CHAPTERVEARLY MEMORIES OF MANCHESTERI see the huge warehouses of Manchester, the many-storied mills, the great bale-laden drays, the magnificent horses.“Towards Democracy.”And by moving down to Manchester in Whit-week I found myself indeed plunged into a new world. For Whit-week, as I said, is a universal holiday among all sorts and conditions of people, and every man, woman and child has his or her share in the feast. For the shops close, the workman goes to Blackpool or the Isle of Man, and the employer to Paris or the West Highlands, or St. Andrews, or North Berwick as the mood suggests, and Lancashire and Yorkshire play cricket at Old Trafford and the races are run, and the children dressed in white, carrying their banners, move in procession through streets thronged with admiring parents. And that all may be at peace and good will the Protestant children “walk”—that is the Manchester word—on one day and the Roman Catholics on another, for fear the good Christian parents of either denomination should batter each other’s skulls whilst their little children are singing “Lead Kindly Light.” And if you want to see one of the prettiest sightsin the land, go and see the children “walking,” the little Catholics for choice, because their frocks are daintier and their banners more picturesque, and their parents in the crowd, among whom you should stand, are more Irish, enthusiastic and full of epigram. But by no means go to Manchester in Whit-week if you want to buy or sell. And if you have to move into a new house it is obviously not the right season to make the attempt, for at this season no money or entreaty will save your vans from being held up, and you may make up your mind to lay your carpets yourself. When you become a citizen of Manchester you recognise the sanity of the Whit-week festival. It comes at a time when days are long, weather favourable, the despair of winter behind you and the joy of summer at your feet. Some day all England will acquire the Whit-week habit, and it will cease to be the special luxury of Manchester.As there was no possibility of work or any kind of progress in domestic affairs, I had ample leisure to survey the city and study its geography. My earliest impressions were not prepossessing. The town of Manchester seemed to consist of one long street—Market Street—which was far too small for the trams and lurries and men and women who wanted to use it. All the other streets seemed half empty, and this one was overcrowded. The costumes of the inhabitants struck me as grotesque. Men’s gloves were only to be seen in the shop windows, and I wondered why they were there atall, but discovered afterwards that the devout carried them to church or chapel on Sundays. Top hats were worn, certainly, but generally with light tweed suits. Frock coats were surmounted by boating straws, and I remember the shock experienced by my Cockney mind when I met a native clothed in correct black coat and silk hat in Albert Square ruining his chances in life, as I thought, by the added blasphemy of a short pipe. It must not be thought that I sighed deeply for the Babylonish garments of the Temple, for I soon learned that in Manchester, of all places, you mightGi’e fools their silks, and knaves their wine,A man’s a man for a’ that.And, for myself, I cared for none of these things, and no doubt Charley McKeand—whose outspoken comments on men and manners were the joy of the circuit—was fully within the truth when he insisted, as he always did, that I was the worst-dressed man on the circuit.But truth compels me to say that my memory of the first aspect of Manchester was a scene of hustle, roughness, and uncouthness rather depressing to a stranger in a strange land not to the manner born. I discovered before long the kindness of heart and the real sense of independence that underlies and is the origin of the Manchester manner, but I still think that there are many natives who mistake incivility for independence, thereby lowering their fellow-citizens in the esteem of mankind.I could quote many instances of what I mean, but one will suffice. An eminent Withington butcher, having delivered meat of exceptional toughness, my wife remonstrated with him about it, when he blurted out, “Nay, missis, it’s not my meat—if anything’s wrong, more laikely it’s your teeth.”It is this kind of greeting that puzzles the softer races of the South.And if there was one thing more than another that impressed me as having the real spirit of Manchester abiding within it, it was the lurry. I use the word lurry with the true Manchester spelling as though it were an English and not merely a Manchester word. The lurry is symbolic of the city and the dwellers within its walls. The lurry incarnate in wood and iron is a cart or wagon, what you will, a four-wheeled, oblong, flat tray, cumbersome yet capable of bearing great burdens. There is a stern largeness about its aspect, a straightness about its course—it is never at its ease in turning corners—which always suggests to me an ancient Roman origin, though there is a noble catholicity about it which is quite the reverse of Roman, for it will carry anything for money. I have seen a two-horse lurry marching slowly down Market Street bearing only a solitary blue band-box. But its chief and usual burden is a load of bales of cotton cloth. From the upper windows of narrow streets heavy pieces of cloth are flung accurately and rapidly on to the lurry waiting below, and the driver, moving withinan ace of destruction on the floor of the lurry, stacks them solidly together until the load is complete. Then when the sun shines—as it has been known to on occasions even in Portland Street—the lurry, with its two magnificent horses, strolls proudly away to station or steamer, no tarpaulin covering its snowy burden—the harvest of Lancashire—and when your stranger’s eyes follow it with admiration, you begin to learn something of the spirit and character of the city whose symbol it is. For the lurry is a carrier of goods from man to man, a four-wheeled middleman, moving in a straight, dogged, obstinate course, shoving lighter affairs aside, disputing its right to all the street even with its own municipality and their trams, caring little who goes down beneath its hoofs and wheels so long as the cotton bales and pieces arrive and are sent forth, and that the loads are pressed down and shaken together and running over, and that business is good.And the lurry horses, like the Sunday School children, have their feast day also, which is the first of May, when, bedecked with ribbons and caparisoned in gleaming harness, they parade the streets. Who that has seen them will ever forget the splendid teams of Robert Clay, the bleacher, as they swing round into Albert Square on a sunny first of May and gladden the hearts of Manchester man, woman and child, with a vision of strength and wealth and beauty