shadow of britain

Chapter 809 Bonus Chapter: Arthur Hastings: The Driven Ambition of a Reasonable Prisoner

Arthur Hastings: The Driven Ambition of a Reason Prisoner, Volume 1: The Erased Name
On the horizon of history, some names appear without thunder or clarion call; they emerge silently, like a fly landing on a page, neither disturbing the reader's attention nor displaying their weight. Arthur Hastings, whose name first appeared in official records, did so in such a quiet, even somewhat awkward, manner.

On January 15, 1810, Arthur Hastings, the future Secretary of the Cabinet of the British Empire, was born in a workhouse in the rural area of ​​Bradford, Yorkshire. At that time, probably no one could have predicted that this infant boy would later appear time and again on the front page of The Times, in secret government bulletins, and in confidential correspondence of the Foreign Office.

Born in a workhouse, Arthur Hastings came from a family of far lesser renown, with no noble lineage whatsoever (if one disregards his dubious blood relation to the Marquess of Hastings). His fathers were neither distinguished military commanders nor literary geniuses. Even those who first met him struggled to discern how this young man had ascended the path to the heart of power.

He grew up in the workhouse until he was six years old, if that period can be called "growing up".

It was a kind of growth without language or a future. Groups of children, thin and frail, were crammed into a hopeless, monotonous routine, like a porridge pot, to eat, sleep, pray, receive crude lessons, and silently await the next unfortunate morning. Bradford winters were particularly long, the grey light hanging like a shroud on every window.

Little Arthur often sat by the fire, watching the wind stir the dust in the cracks of the door. He rarely spoke, but he never cried or fought with the other children. He seemed like a silent stone, always ready to bury himself in the dust.

But it was this silence that caught the attention of a visitor who came by chance.

It was an afternoon in 1816, the winter snow still lingering. An elderly gentleman with gray hair and a hunched back, supported by his servant, entered the workhouse. As one of the most prominent figures in Bradford, he had come to visit the local parish's charitable projects.

The old country gentleman's name was known by word of mouth in the nearby villages, but it never appeared in the pages of a London newspaper. His property had long since dwindled, and he had few servants left, but he could still grow a few yews and keep a few shorthaired cats at home, putting on a show of wealth in the nearby countryside.

As the old country gentleman inspected the soup kitchen, he inadvertently spotted the future British Cabinet Secretary. While the other children cried, fussed, and reached out to him for help, little Arthur stood alone in a corner, like a cat reluctant to approach the fire. He didn't look at the old gentleman, but he knew the old gentleman was watching him.

To this day, people still don't understand what the old squire was thinking. Was it pity? Loneliness? Or was it a case of loving children out of love for them because of the loss of his own son in his later years? In any case, not long after, the institution received a letter of application requesting that little Arthur be placed in the old squire's care as a servant and companion. The old squire's reasons were quite convincing: he was willing to cover all of Arthur's living expenses and provide him with a proper education.

In those days, this was one of the best possible outcomes that countless children in workhouses could hope for.

However, for Arthur, it was not the beginning of happiness, but merely the first time that fate quietly pushed him out of the ruins.

On the day he left the workhouse, he didn't cry or look back; he simply tightened the patched scarf around his neck. He knew very well that from then on, he was no longer a pitiful workhouse child, but had become part of someone's "private property"—a fact he had understood long ago.

The squire's estate was small; the windowsills of the old house were covered in dirt and scratches, and only two old horses and an outdated carriage remained in the stables. Besides the old squire, there were only a few elderly servants and a steward who managed his lands.

Although young, young Arthur seized the opportunity, working diligently on the farm and becoming a renowned pig farmer in the area within a few years. The old gentleman, however, seemed to always see Arthur as some kind of compensation. He taught Arthur to read, had Arthur read to him, organize his medicine box, wipe his cane and the clock, and sometimes even had Arthur sit by the fireplace while he reminisced about his youthful adventures in London.

This period of life lasted for nearly ten years, during which Arthur silently grew into a teenager.

However, this British "Inside Secretary" seemed to intentionally downplay his muddy childhood, leaving people with very little knowledge of his childhood. Outsiders could only piece together some vague clues through his dubious autobiography, "Fifty Years of Life."

