Allan's 155th birthday, and Dying Fires at the Exchange
It's my grandfather Allan's 155th birthday, so again I'll post an extract from his writing. The past two years I've drawn on the two plays which were revived at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond recently (and later at the Mint in New York). But I thought today I would go back to one of the novels.
Dying Fires was published in 1912, and is the story of a marriage which undergoes great strain. But the opening scene is set in the Manchester Exchange, which is where Allan himself, like the male character introduced here, worked for years. He originally entered the cotton trade - on which Manchester's fortunes depended - as a yarn agent on the floor of the Exchange. Later, he joined the Manchester Guardian, writing reports on the cotton exchange by day and dramatic criticism by night. David Ayerst's history of the Guardian remarked that "His cotton reports supported his literary work just as the cotton trade made it possible (though not inevitable) for Manchester to be a great artistic centre." So it's strangely appropriate that, a few years after trading ended in 1968, the Exchange which Allan visited every day to check the cotton prices became the home of the Royal Exchange Theatre. I still hope that one day I may see his work performed there.
Anyway, here are the opening pages of Dying Fires, written in Allan's curiously indirect style, always more interested in thought than description; how many writers would refrain from giving us more detail about exactly what his characters are seeing on the Exchange floor? But I imagine some of the thoughts about working in the cotton trade come from his own past. And when we finally learn his heroine's name, she has the same initials as Allan's first wife, Lucy Dowie, though their marriage had a different story.
Dying Fires, Chapter 1 - The Tether
They looked down together from the gallery of the Manchester Exchange upon swarming humanity. He had met her in St. Ann's Square, had yielded to the impulse - he hardly recognised it as part of a perpetual craving - to speak to her, and eventually an inquiry about his work had led to his proposal that she should see one scene of it. She saw the place with an amazed curiosity, and it had the effect - familiar to those who have followed a friend into his strange environment - of raising some shadow of a barrier between them. Yet in her perturbation, in the confused attempt to adjust him to this vast sum of unsounded life, she was stirred to sharp sympathies. The turmoil, the heat, and the reek of it were disturbing, but her niceties of revolt were curbed by the knowledge that he belonged to this, even while they were stimulated by the thought that he must endure it. When her glance roamed over the whole vast assembly her heart lifted, but the concentration upon groups of little shabby men and their obscure chafferings depressed her. He gave some simple explanations to which she hardly listened.
She said: "You go down there, of course? You're one of them?"
"Every day."
"It looks uncomfortable - horrid. Interesting, too. I suppose you are interested?"
"One has to do it."
"You sell? - buy?"
"Both. I buy yarn and sell cloth. We weave the yarn into cloth and you get your calico."
"And all these people are contesting - competing? It's terribly severe and engrossing, I suppose." She craned down to study the bearing and gestures of a group, and failed to find the tension.
He laughed. "It's not so strenuous for most of them. It's a dull place, full of mere repetitions."
"But fortunes are made and lost. Don't I hear about speculations that in a few hours - "
"Ah! this is a humdrum, commercial community. There are men here who have been short of a five-pound note any time these ten years, and they never break. Of course, there's some speculation. Anyone may speculate."
"You do not?"
"Not more than is necessary. You see, we are solid, commercial people. And this place - what it represents - is my hold on sanity."
He pointed out one or two notable figures; he was a little supercilious and aloof.
"What a mass!" he said. "What a life! Shall I tear myself away before it's too late? And how should I get on without it?"
"I can't make out," he said, as she was silent, "whether this is the essential thing in my life or only a background. A tremendous lot of my energies go here, and sometimes one thinks pretty hard in a way, but there's no fine flower about it."
She said: "We can't live on fine flowers."
"The dramas of the world are embedded, really. It's a convention that makes them pass before us on the stage or in history. Do you read history? It seems to me that the undiscovered art of it is to give a notion of the spacing out. Perhaps I'm thinking of school abridgements. But how did these people pass the intervening years? One thinks of Macbeths and Richards passing from one great experience to another. Really, there must have been some long, dull evenings with Lady Macbeth when he wished that Banquo or somebody would drop in. Dull years, dull occupations. Here's mine."
She said: "How curious the movement of the atoms is! Why, the whole thing is great and impressive. I see they are ill-dressed little men with bowler hats, but, together, what a shout they could raise."
"There's a big thing behind them. All the mills and spindles and looms and the operatives. Manchester's only the bargaining centre. You get to the heart of it at Oldham or Burnley. They're the tragic places. Of course they don't know it, and there's a queer little fringe of philanthropy with parks and things and arid religious sects for those who like them, and great, queer interests in betting and football. And you mustn't judge the operatives when you meet thousands of them - eager little men and boys in caps - going to a football match. They're not lovable so. Don't judge any class by its crowds. Mighty, blind powers."
