“Can I stay, Miss, for a while?” Jonah asked.
“Of course,” she said, standing up. “I’ll tell the nurse you are all right. She was worried. Take as long as you like; come back when you feel you can. We can’t do this show without you, you know.”
And then she left, closing the door behind her.
Jonah somehow knew the old man would be back in the pew even before he looked round. He was sitting exactly where he had been before.
“I am seen only when I wish to be seen, and only by those whom I choose to see me,” he said, smiling. “I have much still to tell you. She seems to be a kindly soul, Jonah, your Mrs Rainer, but I do not care for her shoes. Too pointed. Now, where was I?”
“Mr Pa was teaching you how to swim,” Jonah told him.
“You listen well, Master Trelawney,” the old man said. “The truth is, I remember not nearly enough of my foster parents, only that I was loved, that they made me a happy child. But they could not protect me from the world. One day – I would have been about four or five, I do not recall exactly – Mrs Ma took me suddenly off to London. The journey was an adventure for me. I had never been on a coach, never been away from home. Until then the village and that cottage had been my world. I did not know why I was going, nor what I was going to, until we arrived at the gates of the Foundling Hospital. That parting was my first great sorrow. I remember the pain of it to this day. I can see Mrs Ma walking away from me even now.
“They dressed me in different clothes, the same brown uniform all the other boys wore. They gave me a number which I was told was to be worn always on a string round my neck. I was no longer ‘our dear little Nat’ or ‘our lovely boysie’. I was now Master Nathaniel Hogarth, number 762 of the Foundling Hospital.
“Our lessons were long and often tedious, our nights cold and lonely. They punished us frequently, the matron more than anyone else, with the cat-o’-nine-tails on our hands or the back of our legs. How we hated and feared her. We slept in lines, marched in lines wherever we went. Everything was inspected, our hands, our hair, our clothes, and our masters were strict with us, their voices hard-edged. There was little gentleness, little kindness, in this place.
“Here, for the first time, I realized I had been born a foundling like all the others. I was reminded again and again by the matron when she was reprimanding me, telling me that I should understand how fortunate I was, that I had no home but this school, that I belonged nowhere. She it was who told me that Mrs Ma and Mr Pa were not my mother and father as I had supposed them to be. I had no father and mother. None of us did. We were entirely alone in the world.”
For a moment he seemed overwhelmed by the sadness of his memories, and unable to go on. When he did, Jonah saw the tears in his eyes, heard them in his voice.
“I cried as you do, Jonah,” he went on. “And where did I escape to do my crying? To the chapel, as you do – and it was very like this chapel too. It was the only place I could be alone. How I longed to be ‘our lovely boysie’ again, to see my dear Mrs Ma and Mr Pa, to swim again in the dykes, to ride on Friend, to watch the hares boxing in the fields, and to hear the skylarks singing.
“But do not imagine I was always unhappy. I did have happy times too in this Foundling Hospital. We had each other. We were a band of foundlings. We may have been, all of us, alone in the world, but we were bound together by this circumstance, and there is real solace and companionship in that.
“And there was fame too. Foundlings we might have been, but we soon learnt we were a source of great curiosity to those living outside our walls. From time to time, the rich and the great in society would come to stare at us. We were, one of the elegant ladies who often came visiting told me, the most famous foundlings in the land. Once, even the king came, King George. For him, and for all these lords and ladies in their grand clothes, we always had to behave perfectly, look smart, stand up straight, have clean hands and fingernails, remember how fortunate we were, and, most of all, we were told, we had to look happy.
“It was never easy to look happy, I discovered, when I wasn’t. Every day, every night, of my life I missed Mrs Ma and Mr Pa. I longed for them and for my home in Paradise. We lived so much in enforced silence. At meals no one was allowed to speak. In class no one spoke, unless to answer a question. In our dormitories at night we never spoke. If we did, and if we ever dared to speak to the girls who lived in the other half of the school, Matron’s punishment was immediate and severe. There were times when, even with my friends all around me, I felt quite alone in this world.