But as he aptly put it in his book "Fifty Years of Life," many of his clues are unreliable—"I wrote this book not to commemorate my life, but to provide a version before you commemorate me. Because for me, life, from the very beginning, is a farewell, not a destination."

“I was by his bedside when he died. He was calling out the name Arthur Hastings, and I took that as me. Before he died, he gave me a signature, a surname, and a vague story. I accepted these things like a soldier accepting a rifle without ammunition. It may be useless, but holding it makes you look like a soldier. Of course, I didn’t end up becoming a soldier; I became a middle-class person, nominally.”

A few hours later, the old gentry died.

On the bedside table, there was a will and a document for changing the name.

The funeral was simple. Several old servants attended, dressed in ill-fitting black clothes. The pastor read prayers, and Arthur remained silent with his head down. Everything was as he had hoped: quiet, dignified, and beyond reproach.

Next, it was time for him to leave.

He set off without family to see him off or any sense of home or hometown. Arthur Hastings boarded a carriage in Bradford bound for London.

At this time, although Britain had not yet completed its magnificent transformation into a democrat, it had already entered the eve of a loosening of its social structure. The steam of industry was reshaping London's cityscape, printing presses spitting out white paper were gradually destroying the authority of the church, and the emerging middle class was beginning to yearn to no longer be dependent on the patronage of the aristocracy. The old order was still clinging to life, but the outline of a new world was already emerging.

The University of London, founded in 1826, was the first light to burst forth from that crack.

This university differs greatly from Oxford and Cambridge. It does not discriminate based on background, religion, or Latin proficiency, nor does it impose a preference for aristocratic children. As a rift in higher education despised by the aristocracy, it ironically provides an entrance for those "outcasts" who cannot enter high society through bloodline.

Here, you can meet the second son of a merchant, the son-in-law of a printer, a seminary exile, a Catholic and a Jewish heretic, and even someone like Arthur Hastings, the son of someone whose father is unknown and whose mother is buried.

However, there is no doubt that in 1826, the University of London welcomed its most distinguished alumnus in history.

Arthur Hastings was not the kind of young man who would raise his voice in the lecture hall, nor did he belong to the student group that would always argue over tea about whether Burke or Pound was more patriotic, but that did not mean he did not have like-minded friends at the University of London.

Elder Carter, a young nobleman attempting to break free from the shackles of his social status and integrate into the new era, a regular at London social balls, the future Permanent Secretary of the Admiralty, and the drafter of many of the Royal Navy's regulations...

Of course, most importantly, he was one of Arthur Hastings's few friends at University College London. Or at least, that's what Elder Carter himself thought.

Unlike Arthur Hastings, Elder Carter was born with a surname, coat of arms, and a long family tradition. His father was a disgraced Irish MP, and his mother came from a declining noble family in Nottingham. The family was respectable enough, but far from being able to gain a seat in the House of Lords. They had hoped that Elder would follow the path of the Royal Navy or find his way into the civil service of the East India Company.

But like many hot-blooded young people, Elder was determined to prove that he could earn his place in society through his intellect and writing skills. He rejected the East India Company's Highley College and didn't even glance at Balliol College in Oxford or Trinity College in Cambridge.

He chose the University of London as his destination for higher education.

Perhaps because these two young people were inexperienced at the time and both harbored beautiful expectations for the future, they quickly became close friends.

During that period, Arthur Hastings and Elder Carter appeared together in every corner of student life at the University of London: debate clubs, philosophy reading groups, political speech gatherings, and even weekend charity marches.

At that time, they were known as the "Bloomsbury Twins" by students at the University of London: one was a noble descendant aspiring to reform, and the other was a manor heir who was always sharp-tongued and passionate. Professors had differing opinions about them in private; some said they were "the beginnings of modern society," while others said they were nothing more than "a gentle breeze before the storm."

But how many people at the time could have imagined that the political opinions they had personally written would later be refuted one by one in the editorials of The Times and The Economist by the "literary hooligans" employed by Imperial Publishing Company from completely opposite perspectives?

