Those two girls, Constance and Sophia Baines, paid no heed to the
manifold interest of their situation, of which, indeed, they had
never been conscious. They were, for example, established almost
precisely on the fifty-third parallel of latitude. A little way to
the north of them, in the creases of a hill famous for its
religious orgies, rose the river Trent, the calm and
characteristic stream of middle England. Somewhat further
northwards, in the near neighbourhood of the highest public-house
in the realm, rose two lesser rivers, the Dane and the Dove,
which, quarrelling in early infancy, turned their backs on each
other, and, the one by favour of the Weaver and the other by
favour of the Trent, watered between them the whole width of
England, and poured themselves respectively into the Irish Sea and
the German Ocean. What a county of modest, unnoticed rivers! What
a natural, simple county, content to fix its boundaries by these
tortuous island brooks, with their comfortable names--Trent,
Mease, Dove, Tern, Dane, Mees, Stour, Tame, and even hasty Severn!
Not that the Severn is suitable to the county! In the county
excess is deprecated. The county is happy in not exciting remark.
It is content that Shropshire should possess that swollen bump,
the Wrekin, and that the exaggerated wildness of the Peak should
lie over its border. It does not desire to be a pancake like
Cheshire. It has everything that England has, including thirty
miles of Watling Street; and England can show nothing more
beautiful and nothing uglier than the works of nature and the
works of man to be seen within the limits of the county. It is
England in little, lost in the midst of England, unsung by
searchers after the extreme; perhaps occasionally somewhat sore at
this neglect, but how proud in the instinctive cognizance of its
representative features and traits!
Constance and Sophia, busy with the intense preoccupations of
youth, recked not of such matters. They were surrounded by the
county. On every side the fields and moors of Staffordshire,
intersected by roads and lanes, railways, watercourses and
telegraph-lines, patterned by hedges, ornamented and made
respectable by halls and genteel parks, enlivened by villages at
the intersections, and warmly surveyed by the sun, spread out
undulating. And trains were rushing round curves in deep cuttings,
and carts and waggons trotting and jingling on the yellow roads,
and long, narrow boats passing in a leisure majestic and infinite
over the surface of the stolid canals; the rivers had only
themselves to support, for Staffordshire rivers have remained
virgin of keels to this day. One could imagine the messages
concerning prices, sudden death, and horses, in their flight
through the wires under the feet of birds. In the inns Utopians
were shouting the universe into order over beer, and in the halls
and parks the dignity of England was being preserved in a fitting
manner. The villages were full of women who did nothing but fight
against dirt and hunger, and repair the effects of friction on
clothes. Thousands of labourers were in the fields, but the fields
were so broad and numerous that this scattered multitude was
totally lost therein. The cuckoo was much more perceptible than
man, dominating whole square miles with his resounding call. And
on the airy moors heath-larks played in the ineffaceable mule-
tracks that had served centuries before even the Romans thought of
Watling Street. In short, the usual daily life of the county was
proceeding with all its immense variety and importance; but though
Constance and Sophia were in it they were not of it.
The fact is, that while in the county they were also in the
district; and no person who lives in the district, even if he
should be old and have nothing to do but reflect upon things in
general, ever thinks about the county. So far as the county goes,
the district might almost as well be in the middle of the Sahara.
It ignores the county, save that it uses it nonchalantly sometimes
as leg-stretcher on holiday afternoons, as a man may use his back
garden. It has nothing in common with the county; it is richly
sufficient to itself. Nevertheless, its self-sufficiency and the
true salt savour of its life can only be appreciated by picturing
it hemmed in by county. It lies on the face of the county like an
insignificant stain, like a dark Pleiades in a green and empty
sky. And Hanbridge has the shape of a horse and its rider, Bursley
of half a donkey, Knype of a pair of trousers, Longshaw of an
octopus, and little Turnhill of a beetle. The Five Towns seem to
cling together for safety. Yet the idea of clinging together for
safety would make them laugh. They are unique and indispensable.
From the north of the county right down to the south they alone
stand for civilization, applied science, organized manufacture,
and the century--until you come to Wolverhampton. They are unique
and indispensable because you cannot drink tea out of a teacup
without the aid of the Five Towns; because you cannot eat a meal
in decency without the aid of the Five Towns. For this the
architecture of the Five Towns is an architecture of ovens and
chimneys; for this its atmosphere is as black as its mud; for this
it burns and smokes all night, so that Longshaw has been compared
to hell; for this it is unlearned in the ways of agriculture,
never having seen corn except as packing straw and in quartern
loaves; for this, on the other hand, it comprehends the mysterious
habits of fire and pure, sterile earth; for this it lives crammed
together in slippery streets where the housewife must change white
window-curtains at least once a fortnight if she wishes to remain
respectable; for this it gets up in the mass at six a.m., winter
and summer, and goes to bed when the public-houses close; for this
it exists--that you may drink tea out of a teacup and toy with a
chop on a plate. All the everyday crockery used in the kingdom is
made in the Five Towns--all, and much besides. A district capable
of such gigantic manufacture, of such a perfect monopoly--and
which finds energy also to produce coal and iron and great men--
may be an insignificant stain on a county, considered
geographically, but it is surely well justified in treating the
county as its back garden once a week, and in blindly ignoring it
the rest of the time.
