Part 1

Transcriber’s Notes:

The spelling, hyphenation, punctuation and accentuation are as the original, except for apparent typographical errors which have been corrected.

Italic text is denoted _thus_. Bold text is denoted =thus=.

MRS. BANKS’S NOVELS.

THE MANCHESTER MAN.

THE MANCHESTER MAN.

BY

MRS. G. LINNÆUS BANKS.

_Author of “God’s Providence House, Glory,” &c._

Tenth Edition.

Manchester: ABEL HEYWOOD & SON, 56 & 58, OLDHAM STREET,

London: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LIMITED. STATIONERS’ HALL COURT.

1897.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER. PAGE.

I. The Flood 1

II. No One Knows 7

III. How the Rev. Joshua Brookes and Simon Clegg interpreted a Shakesperian Text 14

IV. Mischief 22

V. Ellen Chadwick 28

VI. To Martial Music 36

VII. The Reverend Joshua Brookes 43

VIII. The Blue-Coat School 49

IX. The Snake 56

X. First Antagonism 64

XI. The Blue-Coat Boy 71

XII. The Gentleman 80

XIII. Simon’s Pupil 85

XIV. Jabez goes out into the World 91

XV. Apprenticeship 98

XVI. In War and Peace 105

XVII. In the Warehouse 113

XVIII. Easter Monday 121

XIX. Peterloo 128

XX. Action and Reaction 139

XXI. Wounded 146

XXII. Mr. Clegg 153

XXIII. In the Theatre Royal 161

XXIV. Madame Broadbent’s Fan 166

XXV. Retrospective 173

XXVI. On the Portico Steps 181

XXVII. Manhood 188

XXVIII. Once in a Life 194

XXIX. On Ardwick Green Pond 201

XXX. Blind 210

XXXI. Coronation Day 217

XXXII. Evening: Indoors and Out 225

XXXIII. Clogs 233

XXXIV. Birds of a Feather 240

XXXV. At Carr Cottage 246

XXXVI. The Lover’s Walk 254

XXXVII. A Ride on a Rainy Night 262

XXXVIII. Defeated 269

XXXIX. Like Father, Like Son 276

XL. With all His Faults 283

XLI. Marriage 290

XLII. Blows 298

XLIII. Partnership 307

XLIV. Man and Beast 316

XLV. Wounds Inflicted and Endured 325

XLVI. The Mower with His Scythe 333

XLVII. The Last Act 340

THE MANCHESTER MAN.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.[1]

THE FLOOD.

When Pliny lost his life, and Herculaneum was buried, Manchester was born. Whilst lava and ashes blotted from sight and memory fair and luxurious Roman cities close to the Capitol, the Roman soldiery of Titus, under their general Agricola, laid the foundations of a distant city which now competes with the great cities of the world. Where now rise forests of tall chimneys, and the hum of whirling spindles, spread the dense woods of Arden; and from the clearing in their midst rose the Roman castrum of Mamutium,[2] which has left its name of Castle Field as a memorial to us. But where their summer camp is said to have been pitched, on the airy rock at the confluence of the rivers Irk and Irwell, sacred church and peaceful college have stood for centuries, and only antiquaries can point to Roman possession, or even to the baronial hall which the Saxon lord perched there for security.

And only an antiquary or a very old inhabitant can recall Manchester as it was at the close of the last century, and shutting his eyes upon railway-arch, station, and esplanade, upon Palatine buildings, broad roadways, and river embankments, can see the Irk and the Irwell as they were when the Cathedral was the Collegiate Church, with a diminutive brick wall round its ancient graveyard. Then the irregular-fronted rows of quaint old houses which still, under the name of Half Street, crowd upon two sides of the churchyard, with only an intervening strip of a flagged walk between, closed it up on a third side, and shut the river (lying low beneath) from the view, with a huddled mass of still older dwellings, some of which were thrust out of sight, and were only to be reached by flights of break-neck steps of rock or stone, and like their hoary fellows creeping down the narrow roadway of Hunt’s Bank, overhung the Irwell, and threatened to topple into it some day.

The Chetham Hospital or College still looks solidly down on the Irk at the angle of the streams; the old Grammar School has been suffered to do the same; and—thanks to the honest workmen who built for our ancestors—the long lines of houses known as Long Millgate are for the most part standing, and on the river side have resisted the frequent floods of centuries.

