First and Last Loves

by John Betjeman

  But that is perhaps a personal matter. I went to Leeds to see the Civic Hall but there was no seeing the Civic Hall without seeing Leeds at the same time. One can understand why Mr. Vincent Harris was chosen as architect. He had designed the Sheffield Town Hall, and Leeds was not going to be outdone by Sheffield. A site was chosen near the Town Hall, but higher up, so that the new building was bound to dominate the old. Should it attempt to harmonise or give up the struggle? Mr. Vincent Harris is not a Brodrick; that he was in two minds as to what to do is as obvious as are the two steeples with which he terminated his main façade. The result is that the building, looked at with the Town Hall in the foreground, is out of place. The twin steeples are more elaborate than that on the Town Hall—they are a cross between St. Vedast’s, Foster Lane, and St. John’s, Waterloo Road—yet their effect is nullified by the older building. The plain returns and wings look well, but the portico, a necessary justification for twin steeples, mars the otherwise plain and harmonious front. There has been much adverse criticism of the building, particularly from those who have not seen it. But photographs have not done the building justice. The busy streets of Leeds are below. Two main ones almost converge on the building, so that as the sightseer wanders among the hotchpotch of commercial styles around Infirmary Street and the City Square, he suddenly catches a glimpse of one or other brilliant white steeple, rising above tram lines and turrets, terminating an otherwise dreary street. He never sees both steeples at once. What the effect will be when the Portland stone is blackened I cannot say. But I think the odd effect of a close view of the exterior is justified. For the style of the extraordinary gilded clocks I can see less justification. Yet the shrewdest remark of all came from a Yorkshire builder in the bar of the Golden Cock in Kirkgate. “The Civic Hall—you know what that is—a structure of steel; but the Town Hall—that’s architecture, that’s craftsmanship. It’s grown up. There’s no more steel in that than’ld make a lion’s cage.”

  1 1933.

  2 The Heart of John Middleton, Mrs. Gaskell (1850).

  3 Today prefabs spread over the Leeds suburban areas. Quarry Hill Flats, a colossal fortress designed to induce the worker to improve his living conditions, has been turned into a slum.

  6

  THE ISLE OF MAN

  NOT long ago I stepped out of an Edwardian electric tram-car on to the grassy height of Snaefell, two thousand feet above sea-level. The day was clear and I could see Snowdon seventy-three miles away to the south-west and, much nearer, the mountains of Cumberland, the Mull of Galloway and, in the west, the mountains of Mourne—four countries in bluish outline beneath a sky of mother-of-pearl and a wrinkled sea all round us, cloud-patched with streaks of purple.

  Four countries seen from a fifth—this ancient kingdom of Man which once owned the Sodor or southern islands of Scotland. The tram-car returned down the mountainside. Many who had landed at the top went into the café for tea or beer and I had, for a moment, the whole island to myself, thirty-two miles long and twelve wide at my feet; brown moorland and mountain in the middle with tiny fields on the lower slopes, green slate and blue slate, silver limestone and red sandstone, gorse and blaeberries and ling, gigantic cliffs and hidden, wooded glens, foxgloves, fern and scabious on Cornish-looking hedges, whitewashed cottages thatched with straw and drowned in fuchsia bushes. It is a bit of Ulster set down in the sea, a bit of England, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall too, a place as ancient as them all, a separate country, Norse and Celtic at once.

  The Isle of Man, like Shakespeare, has something memorable for everyone. It is a place of strong contrasts and great variety. Yet in southern England it is hardly known at all.

  Yet from June to September half a million people cross from the coast of Lancashire, whole towns at a time. Then lodging houses are stuffed to capacity, then bathing things hang from the sixth floor downwards, then the main road round the island, the famous T.T. track, hums with “charas,” and still there is room. Each time I have visited the Isle of Man it has been at the height of the season and each time I have been able to lose myself in the country. I have tramped knee-deep in blaeberry bushes on the wild west coast of the island, looking in vain for the ruins of a Celtic chapel and never seeing a soul till I turned inland and walked down rutty farm lanes between foxgloves and knapweed to the narrow-gauge railway. And on the same evening I have been able to lose myself again in the crowds on Douglas front, to see Norman Evans in variety at the Palace and afterwards to watch a thousand couples dance in one of the big halls. All this in so small a kingdom, such wildness and such sophistication, such oldness and such newness. The trams, the farms, the switchback railways, the mountain sheep, the fairy lights and the wood-smoke curing kippers—how can I cram them all in? The clearest way of describing the island is to divide it into the two peoples of which it consists, the Manx and the visitors.

