________________________________________________
_ We stood at the corner of the side-street and the main road, and
down the main road a vast, white rectangular cube of bright light
came plunging--its head rising and dipping--at express speed, and
with a formidable roar. Mr Brindley imperiously raised his stick;
the extraordinary box of light stopped as if by a miracle, and we
jumped into it, having splashed through mud, and it plunged off
again--bump, bump, bump--into the town of Bursley. As Mr Brindley
passed into the interior of the car, he said laconically to two
men who were smoking on the platform--
'How do, Jim? How do, Jo?'
And they responded laconically--
'How do, Bob?'
'How do, Bob?'
We sat down. Mr Brindley pointed to the condition of the floor.
'Cheerful, isn't it?' he observed to me, shouting above the din of
vibrating glass.
Our fellow-passengers were few and unromantic, perhaps halfa-dozen
altogether on the long, shiny, yellow seats of the car, each
apparently lost in gloomy reverie.
'It's the advertisements and notices in these cars that are the
joy of the super-man like you and me,' shouted Mr Brindley. 'Look
there, "Passengers are requested not to spit on the floor." Simply
an encouragement to lie on the seats and spit on the ceiling,
isn't it? "Wear only Noble's wonderful boots." Suppose we did!
Unless they came well up above the waist we should be prosecuted.
But there's no sense of humour in this district.'
Greengrocers' shops and public-houses were now flying past the
windows of the car. It began to climb a hill, and then halted.
'Here we are!' ejaculated Mr Brindley.
And he was out of the car almost before I had risen.
We strolled along a quiet street, and came to a large building
with many large lighted windows, evidently some result of public
effort.
'What's that place?' I demanded.
'That's the Wedgwood Institution.'
'Oh! So that's the Wedgwood Institution, is it?'
'Yes. Commonly called the Wedgwood. Museum, reading-room, public
library--dirtiest books in the world, I mean physically--art
school, science school. I've never explained to you why I'm
chairman of the Management Committee, have I? Well, it's because
the Institution is meant to foster the arts, and I happen to know
nothing about 'em. I needn't tell you that architecture,
literature, and music are not arts within the meaning of the act.
Not much! Like to come in and see the museum for a minute? You'll
have to see it in your official capacity tomorrow.'
We crossed the road, and entered an imposing portico. Just as we
did so a thick stream of slouching men began to descend the steps,
like a waterfall of treacle. Mr Brindley they appeared to see, but
evidently I made no impression on their retinas. They bore down
the steps, hands deep in pockets, sweeping over me like Fate. Even
when I bounced off one of them to a lower step, he showed by no
sign that the fact of my existence had reached his consciousness--
simply bore irresistibly downwards. The crowd was absolutely
silent. At last I gained the entrance hall.
'It's closing-time for the reading room,' said Mr Brindley.
'I'm glad I survived it,' I said.
'The truth is,' said he, 'that people who can't look after
themselves don't flourish in these latitudes. But you'll be
acclimatized by tomorrow. See that?'
He pointed to an alabaster tablet on which was engraved a record
of the historical certainty that Mr Gladstone opened the
Institution in 1868, also an extract from the speech which he
delivered on that occasion.
'What do you THINK of Gladstone down here?' I demanded.
'In my official capacity I think that these deathless words are
the last utterance of wisdom on the subject of the influence of
the liberal arts on life. And I should advise you, in your
official capacity, to think the same, unless you happen to have a
fancy for having your teeth knocked down your throat.'
'I see,' I said, not sure how to take him.
'Lest you should go away with the idea that you have been visiting
a rude and barbaric people, I'd better explain that that was a
joke. As a matter of fact, we're rather enlightened here. The only
man who stands a chance of getting his teeth knocked down his
throat here is the ingenious person who started the celebrated
legend of the man-and-dog fight at Hanbridge. It's a long time
ago, a very long time ago; but his grey hairs won't save him from
horrible tortures if we catch him. We don't mind being called
immoral, we're above a bit flattered when London newspapers come
out with shocking details of debauchery in the Five Towns, but we
pride ourselves on our manners. I say, Aked!' His voice rose
commandingly, threateningly, to an old bent, spectacled man who
was ascending a broad white staircase in front of us.
