Rags to Riches by Elizabeth Obadina

Early 18th Century Print of Bridgnorth - from Bridgnorth Council Offices
 showing the old St Mary's Church by the ruined castle and the cluster of houses
along The Cartway from the Hightown to the bridge across the River Severn.

 “It is a fact often observed that a man only truly achieves greatness when he has known suffering.”

Old Samuel waited a few moments for his words to sink into his drinking companions around him and taking a long draw on his pipe, leaned back on the warm wall of his home, enjoying the sunshine streaming into this sheltered corner of his property which lay alongside Arthur Percy’s place. He counted himself lucky with his merchant neighbour who kept him well supplied with tobacco and copies of The Worcester Post-Man from Percy’s business downriver in Worcester. A good man thought Samuel, an alderman indeed, not at all like old merchant Forster who had built the house and from whom Samuel still bore scars.

Bridgnorth was doing well for itself nowadays. It was blossoming.

*

It was a far cry from the days of his childhood. Then the townsfolk suffered one blow after another.

His grandmother, Eliza, lost her husband to the fighting of the civil war and widowed, gave birth to his mother, Anne, after the Easter Fire of 1646 in the ruined remains of Bridgnorth. She was lucky, finding employment in The Swan which had somehow escaped the worst of the inferno and it was there that Samuel had been born in 1667. Anne had been living with her mother whilst her husband piloted boats up and down the Severn. He was often away and news of his death in the winter floods at the end of 1666 didn’t reach Anne until many weeks later. The circumstances of his death were vague. Anne suspected ale and her husband’s mercurial temper might have played a part, but the river folk stayed silent and his body was swallowed by the waters and never recovered.

The river gave and the river took away.

In 1666 plague seeped through the country and was brought by river folk to Bridgnorth. Early in 1667 Anne went with little Samuel to visit her husband’s people who kept the Halfway House past Oldbury. She came home unwell. It was the plague. Her baby survived but Anne did not. She was probably one of the last to die of the pestilence.

Grandma Eliza soldiered on working as a maid at The Swan and bringing up her grandson, Samuel. She was tough, as was her grandson who weathered the ire and countless beatings from the stable grooms, the townsfolk and the river folk who said he was the very likeness of his father, tall, good-looking, clever and ambitious but impatient.

There wasn’t a person in town that Samuel didn’t know, nor their vices; from the pandering going on at the New Inn to the extra packages of fine laces and wines finding their way from the boats moored along the river wharfs up the Cartway to the back entrances of the most respectable dwellings without once attracting the attention of the excise men. He saw how business was done.

The river brought tantalising fragments of a wider world to this sleepy inland settlement and Samuel absorbed them all. He learned that the earth was round and it went round the sun and that England was its centre from which one could sail to the east or to the west and discover new worlds. He so wanted to see these worlds beyond Bridgnorth. He taught himself to read by befriending and then eavesdropping on the lessons of the scholars of the grammar school. He counted as boats were loaded and unloaded and knew exactly what came ashore, what went missing and where in the labyrinth of sandstone caves contraband was hidden. He tried to share his observations with the hope of being rewarded with old Forster who then beat him for his insolence and forbade him from loitering around Forster’s Loade ever again on pain of further beatings.  

Samuel only stayed for Grandma Eliza but then, suddenly, at the grand old age of 59 she died of the winter fever. Shortly afterwards came news of the old king dying.

It was early 1685. The world was changing and there was nothing to keep Samuel in Bridgnorth. He left on a grey day, on a grey boat on a grey river in flood and he never looked back.  

*

“Suffering …” Old Samuel opened his eyes he had been lost in his thoughts now he looked at the faces turned towards him. “Suffering,” he repeated for the third time, “is something to learn from, something to drive you on.”

*

Since the old man disembarked on Forster’s Loade just over a year ago with tales to tell and deep pockets and chest loads of curiosities from exotic, far-away lands he had been the centre of fascination for both locals and travellers passing through. He had taken one of the new houses being built on the banks of the river at the end of the Cartway. Everyone passing from the low town to the high town had to pass by his front door and many got no further than that portal for Old Samuel had opened up an alehouse. He could no longer travel the world but he could bring the world to him – and he did, although there was little anyone could add to the marvellous worlds Old Samuel conjured up for his guests for that’s how he viewed his customers.

Old Samuel was something of a mystery. Some townsfolk thought he might have once lived in Bridgnorth, something about the way he talked, something about the way he knew about people and places he surely couldn’t have discovered in the months since he had taken up residence. But he never talked about his birth or his childhood and affected deafness should anyone be so bold as to ask. Besides which his stories enthralled everyone and they just flowed.

