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Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).
WHAT THE JUDGE SAW
Being Twenty-Five Years in Manchester by One Who Has Done It
by
His Honour Judge
EDWARD ABBOTT PARRY
Author of “Dorothy Osborne’S Letters,” “Judgments in Vacation,”
“The Scarlet Herring,” “Katawampus: Its Treatment
and Cure,” “Butter Scotia,” etc.
London
Smith, Elder & Co., 15, Waterloo Place
1912
[All rights reserved]
To
MY PARTNER, COMRADE AND WIFE
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. FAREWELL MANCHESTER 1
II. HOME 10
III. STUDENT DAYS 32
IV. CALLED TO THE BAR 49
V. EARLY MEMORIES OF MANCHESTER 65
VI. QUARTER SESSIONS 84
VII. THE SENTENCE OF DEATH 105
VIII. JUDGES OF YESTERDAY 125
IX. FIRST BRIEFS 147
X. ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS 163
XI. THE COMPLEAT CITIZEN 179
XII. THAT REMINDS ME 199
XIII. THE PEARK 219
XIV. OVERTIME 238
XV. PHARISEES AND PUBLICANS 257
XVI. THE MANCHESTER STAGE 278
XVII. QUOTATIONS FROM QUAY STREET 293
XVIII. DEALING IN FUTURES 311
INDEX 317
NOTE
_The origin of these reminiscences was the appearance of some papers I
contributed to the_ “MANCHESTER DAILY DISPATCH” _in January of this
year. These met with considerable favour, and many readers seemed to
think that their story was worthy of being set down in a more
permanent fashion. It was to meet this suggestion that I have largely
added to and re-written the original essays and published them in book
form._
EDWARD A. PARRY.
SEVENOAKS,
_September, 1912_.
WHAT THE JUDGE SAW
CHAPTER I
FAREWELL MANCHESTER
I go――but God knows when or why
From smoky towns and cloudy sky
To things (the honest truth to say)
As bad――but in a different way.
BYRON: “Farewell to Malta.”
(_Amended by leave of the Court._)
“Some poet has observed that if any man would write down what has
really happened to him in this mortal life he would be sure to make a
good book, though he never had met with a single adventure from his
birth to his burial.” Even Thackeray does not take the responsibility
for the thesis, but with a light heart lays the burden upon the
shoulders of “some poet.” And for my part I had never any intention of
answering the poet’s challenge until after a quarter of a century of
life in Manchester I found myself back again in my original domicile.
I doubt if I had ever really acquired a domicile in Manchester. There
was residence, but was there intention? I think I must decide that
somewhere at the back of my mind there was an intention if not a
desire to return.
But when I did return, how many changes I found. Of course I had paid
fleeting visits to London during the term of my exile; but here I was
again for better or worse, and my mind made contrast of to-day with
the memories of twenty-five years ago. Where were the familiar faces?
Not all were gone certainly, but those that remained seemed to my eyes
duller, grizzled and less alert than I had remembered them. And no
doubt I was the same to them, and had grown rugged and provincial
during my long absence. For when old friends met me in the Strand or
the Temple they patted my shoulder in a kindly compassionate manner as
if I were a pit pony who had just come to the surface after several
decades of darkness. These Londoners who knew nothing of Manchester
and the North seemed to fancy I was blinking and dazzled with the
brilliancy of their converse, when in truth and in fact I was
wondering why they all――except the Jews――spoke with a tinge of Cockney
accent. When they congratulated me upon my “promotion,” as they called
it, I could not help contrasting the trial of cases arising out of
commercial contracts on the Manchester Exchange with the trespass of
sheep among the turnip-tops, which is the nearest we have to a _cause
célèbre_ in the Weald of Kent.
But what caused me a greater sinking of heart was that, when I spoke
of Manchester men and Manchester affairs, I spoke to deaf ears. Your
Peckham and Surbiton Londoner knows indeed that there is such a place
as Manchester on the map, but intellectually and spiritually he is far
nearer to New York or Johannesburg. The works and doings of these
places interest and amuse him, but the annals of the great cities of
the North are closed books to him. And when I was lamenting on such a
state of things I came across Thackeray’s message and wondered if it
was intended for me. I could not help thinking how many of us would
like to have the reminiscences of the pit pony. How entertaining it
would be to his fellow ponies below to know what the old fellow really
thought of them, and how the story of a life underground would tickle
the supercilious ears of the pony aristocrats who had spent their
lives among surburban milk floats and butchers’ carts, or even let us
say in the polo field. There was the personal pleasure, too, of
remembering and setting down the story of the days that were gone and
describing the highways and byways along which I had travelled so
pleasantly, and the thought that some who were children in those years
might like to know what sort of a world it was they used to live in.
Maybe Charles Lamb is right when he asks himself “Why do cats grin in
Cheshire?” and tells us that “it was once a County Palatine, and the
cats cannot help laughing when they think of it.” For my part as one
who has been a “poore Palatine” in the adjacent county of Lancaster I
confess that the very sound of its name will always induce a smile――or
should I say a purr――at the pleasant memories with which it is
fragrant.
Attachment to places is quite irrespective of their pleasances. The
fields and orchards of Kent, white with blossom in the spring, purple
and golden with the heavy fruits of autumn, can never be as acceptable
to me as the mud building land of South Manchester. The Embankment and
the Strand――even in its debased modern form――and the Temple Gardens
and the fountain will always be home to one who started life as a
Londoner, and was educated in the cellars of Somerset House. But in
solitary thoughts and dreams I shall glide in fancy down the flags of
Oxford Road, and watch the rooks building on Fallowfield “Broo,” or
strike across the fields of Chorlton’s Farm by the cottages with the
old vine on them, and take the train from Alexandra Park to my work.