and business?For the first idea of Manchester is business, and thesecond idea of Manchester is business, and the seventy times seventh idea of Manchester is business, and the outward and visible sign of the Manchester idea is a lurry laden with cotton cloth. And had I had a hand in the emblazoning of a coat of arms, instead of a beehive—whose denizens are, after all, but a dull set of socialist fellows, fond of rural pursuits and little embued with the Manchester ideals—I would have set aside thatterrestrial globe semée of bees volant on a wreath of the colours, and instituted a lurry—notrampantorcourant, butpassant—day and night constantly and eternallypassant, until the last Manchester contract is fulfilled and the last load of cotton goods is delivered.I do not say I learned all this about Manchester in one Whit-week. On the contrary, it took me a quarter of a century to find out what little I have learned, and even now I recognise that I am only outside the veil of a great mystery. For the heart and life and being of Manchester and its surroundings is a human study worthy of a sane and honest philosopher, if such a one exist, and I am only attempting to set down a few traveller’s notes, as it were.Now, at first, no Courts were sitting, and I sat in my chambers, which were up two flights of stairs in 41, John Dalton Street—where I remained even in the days of my prosperity—and there I settled to work on my edition of Dorothy Osborne’s letters, and only heard the blurred rattle of the lurries over the stone setts through the double windows whichall Manchester offices must have to preserve the sense of hearing of their inmates.And though I think it is a good thing for the fledgling barrister to write a book of some sort, so that he may have an occupation to keep him in his chambers, and be there ready to greet that first great cause which is going to bring him fame or fortune, yet he should never miss a meet of the profession at sessions or assizes, even though he is well aware he is merely going to sit at the receipt of a custom that is not there.The Manchester Assize Courts, where most of our local courts were held, are very handsome and convenient buildings. Any other city but Manchester would have approached them through something better than a slum. But there is not a single entrance into Manchester that can be described as either comely or decent. The individual public buildings of Manchester are, many of them, of exceptional beauty. How fine the Town Hall would look—if it were washed! The streets of Manchester are by no means badly cleansed. Why should Manchester wash her feet and not wash her face? Why should Manchester fail to appreciate what other cities of Europe seem to understand, that you do not only want fine buildings, but worthy roads and streets to see them as you approach? It is the approach shot that Manchester has to learn in architecture.I shall never forget my first walk down Strangeways towards the Courts, and the despair that entered into my soul as I thought of the Embankmentand my beloved Temple, with its pure fountain and its memories of Tom Pinch and Ruth. How dismally I compared these with the filthy, black, oily river, the grimy cathedral, the ancient four-wheeled cabs, and their miserable horses bending their knees and drooping their heads as if in worship of the graven image of Oliver Cromwell, and then a plunge underneath clanging railway bridges and along a mean Yiddish street, to encounter a glad surprise when the glorious vista of the Law Courts swam into my ken. As a practical joke upon the stranger within your gates—excellent! As a piece of municipal town planning—rotten!But if I seem to dwell too much on the deficiencies of Manchester as a great city, it is only because I am trying to recall as honestly as I can the first impression it made upon my little Cockney mind, for to-day when I return to its flags and setts I pace them with as much of the pride of a real citizen as my modesty will allow. And though the outward aspect of the streets was somewhat forbidding, the kind-heartedness of the inhabitants was soon made manifest. It was a wild venture I had made, but I had one introduction that I presented without delay, and that was addressed to Mr. C. P. Scott, of theManchester Guardian. Of all Manchester people Mr. and Mrs. Scott had the true Manchester instinct of hospitality. It did not matter that the people introduced were young, unimportant and of no account, that made it the more necessary to entertain them and introduce them to others. It wasnot many weeks therefore before dining at Mr. Scott’s we met his chief assistant editor, W. T. Arnold.The world knows Arnold as a writer and historian. I can only speak of him as a kind friend and my master in journalism. That I should ever have commenced journalism at all in Manchester rested in the main on one of those accidental foundations upon which the world seems mainly to be built.At that first dinner-party at Mr. Scott’s house my wife went in with Mr. Arnold. I can remember the occasion well because the whole idea of the gathering was so new to me. For instance, in London if you dined with a judge there were leaders of the Bar, a dull stranger and two old solicitors who had briefed the judge in earlier days. If you dined with an artist there were patrons, and if possible a critic. If you dined with a professor, it was all professors, if with a doctor, all doctors. But here were barristers, journalists, specialist doctors, members of Parliament and merchants all round one table, and the talk never degenerated into any one special “shop.” Manchester is exactly the right size for a dinner-party, and there are enough of all sorts and conditions of workers in it to bring together a really interesting company. Moreover Manchester knows how to entertain. It happened, then, that my wife began to talk to Mr. Arnold about the Seine. We had had a very interesting trip up the river that summer with an artist friend, taking over a half-outrigged boat from Oxford, starting from Caudebec and rowing up to Paris, camping outen route. Arnoldwas enthusiastic about France and all things French. Moreover he knew Les Andelys and Chateau Gaillard and Pont de l’Arche. I think my wife claimed that we were the first English folk to row up the Seine, except, of course, Molloy and his four on French rivers—for had we not camped on the Ile St. Georges below Rouen where they were wrecked, and learned all about their adventures from Madame, the grandmother of the farm.But Arnold was sure that he had read something recently about it—he remembered he had cut it out—it was in thePall Mall.