In 1799 that line was almost unbroken, from the College (where it commenced at Hunt’s Bank Bridge) to Red Bank. The little alley by the Town Mill, called Mill-brow, which led down to the wooden Mill Bridge, was little more of a gap than those narrow entries or passages which pierced the walls like slits here and there, and offered dark and perilous passage to courts and alleys, trending in steep incline to the very bed of the Irk. The houses themselves had been good originally, and were thus cramped together for defence in perilous times, when experience taught that a narrow gorge was easier held against warlike odds than an open roadway.

Ducie Bridge had then no existence, but Tanners’ Bridge—no doubt a strong wooden structure like that at Mill-brow—accessible from the street only by one of those narrow steep passages, stood within a few yards of its site, and had a place on old maps so far back as 1650. Its name is expressive, and goes to prove that the tannery on the steep banks of the Irk, behind the houses of Long Millgate opposite to the end of Miller’s Lane, was a tannery at least a century and a half before old Simon Clegg worked amongst the tan-pits, and called William Clough master.

To this sinuous and picturesque line of houses, the streams with their rocky and precipitous banks will have served in olden times as a natural defensive moat (indeed it is noticeable that old Manchester kept pretty much within the angle of its rivers), and in 1799, from one end of Millgate to the other, the dwellers by the waterside looked across the stream on green and undulating uplands, intersected by luxuriant hedgerows, a bleachery at Walker’s Croft, and a short terrace of houses near Scotland Bridge, denominated Scotland, being the sole breaks in the verdure.

Between the tannery and Scotland Bridge, the river makes a sharp bend; and here, at the elbow, another mill, with its corresponding dam, was situated. The current of the Irk, if not deep, is strong at all times, though kept by its high banks within narrow compass. But when, as is not unseldom the case, there is a sudden flushing of water from the hill-country, it rises, rises, rises, stealthily, though swiftly, till the stream overtops its banks, washes over low-lying bleach-crofts, fields, and gardens, mounts foot by foot over the fertile slopes, invades the houses, and, like a mountain-robber sweeping from his fastness on a peaceful vale, carries his spoil with him, and leaves desolation and wailing behind.

Such a flood as this, following a heavy thunder-storm, devastated the valley of the Irk, on the 17th of August, 1799.

Well was it then for the tannery and those houses on the bank of the Irk which had their foundations in the solid rock, for the waters surged and roared at their base and over pleasant meadows—a wide-spread turbulent sea, with here and there an island of refuge, which the day before had been a lofty mound.

The flood of the previous Autumn, when a coach and horses had been swept down the Irwell, and men and women were drowned, was as nothing to this. The tannery yard, high as it was above the bed of the Irk, and solid as was its embankment, was threatened with invasion. The surging water roared and beat against its masonry, and licked its coping with frothy tongue and lip, like a hungry giant, greedy for fresh food. Men with thick clogs and hide-bound legs, leathern gloves and aprons, were hurrying to and fro with barrows and bark-boxes for the reception of the valuable hides which their mates, armed with long-shafted hooks and tongs, were dragging from the pits pell-mell, ere the advancing waters should encroach upon their territory, and empty the tan-pits for them.

Already the insatiate flood bore testimony to its ruthless greed. Hanks of yarn, pieces of calico, hay, uptorn bushes, planks, chairs, boxes, dog-kennels, and hen-coops, a shattered chest of drawers, pots and pans, had swept past, swirling and eddying in the flood, which by this time spread like a vast lake over the opposite lands, and had risen within three feet of the arch of Scotland Bridge, and hardly left a trace where the mill-dam chafed it commonly.

Too busy were the tanners, under the eye of their master, to stretch out hand or hook to arrest the progress of either furniture or live stock, though beehives and hen-coops, and more than one squealing pig, went racing with the current, now rising towards the footway of Tanner’s Bridge.

Every window of every house upon the banks was crowded with anxious heads, for flooded Scotland rose like an island from the watery waste, and their own cellars were fast filling. There had been voices calling to each other from window to window all the morning; but now from window to window, from house to house, rang one reduplicated shriek, which caused many of the busy tanners to quit their work, and rush to the water’s edge. To their horror, a painted wooden cradle, which had crossed the deeply-submerged dam in safety, was floating foot-foremost down to destruction, with an infant calmly sleeping in its bed; the very motion of the waters having seemingly lulled it to sounder repose!