Even the majestic thought that whenever and wherever in all
England a woman washes up, she washes up the product of the
district; that whenever and wherever in all England a plate is
broken the fracture means new business for the district--even this
majestic thought had probably never occurred to either of the
girls. The fact is, that while in the Five Towns they were also in
the Square, Bursley and the Square ignored the staple manufacture
as perfectly as the district ignored the county. Bursley has the
honours of antiquity in the Five Towns. No industrial development
can ever rob it of its superiority in age, which makes it
absolutely sure in its conceit. And the time will never come when
the other towns--let them swell and bluster as they may--will not
pronounce the name of Bursley as one pronounces the name of one's
mother. Add to this that the Square was the centre of Bursley's
retail trade (which scorned the staple as something wholesale,
vulgar, and assuredly filthy), and you will comprehend the
importance and the self-isolation of the Square in the scheme of
the created universe. There you have it, embedded in the district,
and the district embedded in the county, and the county lost and
dreaming in the heart of England!
The Square was named after St. Luke. The Evangelist might have
been startled by certain phenomena in his square, but, except in
Wakes Week, when the shocking always happened, St. Luke's Square
lived in a manner passably saintly--though it contained five
public-houses. It contained five public-houses, a bank, a
barber's, a confectioner's, three grocers', two chemists', an
ironmonger's, a clothier's, and five drapers'. These were all the
catalogue. St. Luke's Square had no room for minor establishments.
The aristocracy of the Square undoubtedly consisted of the drapers
(for the bank was impersonal); and among the five the shop of
Baines stood supreme. No business establishment could possibly be
more respected than that of Mr. Baines was respected. And though
John Baines had been bedridden for a dozen years, he still lived
on the lips of admiring, ceremonious burgesses as 'our honoured
fellow-townsman.' He deserved his reputation.
The Baines's shop, to make which three dwellings had at intervals
been thrown into one, lay at the bottom of the Square. It formed
about one-third of the south side of the Square, the remainder
being made up of Critchlow's (chemist), the clothier's, and the
Hanover Spirit Vaults. ("Vaults" was a favourite synonym of the
public-house in the Square. Only two of the public-houses were
crude public-houses: the rest were "vaults.") It was a composite
building of three storeys, in blackish-crimson brick, with a
projecting shop-front and, above and behind that, two rows of
little windows. On the sash of each window was a red cloth roll
stuffed with sawdust, to prevent draughts; plain white blinds
descended about six inches from the top of each window. There were
no curtains to any of the windows save one; this was the window of
the drawing-room, on the first floor at the corner of the Square
and King Street. Another window, on the second storey, was
peculiar, in that it had neither blind nor pad, and was very
dirty; this was the window of an unused room that had a separate
staircase to itself, the staircase being barred by a door always
locked. Constance and Sophia had lived in continual expectation of
the abnormal issuing from that mysterious room, which was next to
their own. But they were disappointed. The room had no shameful
secret except the incompetence of the architect who had made one
house out of three; it was just an empty, unemployable room. The
building had also a considerable frontage on King Street, where,
behind the shop, was sheltered the parlour, with a large window
and a door that led directly by two steps into the street. A
strange peculiarity of the shop was that it bore no signboard.
Once it had had a large signboard which a memorable gale had blown
into the Square. Mr. Baines had decided not to replace it. He had
always objected to what he called "puffing," and for this reason
would never hear of such a thing as a clearance sale. The hatred
of "puffing" grew on him until he came to regard even a sign as
"puffing." Uninformed persons who wished to find Baines's must ask
and learn. For Mr. Baines, to have replaced the sign would have
been to condone, yea, to participate in, the modern craze for
unscrupulous self-advertisement. This abstention of Mr. Baines's
from indulgence in signboards was somehow accepted by the more
thoughtful members of the community as evidence that the height of
Mr. Baines's principles was greater even than they had imagined.
Constance and Sophia were the daughters of this credit to human
nature. He had no other children.
Read next: BOOK I MRS. BAINES#CHAPTER I - THE SQUARE#PART II
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