Constance Street: The true story of one family and one street in London’s East End. Charlie Connelly

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СКАЧАТЬ their horses and set off back for Winchester beneath a burnished golden sky lined with long, dark clouds. When his friends made it clear that they were in no great hurry Stephen Silver, in great spirits, told them he’d go on ahead as he wanted to see his son before he was put to bed, dug his heels into the flanks of his horse, called out that he’d meet them in the saloon and galloped ahead.

      The wind pushed his hair back from his face. Twenty-six years old, handsome, fast establishing himself as a leading local businessman, Stephen Silver was about as full of life as he’d ever been as he thundered home to Winchester that night.

      Nobody would ever be quite sure how it happened as there was nobody else on the road at the time, but as Stephen reached the edge of Winchester, barely two minutes’ ride from the Three Tuns, something caused him to fall from his horse and strike his head against the ground so hard that he must have been killed instantly. His friends arrived shortly afterwards and found him lying in the road, on his back, face looking up at the darkening sky, eyes open and lifeless, a trickle of blood from his left ear the only tangible sign that something was wrong other than the agitated horse trotting one way and then the other nearby, tossing its head as the reins hung down from its neck.

      The two men knelt by him and shouted his name, lifting his head from the ground and imploring him to answer, but Stephen Silver was gone.

      They lifted him gently from the ground, laid him over the back of one of their horses and rode slowly back to the Three Tuns. They brought him in through the back door and one of them went to fetch Elizabeth and tell her the dreadful news while the other laid him on the dining table. Young Stephen, oblivious, was woken by the low, guttural wail of his mother that rose to a shriek, and then there was silence. He fell asleep again.

      His mother came in during the night, sat on his bed, leaned over him and when she was sure he was awake said, ‘Stephen, your father’s had an accident and he’s had to leave us to be with God. Be brave, my son, my dear boy, for it is just you and I now.’ With that she plunged forward, the weight of her head heavy on his torso, and wailed again, so loud and so long that Stephen felt the vibration deep in his own chest.

      Stephen Silver was buried three days later in the churchyard at St Thomas’s, but young Stephen wasn’t there; having been deemed too young to attend he stayed back at the Three Tuns where he was watched over by Emily, the family’s young domestic servant. The inn was closed and shuttered and they sat in the dark, just the two of them, Emily saying nothing; just crying quietly and watching him through red, weepy eyes.

      He’d been told to stay out of the back parlour, where his father had lain since being placed there, and where the local doctor had carried out the inquest, confirming a tragic accident, giving his condolences to Elizabeth and ruffling young Stephen’s hair before he left. The sight of the closed door of that room would be a constant memory of his childhood, for him the ultimate representation of his father’s death, far more poignant than the grave itself which his mother never visited after the funeral and which he never visited as long as he lived.

      This meant he also never visited his little brother, William, who had died the previous year at eighteen months of a weak heart. It wasn’t until much later that Stephen appreciated just what his mother had gone through, losing her baby son and her husband within the space of fifteenth months. It wasn’t until Stephen’s twilight years that he really forgave her for marrying again, either.

      Four years after the death of his father, Elizabeth married again. So much for it being just the two of them now, he thought. After Stephen’s funeral she had thrown herself into the running of the Three Tuns and barely mentioned her late husband ever again. On the day of the funeral itself there appeared in the Hampshire Gazette a notice she’d placed, informing ‘her late husband’s friends and the public in general that she continues the business of the Three Tuns inn and solicits the continuance of their favours to which every attention will be paid’, and asking that everyone to whom her husband was indebted at the time of his death should send their accounts immediately.

      And that was it. There was barely a mention of his father ever again. Indeed, so busy was Elizabeth with the running of the inn that he saw her but rarely. Emily prepared his meals and he’d help her with some of the chores when he wasn’t at school – the laundry and the pot-washing, and he’d occasionally go into the centre of Winchester on errands – but shortly after his mother’s marriage Emily left the Three Tuns when she herself was married, to a sailor, and moved to Portsmouth.

      Stephen’s mother’s second husband was a man called John Hayter, who had also been widowed. He was kind to Stephen but he wasn’t his father. Every time John smiled at him Stephen would clamp his eyes shut as if every vaguely paternal act from somebody else, every tiny kindness, took his real father further away from him. His memories were faint enough and he struggled to hold on to them. He remembered a shape rather than a person; the features of his face had dissipated among the wispy caverns of Stephen’s memory. He wanted to cling on to what he had of his father, especially his name, and John Hayter, for all his good intentions, was gradually erasing all of it.

Chapter Four

      In 1803, when Stephen was 13 years old, John and his mother had a baby boy. Suddenly the household revolved around little George Hayter and Stephen missed both his father and Emily. Within a year Stephen Winckworth Silver had completed his schooling, packed his bag and set off for London with a letter of introduction in his pocket to a clothier named Arrowsmith who he’d been told by a friend’s father might take him on as an apprentice.

      It took him three days to reach London. He hadn’t realised that St John’s Wood was quite a way out from the centre, but finally he reached the Arrowsmith premises. He didn’t present an appealing prospect in clothes dusty and rumpled from the journey, but when Arrowsmith saw the letter of introduction and recognised the clear innate intelligence in the boy’s eyes and conversation, he was taken on and permitted to sleep in an attic room.

      Stephen Winckworth Silver worked hard. He worked long hours and made himself indispensable to his employer. When his apprenticeship was completed he began to make suggestions for improving and expanding the business, suggestions so effective that he was eventually made a partner, and by 1830 he’d outgrown Arrowsmith’s and set out on his own.

      In the early days of the company he would often go and stand outside the building he’d taken on Cornhill and just look at the sign: S.W. Silver & Co. His name and his father’s name. It was the memory of his father that spurred him on, and when he saw that sign for the first time he’d nearly wept. At last, his father had some permanence. If Stephen had his way, the name would become immortal yet.

      Before long the business had expanded to workshops in Bishopsgate and on the Commercial Road, and, with the increase in transatlantic travel creating a market for high-quality clothing for the traveller, a shop was opened in Liverpool, close to the port from where the steamers departed for America. By this time Stephen had moved to a fine house on Abbey Road which he shared with his wife Frances, whom he’d married in 1812, and their children, including his son Stephen William Silver, named for his late father and brother, who he hoped would go on to succeed him in business and keep the name alive. Indeed, even his initials fitted the firm. Which was no coincidence.

      Stephen Winckworth Silver had a mind that never rested. There were always other lines to be explored, new markets to develop, new industries to investigate. When gutta-percha, a hard-wearing latex from the sap of a Malaysian tree, became popular in the mid-nineteenth century, Stephen was quick to take note of its waterproof qualities. His waterproof clothing coated in the substance was one of S.W. Silver & Co’s most popular lines, so much so that Stephen opened a small waterproofing works in Greenwich, on the south side of the Thames and at the terminus of the new railway СКАЧАТЬ