“Good Lord! It’s a choilt!” exclaimed Simon Clegg, the eldest tanner in the yard. “Lend a hand here, fur the sake o’ th’ childer at whoam.”

Half a dozen hooks and plungers were outstretched, even while he spoke; but the longest was lamentably too short to arrest the approaching cradle in its course, and the unconscious babe seemed doomed. With frantic haste Simon Clegg rushed on to Tanner’s Bridge, followed by a boy; and there, with hook and plunger, they met the cradle as it drifted towards them, afraid of over-balancing it even in their attempt to save. It swerved, and almost upset; but Simon dexterously caught his hook within the wooden hood, and drew the frail bark and its living freight close to the bridge. The boy, and a man named Cooper, lying flat on the bridge, then clutched at it with extended hands, raised it carefully from the turbid water, and drew it safely between the open rails to the footway, amidst the shouts and hurrahs of breathless and excited spectators.

The babe was screaming terribly. The shock when the first hook stopped the progress of the cradle had disturbed its dreams, and its little fat arms were stretched out piteously as strange faces looked down upon it instead of the mother’s familiar countenance. Wrapping the patchwork quilt around it to keep it from contact with his wet sleeves and apron, Simon tenderly as a woman, lifted the infant in his rough arms, and strove to comfort it, but in vain. His beard of three days growth was as a rasp to its soft skin, and the closer he caressed, the more it screamed. The men from the tannery came crowding round him.

“What dost ta mean to do wi’ th’ babby?” asked the man Cooper of old Simon. “Aw’d tak’ it whoam to my missis, but th’ owd lass is nowt to be takken to, an’ wur cross as two sticks when oi only axed fur mi baggin to bring to wark wi’ mi this mornin’,” added he, with rueful remembrance of the scolding wife on his hearth.

“Neay, lad, aw’ll not trust th’ poor choilt to thy Sally. It ’ud be loike chuckin’ it out o’ th’ wayter into th’ fire (Hush-a-by, babby). Aw’ll just take it to ar’ Bess, and hoo’ll cuddle it up, and gi’ it summat to sup, till we find its own mammy,” answered Simon, leaving the bridge. “Bring the kayther[3] alung, Jack,” (to the boy) “Bess’ll want it. We’n noan o’ that tackle at ar place. Hush-a-by, hush-a-by, babby.”

But the little thing, missing its natural protector, and half stifled in the swathing quilt, only screamed the louder; and Simon, notwithstanding his kind heart, was truly glad when his daughter Bess, who had witnessed the rescue from their own window, met him at the tannery gate, and relieved him of his struggling charge.

“Si thi, Bess! here’s a God-send fur thi—a poor little babby fur thi to tend an’ be koind to, till them it belungs to come a-seekin’ fur it,” said he to the young woman; “but thah mun give it summat better than cowd wayter—it’s had too mich o’ that a’ready.”

“That aw will, poor darlin’!” responded she, kissing the babe’s velvet cheeks as, sensible of a change of nurses, it nestled to her breast. “Eh! but there’ll be sore hearts for this blessed babby, somewheere.” And she turned up the narrow passage which led at once from the tan-yard and the bridge, stilling and soothing the little castaway as adroitly as an experienced nurse.

“Neaw, luk thi, lad,” Simon remarked to Cooper; “is na it fair wonderful heaw that babby taks to ar Bess? But it’s just a way hoo has, an’ theere is na a fractious choilt i’ a’ ar yard but’ll be quiet wi’ Bess.”

Cooper looked after her, nodded an assent, and sighed, as if he wished some one in another yard had the same soothing way with her.

But the voice of the raging water had not stilled like that of the rescued infant. Back went the two men to their task, and worked away with a will to carry hides, bark and implements to places of security. And as they hurried to and fro with loads on back or barrow, up, up, inch by inch, foot by foot, the swelling flood rose still higher, till, lapping the foot-bridge, curling over the embankment, it drove the sturdy tanners back, flung itself into the pits, and, in many a swirling eddy, washed tan and hair and skins into the common current.

