THE MARCH OF THE YEARS

A century in the times of two families

It was a cold December in 1850 and the Robinsons felt it with every bone in their bodies. Shivering was no good: what they needed was a darned good fire to spread heat through their one up, one down terraced home, but logs were hard to come by and coal too expensive to think of burning.

Far away in London the Queen’s beau, Albert, was full of the joys of living as he planned the great exhibition that was going to enthral the world next year, but it didn’t excite Tom or Pam Robinson, or their three young children, Edward who was eight, Joan who was six and tiny Rob who was three. They didn’t have the strength or the will to even begin to feel Prince Albert’s excitement. But then, he didn’t have the poverty or the weariness to feel their cold.

Tom worked at the Starling Mill along with Pam, and it was down to Edward to keep a weather eye on the younger two, though he’d be putting in a huge number of hours at work before long himself because if he didn’t there’d be no logs for the fire next winter either. As it was, this cold season the best they could do was survive.

Food wasn’t always easy to come by, though it puzzled both parents why that should be seeing as they were working twelve hour days themselves. But the tokens they got paid for that toil barely sufficed. It was the factory shop: everything was so expensive. They had heard that if they’d been paid in coin of the realm for their labour then the shop in the village was cheaper, a great deal cheaper, but they weren’t and the tokens had to be spent in Sir Joshua’s shop.

Sir Joshua Starling (he’d been a sir for several years by then, mostly because he contributed a small portion of the mill’s profits to the party and his knighthood was an acknowledgement of that) lived in a large and impressive house at the top of the hill. It was mooted that from his bedroom window he could see three counties on a clear day, and he owned much of the land in sight, though Tom and Pam had little idea what a county might be. Their sole task was to stay alive along with their three little ones until things got better. It was mooted that things would turn to riches soon enough, when the Great exhibition generated rewards that all could enjoy.

Christmas day came, and on that sacred day little Rob passed away. Maybe it was the cold or maybe, and Pam fervently hoped this was the real treason she lost him so soon, maybe the Lord had called him to him because he was free from sin and would join the angels in endless songs of love in Heaven. She could just imagine his sweet voice singing praises in a world of warmth and light.

But her grief was terrible and painful, for like all mothers she loved her child. She sat in her chair, and that was no comfortable piece of furniture, and wept, asking continually the same question, why, why why?

Then as night fell, she whispered a prayer to him in Heaven.

But Heaven wasn’t on Earth and she had to weep more tears as the tiny crude coffin was laid in the poorhouse graveyard, and mud mixed with ice piled onto it. Had it been snowing that afternoon then the scene might have been pretty, but it wasn’t: a cold wind bit through Pam and Tom’s clothes and into their flesh.

It was all too much for Pam. She caught a chill and, lacking the reserves to fight it off, she too died as the new year chimed in country houses where they could afford clocks.

Which left Tom and his two youngsters to survive with half their income gone and no woman to do womanly things. So Edward had to join his father at the mill while Joan survived as best she could.

“Father,” he said as they struggled back home after his first day at work and sounding far too middle class for his background, “father things must change. For we work a full day, the machines clatter so loud and the toil is so continuous with the overseer ready to swipe us if we slacken, and yet we starve, go hungry and die of the cold. What’s it all about?”

“Sir Joshua Starling owns the cottage we live in,” replied Tom, “and without it there’d be nowhere for us to lay our heads. And, son, it is said that those who work for Dick Everard in his mill are worse off than us!”

“Then, father, something ought to be done!” declared Edward, “for I know by using my own eyes that the work we do is richly rewarded, to Sir Joshua if not to us! Why, it is said that only the rich can afford the cloth we weave and that much of is is sent overseas where foreigners with deep pockets that chink with much coin are keen to buy it. So where do all those riches go?”

“Ah, son, it is the way of the world that he who owns the mill can rule that world and with it all the coin he can handle,” sighed Tom. “We are but pawns and that is the fact. Think what Sir Joshua’s fancy house cost him…”

But Edward didn’t have time to think too much about what wealth the mill owner had, for when they arrived home it was to find that his sister, in an attempt to wash clothes in a tub, had fallen into a wretched sleep and died as she stirred the water.

Tom was heart broken. His family was shattered until it was just himself and Edward, and to his eyes the boy looked none too healthy.

That night he prayed as hard as he could and hoped to see a light on his personal horizon…

oo0oo

The years rolled along, eventually taking the last two Robinsons with them, but not until Edward had met and learned to cherish a lass from the finishing room at the mill. And ten years after his mother had died he wed Lucy, a move which meant a change for him if not for poor old Tom, who passed away before he was forty years old.

Edward and Lucy, being hugely in love, created a new family of Robinsons and soon moved to the country hoping to find work there and where good luck provided them with both food and warmth for when the seasons turned cold. They tended to five offspring, all of which survived into adulthood and all of which took the family name with them, for they were all boys.

The century ended and a new one began, and a series of chances and snatched opportunities led to Edward Junior, the oldest of his father’s sons, becoming a farmer with a small holding of land which he tended carefully and with knowledge he gleaned from books in the nearby town’s small public library.

Wars came and went, and there were losses as two of Edward’s grandchildren were killed in the Somme during the first great war. That led to grief, tears, misery, but the family, now in fact having become several families, recovered.

Finally came the nineteen fifties, more than a century after this account began, and the farmland around the village of Swanspottle was largely owned by the Robinson clan. And it was to that village one day when a stranger clad in the rags of a poor man came looking for work.

“I can do anything…” he said, though his voice was coarse as though speech itself was difficult.

“Who are you? I mean, what’s your name?” asked Edward Junior, by then an old man well into his nineties yet still hale and hearty.

“I am Dick, sir, Dick Starling,” replied the tramp.

“Starling? That’s a strange name… are you by any chance related to the late Sir Joshua of that name?” asked the old man.

“Sir… my grandfather had that name…” replied Dick Starling.

“And I am to pity you, am I? Before I offer you a day’s toil let me tell you how my own grandparents died, of poverty even though they worked full days at your grandfather’s mill, while he lorded it over one and all from his big house on the hill.”

The tramp shuddered. “But I am not he,” he muttered, “nor are his sins my sins.”

“So what happened to all that wealth?” asked Edward Junior, “for there was a great deal wrapped up in the mill and that big house on the hill.”

“All gone,” sighed Dick Starling, “investments made in the great war came to nothing. He should have doubled or trebled his money, but he made poor choices when he invested, and at the end of the day he was pennyless. The mill was sold and even that didn’t cover his debts, so the big house went too.”

“War,” sighed Edward Junior, “a great evil. My kin died whilst yours gambled and lost. Well, for your story you can work for a day or two on the top field. But beware of the bull. He has no love for Starlings either!”

Dick Starling shuffled off, too grateful for words that he might have the wherewithal to feel himself, at least for one day at the time.

And the roundabout turned. One of the Robinson clan entered politics, became big in the land, and as he pondered over great issues a shadow from the past, his family’s past, hovered round his innermost thoughts. Decisions had to be made, and he had to make them…

© Peter Rogerson 25.04.22