Transcriber’s Notes:
The spelling, hyphenation, punctuation and accentuation are as the
original, except for apparent typographical errors which have been
corrected.
Italic text is denoted _thus_.
Bold text is denoted =thus=.
MRS. BANKS’S NOVELS.
THE MANCHESTER MAN.
[Illustration: THE FIGHT IN THE COLLEGE YARD.]
THE MANCHESTER MAN.
BY
MRS. G. LINNÆUS BANKS.
_Author of “God’s Providence House, Glory,” &c._
Tenth Edition.
[Illustration: OLD MARKET STREET.]
Manchester:
ABEL HEYWOOD & SON, 56 & 58, OLDHAM STREET,
London:
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LIMITED.
STATIONERS’ HALL COURT.
1897.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER. PAGE.
I. The Flood 1
II. No One Knows 7
III. How the Rev. Joshua Brookes and Simon Clegg interpreted
a Shakesperian Text 14
IV. Mischief 22
V. Ellen Chadwick 28
VI. To Martial Music 36
VII. The Reverend Joshua Brookes 43
VIII. The Blue-Coat School 49
IX. The Snake 56
X. First Antagonism 64
XI. The Blue-Coat Boy 71
XII. The Gentleman 80
XIII. Simon’s Pupil 85
XIV. Jabez goes out into the World 91
XV. Apprenticeship 98
XVI. In War and Peace 105
XVII. In the Warehouse 113
XVIII. Easter Monday 121
XIX. Peterloo 128
XX. Action and Reaction 139
XXI. Wounded 146
XXII. Mr. Clegg 153
XXIII. In the Theatre Royal 161
XXIV. Madame Broadbent’s Fan 166
XXV. Retrospective 173
XXVI. On the Portico Steps 181
XXVII. Manhood 188
XXVIII. Once in a Life 194
XXIX. On Ardwick Green Pond 201
XXX. Blind 210
XXXI. Coronation Day 217
XXXII. Evening: Indoors and Out 225
XXXIII. Clogs 233
XXXIV. Birds of a Feather 240
XXXV. At Carr Cottage 246
XXXVI. The Lover’s Walk 254
XXXVII. A Ride on a Rainy Night 262
XXXVIII. Defeated 269
XXXIX. Like Father, Like Son 276
XL. With all His Faults 283
XLI. Marriage 290
XLII. Blows 298
XLIII. Partnership 307
XLIV. Man and Beast 316
XLV. Wounds Inflicted and Endured 325
XLVI. The Mower with His Scythe 333
XLVII. The Last Act 340
THE MANCHESTER MAN.
CHAPTER THE FIRST.[1]
THE FLOOD.
When Pliny lost his life, and Herculaneum was buried, Manchester was
born. Whilst lava and ashes blotted from sight and memory fair and
luxurious Roman cities close to the Capitol, the Roman soldiery of
Titus, under their general Agricola, laid the foundations of a distant
city which now competes with the great cities of the world. Where now
rise forests of tall chimneys, and the hum of whirling spindles, spread
the dense woods of Arden; and from the clearing in their midst rose
the Roman castrum of Mamutium,[2] which has left its name of Castle
Field as a memorial to us. But where their summer camp is said to have
been pitched, on the airy rock at the confluence of the rivers Irk and
Irwell, sacred church and peaceful college have stood for centuries,
and only antiquaries can point to Roman possession, or even to the
baronial hall which the Saxon lord perched there for security.
And only an antiquary or a very old inhabitant can recall Manchester
as it was at the close of the last century, and shutting his eyes upon
railway-arch, station, and esplanade, upon Palatine buildings, broad
roadways, and river embankments, can see the Irk and the Irwell as they
were when the Cathedral was the Collegiate Church, with a diminutive
brick wall round its ancient graveyard. Then the irregular-fronted rows
of quaint old houses which still, under the name of Half Street, crowd
upon two sides of the churchyard, with only an intervening strip of a
flagged walk between, closed it up on a third side, and shut the river
(lying low beneath) from the view, with a huddled mass of still older
dwellings, some of which were thrust out of sight, and were only to be
reached by flights of break-neck steps of rock or stone, and like their
hoary fellows creeping down the narrow roadway of Hunt’s Bank, overhung
the Irwell, and threatened to topple into it some day.
The Chetham Hospital or College still looks solidly down on the Irk
at the angle of the streams; the old Grammar School has been suffered
to do the same; and—thanks to the honest workmen who built for our
ancestors—the long lines of houses known as Long Millgate are for the
most part standing, and on the river side have resisted the frequent
floods of centuries.
In 1799 that line was almost unbroken, from the College (where it
commenced at Hunt’s Bank Bridge) to Red Bank. The little alley by the
Town Mill, called Mill-brow, which led down to the wooden Mill Bridge,
was little more of a gap than those narrow entries or passages which
pierced the walls like slits here and there, and offered dark and
perilous passage to courts and alleys, trending in steep incline to the
very bed of the Irk. The houses themselves had been good originally,
and were thus cramped together for defence in perilous times, when
experience taught that a narrow gorge was easier held against warlike
odds than an open roadway.
Ducie Bridge had then no existence, but Tanners’ Bridge—no doubt a
strong wooden structure like that at Mill-brow—accessible from the
street only by one of those narrow steep passages, stood within a few
yards of its site, and had a place on old maps so far back as 1650.
Its name is expressive, and goes to prove that the tannery on the
steep banks of the Irk, behind the houses of Long Millgate opposite to
the end of Miller’s Lane, was a tannery at least a century and a half
before old Simon Clegg worked amongst the tan-pits, and called William
Clough master.
