Читать книгу What the Judge Saw: Being Twenty-Five Years in Manchester by One Who Has Done It - Edward Abbott Sir Parry - Страница 3
ОглавлениеFAREWELL 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.
