Late 1789, just before S2E2
Autumn
Jemima's father walked her to Tehidy two days after leaving Wheal Leisure. Sir Francis Bassett was more diminutive than Jemima thought he was going to be, dark brown hair and eyes, fair face, neat and trim in frame and style, his clothes, his household and, it turned out, his approach to business seemed as efficient as it possibly could be. There would be no room for Jemima to waste time or energy or resources. So whatever the man thought there her worth would be.
When he spoke, however, his manner was welcoming, friendly, not cold and austere that his outward appearance suggested. Jemima came in trousers and shirt, and stood beside her father as the butler showed them into Lord Bassett's living room.
"I owe your father my life!" Francis Bassett told Jemima. "He stayed with me night after night until I was well." He smiled, brightly, at her, and offered a hand and added, "I wonder, after all this time, I have not met you before?"
"My father is kind beyond measure, and has supported me and encouraged me in my career. I have been pursuing it."
"And making new strides in the field; how useful your friends are up country, Dr. Withering," Bassett added, "Of course, I have known William Murdoch for many years, and I funded Edward Bull to Warwickshire. We have benefited from the expertise and specialisms that the industrialists have shared. It is a good thing our business interests have never competed, what say you, Miss Withering? No copper and tin in Shropshire or Stafforshire or Worcestershire?"
"Indeed not, Lord Bassett," Jemima replied.
"Sir Francis, please!"
"Sir Francis," she corrected herself. "It is such a pity that the ironstone that gets pulled out of your mines cannot be sent to our counties, for such rich lodes would yield high percentages of metal. But no, we have no copper or tin."
Lord Bassett held up a hand. "Ironstone? We simply use it for ballast," he told her. "Do you think it valuable?"
"Oh, extremely," Jemima told him. "Such as the china clay at Luxulyan." She nodded to the tea service. "Our friend, Mr. Wedgwood, buys all he can, for it makes a ware so delicate and yet so strong, that even the Queen has the service. Several services. What Mr. Darby give for such a product, far more superior than what we have in Shropshire. Leisure, it's just a waste product. Such an opportunity wasted for want of a little organisation."
Jemima realised that Lord Bassett was listening to her, really listening, like her friends, her almost–family, who lived and worked with one another as a middle class, who shared ideas and experimented. No rivalry, only the love of a fellow friend to advance. It helped, of course, that there were a thousand trades, for not one interest overlaid another. Unlike here, where a divergence of interest caused bad feeling and rivalry.
"I am impressed by your clarity of speech, Miss Withering, your thoughts within thoughts. And it is through your connections you discovered that there is a way of estimating the lay of metal ores?"
"An advantage borne from a theory from a surveyor, who is known to my father's friend, Mr. Wedgwood," Jemima told him. "I - " She broke off. "I did my best to explain how it could be used to financial advantage of the shareholders of Wheal Leisure. Unfortunately, the owner decided against my advice."
"Miss WIthering," Bassett forwarded, glancing at John Withering, "You do a disservice with your account - "
"My Lord - !" Jemima exclaimed in protest. She had done all she could. But, indeed, she was young, and a woman would always be judged less favourably than a man. Bassett smiled at her, and gave a chuckle.
"Miss Withering, the disservice is to yourself! You are modest about your achievements, you do not press your own accomplishments And, as for the owner of Wheal Leisure, he is curmudgeonly, contrary man, and could have disagreed about anything from anybody. His mine is inefficient, he things with his emotions, not his head, and while that is admirable, it gives no-one who depends on him security long term. Ha!" He took a step forward and clapped Dr. Withering on the shoulder.
"I have no intention of wasting your talents, Miss Withering, I just wish I could have engaged you earlier, before we had opened Ishmaels. Wild is a manager of prodigious mining talent, and to be in possession of knowledge that you may give him, could improve the prosperity of all. Poldark believes he is the saviour of all the poor, but what good will it be if he has no mine for his workers to work?"
