The Island by Richard Whiteing — Read

‘Swart then, to cast it in proper form, was of the Swarts of Norfolk, and his family had been settled in that part of the country from an extremely early time. They had subsequently removed to London, and had planted offshoots in many of the great towns, but their earliest family seat was a swineherd's hovel on the bank of one of the Broads. Swart's father, Jeremiah Swart, more commonly known as "Jerry," had assisted at the rise of our great cotton industry, not exactly as one of the cotton lords, but as one of the others. Swart had often heard his history from his own lips. He was born in 1800, and in 1816 he took another infant to wife, without the formality of a visit to the parson. Babes of every age, from five and six upwards, were common enough in the factories at that time, and they worked from twelve to fourteen and fifteen hours a day. Puberty began early, for the temperature of the factories was the temperature of Bombay, yet, even with this chance in their favour, half the children never reached a marriageable age. They perished like flies, and the few that were left, like flies of a certain sort, had just time to arrange for the propagation of their species, and then to die. Boys and girls, men and women, worked together, lived together. Inspection was unknown; control of any sort, on the part of law, equally so; their common lodging-houses, not to put too fine a point on it, were common stews. They toiled for just as much as would keep their bodies together; and the rate of pay was calculated on the sound economical assumption that they had no souls.

‘Swart's father seems to have taken the same interest in public affairs as his more famous son. He would often tell the boy of his patriotic satisfaction in the Act of 1816, which regulated the detention of Napoleon at St. Helena. He felt, as he used to say, that they had got Boney safe at last, and he could now breathe as freely as his fluffy cough would allow. Swart's infant mother was indifferent to that great event, for she was bearing Swart in her bosom, at the factory, within three days of her delivery of him into this joyous world. Having performed this function, she went to join her ancestors, whose pedigree, I regret to say, it is impossible to trace. Swart's father used to remark that he had been less fortunate than Prince Leopold, who, on taking the Princess Charlotte to wife, at about this time, secured 50,000_l._ a year with her, dead or alive. He meant to say, of course, that the grant was to be continued to the Prince in the event of the lady's demise. It was a generous gift, for the nation had been left in extreme poverty and misery by the great war. The Marquis Camden subsequently surrendered his sinecure, "towards the relief of the public burdens," in the handsomest way in the world, and the Prince Regent found he could spare 50,000_l._ a year from his own ample revenues, for the same purpose. Swart's father was particularly touched by this last act of self-denial, and he expressed a hope that his Prince might never want a meal. The wish must have been heard in Heaven. The people at large were not so fortunate: they became like wild beasts with hunger; they rioted at Ely, they rioted at Spa-Fields. The country blazed with incendiary fires, as though for a second celebration of the Peace. The hero who had conquered the Peace was not forgotten; and Strathfieldsaye was purchased for the Duke of Wellington.