From Old Samuel the people of Bridgnorth learned about London and that Samuel was an orphan who had been taken in by some French cloth makers, refugees who were escaping the wrath of the Sun King. He had been sent France on trading trips to places where his Huguenot benefactors could no longer go. He learned French and more ways of doing business. Old Samuel even claimed to have seen the Sun King in the palace he was building but no one could really believe that anyone, even a king, could live in such splendour as Samuel described.

Was there anywhere in Europe that Old Samuel hadn’t visited where new marvels were being built, new ideas were being hatched or new machines were being invented? Old Samuel seemed to have seen it all.

People waited for the old man to take a deep breath of tobacco and exhale with a sigh and from within the clouds of pungent smoke they always hoped to hear the magic words, “I remember when …” signalling the start of another tall tale.

From his stories people worked out that Old Samuel had eventually made his way to India in the employ of the East India Company where he grew rich trading with local princes, provoking political discord between the kingdoms, the French and the Dutch in ways which always eventually benefitted the East India Company and Samuel. Samuel knew how to fight off the competition, beating a path to become merchants to the Mogul Emperor Aurangzeb who was, said Old Samuel, both the most splendid and the most evil ruler to have ever lived.

“More splendid than the Sun King?” questioned one lad.

“Surely,” replied Old Samuel, “Delhi had the most beautiful palaces, the most beautiful women and even the most beautiful tombs. The emperor’s father had built a tomb like a palace for his favourite wife who had died in childbirth. It was called the Taj Mahal.” He had described it in detail leaving his listeners wide eyed. No one had been too sure whether to believe the old man or not.

 *

Now it was a few months later; a warm spring day in the year 1740 in the early years of His Majesty King George II’s reign. Bridgnorth was mightily changed from the wilder times of the Merry Monarch which had shaped the young Samuel. These days were far more staid, respectable and quietly prosperous. Old Samuel could have bought one of the new town houses on the bluff overlooking the river in High Town, but the old man felt more comfortable closer to the wharves, the river folk and the comings and goings of traders.

On this day Old Samuel had been greatly taken with an article in The Worcester Post-Man which his neighbour Arthur Percy had given the old man. The news that had so engaged the old man was a year old. It was reported from India that Delhi had been sacked by a combined army of Persian and Georgian invaders who had marched over the Khyber Pass and although outnumbered defeated the forces of the Mogul Emperor Mohammed Shah. The Persians had captured 700 elephants, 4,000 camels, 12,000 horses; had captured thousands of slaves and looted the emperor’s treasury. They had carried away the emperor’s jewel encrusted Peacock Throne and the fabled Koh-i-Nor and Darya-ye Noor diamonds.

As the old man read out the report he had to pause, to explain what an elephant was, to explain what a camel was and to let his listeners know that the diamonds were so big that their names translated as ‘the mountain of light’ and ‘the sea of light.’ His audience was enthralled to hear of such riches in such a faraway world. The leader of the Persian army was being called the ‘New Alexander’ by The Worcester Post-Man. Such was his military brilliance.

 *

Into the warm silence inhabited by visions of strange humped, huge, floppy eared, spitting, tusked and trunked animals; and visions of bejeweled and beautiful harem slave-girls dropped the words they had all been waiting for.

“I remember when I met this man, this general they are calling the New Alexander, the Shah of Persia called Nader Shah. I knew him.”

Old Samuel took another long draught from his pipe and called on one of the serving girls to bring more mugs of ale for all his drinking companions. It was what they’d been waiting for, the free beer and his stories. He began.

“He was a huge man, a giant tall and strong. We were just into the new king’s reign when his majesty sent an emissary to meet this general who had defeated the Turks to the west, and the Afghans to the north and had held the mighty Russian Bear at Bay. There was a rumour that he was a descendent of the great conqueror Ghengis Khan. It was in the interests of the Company and our sovereign lord back home to come to an understanding with this warrior. There were great trade opportunities to be had for we had heard that the general was a great admirer of new-found ideas and goods. I had heard that his soldiers lacked for nothing and since I had long been an admirer of the padded cloth that the soldiers of the Mogul Khan wore, and I knew where to get it made amongst our factories in Calcutta, I smelt big contracts to be had from equipping this model army.

James … James Brown – yes -that was the name of the king’s emissary. 

I took a ship out of Calcutta to meet up with him in Bombay."

 *

Old Samuel paused, drew upon his pipe and shut his eyes, transported back to a life spent far away from Bridgnorth. 

Then he continued …

"Together we took a Dutch trading ship out of Bombay north over the Arabian Sea to Karak Bandar and then travelled north-westwards overland to meet the khan – for that is what he was called then. We were watched all the way after leaving Bombay although we pretended not to notice the spies.

We knew, he knew we were coming.

Eventually we came by the great Persian army camped out on the stony plains of Baluchistan. It was unusually cold for the place and the season, and we had even seen snow capping rocky mountains in the distance. We were met some way out of the camp by a detachment of cavalry, armed with lances, swords, shields and bows. The slanting rays of the setting sun shining on their steel and gold plumed helmets, arm braces and weapons made it seem that we were surrounded by devils dripping in shimmering blood. We thought them the fiercest men you could imagine until we came by the camp guards.