  And the Manx come first. When the last boat of holiday-makers has steamed out of Douglas harbour back to Lancashire, about fifty-thousand Manx are left behind: the Christians, Quayles, Crellins, Kewleys, Caines, Kermodes, Clucases, Kellys, Cregeens—Manx names seem almost all to begin with C, K or Q. They are a shy, poetical people. The look of their country is Celtic. There are smallholdings and plenty of antiquities, but not much ancient architecture. The island looks like Cornwall, Wales and Ireland mixed. But Man is Norse as well as Celtic. Until 1266 it belonged to Norway. Race enthusiasts see in the long, tall Manxmen with their fair hair and blue eyes and long moustaches, the descendants of the Vikings. Man was the capital of a Viking kingdom of islands, and very well the Vikings ran it and very slowly they adopted the Christian religion of the conquered Celts. Then the Scots took it over and finally Edward III, the strong man of the time, made England overlord. In 1405 Henry IV gave it to the Stanley family. The Stanleys became not only Earls of Derby but Kings of Man. And when that line of Stanleys died out, the kingship passed to a descendant, the Duke of Atholl. Late in the eighteenth century Man was still an independent country, an unknown island of mists and cliffs and smugglers with a king who was usually non-resident. Spain and France and Portugal shipped dutiable goods to Douglas and Castletown and other Manx ports. Manx sailors would run specially designed fast ships to England. By their own laws they were doing nothing illegal. They were only breaking British laws.

  The island was also a place of refuge for debtors at this time when, by the laws of England and Ireland, a person could still be imprisoned for debt. I believe that Sir William Hillary, founder of the National Lifeboat Institution, who lived at Falcon Cliff, Douglas, was one of these debtors, though he did nothing but good to the Isle of Man. On the other side of Douglas Bay the ruined rake “Buck Whaley” built himself Fort Anne, now an hotel, where, safe from his creditors, he wrote his memoirs. He died in 1800.

  Assuming much moral indignation about the smugglers and debtors who had settled on Man, as well as seeing that the island might be both profitable financially and useful in times of war, the British Government bought out the last claims of the Duke of Atholl to kingship of Man in 1828 for nearly half a million pounds. This was an immense sum for the period, but the British Government gained in the long run. The only people who did not do well out of this sale were the Manx.

  He who has not seen the Tynwald on Tynwald Day does not know how ancient and independent Man is. Of course the feel of another country is in the air as soon as one lands. It is an island, it has generous licensing hours, it has its own flag of three armoured legs on a red background, its own language (half Scottish, half Northern-Irish Gaelic), its own customs in both senses of that word. But the full Manxness shines on July 5th, the annual holiday of Tynwald Day. The centre of the island is St. John’s. Here most valleys meet and here surrounding mountains hide the sea. Carts from all the sheadings, tall men from Rushen in the south, small men from the white fuchsia-hidden farms of Ayre in the north, from forgotten holdings deep in the primeval forests of the Curraghs, from cottages in sycamore-shaded glens, from lonely houses on the
sides of mountains, and from the narrow lanes of Peel that smell of wood-smoke and kippers, from the stately old capital of Castletown with its silver limestone castle, from the noble Welch Gothic range of King William’s College, from Ramsey with its delicate Georgian Court House, from Douglas, that Naples of the North, from forgotten hamlets like Ronague on the slopes of South Barrule, from the stricken terraces by deserted lead-mines of Foxdale, from Laxey where the greatest water-wheel in the world stands idle for ever, and from the sheltered lanes of Port St. Mary, the Manxmen come to Tynwald fair. The little railway runs extra trains. All sorts of extraordinary rolling stock, made in the ’nineties and as good as ever, is drawn by little engines past creamy meadowsweet and brown mountain streams to the curious junction of St. John’s. And there not far from the station is Tynwald Hill itself, an artificial mound of grass, eighty feet high with four circular terraces around it.

