Chapter 8

St. Mary's Hall, a large building, now used for corporation council meetings, and festivities, erected in the reign of Henry VI., is one of the richest and most interesting vestiges of the ornamental architecture of England. The principal room has a grotesquely-carved roof of oak, a gallery for minstrels, an armoury, a chair of state, and a great painted window, which need only the filling up of royal and noble personages, their attendants, and the rich burgesses of Coventry, to recall the time when Richard II. held his Court in this ancient city, and, with "old John of Gaunt," settled the sentence on Harry of Hereford, and Philip of Norfolk.

In this chamber is to be seen a beautiful piece of tapestry, executed in 1450, measuring thirty feet by ten, and containing eighty figures.

In the free school, founded by John Moles, in the reign of Henry VIII., Sir William Dugdale, the antiquarian and historian of Warwickshire, was educated. The income is about 900 pounds a-year, and the scholars have open to competition two fellowships of St. John's College, Oxon, one at Catherine's Hall, Cambridge, and six exhibitions at either University. Previous to the investigations of the Charity Commissioners, the fine school-room was locked up, and the books of the library torn for waste paper to light fires. At present, under the reformed system, the school is attended by a large number of scholars.

There are more than a dozen educational and other charities for the benefit of the poor, enjoying a revenue of many thousands a-year.

There are also several curious specimens of domestic architecture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to be found in Coventry. It is, however, on the whole, a dark, dirty, inconvenient city. The surrounding belt of Lammas lands on which the freemen have the right of pasturing their horses and cows, has prevented any increase in the limits of the city.

In the middle ages Coventry was celebrated for its "mysteries and pageants," of which an account has been published by Mr. Reader, a local bookseller.

The chief manufactures are of ribands and of watches, both transplantations from the Continent. The electors of Coventry distinguished themselves by their consistency during the Free-trade agitation. They exacted a pledge from their members in favour of Free-trade, except in watches and ribands. More recently these same Coventry men have had the good sense to prefer a successful man of business, the architect of his own fortunes, to a Right Honourable Barrister and ex-Railway Commissioner.

[THE SHERBORNE VIADUCT, NEAR COVENTRY: ill12.jpg]

One thing needful to preserve the manufacturing position of Coventry is, a first-rate School of Design--labour, and coal, and ample means of conveyance they have, east and west, and north and south; and now the manufacturers only need the cultivation of true principles of taste among the whole riband- weaving population. For taste is a rare article, and many draughts of small fry must be made before one leviathan salmon can be caught. Great advances have been made recently in the production of the best kinds of ribands. A specimen produced by subscription for the Hyde Park Exhibition of 1851, proved that Coventry was quite able to rival the choicest work of France in the class of machine-made ribands. The application of steam power to this class of manufactures is of but recent date. Coventry surveyed, and this may be done in a few hours, unless the traveller is able and willing to examine its rich manufactories, it is difficult to resist the invitation of the railway porter, bawling, to Kenilworth, Leamington, and Warwick, names calling up a crowd of romantic associations, from Shakspeare to Scott and Bulwer; but for the present we must keep steadily on to Birmingham, where steam finds the chief raw materials of poetry and fashioner of beauty.

BIRMINGHAM.

A run of nineteen miles brings us to what the inhabitants call the Hardware Village, a healthy, ugly town, standing upon several hills, crowned with smoke, but free from fog.

The old railway station stands at the foot of one of these hills, leaving a drive of a quarter of a mile through a squalid region, almost as bad as the railway entrance into Bristol, before entering into the decent part of the town; but the new station, now in course of rapid completion, will land passengers behind the Grammar School, in New Street, the principal, and, indeed, only handsome street of any length in Birmingham.

At the old station there is an excellent hotel, kept by Mr. Robert Bacon, who was so many years house steward to the Athenaeum Club, in Pall Mall; and at the refreshment-rooms a capital table d'hote is provided four times a-day, at two shillings a-head, servants included, an arrangement extremely acceptable after a ride of 118 miles.

[NEWTON ROAD STATION, NEAR BIRMINGHAM: ill16.jpg]

At the new station similar refreshment-rooms are to be provided, and it is to be hoped that the architect will plan the interior first, and the exterior afterwards, so that comfort may not be sacrificed, as it usually is in English public buildings, to the cost of an imposing portico and vestibule.

As a railway starting point, Birmingham has become a wonderful place. In addition to those main lines and branches passed and noted on our journey down, it is also the centre at which meet the railroads to Derby and Sheffield; to Worcester, Cheltenham, Gloucester, and Bristol; to London through Oxford, by the Broad Gauge Great Western, to Shrewsbury and Chester through Wolverhampton, beside the little South Staffordshire lines, which form an omnibus route between Birmingham, Walsall, Dudley, and Lichfield, and other iron nets "too tedious to describe."