To this sinuous and picturesque line of houses, the streams with
their rocky and precipitous banks will have served in olden times as
a natural defensive moat (indeed it is noticeable that old Manchester
kept pretty much within the angle of its rivers), and in 1799, from
one end of Millgate to the other, the dwellers by the waterside looked
across the stream on green and undulating uplands, intersected by
luxuriant hedgerows, a bleachery at Walker’s Croft, and a short terrace
of houses near Scotland Bridge, denominated Scotland, being the sole
breaks in the verdure.
Between the tannery and Scotland Bridge, the river makes a sharp bend;
and here, at the elbow, another mill, with its corresponding dam, was
situated. The current of the Irk, if not deep, is strong at all times,
though kept by its high banks within narrow compass. But when, as is
not unseldom the case, there is a sudden flushing of water from the
hill-country, it rises, rises, rises, stealthily, though swiftly, till
the stream overtops its banks, washes over low-lying bleach-crofts,
fields, and gardens, mounts foot by foot over the fertile slopes,
invades the houses, and, like a mountain-robber sweeping from his
fastness on a peaceful vale, carries his spoil with him, and leaves
desolation and wailing behind.
Such a flood as this, following a heavy thunder-storm, devastated the
valley of the Irk, on the 17th of August, 1799.
Well was it then for the tannery and those houses on the bank of the
Irk which had their foundations in the solid rock, for the waters
surged and roared at their base and over pleasant meadows—a wide-spread
turbulent sea, with here and there an island of refuge, which the day
before had been a lofty mound.
The flood of the previous Autumn, when a coach and horses had been
swept down the Irwell, and men and women were drowned, was as nothing
to this. The tannery yard, high as it was above the bed of the Irk, and
solid as was its embankment, was threatened with invasion. The surging
water roared and beat against its masonry, and licked its coping with
frothy tongue and lip, like a hungry giant, greedy for fresh food. Men
with thick clogs and hide-bound legs, leathern gloves and aprons, were
hurrying to and fro with barrows and bark-boxes for the reception of
the valuable hides which their mates, armed with long-shafted hooks and
tongs, were dragging from the pits pell-mell, ere the advancing waters
should encroach upon their territory, and empty the tan-pits for them.
Already the insatiate flood bore testimony to its ruthless greed. Hanks
of yarn, pieces of calico, hay, uptorn bushes, planks, chairs, boxes,
dog-kennels, and hen-coops, a shattered chest of drawers, pots and
pans, had swept past, swirling and eddying in the flood, which by this
time spread like a vast lake over the opposite lands, and had risen
within three feet of the arch of Scotland Bridge, and hardly left a
trace where the mill-dam chafed it commonly.
Too busy were the tanners, under the eye of their master, to stretch
out hand or hook to arrest the progress of either furniture or live
stock, though beehives and hen-coops, and more than one squealing
pig, went racing with the current, now rising towards the footway of
Tanner’s Bridge.
Every window of every house upon the banks was crowded with anxious
heads, for flooded Scotland rose like an island from the watery waste,
and their own cellars were fast filling. There had been voices calling
to each other from window to window all the morning; but now from
window to window, from house to house, rang one reduplicated shriek,
which caused many of the busy tanners to quit their work, and rush to
the water’s edge. To their horror, a painted wooden cradle, which had
crossed the deeply-submerged dam in safety, was floating foot-foremost
down to destruction, with an infant calmly sleeping in its bed; the
very motion of the waters having seemingly lulled it to sounder repose!
“Good Lord! It’s a choilt!” exclaimed Simon Clegg, the eldest tanner in
the yard. “Lend a hand here, fur the sake o’ th’ childer at whoam.”
Half a dozen hooks and plungers were outstretched, even while he spoke;
but the longest was lamentably too short to arrest the approaching
cradle in its course, and the unconscious babe seemed doomed. With
frantic haste Simon Clegg rushed on to Tanner’s Bridge, followed by
a boy; and there, with hook and plunger, they met the cradle as it
drifted towards them, afraid of over-balancing it even in their attempt
to save. It swerved, and almost upset; but Simon dexterously caught his
hook within the wooden hood, and drew the frail bark and its living
freight close to the bridge. The boy, and a man named Cooper, lying
flat on the bridge, then clutched at it with extended hands, raised it
carefully from the turbid water, and drew it safely between the open
rails to the footway, amidst the shouts and hurrahs of breathless and
excited spectators.
The babe was screaming terribly. The shock when the first hook stopped
the progress of the cradle had disturbed its dreams, and its little fat
arms were stretched out piteously as strange faces looked down upon it
instead of the mother’s familiar countenance. Wrapping the patchwork
quilt around it to keep it from contact with his wet sleeves and apron,
Simon tenderly as a woman, lifted the infant in his rough arms, and
strove to comfort it, but in vain. His beard of three days growth was
as a rasp to its soft skin, and the closer he caressed, the more it
screamed. The men from the tannery came crowding round him.
“What dost ta mean to do wi’ th’ babby?” asked the man Cooper of old
Simon. “Aw’d tak’ it whoam to my missis, but th’ owd lass is nowt to
be takken to, an’ wur cross as two sticks when oi only axed fur mi
baggin to bring to wark wi’ mi this mornin’,” added he, with rueful
remembrance of the scolding wife on his hearth.
“Neay, lad, aw’ll not trust th’ poor choilt to thy Sally. It ’ud be
loike chuckin’ it out o’ th’ wayter into th’ fire (Hush-a-by, babby).
Aw’ll just take it to ar’ Bess, and hoo’ll cuddle it up, and gi’ it
summat to sup, till we find its own mammy,” answered Simon, leaving the
bridge. “Bring the kayther[3] alung, Jack,” (to the boy) “Bess’ll want
it. We’n noan o’ that tackle at ar place. Hush-a-by, hush-a-by, babby.”
