It is terribly unfair, of course; for Bootle, in spite of the fact that its dockside quarters are not places of an overwhelming lucency and charm, really does possess many gentle and engaging attributes, not least among them being the spasmodic presence in its midst (even yet in larger numbers than elsewhere) of the most delightful broad Scotch seagoing engineers—sitters (when in port) in stifling back sitting-rooms—smokers of incomparable cigars (on which duty may or may not have been paid)—possessors of a very precise knowledge of the healing virtues of strong waters.... And yet, in spite of the unfairness of that contempt, one can’t help feeling that perhaps, after all—independence or no independence—something of the sort was inevitable. Frankly, what is to be expected by a place so unhappily named? Its absurdity is crushing. Bootle, tootle, footle—and not another rhyme-sound in the language. Buckingham Palace, Bootle; White Nights, Bootle: clearly, note-paper could affect no address, from the most stately to the most charming, that it would not instantly convert to screaming farce. And to protest that the name is of the most honourable antiquity is by no means to avoid the consequences. It simply invests the whole business with an extra tinge of tragedy.
Independence of another sort, as yet untouched by tragedy, and awakening in the soul of the Liverpolitan something more like envy than contempt, is to be found at Litherland, which lies just beyond that raucous Linacre terminus, a few steps nearer to the cemetery at Ford. They are steps that provide an effective study in contrasts. They carry one across a frail little swing-bridge; and whilst one end of the bridge is immersed in that bad-tempered outburst of industrialism, the other shares an atmosphere of positively Quakerish demureness. Mild old Georgian residences, placidly sunning themselves among their groves and lawns, are respectfully waited upon by an irresistible village street of shops and inns and a post office. In the mildest and sunniest residence of all the Urban District Council has comfortably established itself; the village fire-escape sits contentedly upon the lawn; and the orchard at the rear has been contrived into an alley echoing with bird-song, where councillors and counselled may foregather with their evening pipes.... It is that highly prosaic thing, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, that has apparently served to keep this idyll unspotted by the world. It curves like a defensive moat between the bird-song and the harsh imbroglio a biscuit’s-throw beyond, and upon the frail structure that crosses it not the most reckless electric car in the world would ever dream of venturing. It is the weakness of that bridge that has proved the place’s strength.
It was in the very shadow of that enviable fire-escape, by the way, that I heard of another and a subtler way in which the electric car carries on its business of subversion. My informant was an Urban District retainer, whom I found, the other afternoon, bedding out the Urban District geraniums. I spoke to him regarding the pleasantness of the neighbourhood, praised its quiet, its salubrity, and so forth. He merely subscribed a perfunctory assent. Judging that my pæan was considered to lack the appropriate degree of fervour, I redoubled my efforts. I waxed really eloquent. Superlatives abounded. But my strophe aroused no antistrophe. The more loudly did I extol, indeed, the gloomier and more perfunctory became his replies. At last I touched on rates, and that proved the last straw. “They’re only two shillings and ninepence,” he burst out wrathfully—I think it was two shillings and ninepence; anyhow, something quite preposterously minute—“and over in Liverpool folks is paying eight or nine shillin’.” It certainly seemed an extraordinary sort of grievance.... And then “They use our cars,” he went on savagely—“they use our cars an’ libries an’ baths. Why shouldn’t they help to pay for ’em?... But they can’t ’old out for ever; Liverpool will nab the place some o’ these fine days.” And he glanced at the genteel old stucco with an air of malevolent triumph.
The man, it will be seen, was himself a Liverpolitan, and I dare say he voiced very fairly the general Liverpolitan sentiment in these matters. “You use our cars; clearly, then, you must be one of us; so quit this foolish pose of independence.” And one day, no doubt, it will quit the pose perforce. Liverpool will “nab” it, the moat will be stoutly bridged, a troop of electric cars will storm across, and the quiet little gathering among the trees will be rudely broken up and submerged.
§ 4.
To witness the actual consummation of such a ravagement, it is only necessary to follow the next “bone” as far as Walton-on-the-Hill. Walton, to my mind, stands as a perfect embodiment of all the mingled tragedy and triumph of this great process of suburb overthrow. For centuries her Church was the proud hub of the parish in which Liverpool was but an inconsiderable hamlet; and even so late as the last year of the seventeenth century she compelled Liverpool to regard her as its parochial superior, and to tramp every Sunday three miles out to her and three miles back. There is little pride left to the old Church now. It stands, bleak and friendless, in the midst of a dull pool of gravestones; smoke from a railway siding blackens its walls; the cars roar triumphantly past its very gates; it has been compelled to guard its dead with rows of iron railings. In the lanes that cower behind it, too, defeat is equally apparent: scraps of villagedom hunted down by a rabble of red-faced tenements; a mass of garish brick squatting blatantly in the ruins of a cornfield; jerry-builders evicting old residents from the cottages they have lived in for half a century; the old Hall, in its nest of trees, lying fouled and rifled. In the shadow of the Church there is a little cottage that has the reputation, significantly enough, of being the only thatched cottage in Liverpool. It is delicately complexioned, daintily windowed, and altogether very fragrant and delightful. But the poor soul, one fancies, is not long for this world. A frenzied hoarding, horrent and gibbering, raves above it on one side; on the other some kind of corrugated iron affair screws its blunt shoulder into the frail old bones.... One seems to catch a gleam of piteous supplication behind the leaded panes.
But just beside the Church one gets the modern touch that seems to make amends. It is from here that the great new road—wide, much-foliaged, grass-platted—begins the journey which is to result in a curving band of ordered white and green being drawn right through the mass of eastern suburbs: a noble avenue which posterity will pace delightedly, thinking kind thoughts of 1907. It is an admirable project, and a fine salve for outraged sentiment. It sets the seal on Walton’s defeat: more even than the red-faced streets does it signalize her absorption in the mass; but it is none the less a thing one welcomes with enthusiasm. Thatch, after all, is not the final excellence of life.
§ 5.
And, in any case, if Walton still thirsts for redress, she can surely regard herself as amply revenged by her sister suburb, Aintree. For Aintree, to no inconsiderable proportion of the inhabitants of the British Isles, is a vastly more important place than Liverpool—Liverpool, indeed, for them, deriving its sole significance from the fact that it is a well-trained and useful attendant at Aintree’s door. The secret, of course, is the Grand National—most searching of all the national rhapsodies we strum on horse-flesh—which is performed here every spring.