A Pinchbeck Peer by Andrew Wareham

Author:Andrew Wareham [Wareham, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B07L9G883W
Goodreads: 43197627
Publisher: PublishNation
Published: 2018-12-09T23:00:00+00:00

“You see, my lord, your income is, you tell me, of the nature of three thousand pounds per annum, which is a respectable sum. That amounts to about sixty pounds a week, on which one may live in some degree of luxury.”

“Is it so great a sum, Newcombe?”

“To a farm labourer, a hind, sixty pounds is vast – more in cash than he would see in perhaps five years. Mind you, most of the farm hand’s income is paid in kind – his cottage and often bread and cheese and milk, sometimes bacon as well, given him by the farmer. I remember my father talking of the amount he had to spend out each week on the families of the workers on the estate, and it was not an enormous sum of money. A curate, I remember, sees normally sixty pounds a year; a lieutenant of the militia, perhaps one hundred and fifty, but that varies very much from one regiment to another. So, yes, my lord, it is a large sum of money, but it is easily spent if one is careless, perhaps ‘carefree’ would be a better word.”

“How do they pay their tailor’s bills, these farm workers, Newcombe?”

“They do not have such things, my lord. Homespuns for them. Their goodwife, or mother if they are unwed, will spin the wool into thread and then make their own cloth on her own little loom, or so I presume. Then it is measure and cut and sew at home and use oak bark as a dye to turn the cloth a long-wearing brown that will not show the mud stains too much. If they do not have their own sheep, well, I do not know how they go on. There are goats, I know, in almost every village…”

My lord could not conceive of such hardship. He had not known how the poor lived, he said.

Fabius made no comment.

“I am told that it is a wise habit, my lord, to keep a notebook, and to write down one’s expenditure each day. That way, one may always know just how much one has spent, and one can calculate how much of one’s substance remains. I know that debt is not important to you – if you overspend, all you need do is tell your good father and he will rescue you from the bum-bailiffs. Even so, it is as well not to outrun the constable.”

Lord Cheddar was not enthralled by the prospect of admitting to his father that he had run into Dun Territory; he did not think that the old gentleman would speak very kindly to him in such case.

“This business of writing spending in a little book, Newcombe… Just how would I go about it?”

They drew up at the Town House four days later, the rain having been annoying, my lord with his newly purchased notebook and pencil in his pocket and already in the habit of making his daily record of monies laid out, and rather proud of his wisdom in so doing.

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