When I come out of the Lambeth County Court into the Camberwell New
Road it will always feel irksome to me not to be able to stride up
Peter Street and push open the swing doors of a certain club in Mosley
Street and find myself in an atmosphere of tobacco and good
fellowship. You get so attached to the actual place in which you dwell
that though things are better and more beautiful elsewhere your optic
nerves do not respond at their call, or you suffer from a geographical
deafness. I do not defend such narrow patriotism, I only assert that
it exists. The other day I found myself in a fog in London――one which
Mr. Guppy would call a _real_ London particular――saying to a friend,
“Call this a fog? You should see a first-class Manchester fog.” I knew
I was a boaster and a braggart, for Manchester fogs, though tastier in
chemical flavour, have not the real woolly orange blanket appearance
of the fog that rolls up white from the Nore and bronzes with the
London smoke.
I think I have the place attachment――a limpet-like characteristic,
after all――very highly developed. I remember a story of a little boy,
about three years old or perhaps more, who moved with his family and
their furniture into a new house. At first the affair excited him, but
later on he wandered uneasily and miserably about his new quarters
with an idea that he would never smile again, and that the sooner the
world came to an end the better for everybody. Poor, doleful, little
urchin, he climbed up long flights of stairs into a box-room, and
there, finding a pile of old carpets, he selected one that had
belonged to his nursery and laid him down to die. Forgotten in the
turmoil, he cried himself to sleep, and was discovered by anxious
domestics after prolonged search. I know a great deal of the story is
true, because I have heard it from some of my more reliable relations,
and as the hero of the story I believe I can remember hearing an
agonised nurse calling my name in despair, and sullenly refusing to
reply to her calls on the ground that I never wished to consort with
the world again since I had discovered with Zarathustra that “all is
empty, all is equal, all hath been.”
This attachment to places is a very animal virtue, or failing,
whichever it be, and in my experience is not so much a home-sickness
as a nausea of novelty. One erects in one’s mind a standard of what
ought to be, and applies that to the beloved place; and by constantly
asserting to strangers that the place is in all particulars absolutely
perfect, one begins by mere force of the repetition to believe in it
oneself. In this way do myths become religions. There are many
Manchester myths, all of which in my patriotism――the more vehement
because I cannot claim birthright in the great city――I repeat, and
shall continue to repeat, with the accuracy and fervour with which I
still run over on occasion my “duty to my neighbour.” Thus a true
Manchester man will tell you Manchester is musical, whereas, in truth
and in fact, very few of her people care anything about music at all.
Also he will speak with glowing pride of the marvellous municipal
statesmanship of her governors, whereas, though we are very fond of
them personally, we know they are about as ordinary a set of parish
councillors as ever met in a village schoolroom. I myself have often
reproved a mere Southerner for casting aspersions on our climate by
saying “it was not half so black as it is painted,” when I knew that
on oath I should have to admit that no ink could paint it black
enough. These are lawful perjuries, and unworthy of Manchester would
any citizen be who should hesitate to repeat them.
And yet I am not altogether sorry that I left Manchester. It is true
that it was for purely personal and domestic reasons that I came
south. There was no financial gain in my move, and therefore there is
no ecclesiastical precedent for pretending that I had received a
spiritual call to a wider sphere of action. At the same time it is
possible that the dignity and decorum of Lambeth may be perfected by
that “wakkening up” spirit which the apostles of Manchester go forth
to maintain.
I remember when I was moving south, Bishop Welldon asking me on the
steps of the pavilion at Old Trafford, “And where is your diocese?”
“Lambeth,” I replied promptly. “It sounds ecclesiastical, doesn’t it?”
“It did until your name was connected with it,” said the Bishop with a
merry laugh.
And I left him wondering whether that was the reason Providence had
translated me to the Camberwell New Road.
As for myself, I never want my name to be connected with Lambeth; but
in so far as it will ever be remembered at all, I pray that it may
find its way into some niche in those cyclopædias and other mausoleums
of the famous under the title “Manchester.”
And I am not alone in thinking that “Farewell Manchester” is a sad
phrase to utter. For when Charles Edward left Manchester in 1745 after
those pleasant weeks of revelry among the gentry of Lancashire and
Cheshire, the legend is that he rode sadly over the Derbyshire hills
chanting that mournful lament the music of which the old prebendary of
Hereford set down in later years and called “Felton’s Gavot” or
“Farewell Manchester.” But I picture the Pretender cantering along and
rallying his friends about the Lancashire lasses, whose hearts they
had conquered and whose ribbons they wore in their bonnets, and I
believe it was only in after years that the mournful ballad spread
round the countryside and the ballad-mongers sang of the young prince
whose “tear-drops bodingly from their prisons start.”
It would be absurd for modern visitors to Manchester, rushing away
from the city in a luxurious dining car, plunging beneath the Disley
Golf Links and emerging among the picturesque Derbyshire crags, to
throw themselves into the romantic humour of the heroes of ’45 and
mingle tear-drops with their soup. But alone with your thoughts, if
you have lived in the midst of Manchester and her people and
experienced their gracious hospitality to the stranger that is within
their gates, you may find yourself crooning old Felton’s Gavot, and
learn that the song vibrates in a minor key and that the tear-drops
can only be kept back by control.
It is a hard thing to say “Farewell!” in the right key. Many, many
kindly letters I received when I went away, and all were full of
gracious messages; but the one I best remember as saying the just word
of complimentary reproof was a valedictory letter from the Secretary
of the Crematorium, in which he wrote, “our committee feel very
grieved that you should be leaving us in this manner.” I quote from
memory, and of course the wording may not be exactly accurate. But the
idea was beautifully and delicately expressed, and to the hidden
indictment in the letter I plead guilty and throw myself upon the
mercy of the Court.