I only remember one smile during the many weary hours we spent in those dingy chambers in Rolls Court. Sir William Agnew was being examined. He was always somewhat pompous and well-to-do in his manner, and Smith did his best to annoy him. A question arose as to the authenticity of a letter written by the plaintiff on Agnew’s Bond Street letter paper.
“I suppose,” said Smith, “if any customer in your shop――I beg your pardon, emporium――were to ask one of your servants for a sheet of notepaper, he would give him one?”
“I hope not, sir,” said Sir William, with expansive dignity, “I hope he would hand him two or three.”
Old Anderson looked at Sir William in Scot’s surprise, and said in his broadest accent, “Do you really mean that, now?”
I do not think I ever saw the ultimate written judgment of the Official Referee. I believe both sides appealed from it, and no appeal was ever heard. It was, from the point of view of English litigation, one of our failures. There ought to be a compulsory conciliation court for troubles of this nature, at least to sift out what the quarrel and dispute really is. But I look back to the case with pleasure. I don’t think the result left M‘Lachlan worse than it found him, and it certainly did me a good turn. During those days I heard from Smith of the wonderful possibilities of the Bar in Manchester, and I made up my mind I would at least join the Northern Circuit. This I did without delay, and before the summer I had taken a little house in Heaton Road, Withington, and turned my back on London for ever.
Just to show what a lot I knew about Manchester, I moved down in Whit-week――or tried to. For Manchester has an excellent and sacred custom in Whit-week. Nobody does any work.
I see the huge warehouses of Manchester, the many-storied mills, the great bale-laden drays, the magnificent horses.
And by moving down to Manchester in Whit-week I found myself indeed plunged into a new world. For Whit-week, as I said, is a universal holiday among all sorts and conditions of people, and every man, woman and child has his or her share in the feast. For the shops close, the workman goes to Blackpool or the Isle of Man, and the employer to Paris or the West Highlands, or St. Andrews, or North Berwick as the mood suggests, and Lancashire and Yorkshire play cricket at Old Trafford and the races are run, and the children dressed in white, carrying their banners, move in procession through streets thronged with admiring parents. And that all may be at peace and good will the Protestant children “walk”――that is the Manchester word――on one day and the Roman Catholics on another, for fear the good Christian parents of either denomination should batter each other’s skulls whilst their little children are singing “Lead Kindly Light.” And if you want to see one of the prettiest sights in the land, go and see the children “walking,” the little Catholics for choice, because their frocks are daintier and their banners more picturesque, and their parents in the crowd, among whom you should stand, are more Irish, enthusiastic and full of epigram. But by no means go to Manchester in Whit-week if you want to buy or sell. And if you have to move into a new house it is obviously not the right season to make the attempt, for at this season no money or entreaty will save your vans from being held up, and you may make up your mind to lay your carpets yourself. When you become a citizen of Manchester you recognise the sanity of the Whit-week festival. It comes at a time when days are long, weather favourable, the despair of winter behind you and the joy of summer at your feet. Some day all England will acquire the Whit-week habit, and it will cease to be the special luxury of Manchester.