SMOKY ENGLAND (_continued_)
At Middleton the mills are majestically large and the cottages
relatively minute. There is a famous old inn here, very picturesque to
look upon, and Somebody of Something’s comfortable manor, but they were
not the point for me. In one of its old streets, in the dark doorway of
an old house, I encountered an old woman, very heavy, very pale, very
weary, who stood leaning against the door post.
“What do you burn here, gas or oil?” I asked, interested to obtain
information on almost any topic and seeking a pretext for talking to
her.
“Hey?” she replied, looking at me wearily, but making no other move.
“What do you burn?” I asked. “What do you use for light, gas or oil?”
“Ile,” she replied heavily. “You’ll have to talk very loud. I’m gettin’
old and I’m goin’ to die pretty soon.”
“Oh, no,” I said, “you’re not old enough for that. You’re going to live
a long time yet.”
“Hey?” she asked.
I repeated what I had said.
“No,” she mumbled, and now I saw she had no teeth. “I’m gettin’ old.
I’m eighty-two and I’m goin’ to die. I been workin’ in the mills all my
life.”
“Have you ever been out of Middleton?” I asked.
“Hey?” she replied.
I repeated.
“Yes, to Manchester, Saturdays. Not of late, though. Not in years and
years. I’m very sick, though, now. I’m goin’ to die.”
I could see from her look that what she said was true. Only her
exceeding weariness employed her mind. I learned that water came from a
hydrant in the yard, that the kitchen floor was of earth. Then I left,
noticing as I went that she wore wooden-soled shoes.
In the public square at Boulton, gathered about the city-hall, where
one would suppose for the sake of civic dignity no unseemly spectacle
would be permitted, was gathered all the paraphernalia of a shabby,
eighth-rate circus--red wagons, wild animal and domestic horse tents,
the moderate-sized main tent, the side show, the fat woman’s private
wagon, a cage and the like. I never saw so queer a scene. The whole
square was crowded with tents, great and small; but there was little
going on, for a drizzling rain was in progress. Can human dullness
sink lower? I asked myself, feeling that the civic heart of things was
being profaned. Could utmost drabbiness out-drab this? I doubted it.
Why should the aldermen permit it? Yet I have no doubt this situation
appealed exactly to the imagination of the working population. I can
conceive that it would be about the only thing that would. It was just
raw and cheap and homely enough to do it. I left with pleasure.
When I came into Oldham on a tram-car from Rochdale, it was with my
head swimming from the number of mills I had seen. I have described the
kind--all new. But I did not lose them here.
It was the luncheon hour and I was beginning to grow hungry. As I
walked along dull streets I noticed several small eating-places labeled
“fish, chip, and pea restaurant” and “tripe, trotters, and cow-heels
restaurant,” which astonished me greatly--really astonished me. I had
seen only one such before in my life and that was this same morning
in Middleton--a “fish, chip, and pea restaurant”; but I did not get
the point sufficiently clearly to make a note of it. The one that I
encountered this afternoon had a sign in the window which stated that
unquestionably its chips were the best to be procured anywhere and very
nourishing. A plate of them standing close by made it perfectly plain
that potato chips were meant. No recommendation was given to either the
fish or the peas. I pondered over this, thinking that such restaurants
must be due to the poverty of the people and that meat being very dear,
these three articles of diet were substituted. Here in Oldham, however,
I saw that several of these restaurants stood in very central places
where the rents should be reasonably high and the traffic brisk. It
looked as though they were popular for some other reason. I asked a
policeman.
“What is a ‘fish, chip, and pea’ restaurant?” I asked.
“Well, to tell you the truth,” he said, “it’s a place where a man
who’s getting over a spree goes to eat. Those things are good for the
stomach.”
I pondered over this curiously. There were four such restaurants in the
immediate vicinity, to say nothing of the one labeled “tripe, trotters,
and cow-heels,” which astonished me even more.
“And what’s that for?” I asked of the same officer.
“The same thing. A man who’s been drinking eats those things.”
I had to laugh, and yet this indicated another characteristic of a wet,
rainy climate, namely considerable drinking. At the next corner a man,
a woman, and a child conferring slightly confirmed my suspicion.
“Come on,” said the man to the woman, all at once, “let’s go to the
pub. A beer’ll do you good.”
The three started off together, the child hanging by the woman’s hand.
I followed them with my eyes, for I could not imagine quite such a
scene in America--not done just in this way. Women--a certain type--go
to the back rooms of saloons well enough; children are sent with pails
for beer; but just this particular combination of husband, wife, and
child is rare, I am sure.
And such public houses! To satisfy myself of their character I went to
three in three different neighborhoods. Like those I saw in London and
elsewhere around it, they were pleasant enough in their arrangement,
but gloomy. The light from the outside was meager, darkened as it was
by smoke and rain. If you went on back into the general lounging-room,
lights were immediately turned on, for otherwise it was not bright
enough to see. If you stayed in the front at the bar proper it was
still dark, and one light--a mantled gas-jet--was kept burning. I asked
the second barmaid with whom I conferred about this:
“You don’t always have to keep a light burning here, do you?”
“Always, except two or three months in summer,” she replied. “Sometimes
in July and August we don’t need it. As a rule we do.”
“Surely, it isn’t always dark and smoky like this?”
“You should see it sometimes, if you call this bad,” she replied
contemptuously. “It’s black.”
“I should say it’s very near that now,” I commented.