"Indeed," Jemima agreed, and glanced to her father. "Everyone we know believes the same. Mr. Wedgwood and Mr. Boulton have built houses for their workers, so they may be close at hand to work, have little distance to travel, have warm, clean homes. You would not have a business if you did not have your miners."
"So," Francis Bassett told Jemima, "I have spoken to your father, and have engaged you for a year. He has signed a letter to the effect, you being under twenty one. You will be under the management of Wild, or whoever Wild chooses to delegate this task to, or Mister Trevithick, in effect working with his son, Dick, or Edward Bull when it comes to the steam engine.
"You will wear what you are wearing now, but in hard wearing material, and boots," he ran a hand vertically in the air for a moment. "You will arrive at dawn and leave at dusk. You will enjoy working for the Ting Tong mines." He smiled. "Anything you wish clarified, you may come to me at any time." He praised, and looked between Jemima and her father.
"Do we have a contract?" He held out his hand.
"Yes, sir," Jemima replied, and took it. He wrapped his other hand around hers too, and shook once more, before clapping John Withering on the shoulder. "Why do I feel I have the better bargain," he told Jemima, and then reached for a glass of sherry, then held it aloft. "I know you will decline, but I offer anyway."
"No thank you, my lord," Dr. Withering told him. "We rejoice in the happy day - my daughter happy is enough refreshment for me."
"I look forward to following your career," Bassett finished, and then glanced past her as the door opened. The butler showed in a person - it was WIlliam Wild, shorter even than Bassett, as he came to stand by the mines' owner.
"You acquitted yourself well, you .were listening," Wild told her. Jemima nodded her head.
"Father ."
"Terrible missed opportunity," he told her. "I am sorry the man refused your freely given advice - we will not be so foolish." He glanced to Lord Bassett.
"Agreed," Bassett nodded.
"First, Wheal Fortune, and survey it with the guidance of Mr. Trevithick. Then, when you have learned the mines, you will know what the pumping engine must achieve. Your skill is good, and you have insight that goes beyond. Dick and Edward will need that, for the engine is not finished yet."
How could Jemima compare that morning with her beginning at Wheal Leisure. Bassett had spoken to her, as a professional, told her what he expected, gave instruction on her working and her tasks explained.
"There is one thing, as we are here," Jemima put in, as she sensed Bassett was about to dismiss her to Wild. "Forgive me, father, for speaking of this now," she nodded to Dr. Withering. "Sir Francis, my father recently had good fortune, and has passed that to me. I wish to ensure - " she broke off, and passed a slip of paper from her trouser pocket to Sir Francis's hand. He opened it, and looked over her writing, frowning a little. John Withering raised an eyebrow to Jemima, but she simply smiled.
"I will see that it is done, Miss Withering," Sir Francis told her, and then looked to Dr. Withering. You are fortunate to have such a daughter. Wild," he added, "Wait for Miss Withering outside for a moment." He looked between father and daughter. "Goodday to you both."
When they were standing outside Tehidy, Jemima took up her father's hands. "You were good enough to give this to me, for some future opportunity," she told him. "And so, what better use than to unmortgage our home."
John Withering said nothing for a moment, and Jemima wondered whether he had heard. Then, she wondered whether he was angry.
"How is it that I have such a one as you, when your dear mother and your dear brother are beside God now?" He shook his head. "If I could have drawn up a list of characters that I would ask for in a daughter, I would put all that you own, my dear." Jemima clung to him, for what felt like the longest time, all her guilt, every misdemeanour weighting her mind. He exaggerated; she had been wilful, she had been lustful, covetous, argumentative. She promised him, silently, that she would do better from now on.
"There will be money spare," he told Jemima. "It could be invested," he told her.
"Yes," Jemima agreed. "But do I need to decide now?" John Withering shook his head.
"I will ask Sir Francis to hold the money for you," he told Jemima. "Now hurry," he added, looking at Wild, who was waiting patiently in the arboretum, "You don't want to be late on your first day."