Not so much, however, went into its seething caldron as might have been, had the men worked with less vigour; and, quick to recognise the value of ready service, Mr. Clough led his drenched and weary workmen to the “Skinner’s Arms,” in Long Millgate, and ordered a supply of ale and bread and cheese to be served out to them.

At the door of the public-house, where he left the workmen to the enjoyment of this impromptu feast, he encountered Simon Clegg. The kind fellow had taken a hasty run to his own tenement, “just to see heaw ar Bess an’ th’ babby get on;” and he brought back the intelligence that it was “a lad, an’ as good as goold.”

“Oh, my man, I’ve been too much occupied to speak to you before,” cried Mr. Clough. “I saw you foremost in the rescue of that unfortunate infant, and shall not forget it. Here is a crown for your share in the good deed. I suppose that was the child’s mother you gave it to?”

Simon was a little man, but he drew back with considerable native dignity.

“Thenk yo’, measter, all th’ same, but aw connot tak’ brass fur just doin’ my duty. Aw’d never ha slept i’ my bed gin that little un had bin dreawned, an’ me lookin’ on loike a stump. Neay; that lass wur Bess, moi wench. We’n no notion wheer th’ lad’s mother is.”

Mr. Clough would have pressed the money upon him, but he put it back with a motion of his hand.

“No, sir; aw’m a poor mon, a varry poor mon, but aw connot tak’ money fur savin’ a choilt’s life. It’s agen’ mi conscience. I’ll tak’ mi share o’ the bread an’ cheese, an’ drink yo’r health i’ a sup o’ ale, but aw cudna’ tak’ that brass if aw wur deein’.”

And Simon, giving a scrape with his clog, and a duck of his head, meant for a bow, passed his master respectfully, and went clattering up the steps of the “Skinners’ Arms,” leaving the gentleman standing there, and looking after him in mingled astonishment and admiration.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

NO ONE KNOWS.

When the scurrying water, thick with sand and mud, and discoloured with dye stuffs, which floated in brightly-tinted patches on its surface, filled the arch of Scotland Bridge, and left only the rails of Tanners’ Bridge visible, the inundation reached its climax; but a couple of days elapsed before the flood subsided below the level of the unprotected tannery-yard, and until then neither Simon Clegg nor his mates could resume their occupations.

There was a good deal of lounging about Long Millgate and the doors of the “Queen Anne” and “Skinners’ Arms,” of heavily-shod men, in rough garniture of thick hide—armoury against the tan and water in which their daily bread was steeped.

But in all those two days no anxious father, no white-faced mother, had run from street to street, and house to house, to seek and claim a rescued living child. No, not even when the week had passed, though the story of his “miraculous preservation” was the theme of conversation at the tea-tables of gentility and in the bar-parlours of taverns; was the gossip of courts and alleys, highways and byways; and though echo, in the guise of a “flying stationer,” caught it up and spread it broadcast in catchpenny sheets, far beyond the confines of the inundation.

This was the more surprising as no dead bodies had been washed down the river, and no lives were reported “lost.” Had the child no one to care for it?—no relative to whom its little life was precious? Had it been abandoned to its fate, a waif unloved, uncared for?

The house in which Simon Clegg lived was situated at the very end of Skinners’ Yard, a _cul-de-sac_, to which the only approach was a dark covered entry, not four feet wide. The pavement of the yard was natural rock, originally hewn into broad flat steps, but then worn with water from the skies, and from house-wifely pails, and the tramp of countless clogs, to a rugged steep incline, asking wary stepping from the stranger on exploration after nightfall. Gas was, of course, unknown, but not even an oil-lamp lit up the gloom.

In the sunken basement a tripe-boiler had a number of stone troughs or cisterns, for keeping his commodities cool for sale. The three rooms of Simon Clegg were situated immediately above these, two small bed-rooms overlooking the river and pleasant green fields beyond; the wide kitchen window having no broader range of prospect than the dreary and not too savoury yard. Even this view was shut out by a batting frame, resembling much a long, narrow French bedstead, all the more that on it was laid a thick bed of raw (that is, undressed) cotton, freckled with seeds and fine bits of husky pod. Bess was a batter, and her business was to turn and beat the clotted mass with stout lithe arms and willow-wands, until the fibres loosened, the seeds and specks fell through, and a billowy mass of whitish down lay before her. It was not a healthy occupation: dust and flue released found their way into the lungs, as well as on to the floor and furniture; and a rosy-cheeked batter was a myth. Machinery does the work now—but this history deals with _then_!