But the little thing, missing its natural protector, and half
stifled in the swathing quilt, only screamed the louder; and Simon,
notwithstanding his kind heart, was truly glad when his daughter Bess,
who had witnessed the rescue from their own window, met him at the
tannery gate, and relieved him of his struggling charge.
“Si thi, Bess! here’s a God-send fur thi—a poor little babby fur thi to
tend an’ be koind to, till them it belungs to come a-seekin’ fur it,”
said he to the young woman; “but thah mun give it summat better than
cowd wayter—it’s had too mich o’ that a’ready.”
“That aw will, poor darlin’!” responded she, kissing the babe’s velvet
cheeks as, sensible of a change of nurses, it nestled to her breast.
“Eh! but there’ll be sore hearts for this blessed babby, somewheere.”
And she turned up the narrow passage which led at once from the
tan-yard and the bridge, stilling and soothing the little castaway as
adroitly as an experienced nurse.
“Neaw, luk thi, lad,” Simon remarked to Cooper; “is na it fair
wonderful heaw that babby taks to ar Bess? But it’s just a way hoo has,
an’ theere is na a fractious choilt i’ a’ ar yard but’ll be quiet wi’
Bess.”
Cooper looked after her, nodded an assent, and sighed, as if he wished
some one in another yard had the same soothing way with her.
But the voice of the raging water had not stilled like that of the
rescued infant. Back went the two men to their task, and worked away
with a will to carry hides, bark and implements to places of security.
And as they hurried to and fro with loads on back or barrow, up, up,
inch by inch, foot by foot, the swelling flood rose still higher,
till, lapping the foot-bridge, curling over the embankment, it drove
the sturdy tanners back, flung itself into the pits, and, in many a
swirling eddy, washed tan and hair and skins into the common current.
Not so much, however, went into its seething caldron as might have
been, had the men worked with less vigour; and, quick to recognise the
value of ready service, Mr. Clough led his drenched and weary workmen
to the “Skinner’s Arms,” in Long Millgate, and ordered a supply of ale
and bread and cheese to be served out to them.
At the door of the public-house, where he left the workmen to the
enjoyment of this impromptu feast, he encountered Simon Clegg. The kind
fellow had taken a hasty run to his own tenement, “just to see heaw ar
Bess an’ th’ babby get on;” and he brought back the intelligence that
it was “a lad, an’ as good as goold.”
“Oh, my man, I’ve been too much occupied to speak to you before,” cried
Mr. Clough. “I saw you foremost in the rescue of that unfortunate
infant, and shall not forget it. Here is a crown for your share in the
good deed. I suppose that was the child’s mother you gave it to?”
Simon was a little man, but he drew back with considerable native
dignity.
“Thenk yo’, measter, all th’ same, but aw connot tak’ brass fur just
doin’ my duty. Aw’d never ha slept i’ my bed gin that little un had bin
dreawned, an’ me lookin’ on loike a stump. Neay; that lass wur Bess,
moi wench. We’n no notion wheer th’ lad’s mother is.”
Mr. Clough would have pressed the money upon him, but he put it back
with a motion of his hand.
“No, sir; aw’m a poor mon, a varry poor mon, but aw connot tak’ money
fur savin’ a choilt’s life. It’s agen’ mi conscience. I’ll tak’ mi
share o’ the bread an’ cheese, an’ drink yo’r health i’ a sup o’ ale,
but aw cudna’ tak’ that brass if aw wur deein’.”
And Simon, giving a scrape with his clog, and a duck of his head, meant
for a bow, passed his master respectfully, and went clattering up the
steps of the “Skinners’ Arms,” leaving the gentleman standing there,
and looking after him in mingled astonishment and admiration.
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
NO ONE KNOWS.
When the scurrying water, thick with sand and mud, and discoloured with
dye stuffs, which floated in brightly-tinted patches on its surface,
filled the arch of Scotland Bridge, and left only the rails of Tanners’
Bridge visible, the inundation reached its climax; but a couple of days
elapsed before the flood subsided below the level of the unprotected
tannery-yard, and until then neither Simon Clegg nor his mates could
resume their occupations.
There was a good deal of lounging about Long Millgate and the doors of
the “Queen Anne” and “Skinners’ Arms,” of heavily-shod men, in rough
garniture of thick hide—armoury against the tan and water in which
their daily bread was steeped.
But in all those two days no anxious father, no white-faced mother,
had run from street to street, and house to house, to seek and claim a
rescued living child. No, not even when the week had passed, though the
story of his “miraculous preservation” was the theme of conversation at
the tea-tables of gentility and in the bar-parlours of taverns; was the
gossip of courts and alleys, highways and byways; and though echo, in
the guise of a “flying stationer,” caught it up and spread it broadcast
in catchpenny sheets, far beyond the confines of the inundation.
This was the more surprising as no dead bodies had been washed down the
river, and no lives were reported “lost.” Had the child no one to care
for it?—no relative to whom its little life was precious? Had it been
abandoned to its fate, a waif unloved, uncared for?
The house in which Simon Clegg lived was situated at the very end
of Skinners’ Yard, a _cul-de-sac_, to which the only approach was a
dark covered entry, not four feet wide. The pavement of the yard was
natural rock, originally hewn into broad flat steps, but then worn
with water from the skies, and from house-wifely pails, and the tramp
of countless clogs, to a rugged steep incline, asking wary stepping
from the stranger on exploration after nightfall. Gas was, of course,
unknown, but not even an oil-lamp lit up the gloom.
