visited Carlile in jail, where he found his fellow radical mooning over the country Cobbett had just left.
"Ah,"sighed Carlile, "had I been in America, they would not have thrown me in prison!"
"No,"countered Cobbett. 'They would have tarred and feathered you."
But Carlile's fate had indeed been harsh here. Within an hour of the court ruling, authorities swept into the 'Temple of Reason" at 55 Fleet Street and impounded L600 worth of books and cash; the next morning, when beadles arrived to pull down rebellious placards surreptitiously placed on the closed-down shop, they were roundly booed and jostled by an angry crowd. But eventually the crowd dispersed, and the shop kept locked up by authorities until, with its rent hopelessly due a few weeks later, Carlile's remaining family and friends had to clear out the pitiful remains of the Temple.
Cobbett had his own problems. Even before he'd arrived in London, he found himself and his box of bones being attacked incessantly in the press and Parliament speeches. 'Was there ever any subject treated with more laughter, contempt, and derision than the introduction of these miserable bones?" one member of Parliament sneered. Writing to his son, Cobbett complained how "to cry out against CARLILE, PAINE and 'blasphemy,' was the order of day amongst all enemies of freedom." But he was ready to fight back.
PAINE'S BIRTH DAY, a notice proclaimed in the January 22 issue of his Political Register: "There will be a Dinner at the Crown and Anchor, in the Strand, on Saturday the 29th." Admirers of Paine, clutching five-shilling tickets for the dinner would gather at seven P.M. to watch Cobbett ring in a new era of political reform. There might even be Paine Clubs founded in various cities. In any case, the dinner would make a fine start for his efforts to raise money for Paine's grave, and it would give Cobbett a chance to hawk his latest notion in monument fund-raising: selling gold rings containing locks of Paine's hair. Cobbett vowed that the rings would be made directly under his own supervision as he handed each lock of hair to the goldsmith, and that he would personally sign a parchment of authenticity for every ring.
It was all a splendid planâexcept, Cobbett wrote glumly a few days later, "Envy, hatred, malice, revenge, fear; but above all, Envy, mean black, dastardly Envy interfered to prevent the triumph of reason and of truth." And the cause of the downfall of Reason and Truth? Well . . . the pub . "The Landlord refused us his house," Cobbett reported. Exasperated, he moved his dinner at the last minute. But, walking down Fleet Street when the great day arrived, Cobbett might have noticed some rather bad omens. People were suddenly dressing in black; flags were lowered; church bells were tolling. And by the time he made it to the dinner, Cobbett would have known that he'd picked quite possibly the worst day of the entire nineteenth century to celebrate the birth of King George's greatest enemy. As if in one last act of
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