“That was our trip,” replied my wife.Arnold bunched up his black eyebrows and had a good look at me across the table. After dinner he said in that off-hand, desultory way that hindered him getting to the hearts of some Manchester men—Oxford has its drawbacks, after all—“Do you care to write for theManchester Guardianoccasionally?”Did I care to write? What a question to ask a young man with a wife and daughter and rent and taxes and no hope of an old age pension.The bargain was struck, and the next week I commenced dramatic critic. Arnold approved, and I remained.I never caught theManchester Guardianmanner, and I know I was too enthusiastic and unacademic, but I wrote on all sorts of subjects, and shall always remember the kindness of Arnold, who was my immediate chief, and all the staff, from the highestto the lowest. Generally Arnold’s blue pencil was rightly wielded, but now and again, of course, enthusiasm scored.I remember among a lot of books to review I had singled out the “Auld Licht Idylls,” by J. M. Barrie. I am glad to say for my reputation as a reviewer that it captured me and I enthused. I came into Arnold’s room in the office after the theatre. I can see him now, sitting wearily in the midst of proofs and papers. He looked up at me as I entered with an amused smile—he regarded me, I think, as an irrepressible, journalistic infant.“That Scots’ book, you know,” he said, pulling out a proof—“Walter Scott and Bret Harte and Mark Twain rolled into one. Really, Parry, when will you grow up?”I defended my point of view earnestly, and after listening a while he shrugged his shoulders, saying, “Good night; it’s not badly written—except for the adjectives. I’ll see to it.” He did see to it—with the blue pencil. For Arnold did not believe with the moderns in discovering a new literary genius once a week and canonizing him on the spot. He was a high priest of letters, and his literary saints had to be thoroughly tested in the pure fires of his critical insight before they were consecrated. But months afterwards he was just enough to say as I brought him in a theatre notice, “By the way, Parry, that Scots’ book. I’ve read it. We might have left in all that about Mark Twain and Bret Harte—and even Scott. But mind you don’t doit again; you won’t find another Barrie in a hurry.”I have not; nor indeed have I found another Arnold, so patient, cynical, learned and full of kindliness to those who worked under him. He was indeed a great loss to Manchester and the English Press. He too was, like myself, a stranger within the gates. He came to Manchester in 1879 from Oxford, where I think he had been a coach, and he had certainly brought from Oxford the best she has to give. For nearly twenty years he was a hard-working journalist, but he never lost his love of scholarship, and he was a scholar without pedantry. In his old-world house in Nelson Street, the site of which is now, I think, covered by the Infirmary buildings, he loved to greet newcomers and cheer them on their path with good-humoured, sane and helpful thoughts. He knew the best of Manchester, for he, too, loved to explore on foot or a wheel the moors and lanes and woodlands which lie within such tempting adjacence to the city. “I see him,” writes one who knew him best, “alert and vigorous, his broad shoulders somewhat over-weighted by the strong intellectual head, his dark eyes full of fun and affection.” The picture is by a great artist, and it cannot be bettered.The stage lost a real friend in Arnold. His criticisms were not the fretful, carping essays of the moderns. He had the capacity to do common-place work earnestly, and gave of his best to the task of every day. Moreover, he loved good acting, and knewit when he saw it, and was catholic in his tastes. Like all men, he had his mannerisms. As he said of himself, “It is the pedagogue in me which needs subduing,” and in the main he kept it under. Yet I think I could trace his unsigned writings in the Press by his love of a French phrase. The French were always with him, and in season and occasionally out of season, like the great Mr. Wegg, he dropped into French. Some of these adjectives were well chosen. Thus Irving’s humour in the grave-digger’s scene wasmacabre; Pinero understood the use of themot de la situation; and the English opinion of the French classical writers wassangrenu—I have but a hazy notion of the meaning of the word, still it sounds satisfying. These words are expressive, but on occasion he would, to show he was a mortal journalist, descend todéclasséandtour de forcelike the lower infusoria of the reporter’s room.I remember in his French enthusiasm he gave me to read a criticism in a French paper—by Sarcey, I fancy. “Why cannot we do work like that? Why can’t that be done in England?” he asked.“I think it might be,” I replied. “Indeed, under proper conditions, I think I could do it myself. All I should want is the same conditions as the French fellow—half the first sheet of theManchester Guardianonce a week to print my criticisms on, and, of course, Sarcey’s salary, and my name at the bottom of the page.”The ribaldry of demanding half the first page of theGuardianfor anything but advertisements wastoo much for Arnold, and the gathering rebuke of flippancy dissolved in laughter.Arnold was disabled at forty-four and died in 1904, at the age of fifty-two. Bravely and unselfishly he bore his weary years of sickness, using every available hour for scholarship and study. I last saw him in Manchester some time before his death. He was then very weak and ill and in great pain; but I remember this of it at least with pleasure, that when I came to say farewell at his bedside the word he whispered, at which I proudly caught, was “friend.”And it was through the kindness of Mrs. Scott, too, that Miss Gaskell and her sister became aware of our existence and collected us into their fold, so that whenever some actor or doctor or artist or musician or writer or thinker came to Manchester there was an invitation to meet him or her at their historic house in Plymouth Grove. It is hard to say whether these pleasant dinner-parties were more refreshing to the body or the soul. One reads of the Parisiansalonsof the reign of Louis XV., but one cannot believe that the privilege of attending Madame Geoffrin or Madame Necker could be compared to the honour of an invitation to Plymouth Grove. Art, literature, music, and drama were impersonated by the greatest artists, though they were not there as lions to gaze at, but rather as friends of the home. The hospitality and elegance of the entertainment would have been a happy memory for Lord Guloseton himself, and as he came away he would have sheathed his silver weaponswith content. Though these were things other houses could give you, the real treasure casketed in the shrine of Plymouth Grove was the homely welcome which great and small received from the high priestesses. It was asalonof Louis XV. conceived in the spirit of Cranford.And if, as we are promised, there are to be many mansions in the realms above, I trust it is not impious to hope that one will be situated in some Elysian Plymouth