In the sunken basement a tripe-boiler had a number of stone troughs
or cisterns, for keeping his commodities cool for sale. The three
rooms of Simon Clegg were situated immediately above these, two small
bed-rooms overlooking the river and pleasant green fields beyond; the
wide kitchen window having no broader range of prospect than the dreary
and not too savoury yard. Even this view was shut out by a batting
frame, resembling much a long, narrow French bedstead, all the more
that on it was laid a thick bed of raw (that is, undressed) cotton,
freckled with seeds and fine bits of husky pod. Bess was a batter, and
her business was to turn and beat the clotted mass with stout lithe
arms and willow-wands, until the fibres loosened, the seeds and specks
fell through, and a billowy mass of whitish down lay before her. It was
not a healthy occupation: dust and flue released found their way into
the lungs, as well as on to the floor and furniture; and a rosy-cheeked
batter was a myth. Machinery does the work now—but this history deals
with _then_!
During the week dust lay thick on everything; even Bessy’s hair was
fluffy as a bursting cotton pod, in spite of the kerchief tied across
it; but on the Saturday, when she had carried her work to Simpson’s
factory in Miller’s Lane, and came back with her wages, broom and
duster cleared away the film; wax and brush polished up the oak bureau,
the pride and glory of their kitchen; the two slim iron candlesticks,
fender and poker were burnished bright as steel; the three-legged round
deal table was scrubbed white; and then, mounted on tall pattens, she
set about with mop and pail, and a long-handled stone, to cleanse the
flag floor from the week’s impurities.
She had had a good mother, and, to the best of her ability, Bess tried
to follow in her footsteps, and fill the vacant place on her father’s
hearth, and in his heart. Her mother had been dead four years, and
Bess, now close upon twenty, had since then lost two brothers, and
lamented as lost one dearer than a brother—the two former by death, the
other by the fierce demands of war. She had a pale, interesting face,
with dark hair and thoughtful, deep grey eyes, and was, if anything,
too quiet and staid for her years; but when her face lit up she had as
pleasant a smile upon it as one would wish to see by one’s fireside,
and not even her dialect could make her voice otherwise than low and
gentle.
Both her brothers had been considerably younger than herself; and
possibly the fact of having stood _in loco parentis_ to them for
upwards of two years had imparted to her the air of motherliness she
possessed. Certain it is that if a child in the yard scalded itself, or
cut a finger, or knocked the bark off an angular limb, it went crying
to Bessy Clegg in preference to its own mother; and she healed bruises
and quarrels with the same balsam—loving sympathy. She was just the one
to open her arms and heart to a poor motherless babe, and Simon Clegg
knew it.
Old Simon, or old Clegg, he was called, probably because he was graver
and more serious than his fellows, and had never changed his master
since he grew to manhood; certainly not on account of his age, which
trembled on the verge of fifty only. He was a short, somewhat spare
man, with a face deeply lined by sorrow for the loved ones he had lost.
But he had a merry twinkling eye, and was not without a latent vein of
humour. The atmosphere of the tannery might have shrivelled his skin,
but it had not withered his heart; and when he handed the child he had
saved to his daughter, he never stopped to calculate contingencies.
The boy, apparently between two and three months’ old, was dressed in
a long gown of printed linen, had a muslin cap, and an under one of
flannel, all neatly made, but neither in make nor material beyond those
of a respectable working-man’s child; and there was not a mark upon
anything which could give a clue to its parentage.
The painted wooden cradle, which had been to it an ark of safety,
was placed in a corner by the fireplace; and an old bottle, filled
with thin gruel, over the neck of which Bess had tied a loose cap
of punctured wash-leather, was so adjusted that the little one,
deprived of its mother, could lie within and feed itself whilst Bess
industriously pursued her avocations.
These were not times for idleness. There had been bread-riots the
previous winter; food still was at famine prices; and it was all a poor
man could do, with the strictest industry and economy, to obtain a bare
subsistence. So Bess worked away all the harder, because there were
times when babydom was imperative, and would be nursed.
She had put the last garnishing touches to her kitchen on Saturday
night, had taken off her wrapper-brat,[4] put on a clean blue,
bedgown,[5] and substituted a white linen cap for the coloured
kerchief, when her father, who had been to New Cross Market to make his
bargains by himself on this occasion, came into the kitchen, followed
by Cooper, who having helped to save the child, naturally felt an
interest in him.
The iron porridge-pot was on the low fire, and Bess, sifting the
oatmeal into the boiling water with the left hand, whilst with the
other she beat it swiftly with her porridge-stick, was so intent on the
preparation of their supper, she did not notice their entrance until
her father, putting his coarse wicker market-basket down on her white
table, bade Cooper “Coom in an’ tak’ a cheer.”
Instead of taking a chair, the man walked as quietly as his clogs would
let him to the cradle, and looked down on the infant sucking vigorously
at the delusive bottle. Mat Cooper was the _un_happy father of eight,
whose maintenance was a sore perplexity to him; and it may be supposed
he spoke with authority when he exclaimed—
“Whoy, he tak’s t’ th’ pap-bottle as nat’rally as if he’n ne’er had
nowt else!”
And the big man—quite a contrast to Simon—stooped and lifted the babe
from the cradle with all the ease of long practice, and dandled it in
his arms, saying as he did so,
“Let’s hey a look at th’ little chap. Aw’ve not seen the colour o’ his
eyen yet.”
The eyes were grey, so dark they might have passed for black; and there
was in them more than the ordinary inquiring gaze of babyhood.
“Well, thah’rt a pratty lad; but had thah bin th’ fowest[6] i’ o’
Lankisheer, aw’d a-thowt thi mammy’d ha’ speered[7] fur thi afore
this,” added he, sitting down, and nodding to the child, which crowed
in his face.
“Ah! one would ha’ reckoned so,” assented Bess, without turning round.
“What ar’ ta gooin’ to do, Simon, toward fandin’ th’ choilt’s kin?”
next questioned their visitor.