"You find it dull, and yet you're interested."
"Yes - interested. You make me feel that. With you here I see what a big thing all this is. One can hardly let go. But it's only a habit; I've not been concerned much so far in the politics of the trade. I'm tethered to it. Can tethered people have their dramas? It's the privilege of an animal not to be rooted, but we root ourselves."
She had liked him well enough, but now he was looming larger than before, though she could not accept him unquestioningly. He provoked criticism; he had never been the modest, charming person whom everyone likes. Shrewdly, she saw something of the quality of his egoism, and he was, as she was to learn, a tremendous egoist. He disarmed one by his consciousness of it; his interest in himself, his soundings and questionings were partly an invitation to you to share the fun. In casual company he was sufficiently reticent, and even with his friends a hint might bring a sensitive withdrawal. Of course she had not phrased it to herself that he was a sensitive egoist, and if she had it might not have scared her. She liked him, and with a gasp it came to her that it might be possible to like him very much, to be overwhelmed. She looked at him furtively, thrillingly. In such a case even frank and simple women are cautious, and her mind was in pretty good control. He was a clean, handsome creature and he could laugh ringingly. He was kind and could make his kindness distinctive. His strong features gave her some assurance, and yet she believed that his strength was not assured. She liked to reflect that she had heard him say unbalanced things. It brought her closer to him; she might help. She could almost think of him as unprotected.
He was not less bold. Indeed, his experimental imaginings went further. His thoughts almost framed themselves into: "Is this she?" But he had not resolved that there was to be any she in the case; he still shrank from the great adventure. Men spoilt by civilisation have their misgivings - call them irrational and unnatural. The natural man in him saw her in a flash that seemed to give warmth to the conventional suitability; your true lover does not pine for material obstructions. Did she think kindly of him? A tremor of nerves shook his self-possession for a moment, and he stiffened when he saw that an acquaintance below was gazing at them. By common consent they retired from the balcony, and as they threaded the groups to reach the door of egress it seemed to him that her embarrassment was more than this running of the gauntlet of staring men should occasion. And, truly, the poor girl had lost some of her nerve, too, for she was oppressed with a ridiculous apprehension that she might be taken for Richard Peel's wife. Under her breath she was repeating: "I'm Letitia Mary Drayton, I'm Letitia Mary Drayton," whimsically recalling the day in her childhood when she was lost and had been recovered through this insistence on identity. She was glad to get outside.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.
Dying Fires was published in 1912, and is the story of a marriage which undergoes great strain. But the opening scene is set in the Manchester Exchange, which is where Allan himself, like the male character introduced here, worked for years. He originally entered the cotton trade - on which Manchester's fortunes depended - as a yarn agent on the floor of the Exchange. Later, he joined the Manchester Guardian, writing reports on the cotton exchange by day and dramatic criticism by night. David Ayerst's history of the Guardian remarked that "His cotton reports supported his literary work just as the cotton trade made it possible (though not inevitable) for Manchester to be a great artistic centre." So it's strangely appropriate that, a few years after trading ended in 1968, the Exchange which Allan visited every day to check the cotton prices became the home of the Royal Exchange Theatre. I still hope that one day I may see his work performed there.
Anyway, here are the opening pages of Dying Fires, written in Allan's curiously indirect style, always more interested in thought than description; how many writers would refrain from giving us more detail about exactly what his characters are seeing on the Exchange floor? But I imagine some of the thoughts about working in the cotton trade come from his own past. And when we finally learn his heroine's name, she has the same initials as Allan's first wife, Lucy Dowie, though their marriage had a different story.
Dying Fires, Chapter 1 - The Tether
They looked down together from the gallery of the Manchester Exchange upon swarming humanity. He had met her in St. Ann's Square, had yielded to the impulse - he hardly recognised it as part of a perpetual craving - to speak to her, and eventually an inquiry about his work had led to his proposal that she should see one scene of it. She saw the place with an amazed curiosity, and it had the effect - familiar to those who have followed a friend into his strange environment - of raising some shadow of a barrier between them. Yet in her perturbation, in the confused attempt to adjust him to this vast sum of unsounded life, she was stirred to sharp sympathies. The turmoil, the heat, and the reek of it were disturbing, but her niceties of revolt were curbed by the knowledge that he belonged to this, even while they were stimulated by the thought that he must endure it. When her glance roamed over the whole vast assembly her heart lifted, but the concentration upon groups of little shabby men and their obscure chafferings depressed her. He gave some simple explanations to which she hardly listened.
She said: "You go down there, of course? You're one of them?"
"Every day."
"It looks uncomfortable - horrid. Interesting, too. I suppose you are interested?"