'Sir!' The man turned.
'Don't turn the lights out yet in the museum.'
'No, sir! Are you coming up?' The accents were slow and tremulous.
'Yes. I have a gentleman here from the British Museum who wants to
look round.'
The oldish man came deliberately down the steps, and approached
us. Then his gaze, beginning at my waist, gradually rose to my
hat.
'From the British Museum?' he drawled. 'I'm sure I'm very glad to
meet you, sir. I'm sure it's a very great honour.'
He held out a wrinkled hand, which I shook.
'Mr Aked,' said Mr Brindley, by way of introduction. 'Been
caretaker here for pretty near forty years.'
'Ever since it opened, sir,' said Aked.
We went up the white stone stairway, rather a grandiose
construction for a little industrial town. It divided itself into
doubling curving flights at the first landing, and its walls were
covered with pictures and designs. The museum itself, a series of
three communicating rooms, was about as large as a pocket-
handkerchief.
'Quite small,' I said.
I gave my impression candidly, because I had already judged Mr
Brindley to be the rare and precious individual who is worthy of
the high honour of frankness.
'Do you think so?' he demanded quickly. I had shocked him, that
was clear. His tone was unmistakable; it indicated an instinctive,
involuntary protest. But he recovered himself in a flash. 'That's
jealousy,' he laughed. 'All you British Museum people are the
same.' Then he added, with an unsuccessful attempt to convince me
that he meant what he was saying: 'Of course it is small. It's
nothing, simply nothing.'
Yes, I had unwittingly found the joint in the armour of this
extraordinary Midland personage. With all his irony, with all his
violent humour, with all his just and unprejudiced perceptions, he
had a tenderness for the Institution of which he was the dictator.
He loved it. He could laugh like a god at everything in the Five
Towns except this one thing. He would try to force himself to
regard even this with the same lofty detachment, but he could not
do it naturally.
I stopped at a case of Wedgwood ware, marked 'Perkins Collection.'
'By Jove!' I exclaimed, pointing to a vase. 'What a body!'
He was enchanted by my enthusiasm.
'Funny you should have hit on that,' said he. 'Old Daddy Perkins
always called it his ewe-lamb.'
Thus spoken, the name of the greatest authority on Wedgwood ware
that Europe has ever known curiously impressed me.
'I suppose you knew him?' I questioned.
'Considering that I was one of the pall-bearers at his funeral,
and caught the champion cold of my life!'
'What sort of a man was he?'
'Outside Wedgwood ware he wasn't any sort of a man. He was that
scourge of society, a philanthropist,' said Mr Brindley. 'He was
an upright citizen, and two thousand people followed him to his
grave. I'm an upright citizen, but I have no hope that two
thousand people will follow me to my grave.'
'You never know what may happen,' I observed, smiling.
'No.' He shook his head. 'If you undermine the moral character of
your fellow-citizens by a long course of unbridled miscellaneous
philanthropy, you can have a funeral procession as long as you
like, at the rate of about forty shillings a foot. But you'll
never touch the great heart of the enlightened public of these
boroughs in any other way. Do you imagine anyone cared a twopenny
damn for Perkins's Wedgwood ware?'
'It's like that everywhere,' I said.
'I suppose it is,' he assented unwillingly.
Who can tell what was passing in the breast of Mr Brindley? I
could not. At least I could not tell with any precision. I could
only gather, vaguely, that what he considered the wrong-
headedness, the blindness, the lack of true perception, of his
public was beginning to produce in his individuality a faint trace
of permanent soreness. I regretted it. And I showed my sympathy
with him by asking questions about the design and construction of
the museum (a late addition to the Institution), of which I
happened to know that he had been the architect.
He at once became interested and interesting. Although he perhaps
insisted a little too much on the difficulties which occur when
original talent encounters stupidity, he did, as he walked me up
and down, contrive to convey to me a notion of the creative
processes of the architect in a way that was in my experience
entirely novel. He was impressing me anew, and I was wondering
whether he was unique of his kind or whether there existed
regiments of him in this strange parcel of England.
