§ 7.
As for the male members of the company, they avow, of course, an unusually complete immersion in occupations unmuscular and theoretical: Liverpool’s exceptional freedom from industrialism—other than the secluded industrialism of the Docks—making her, in this conspicuous white-fingered urbanity of her workers, once more especially typical of one of the chief modes of modern civic life. All manual labour being, broadly speaking, tidily banished to the Docks, these central spaces are left entirely at the disposal of the dock-labourer’s soft-handed collaborators—the clerk, the merchant, the broker. Every morning, from nine to ten, the tide of these spruce actors pours astonishingly in. They cram and encrust the cars, they traverse, with a neat, fashionable air, that mild ante-room in Tithebarn Street; they flood thickly up from the River—an agreeably apparelled army that gives a fine air of prosperity to all the streets, and that will shortly settle down, in a thousand unseen cells, to its extraordinary and so modern labours, dealing always with symbols instead of actualities, with signatures instead of people, with bills of lading instead of bales and boxes, flinging tons of merchandise from continent to continent with the flick of a pen—a queer, Shalott-like existence of whispers and reflections.
But in spite of these unmuscular rites, and in spite of those elegant costumes, it must not be imagined that the ritualists are themselves unmuscular. It is by no means a white-faced and dyspeptic clan, this clerical tribe of Liverpool. And, for my own part, I like to believe that it is the River once more which has secured for these clerks, merchants, bankers, brokers, their rather conspicuous emancipation from the proverbial physical defects of the sedentary. The place, anyhow, is very clearly pledged to athleticism, as those rows of physical culture magazines which chromatically tessellate the pavements of Water Street and Chapel Street would alone suffice to make quite evident. And certainly, even if it be not wholly responsible for this remorseless pursuit of muscularity, the River gives that pursuit all manner of exceptional advantages. The long series of famous golf-links that lie amongst the sand-dunes at New Brighton, at Leasowe, at Hoylake, at Formby, at Blundellsands, at Birkdale; the numerous salt-water swimming-baths; the sailing clubs; the briny, gale-cleansed spaces of aromatic gold, free to all who care to use them, that curve endlessly about the coast; the mere proximity of the Landing Stage and the presence of the cordial and bracing airs that enfilade the streets of offices behind it—all these things must have tended to give athleticism an especial point and vigour. The River has made one-half of Liverpool a race of quill-drivers; but it has also made them a race of exceptionally deep-lunged and brown-faced quill-drivers.
EVENING AT NEW BRIGHTON.
Take, for instance, the case of L——. L——, nearer twenty than thirty, is a clerk in a bank here, and he, like our free-striding heroine, presents a clear and accurate summary of the tendencies one notes in the innumerable clerks who fill the close-packed offices all about him. He lives “across the water” at New Brighton, choosing that because of the half-hour’s river crossing morning and evening. (He spends that half-hour walking steadfastly round and round the upper deck, hat in hand, practising—if he can do so unobtrusively—an elaborate and, I am sure, highly painful system of respiration.) He goes to the swimming-bath twice a week in winter, five or six times in summer, dodging down there, if possible, at moments that are perhaps, from a mere purist’s point of view, not entirely his own. But in these matters L—— is no mere purist. He does his work well (he is really a most excellent servant), and that suffices. He is paid £140 a year for doing it well, and that, too, suffices. It suffices for three £3 3s. suits per annum, for subscriptions to a football club, to a cricket club, to a tennis club, for a sixth share of the expenses of running a small yacht, for a £13 summer holiday, and for his various trim necessities. He is a close student of the science of “fitness,” regarding “fitness” (very properly) as a thing much superior to any mental abnormality, and the shilling which suffices for his daily lunch is not expended without due dietetical considerations. Just now it is vegetarianism. Thereafter he repairs to one of those surprising underground smoking cabarets—places where an Oriental easefulness and languor loom dimly through a blue narcotic veil—which Liverpool, probably because of her emphatic clericalism, provides in such extreme abundance, and there, in the company of other seekers after fitness, he sips, and smokes, and nibbles one of the two biscuits with which he is provided (never both—that would be a grave faux pas), and discusses athleticism until a quarter of an hour after the time he should be back at his desk. He is lithe, clean-shaven, temperate, unmarried, and, in spite of his contes, probably strictly celibate as well. He reads, but books are of interest to him chiefly because they remind him of life, give him a fresh appetite for the fit and pleasant things of life; thus, he praises Harland because his people—Anthony and the rest—are “so immensely decent.” He is not inordinately religious, but the traditional piety of his people is a thing he contentedly accepts. He may one day migrate (“going abroad” is a familiar topic in this City of lowly paid clerks and multitudinous cheap and obvious modes of exit), and if he does he will certainly score. If he stays at home he will wind up with a small bank managership and as much in the way of golf and week-ends as £250 a year will permit him to use as a salve for the obedient monotony of small bank management.
That is one type of player. Another, and much older, is to be found gravely pacing among those sober buildings in Brunswick Street. Self-made, but never blatant; successful because of his common sense and his genius for hard work, and remaining common-sensible and hard-working in spite of his success; vested with a dignity that sometimes verges on stolidity; suspicious of sentiment in life, but an admirer of Bouguereau in art, he is pre-eminently the kind of man who ought always to be commemorated in a steel engraving, never in a photograph. He has had much to do with the creation of his City, and certain of her newer propensities awaken in him a vague sensation of alarm. Wealthy, he is a collector rather than an amateur, but a friend rather than a host. Not without a rich vein of humour, he still takes politics quite seriously. His house (if his family be amenable) has a strong mahogany flavour; if his family be vigorous, that vague feeling of disquietude pursues him there, where he is compelled to fit into an incongruous bungalow-full of art nouveau tenuities.
THE WALKER ART GALLERY—INTERIOR.
Thus, in spite of the fact that he, more than any of the others, often startles one by his resemblance to the tense Rodinesque figure beyond, he finds himself already being surrounded by a steady flow of new modes and influences. E——, for example, is the vigorous son of one of these admirable persons; and E—— believes in bungalows, thinks consistent dignity undignified, and has acquired for mahogany a distaste which he believes to be instinctive. I doubt, myself, whether he has the essential capacity of his parent; but his practice (he is a solicitor) is good and whenever one catches his alert, rather thin, diligently groomed face in the City, he seems extraordinarily full of business. He is a member of a club, but uses it rarely: there is little club life in Liverpool. His idea of conversation is to get one alone, and talk shop with extreme diligence and (to be just) much charm. In spite of his art nouveau proclivities, he has less sincere taste for the arts than his Bouguereau-appreciating father; but he has a great stock of criteria, numbers a local portrait-painter among his friends, and at the Private View of the Autumn Exhibition has a neat, intelligent appraisement for every notable picture in the room. He never makes discoveries there, and of course his range is limited. He has a word of judicious praise for Hornel (whom his father still honestly dislikes), but Steer has not yet emerged from the unimportant section he vaguely calls Impressionist; but within those limits his efficiency is surprising: yes, he is unmistakably intelligent. He is not quite sure of the University: actually, unconsciously, he is just a little afraid of all that it stands for; and the University, although it makes a friend of him, has, in private, an attitude not wholly antithetical to pity.... That splitting up—that friendly specialization and intelligent exchange when needed—of culture, of business instincts, of dilettantism—so different from the inclusive interests, almost the independent universality, both of demand and supply, that marked his father—I find quite profoundly characteristic of the Liverpool of the present moment.