“Hardly,” was the hesitating answer.
“She’s been laid in consecrated ground, and I’ve read the burial
service over her; what more would you have? Some folk are never
satisfied.”
Emptying half his horehound drops into the hand of Master Laurence,
Joshua turned on his heel, went to the chapter-house to disrobe, and
then back over the wall to Mrs. Clowes.
“I say, dame, you were not at church on Sunday.”
“No, Parson Brookes; I was in Liverpool.”
“Oh!” grunted he, “in Liverpool. Sugar-buying, I suppose?”
“Yea; an’ a fine joke I’ve had.”
Joshua pricked up his ears: he did not object to a little fun.
“You mun know I thought I’d give Branker, the new sugar-brokers,
a trial, an’ I went there and asked to see samples; but the young
whipper-snapper of a salesman looked at me from top to toe, an’ I
suppose, reckoned up the value of my old black bonnet, my kerchief an’
mutch, an’ my old stuff dress, and fancied my pocket must match my
gown, for he was barely civil, and didn’t seem to care for the trouble
o’ showin’ th’ samples. So I bade my young man good day, and said I’d
call again.”
“And didn’t, I suppose. Just like a woman,” put in Joshua.
“Oh, yea, I did. I borrowed my landlady’s silk gown and fine satin
bonnet, and put on my lady’s manners; and then Mr. Whipper-snapper
could show his samples, and _his_ best manners too. But when I gave my
orders by tons, and not hundredweights, he looked at me, and looked
again, as if he thought I’d escaped from a madhouse; an’ at last he
began to h’m an’ ah, an’ talk of large orders, an’ cash payment, an’
references; an’ I told him to make out th’ invoice and bring it.
An’ when I pulled out this old leather pocket-book, and counted the
bank-notes to pay him down on the nail, good gracious! how the fellow
stared! I reckon I’ll not need to borrow a silk dress when I give my
next order. It was as good as a play.”
“Um! You women-folk think yourselves wonderfully clever. But come, I
can’t waste my time here.” (Joshua had heard all he went for.) “Give me
quarter-a-pound of humbugs; I threw half the other things away,” said
he.
“I don’t think it’s much you’ll throw away, Jotty,” replied the
old confectioner, with independent familiarity, as she weighed and
parcelled the sweets, for which this time he put down the money.
“It’s much you know about it, Mother Clowes,” he jerked out, as if
throwing the words at her over his shoulder, as he turned to leave the
shop, putting the package in one of the large pockets of his long flap
waistcoat as he went.
His own house, not more than three hundred yards away, adjoined the
Grammar School; a red-brick building, with stone quoins, now darkened
by time and smoke, one gable of which overhung the Irk; the other,
pierced for four small-paned windows, almost confronting the antique
Sun Inn, at the acute angle of Long Millgate, and quite overlooking an
open space, flanked by the main entrance to the College. From this, the
east wing of the College, it is separated by a plain iron gateway and
palisades on the Millgate side, and by a wall which serves as a screen
from the river on the other side; and the enclosed space between rails,
wall, College, and the front of the school served as a playground for
such scholars as were willing to keep within bounds. It was divided
into upper, middle, and lower schools, the last being in the basement,
and designed for elementary instruction. The high and middle schools
together occupied the same long room above this. Joshua Brookes, as
second master, presided over the middle school, and surely never M.A.
had so thankless an office. He was placed at a terrible disadvantage
in the school, not altogether because he had risen from its lowest
ranks—not altogether because a drunken foul-mouthed cripple interfered
with their sports, or went reeling to his son’s domicile next door—not
because he was unduly severe; other masters were that—but because his
own eager thirst for knowledge as a boy had made him intolerant towards
indolence, incredulous of incapacity; and his constitutional impatience
and irritability made his harsh voice seem harsher when he reproved
a dullard. He lost his self-command, and with that went his command
over others. Meaning to be affable to the poor, from whose ranks he
sprang, he became familiar; and they reciprocated the familiarity so
fully as to draw down the contempt of his _confreres_. He was a man to
be respected, and they slighted him; a man to be honoured, and they
snubbed him. What wonder, then, that eccentricities grew like barnacles
on a ship’s keel, or that the boys failed in obedience and respect to a
master when their elders set them the example?
This defence of a misunderstood man has not taken up a tithe of the
time he gave to his refractory class, to whom he went straightway from
the confectioner’s, whose “humbugs” had melted considerably, not wholly
down his own throat, before the hour when the boys closed their Latin
Grammars and Greek Lexicons, and poured as if they were mad down the
steps, and through the gate, to the road. Yet even the sweets he gave
to the attentive did not conciliate; they only made the intractable
more defiant; and even the recipients felt they were bribed.