“But I thank God that I had one great and comforting joy: music. So you see, Jonah, you and I, we share some of the same sadnesses, and the same great joy. Music was my friend, the best friend I had. I think you know what I mean, Jonah, do you not?”
CHAPTER FIVE
Hot Pies and Roasted Chestnuts
THE SCHOOL BELL WENT THEN, distantly, but jangling and insistent as always. Jonah winced at the sound, its shrill electronic pitch, the urgency of it.
“I too never liked the school bell,” said the old man, “though ours sounded rather different, of course. I would go around the school ringing it sometimes; we all took our turn. Church bells I loved and still do, but a school bell was never music to my ears. I loved all other music, Mrs Ma’s greatest gift to me. She first sang to me as I sat on her knee, first played her fiddle to me in the kitchen at home. Dear Mrs Ma, she it was who first told me I could sing like an angel, who first sowed the seed of my love of music.”
The school bell stopped. The old man smiled. “That’s better. Now, where was I?”
He answered himself. “Ah yes, dear Mrs Ma,” he went on. “If Mrs Ma sowed the seed, then Mr Montefiore grew it and helped it bloom.”
“Who was Mr Montefiore?” Jonah asked.
“Our choirmaster at the Foundling Hospital, and quite the kindliest master in the whole school. Because of him, I found myself singing every morning of my school life in the chapel services, and every Sunday evening too. And Mr Montefiore it was who so often chose me to sing solo before the whole school, and to perform for those lords and ladies when they came to visit, to gawp at us, to see for themselves what foundling children looked like. I sang for them, always fiercely determined that they should see and understand that we were not mere objects of their pity and charity, but could sing as well as any other children – better even, maybe.
“Then one happy day the greatest composer of our age, George Frideric Handel, already an old man by this time, came to the Foundling Hospital and heard us singing in the chapel. I had no idea he was there in the congregation, but he came afterwards to the vestry and told me in front of Mr Montefiore and the whole choir that he should like me to sing in his oratorio the Messiah, which we all knew he conducted and performed with an orchestra and chorus every Christmas time in our chapel. It was performed only for the great and good, not for little foundlings like us, so we had never been there to see it. But we had heard them rehearsing, seen everyone arriving in their carriages, all in their finery. Can you imagine how I felt, Jonah? Me, Nathaniel Hogarth, foundling child number 762, singing for Mr Handel in his sublime Messiah, and in front of all those people!
“Mr Montefiore seemed struck dumb in the presence of this great man, but I was not. The courage of youth, maybe. I told Mr Handel, to his face, that I would be honoured to sing for him. I had no fear of him. He might have been the most famous composer in the land, but I was not in awe of that. He had a kind face, gentle watery eyes like Mr Pa, and he was asking me to sing. I loved to sing. What was there to fear?
“Nor was I the least fearful in rehearsals in front of others, or when I sang some weeks later before the hundreds of people assembled there in the school chapel to hear us perform Handel’s great Messiah. I imagined I was singing back in my childhood home, back in Paradise Cottage, with Mrs Ma and Mr Pa. In my head I sang my part in the Messiah for them, and for Mr Montefiore, and for Mr Handel, our much-loved composer and conductor too. Ver
y old he might have been, and stooped with age, but he was always resplendent and elegant with a wondrously tumbling wig. I did not know then that every time we sang Handel’s Messiah in our chapel he gave all the money he made from the performances to the Foundling Hospital. He was a good man with a kind and generous heart for those less fortunate than himself.”
Jonah had been struggling to remember, and now he did. “I think I know the Messiah!” he told the old man. “My mum used to play tunes from it on her piano, at Christmas. She cried sometimes as she played, because it was so beautiful, she said. But she doesn’t play her piano any more.”
