a feeling of melancholy, even of uneasiness, attends our first entrance into a great town, especially at night. is it that the sense of all this vast existence with which we have no connexion, where we are utterly unknown, oppresses us with our insignificance? is it that it is terrible to feel friendless where all have friends?
yet reverse the picture. behold a community where you are unknown, but where you will be known, perhaps honoured. a place where you have no friends, but where, also, you have no enemies. a spot that has hitherto been a blank in your thoughts, as you have been a cipher in its sensations, and yet a spot, perhaps, pregnant with your destiny!
there is, perhaps, no act of memory so profoundly interesting as to recall the careless mood and moment in which we have entered a town, a house, a chamber, on the eve of an acquaintance or an event that has given colour and an impulse to our future life.
what is this fatality that men worship? is it a goddess?
unquestionably it is a power that acts mainly by female agents. women are the priestesses of predestination.
man conceives fortune, but woman conducts it.
it is the spirit of man that says, ‘i will be great;’ but it is the sympathy of woman that usually makes him so.
it was not the comely and courteous hostess of the adelphi hotel, manchester, that gave occasion to these remarks, though she may deserve them, and though she was most kind to our coningsby as he came in late at night very tired, and not in very good humour.
he had travelled the whole day through the great district of labour, his mind excited by strange sights, and at length wearied by their multiplication. he had passed over the plains where iron and coal supersede turf and corn, dingy as the entrance of hades, and flaming with furnaces; and now he was among illumined factories with more windows than italian palaces, and smoking chimneys taller than egyptian obelisks. alone in the great metropolis of machinery itself, sitting down in a solitary coffee-room glaring with gas, with no appetite, a whirling head, and not a plan or purpose for the morrow, why was he there? because a being, whose name even was unknown to him, had met him in a hedge alehouse during a thunderstorm, and told him that the age of ruins was past.
remarkable instance of the influence of an individual; some evidence of the extreme susceptibility of our hero.
even his bedroom was lit by gas. wonderful city! that, however, could be got rid of. he opened the window. the summer air was sweet, even in this land of smoke and toil. he feels a sensation such as in lisbon or lima precedes an earthquake. the house appears to quiver. it is a sympathetic affection occasioned by a steam-engine in a neighbouring factory.
notwithstanding, however, all these novel incidents, coningsby slept the deep sleep of youth and health, of a brain which, however occasionally perplexed by thought, had never been harassed by anxiety. he rose early, freshened, and in fine spirits. and by the time the deviled chicken and the buttered toast, that mysterious and incomparable luxury, which can only be obtained at an inn, had disappeared, he felt all the delightful excitement of travel.
and now for action! not a letter had coningsby; not an individual in that vast city was known to him. he went to consult his kind hostess, who smiled confidence. he was to mention her name at one place, his own at another. all would be right; she seemed to have reliance in the destiny of such a nice young man.
he saw all; they were kind and hospitable to the young stranger, whose thought, and earnestness, and gentle manners attracted them. one recommended him to another; all tried to aid and assist him. he entered chambers vaster than are told of in arabian fable, and peopled with habitants more wondrous than afrite or peri. for there he beheld, in long-continued ranks, those mysterious forms full of existence without life, that perform with facility, and in an instant, what man can fulfil only with difficulty and in days. a machine is a slave that neither brings nor bears degradation; it is a being endowed with the greatest degree of energy, and acting under the greatest degree of excitement, yet free at the same time from all passion and emotion. it is, therefore, not only a slave, but a supernatural slave. and why should one say that the machine does not live? it breathes, for its breath forms the atmosphere of some towns. it moves with more regularity than man. and has it not a voice? does not the spindle sing like a merry girl at her work, and the steam-engine roar in jolly chorus, like a strong artisan handling his lusty tools, and gaining a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s toil?
nor should the weaving-room be forgotten, where a thousand or fifteen hundred girls may be observed in their coral necklaces, working like penelope in the daytime; some pretty, some pert, some graceful and jocund, some absorbed in their occupation; a little serious some, few sad. and the cotton you have observed in its rude state, that you have seen the silent spinner change into thread, and the bustling weaver convert into cloth, you may now watch as in a moment it is tinted with beautiful colours, or printed with fanciful patterns. and yet the mystery of mysteries is to view machines making machines; a spectacle that fills the mind with curious, and even awful, speculation.
from early morn to the late twilight, our coningsby for several days devoted himself to the comprehension of manchester. it was to him a new world, pregnant with new ideas, and suggestive of new trains of thought and feeling. in this unprecedented partnership between capital and science, working on a spot which nature had indicated as the fitting theatre of their exploits, he beheld a great source of the wealth of nations which had been reserved for these times, and he perceived that this wealth was rapidly developing classes whose power was imperfectly recognised in the constitutional scheme, and whose duties in the social system seemed altogether omitted. young as he was, the bent of his mind, and the inquisitive spirit of the times, had sufficiently prepared him, not indeed to grapple with these questions, but to be sensible of their existence, and to ponder.
one evening, in the coffee-room of the hotel, having just finished his well-earned dinner, and relaxing his mind for the moment in a fresh research into the manchester guide, an individual, who had also been dining in the same apartment, rose from his table, and, after lolling over the empty fireplace, reading the framed announcements, looking at the directions of several letters waiting there for their owners, picking his teeth, turned round to coningsby, and, with an air of uneasy familiarity, said,—
‘first visit to manchester, sir?’