Simon looked puzzled
“Whoy, aw’ve hardly gi’en it a thowt.”
But the question, once started, was discussed at some length. Meanwhile
the porridge destined for two Bess poured into three bowls, placing
three iron spoons beside them, with no more ceremony than, “Ye’ll tak’
a sup wi’ us, Mat.”
Mat apologised, feeling quite assured there was no more than the
two could have eaten; but Simon looked hurt, and the porridge was
appetising to a hungry man; so he handed the baby to the young woman,
took up his spoon, and the broken thread of conversation was renewed at
intervals. What they said matters not so much as what they did.
The next morning being Sunday, Cooper called for Clegg just as the
bells were ringing for church; and the two, arrayed in their best
fustian breeches, long-tailed, deep-cuffed coats, knitted hose,
three-cornered hats, and shoes, only kept for Sunday wear, set out to
seek the parents of the unclaimed infant, nothing doubting that they
were going to carry solace to sorrowing hearts.
Their course lay in the same track as the Irk, now pursuing its course
as smilingly under the bright August sun as though its banks were
not strewed with wreck, and foul with thick offensive mud, and the
woeful devastation were none of its doing. There were fewer houses on
their route than now, and they kept close as possible to the course
of the river, questioning the various inhabitants as they went along.
They had gone through Collyhurst and Blakely without rousing anyone
to a thought beyond self-sustained damage, or gaining a single item
of intelligence, though they made many a detour in quest of it. At a
roadside public-house close to Middleton they sat down parched with
heat and thirst, called for a mug of ale each, drew from their pockets
thick hunks of brown bread and cheese, wrapped in blue and white
check handkerchiefs, and whilst satisfying their hunger, came to the
conclusion that no cradle could have drifted safely so far, crossing
weirs and mill dams amongst uprooted bushes, timber, and household
chattels and that it was best to turn back.
In Smedley Vale, where the flood seemed to have done its worst, and
where a small cottage close to the river lay in ruins, a knot of
people were gathered together talking and gesticulating as if in eager
controversy. As they approached, they were spied by one of the group.
“Here are th’ chaps as fund th’ babby, an’ want’n to know who it
belungs to,” cried he, a youth whom they had interrogated early in the
day.
To tell in brief what Simon and his companion learned by slow
degrees—the hapless child was alone in the world, orphaned by a
succession of misfortunes. The dilapidated cottage had been for some
fifteen months the home of its parents. The father, who was understood
to have come from Crumpsall with his young wife and her aged mother,
had been sent for to attend the death-bed of a brother in Liverpool,
and had never been heard of since. The alarm and trouble consequent
upon his prolonged absence prostrated the young wife and caused not
only the babe’s premature birth, but the mother’s death. The care of
the child had devolved upon the stricken grandmother, who had him
brought up by hand, as Matthew’s sagacity had suggested. She was a
woman far advanced in years, and feeble, but she asked no help from
neighbours or parish, though her poverty was apparent. She kept poultry
and knitted stockings, and managed to eke out a living somehow, but
how, none of those scattered neighbours seemed to know—she had “held
her yead so hoigh” (pursued her way so quietly).
She had been out in her garden feeding her fowls, when the flood came
upon them without warning, swept through the open doors of the cottage,
and carried cradle and everything else before it, leaving hardly a wall
standing. In endeavouring to save the child she herself got seriously
hurt, and was with difficulty rescued. But between grief and fright,
bruises and the drenching, the old dame succumbed, and died on the
Thursday morning, and had been buried by the parish—from which in life
she had proudly kept aloof—that very afternoon, and no one could tell
other name she had borne than Nan.
Bess sobbed aloud when she heard her father’s recital which lost
nothing of its pathos from the homely vernacular in which it was
couched.
“An’ what’s to be done neaw?” asked Cooper, as he sat on one of the
rush-bottomed chairs, sucking the knob of his walking-stick, as if for
an inspiration. “Yo canno’ think o’ keeping th’ choilt, an’ bread an’
meal at sich a proice!”
“Connot oi? Then aw conno’ think o’ aught else. Wouldst ha’ me chuck it
i’ th’ river agen? What dost thah say, Bess?” turning to his daughter,
who had the child on her lap.
“Whoi, th’ poor little lad’s got noather feyther nor mother, an’ thah’s
lost boath o’ thi lads. Mebbe it’s a Godsend, feyther, after o’, as yo
said’n to me,” and she kissed it tenderly.
“Eh, wench!” interposed Matthew, but she went on without heeding him.
“There’s babby clooas laid by i’ lavender i’ thoase drawers as hasna
seen dayleet sin ar Joe wur a toddler, an’ they’ll just come handy. An’
if bread’s dear an’ meal’s dear, we mun just ate less on it arsels, an’
there’ll be moore fur the choilt. He’ll pay yo back, feyther, aw know,
when yo’re too owd to wark.”
“An’ aw con do ’bout ’bacca, lass. If the orphan’s granny wur too
preawd to ax help o’ th’ parish, aw’ll be too preawd to send her pratty
grandchoilt theer.”
An so, to Matthew Cooper’s amazement, it was settled. But the extra
labour and self-denial it involved on the part of Bess, neither Matthew
nor Simon could estimate.
In the midst of the rabid scepticism and Republicanism of the period,
Simon Clegg was a staunch “Church and King” man, and, as a natural
consequence, a stout upholder of their ordinances. Regularly as the
bell tolled in for Sunday morning service, he might be seen walking
reverently down the aisle of the old church, to his place in the
free seats, with his neat, cheerful-looking daughter following him
sometimes, but not always—so regularly that the stout beadle missed him
from his seat the Sunday after the inundation, and meeting him in the
churchyard a week later, sought to learn the why and wherefore.