Grove, exact in every detail to the dear original. For it must have the same semi-circular drive approaching its old-fashioned portico, and the steps must be a trifle steep by which you reach the shuttered door, and I must be permitted to be young again, unknown and obscure, and to drive up in a heavenly hired four-wheeled cab, so that when the door is opened by some neat angel maid-servant I may feel fully again the honour that is done me. Everything must be in its place in the beloved drawing-room, for each book and picture, and piece of furniture had its own welcome for you, and though, of course, I should like to meet the shade of Charlotte Brontë as well as some of those noted men and women who were visitors in my day, yet all I shall really wish for is the Manchester welcome the good ladies gave me twenty-five years ago. For if heaven is to be a success, there must be kind hostesses to welcome shy, awkward, unknown, youthful persons like myself, and make us at ease and at home in the presence of the great ones. And though I write this as a nonsense dream, I do it because I findit easier to express truth in that form. And it is certainly true that the good ladies of Plymouth Grove made Manchester for me and mine as they did for so many toilers of all degrees, a holier and better place.Falkner Blair was another kind friend who discovered me when I first went to Manchester, and helped by his kindly greeting to make its skies blue for me and its sun to shine on me. He was the leader among those juniors who practised mainly in the Crown Court, and was afterwards a judge in India. He and Arnold were good friends, though they had little but Oxford in common—Oxford has its advantages—and Blair called Arnold “the Don” and Arnold nicknamed Blair “the Agreeable Rattle.”For I remember feeling very lonely wandering about the Courts in those early days, when Falkner Blair came up to me and said, “Is your name Parry? Well, come up and take the dogs for a walk and have some dinner.” It appeared I had met some relations of his, but any pretext was good enough for Blair to open his house to a newcomer and see what he was like, and he was a real friend to his juniors.Blair was a great character. He was a fine cross-examiner, an eloquent speaker, and a better lawyer than many supposed, but he was undoubtedly indolent. Full of fads and enthusiasm, he was an excellent talker, the remains of a classical billiard player, a most redoubtable gourmet, and a great lover of dogs. The three collies of those days,Bruce, Vixen, and Luath, were well known in the neighbourhood and greatly admired by the “doggy.”Blair had a ready wit. I remember him escorting some ladies round the law courts during the luncheon hour when they came across the antique spears of the javelin men piled in a corner of the corridor outside the judges’ room. “Whatever are those used for?” asked a lady, gazing at them admiringly.“Those, my dear madam,” said Blair with prompt decision, “are used by the Judge in the Crown Court when he charges the grand jury.”The ladies looked at them with reverent awe and shuddered.Just as I was beginning to do a little work I was invalided, and the doctor wanted me to go to the Riviera in January. As I could afford neither time nor money for this I decided on Barmouth. I was very depressed about having to go away, and, meeting Blair, told him my trouble. He was overjoyed. There was nothing doing, and he and Mrs. Blair and the dogs would join us. He would go ahead and get rooms with his friend Mrs. Davis, at the Cors-y-gedol. I wonder how many remember that fine portrait of the dear old lady that her son-in-law, Phil Morris, R.A., painted.Blair in an hotel became a kind of proprietor of it and chief guest rolled into one. The first night we were nearly all awakened by a horrible noise of clashing bells. It ought to have been a fire, but nothing had happened, we were told. What reallyoccurred Blair explained at breakfast without a notion that there was any reason for apology or regret.“I sat up till about half-past twelve, and went up to bed and said, ‘Where’s Vixen?’”—the beloved dogs always slept with him. “There was no Vixen. I went downstairs and looked everywhere, and then heard poor Vixen whining outside the front door. I tried to undo the chains and things, but couldn’t manage it, and couldn’t find a soul about, and there was the poor dog whining outside. Luckily”—what an adverb to choose—“luckily I found a broom lying about, so I just swept the row of bells in the passage backwards and forwards until quite a lot of people came, and we let the poor dog in.”The late Bishop of St. Asaph, who had come for the rest cure, left the next morning, but Mrs. Davis only laughed. If Blair was in an hotel it mattered not who came or went.Blair was full of hygienic fads, and one of them was a very huge sponge, which was placed on the window-sill of his second floor bedroom, and much admired by passers-by in the street. Blair would discourse at length on the properties of the sponge, and how it soaked in ozone all day and gave it forth in the morning tub. One afternoon we were standing at our sitting-room window, which was directly beneath his bedroom, and Blair called our attention to two little dogs having a tug-of-war in the street with what looked like a long rope. Blair cheeredon the smaller dog, leaning out of the window and shouting, “Go it, little ’un! Two to one on the black one. Stick to it! Stick at it! Hurrah! No! What! Good heavens! It’s my sponge.” The next we saw was Blair with an umbrella separating the combatants and swearing vigorously. The hygienic properties of the rescued morsels were never afterwards referred to.I learned in that visit the wonderful qualities of Welsh air. I came down scarcely able to walk from the hotel to the station; I finished up in a fortnight with more than a twenty-mile tramp. Blair was a great hill walker, and knew Wales and the Lake District in and out. The younger generation of Manchester will find as they grow old that they have lost many of the pleasures of memory which might have been theirs, because they have spent their holiday hours on crowded tees and in arid bunkers when they might have been learning something of what Coleridge meant when he wrote of“The power, the beauty and the majestyThat had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,Or forest, by slow stream or pebbly spring,Or chasms and watery depths.”For these things are to be found in Yorkshire and Derbyshire and Cumberland, and, of all places, in Wild Wales. And one who has lived a quarter of a century in Manchester and made good use of his time can at least say this in its favour with all truth and honesty, that it is the best city in the United Kingdom to get away from.
I see the huge warehouses of Manchester, the many-storied mills, the great bale-laden drays, the magnificent horses.
“Towards Democracy.”