To a stranger not interested in manufactures, and in mechanic men, this is a very dull, dark, dreary town, and the sooner he gets out of it the better. There are only two fine buildings. The Town Hall, an exact copy externally of the Temple of Jupiter Stator at Rome, built of a beautiful grey Anglesey marble, from the designs of Messrs. Hansom and Welch, who also undertook to execute it for 24,000 pounds. It cost 30,000 pounds, and the contractors were consequently ruined. A railway company would probably have paid the difference; but, in such cases, communities have no conscience, so the people of Brummagem got the Hall of which they are justly proud "a bargain."

The interior is disappointing, and wants the expenditure of some more thousand pounds in sculptures and decorative details, to bring it into harmony with its noble external effect. The great room, 145 feet in length, by 65 feet in width and height, will contain upwards of 8,000 persons.

Musical meetings are held here periodically, for the benefit of certain charities; but the sight best worth seeing, is the Hall at the period of an election, or of political excitement, crowded with a feverish army of workmen, cheering, groaning, swaying to and fro, under the speeches of their favourite orators. Then in this Pagan temple may be seen a living specimen of a Brummagem Jupiter, with a cross of Vulcan, lion-faced, hairy, bearded, deep-mouthed swaggering, fluent in frank nonsense and bullying clap-trap, loved by the mob for his strength, and by the middle classes for his money. The lofty roof re-echoes with applause.

The temple, the man, and the multitude, all together, are well worth a journey to Birmingham to see.

There is also the Free School of King Edward VI., in New Street, a stately pile, built by Barry, before he had become so famous as he is now; which supplies first-rate instruction in classics, mathematics, modern languages, and all branches of a useful English education, after the plan introduced into our public schools by Dr. Arnold, to the sons of all residents, at an extremely cheap, almost a nominal rate. Ten exhibitions of 50 pounds each for four years at Oxford or Cambridge are open to the competition of the scholars.

The salary of the Head Master is 400 pounds a-year, with a residence, and the privilege of boarding eighteen pupils. Of the Second Master, 300 pounds. Beside Under Masters.

These liberal appointments have secured a succession of competent masters, and cannot fail to produce a permanent and favourable change in the character of young Birmingham. The diffusion of sound classical learning was much needed to mitigate the coxcombical pretensions of the half-educated, and the vulgar coarseness of the uneducated. The inhabitants of manufacturing towns are apt to grow petty Plutocracies, in which after wealth, ignorance and assumption are the principal qualifications. Brass turns up its nose at iron, and both look down upon tin, although half an hour in the world's fire make all so black as to be undistinguishable.

Besides this, which we may term the High School, there are four schools supported out of King Edward VI.'s foundation, where reading, writing, and arithmetic, are taught.

The funds on which these magnificent ecclesiastical establishments are supported, arise from lands in the neighbourhood which originally produced only 21 pounds a year, and were part of the estates of the Guild of the "Holy Cross." After being occupied first as fields and then as gardens, the rise of manufactures and extension of the town of Birmingham, converted a great portion into building land. The present revenue amounts to about 11,000 pounds per annum, and are likely to be still further increased.

Twenty years ago, school lands which are now leased for terms of years, and covered with buildings, were occupied as suburban gardens at trifling rents. Eventually the Birmingham Free School will enjoy an income equal to the wants of a university as well as a school. Meagre accounts of the income and expenditure of this noble foundation are published annually, under the regulations of an Act of Parliament passed in 1828; but no report of the number of scholars, or the sort of education communicated, is attached to this balance sheet. It would be very useful; and we hope that the self- elected corporation, who have the management, will see the propriety of supplying it.

Birmingham also possesses a chartered college, "Queen's College," similar to that at Durham; first established as a medical school by the exertions of the present dean, Mr. Sands Cox, since liberally endowed by the Rev. Dr. Warneford to the extent of many thousand pounds, and placed in a position to afford the courses in law, physic, and divinity, required for taking a degree at the University of London. Also a Blue Coat School, and School for the Blind.

In a picturesque point of view there are few towns more uninviting than Birmingham; for the houses are built of brick toned down to a grimy red by smoke, in long streets crossing each other at right angles,--and the few modern stone buildings and blocks of houses seem as pert and as much out of place as the few idle dandies who are occasionally met among the crowds of busy mechanics and anxious manufacturers. What neatness--cleanliness--can do for the streets, bell-pulls, and door-knockers, has been done; the foot- pavements are, for the most part flagged, although some of the round pebble corn-creating footways still remain in the back streets. One suburb, Edgbaston, is the property of Lord Calthorpe, and has been let out on building leases which entirely exclude all manufactories and inferior classes of houses. The result has been a crop of snug villas, either stucco or polished red brick; many of them surrounded by gardens and shrubberies, and a few of considerable pretension. Of this suburb the Birmingham people think a great deal; but, as it is built upon a dead flat in long straight lines, its effect is more pleasing to the citizen after a hard day's work, than to the artist, architect, landscape gardener, or lover of the picturesque.