“Your mother is right, Jonah,” the old man said. “Handel’s Messiah is indeed gloriously beautiful, quite sublime. Such music touches the heart, stirs the soul. To sing in it every Christmas, as I did as a child, was the best thing that ever happened to me in that place; gave me the strength to persevere, to survive the rest.” The old man took a deep breath and sighed. “But it could not last. The great and beloved Mr Handel passed away, and a couple of years afterwards the time came for me to leave the Foundling Hospital. They took me away from my music, from my singing. We knew this moment would come for each of us, the time to go out into the world and be apprenticed to some trade. Some went to be joiners or masons, some into domestic service; some became soldiers or sailors. I wanted only to be a musician. I wanted to learn to play in a band, in an orchestra, be a fiddle player, perhaps, or a drummer boy. Nothing else interested me. But the truth was that none of us had much of a choice in the matter.
“Mr Montefiore did his best to find a place for me, which indeed he did, but not as a musician as I had hoped. I was to be an apprentice at the house of a good friend of his in Chiswick, one William Hogarth, a painter, but also, Mr Montefiore assured me, a man who had a good and kind heart, who had devoted his life and his art for the benefit of the poor and needy. Hogarth worked tirelessly for the care of the children who came to the Foundling Hospital. He was a great man, Mr Montefiore told me, who would do all he could for me. I would have to make the best of it.
“I was filled with sadness at this news. Life at the Foundling Hospital might have been hard, but it had been my home all these years, and the other boys the best of companions. Like brothers together we had been. So it cheered me somewhat when Mr Montefiore told me there would be music in the house where I was going, concerts and recitals. He had played there himself, he told me. All had been arranged; Mr Hogarth would be my master now, and I would be working in the stables with his horses. I knew and liked horses, of course, from my days with Friend and Mr Pa at Paradise in my early childhood, you remember?” He paused and leant towards me. “Why do you frown at me so, Master Trelawney?”
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Jonah replied. “Hogarth? That’s your name too, isn’t it? Nathaniel Hogarth, you said.”
“You listen well, Master Trelawney,” he said, nodding his approval. “And it is true, as you say, that my new master and I shared the very same surname, and I was soon to discover why. This William Hogarth was, I learnt, almost as great a painter as Mr Handel was a composer. It seems that he gave his name to certain infant foundlings, of whom I was one, and because of this he had throughout my time at the school taken a particular interest in me, and come to hear me sing often in the chapel. It was because of this gift of his name to me, this interest in me, that at twelve years old I found myself living in the servants’ quarters of Mr Hogarth’s fine house in Chiswick.
“I was apprenticed, along with two of my fellow foundlings, to Mr Hogarth’s carriage driver, Billy Bones – Boney, as we called him. He was a sullen man, gruff in speech and gruff in appearance, with a great dislike of apprentices, and a great love of gin, spitting and cursing. All of us who worked there kept out of his way as much as possible. We were working day in, day out, in the stables, cleaning tack, grooming horses, mucking out, and cleaning and polishing Mr Hogarth’s carriage.
“There was one horse I loved especially: Horace, a gentle soul, the oldest of the carriage horses. He reminded me of Friend. I would spend as much time with him as Boney would allow.
“We all lived comfortably enough, and happily enough too, despite Boney. We were no longer at the beck and call of the school bell and our schoolmasters, nor tormented by that witch of a matron, who, with her dreaded cat-o’-nine-tails, had been the bane of our lives for so long.
“Best of all, we were always well fed and warmly clothed in Mr Hogarth’s employ, and I was now earning a few pennies a week. I took great pride in that, and in my work too. I was worth something – we all were. And we were free one afternoon a week to wander the banks and meadows of the Thames near Chiswick. I loved these afternoons. I would go swimming on summer days – I was the only one of us who could, and I have to confess I took great pleasure in that. We would eat hot pies and roasted chestnuts in winter. Nothing had ever tasted so good to me, not since Mrs Ma’s tattie pie, which we had made so often together. In truth we wanted for nothing, and Mr Hogarth was kindness itself. But it was not home. Nowhere had ever been home to me but Paradise, my childhood cottage by the sea.