And by moving down to Manchester in Whit-week I found myself indeed plunged into a new world. For Whit-week, as I said, is a universal holiday among all sorts and conditions of people, and every man, woman and child has his or her share in the feast. For the shops close, the workman goes to Blackpool or the Isle of Man, and the employer to Paris or the West Highlands, or St. Andrews, or North Berwick as the mood suggests, and Lancashire and Yorkshire play cricket at Old Trafford and the races are run, and the children dressed in white, carrying their banners, move in procession through streets thronged with admiring parents. And that all may be at peace and good will the Protestant children “walk”—that is the Manchester word—on one day and the Roman Catholics on another, for fear the good Christian parents of either denomination should batter each other’s skulls whilst their little children are singing “Lead Kindly Light.” And if you want to see one of the prettiest sightsin the land, go and see the children “walking,” the little Catholics for choice, because their frocks are daintier and their banners more picturesque, and their parents in the crowd, among whom you should stand, are more Irish, enthusiastic and full of epigram. But by no means go to Manchester in Whit-week if you want to buy or sell. And if you have to move into a new house it is obviously not the right season to make the attempt, for at this season no money or entreaty will save your vans from being held up, and you may make up your mind to lay your carpets yourself. When you become a citizen of Manchester you recognise the sanity of the Whit-week festival. It comes at a time when days are long, weather favourable, the despair of winter behind you and the joy of summer at your feet. Some day all England will acquire the Whit-week habit, and it will cease to be the special luxury of Manchester.
As there was no possibility of work or any kind of progress in domestic affairs, I had ample leisure to survey the city and study its geography. My earliest impressions were not prepossessing. The town of Manchester seemed to consist of one long street—Market Street—which was far too small for the trams and lurries and men and women who wanted to use it. All the other streets seemed half empty, and this one was overcrowded. The costumes of the inhabitants struck me as grotesque. Men’s gloves were only to be seen in the shop windows, and I wondered why they were there atall, but discovered afterwards that the devout carried them to church or chapel on Sundays. Top hats were worn, certainly, but generally with light tweed suits. Frock coats were surmounted by boating straws, and I remember the shock experienced by my Cockney mind when I met a native clothed in correct black coat and silk hat in Albert Square ruining his chances in life, as I thought, by the added blasphemy of a short pipe. It must not be thought that I sighed deeply for the Babylonish garments of the Temple, for I soon learned that in Manchester, of all places, you might
Gi’e fools their silks, and knaves their wine,A man’s a man for a’ that.
Gi’e fools their silks, and knaves their wine,A man’s a man for a’ that.
Gi’e fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man’s a man for a’ that.
And, for myself, I cared for none of these things, and no doubt Charley McKeand—whose outspoken comments on men and manners were the joy of the circuit—was fully within the truth when he insisted, as he always did, that I was the worst-dressed man on the circuit.
But truth compels me to say that my memory of the first aspect of Manchester was a scene of hustle, roughness, and uncouthness rather depressing to a stranger in a strange land not to the manner born. I discovered before long the kindness of heart and the real sense of independence that underlies and is the origin of the Manchester manner, but I still think that there are many natives who mistake incivility for independence, thereby lowering their fellow-citizens in the esteem of mankind.
I could quote many instances of what I mean, but one will suffice. An eminent Withington butcher, having delivered meat of exceptional toughness, my wife remonstrated with him about it, when he blurted out, “Nay, missis, it’s not my meat—if anything’s wrong, more laikely it’s your teeth.”
It is this kind of greeting that puzzles the softer races of the South.
And if there was one thing more than another that impressed me as having the real spirit of Manchester abiding within it, it was the lurry. I use the word lurry with the true Manchester spelling as though it were an English and not merely a Manchester word. The lurry is symbolic of the city and the dwellers within its walls. The lurry incarnate in wood and iron is a cart or wagon, what you will, a four-wheeled, oblong, flat tray, cumbersome yet capable of bearing great burdens. There is a stern largeness about its aspect, a straightness about its course—it is never at its ease in turning corners—which always suggests to me an ancient Roman origin, though there is a noble catholicity about it which is quite the reverse of Roman, for it will carry anything for money. I have seen a two-horse lurry marching slowly down Market Street bearing only a solitary blue band-box. But its chief and usual burden is a load of bales of cotton cloth. From the upper windows of narrow streets heavy pieces of cloth are flung accurately and rapidly on to the lurry waiting below, and the driver, moving withinan ace of destruction on the floor of the lurry, stacks them solidly together until the load is complete. Then when the sun shines—as it has been known to on occasions even in Portland Street—the lurry, with its two magnificent horses, strolls proudly away to station or steamer, no tarpaulin covering its snowy burden—the harvest of Lancashire—and when your stranger’s eyes follow it with admiration, you begin to learn something of the spirit and character of the city whose symbol it is. For the lurry is a carrier of goods from man to man, a four-wheeled middleman, moving in a straight, dogged, obstinate course, shoving lighter affairs aside, disputing its right to all the street even with its own municipality and their trams, caring little who goes down beneath its hoofs and wheels so long as the cotton bales and pieces arrive and are sent forth, and that the loads are pressed down and shaken together and running over, and that business is good.
And the lurry horses, like the Sunday School children, have their feast day also, which is the first of May, when, bedecked with ribbons and caparisoned in gleaming harness, they parade the streets. Who that has seen them will ever forget the splendid teams of Robert Clay, the bleacher, as they swing round into Albert Square on a sunny first of May and gladden the hearts of Manchester man, woman and child, with a vision of strength and wealth and beauty and business?