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"I wouldn't need you the whole week," Captain Trevithick told her as they made to climb down the main shaft of Wheal Fortune. It had been less than an hour since kissing her father goodbye and walking with William Wild over to the mines that she was now only ten fathoms below the surface and in a corridor three times as wide as that of Leisure.
What a thing it was to have the monopoly - Bassett owns his own pressing and rolling mill, as well as his own bank independent of the east Cornwall banks of Pascoe and Warleggan. He could command the best price of coal for smelting - all the mines large enough to do everything in-house and sell directly to the Navy. If only the Poldark's had decided to do that - individual mines were just not competitive, even with her professional advice, which has been spurned.
"You will go down all our mines, of course? You wish our men to take samples?"
"You may already be using what I learned already, you may not need what I know. But, as I said to Mr. Wild, if I do my own survey without seeing your own, and compare it at a later date, we can see what matches. For what doesn't we can discuss why, and it can give us an idea as to what may be possible. But - "
"But - ?" Trevithick senior asked her.
"I am just…awed at the scale you have here." She nodded to a pair of boys who were shirtless and pushing a wagon of rock. "Lord Dudley's mines are of this scale, but of course they are coal, and prone to gas escapes that are lethal to the miners."
"There is an air which seems to be to the undoing of some of our men, it causes a lung disease of which there is no cure, and worsens with age. Lord Bassett will bring men up who are over fifty and give them grass-side jobs. You will not likely see a middle aged man under a Ting Tong mine. So, tell me of this theory then?"
So Jemima told Captain Trevithick about stratification, how William Smith had surveyed rick all over the country and it had the common feature that strata of rock were laid horizontally on top of one another.
"Of what you speak, I do believe it is done already: we have very experienced miners here who are many generations from the same place."
So rock layers could be determined by conjecture, Jemima told herself, cross for a moment at the arrogance of Poldark towards her perfectly acceptable idea.
"Which is why we are a successful set of mines, I do b'la. It is not a new idea.". He smiled as another truck came past. "Though I am glad there is some foundation to it, if you'll pardon my, er, play on words."
Once Jemima had seen through the whole of Fortune, and had been introduced to Wheal Malkin by means of a small hole from a shaft in Wheal Fortune, Captain Trevithick took her the half mile walk over to where she had dressed for the day at the mine head office and to Dolcoath.
"This is one of the oldest mines on Cornwall," he told her. "We have found things ancient Cornish took down with them, rocks with markings on them put deliberately in one place.". From his pocket he pulled out a few plates of rock, like Welsh slate only thinner with a greenish tinge.
On one side was a twisted, knotted shape, which resembled somehow an animal, a head was there and part of the lower twist has claws like feet.
"Keep it, Miss Withering," Captain Trevithick told her. "I have many others." He stood at the edge of Dolcoath mine, peering over the edge and into the void where the steam pump was still being built. A rhythmical banging of metal on metal echoes upwards. She looked at the engine that was exposed: to Jemima, it didn't look as if much progress had been made.
"If you come here once more, I'll throw ee down to the devil!". The threat seemed to come from deep within Dolcoath, and could well have been of hell itself.
"It's yer father," Trevithick senior shouted back, in a tone that sounded well worn to the threats of death. "Are you meaning me, son of my own? Or Miss Withering?"
The banging that was coming from below stopped abruptly, and a creak of a chain came to the surface. Then, the wide, round face of Dick Trevithick appeared, wiping his brow on a cloth.
"You must be so proud of him," Jemima told Captain Trevithick. He gave Jemima a wry smile as Trevithick junior climbed the rings to the upper storey.
" Aye," he admitted, "Prouder than the attempt he made of school - this? He looked over the steel framework of rivets, pistons, levers and valves.
"This? He has true insight into the steam, from the engine he has converted and the help given to him by Murdoch before he went back to Brummigem, from his steam carriage.". Captain Trevithick turned and looked at his son.
"And what of you, my lad? You knew that Miss Withering was coming today."
Dick Trevithick looked at Jemima, and bowed his head. Jemima nodded back.