Upon reaching the camp our cavalry escort wheeled away in perfect formation to quarter their horses and we were led through the camp by broad-shouldered infantry men carrying sabres, daggers, bags of gunpowder and muskets superior and better tempered than any I had ever seen before. The barrels were at least six spans long! We prayed we would never find ourselves having to flee such fearsome warriors.

There was an ocean of campfires stretching across the plain so far as the eye could see, a warm twinkling glow spread under the stars from which rumbled the low conversations and laughter of comrades-in-arms at rest. Around each pool of light gleamed weaponry and armour but these men were relaxing. We learned later that they had secured lands nearly up to Kandahar for the Persian Shah. They had earned their rest – and their food. It was the rich muttony smell from their cooking pots that reminded myself and my companion that we hadn’t eaten for hours and we were very hungry.

By and by our silent escort brought us to a large marquee set besides a roaring fire and indicated that we should sit down on fleeces laid out on the ground. We did so. My companion tried to tell our guard that we wanted audience with the great khan. The man just nodded and silently melted away into the surrounding gloom.

It wasn’t long before we were brought flatbreads and bowls of the delicious stew we had smelled on our walk through the camp. We ate like starving dogs. After being fed most fulsomely we waited, and waited, for this great general who had led the troops of Shah Thamas, Sophy of Persia to victories against all the neighbours of Persia who had cast envious eyes upon her lands and treasures.

Suddenly we heard a murmur and a clink of armour and shuffling of feet and the darkness parted as the soldiers around us made way for someone to enter by the fire. He was a huge man, yet he sat down like a humble soldier on the ground aside us. He was dressed like a simple guardsman. Unlike the other soldiers he seemed more friendly offering us seeds from his pocket for us to taste. We were full of stew, bread and wine but encouraged by this friendly overture we started up a conversation.

My grasp of the language helped us and by and by this giant soldier and I passed the time talking about everyday matters whilst we waited. It emerged that he and I shared a common start in life – we had both been orphans and dirt poor when we started making our own way in life. He told me how he would collect sticks to sell to buy food for his mother when they were both facing destitution. I told him how my mother had died shortly after I was born and how my grandmother had struggled to bring me up whilst I took whatever employment I could find along the river wharfs and in the inns of my hometown. His mother died. My grandmother died. We both left the towns of our birth. He said he found military service. I found employment with cloth weavers and merchants and then with the East India Company.

The giant man slapped me on my shoulders and said something that translates to ‘Bravo’. The king’s emissary, James Brown was his name, he fidgeted uncomfortably and asked me to ask him when we would get to meet the general. I turned to my new friend to ask him but he had rolled over into his blanket and was sleeping by the fire on the cold, hard ground. He didn’t even have a fleece to soften his slumber.

A couple of soldiers shook us to get up and escorted us out of camp. My companion wanted to stay for all we had done was to share life stories with a friendly soldier but the guard gestured with his musket for us to move. Well, I can tell you that the king’s emissary was far from pleased at this rebuff by the great general who had not even deigned to greet His Majesty’s official representative.

We stayed in a humble house close by the camp and hoped that the next day would bring us better luck. We were both well accustomed to the waiting games played by mighty men in all places.

The morning came and with it our hopes were dashed for we were shocked to see signs that the camp was being struck. The guards had disappeared. Hastening in to where we had sat around the campfire we discovered an ashen ring and the large marquee was gone. In God’s name! The whole army was mostly marched away but a few souls remained.

The King’s emissary was beyond angry and called upon the nearest soldier to summon the famous general immediately or to face the wrath arising from insulting the King of England. I translated with softer words and an expression of puzzlement crossed the soldier’s face.

‘But masters,’ he said, ‘Was it not the two of you who set down with the great Thamas Kouli Khan last night and took of his food and drank of his wine? Did he not speak to you at length? Did you not recognise the great conqueror?’ "

*

Old Samuel drew again deeply on his tobacco pipe. “I never did meet the great man again and later, after the Shah he had served so well cast him aside, he was elected Shah of Persia, King of Kings, by the other princes and his loyal soldiers.”

There was a long pause whilst his companions digested this latest story. Perhaps the old man’s admiration for this foreign monarch and his rise from rags to riches had been why he had called his ale house The Kouli Khan. But why had the old man chosen to buy an inn in Bridgnorth, a tiny town, miles from the great cities he had spent most of his life in? Why buy a house by the river alongside the wealthy merchant Arthur Percy when he could have afforded a mansion at the top of the Cartway? Why? As a silence fell upon the group some of them had new questions to ask Old Samuel – not questions about his exotic travels and the wonders he’d encountered, but questions rooted much closer to home.