“Why,” exclaimed I, guessing wildly, “it is a portrait of you!”
“Yes,” said he, with naïve satisfaction, “it is. I sat to Madox Brown for the great Duke. The portrait is immortal.”
But whether the portrait was immortal because Kendrick Pyne had sat for it, or Madox Brown had painted it, I did not gather.
On another occasion he again used the word “immortal,” but this time it was in reference to one of his own works.
“You know,” said he, apropos of something I have forgotten, “I should have made a name as a writer if I had gone in for literature, but I felt that music had stronger claims upon me. My organ-playing will not, so to speak, live, because the art of the executant necessarily dies with him. But my Mass in A flat is, in itself, enough to keep my name immortal.”
[164]
]There was such innocent satisfaction in his tone, such a bland look upon his face, that he seemed to me like a delicious grown-up child.
But have not all men of genius this superb confidence in themselves? I am convinced they have. Could they possibly “carry on” without it? But only a few men of genius have the courage, or the artlessness, to speak what is really in their hearts.
. . . . . . . .
One of the “characters” of Manchester, a man who loves being a character, is Mr Charles Rowley, who for an unconscionable number of years has been doing splendid educational and recreative work in Ancoats, a congeries of slums, a district of appalling poverty. Here, in the Islington Hall, on most Sunday afternoons, one can hear first-rate chamber music and, as a rule, a lecture delivered by some local or London celebrity. I myself have heard Bernard Shaw and Hilaire Belloc lecture there and, after the lectures, I have gone to the clean little cottage where Mr Rowley occasionally entertains a few chosen friends to tea and talk.
I do not know if Mr Rowley is a Manchester man, but he is of a type that I have found only in that city. He is combative and energetic; he is a little red flame of enthusiasm. Though, no doubt, interested in and pleased with himself, he is equally interested in local public affairs and equally pleased with the people for whom he works. His broad and pungent humour is just the kind of humour the so-called lower classes understand, and his energy of mind and readiness of wit are remarkable. I have seen him on several occasions talking to—or, perhaps, talking with is what I really mean—a huge audience in order to keep them in good humour until the arrival of the lecturer of the afternoon. He bandies jokes with anybody who cares to shout to him, and he has the true democrat’s gift—he never by a look, a word or a gesture implies that [165] ]he is in any way superior to the meanest member of his audience. These rough people love him, admire him and laugh at him. And, of course, he is able to laugh at himself. Perhaps, all things considered, he is the most human man I have met, and I like to think that in him the spirit of Manchester is embodied. I do not mean you to infer that I think the spirit of Manchester is the finest spirit in the world, but I do believe that it is a spirit that might well be emulated by many other towns.