Anna of the Five Towns

dred of pounds, arrived by post almost daily. They were all addressed to her, since the securities now stood in her own name;

imagination had been stirred by recent events, the arrival of moneys out of space, unearned, unasked, was a disturbing experience, affecting her as a conjuring trick affects a child, whose sensations hesitate between pleasure and apprehension. Practically, Anna could not believe that she was rich; and in fact she was not rich-she was merely a fixed point through which moneys that she was unable to arrest passed with the rapidity of trains. If money is a token, Anna was denied the satisfaction of fingering even the token: drafts and cheques were all that she touched (touched only to abandon)-the doubly tantalising and insubstantial tokens of a token. She wanted to test the actuality of this apparent dream by handling coin and causing it to vanish over counters and into the palms of the necessitous. And moreover, quite apart from this curiosity, she really needed money for pressing requirements of Agnes and herself. They had yet had no new summer clothes, and Whitsuntide, the time prescribed by custom for the refurnishing of wardrobes, was long since past. The intercourse with Henry Mynors, the visit to the Suttons, had revealed to her more plainly than ever the intolerable shortcomings of her wardrobe, and similar imperfections. She was more painfully awake to these, and yet, by an unhappy paradox, she

deliver this,' he said, p

o write, but he stopped h

lind then, eh? J

t to you,

to me!

at the partnership was for seven years, a period extensible by consent of both parties to fourteen or twenty

bit o' wax, and say; "I deli

his as my ac

this to Lawyer Dane,' he remarked, 'thou'rt bou

pting Anna did not know, since he said no word to her about the matter: she only knew that Agnes had twice been dispatched with notes to Edward Street. One day, about noon, a clay-soiled urchin brought a letter addressed to herself: she guessed that it was some appeal for mercy from the Prices, and wished that her father had been at home. The old man was away for the whole day, attending a sale of property at Axe, the agricultural town in the north of the county, locally styled 'the metro

that such a departure would not make him violently angry. She wondered whether Mynors knew that her father was away, and, if so, whether he had chosen that afternoon purposely. She did not care that Mynors should call for her-it made the visit seem so formal; and as in order to reach the works, down at Shawport by the canal-side, they would necessarily go through the middle of the town, she foresaw infinite gossip and rumour as one result. Already, she knew, the names of herself and Mynors were everywhere coupled, and sh

es, ever compli

ut, and I mu

he house all empty? What will fat

and she answered rather curtly: 'I'm going to the works-Mr. Mynors' works. He's sent word he wants me to.'

e fell somewhat. 'I suppose he won't call before

want to

But-I suppose you'll be out a lo

y girl. And I shan't be out l

lly left at a quarter to two, but the child had not yet gone. At five minut

or and then returned to the foot of the stairs. 'Anna, if I meet

ing of?' the elder sister reproved. 'B

od-bye.' And the c

shed the summons to work-when Mynors rang the bell. Anna was still up

I haven't inconvenienced you, but just this afternoon seemed to be a good oppor

e the house to take care of i

plied. 'I think we hav

ot his eyes. His demeanour, as she viewed it, aggravated her self-consciousness as they braved the streets. But she was happy in her perturbation. When they reached Duck Bank, Mynors asked her whether they should go through the market-place or alo

roken tradition of countless centuries, the seal of their venerable calling is upon their foreheads. If no other relic of an immemorial past is to be seen in these modernised sordid streets, there is at least the living legacy of that extraordinary kinship between workman and work, that instinctive mastery of clay which the past has bestowed upon the present. The horse is less to the Arab than clay is to the Bursley man. He exists in it and by it; it fills his lungs and blanches his cheek; it keeps him alive and it kills him. His fingers close round it as round the hand of a friend. He knows all its tricks and aptitudes; when to coax and when to force it, when to rely on it and when to distrust it. The weavers of Lancashire have dubbed him with an obscene epithet on account of it,

hundred hands, and devoted all his ingenuity to prevent that wastage which is at once the easiest to overlook and the most difficult to check, the wastage of labour. No pains were spared to keep all departments in full and regular activity, and owing to his judicious firmness the feast of St. Monday, that canker eternally eating at the root of the prosperity of the Five Towns, was less religiously observed on his bank than perhaps anywhere else in Bursley. He had realised that when a workshop stands empty the employer has not only ceased to make money, but has begun to lose it. The architect of 'Providence Works' (Providence stand

entrance, because the buildin

inting to a crate which was being swung on a c

nton's I have seen a crate worth three hundred pounds. But that one there

any really good pots

eap,' h

ess?' He detected a not

what everyone wants. Don't you think it's better to please a thousand folks than to please ten? I like to feel that my ware

f the general markets. He had no sympathy with specialities, artistic or otherwise. He found his satisfaction in honestly meeting the public taste. He was born to be a manufacturer of cheap goods on a colossal scale. He could dream of fifty

did not need to be told that Anna was perfectly ignorant of the craft of pottery, and that ev

e common 'body'-ball clay, China clay, flint clay and stone clay-were compelled to pass before they became a white putty-like mixture meet for shaping by human hands. The blunger crushed the clay, the sifter extracted the iron from it by means of a magnet, the