“Oh, no, most of the mills are not running. You should see it when it’s
foggy and the mills are running.”
She seemed to take a sort of pride in the matter and I sympathized with
her. It is rather distinguished to live in an extreme of any kind, even
if it is only that of a smoky wetness of climate. I went out, making
my way to the “Kafe” Monico, as the policeman who recommended the
place pronounced it. Here I enjoyed such a meal as only a third-rate
restaurant which is considered first by the local inhabitants would
supply.
I journeyed forth once more, interested by the fact that, according
to Baedeker, from one point somewhere, _on a clear day_, whenever
that might be, six hundred stacks might be seen. In this fog I soon
found that it was useless to look for them. Instead I contented myself
with noting how, in so many cases, the end of a street, or the sheer
dismal length of an unbroken row of houses, all alike, was honored,
made picturesque, made grand even, by the presence of the mills, these
gloomy monuments of labor.
There is an architecture of manufacture, dreary and shabby as its
setting almost invariably is, which in its solemnity, strangeness of
outline, pathos and dignity, quite rivals, if it does not surpass, the
more heralded forms of the world--its cathedrals, parthenons, Moorish
temples and the like. I have seen it often in America and elsewhere
where a group of factory buildings, unplanned as to arrangement and
undignified as to substance, would yet take on an exquisite harmony of
line and order after which a much more pretentious institution might
well have been modeled. At Stockport, near Manchester, for instance, on
the Mersey, which here is little more than a rivulet, but picturesque
and lovely, I saw grouped a half-dozen immense mills with towering
chimneys which, for architectural composition from the vantage point
of the stream, could not have been surpassed. They had the dignity of
vast temples, housing a world of under-paid life which was nevertheless
rich in color and enthusiasm. Sometimes I fancy the modern world has
produced nothing more significant architecturally speaking, than
the vast manufactory. Here in Oldham they were gathered in notable
clusters, towering over the business heart and the various resident
sections so that the whole scene might well be said to have been
dominated by it. They bespeak a world of thought and feeling which we
of more intellectual fields are inclined at times to look on as dull
and low, but are they? I confess that for myself they move me at times
as nothing else does. They have vast dignity--the throb and sob of the
immense. And what is more dignified than toiling humanity, anyhow--its
vague, formless, illusioned hopes and fears? I wandered about the
dull rain-sodden thoroughfares, looking in at the store windows. In
one I found a pair of gold and a pair of silver slippers offered for
sale--for what feet in Oldham? They were not high in price, but this
sudden suggestion of romance in a dark workaday world took my fancy.
At four o’clock, after several hours of such wandering, I returned to
the main thoroughfare--the market-place--in order to see what it was
the hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants found to entertain them. I
looked for theaters and found two, one of them a large moving-picture
show. Of a sudden, walking in a certain direction my ears were greeted
by a most euphonious clatter--so interwoven and blended were the
particular sounds which I recognized at once as coming from the feet of
a multitude, shod with wooden-soled clogs. Where were they coming from?
I saw no crowd. Suddenly, up a side street, coming toward me down a
slope I detected a vast throng. The immense moving-picture theater had
closed for the afternoon and its entire audience, perhaps two thousand
in all, was descending toward the main street. In connection with
this crowd, as with the other at Boulton, I noted the phenomenon of
the black or white straw hat, the black or brown shawl, the shapeless
skirts and wooden-soled clogs of the women; the dull, commonplace
suit and wooden clogs of the men. Where were they going now? Home, of
course. These must be a portion of the strikers. They looked to me
like typical mill-workers out on a holiday and their faces had a waxy
pallor. I liked the sound of their shoes, though, as they came along.
It was like the rattle of many drums. They might have been waltzing on
a wooden floor. The thing had a swing and a rhythm of its own. “What
if a marching army were shod with wooden shoes!” I thought; and then,
“What if a mob with guns and swords came clattering so!”
A crowd like this is like a flood of water pouring downhill. They came
into the dark main street and it was quite brisk for a time with their
presence. Then they melted away into the totality of the stream, as
rivers do into the sea, and things were as they had been before.
If there were any restaurants other than the “Kafe” Monico, I did not
find them. For entertainment I suppose those who are not religiously
minded do as they do in Fall River and elsewhere--walk up and down past
the bright shop windows or sit and drink in the public houses, which
are unquestionably far more cheerful by night than by day.
The vast majority who live here must fall back for diversion on other
things, their work, their church, their family duties, or their vices.
I am satisfied that under such conditions sex plays a far more vital
part in cities of this description than almost anywhere else. For,
although the streets be dull and the duties of life commonplace,
sex and the mysteries of temperament weave their spells quite as
effectively here as elsewhere, if not more so. In fact, denied the
more varied outlets of a more interesting world, humanity falls back
almost exclusively on sex. Women and men, or rather boys and girls (for
most of the grown women and men had a drudgy, disillusioned, wearied
look), went by each other glancing and smiling. They were alert to be
entertained by each other, and while I saw little that I would call
beauty in the women, or charm and smartness in the men, nevertheless
I could understand how the standards of New York and Paris might not
necessarily prevail here. Clothes may not fit, fashion may find no
suggestion of its dictates, but after all, underneath, the lure of
temperament and of beauty is the same. And so these same murky streets
may burn with a rich passional life of their own. I left Oldham finally
in the dark and in a driving rain, but not without a sense of the
sturdy vigor of the place, keen if drab.