"Couldn't just wait around for her while there was work to be done," Trevithick told his father.
"Quite right," Jemima replied. "I am here to help, not to hold you up.". Captain Trevithick looked between the two of them.
"Right, well, I will leave you with Dick. Be sure to bring her over to the office when the bell goes, son?". He looked to Jemima. "Bassett does things differently here: he feeds his workers, as well as pays them good wages. But they have to be sober, and attend church or chapel on Sundays. Oh," he sighed, as he caught sight of the third engineer of the three of them strolling over the grass. "Bull is here - watch him, Jemima, this one is a bit of a wag."
And with that, Captain Trevithick strode back over the grass back towards Wheal Fortune.
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"So? What do you make of her?"
He had taken Jemima all round the engine, down the levels, seen the coal furnace and the piston valve.
"I am impressed," she told them. "I would like to see her working."
"After dinner, then," Edward Bull laughed, as the bell went from the large hut that stood within a hundred yards from Tehidy and was being supplied by a steady flow of servants carrying trays and pots.
Dick Trevithick, as Jemima would come to realise, stopped everything for his food, and was now putting the cover back on the boiler, having banked her with coal.
"It is good Bassett puts this on," Jemima told them, as they trod the grass. Miners ranked through one door, waiting with tin plates - the goods having not travelled far from their source of raw material, but Edward pushed open another door and held it open for Jemima - the captains and, clearly, engineers, were treated differently, and instead of queueing, could sit at a table and food was brought over to them. Jemima sat between Edward and Dick.
The food consisted of meat and vegetables put into pastry, a fuller version of that which Jago Martin so readily showed her and talked to Jemima and about. Boiled water was brought to drink and a jelly like substance that was made out of seaweed.
"What is it?" Jemima asked, picking it up with some bread. Despite its appearance it was actually rather tasty
"It's made by some of the poorer people by the coast," Edward told her. "The Welsh call it "laverbread", though I don't know a Cornish name." He looked across to Dick, who shook his head, mid-chew.
"Your father said it would stop the gum bleeding and lethargy that miners and their families are prone to. What happens in up-country? I've never thought of it."
Jemima paused, and thought, of rolling fields through Shropshire and upper Staffordshire, of Warwickshire's green country and fruit bearing regions of Worcestershire.
"It's grown all around - workers, if they work for a company, get this food. It's common food," she added. "More problems for them are pestilence - there are few rivers nearby, and when there are they are used for trade. We don't have the sea." She took in Trevithick 's expression. "There's plenty of farmers and food that is greenery is cheap," Jemima replied. "If father thinks that this helps the poor from their weakness, I wonder why the miners at Leisure didn't eat it."
Bull shrugged; Dick said nothing. They thought little of the mines to the east - Redruth and Camborne were their focus, and further west, and south to Penzance.
Which suited Jemima immensely, for it reminded her of the time she had spent with Davies, and Humphry, which she missed, and she noted to ask the question to Humphry when he next wrote, about common food and health of workers. What was it that it contained that prevented the scurvy disease? He would know, or Beddoes.
"Come on, we will show you the engine," Bull told her, when the bell rang again. As they left the large food hut, Dick Trevithick caught his father's eye and he went over to him.
Jemima saw a few words pass between them, Captain Trevithick pointing in the direction of Wheal Fortune and then back to Dolcoath.
Jemima and Edward waited for a moment for Dick to return to them.
"What was that?" Edward asked, expectantly. Trevithick glanced across to Jemima and shook his head. "The churchyard. We are wanted tonight." Jemima smiled but didn't ask further, but looked across to the engine, for it was that which she wanted to see.
"Do you like what has been done?" Bull said proudly, standing in what might be the caldera of a volcano with the top half of a Newcomen engine, its beam and lever, out of the ground. Below was the rest, which was to remove the seawater, but it was not yet working.
"You've taken a Watt steam engine and inverted it, to pump water from the lower levels."