For the first idea of Manchester is business, and thesecond idea of Manchester is business, and the seventy times seventh idea of Manchester is business, and the outward and visible sign of the Manchester idea is a lurry laden with cotton cloth. And had I had a hand in the emblazoning of a coat of arms, instead of a beehive—whose denizens are, after all, but a dull set of socialist fellows, fond of rural pursuits and little embued with the Manchester ideals—I would have set aside thatterrestrial globe semée of bees volant on a wreath of the colours, and instituted a lurry—notrampantorcourant, butpassant—day and night constantly and eternallypassant, until the last Manchester contract is fulfilled and the last load of cotton goods is delivered.
I do not say I learned all this about Manchester in one Whit-week. On the contrary, it took me a quarter of a century to find out what little I have learned, and even now I recognise that I am only outside the veil of a great mystery. For the heart and life and being of Manchester and its surroundings is a human study worthy of a sane and honest philosopher, if such a one exist, and I am only attempting to set down a few traveller’s notes, as it were.
Now, at first, no Courts were sitting, and I sat in my chambers, which were up two flights of stairs in 41, John Dalton Street—where I remained even in the days of my prosperity—and there I settled to work on my edition of Dorothy Osborne’s letters, and only heard the blurred rattle of the lurries over the stone setts through the double windows whichall Manchester offices must have to preserve the sense of hearing of their inmates.
And though I think it is a good thing for the fledgling barrister to write a book of some sort, so that he may have an occupation to keep him in his chambers, and be there ready to greet that first great cause which is going to bring him fame or fortune, yet he should never miss a meet of the profession at sessions or assizes, even though he is well aware he is merely going to sit at the receipt of a custom that is not there.
The Manchester Assize Courts, where most of our local courts were held, are very handsome and convenient buildings. Any other city but Manchester would have approached them through something better than a slum. But there is not a single entrance into Manchester that can be described as either comely or decent. The individual public buildings of Manchester are, many of them, of exceptional beauty. How fine the Town Hall would look—if it were washed! The streets of Manchester are by no means badly cleansed. Why should Manchester wash her feet and not wash her face? Why should Manchester fail to appreciate what other cities of Europe seem to understand, that you do not only want fine buildings, but worthy roads and streets to see them as you approach? It is the approach shot that Manchester has to learn in architecture.
I shall never forget my first walk down Strangeways towards the Courts, and the despair that entered into my soul as I thought of the Embankmentand my beloved Temple, with its pure fountain and its memories of Tom Pinch and Ruth. How dismally I compared these with the filthy, black, oily river, the grimy cathedral, the ancient four-wheeled cabs, and their miserable horses bending their knees and drooping their heads as if in worship of the graven image of Oliver Cromwell, and then a plunge underneath clanging railway bridges and along a mean Yiddish street, to encounter a glad surprise when the glorious vista of the Law Courts swam into my ken. As a practical joke upon the stranger within your gates—excellent! As a piece of municipal town planning—rotten!
But if I seem to dwell too much on the deficiencies of Manchester as a great city, it is only because I am trying to recall as honestly as I can the first impression it made upon my little Cockney mind, for to-day when I return to its flags and setts I pace them with as much of the pride of a real citizen as my modesty will allow. And though the outward aspect of the streets was somewhat forbidding, the kind-heartedness of the inhabitants was soon made manifest. It was a wild venture I had made, but I had one introduction that I presented without delay, and that was addressed to Mr. C. P. Scott, of theManchester Guardian. Of all Manchester people Mr. and Mrs. Scott had the true Manchester instinct of hospitality. It did not matter that the people introduced were young, unimportant and of no account, that made it the more necessary to entertain them and introduce them to others. It wasnot many weeks therefore before dining at Mr. Scott’s we met his chief assistant editor, W. T. Arnold.
The world knows Arnold as a writer and historian. I can only speak of him as a kind friend and my master in journalism. That I should ever have commenced journalism at all in Manchester rested in the main on one of those accidental foundations upon which the world seems mainly to be built.
At that first dinner-party at Mr. Scott’s house my wife went in with Mr. Arnold. I can remember the occasion well because the whole idea of the gathering was so new to me. For instance, in London if you dined with a judge there were leaders of the Bar, a dull stranger and two old solicitors who had briefed the judge in earlier days. If you dined with an artist there were patrons, and if possible a critic. If you dined with a professor, it was all professors, if with a doctor, all doctors. But here were barristers, journalists, specialist doctors, members of Parliament and merchants all round one table, and the talk never degenerated into any one special “shop.” Manchester is exactly the right size for a dinner-party, and there are enough of all sorts and conditions of workers in it to bring together a really interesting company. Moreover Manchester knows how to entertain. It happened, then, that my wife began to talk to Mr. Arnold about the Seine. We had had a very interesting trip up the river that summer with an artist friend, taking over a half-outrigged boat from Oxford, starting from Caudebec and rowing up to Paris, camping outen route. Arnoldwas enthusiastic about France and all things French. Moreover he knew Les Andelys and Chateau Gaillard and Pont de l’Arche. I think my wife claimed that we were the first English folk to row up the Seine, except, of course, Molloy and his four on French rivers—for had we not camped on the Ile St. Georges below Rouen where they were wrecked, and learned all about their adventures from Madame, the grandmother of the farm.
But Arnold was sure that he had read something recently about it—he remembered he had cut it out—it was in thePall Mall.
“That was our trip,” replied my wife.
Arnold bunched up his black eyebrows and had a good look at me across the table. After dinner he said in that off-hand, desultory way that hindered him getting to the hearts of some Manchester men—Oxford has its drawbacks, after all—
“Do you care to write for theManchester Guardianoccasionally?”
Did I care to write? What a question to ask a young man with a wife and daughter and rent and taxes and no hope of an old age pension.
The bargain was struck, and the next week I commenced dramatic critic. Arnold approved, and I remained.
