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By Root 1992 0

Kropotkin believed in the printing-press. Maybe Charles would not believe this, but not far from where they were was just such a press, producing a monthly revolutionary paper called The Torch of Anarchy. It might interest Charles to know that the paper had been founded by three young people—still children really—from a famous poetic family, by Olive, Arthur and Helen Rossetti, when they were younger than Charles was now. The press had recently moved to a stable loft in Ossulston Street—but had produced powerful revolutionary literature from a room in the basement of Mr. William Rossetti’s house—a basement in which everything was painted blood-red, said Joachim Susskind, smiling over the absolute enthusiasm of the young Rossettis. He said, timidly, that he could give Charles some copies of this pamphlet, and even take him to see the press at work, if he felt he could go there. He himself helped out when he could. He loved mathematics as much as revolution, so he could not give up his college work. Statisticians and mathematicians would be welcome in the new order. Professor Pearson was not unsympathetic, though he inclined more to Karl Marx’s socialism than to Kropotkin’s anarchism. Indeed he had changed his name from Charles to Karl, to show his respect for the thinker.

Charles wanted to see the press. He wanted to see work being done, to change things. No one thought to question him at home, if he said he was going to visit Dr. Susskind. And so, one afternoon, the two of them set off for Ossulston Street.

Ossulston Street stank. The gutter ran with yellow horse-piss, and the road was almost solid with caked dung. Charles walked gingerly, trying to keep his shoes clean, and wondering whether clean shoes should be of any concern. The offices of The Torch of Anarchy were in a loft above a stable, behind the “jugs and bottles” door of a dingy public house, The Bay Tree. Joachim Susskind and Charles had to negotiate a kind of midden to get to the wooden stairs that led to the loft. As he went up, Charles suddenly remembered Humphry’s midsummer speech about the poor man who picked and ate undigested oats from stuff like this. This was what he ought to know about. He followed his tutor through a ramshackle door into a long wooden shedlike room, full of dust, floating in the air, thick on the heaps of literature and pamphlets which covered almost all the floor. There were strong smells in this dusty air—tobacco smoke and tobacco juice, human odours of thick sweat and excrement, a pervasive smell of sour milk, and another of rancid fat. And the smell of dog, though he could see no dog. There was also a smell of sour beer. A man in a greasy jacket was scoffing fried bread and bacon scraps from a newspaper on what appeared to be the plate of the printing press, at one end of the room. There were two or three little groups of people, none of whom appeared likely to be the young Rossettis. One group was talking fast and intently in Italian. One consisted of three people on a bench, against which leaned a hard placard. “The Day of the Beast Is Upon Us.” At one end of the room was a mattress, where someone—or more than one person—was snoring thickly under a heap of tattered cloth and a bundle of flags. Susskind said to the eating man that he had understood that Comrade Bartlett would be printing. He had brought his promised article on the German anti-socialist laws. He had brought a young man who was interested in anarchist ideas. Comrade Bartlett said his hand was too black with ink to shake the new Comrade by the hand, and asked his name. Charles said his name was Karl. He said he would like to help. Comrade Bartlett swept his meal off the press and began to ink it. Charles/Karl found himself worrying intensely about his clothes, at which the inhabitants of the loft appeared to be staring. His shirt was clean and starched, his jacket was pressed and expensive. He looked wrong and moreover he was going to get dirty, and be in trouble at home. He was saved by Joachim Susskind, who produced a workman’s apron from his bookbag and gave