“As the months passed, I longed more and more to see Mrs Ma and Mr Pa again, and to discover who I was. I had a mother somewhere, and a father. Down by the Thames I would wonder about the lady selling chestnuts. Could she be my mother? I dared even ask her once if she had children of her own, but she told me to be off and to mind my own business. I decided that the only way I might ever find out was through Mrs Ma and Mr Pa. I had to find them.
“Time and again I ventured to ask my master, the kindly Mr Hogarth, if I might now after all these years be able to seek out my foster mother and father, my dear Mrs Ma and Mr Pa, but he was adamant that it could not be done, that it was not allowed by the rules of the Foundling Hospital. And furthermore, when I asked if I might ever know who my real mother and father were, it was the same answer.
“He it was who explained to me that when any mother of a foundling child gave her baby into the care of the Foundling Hospital, she left behind, to be kept safe and secret at the hospital, a token of some kind, a piece of cloth, a button, a trinket, something known only to that mother. The only way mother and child could ever be reunited was if the mother returned, recognized their token and claimed their child. It was absolutely forbidden for a foundling child ever to know who his mother was unless this occurred. He advised me, kindly but firmly, that I should not seek answers to my past, but put all that behind me, work hard at my apprenticeship and live only for my future.”
“And this button in my hand…” Jonah began.
“All in good time, Jonah,” the old man said, holding up his hand. “Patience. You shall know all in good time, I promise you. I still have much to tell you. After a year or so of my apprenticeship, the sad news came that Mr Montefiore had died. For me it was as if music itself had died.
“Though I did on occasion hear the sound of a distant piano or harpsichord playing somewhere deep in Mr Hogarth’s house, and there was indeed a concert now and then, these days I could hear music only in snatches. Boney kept me to my work, so that if I ever heard music playing, I could never stay to listen. But I did sing, when he was not about, when no one was about. I sang to my horse, to big brown Horace, who had become my best and most trusted friend by now. He was my pride and chief joy. I kept his stable spotless, his coat shining, his hooves picked out and sound; made sure his hay was never dusty, his straw fresh. I kept my Horace happy and took great pleasure in that, for there was gratitude and love in every look he gave me.
“I would stand beside him in his stable and sing softly to him, all the arias I remembered from the Messiah: ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’, ‘Every valley shall be exalted’. I had not forgotten a note; I remembered every word. I would rest my hand on his warm neck below his ear – it felt like warm velvet, Jonah. His stable was now my chapel. Horace would stand so still as I sang to him, and he would listen, truly listen, Jonah.
“I
was in the stable grooming Horace on the day I heard my master, Mr Hogarth, had suffered a stroke. He was gravely ill, unlikely to ever fully recover, and it was thought he could not be long for this world. I remember I walked along the riverbank in the rain so I could be alone, and I cried out loud in my sadness, because he had been a good and kind master to me. The three of them, Mr Montefiore, Mr Handel and Mr Hogarth, had been to me like three great oak trees in the parkland of my life, and I but a little sapling in their shade. And soon they would all be gone. Mrs Ma and Mr Pa I would never find again, nor my true mother and father. I felt entirely alone in the world.
“I cried again, I recall, the day I left Mr Hogarth’s house some months later, but then it was more because I was having to leave my big brown Horace behind. With Mr Hogarth ailing, there was no longer any place in his house, we were told, for apprentices from the Foundling Hospital. We were all to be sent elsewhere.
“Horace was pulling the cart that took me away from Mr Hogarth’s house, away from my friends, and far out into the countryside, to be apprentice now, Boney told me, to Sir John Sullivan, a good friend of Mr Hogarth, who owned a great house and estate, and who was in urgent need of a boy apprentice in his stables. Boney also made no secret of the fact that he was glad to be rid of me. Mr Hogarth’s apprentices, and especially me, he told me, had been nothing but a trial and a nuisance to him all these years. He wanted rid of the lot of us. ‘Mr Hogarth had too kind a heart, that’s what I say, lettin’ in all you waifs and strays,’ he said. ‘If no one knows your father and no one knows your mother, then you ain’t worth knowin’, prob’ly good for nothin’. That’s what I think.’