Years passed. Harry—we will call him Harry—survived the perils of babyhood and was sent to a school for the sons of gentlemen, and the editor was duly apprised of the fact. Harry studied hard, for his ambition was even that of his father. Harry took scholarships, Harry had a private tutor, and, eventually, Harry went to the ’varsity. In the meantime, reports passed at regular intervals from Harry’s father to the editor of The Manchester Guardian, who now, as nurses say, began to sit up and take notice. He desired to meet Harry. He did meet him. Harry took an honours degree, came back to Manchester, and was duly installed among the blessed, where he still is. Harry’s dream, Harry’s father’s dream, is fulfilled. But are those reports, I wonder, still being written. As, for example:
Sir,—I have the honour to inform you that my son, Harold, contemplates marriage. It has always appeared to me that the married state is peculiarly useful in developing....
. . . . . . . .
But not all the members of The Manchester Guardian staff are ’varsity men: for which, indeed, one may be thankful. The men of letters whom they admire most—Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad and Arnold Bennett—never even dimly espied the towers and spires of Oxford and Cambridge. But the paper has the manner of Oxford, though not Oxford’s intellectual outlook.
[157]
]For myself, I have never been on the staff of this paper, though I have written scores of articles for its commercial pages. Some of the most distinguished intellects in the country write for it regularly—Allan Monkhouse, whose play, Mary Broome, has not been and scarcely can be sufficiently praised; C. E. Montague, now in the Army; Professor C. H. Herford, whose scholarship is in excess of his human feeling; Samuel Langford, whom I have dealt with elsewhere in this book; J. E. Agate, whose fastidious style is a pure delight. Indeed, nearly every man who can write and who has something definitely new to say will find the columns of this paper open to him.
. . . . . . . .
The drawback to social life in Manchester is that there is no central meeting-place where kindred spirits can foregather
. It is true, there is the Arts Club, but when you have said the Arts Club is there, you have said all that it is necessary to say about the Arts Club. It is true, also, that if you stroll into the American bar of the Midland Hotel at almost any hour of the day, you are pretty sure to meet someone amusing; but you really can’t make music, or rehearse plays, or play the fool (at least, not to any great extent) in an American bar. The consequence of this lack of a good democratic club is that all kinds of little coteries are formed, and it is about one of these little coteries that I wish to tell you.
Of course, Manchester is not London. You know that. In London, if you don’t like one play, you can go to another. If the music that Sir Henry J. Wood gives you is not to your taste, you can go to hear Mr Landon Ronald, or (if truly desperate) join the Philharmonic Society. But in Manchester this is not so. You have either to like the music or do without it. Well, some years ago we didn’t like it, and Jack Kahane, talking to me one day in a mood of disgust, casually remarked:
[158]
]“I’m going to kick Richter out of Manchester. We’ve had enough of him.”