Part 15 (2/2)
CHORLEY, July 7.
[Sidenote: _Anderton Hall._]
As we approached Anderton Hall the English and American flags were seen floating from the archway, earnest of cordial welcome. We were quite at home immediately. Mr. and Mrs. B---- had their family and friends ready to greet us. The dining-hall was decorated with the flags of the old and the new lands, gracefully intertwined, symbolizing the close and warm friends.h.i.+p which exists between them--never, we hope, to be again disturbed. We had a long walk about the place and on the banks of the famous Rivington Reservoir, which supplies Manchester with water. In the evening, after dinner, came speeches. The evening pa.s.sed delightfully.
Next day we were sorely tempted. Mr. M---- was to have the school-children at his house to be entertained, and an opportunity to see a novel celebration was afforded us. Our host and hostess were pressing in their invitation for us to stay, but one night of fourteen guests, two servants, and four horses, was surely enough; so we blew our horn, and, with three ringing cheers for Anderton Hall and all within it, drove out of its hospitable gates. We stopped and paid our respects to Mr. and Mrs. M---- as we pa.s.sed their place, and left them all with very sincere regret. How pleasant it would be to linger! but Inverness lies far in the north. We are scarcely one-third of our way thither and the time-table stares us in the face. We do not quite ”fold our tents like the Arabs and silently steal away,” but at the thrilling call of the horn we mount, and with cheers and G.o.d-speeds take our departure for other scenes, but many a long day shall it be ere the faces of the kind people we leave behind fade from our memory.
Chorley has been one of the seats of the cotton manufacture in England for more than two hundred years, the business having been begun there about the time of the Restoration. During the American Revolution it was visited, like other places in Lancas.h.i.+re, by mobs who broke up the spinning machines because they feared that they would deprive the poor of labor. Similar mobs once destroyed sewing-machines in France. What a commentary upon such short-sightedness has been the success of the spinning-jenny and the sewing-machine, and the revolution they have made in the manufacturing industry of the world!
PRESTON, July 8.
[Sidenote: _Strolling Players._]
Preston, sixteen miles away, is our destination, permitting a late start to be made. Our route is still through a manufacturing district; for Manchester reaches her arms far out in every direction. We pa.s.s now and then a company of show-people with their vans. Sometimes we find the caravan at rest, the old, weary-looking horses nibbling the road-side gra.s.s, for the irregularity of the hedges in England gives fine little plots of gra.s.s along the hedge-rows, and nice offsets, as it were, in the road, where these strolling players, and gypsies, pedlers, and itinerant venders of all sorts of queer things, can call a halt and enjoy themselves. Every van appears to be invested with an air of mystery, for was not our Shakespeare,
”Th' applause, delight, the wonder of our stage,”
a strolling player, playing his part in barns and outhouses to wondering rustics? There are such possibilities in every van that I greet the sweet little child as if she were a princess in disguise, and the dark-eyed, foreign-looking boy as if he might have within him the soul of Buddha. I do not believe that any other form of life has the attractions of this nomadic existence. To make it perfect one should put away enough in the funds as a reserve to be drawn upon when he could not make the pittance necessary to feed and clothe him and buy a few old copies of good books as he pa.s.sed through a village. The rule might be, only when hungry shall this pocket-book be opened. I should have one other contingency in order to be perfectly happy--when I wanted to help a companion in distress. Elia was truly not very far from it when he said that if he were not the independent gentleman he was he would be a beggar. So, if I were not the independent gentleman I am, I would be a member of a strolling band, such as we often pa.s.s in this crowded land, and boast that Shakespeare was of our profession. What are the Charioteers, after all, in their happiest dream, but aristocratic gypsies? That is the reason we are so enraptured with the life.
But in Preston there is no scope for idealism. It is a city where cotton is king. No town can be much less attractive; but, mark you, a few steps toward the river and you overlook one of the prettiest parks in the world. The Ribble runs at the foot of the sloping hill upon which the city stands, and its banks have been converted into the pleasure-ground I speak of, in which the toilers sport in thousands and gaze upon the sweet fields of living green beyond far into the country. It is not so bad when the entire district is not given over to manufactures, as in Birmingham and Manchester. There is the cloud, but there is the silver lining also.