"One has to do it."
"You sell? - buy?"
"Both. I buy yarn and sell cloth. We weave the yarn into cloth and you get your calico."
"And all these people are contesting - competing? It's terribly severe and engrossing, I suppose." She craned down to study the bearing and gestures of a group, and failed to find the tension.
He laughed. "It's not so strenuous for most of them. It's a dull place, full of mere repetitions."
"But fortunes are made and lost. Don't I hear about speculations that in a few hours - "
"Ah! this is a humdrum, commercial community. There are men here who have been short of a five-pound note any time these ten years, and they never break. Of course, there's some speculation. Anyone may speculate."
"You do not?"
"Not more than is necessary. You see, we are solid, commercial people. And this place - what it represents - is my hold on sanity."
He pointed out one or two notable figures; he was a little supercilious and aloof.
"What a mass!" he said. "What a life! Shall I tear myself away before it's too late? And how should I get on without it?"
"I can't make out," he said, as she was silent, "whether this is the essential thing in my life or only a background. A tremendous lot of my energies go here, and sometimes one thinks pretty hard in a way, but there's no fine flower about it."
She said: "We can't live on fine flowers."
"The dramas of the world are embedded, really. It's a convention that makes them pass before us on the stage or in history. Do you read history? It seems to me that the undiscovered art of it is to give a notion of the spacing out. Perhaps I'm thinking of school abridgements. But how did these people pass the intervening years? One thinks of Macbeths and Richards passing from one great experience to another. Really, there must have been some long, dull evenings with Lady Macbeth when he wished that Banquo or somebody would drop in. Dull years, dull occupations. Here's mine."
She said: "How curious the movement of the atoms is! Why, the whole thing is great and impressive. I see they are ill-dressed little men with bowler hats, but, together, what a shout they could raise."
"There's a big thing behind them. All the mills and spindles and looms and the operatives. Manchester's only the bargaining centre. You get to the heart of it at Oldham or Burnley. They're the tragic places. Of course they don't know it, and there's a queer little fringe of philanthropy with parks and things and arid religious sects for those who like them, and great, queer interests in betting and football. And you mustn't judge the operatives when you meet thousands of them - eager little men and boys in caps - going to a football match. They're not lovable so. Don't judge any class by its crowds. Mighty, blind powers."
"You find it dull, and yet you're interested."
"Yes - interested. You make me feel that. With you here I see what a big thing all this is. One can hardly let go. But it's only a habit; I've not been concerned much so far in the politics of the trade. I'm tethered to it. Can tethered people have their dramas? It's the privilege of an animal not to be rooted, but we root ourselves."
She had liked him well enough, but now he was looming larger than before, though she could not accept him unquestioningly. He provoked criticism; he had never been the modest, charming person whom everyone likes. Shrewdly, she saw something of the quality of his egoism, and he was, as she was to learn, a tremendous egoist. He disarmed one by his consciousness of it; his interest in himself, his soundings and questionings were partly an invitation to you to share the fun. In casual company he was sufficiently reticent, and even with his friends a hint might bring a sensitive withdrawal. Of course she had not phrased it to herself that he was a sensitive egoist, and if she had it might not have scared her. She liked him, and with a gasp it came to her that it might be possible to like him very much, to be overwhelmed. She looked at him furtively, thrillingly. In such a case even frank and simple women are cautious, and her mind was in pretty good control. He was a clean, handsome creature and he could laugh ringingly. He was kind and could make his kindness distinctive. His strong features gave her some assurance, and yet she believed that his strength was not assured. She liked to reflect that she had heard him say unbalanced things. It brought her closer to him; she might help. She could almost think of him as unprotected.
He was not less bold. Indeed, his experimental imaginings went further. His thoughts almost framed themselves into: "Is this she?" But he had not resolved that there was to be any she in the case; he still shrank from the great adventure. Men spoilt by civilisation have their misgivings - call them irrational and unnatural. The natural man in him saw her in a flash that seemed to give warmth to the conventional suitability; your true lover does not pine for material obstructions. Did she think kindly of him? A tremor of nerves shook his self-possession for a moment, and he stiffened when he saw that an acquaintance below was gazing at them. By common consent they retired from the balcony, and as they threaded the groups to reach the door of egress it seemed to him that her embarrassment was more than this running of the gauntlet of staring men should occasion. And, truly, the poor girl had lost some of her nerve, too, for she was oppressed with a ridiculous apprehension that she might be taken for Richard Peel's wife. Under her breath she was repeating: "I'm Letitia Mary Drayton, I'm Letitia Mary Drayton," whimsically recalling the day in her childhood when she was lost and had been recovered through this insistence on identity. She was glad to get outside.
Also posted on Dreamwidth, with
comments.