Warned by the uproar of a large school in motion, as well as by the
long-cased clock, Tabitha, his one servant, had her master’s tea ready
for him the instant he came in from the school, as he generally did,
fagged and jaded, with the growl of a baited bear.
That day he simply put his head into the house, and bawled, “Tea ready,
Tab?” and without waiting for an answer, went on, “Keep it hot till I
get back;” then, closing the door, took his way eastwards down Long
Millgate. His journey was not a long one. It ended at the bottom of a
yard where a sad pale-faced young woman was switching monotonously at
a mass of downy cotton, and listening at the same time to the equally
monotonous drawl of a youngster in the throes of monosyllabic reading.
“Get larning, lad!—get larning! Larning’s a greät thing. Yo’ shan read
i’ this big picture-book when you can spell gradely,” had been Simon’s
precept and inducement; and Jabez, to whom that big pictorial Bible was
a mysterious unexplored crypt, did try with all his little might.
“J-a-c-k—Jack, w-a-s—was, a g-o-o-d—good, b-o——”
“And I hope you’re a good boy, as well as Jack,” said Joshua Brookes
abruptly, as he put his head into the room, and put a stop to the
lesson at the same time. “But, hey-day” (observing the swollen nose and
bruised forehead), “You’re been in the wars. Good boys don’t fight.”
“Then what did Bill Barnes throw stones at ar pussy for? Good boys
dunnot hurt kittlins,” said Jabez, nothing daunted.
Bess explained.
“Um!” quoth Joshua, when she had finished, “he’s fond of his kitten,
is he?” and drawing Jabez towards him by the shoulder, with one finger
uplifted as a caution, he looked down on the shrinking child, and said,
impressively—
“Never fight if you can help it, Jabez; but if you fight to save a poor
dumb animal from ill-usage, or to protect the weak against the strong,
Jotty Brucks is not the man to blame you. Here, lad,” and into the
pinafore of Jabez went the remainder of the “humbugs.”
He patted the boy on the head, bade him get on with his reading, he did
not know what good fortune might come of it, told him to come regularly
to church, to love God and God’s creatures, and went away, leaving
Bess to prepare her father’s porridge (tea was from twelve to sixteen
shillings a pound, and beyond their reach).
Almost on the threshold he encountered Simon.
“Can’t you keep that young sprig out of mischief? If he begins fighting
and quarrelling at six years old, what will he do when he is sixteen?”
he cried, gruffly, as he brushed past the tanner, and was far up the
yard before the man could think of a reply.
A couple of young pigeons were sent for Jabez about a week after, with
a large bag of stale cakes and bread to feed them with. The name of the
sender was unknown, but anyone acquainted with the habits of Joshua
Brookes (who contracted for Mrs. Clowes’s waste pastry, to fill the
crops of his own feathered colony) would not have been troubled to
guess.
Simon stroked his raspy chin, and seemed dubious, cost of keep being a
question; but Jabez looked so wistful, his foster-father borrowed tools
and answered the appeal by making a triangular cote for them, and Jabez
found fresh occupation in their care. Yet occupation was not lacking,
young as he was. He could fetch and carry, run short errands, and help
Bess to clean. Their living-room no longer waited a week to be swept
and dusted, Jabez did it every day, standing on a chair to reach the
top of the bureau, where lay the cynosure of his young eyes. He still
took his Sunday lessons in field or stream with Simon, and through the
week clambered up from monosyllables to dissyllables with Bess.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.
THE BLUE-COAT SCHOOL.
The children of the poor begin early to earn their bread.
Legislature has stepped in to regulate the age and hours for labour
in manufacturing districts, and to provide education for the very
humblest. Jabez Clegg was not born in these blissful times, and he only
narrowly escaped the common lot.
He was not eight years old, yet Simon, on whom war-prices pressed as
heavily as on his neighbours, began to discuss with Bess the necessity
for sending the lad to Simpson’s factory (where Arkwright’s machinery
was first set in motion).
“He mun goo as sune as the new year taks a fair grip,” decided Simon,
and 1805 was at its last gasp as he said it.
But the new year brought Jabez a reprieve by the uncourtly hands of
Joshua Brookes. Meeting Simon and Jabez at a stall in the Apple-market,
where, the better to bargain, he had laid down a pile of old classical
school-books (Joshua was a collector of these, which he retailed again
to the boys at prices varying with his mood, or his estimate of the
purchaser’s pocket), he accosted the former.