Birmingham is, in fact, notable for its utility more than its beauty,--for what is done in its workshops, rather than for what is to be seen in its streets and suburbs. Nowhere are there to be found so numerous a body of intelligent, ingenious, well educated workmen. The changes of fashion and the discoveries of science always find Birmingham prepared to march in the van, and skilfully execute the work needed in iron, in brass, in gold and silver, in all the mixed metals and in glass. When guns are no longer required at the rate of a gun a minute, Birmingham steel pens become famous all over the world. When steel buckles and gilt buttons have had their day, Britannia teapots and brass bedsteads still hold their own. No sooner is electrotype invented, than the principal seat of the manufacture is established at Birmingham. No sooner are the glass duties repealed than the same industrious town becomes renowned for plate glass, cut glass, and stained glass; and, when England demands a Palace to hold the united contributions of "The Industry of the World," a Birmingham banker finds the contractor and the credit, and Birmingham manufacturers find the iron, the glass, and the skill needful for the most rapid and gigantic piece of building ever executed in one year.

In order to appreciate the independent character and quick inventive intelligence of the Birmingham mechanic, he should be visited at his own home. A system of small independent houses, instead of lodgings, prevails in this town, to the great advantage of the workmen.

It is only within a very few years that the working classes have had, in a local School of Design, means of instruction in the principles of taste, and arts of drawing and modelling; while, until the patent laws are put upon a just foundation, their inventive faculties can never be fully developed. When the artizans of Birmingham have legislative recognition of their rights as inventors, and free access to a first-rate school of design, their "cunning" hands will excel in beauty as well as ingenuity all previous triumphs.

The wealthier classes have, from various causes, deteriorated within the last sixty years, while the workmen have improved within that time. Men who have realized fortunes no longer settle down in the neighbourhood of their labours. They depart as far as possible from the smoke of manufactures and the bickerings of middle class cliques, purchase estates, send their sons to the universities, and in a few years subside into country squires. Professional men, as soon as they have displayed eminent talent, emigrate to London; and the habit, now so prevalent in all manufacturing towns, of living in the suburbs, has sapped the prosperity of those literary and philosophical institutions and private reunions, which so much contributed to raise the tone of society during the latter half of the last century. The meetings of an old Literary and Philosophical Society have been discontinued, and the News Room was lately on the brink of dissolution. Instead of meeting to discuss points of art, science, and literature, the middle classes read the Times and Punch, and consult the Penny Cyclopaedia. The literary and scientific character which Birmingham acquired in the days when Boulton, Watt, Priestly, Darwin, Murdoch, and their friends, met at the Birmingham Lunarian Society, to discuss, to experiment, and to announce important discoveries, have passed away never to return; and we are not likely to see again any provincial town occupying so distinguished a position in the scientific world. The only sign of Birmingham's ancient literary pre- eminence is to be found in several weekly newspapers, conducted with talent and spirit far beyond average. It is an amusing fact, that the sect to which Priestly belonged still trade on his reputation, and claim an intellectual superiority over the members of other persuasions, which they may once have possessed, but which has long been levelled up by the universal march of education. The richer members publish little dull books in bad English on abstruse subjects, and, like Consuelo's prebendary, have quartos in preparation which never reach the press.

In fact, the suburban system of residence and the excessive pretension of superiority by the "pots over the kettles" have almost destroyed society in Birmingham, although people meet occasionally at formal expensive parties, and are drawn together by sympathy in religion and politics.

Nothing would induce an educated gentleman to live in Birmingham except to make a living, yet there are residing there, seldom seen out of their factories, men of the highest scientific and no mean literary attainments.

There are a number of manufactories, which, in addition to their commercial importance, present either in finished articles, or in the process of manufacture, much that will interest an intelligent traveller.

GLASS.--Messrs. F. & C. Oslers, of Broad Street, have attained a very high reputation for their cut and ornamental, as well as the ordinary, articles of flint glass. The have been especially successful in producing fine effects from prismatic arrangements. Their gigantic chandeliers of great size, made for Ibrahim Pacha, and the Nepalese Prince, were the steps by which they achieved the lofty crystal fountain, of an entirely original design, which forms one of the most novel and effective ornaments of the Crystal Palace. The manufactory as well as the show-room is open to the inspection of respectable strangers.