Who could have imagined that when the Reformation marches in the streets of London in 1832 ignited anger, and when the demonstrators at the Tower of London clashed with Scotland Yard police, Arthur Hastings personally gave the police order to suppress the protests.

Who could have imagined that in 1848, when revolutionary sentiments swept from Vienna to London, and when Chartists attempted to storm Westminster Palace shouting the People's Charter, Arthur Hastings would not sympathize with the crowds in the streets, because he did not want to repeat the mistakes he made during the Reform Act of 1832.

Overnight, his Scotland Yard "thugs" could be seen everywhere—bridges, passes, government buildings… at every strategic point.

The Royal Artillery and the Royal Guard were secretly deployed to the outskirts of London, but they were not deployed directly, as the presence of the troops might escalate tensions.

Meanwhile, in that seemingly unimposing stone building on the west side of Whitehall, which held the reins of the empire's naval power, a mobilization order had been issued directly to the Portsmouth naval base. That midnight, a detachment of the Channel Fleet, led by the steam-powered frigate HMS Avenger and the steam-powered gunboat HMS Vesuvius, secretly departed Portsmouth under the guise of routine training, heading at full speed towards the Thames estuary…

If they had been greeted by a more tolerant and free British society when they graduated in 1829, perhaps everything that followed would have been very different.

Perhaps Elder Carter would open a small bookstore on St. James Street, publishing classical texts, just as he had originally hoped, copying Byron and Shelley's poems with a quill pen during the day and inviting a few artistic young people to drink, make merry, and chat in the evening.

Perhaps Arthur Hastings would rent a low, south-facing apartment somewhere in the city center, becoming the historian he so longed for, writing two editorials for The Times and The Morning Post during the day, burying himself in sixteenth and seventeenth-century documents at night, and occasionally volunteering at a poor relief organization, telling them what a true social contract is.

unfortunately,

History has no "what ifs".

In 1829, they were not greeted by a golden age of England, but by an unexpected economic crisis. Banks collapsed one after another, newspapers were filled with arrest warrants for debtors, canal and mining stocks plummeted, unemployment soared, textile workers took to the streets, printing workers went on strike, and rural areas suffered famine due to reduced agricultural production.

The newly graduated students of the University of London that year did not rush to work, but instead cut back on their spending, stayed with relatives and friends, and survived on old clothes and discounted food from the evening market.

Arthur Hastings, a young man once described by professors as having "the sharpest tongue in Bloomsbury," found that he had never received a single reply to the massive number of job applications he submitted.

He soon realized that those opportunities that seemed readily available in school were actually just carefully crafted mirages in a shop window. The threshold to the middle class has never been based on academic qualifications, but on surnames, church backgrounds, and fathers' names.

Arthur was silent.

Silence is one way he expresses his anger.

Elder then erupted.

He burned his carefully edited Latin edition of "The Republic," threw off his tweed suit, and resigned himself to fate as he reported to the Admiralty.

However, no matter what they think, fate never makes way for the passion of young people.

London was still recovering from the previous economic downturn. The emerging middle class was severely damaged by the stock market crash and bond defaults, while the anger of the lower classes was brewing. Concerned about the continued deterioration of public security, the government established a new agency called the "Metropolitan Police," historically known as "Scotland Park."

It was in this year that Arthur Hastings stepped into Scotland Yard, donned that crudely tailored, novel dark blue uniform, and went from being a Gold Medalist at the University of London to a street patrolman.

He started from the bottom, patrolling Greenwich's Central Avenue at night, chasing pickpockets, beating drunkards, and stopping angry unemployed workers from throwing stones at churches. He tried to solve problems according to the laws, philosophy, and so-called historical inertia he had learned in the classroom, but he found that this city valued fists, money, and connections more.

"The streets of London taught me one thing. 'Justice' is an extremely expensive word. It requires a budget to maintain order, clearly printed laws, a sense of awe for public spaces, and, most importantly, the ability for people to at least have three meals a day. Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian philosophy has benefited me throughout my life, and I have dedicated myself to ensuring the greatest possible happiness for the greatest number. But who decides what happiness is? And who defines the greatest number? This is a question I have never been able to answer in my lifetime."

(End of this chapter)