“Well, old Leathershanks, what are you going to make of young
Cheat-the-fishes there? I suppose he’s to follow your own trade, he
began to _tan hides_ so early?” And the glance which shot from under
his shaggy brows caused the boy to blush, and shrink behind his
protector.
Simon’s eyes twinkled, but he shook his head as he answered:
“Nay, Parson Bruks, we’n thowt o’ sendin’ him t’ th’ cotton fact’ry;
but it fair goos agen th’ grain to send th’ little chap through th’
streets to wark Winter an’ Summer, weet or dry, afore th’ sun’s oop an’
abeawt _his_ wark. But we conno’ keep him bout it—toimes are so bad.”
“H’m! Then what a stupid old leather-head you must be not to
think of the College, where he’d be kept and fed and clothed and
educated!—_educated_, man—do you hear?”
Simon heard, and his eyes again twinkled and winked at the new idea
presented to him.
“And apprenticed!” he echoed, with a long-drawn, gasping breath.
“Ay, and apprenticed.”
The parson, cramming his pockets with apples, for which he had higgled
with much persistence, handed one to Jabez with the question—
“How would you like to be a College boy, Jabez, and wear a long blue
coat, like that fellow yonder” (pointing to a boy then crossing the
market on an errand), “and learn to write and cipher, as well as to
read?”
“If you please’n, aw’d loike it moore nor eawt.” And his animated face
was a clearer answer than his words.
Joshua then read the lad a brief homily to the effect that only good
and honourable boys could find admission, winding up with—
“If you’re a _very_ good lad, I’ll see what can be done for you.”
He interrupted thanks with—
“Easter’s very near, Sim, so you’ll have to stir your stumps to prove
that our _honourable_ young friend came honourably into the world. I’ll
get the forms and fill them up for you, and his baptismal register too.”
He snatched up his books and was off, the tassel of his collegiate cap
and the cassock he wore flying loose as he hurried away muttering to
himself—
“What an old fool I am to bother about the lad! I daresay he’ll turn
round and sting me in the end, like the rest of the snakes I have
warmed. As great an idiot as old dame Clowes!”
Chetham’s College, or Hospital, is a long, low, ancient stone edifice,
built on the rock above the mouth of the Irk, with two arms of unequal
length, stretching towards church and town, and embracing a large
quadrangle used as a playground, which has for its fourth and southern
boundary a good, useful garden.
It is needless to grope upward from the time when the Saxon Theyn built
a fortified residence on its site; sufficient for us that Thomas de la
Warr, youngest son of the feudal baron of Manchester, was brought up
to the Church, and in the fourteenth century inducted into the Rectory
of Manchester, his father being patron. His elder brother dying at the
close of the century, the rector (a pious Churchman) became baron. And
then he put his power and wealth to sacerdotal uses. He petitioned
the king, obtained a grant to collegiate Christ Church, erected the
College, endowed it with lands; and here at his death the Warden of the
Collegiate Church had his residence. Of these wardens, the celebrated
Dr. Dee, whose explorations into alchemy and other occult sciences
brought him into trouble with Queen Elizabeth, was one; and Dr. Dee’s
room is still extant—in occupation of the governor.
In 1580, at Crumpsall Hall, Humphrey Chetham was born; and he, a
prosperous dealer in fustians, never marrying, at his own expense
fed and clothed a number of poor boys; and, by his will, not only
bequeathed a large sum of money to be expended in the foundation
and endowment of a hospital for the maintenance, education, and
apprenticing of forty poor boys for ever, but one thousand pounds to be
expended in a library, free to the public—_the first free library in
Britain_.
The estate was vested in feoffees, and with them lay the power alike to
elect boys and officials. From the townships of Manchester, Droylsden,
Crumpsall, Bolton-le-Moors, and Turton, the boys were to be elected
between the ages of six and ten, and were required to be of honest,
industrious parents, and neither illegitimate nor diseased; and
baptismal registers had to be produced. They had to be well maintained,
well trained, and carefully apprenticed at fourteen, a fee of four
pounds (a large sum in Humphrey Chetham’s time) being given with them.
The churchwardens and overseers were to prepare lists of boys, doubling
the number of vacancies, stating their respective claims, which lists
they had to sign.
Easter Monday was the period for election, after which the feoffees
dined together in Dr. Dee’s quaintly-carved room.
