Maybe Charles Lamb is right when he asks himself “Why do cats grin in Cheshire?” and tells us that “it was once a County Palatine, and the cats cannot help laughing when they think of it.” For my part as one who has been a “poore Palatine” in the adjacent county of Lancaster I confess that the very sound of its name will always induce a smile—or
should I say a purr—at the pleasant memories with which it is fragrant.
Attachment to places is quite irrespective of their pleasances. The fields and orchards of Kent, white with blossom in the spring, purple and golden with the heavy fruits of autumn, can never be as acceptable to me as the mud building land of South Manchester. The Embankment and the Strand—even in its debased modern form—and the Temple Gardens and the fountain will always be home to one who started life as a Londoner, and was educated in the cellars of Somerset House. But in solitary thoughts and dreams I shall glide in fancy down the flags of Oxford Road, and watch the rooks building on Fallowfield “Broo,” or strike across the fields of Chorlton’s Farm by the cottages with the old vine on them, and take the train from Alexandra Park to my work. When I come out of the Lambeth County Court into the Camberwell New Road it will always feel irksome to me not to be able to stride up Peter Street and push open the swing doors of a certain club in Mosley Street and find myself in an atmosphere of tobacco and good fellowship. You get so attached to the actual place in which you dwell that though things are better and more beautiful elsewhere your optic nerves do not respond at their call, or you suffer from a geographical deafness. I do not defend such narrow patriotism, I only assert that it exists. The other day I found myself in a fog in London—one which Mr. Guppy would call a real London particular—saying to a friend, “Call this a
fog? You should see a first-class Manchester fog.” I knew I was a boaster and a braggart, for Manchester fogs, though tastier in chemical flavour, have not the real woolly orange blanket appearance of the fog that rolls up white from the Nore and bronzes with the London smoke.
I think I have the place attachment—a limpet-like characteristic, after all—very highly developed. I remember a story of a little boy, about three years old or perhaps more, who moved with his family and their furniture into a new house. At first the affair excited him, but later on he wandered uneasily and miserably about his new quarters with an idea that he would never smile again, and that the sooner the world came to an end the better for everybody. Poor, doleful, little urchin, he climbed up long flights of stairs into a box-room, and there, finding a pile of old carpets, he selected one that had belonged to his nursery and laid him down to die. Forgotten in the turmoil, he cried himself to sleep, and was discovered by anxious domestics after prolonged search. I know a great deal of the story is true, because I have heard it from some of my more reliable relations, and as the hero of the story I believe I can remember hearing an agonised nurse calling my name in despair, and sullenly refusing to reply to her calls on the ground that I never wished to consort with the world again since I had discovered with Zarathustra that “all is empty, all is equal, all hath been.”
This attachment to places is a very animal virtue, or failing, whichever it be, and in my experience is
not so much a home-sickness as a nausea of novelty. One erects in one’s mind a standard of what ought to be, and applies that to the beloved place; and by constantly asserting to strangers that the place is in all particulars absolutely perfect, one begins by mere force of the repetition to believe in it oneself. In this way do myths become religions. There are many Manchester myths, all of which in my patriotism—the more vehement because I cannot claim birthright in the great city—I repeat, and shall continue to repeat, with the accuracy and fervour with which I still run over on occasion my “duty to my neighbour.” Thus a true Manchester man will tell you Manchester is musical, whereas, in truth and in fact, very few of her people care anything about music at all. Also he will speak with glowing pride of the marvellous municipal statesmanship of her governors, whereas, though we are very fond of them personally, we know they are about as ordinary a set of parish councillors as ever met in a village schoolroom. I myself have often reproved a mere Southerner for casting aspersions on our climate by saying “it was not half so black as it is painted,” when I knew that on oath I should have to admit that no ink could paint it black enough. These are lawful perjuries, and unworthy of Manchester would any citizen be who should hesitate to repeat them.
And yet I am not altogether sorry that I left Manchester. It is true that it was for purely personal and domestic reasons that I came south.
There was no financial gain in my move, and therefore there is no ecclesiastical precedent for pretending that I had received a spiritual call to a wider sphere of action. At the same time it is possible that the dignity and decorum of Lambeth may be perfected by that “wakkening up” spirit which the apostles of Manchester go forth to maintain.
I remember when I was moving south, Bishop Welldon asking me on the steps of the pavilion at Old Trafford, “And where is your diocese?”