EARLY MEMORIES OF MANCHESTER
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 sights in 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 at all, 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.
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 within an 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 the second 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 that _terrestrial globe semée of bees volant on a
wreath of the colours_, and instituted a lurry――not _rampant_ or
_courant_, but _passant_――day and night constantly and eternally
_passant_, 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 which all 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
Embankment and 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 the
_Manchester 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 was not 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 out _en route_. Arnold was
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 the _Pall 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 the _Manchester Guardian_ occasionally?”
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 the _Manchester Guardian_ manner, 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 highest to 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 do it 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 knew it 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 was
_macabre_; Pinero understood the use of the _mot de la situation_; and
the English opinion of the French classical writers was _sangrenu_――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 to _déclassé_ and _tour de
force_ like 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 the _Manchester
Guardian_ once 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 the _Guardian_ for
anything but advertisements was too 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 Parisian
_salons_ of 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 weapons with 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 a _salon_ of 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 find it 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 really occurred 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 cheered on 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 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.