I never caught theManchester Guardianmanner, and I know I was too enthusiastic and unacademic, but I wrote on all sorts of subjects, and shall always remember the kindness of Arnold, who was my immediate chief, and all the staff, from the highestto the lowest. Generally Arnold’s blue pencil was rightly wielded, but now and again, of course, enthusiasm scored.
I remember among a lot of books to review I had singled out the “Auld Licht Idylls,” by J. M. Barrie. I am glad to say for my reputation as a reviewer that it captured me and I enthused. I came into Arnold’s room in the office after the theatre. I can see him now, sitting wearily in the midst of proofs and papers. He looked up at me as I entered with an amused smile—he regarded me, I think, as an irrepressible, journalistic infant.
“That Scots’ book, you know,” he said, pulling out a proof—“Walter Scott and Bret Harte and Mark Twain rolled into one. Really, Parry, when will you grow up?”
I defended my point of view earnestly, and after listening a while he shrugged his shoulders, saying, “Good night; it’s not badly written—except for the adjectives. I’ll see to it.” He did see to it—with the blue pencil. For Arnold did not believe with the moderns in discovering a new literary genius once a week and canonizing him on the spot. He was a high priest of letters, and his literary saints had to be thoroughly tested in the pure fires of his critical insight before they were consecrated. But months afterwards he was just enough to say as I brought him in a theatre notice, “By the way, Parry, that Scots’ book. I’ve read it. We might have left in all that about Mark Twain and Bret Harte—and even Scott. But mind you don’t doit again; you won’t find another Barrie in a hurry.”
I have not; nor indeed have I found another Arnold, so patient, cynical, learned and full of kindliness to those who worked under him. He was indeed a great loss to Manchester and the English Press. He too was, like myself, a stranger within the gates. He came to Manchester in 1879 from Oxford, where I think he had been a coach, and he had certainly brought from Oxford the best she has to give. For nearly twenty years he was a hard-working journalist, but he never lost his love of scholarship, and he was a scholar without pedantry. In his old-world house in Nelson Street, the site of which is now, I think, covered by the Infirmary buildings, he loved to greet newcomers and cheer them on their path with good-humoured, sane and helpful thoughts. He knew the best of Manchester, for he, too, loved to explore on foot or a wheel the moors and lanes and woodlands which lie within such tempting adjacence to the city. “I see him,” writes one who knew him best, “alert and vigorous, his broad shoulders somewhat over-weighted by the strong intellectual head, his dark eyes full of fun and affection.” The picture is by a great artist, and it cannot be bettered.
The stage lost a real friend in Arnold. His criticisms were not the fretful, carping essays of the moderns. He had the capacity to do common-place work earnestly, and gave of his best to the task of every day. Moreover, he loved good acting, and knewit when he saw it, and was catholic in his tastes. Like all men, he had his mannerisms. As he said of himself, “It is the pedagogue in me which needs subduing,” and in the main he kept it under. Yet I think I could trace his unsigned writings in the Press by his love of a French phrase. The French were always with him, and in season and occasionally out of season, like the great Mr. Wegg, he dropped into French. Some of these adjectives were well chosen. Thus Irving’s humour in the grave-digger’s scene wasmacabre; Pinero understood the use of themot de la situation; and the English opinion of the French classical writers wassangrenu—I have but a hazy notion of the meaning of the word, still it sounds satisfying. These words are expressive, but on occasion he would, to show he was a mortal journalist, descend todéclasséandtour de forcelike the lower infusoria of the reporter’s room.
I remember in his French enthusiasm he gave me to read a criticism in a French paper—by Sarcey, I fancy. “Why cannot we do work like that? Why can’t that be done in England?” he asked.
“I think it might be,” I replied. “Indeed, under proper conditions, I think I could do it myself. All I should want is the same conditions as the French fellow—half the first sheet of theManchester Guardianonce a week to print my criticisms on, and, of course, Sarcey’s salary, and my name at the bottom of the page.”
The ribaldry of demanding half the first page of theGuardianfor anything but advertisements wastoo much for Arnold, and the gathering rebuke of flippancy dissolved in laughter.
Arnold was disabled at forty-four and died in 1904, at the age of fifty-two. Bravely and unselfishly he bore his weary years of sickness, using every available hour for scholarship and study. I last saw him in Manchester some time before his death. He was then very weak and ill and in great pain; but I remember this of it at least with pleasure, that when I came to say farewell at his bedside the word he whispered, at which I proudly caught, was “friend.”
And it was through the kindness of Mrs. Scott, too, that Miss Gaskell and her sister became aware of our existence and collected us into their fold, so that whenever some actor or doctor or artist or musician or writer or thinker came to Manchester there was an invitation to meet him or her at their historic house in Plymouth Grove. It is hard to say whether these pleasant dinner-parties were more refreshing to the body or the soul. One reads of the Parisiansalonsof the reign of Louis XV., but one cannot believe that the privilege of attending Madame Geoffrin or Madame Necker could be compared to the honour of an invitation to Plymouth Grove. Art, literature, music, and drama were impersonated by the greatest artists, though they were not there as lions to gaze at, but rather as friends of the home. The hospitality and elegance of the entertainment would have been a happy memory for Lord Guloseton himself, and as he came away he would have sheathed his silver weaponswith content. Though these were things other houses could give you, the real treasure casketed in the shrine of Plymouth Grove was the homely welcome which great and small received from the high priestesses. It was asalonof Louis XV. conceived in the spirit of Cranford.
