Now there had been some by-play at this meeting, not recorded in the Manchester newspapers, which gave an account of the more regular part of the transaction.
While the men had stood grouped near the door, on their first entrance, Mr. Harry Carson had taken out his silver pencil, and had drawn an admirable caricature of them—lank, ragged, dispirited, and famine-stricken. Underneath he wrote a hasty quotation from the fat knight’s well-known speech in Henry IV. He passed it to one of his neighbours, who acknowledged the likeness instantly, and by him it was sent round to others, who all smiled and nodded their heads. When it came back to its owner he tore the back of the letter on which it was drawn in two, twisted them up, and flung them into the fireplace; but, careless whether they reached their aim or not, he did not look to see that they fell just short of any consuming cinders.
This proceeding was closely observed by one of the men.
He watched the masters as they left the hotel (laughing, some of them were, at passing jokes), and when all had gone, he re-entered. He went to the waiter, who recognised him.
“There’s a bit on a picture up yonder, as one o’ the gentlemen threw away; I’ve a little lad at home as dearly loves a picture; by your leave I’ll go up for it.”
The waiter, good-natured and sympathetic, accompanied him upstairs; saw the paper picked up and untwisted, and then being convinced, by a hasty glance at its contents, that it was only what the man had called it, “a bit of a picture,” he allowed him to bear away his prize.
Towards seven o’clock that evening, many operatives began to assemble in a room in the Weavers’ Arms public-house, a room appropriated for “festive occasions,” as the landlord, in his circular, on opening the premises, had described it. But, alas! it was on no festive occasion that they met there this night. Starved, irritated, despairing men, they were assembling to hear the answer that morning given by the masters to their delegates; after which, as was stated in the notice, a gentleman from London would have the honour of addressing the meeting on the present state of affairs between the employers and the employed, or (as he chose to term them) the idle and the industrious classes. The room was not large, but its bareness of furniture made it appear so. Unshaded gas flared down upon the lean and unwashed artisans as they entered, their eyes blinking at the excess of light.
They took their seats on benches, and awaited the deputation. The latter, gloomily and ferociously, delivered the masters’ ultimatum, adding thereto not one word of their own; and it sank all the deeper into the sore hearts of the listeners for their forbearance.
Then the “gentleman from London” (who had been previously informed of the masters’ decision) entered. You would have been puzzled to define his exact position, or what was the state of his mind as regarded education. He looked so self-conscious, so far from earnest, among the group of eager, fierce, absorbed men, among whom he now stood. He might have been a disgraced medical student of the Bob Sawyer class, or an unsuccessful actor, or a flashy shopman. The impression he would have given you would have been unfavourable, and yet there was much about him that could only be characterised as doubtful.
He smirked in acknowledgment of their uncouth greetings, and sat down; then glancing round, he inquired whether it would not be agreeable to the gentlemen present to have pipes and liquor handed round, adding, that he would stand treat.
As the man who has had his taste educated to love reading, falls devouringly upon books after a long abstinence, so these poor fellows, whose tastes had been left to educate themselves into a liking for tobacco, beer, and similar gratifications, gleamed up at the proposal of the London delegate. Tobacco and drink deaden the pangs of hunger, and make one forget the miserable home, the desolate future.
They were now ready to listen to him with approbation. He felt it; and rising like a great orator, with his right arm outstretched, his left in the breast of his waistcoat, he began to declaim, with a forced theatrical voice.
After a burst of eloquence, in which he blended the deeds of the elder and the younger Brutus, and magnified the resistless might of the “millions of Manchester,” the Londoner descended to matter-of-fact business, and in his capacity this way he did not belie the good judgment of those who had sent him as a delegate. Masses of people, when left to their own free choice, seem to have discretion in distinguishing men of natural talent: it is a pity they so little regard temper and principles. He rapidly dictated resolutions, and suggested measures. He wrote out a stirring placard for the walls. He proposed sending delegates to entreat the assistance of other Trades’ Unions in other towns. He headed the list of subscribing Unions, by a liberal donation from that with which he was especially connected in London; and what was more, and more uncommon, he paid down the money in real, clinking, blinking, golden sovereigns! The money, alas! was cravingly required; but before alleviating any private necessities on the morrow, small sums were handed to each of the delegates, who were in a day or two to set out on their expeditions to Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham, etc. These men were most of them members of the deputation who had that morning waited upon the masters. After he had drawn up some letters, and spoken a few more stirring words, the gentleman from London withdrew, previously shaking hands all round; and many speedily followed him out of the room, and out of the house.
The newly-appointed delegates, and one or two others, remained behind to talk over their respective missions, and to give and exchange opinions in more homely and natural language than they dared to use before the London orator.
“He’s a rare chap, yon,” began one, indicating the departed delegate by a jerk of his thumb towards the door. “He’s getten the gift of the gab, anyhow!”
“Ay! ay! he knows what he’s about. See how he poured it into us about that there Brutus. He were pretty hard, too, to kill his own son!”
“I could kill mine if he took part with the masters; to be sure, he’s but a step-son, but that makes no odds,” said another.
But now tongues were hushed, and all eyes were directed towards the member of the deputation who had that morning returned to the hotel to obtain possession of Harry Carson’s clever caricature of the operatives.
The heads clustered together, to gaze at and detect the likenesses.
“That’s John Slater! I’d ha’ known him anywhere, by his big nose. Lord! how like; that’s me, by G-d, it’s the very way I’m obligated to pin my waistcoat up, to hide that I’ve getten no shirt. That IS a shame, and I’ll not stand it.”
“Well!” said John Slater, after having acknowledged his nose and his likeness; “I could laugh at a jest as well as e’er the best on ‘em, though it did tell agen mysel, if I were not clemming” (his eyes filled with tears; he was a poor, pinched, sharp-featured man, with a gentle and melancholy expression of countenance), “and if I could keep from thinking of them at home, as is clemming; but with their cries for food ringing in my ears, and making me afeard of going home, and wonder if I should hear ‘em wailing out, if I lay cold and drowned at th’ bottom o’ th’ canal, there—why, man, I cannot laugh at aught. It seems to make me sad that there is any as can make game on what they’ve never knowed; as can make such laughable pictures on men, whose very hearts within ‘em are so raw and sore as ours were and are, God help us.”