The beadle of the parish church was an important personage in the eyes
of Simon Clegg; and, somewhat proud of his notice, the little tanner
related the incidents of that memorable flood-week to his querist,
concluding with his adoption of the child.
The official h’md and ha’d, applauded the act, but shook his powdered
head, and added, sagely, that it was a “greeat charge, a varry greeat
charge.”
“Dun yo’ think th’ little un’s bin babtised?” interrogated the beadle.
“Aw conno’ tell; nob’dy couldn’t tell nowt abeawt th’ choilt, ’ut wur
ony use to onybody. Bess an’ me han talked it ower, an’ we wur thinkin
o’ bringin’ it to be kirsened, to be on th’ safe soide loike. Aw reckon
it wouldna do th’ choilt ony harm to be kirsened twoice ower; an’
’twoud be loike flingin’ th’ choilt’s soul to Owd Scrat gin he wur no
kirsened at o’. What dun yo’ thinken’?”
The beadle thought pretty much the same as Simon, and it was finally
arranged that Simon should present the young foundling for baptism in
the course of the week.
CHAPTER THE THIRD.[8]
HOW THE REV. JOSHUA BROOKES AND SIMON CLEGG INTERPRETED A SHAKESPERIAN
TEXT.
Manchester had at that date two eccentric clergymen attached to the
Collegiate Church. The one, Parson Gatliffe, a fine man, a polished
gentleman, an eloquent preacher, but a _bon vivant_ of whom many odd
stories are told. The other, the Reverend Joshua Brookes, a short,
stumpy man (so like to the old knave of clubs in mourning that the
sobriquet of the “Knave of Clubs” stuck to him), was a rough, crusted,
unpolished black-diamond, hasty in temper, harsh in tone, blunt in
speech and in the pulpit, but with a true heart beating under the
angular external crystals; and he was a good liver of another sort than
his colleague.
He was the son of a crippled and not too sober shoemaker, who, when
the boy’s intense desire for learning had attracted the attention and
patronage of Parson Ainscough, went to the homes of several of the
wealthy denizens of the town, to ask for pecuniary aid to send his
son Joshua to college. The youth’s scholarly attainments had already
obtained him an exhibition at the Free Grammar School, which, coupled
with the donations obtained by his father and the helping hand of
Parson Ainscough, enabled him to keep his terms and to graduate at
Brazenose, to become a master in the grammar school in which he had
been taught, and a chaplain in the Collegiate Church.
So conscientious was he in the performance of his sacred duties that,
albeit he was wont to exercise his calling after a peculiarly rough
fashion of his own, he married, christened, buried more people during
his ministry than all the other ecclesiastics put together.
It was to this Joshua Brookes (few ever thought of prefixing the
“Reverend” in referring to him) that Simon Clegg brought “Nan’s” orphan
grandchild to be baptised on Tuesday, the 7th of September, just three
weeks from the date of his involuntary voyage down the flooded Irk.
It had taken the tanner the whole of the week following his
conversation with the beadle to determine the name he should give the
child, and many had been his consultations with Bess on the subject.
That very Sunday he had gone home from church full of the matter, and
lifting his big old Bible from its post of honour on the top of the
bureau (it was his whole library), he sat, after dinner, with his
head in his hands and his elbows on the table, debating the momentous
question.
“Yo’ see, Bess,” said he, “a neame as sticks to one all one’s loife,
is noan so sma’ a matter as some folk reckon. An’ yon’s noan a common
choilt. It is na ev’ry day, no, nor ev’ry year, as a choilt is weshed
down a river in a kayther, an’ saved from th’ very jaws of deeath.[9]
An’ aw’d loike to gi’e un a neame as ’ud mak’ it remember it, an’ thenk
God for his marcifu’ preservation a’ th’ days o’ his loife.”
After a long pause, during which Bess took the baby from the cradle,
tucked a napkin under its chin, and began to feed it with a spoon, he
resumed—
“Yo’ see, Bess, hadna aw bin kirsened Simon, aw moight ha’ bin a
cobbler, or a whitster,[10] or a wayver, or owt else. But feyther could
read tho’ he couldna wroite; an’ as he wur a reed-makker, he towt mi
moi A B C wi’ crookin’ up th’ bits o’ wires he couldna use into th’
shaps o’ th’ letters; an’ when aw could spell sma’ words gradely,[11]
he towt mi to read out o’ this varry book; an’ aw read o’ Simon a
tanner, an’ nowt ’ud sarve mi but aw mun be a tanner too, so tha sees
theer’s summat i’ a neame after o’.”
Bess suggested that he should be called Noah, because Noah was saved in
the ark; but he objected that Noah was an old greybeard, with a family,
and that he knew the flood was coming, and built the ark himself; he
was not “takken unawares in his helplessness loike that poor babby.”
Moses was her next proposition—Bess had learned something of Biblical
lore at the first Sunday-school Manchester could boast, the one in Gun
Street, founded by Simeon Newton in 1788—but Simon was not satisfied
even with Moses.
“Yo’ see, Moses wur put in’ th’ ark o’ bullrushes o’ purpose, an’
noather thee nor mi’s a Pharaoh’s dowter, an’ th’ little chap’s not
loike to be browt oop i’ a pallis.”
Towards the end of the week he burst into the room; “Oi hev it, lass,
oi hev it! We’n co’ the lad ‘Irk;’ nob’dy’ll hev a neame loike that,
and it’ll tell its own story; an’ fur th’ after-neame, aw reckon he mun
tak’ ours.”
Marriages were solemnized in the richly-carved choir of the venerable
old Church, but churchings and baptisms in a large adjoining chapel;
and thither Bess, who carried the baby, was ushered, followed by Simon
and Mat Cooper, who were to act as its other sponsors.