If ever the people of England and America are estranged in some future day, which G.o.d forbid, I could wish that every American were duly informed of the conduct of the people of Lancas.h.i.+re during the rebellion, and, indeed, of England, Ireland, and Scotland as well, but more particularly of such as were directly dependent upon the supply of cotton for work, as was the case here. The troops of Pennsylvania did not more truly fight the battle of the Union at Gettysburg, than did the thousands of men and women here under the lead of Bright and Cobden, Potter, Forster, Storey, and others, who held the enemies of Republicanism in check. The sacrifices they bore could never have been borne except for a cause which they felt to be their own and held as sacred. The ruling cla.s.ses of the land were naturally against the Republic. This we must always expect till the day comes in Britain (and it is coming) when all forms of hereditary privilege are swept away and the people are equal politically one with another. Nothing could possibly please the aristocracy of Britain, or any aristocracy, more than the failure of a nation which ignores aristocracy altogether. That is obvious. Human nature would not be what it is were this not so, and they are not blamable for it, but, resisting every temptation, the working men of Britain--those to whom a Republic promises so much, for it gives all men political equality--these stood firm from first to last, the staunch and unflinching friends of the Republic. Some day, perhaps, it may be in the power of America to show that where the interests of the ma.s.ses of Britain are concerned, she has not forgotten the deep debt she owes to them; no matter what the provocation, the people of America must remember it is their turn to forbear for the sake, not of the ruling cla.s.ses, but for the sake of the ma.s.ses of Britain who were and are her devoted friends.
[Sidenote: _Preston._]
Preston, that is, Priest's Town, for it received its name from the many ecclesiastics resident there as early as the eighth century, was once the princ.i.p.al port of Lancas.h.i.+re; and when Charles I. collected s.h.i.+p-money it was a.s.sessed for nearly twice the amount of Liverpool.
This was the Charles of whom Lincoln knew so little. Mr. Blaine tells this good story among a hundred, for he is wonderful in this line: When Lincoln and Seward went to Fortress Monroe to meet Mr. Hunter, who represented the Confederate Government, the latter was exceedingly anxious to get the President to promise that if the rebels would lay down their arms no confiscation of property (slaves, of course, included) should follow, and that no man should be punished for taking part in the rebellion. Mr. Hunter concluded by saying that this would only be following the course pursued in England after the contest with King Charles. ”Well, Mr. Hunter,” said that sagacious and born leader of men, Father Abraham, ”my friend Seward here is the historian of my Cabinet, but the only thing I remember about King Charles is _that Cromwell cut his head off_!” Lincoln did not know very much, you see, but then he knew the only part much worth knowing upon the subject, which is one of the differences between a great man and a learned one.
It was at this celebrated interview that Lincoln took up a blank sheet of writing-paper and said to the Confederates, let me write _Emanc.i.p.ation_ here at the top and you can fill the rest of the page with your conditions.
Lincoln seized the key of a political position as Napoleon did of a military one, and never relaxed his grasp. He would tell stories all night and make his auditors shout with laughter, but whenever the real business was touched upon, he made his opponents feel that the natural division was that the buzzard should fall to them while his long bony fingers were already fast upon the turkey. He could afford to joke and be patient, for he saw the end from the beginning, and had faith in the Republic.
[Sidenote: _Richelieu and Cromwell._]
See what the whirligig of time brings round. Near Preston, in the valley of the Ribble, was fought in 1648 the battle of Preston or Ribblesdale, in which Cromwell defeated the Scotch army under the Duke of Hamilton, and the English army under Sir Marmaduke Langdale. The Royalists were driven at the point of the bayonet through the streets of Preston, and, though they made a stand at Uttoxeter, were finally overthrown and both generals and many thousand men made prisoners. It was a notable struggle, for the Royalists had more than twice as many men as the Parliamentarians; but then the latter had the great Oliver, who knew how and when to strike a blow.
Booth may not be great in anything, as some think, but I do not know his equal in ”Richelieu;” and in one scene in particular he has always seemed to me at his very best. The king sits with his new minister, Baradas, in attendance at his side. Richelieu reclines upon a sofa exhausted while his secretaries ”deliver up the papers of a realm.” A secretary is on his knee presenting papers. He says:
”The affairs of England, Sire, most urgent. Charles The First has lost a battle that decides One half his realm--craves moneys, Sire, and succor.
KING. He shall have both. Eh, Baradas?
BARADAS. Yes, Sire.
RICHELIEU. (_Feebly, but with great distinctness._) My liege-- Forgive me--Charles's cause is lost. A man, Named Cromwell, risen--_a great man_--”
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