'Now, you see this girder,' he said, looking upwards.
That's surely something of Fuge's, isn't it?' I asked, indicating
a small picture in a corner, after he had finished his explanation
of the functions of the girder.
As on the walls of the staircase and corridors, so on the walls
here, there were many paintings, drawings, and engravings. And of
course the best were here in the museum. The least uninteresting
items of the collection were, speaking generally, reproductions in
monotint of celebrated works, and a few second--or third-rate loan
pictures from South Kensington. Aside from such matters I had
noticed nothing but the usual local trivialities, gifts from one
citizen or another, travel-jottings of some art-master, careful
daubs of apt students without a sense of humour. The aspect of the
place was exactly the customary aspect of the small provincial
museum, as I have seen it in half-a-hundred towns that are not
among 'the great towns'. It had the terrible trite 'museum'
aspect, the aspect that brings woe and desolation to the heart of
the stoutest visitor, and which seems to form part of the
purgatorio of Bank-holidays, wide mouths, and stiff clothes. The
movement for opening museums on Sundays is the most natural
movement that could be conceived. For if ever a resort was
invented and fore-ordained to chime with the true spirit of the
British sabbath, that resort is the average museum. I ought to
know. I do know.
But there was the incomparable Wedgwood ware, and there was the
little picture by Simon Fuge. I am not going to lose my sense of
perspective concerning Simon Fuge. He was not the greatest painter
that ever lived, or even of his time. He had, I am ready to
believe, very grave limitations. But he was a painter by himself,
as all fine painters are. He had his own vision. He was Unique. He
was exclusively preoccupied with the beauty and the romance of the
authentic. The little picture showed all this. It was a painting,
unfinished, of a girl standing at a door and evidently hesitating
whether to open the door or not: a very young girl, very thin,
with long legs in black stockings, and short, white, untidy frock;
thin bare arms; the head thrown on one side, and the hands raised,
and one foot raised, in a wonderful childish gesture--the gesture
of an undecided fox-terrier. The face was an infant's face,
utterly innocent; and yet Simon Fuge had somehow caught in that
face a glimpse of all the future of the woman that the girl was to
be, he had displayed with exquisite insolence the essential
naughtiness of his vision of things. The thing was not much more
than a sketch; it was a happy accident, perhaps, in some day's
work of Simon Fuge's. But it was genius. When once you had yielded
to it, there was no other picture in the room. It killed
everything else. But, wherever it had found itself, nothing could
have killed IT. Its success was undeniable, indestructible. And it
glowed sombrely there on the wall, a few splashes of colour on a
morsel of canvas, and it was Simon Fuge's unconscious, proud
challenge to the Five Towns. It WAS Simon Fuge, at any rate all of
Simon Fuge that was worth having, masterful, imperishable. And not
merely was it his challenge, it was his scorn, his aristocratic
disdain, his positive assurance that in the battle between them he
had annihilated the Five Towns. It hung there in the very midst
thereof, calmly and contemptuously waiting for the acknowledgement
of his victory.
'Which?' said Mr Brindley.
That one.'
'Yes, I fancy it is,' he negligently agreed. 'Yes, it is.'
'It's not signed,' I remarked.
'It ought to be,' said Mr Brindley; then laughed, 'Too late now!'
'How did it get here?'
'Don't know. Oh! I think Mr Perkins won it in a raffle at a
bazaar, and then hung it here. He did as he liked here, you know.'
I was just going to become vocal in its praise, when Mr Brindley
said--
'That thing under it is a photograph of a drinking-cup for which
one of our pupils won a national scholarship last year!'
Mr Aked appeared in the distance.
'I fancy the old boy wants to be off to bed,' Mr Brindley
whispered kindly.
So we left the Wedgwood Institution. I began to talk to Mr
Brindley about music. The barbaric attitude of the Five Towns
towards great music was the theme of some very lively
animadversions on his part. _
Read next: PART XII - THE DEATH OF SIMON FUGE: CHAPTER VI
Read previous: PART XII - THE DEATH OF SIMON FUGE: CHAPTER IV
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