At the door they made way for the entrance of a party of ladies, whom
they had seen alight from sedan-chairs at the upper gate, where a
couple of gentlemen joined them. A nurse followed, with a baby, whose
christening robe, nearly two yards long, was a mass of rich embroidery.
The mother herself—a slight, lovely creature, additionally pale and
delicate from her late ordeal—wore a long, plain-skirted dress of
vari-coloured brocaded silk. A lustrous silk scarf, trimmed with
costly lace, enveloped her shoulders. Her head-dress, a bonnet with a
bag-crown and Quakerish poke-brim, was of the newest fashion, as were
the long kid gloves which covered her arms to the elbows.
The party stepped forward as though precedence was theirs of right even
at the church door, heeding not Simon’s mannerly withdrawal to let them
pass; and the very nurse looked disdainfully at the calico gown of the
baby in the round arms of Bess, a woman in a grey duffel cloak and
old-fashioned flat, broad-brimmed hat.
Is there any thrill, sympathetic or antagonistic, in baby-veins, as
they thus meet there for the first time on their entrance into the
church and the broad path of life? For the first time—but scarcely for
the last.
Already a goodly crowd of mothers, babies, godfathers, and godmothers
had assembled—a crowd of all grades, judging from their exteriors, for
dress had not then ceased to be a criterion; and all ceremonies of this
kind were performed in shoals—not singly.
The Rev. Joshua Brookes, followed by his clerk, came through the door
in the carven screen, between the choir and baptismal chapel, and took
his place behind the altar rails. And now ensued a scene which some
of my readers may think incredible, but which was common enough then,
and there, and is notoriously true. The width of the altar could
scarcely accommodate the number of women waiting to be churched; and
the impatient Joshua assisted the apparitors to marshal them to their
places, with a sharp “You come here! You kneel there! Yon woman’s not
paid!” accompanied by pulls and pushes, until the semi-circle was
filled.
But still the shrinking lady, and another, unused to jostle with rough
crowds, were left standing outside the pale.
Impetuous Joshua had begun the service before all were settled.
“Forasmuch as it hath pleased——”
His quick eye caught the outstanding figures. Abruptly stopping his
exordium, he exclaimed, in his harsh tones, which seemed to intimidate
the lady,
“What are you standing there for? Can’t you find a place? Make room
here!” (pushing two women apart by the shoulder), “thrutch up closer
there! Make haste, and kneel here!” (to the lady, pulling her forward).
“You come here;—make room, will you?” and having pulled and pushed them
into place, he resumed the service.
Presently there was another outburst. There had been a hushing of
whimpering babies, and a maternal smothering of infantile cries, as a
chorus throughout; but one fractious little one screamed right out, and
refused to be comforted. The nervous tremor on that kneeling lady’s
countenance might have told to whom it belonged, had Joshua been a
skilful reader of hearts and faces. His irritable temper got the better
of him. He broke off in the midst of the psalm to call out, “stop that
crying child!” The crying child did not stop. In the midst of another
verse he bawled, “Give that screaming babby the breast!” He went on.
The clerk had pronounced the “Amen” at the end of the psalm; the
chaplain followed, “Let us pray;” but before he began the prayer, he
again shouted, “Take that squalling babby out!”—an order the indignant
nurse precipitately obeyed; and the service ended without further
interruption.
Then followed the christenings, and another marshalling (this time of
godfathers and godmothers, with the infants they presented), in which
the hasty chaplain did his part with hands and voice until all were
arranged to his satisfaction.
It so happened that the tanner’s group and the lady’s group were ranked
side by side. The latter was Mrs. Aspinall, the wife of a wealthy
cotton merchant, who, with two other gentlemen and a lady, stood behind
her, and this time gave her their much-needed support. Indeed, what
with the damp and chillness of the church, and the agitation, the
delicate lady appeared ready to faint.
“Hath this child been already baptised or no?” asked Joshua Brookes,
and was passing on, when Simon’s unexpected response arrested him.
“Aw dunnot know.”
“Don’t know? How’s that? What are you here for?” were questions huddled
one on the other, in a broader vernacular than I have thought well to
put in the mouth of a man so deeply learned.
“Whoi, yo’ see, this is the choilt as wur weshed deawn th’ river wi’
th’ flood in a kayther; an’ o’ belungin’ th’ lad are deead, an’ aw mun
kirsen him to mak’ o’ sure.”
Joshua listened with more patience than might have been expected from
him, and passed on with a mere “Humph!” to ask the same question from
each in succession, before proceeding with the general service. At
length he came to the naming of several infants.
“Henrietta Burdelia Fitzbourne,” was given as the proposed name of a
girl of middle-class parents.
“_Mary_, I baptise thee,” &c., he calmly proceeded, handed the baby
back to the astonished godmother, and passed to the next, regardless of
appeal.
Mrs. Aspinall’s boy took his name of Laurence with a noisy protest
against the sprinkling. Nor was the foundling silent when, having been
duly informed that the boy’s name was to be “_Irk_,” self-willed Joshua
deliberately, and with scarcely a visible pause, went on—
“_Jabez_, I baptise thee in the name,” &c., and so overturned at one
fell swoop, all Simon’s carefully-constructed castle.
Simon attempted to remonstrate, but Joshua Brookes had another
infant in his arms, and was deaf to all but his own business. Such a
substitution of names was too common a practice of his to disturb him
in the least. But Simon had a brave spirit, and stood no more in awe of
Joshua Brookes—“Jotty” as he was called—than of another man. When the
others had gone in a crowd to the vestry to register the baptisms, he
stopped to confront the parson as he left the altar.
“What roight had yo’ to change the neame aw chuse to gi’e that choilt?”