‘my first.’
‘gentleman traveller, i presume?’
‘i am a traveller.’ said coningsby.
‘hem! from south?’
‘from the south.’
‘and pray, sir, how did you find business as you came along? brisk, i dare say. and yet there is a something, a sort of a something; didn’t it strike you, sir, there was a something? a deal of queer paper about, sir!’
‘i fear you are speaking on a subject of which i know nothing,’ said coningsby, smiling; ‘i do not understand business at all; though i am not surprised that, being at manchester, you should suppose so.’
‘ah! not in business. hem! professional?’
‘no,’ said coningsby, ‘i am nothing.’
‘ah! an independent gent; hem! and a very pleasant thing, too. pleased with manchester, i dare say?’ continued the stranger.
‘and astonished,’ said coningsby; ‘i think, in the whole course of my life, i never saw so much to admire.’
‘seen all the lions, have no doubt?’
‘i think i have seen everything,’ said coningsby, rather eager and with some pride.
‘very well, very well,’ exclaimed the stranger, in a patronising tone. ‘seen mr. birley’s weaving-room, i dare say?’
‘oh! isn’t it wonderful?’ said coningsby.
‘a great many people.’ said the stranger, with a rather supercilious smile.
‘but after all,’ said coningsby, with animation, ‘it is the machinery without any interposition of manual power that overwhelms me. it haunts me in my dreams,’ continued coningsby; ‘i see cities peopled with machines. certainly manchester is the most wonderful city of modern times!’
the stranger stared a little at the enthusiasm of his companion, and then picked his teeth.
‘of all the remarkable things here,’ said coningsby, ‘what on the whole, sir, do you look upon as the most so?’
‘in the way of machinery?’ asked the stranger.
‘in the way of machinery.’
‘why, in the way of machinery, you know,’ said the stranger, very quietly, ‘manchester is a dead letter.’
‘a dead letter!’ said coningsby.
‘dead and buried,’ said the stranger, accompanying his words with that peculiar application of his thumb to his nose that signifies so eloquently that all is up.
‘you astonish me!’ said coningsby.
‘it’s a booked place though,’ said the stranger, ‘and no mistake. we have all of us a very great respect for manchester, of course; look upon her as a sort of mother, and all that sort of thing. but she is behind the times, sir, and that won’t do in this age. the long and short of it is, manchester is gone by.’
‘i thought her only fault might be she was too much in advance of the rest of the country,’ said coningsby, innocently.
‘if you want to see life,’ said the stranger, ‘go to staleybridge or bolton. there’s high pressure.’
‘but the population of manchester is increasing,’ said coningsby.
‘why, yes; not a doubt. you see we have all of us a great respect for the town. it is a sort of metropolis of this district, and there is a good deal of capital in the place. and it has some firstrate institutions. there’s the manchester bank. that’s a noble institution, full of commercial enterprise; understands the age, sir; high-pressure to the backbone. i came up to town to see the manager to-day. i am building a new mill now myself at staleybridge, and mean to open it by january, and when i do, i’ll give you leave to pay another visit to mr. birley’s weaving-room, with my compliments.’
‘i am very sorry,’ said coningsby, ‘that i have only another day left; but pray tell me, what would you recommend me most to see within a reasonable distance of manchester?’
‘my mill is not finished,’ said the stranger musingly, ‘and though there is still a great deal worth seeing at staleybridge, still you had better wait to see my new mill. and bolton, let me see; bolton, there is nothing at bolton that can hold up its head for a moment against my new mill; but then it is not finished. well, well, let us see. what a pity this is not the 1st of january, and then my new mill would be at work! i should like to see mr. birley’s face, or even mr. ashworth’s, that day. and the oxford road works, where they are always making a little change, bit by bit reform, eh! not a very particular fine appetite, i suspect, for dinner, at the oxford road works, the day they hear of my new mill being at work. but you want to see something tip-top. well, there’s millbank; that’s regular slap-up, quite a sight, regular lion; if i were you i would see millbank.’
‘millbank!’ said coningsby; ‘what millbank?’
‘millbank of millbank, made the place, made it himself. about three miles from bolton; train to-morrow morning at 7.25, get a fly at the station, and you will be at millbank by 8.40.’
‘unfortunately i am engaged to-morrow morning,’ said coningsby, ‘and yet i am most anxious, particularly anxious, to see millbank.’
‘well, there’s a late train,’ said the stranger, ‘3.15; you will be there by 4.30.’
‘i think i could manage that,’ said coningsby.
‘do,’ said the stranger; ‘and if you ever find yourself at staleybridge, i shall be very happy to be of service. i must be off now. my train goes at 9.15.’ and he presented coningsby with his card as he wished him good night.
mr. g. o. a. head, staleybridge.