Joshua Brooks was as good as his word. He procured a blank form from
the governor, and, Simon being no great scholar, filled it in for him.
He found him the baptismal register without charging the regulation
shilling, got the name of Jabez inserted in the churchwardens’ list,
and such influence as he had with the feoffees he exerted to the
utmost, for the case was one involving doubt and difficulty.
Nor had Simon Clegg been idle. He and his crony Matthew scoured Smedley
and Crumpsall, and more successful than in their quest for Tom Hulme,
discovered the nurse who presided at the birth of Jabez. Her testimony,
so far as it went, was important. He had interested both Mr. and Mrs.
Clough in the election of the foundling, and where the influence of
the gentleman failed, that of the lady prevailed; so that when the
important Easter Monday arrived, two-thirds of the feoffees were fully
acquainted with his peculiar case, and more or less impressed in his
favour.
It was on the 18th of April, bright, sunny, joyous. Compared with its
present proportions, Manchester, then was but as a cameo brooch on
a mantle of green; and that green was already starred with daisies,
buttercups, primroses, and cowslips. By wells and brooks, daffodil and
jonquil hung their heads and breathed out perfume. Bush and tree put
out pale buds and fans of promise. The tit-lark sang, the cuckoo—to use
a village phrase—had “eaten up the mud;” and the town was alive with
holiday-makers from all the country round about.
It was the great College anniversary, not only election day, but
one set apart for friends to visit Blue-coat boys already on the
foundation, and for the curious public to inspect the Chetham Museum.
The main entrance in Millgate (said to be arched with the jaw-bone of
a whale) and the smaller gate on Hunt’s Bank, were both thrown open. A
stream of people of all grades, in festival array, poured in and out,
and College cap and gown seemed to be ubiquitous.
The pale, sad widow or widower, holding an orphan boy by the trembling
hand, the uncle or next of kin to the doubly-orphaned candidate were
there, standing in a long line ranged against the building, and
representing hopes and fears and eventualities little heeded by the
shifting stream of gazers.
For the previous week Mrs. Clowes and her assistants had been working
night and day: her shop was in a stage of siege. Every boy, and every
boy’s friend, seemed to have pocket-money to spend, and to want to
spend it over her counter. Then it was the great wedding-day of the
year, and the churchyard swarmed like a hive; from every one of
the many public-houses round College and Church, music and mirth,
clattering feet, and loud-voiced laughter issued. “The Apple Tree,”
“The Pack Horse,” “The Ring o’ Bells,” “The Blackamoor’s Head,” were
filled to repletion with wedding guests; whilst “The College Inn,” and
the old “Sun Inn,” held a less boisterous quota of the Collegians’
friends and relatives.
On those wet days when outdoor play was impossible, the boys, besides
darning their stockings, occupied their spare hours in carving spoons
and apple-scrapers out of bone, in working balls and pincushions with
coloured worsted in fanciful devices, and a stitch locally known as
“colleging:” and with these, on Easter Monday and at Whitsuntide, they
reaped a harvest of pocket-money, having liberty to offer them for
sale. And when it is remembered that our notable female ancestors, poor
and rich, wore indoors a pincushion and sheathed scissors suspended at
their sides, it is not to be wondered that these found ready purchasers
as memorials of the visit.
But in that College Yard were anxious and expectant as well as buoyant
faces. And there in that line, waiting to be called when their turn
came, stood Jabez between Simon Clegg and Bess, with Matthew and the
nurse on either hand. And ever and anon their eyes went up to the oriel
window which faced the main entrance, for in the room it lighted the
arbiters of the boy’s destiny sat in judgment on some other orphan’s
claim. At length the summons came for “Jabez Clegg.”
With palpitating hearts—for any body of men with irresponsible powers
is an awful tribunal—they passed under the arched portal at the
western angle of the building, following their guide past the doors
of the great kitchen on the right hand, and Dr. Dee’s room and the
boys’ refectory on the left, up the wide stone staircase, with its
massive carved oak balusters, along the gallery, at once library and
museum, where gaping holiday-folk followed a Blue-coat cicerone past
shelves and glass cases, and compartments separated for readers’ quiet
study by carven book-shelf screens, hearing but heeding little of the
parrot-roll the boys checked off: “Here’s Oliver Crummle’s sword;
theer’s a loadstone; theer’s a hairy mon; theer’s the skeleton of a
mon;” and so forth, but following their own guide to the nail-studded
oaken door of the feoffees’ room—that door which might open to hope,
only to close on disappointment.