“What right had yo’ to saddle the poor lad with an _Irksome_ name like
that?” was the quick rejoinder.
“Roight! why, aw wanted to gi’e th’ lad a neame as should mak’ him
thankful fur bein’ saved from dreawndin’ to the last deays o’ his
loife.”
“An _Irksome_ name like that would have made him the butt of every
little imp in the gutters, until he’d have been ready to drown himself
to get rid of it. Jabez is an honourable name, man. You go home, and
look through your Bible till you find it.”
Simon was open to conviction; his bright eyes twinkled as a new light
dawned upon them.
The gruff chaplain had brushed past him on his way to the robing-room;
but he turned back, with his right hand in his breeches pocket, and put
a seven-shilling piece in the palm of the tanner, saying:
“Here’s something towards the christening feast of th’ little chap I’ve
stood godfather to. And don’t you forget to look in ‘Chronicles’ for
Jabez; and, above all, see that the lad doesn’t disgrace his name.”
Joshua Brookes had the character, among those who knew him _least_, of
loving money overmuch, and this unwonted exhibition of generosity took
Simon’s breath.
The chaplain was gone before he recovered from his amazement—gone, with
a tender heart softened towards the fatherless child thrown upon the
world, his cynicism rebuked by the true charity of the poor tanner, who
had taken the foundling to his home in a season of woeful dearth.
And, to his credit be it said, the Rev. Joshua Brookes never lost sight
of either Simon or little Jabez. He was wont to throw out words which
he meant to be in season, but his harsh, abrupt manner, as a rule,
neutralized the effect of his impromptu teachings. Now, however, the
seed was thrown in other ground; and, as he intended, Simon’s curiosity
was excited. The Bible was reverently lifted from the bureau as soon as
they reached home, and, after some seeking, the passage was found.
Simon’s reading was nothing to boast of, but Cooper could not read
at all; and in the eyes of his unlettered comrades Clegg shone as
a learned man. He could decipher “black print,” and that, in his
days, amongst his class, was a distinction. Slowly he traced his
fingers along the lines for his own information, and then still
more slowly, with a sort of rest after every word, read out to his
auditors—Bess, Matthew, and Matthew’s wife (there in her best gown and
best temper)—with slight dialectal peculiarities, which need not be
reproduced—
“And Jabez was more honourable than his brethren: and his mother called
his name Jabez, because she bare him with sorrow. And Jabez called on
the God of Israel, saying, O that thou wouldst bless me indeed, and
enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou
wouldst keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me! And God granted
him that which he requested.”[12]
“Eh, Simon, mon, owd Jotty wur woiser nor thee. Theere’s a neame fur
a lad to stand by! It’s as good as a leeapin’-pow’[13] that it is, t’
help him ower th’ brucks[14] an’ rucks[15] o’ th’ warld.”
Simon sat lost in thought. At length he raised his head, and remarked
soberly—
“Parson Brookes moight ha’ bin a prophet; th’ choilt’s mother did bear
him wi’ sorrow. The neame fits th’ lad as if it had bin meade fur him.”
“Then aw hope he’s a prophet o’ eawt, feyther, an’ o’ th’ rest’ll come
true in toime,” briskly interjected Bess; adding—“Coom, tay’s ready;”
further appending for the information of their visitors—“Madam Clough
sent the tay an’ sugar, an’ th’ big curran’-loaf, when hoo heeard as
feyther had axed for a holiday fur the kirsenin’; an’ Mester Clough’s
sen some yale [ale], an’ a thumpin’ piece o’ beef.”
“Ay, lass; an, as we’n a’ready a foine kirsenin’ feast, we’n no change
parson’s seven-shillin’ piece, but lay it oop fur th’ lad hissen.”
But the christening feast did not proceed without sundry noisy
demonstrations from Master Jabez. If, as Simon had once hinted, he was
an angel in the house, he flapped his wings and blew his trumpet pretty
noisily at times.
“Eh, lass, aw wish Tum wur here neaw, to enjoy hisself wi’ us. Aw
wonder what he’d say to see yo’ nursin’ a babby so bonnily?”
Simon was munching a huge piece of currant-cake as he uttered this,
after a meditative pause. A look of pain passed over Bessy’s face.
She rarely mentioned the absent Tom, though he was seldom out of her
thoughts.
“Yea, an’ _aw_ wish he wur here!” she echoed with a sigh, the fountain
of which was deep in her own breast. “Aw wonder where he is neaw.”
“Feightin’, mebbe!” suggested her father.
“Killed, mebbe!” was the fearful suggestion of her own heart, and she
was silent for some time afterwards.
But the feast proceeded merrily for all that, and no wonder, where
Charity was president. And there was quite as happy a party under that
humble roof in Skinners’ Yard as that assembled in the grand house
at Ardwick, where Master Laurence Aspinall was handed about in his
embroidered robes for the inspection of guests who cared very little
about him, although they did present him with silver mugs, and spoons,
and corals, and protest to his pale and exhausted mamma that he was the
finest infant in Manchester.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
MISCHIEF.
It was a time of distress at home and war abroad. Glory’s scarlet fever
was as rife an epidemic in Manchester as elsewhere. The town bristled
with bayonets; corps of volunteers in showy uniforms, on parade or
exercise, with banners flying, dotted it like spots on a peacock’s
tail; the music of drum and fife drowned the murmurs of discontented
men, the groans of poverty-stricken women, and the cries of famishing
children. All nostrums were prescribed for the evils of famine except
a stoppage of the war. The rich made sacrifices for the poor; pastry
was banished by common consent from the tables of the wealthy in order
to cheapen flour; soup-kitchens were established for the poor, and in
the midst of the general dearth the nineteenth century struggled into
existence.