Over thirty years ago I first used to go to Manchester on Tuesdays,
in charge of people who could remember Waterloo, and I was taken into a
vast and intricate palace, where we bought quantities of things without
paying for them--a method of acquisition strictly forbidden in our shop.
This palace was called “Rylands.” I knew not what “Rylands” was, but
from the accents of awe in which the name was uttered I gathered that
its importance in the universe was supreme. My sole impression of
Manchester was an impression of extreme noise.
Without shouting you could not make yourself heard in the streets. Ten
years later, London-road Station had somehow become for me the gate of
Paradise, and I was wont to escape into Manchester as a prisoner escapes
into the open country.
After twenty years’ absence in London and Paris I began to revisit
Manchester. My earliest impression will be my last. Still the same
prodigious racket; the same gigantic altercation between irresistible
iron and immovable paving stones! With the addition of the growling
thunder of cars that seem to be continually bumping each other as
if they were college eights! Lunch in a fashionable grill-room at
Manchester constitutes an auditory experience that could not be matched
outside New York. In the great saloon there is no carpet on the polished
planks of the floor, and the walls consist of highly resonant tiles,
for Manchester would not willingly smother the slightest murmur of
its immense reverberations. The tables are set close together, so that
everybody can hear everybody; the waiters (exactly the same waiters
that one meets at Monte Carlo or in the Champs Elysées) understand all
languages save English, so that the Britisher must shout at them. Doors
are for ever swinging, and people rush to and fro without surcease. It
is Babel. In the background, a vague somewhere, an orchestra is beating;
one catches the bass notes marking the measure, and occasionally a high
squeak in the upper register. And superimposed on this, the lusty voice
of a man of herculean physique passionately chanting that “a-hunting we
will go.”
*****
One looks through the window and, astonished, observes one of those
electric cars flying hugely past without a sound. The thunder within has
challenged and annihilated the heaviest thunder without. The experience
is unique. One rushes forth in search of silence. Where can silence
dwell in Manchester? The end of every street is a mystery of white fog,
a possible home of silence. But no! Be sure that if one plucks out the
heart of the mystery one will find a lorry preceded by at least eight
iron hoofs. The Art Gallery! One passes in. Clack! Clack! Clack! It is
the turnstile. And all afternoon the advent of each student of the
fine arts, of each cultivated dilettante, is announced by Clack! Clack!
Clack! Two young men come in. Clack! Clack! Clack! Turner’s “Decline
of Carthage” naturally arrests them. “By Jove!” says one, “that was
something to tackle!” Clack! Clack! Clack! Out again, in search of
silence. But over nearly every portal curves the legend: “Music all
day.” And outside the music-halls hired bawlers are bawling to the
people to come in. At last, near the Infirmary, one sees a stationary
cab, and across the window of this cab is printed, in letters of gold,
the extraordinary, the magic, the wonderful, the amazing word:
“Noiseless.”
Ah! The traditional, sublime humour of cabmen!
But if my impression has remained, and even waxed, that Manchester
would be an ideal metropolis for a nation of deaf mutes, my other early
impression, of its artistic and intellectual primacy, is sharply renewed
and intensified. Of late, not only by contact with Manchester men,
but by the subtle physiognomy of Manchester streets and the revealing
gestures of the common intelligent person, I have been more than
ever convinced that there is no place which can match its union of
intellectual vigour, artistic perceptiveness, and political sagacity.
*****
Long and close intercourse with capitals has not in the slightest degree
modified my youthful conception of Manchester, my admiration for its
institutions, and my deep respect for its opinion. London may patronise
Manchester as it chooses, but you can catch in London’s tone a secret
awe, an inward conviction of essential inferiority. I have noticed this
again and again. I know well that my view is shared by the fine
flower of Fleet-street, and no dread of disagreeable insinuations or
accusations shall prevent me from expressing my sentiments with my
customary directness. There is no department of artistic, intellectual,
social, or political activity in which Manchester has not corporately
surpassed London. And there have been very few occasions on which, when
they have differed in opinion, Manchester has been as wrong as London.
It is, of course, notorious that London is still agitated by more than
one controversy which was definitely settled by Manchester twenty
years ago in the way in which London will settle it twenty years hence.
Manchester is too proud to proclaim its fundamental supremacy in the
island (though unalterably convinced of it), and no other city would
be such a fool as to proclaim it; hence it is not proclaimed. But it
exists, and the general knowledge of it exists.
The explanation of Manchester is twofold. First, its geographical
situation, midway between the corrupting languor of the south and
the too bleak hardness of the north. And, second, that it enjoys the
advantages of a population as vast as that of London, without the
disadvantages of either an exaggerated centralisation or of a capital.
London suffers from elephantiasis, a rush of blue blood to the head,
vertigo, imperfect circulation, and other maladies. Bureaucratic and
caste influences must always vitiate the existence of a capital, and I
do not suppose that any great capital in Europe is the real source of
its country’s life and energy. Not Rome, but Milan! Not Madrid, but
Barcelona! Not St. Petersburg, but Moscow! Not Berlin, but Hamburg
and Munich! Not Paris, but the rest of France! Not London, but the
Manchester area!