§ 8.
Well, there, in their most characteristic rôles, are some of the chief of the players who step efficiently, efficiently, through the six days’ traffic of this well-set central stage. I have said nothing, it will be seen, of their nationalities. That is partly because national characteristics in Liverpool have a way of bowing to the local spirit—or rather, to put it more accurately, because various national characteristics have contributed to a local spirit that an Englishman, a Scotchman, or a Welshman finds it easy and proper to adopt. Thus, there are any number of clerks in the North and South Wales Bank (whose Head Office is here) who are perfect replicas of L——, and E—— père, for all his typical Liverpolitanism, is really a pure-bred Scot. And it is partly, too, because any real consideration of this alluring question of race would lead to what would be, in this most cosmopolitan of places, a quite endless business: the discussion, namely, of how the pattern of the local spirit has been affected by the presence of those charming peoples who draw such bright exotic threads through the social fabric.
Into all that, unhappily, I have here no space to enter, nor can I even, much as I would desire, describe the changes of cast and play which occasionally take place: the pale Maeterlinckian drama, for instance, which is invariably presented at the close of the six days’ traffic, making a mild hyphen between Saturday’s curtain and Monday’s overture—a coming and going of unknown people among wide echoes and empty roadways, with the sleepy Sunday buildings looking down in a kind of vacant puzzlement.... Or that other performance, not in the least Maeterlinckian, by which the Sunday quiet is succeeded—the great Rabelaisian drama of the Bank Holiday, presented by an entirely fresh company with new costumes and new effects. The lumpish dialect of South Lancashire echoes everywhere about the stage on such occasions. The Landing Stage is a prolonged ballet in red and white and inordinately electric blue. And although the Cotton Market and the Stock Exchange are utterly deserted, the appearance in the streets of a strange, pinkish, tissue-wropt substance described (perhaps apocryphally?) as “Liverpool Rock” would seem to testify to the discovery, and to the whole-souled encouragement, of a hitherto unsuspected local industry.
And I would have liked, too, to celebrate in some measure the change that sweeps over the City with the oncoming of night. It is in her native unconsidered gestures, as I have said, far more than in her studied poses, that the essential beauty of Liverpool is most perfectly revealed; and it is at night, when the aid of the sunlight is ended and the sky is a forgotten tale and even the stars are of as little moment as moths that palely flutter outside the windows of a lighted palace, that Liverpool becomes most elemental and instinctive. Abandoned by external nature, she becomes most natural, and therefore attains her most conspicuous beauty. Those electric cars, of course, designed purely for utility, with no thought of spectacle, give to her nocturnes their special individualizing note; so that whilst she has nothing to correspond to that astonishing golden spray of hansoms which makes midnight Piccadilly a place of almost intolerable magnificence, she has her own rich code, just as characteristic, and of but little less a loveliness. Down London Road, down Renshaw Street, the crocus-coloured rivers pour into the vortex of light that boils beneath the great cliffs of Saint George’s Hall, so terrible in their nocturnal shapelessness. Moon-green arc-lamps, that only Baudelaire could properly describe, hang, strange fruits, above the golden turmoil; and it is through courses fledged by sun-gold and canopied by this moon-green that the fluent saffron finally escapes. It sweeps down Dale Street and Water Street, it sweeps down Church Street and James Street, and so pours out, in the end, upon that streaming terrace by the water-side.
§ 9.
So, inevitably, we return in the end to the River, the beautiful source of all this beauty, the magnificent architect of all this golden triumph. I have spoken already of its daylight loveliness, of the elemental hungers that it both feeds and fosters, of its cordial ministry to all that is most panic in men’s blood. But with the advent of night it, too, suffers a deep and splendid change. Renouncing this medicative disloyalty, it frankly surrenders itself to the City’s rule, and becomes a peaceful province of urbanity. The lights of the City make golden chains about it, golden lights from the City patrol its deep recesses. It is the hour of reconciliations. The City is more elemental than by day, the River is less elemental, and a long sustained harmony unites the flaming tides of the streets and the darkened causeway of the tide. Even the boats have shared the transformation. So eminently business-like beneath the sun, they are now changed to shining presences, romantically visiting the night. Topaz, emerald, and ruby are their chosen favours, and widespread robes of cramoisie and gold reflections trail sumptuously about them as they move.
OVERHEAD RAILWAY FROM JAMES STREET.