"And it works!" Bull enthused, "Because of a little someone who turned the plate around!". He beamed at Jemima. "We can get a whole level clear for workers to go in and keep it clear. Mr Wild is extremely pleased with that."
"But?" Jemima prompted, as Dick dropped down ten feet and started the lever arm. Heat radiated around them as he shovelled in a half hundredweight of coal.
"But?" Edward looked confused.
"What are your objectives?" Jemima asked, when Trevithick had opened the valve at the top. The boiler and two compressor arms were upside down. She guessed what they wanted and Edward confirmed it.
"Deeper pumping, and some other way to make it more efficient. There is no coal in Cornwall save what is shipped in to us from South Wales or the Midlands. Murdoch thinks we might run into difficulty modifying a Watt. But, I said to him, "Mr. Murdoch, did Mr. Watt run into difficulty when he adapted a Newcomen?""
"Newcomen has been dead for nearly fifty years," Jemima told him. She knew the engines well, Mr Darby, the current Mr. Darby 's grandfather, using them to good effect in both Dudley and Madeley.
She has seen Gregory Watt take one apart and reassembled it over the course of a week, adding his father's second condenser, which doubled the efficiency by not wasting the power on the second stroke, but using it in itself as another pump - which is why she knew to turn the drive plate around.
Ingenious, for coal, for the seams did not go below fifty fathoms. Wild wanted to remove water from a hundred fathoms deep. They would need much higher pressure than a Watt engine could give.
"Well exactly - the man cannot sue, as Watt does when he feels his patent has been infringed. Mr. Murdoch is supposed to be Mr. Watt's "eyes and ears" but he has not disabused the engine. And besides - " But it was here Edward broke off, and exchanged a look with Dick Trevithick.
"Besides, we have many more things left to try. And, we have a brand new secret weapon that Watt does not yet know about."
"Oh?". Jemima glanced past Edward and down to Dick, trying to guess.
"You, Miss Withering! I fancy that you will be the key to the lock, like those ones made up in your Black Country."
A Wilenhall lock, Jemima wondered, as she dismissed the comparison to vanity. "Lete show you my worth, Mr. Bull," Jemima told him, "Before you make any great claims to my skill."
"Funny," said Jemima, it's come full circle, we are in Cornwall adapting an engine which was adapted from an engine made by a Cornishman." Edward and Dick both stared at her.
"Which Cornishman?" Trevithick asked.
"Newcomen?"
"That'll be the Cornishman born in Devon, then?" He might have well said, "New Holland" how foreign he implied Devon to be. Jemima did not reply, but instead came further down the ladder and closer to the boiler, a serendipitous move, since the sun was setting and the brush chill hunting at Autumn began to settle.
"So you'll come back tomorrow?"
"Why, I would stay now, if I could. Sir Francis made it clear that I must leave at sundown to walk home safely. May I look at your records?"
And so Jemima read the copious volume of research notes they - Edward mainly - had written of what they had tried so far, Edward on hand to clarify anything or answer any questions she had. It wasn't a job she could do in an hour, however, and she put them aside, determined to begin on them in the morning.
"Your day was a success?" asked Sir Francis Bassett, who made his way over to the office hut just as Jemima reached it.
"Is the work to your liking?" He asked, standing beside the door. "Bull and Trevithick will be suitable for you to work beside?"
He was hedging what he was trying to imply but such things were far from Jemima's mind: both young men were pleasant and, like Jago Martin and Ted Carkeek of Leisure, she could see them working together well, albeit on a steam engine rather than mining copper.
"I think there is much I can do," Jemima replied, smiling. "My thanks for this opportunity, Lord Bassett."
"Good evening Miss Withering
Dressing in her over clothes in the mine office and then bidding Dick Trevithick and Edward Bull avoid evening, Jemima walked the few miles home that evening pondering the puzzle, determined to work some of it out. And thinking what Dick might have meant about tonight at the churchyard.
So wrapped up in her thoughts about the engine, Jemima did not notice that she was, as she had been every night leaving Wheal Leisure, being followed.