The feoffees’ room—now the reading-room of the library—deserves more
than a passing notice. It is a large, square, antique chamber, with a
deeply recessed oriel window, opposite the door, containing a table
and seats for readers. There are carved oak buffets of ancient date,
ponderous chairs, and still more ponderous tables, one of which is said
to contain as many pieces as there are days in the year. Dingy-looking
portraits of eminent Lancashire divines stare at you from the walls;
but the left-hand wall contains alone the benevolent presentment of
Humphrey Chetham, the large-hearted clear-headed founder. Its place is
over the wide chimney-piece, which holds an ample grate; and on either
hand it is flanked by the carved effigy of a bird, the one a pelican
feeding its young brood with its own blood, the other a cock, which is
said (and truly) to crow when it smells roast beef.
But we smell the feoffees’ dinner, and must not delay the progress of
Jabez and his friends. A large body of feoffees were present, many in
the uniforms of their special volunteer regiments.
“So this is the little fellow who was picked up asleep in a cradle
during the flood of August, 1799,” observed rather than inquired one of
the gentlemen, who appeared as spokesman.
“Yoi, yo’r honours,” answered Simon, making a sort of bow.
“Who can bear witness to that?”
“Aw con”—“An’ aw con,” responded Simon and Matt Cooper in a breath. “It
wur uz as got him eawt o’ th’ wayter.”
“Anyone else?”
Bessy stepped forward modestly.
“He wur put i’ moi arms on Tanners’ Bridge, an’ aw’ve browt him oop
iver sin’.”
“Have you never sought for his parents?”
“Ay, mony a time. Matt an’ me have spent mony a day i’ seekin’ ’em,”
said Simon promptly, “an’ we could fand no moore than that papper
tells”—referring to a sheet in the questioning feoffee’s hand.
“Then how do you date the boy’s age with such precision?”
The nurse now sidled confidently to the front.
“If it please your honour’s worship, aw wur called to stiff-backed
Nan’s dowter in the last pinch, when hoo wur loike to die, an’ that
little chap wur born afore aw left, an’ that wur o’ th’ fifth o’ May,
seventeen hunderd an’ noinety-noine. Aw know it, fur aw broke mi arm
th’ varry next day.”
“And the mother died.”
“Yea!—afore the week wur eawt.”
“And you think she was lawfully married? Where was her husband?”
“Ay! that’s it! Hoo had a guinea-goold weddin-ring on; an’ owd Nan
said it wur a sad thing th’ lass had ever got wedded, an’ moore o’
the same soort. An’ aw geet eawt o’ her that they’n bin wedded at
Crumpsail, an’ a’ th’ neebors knew as th’ husbant had had a letter to
fatch him to Liverpool, an’ had niver come back. Onybody i’ Smedley
knows that!”
“And you think they were honest, industrious people?”
“Ay, that they were, but rayther stiff i’ th’ joints, yo’ know—seemed
to think theirsel’s too good to talk to folk like; or mebbe we’d ha’
known th’ lad’s neäme an’ o’ belongin’ to him. They owed nobbody nowt,
an’ aw wur paid fur moi job.”
Jabez was called forward and examined, and he came pretty well out of
the fire. They found that he could read a little, knew part of his
catechism, and they saw that he was a well-behaved, intelligent boy,
with truthful dark grey eyes and a reflective brow.
There was a long and animated discussion, during which the boy and his
friends were bidden to retire. It was contended that the marriage of
the boy’s parents was not proven—that his very name was dubious,—and
that the founder’s will was specific on that head.
Then one of Mrs. Clough’s friends rose and grew eloquent. He asked
if they were to interpret the will of the great and benevolent man,
whose portrait looked down upon them, by the spirit or by the letter?
If they themselves did not _feel_ that the boy was eligible, as the
nurse’s testimony went to prove? That this was a case peculiarly marked
out for their charitable construction. And he wound up by inquiring
if they thought Humphrey Chetham would expect his representatives to
be less humane, less charitable, less conscientious in dealing with a
bounty not their own, than that poor struggling, hardworking tanner and
his daughter, who had maintained and cherished the orphan in spite of
cruelly hard times, and still more cruel slander. And then he told, as
an episode, what Sally Cooper had confessed, and how and why Bess had
lost her lover.
This turned the quivering scale. “Jabez Clegg and his friends” were
called in; the verdict which changed the current of his life, was
pronounced—Jabez Clegg was a Blue-coat boy!