Excerpt from Golden Hill by Francis Spufford, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"What a lot of money you've got, Mr. Stomachs," said Tabitha.

"If it is money," said Smith, "and not a printer's foul-papers."

"You'll get used to it. —Papa, you should invite him to dinner."

"I was about to, my dear," said Lovell. "There's your guineas rendered, fair and square. Would ye care to dine with us tomorrow night?"

"Are you sure you want to do that?" said Smith.

"Come now, come on now," said Lovell, with a grin that seemed, from disuse, in need of the oil-can, to ease the rusty motion of his jaws. "Let's not let a poor beginning spoil matters. Our compact is made, sir, and if all goes well—if all goes as you promise—why then, there's no quarrel between us, but the contrary. And you've made landing on a far shore, and you'll thrive the better for a change from hard tack, I'll be bound."

Mr. Lovell could not be said to have succeeded in the paternal note he tried to strike, for "impudent pup" and "lying rogue" are not obliging terms, and do not vanish from conversation, once spoken, without leaving a trace of awkwardness: but the invitation was pressed, and at the first refusal pressed again; until Mr. Smith, having found (at least) much in the house to interest him, at last accepted it. The arrangement made, he bowed goodbyes to Miss Tabitha and Miss Flora, and two minutes later found himself back in the street, having been loaned the prentice Isaiah to bear his trunk.

It was now raining in good earnest, and the kennel was running, carrying city swill and city ordure down the centre of Golden Hill Street. Uphill and inland the narrow roadway dimmed to a windy darkness, faintly broken by lanterns. Isaiah swore, and tried to shift the box higher on his shoulders, to serve in the office of a wooden roof, but the weight sank his feet deeper. He was bullcalf-broad of figure beside the spindly, phthisical merchants' boys Smith knew, and his skin shone with unearthly cleanness, but a Mannahatta youth seemed to share very fully his Eastcheap cousins' taste for flash in the article of clothes. Isaiah's coat had more gold lace on its facings than many admirals' did, though the colour was all paint and not bullion, and his shoes were elaborately double-buckled and pointed in the toes.

"God's bollocks," he said again, shifting unhappily. "Where away, then?"

"You tell me, cully," Smith said amiably. "Where's clean and comfortable, with a decent chop-house to hand, and won't bleed my purse too fast? —Not a school of Venus," he added, seeing a particular light kindle in Isaiah's eye. "Just a plain lodging."

"Mrs. Lee in the Broad Way, then," said Isaiah. "But I hain't your cully, whate'er that be. I don't cotton to your cant."

And he kept a sullen silence as he led Smith over oozy cobbles. It was not a joyous procession, between the half-seen house-fronts, some rising tall in brick and others mere hovels of wood, or black empty lots where animals complained unseen. Everything trickled, gurgled, spattered, dripped; kept up a watery unwelcoming music. The rain drilled in slantwise, as cold as ocean, and almost as immersing, soaking collar and hair, filling ears with icy drams of floodwater, making soused fingers to ache. The few passers-by scurried along at a crouch, holding canvas sacks overhead if they had 'em, and Smith lost his count of the turns through the town-maze that took them to the door upon which Isaiah, after fifteen sodden minutes, knocked. Yet his spirits rose. A task begun is easier than a task contemplated; besides, he was a young man with money in his pocket, new-fallen to land in a strange city on the world's farther face, new-come or (as he himself had declared) new-born, in the metropolis of Thule. And these things are pleasant still, if the money be of some strange kind easily confus'd with waste paper, if the city be such as to fill you with fear as well as expectation. For what soul, to whom the world still is relatively new, does not feel the sensible excitement, the faster breath and expansion of hope, where every alley may yet contain an adventure, every door be back'd by danger, or by pleasure, or by bliss?

* * *

Mr. Lovell, to whom few things retained the force of novelty, and who misliked extremely the sensation when they did, as if firm ground underfoot had been replaced on the instant by a scrabbling fall in vacuo—was, at the moment the door opened on Broad Way, hesitating in his parlour. Flora was downstairs, commanding from Zephyra the supper that would have arrived whether she commanded it or not. Only Tabitha still sat on the sopha, her hands quite still in her lap. It had been his custom, since his wife died these three years past, to call from time to time on his elder daughter's intelligence, in the same office her mother's had served; but now, for particular reasons, the issue might touch on her own self in terms that made advice unwise to solicit.

Excerpted from Golden Hill by Francis Spufford. Copyright © 2017 by Francis Spufford. Excerpted by permission of Scribner. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.