And if, as we are promised, there are to be many mansions in the realms above, I trust it is not impious to hope that one will be situated in some Elysian Plymouth Grove, exact in every detail to the dear original. For it must have the same semi-circular drive approaching its old-fashioned portico, and the steps must be a trifle steep by which you reach the shuttered door, and I must be permitted to be young again, unknown and obscure, and to drive up in a heavenly hired four-wheeled cab, so that when the door is opened by some neat angel maid-servant I may feel fully again the honour that is done me. Everything must be in its place in the beloved drawing-room, for each book and picture, and piece of furniture had its own welcome for you, and though, of course, I should like to meet the shade of Charlotte Brontë as well as some of those noted men and women who were visitors in my day, yet all I shall really wish for is the Manchester welcome the good ladies gave me twenty-five years ago. For if heaven is to be a success, there must be kind hostesses to welcome shy, awkward, unknown, youthful persons like myself, and make us at ease and at home in the presence of the great ones. And though I write this as a nonsense dream, I do it because I findit easier to express truth in that form. And it is certainly true that the good ladies of Plymouth Grove made Manchester for me and mine as they did for so many toilers of all degrees, a holier and better place.
Falkner Blair was another kind friend who discovered me when I first went to Manchester, and helped by his kindly greeting to make its skies blue for me and its sun to shine on me. He was the leader among those juniors who practised mainly in the Crown Court, and was afterwards a judge in India. He and Arnold were good friends, though they had little but Oxford in common—Oxford has its advantages—and Blair called Arnold “the Don” and Arnold nicknamed Blair “the Agreeable Rattle.”
For I remember feeling very lonely wandering about the Courts in those early days, when Falkner Blair came up to me and said, “Is your name Parry? Well, come up and take the dogs for a walk and have some dinner.” It appeared I had met some relations of his, but any pretext was good enough for Blair to open his house to a newcomer and see what he was like, and he was a real friend to his juniors.
Blair was a great character. He was a fine cross-examiner, an eloquent speaker, and a better lawyer than many supposed, but he was undoubtedly indolent. Full of fads and enthusiasm, he was an excellent talker, the remains of a classical billiard player, a most redoubtable gourmet, and a great lover of dogs. The three collies of those days,Bruce, Vixen, and Luath, were well known in the neighbourhood and greatly admired by the “doggy.”
Blair had a ready wit. I remember him escorting some ladies round the law courts during the luncheon hour when they came across the antique spears of the javelin men piled in a corner of the corridor outside the judges’ room. “Whatever are those used for?” asked a lady, gazing at them admiringly.
“Those, my dear madam,” said Blair with prompt decision, “are used by the Judge in the Crown Court when he charges the grand jury.”
The ladies looked at them with reverent awe and shuddered.
Just as I was beginning to do a little work I was invalided, and the doctor wanted me to go to the Riviera in January. As I could afford neither time nor money for this I decided on Barmouth. I was very depressed about having to go away, and, meeting Blair, told him my trouble. He was overjoyed. There was nothing doing, and he and Mrs. Blair and the dogs would join us. He would go ahead and get rooms with his friend Mrs. Davis, at the Cors-y-gedol. I wonder how many remember that fine portrait of the dear old lady that her son-in-law, Phil Morris, R.A., painted.
Blair in an hotel became a kind of proprietor of it and chief guest rolled into one. The first night we were nearly all awakened by a horrible noise of clashing bells. It ought to have been a fire, but nothing had happened, we were told. What reallyoccurred Blair explained at breakfast without a notion that there was any reason for apology or regret.
“I sat up till about half-past twelve, and went up to bed and said, ‘Where’s Vixen?’”—the beloved dogs always slept with him. “There was no Vixen. I went downstairs and looked everywhere, and then heard poor Vixen whining outside the front door. I tried to undo the chains and things, but couldn’t manage it, and couldn’t find a soul about, and there was the poor dog whining outside. Luckily”—what an adverb to choose—“luckily I found a broom lying about, so I just swept the row of bells in the passage backwards and forwards until quite a lot of people came, and we let the poor dog in.”
The late Bishop of St. Asaph, who had come for the rest cure, left the next morning, but Mrs. Davis only laughed. If Blair was in an hotel it mattered not who came or went.
Blair was full of hygienic fads, and one of them was a very huge sponge, which was placed on the window-sill of his second floor bedroom, and much admired by passers-by in the street. Blair would discourse at length on the properties of the sponge, and how it soaked in ozone all day and gave it forth in the morning tub. One afternoon we were standing at our sitting-room window, which was directly beneath his bedroom, and Blair called our attention to two little dogs having a tug-of-war in the street with what looked like a long rope. Blair cheeredon the smaller dog, leaning out of the window and shouting, “Go it, little ’un! Two to one on the black one. Stick to it! Stick at it! Hurrah! No! What! Good heavens! It’s my sponge.” The next we saw was Blair with an umbrella separating the combatants and swearing vigorously. The hygienic properties of the rescued morsels were never afterwards referred to.
I learned in that visit the wonderful qualities of Welsh air. I came down scarcely able to walk from the hotel to the station; I finished up in a fortnight with more than a twenty-mile tramp. Blair was a great hill walker, and knew Wales and the Lake District in and out. The younger generation of Manchester will find as they grow old that they have lost many of the pleasures of memory which might have been theirs, because they have spent their holiday hours on crowded tees and in arid bunkers when they might have been learning something of what Coleridge meant when he wrote of
“The power, the beauty and the majestyThat had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,Or forest, by slow stream or pebbly spring,Or chasms and watery depths.”
“The power, the beauty and the majestyThat had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,Or forest, by slow stream or pebbly spring,Or chasms and watery depths.”
“The power, the beauty and the majesty
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,
Or forest, by slow stream or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths.”
For these things are to be found in Yorkshire and Derbyshire and Cumberland, and, of all places, in Wild Wales. And one who has lived a quarter of a century in Manchester and made good use of his time can at least say this in its favour with all truth and honesty, that it is the best city in the United Kingdom to get away from.