I
One night, some years before the outbreak of the European War, I
arrived in the town of Hanley in the County of Stafford in the midlands
of England to deliver a lecture on some subject, the name of which
I do not now remember, although I suspect it was connected with the
general improvement of mankind. I had accepted the invitation to
lecture in Hanley, not because I had anything of importance to say to
its inhabitants, but because I had lately read "The Old Wives' Tale"
by Mr. Arnold Bennett, and was eager to see the place and the people
from which that great book had sprung. My recollections of the visit
are very vague now, but I remember that my host, a man of serious mind,
a little over-weighted, perhaps, by the troubles of the universe, took
me for a walk on Sunday morning through some of "the Five Towns," in
the course of which he displayed much knowledge of the topography of
Mr. Bennett's books without displaying much knowledge of the books
themselves. He informed me that the real name of "Trafalgar Road" in
"The Old Wives' Tale" is "Waterloo Road" and that the fictitious name
of Hanley is "Hanbridge." He speculated incuriously on the oddness
which had caused Mr. Bennett to alter real names in this palpable
manner, and ended his discourse with the statement that he seldom read
novels (which he persisted in calling "Works of Fiction") being more
inclined to the study of serious books. I learned that he read chiefly
in the writings of sociologists and political economists and similar
serious persons. I suggested to him that he might more profitably read
novels than sociological books if he wished to discover something
about human character. He was a polite and kindly man, and he did not
abruptly tell me of my folly, but I could see that he considered me to
be a fool or, at best, a flippant person, and I am sure that had he
not been my host he would not have troubled to attend my lecture that
evening. He smiled in the benign way men have when they abstain from
expressing their frank opinion, as he listened to me saying that he
would find in novels a greater fund of information about human nature
than he could hope to find in all the works that all the sociologists
in the world have written. Men of affairs, I said, spend their lives
in writing ponderous volumes on society which are out-of-date as
soon as they are published, whereas the novel or the play of a man
of genius remains true for ever. Henry Fielding and Adam Smith were
contemporaries, but I imagine few will deny that there is more durable
stuff, stuff more continuously applicable to human concerns, in "Tom
Jones" than there is in "The Wealth of Nations." But my friend would
have none of this, and seemed to think that any man who spent time in
reading Fielding's novel which might be spent in reading Adam Smith
was shamefully misusing his mind. He led me, I remember, through much
of the territory which is generically known as "the Five Towns." I saw
the Square in which the Baineses lived, and was told that although Mr.
Bennett called it "St. Luke's Square" in "The Old Wives' Tale," the
local authorities preferred to call it after St. John. So great was the
influence of the novel upon me that when I peered through the window
of the shop in which, so I was told, Constance and Sophia Baines were
born, I almost expected to see the half-heroic figure of Samuel Povey
behind the counter or to meet the cold, un-human glance of that frozen
spinster, Miss Marie Insull, who once, and once only, displayed signs
of human emotion--on the occasion when Mr. Critchlow brought her into
the presence of the widowed Constance to announce his betrothal to her:
The dog had leisurely strolled forward to inspect the edges of the
fiancé's trousers. Miss Insull summoned the animal with a noise of
the fingers, and then bent down and caressed it. A strange gesture
proving the validity of Charles Critchlow's discovery that in
Maria Insull a human being was buried.
My host led me up stony streets, in which every sort of domestic
architecture was visible--for "the Five Towns" are so independent
that even in the workmen's houses there is no uniformity of style or
harmony of design, a fact which makes, not for a pleasing diversity,
but for shapelessness and incoherence--and pointed to places in the
ground where, so he said, the earth had opened, owing to underground
operations, and swallowed whosoever should happen to be passing over
it. There was a story of a man who had set forth in the morning to go
to his work, but, before he had travelled many yards from his home,
was suddenly consumed by the opening earth and was never seen again. I
will admit that I trod those streets thereafter with trepidation and
considerable care! I had begun to tire of the ugly houses with their
insufferable architecture, and of the grime caused by innumerable
chimneys emitting thick, black smoke, when I was led up a steep street
at the top of which I was told to halt and gaze about me. I saw the
whole of "the Five Towns" and much of the surrounding country spread
out like the kingdoms of the world and realized how strangely moving
such a scene can be because of its suggestion of human presences.
It was not without beauty, in spite of the gloom of an industrial
area, but it impressed me most by its air of effort and power and
achievement. I became conscious of the activities of men and women, of
great labours, of confused strivings out of which some human need is
satisfied, and I came away, as I always come away from such sights,
immensely impressed by human organization and very satisfied with great
machines. When we had descended from that high street and had walked
elsewhere, I found myself suddenly confronting a railway station on
which I saw the romantic name of ETRURIA.