Bess suggested that he should be called Noah, because Noah was saved in the ark; but he objected that Noah was an old greybeard, with a family, and that he knew the flood was coming, and built the ark himself; he was not “takken unawares in his helplessness loike that poor babby.”
Moses was her next proposition—Bess had learned something of Biblical lore at the first Sunday-school Manchester could boast, the one in Gun Street, founded by Simeon Newton in 1788—but Simon was not satisfied even with Moses.
“Yo’ see, Moses wur put in’ th’ ark o’ bullrushes o’ purpose, an’ noather thee nor mi’s a Pharaoh’s dowter, an’ th’ little chap’s not loike to be browt oop i’ a pallis.”
Towards the end of the week he burst into the room; “Oi hev it, lass, oi hev it! We’n co’ the lad ‘Irk;’ nob’dy’ll hev a neame loike that, and it’ll tell its own story; an’ fur th’ after-neame, aw reckon he mun tak’ ours.”
Marriages were solemnized in the richly-carved choir of the venerable old Church, but churchings and baptisms in a large adjoining chapel; and thither Bess, who carried the baby, was ushered, followed by Simon and Mat Cooper, who were to act as its other sponsors.
At the door they made way for the entrance of a party of ladies, whom they had seen alight from sedan-chairs at the upper gate, where a couple of gentlemen joined them. A nurse followed, with a baby, whose christening robe, nearly two yards long, was a mass of rich embroidery. The mother herself—a slight, lovely creature, additionally pale and delicate from her late ordeal—wore a long, plain-skirted dress of vari-coloured brocaded silk. A lustrous silk scarf, trimmed with costly lace, enveloped her shoulders. Her head-dress, a bonnet with a bag-crown and Quakerish poke-brim, was of the newest fashion, as were the long kid gloves which covered her arms to the elbows.
The party stepped forward as though precedence was theirs of right even at the church door, heeding not Simon’s mannerly withdrawal to let them pass; and the very nurse looked disdainfully at the calico gown of the baby in the round arms of Bess, a woman in a grey duffel cloak and old-fashioned flat, broad-brimmed hat.
Is there any thrill, sympathetic or antagonistic, in baby-veins, as they thus meet there for the first time on their entrance into the church and the broad path of life? For the first time—but scarcely for the last.
Already a goodly crowd of mothers, babies, godfathers, and godmothers had assembled—a crowd of all grades, judging from their exteriors, for dress had not then ceased to be a criterion; and all ceremonies of this kind were performed in shoals—not singly.
The Rev. Joshua Brookes, followed by his clerk, came through the door in the carven screen, between the choir and baptismal chapel, and took his place behind the altar rails. And now ensued a scene which some of my readers may think incredible, but which was common enough then, and there, and is notoriously true. The width of the altar could scarcely accommodate the number of women waiting to be churched; and the impatient Joshua assisted the apparitors to marshal them to their places, with a sharp “You come here! You kneel there! Yon woman’s not paid!” accompanied by pulls and pushes, until the semi-circle was filled.