I shall never forget my first walk down Strangeways towards the Courts, and the despair that entered into my soul as I thought of the Embankment
and my beloved Temple, with its pure fountain and its memories of Tom Pinch and Ruth. How dismally I compared these with the filthy, black, oily river, the grimy cathedral, the ancient four-wheeled cabs, and their miserable horses bending their knees and drooping their heads as if in worship of the graven image of Oliver Cromwell, and then a plunge underneath clanging railway bridges and along a mean Yiddish street, to encounter a glad surprise when the glorious vista of the Law Courts swam into my ken. As a practical joke upon the stranger within your gates—excellent! As a piece of municipal town planning—rotten!
But if I seem to dwell too much on the deficiencies of Manchester as a great city, it is only because I am trying to recall as honestly as I can the first impression it made upon my little Cockney mind, for to-day when I return to its flags and setts I pace them with as much of the pride of a real citizen as my modesty will allow. And though the outward aspect of the streets was somewhat forbidding, the kind-heartedness of the inhabitants was soon made manifest. It was a wild venture I had made, but I had one introduction that I presented without delay, and that was addressed to Mr. C. P. Scott, of the Manchester Guardian. Of all Manchester people Mr. and Mrs. Scott had the true Manchester instinct of hospitality. It did not matter that the people introduced were young, unimportant and of no account, that made it the more necessary to entertain them and introduce them to others. It was
not many weeks therefore before dining at Mr. Scott’s we met his chief assistant editor, W. T. Arnold.
The world knows Arnold as a writer and historian. I can only speak of him as a kind friend and my master in journalism. That I should ever have commenced journalism at all in Manchester rested in the main on one of those accidental foundations upon which the world seems mainly to be built.
At that first dinner-party at Mr. Scott’s house my wife went in with Mr. Arnold. I can remember the occasion well because the whole idea of the gathering was so new to me. For instance, in London if you dined with a judge there were leaders of the Bar, a dull stranger and two old solicitors who had briefed the judge in earlier days. If you dined with an artist there were patrons, and if possible a critic. If you dined with a professor, it was all professors, if with a doctor, all doctors. But here were barristers, journalists, specialist doctors, members of Parliament and merchants all round one table, and the talk never degenerated into any one special “shop.” Manchester is exactly the right size for a dinner-party, and there are enough of all sorts and conditions of workers in it to bring together a really interesting company. Moreover Manchester knows how to entertain. It happened, then, that my wife began to talk to Mr. Arnold about the Seine. We had had a very interesting trip up the river that summer with an artist friend, taking over a half-outrigged boat from Oxford, starting from Caudebec and rowing up to Paris, camping out en route. Arnold
was enthusiastic about France and all things French. Moreover he knew Les Andelys and Chateau Gaillard and Pont de l’Arche. I think my wife claimed that we were the first English folk to row up the Seine, except, of course, Molloy and his four on French rivers—for had we not camped on the Ile St. Georges below Rouen where they were wrecked, and learned all about their adventures from Madame, the grandmother of the farm.
But Arnold was sure that he had read something recently about it—he remembered he had cut it out—it was in the Pall Mall.
“That was our trip,” replied my wife.
Arnold bunched up his black eyebrows and had a good look at me across the table. After dinner he said in that off-hand, desultory way that hindered him getting to the hearts of some Manchester men—Oxford has its drawbacks, after all—