Messrs. Rice and Harris are also extensive manufacturers of cut and coloured glass; and Messrs. Bacchus and Sons have been very successful in their imitations of Bohemian glass, both in form and colour. Messrs. Chance have acquired a world-wide reputation by supplying the largest quantity of crown glass in the shortest space of time for Paxton's Palace. These works, in which plate and every kind of crown glass is made, are situated at West Bromwich. The proprietors have benevolently and wisely made arrangements for the education of their workmen and their families, which are worthy of imitation in all those great factories where the plan, which originated in Lancashire, has not been already adopted. A letter of introduction will be required in order to view Messrs. Chance's establishment, of which we shall say more when noting the social state of the Birmingham operatives.

PAPIER MACHE.--Messrs. Jennens and Bettridge's works are so well known that it is only necessary to refer to them for the purpose of saying that in their show-rooms some new application of the art which they have carried to such perfection is constantly to be found. Pianos, cradles, arm-chairs, indeed complete drawing-room suites, cornices, door-plates, and a variety of ornaments are displayed, in addition to the tea-trays and tea-chests in which the art of japanning first became known to us.

Although Messrs. Jennens and Co. have the largest establishment in Birmingham, there are several others who produce capital work; among them may be named Mr. Thomas Lane and Messrs. M'Callum and Hodgson, who both exhibited specimens of great merit at the last Birmingham Exhibition of manufactures.

But metals afford the great staple of employment in Birmingham, and we shall avail ourselves, in describing the leading trades, and touching on the social position of the workmen, of the admirable letters on Labour and the Poor in Birmingham which appeared in the Morning Chronicle in the course of 1850. {81}

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BIRMINGHAM BUTTONS.--"A Brummagem Button" is the old-fashioned nickname for a Birmingham workman. The changes of fashion, and the advances of other manufactures, have deprived that trade of its ancient pre-eminence over all other local pursuits; but the "button trade," although not the same trade which made great fortunes in a previous generation, still employs five or six thousand hands, of which one-half are women and children.

In the middle of the eighteenth century a plain white metal button was made, which may occasionally be seen in remote rural districts, on the green coats of old yeomen, wearing hereditary leather breeches. At that period the poorer classes wore coarse horn or wooden buttons, chiefly home made, and the tailor made, as well as the clothes, buttons covered with cloth. By degrees very handsome gilt buttons came into wear, and continued to employ many hands, while the blue coat which figures in the portraits of our grandfathers remained in fashion.

In 1826, the Florentine, or covered button, now in almost universal use, which is manufactured by machinery with the aid of women and children, was introduced, and by 1829 the gilt button trade had been almost destroyed.

The change produced great distress, vast numbers of persons were thrown out of work, who could not at once turn to any other employment. In 1830 a deputation from the gilt button trade waited upon George IV. and the principal nobility, to solicit their patronage. The application succeeded, coloured coats with metal buttons came into fashion, and dandies of the first water appeared in bright snuff-coloured, pale green, and blue coats, such as are now only worn by Paul Bedford or Keeley, in broad farce. In 1836 a cheap mode of gilding, smart for a day, dull and shabby in a week, completely destroyed the character of gilt buttons, and brought up the Florentine again. This change was, no doubt, materially assisted and maintained by Bulwer's novel of "Pelham," which set all young men dressing themselves up like crows with white shirts.

In 1840 a deputation to Prince Albert attempted another revival of the gilt button trade, and at the same time the silk stocking weavers waited on the Prince to endeavour to drive out the patent leather boots, and bring in the low shoe. Both attempts failed. At present there are symptoms of a turn of fashion toward coloured coats and bright buttons, which may be successful, because the fashionable world abhors monotony. The flame coloured coats, long curls, and pink under waistcoats of George IV., were succeeded by the solemn sables of an undertaker; the high tight stock made way for a sailor's neckcloth. For a time shawl waistcoats, of gay colours, had their hour. Then correct tight black yielded to the loosest and shaggiest garments that could be invented. Perhaps the year 1852 may see our youth arrayed in blue, purple and pale brown.

But a very little consideration will prove that these artificial changes, although they may benefit a class, are of little advantage to the community. If a man gives 10s. more for a coat with gilt buttons than for one with plain buttons, he has 10s. less to expend with some other tradesman.

The Florentine Button, first invented in 1820, and since much improved, is a very curious manufacture. It is made--as any one may see by cutting up a button--of five pieces; first, the covering of Florentine, or silk; second, a cover of metal, which gives the shape to the button; third, a smaller circle of mill-board; fourth, a circle of coarse cloth, or calico; fifth, a circle of metal, with a hole punched in the centre, through which the calico or cloth is made to protrude, to form the shank, to be sewed on to the garment.