bolts of the enormous tw

. 'The pressure is tremendous, a

isn't it dangerous for

face at this remark. He had ascended from the engine-house below in order to exhibit the tricks of the various machines, and that done he disappeare

xistence. One instant the clay was an amorphous mass, the next it was a vessel perfectly circular, of a prescribed width and a prescribed depth; the flat and apparently clumsy fingers of the craftsman had seemed to lose themselves in the clay for a fraction of time, and the miracle was accomplished. The man threw these vessels with the rapidity of a Roman candle throwing off coloured stars, and one woman was kept busy in supplying him with material and relieving his bench of the finished articles. Mynors drew Anna along to the batting-machines for plate makers, at that period rather a novelty and the latest invention of the dead genius whose brain has reconstituted a whole industry on new lines. Confronted with a piece of clay, the batting-machine descended upon it with the ferocity of a wild animal, worried it, stretched it, smoothed it into the width and thickness of a plate, and then desisted of itself and waited inactive for the fl

at stuff is dried and fettled-smoothed, you know-it goes into the biscuit oven: that's the f

Equator. The inertness and pallor of the saggars seemed to be the physical result of their fiery trial, and one wondered that they should have survived the trial. Mynors went into the place adjoining the oven and brought back a plate out of an open saggar; it was still quite warm. It had the matt surface of a biscuit, and adhered slightly to the fingers: it was

t they should remain. Contiguous with the printing-shop was the painting-shop, in which the labours of the former were taken to a finish by the brush of the paintress, who filled in outlines with flat colour, and thus converted mechanical printing into handiwork. The paintresses form the noblesse of the banks. Their task is a light one, demanding deftness first of all; they have delicate fingers, and enjoy a general reputation for beauty: the wages they earn may be estimated from their finery on Sundays. They come to business in cloth jackets, carry dinner in little satchels; in the shop they wear white aprons, and look startlingly neat and tidy. Across the benches over which they bend their coquettish heads gossip flies and returns like a shuttle; they are the source of a thousand intrigues, and one or other of them is continually getting married or omitting to get married. On the bank they constitute 'the sex.' An infi

ghteen shillings a week

d of a sudden, curious to expe

assent. 'Priscilla, let this lady

miling politely. A

ors, putting on the table the

g to hide her amusement at Anna's unaccustomed efforts. 'No

and a trembling but passable line, a

Mynors; and the paintres

ded. 'My mother's mother was a pain

twelve hours the oil is burnt out of the colour in decorated ware. A huge, jolly man in shirt and trousers, with an enormous apron, was in the act of drawing the k

de, miss,

nks!' sh

eheads with their bare skeleton-like arms. Anna, challenged by the man's look, walked quickly into the kiln. A blasting heat

cal eyes. 'You know summat as you didn't know afore, miss. Come along, lads,' h

head to foot, was dipping jugs into a vat of lead-glaze, a boy assisting her. The woman's han

eered into the lofty inner chamber, which seemed like the cold crater of an exhausted volcano, or like a vault, or like the ruined seat of some forgotten activity. The other oven wa

ll have seen all,' said Mynors, 'except

which had preceded. Here was a sample of the total and final achievement towards which the thousands of small, disjointed efforts that Anna had witnessed, were directed. And it seemed a miraculous, almost impossible, result; so definite, precise and regular after a series of acts apparently variable, inexact and casual; so inhuman after all that intensely inhuman labour; so vast in comparison with the minuteness of th

d cleverness which were implied by the contents of this warehouse. 'What brains!' she thought, of Myn

er thoughts. 'You seem to make a f

we lose fifteen per cent. of the pieces in making. It's toilet-ware that pays, and that is our leading line.' He waved an arm v

a curve. On one side, close to the water's edge, was a ruined and fragmentary building, its rich browns reflected in the smooth surface of the canal. On the ot

t's really quite strange, such a sc

But I always take a peep at that w

t-with all this place to see after,

you've been down. You must come again. I can see you would be interested

They were alone

fraid it's very late now. Thank you for showing me round, and

what unimaginable message

zed it almost convulsively, his in

,' he said, droppin

one to bed. His supper of bread-and-cheese and water was waiting for him, and Anna sat at the table while he consumed it. He a

he asked at length, gulping

nt

e mun send up some more o' thy rent t

said timidly. 'I was

, wa

down and look over the works; so I w

dding out, as soon as my back's turned. How can I tell whether Price sent u

santly, with a determinati

locked up, he should ha' sent again. Bring me th' inkpot, and I'll writ

twenty-five pounds, father,' she ventured

it thysen.' He threw the pen towards her. 'Tell Titus if he

tter from you, fa

e. But, realising that she would perforce meet both Titus Price and Willie on Sunday, she merely

that

ordered, 'and don't let's have any more paper wasted.' Then he dicta

could see the wistful repr

ood-night,' 'I suppose if I hadn't asked, I should

ou I had been to the w

, and having delivered it, he loose

olutely read her Bible

who does not work in shirt-sleeves, who is not actuall

acles of coarse clay, in which