During the week dust lay thick on everything; even Bessy’s hair was fluffy as a bursting cotton pod, in spite of the kerchief tied across it; but on the Saturday, when she had carried her work to Simpson’s factory in Miller’s Lane, and came back with her wages, broom and duster cleared away the film; wax and brush polished up the oak bureau, the pride and glory of their kitchen; the two slim iron candlesticks, fender and poker were burnished bright as steel; the three-legged round deal table was scrubbed white; and then, mounted on tall pattens, she set about with mop and pail, and a long-handled stone, to cleanse the flag floor from the week’s impurities.

She had had a good mother, and, to the best of her ability, Bess tried to follow in her footsteps, and fill the vacant place on her father’s hearth, and in his heart. Her mother had been dead four years, and Bess, now close upon twenty, had since then lost two brothers, and lamented as lost one dearer than a brother—the two former by death, the other by the fierce demands of war. She had a pale, interesting face, with dark hair and thoughtful, deep grey eyes, and was, if anything, too quiet and staid for her years; but when her face lit up she had as pleasant a smile upon it as one would wish to see by one’s fireside, and not even her dialect could make her voice otherwise than low and gentle.

Both her brothers had been considerably younger than herself; and possibly the fact of having stood _in loco parentis_ to them for upwards of two years had imparted to her the air of motherliness she possessed. Certain it is that if a child in the yard scalded itself, or cut a finger, or knocked the bark off an angular limb, it went crying to Bessy Clegg in preference to its own mother; and she healed bruises and quarrels with the same balsam—loving sympathy. She was just the one to open her arms and heart to a poor motherless babe, and Simon Clegg knew it.

Old Simon, or old Clegg, he was called, probably because he was graver and more serious than his fellows, and had never changed his master since he grew to manhood; certainly not on account of his age, which trembled on the verge of fifty only. He was a short, somewhat spare man, with a face deeply lined by sorrow for the loved ones he had lost. But he had a merry twinkling eye, and was not without a latent vein of humour. The atmosphere of the tannery might have shrivelled his skin, but it had not withered his heart; and when he handed the child he had saved to his daughter, he never stopped to calculate contingencies.

The boy, apparently between two and three months’ old, was dressed in a long gown of printed linen, had a muslin cap, and an under one of flannel, all neatly made, but neither in make nor material beyond those of a respectable working-man’s child; and there was not a mark upon anything which could give a clue to its parentage.

The painted wooden cradle, which had been to it an ark of safety, was placed in a corner by the fireplace; and an old bottle, filled with thin gruel, over the neck of which Bess had tied a loose cap of punctured wash-leather, was so adjusted that the little one, deprived of its mother, could lie within and feed itself whilst Bess industriously pursued her avocations.

These were not times for idleness. There had been bread-riots the previous winter; food still was at famine prices; and it was all a poor man could do, with the strictest industry and economy, to obtain a bare subsistence. So Bess worked away all the harder, because there were times when babydom was imperative, and would be nursed.

She had put the last garnishing touches to her kitchen on Saturday night, had taken off her wrapper-brat,[4] put on a clean blue, bedgown,[5] and substituted a white linen cap for the coloured kerchief, when her father, who had been to New Cross Market to make his bargains by himself on this occasion, came into the kitchen, followed by Cooper, who having helped to save the child, naturally felt an interest in him.

The iron porridge-pot was on the low fire, and Bess, sifting the oatmeal into the boiling water with the left hand, whilst with the other she beat it swiftly with her porridge-stick, was so intent on the preparation of their supper, she did not notice their entrance until her father, putting his coarse wicker market-basket down on her white table, bade Cooper “Coom in an’ tak’ a cheer.”

Instead of taking a chair, the man walked as quietly as his clogs would let him to the cradle, and looked down on the infant sucking vigorously at the delusive bottle. Mat Cooper was the _un_happy father of eight, whose maintenance was a sore perplexity to him; and it may be supposed he spoke with authority when he exclaimed—

“Whoy, he tak’s t’ th’ pap-bottle as nat’rally as if he’n ne’er had nowt else!”