  On July 5th, a cream canopy tops the mound to shelter the Governor of Man who will represent the King, and down the straight avenue that leads to the church white masts fly alternately the flags of Britain and of Man. St. John’s Chapel is a golden granite spired building in that dashing and original style of romantic Gothic invented by John Welch which characterises almost all Manx established churches and which is Georgian in origin, though often Victorian in execution. The path to the church is strewn with rushes, offerings to a pagan sea god older than the Viking Tynwald mound. As eleven strikes, the sun streams down, a hymn from A. and M. is relayed from the church; the chief people in the island are assembled for public worship. The Coroners, the Captains of the Parishes, the Clergy in their robes, the Chairmen of the Town Commissioners of Peel, Ramsey and Castletown in frock coats, the Mayor of Douglas all in red and ermine; they step out into the sunlight from the west door. And so do the Vicar-General, the Archdeacon, the High Bailiff—all these legal-clerical-looking men—the Members of the House of Keys, their Chaplain and their Speaker, the Government Secretary, the Members of the Legislative Council, the Attorney-General, the two Deemsters in their robes of red who are the judges of the island, and the Lord Bishop of Sodor and Man—that luckless Bishop whose cathedral is a beautiful ruin of green slate and red sandstone on an islet overlooking Peel, that luckless Bishop who has a seat in the English House of Lords but no vote in it—who is second in command of the island. And now comes the Sword of State, a thirteenth-century Scandinavian relic, and behind it the Lieutenant-Governor himself with a posse of police and the Surgeon to the Household keeping up the rear. Slowly they ascend to Tynwald Hill, the Governor to the top and the rest in order of importance on terraces below. The Coroner fences the court. Then the Deemster reads out the latest laws in English and a priest reads them out again in Manx. It is all beautifully organised and it goes on for a long time. But here in this ancient circle of the hills time seems nothing. As the old Manx language is read out, the sun shines down on us, although the peaks of every mountain round us are hidden in clouds. It is always fine, I am told, at St. John’s on Tynwald Day. The magician who lived in the island up to the fifth century used to make a mist to hide the island from its invaders, and it is certainly true that whenever Man has been visited by English king or queen it has been shrouded in mist, even at a recent visit of King George VI.

  Fishing and farming were once the chief industries of the Manx. Fishing has dwindled so that there are now only nine boats Manx-manned and owned among all the little drifters that set out into the evening for herrings. The other hundred are mostly Scottish. And even farming takes second place to the greatest Manx industry, which is catering.

  This brings me to the most enjoyable thing in all the enjoyment of Man—the visitors. I wish I knew when it was that these mass migrations from Lancashire started. Perhaps I can tell most easily from looking at Douglas. If I stand on Douglas Head and look across that noble sweep to Onchan Head, before the fairy lights are on and while the sun setting behind the mountains still lets me see the outline of the houses on the front, I can trace the recent history of the island.

  The original Douglas at my feet, around the harbour, is a small fishing port, not half so beautiful as Castletown further down this eastern coast—Castletown with its magnificent medieval-moated and turreted castle, its box-pewed, three-deckered, still unspoilt church, its exciting stone police station by Baillie Scott, and its Doric column to Governor Smelt. What made Douglas grow was its natural scenery, but people did not notice natural scenery until Georgian times. The last Duke of Atholl to be governor had the Shrewsbury architect George Stewart design him, in 1804, a palace on this noble sweep of bay. It is known today in its smooth, silvery stone as Castle Mona Hotel. Its dining-room is the finest room on the island, the Adam style at its simplest and most graceful. Only that exquisite country house the Nunnery, in Walter Scott Gothic by John Pinch, compares with it. And after the Duke, the debtors escaping to Mona with some cash, and other visitors, built themselves romantic castles on these heights above the bay—Falcon Cliff, Fort Anne, Derby Castle. These are late Georgian castellated buildings designed to look like romantic ruins by John Welch who also built in 1832 the Tower of Refuge on a rock in the middle of the water in Douglas Bay and so turned a looming danger into the semblance of an ancient castle. Then in the reign of William IV the gaps between the castles were filled in with stately stucco terraces, Brighton fashion (Windsor Terrace and Mount Pleasant are the best) sometimes high on the cliffs and here and there on the sea shore. The effect was and is magically beautiful. These Georgian terraces and Walter Scott, Peveril-of-the-Peak style castles flash out upon the cliff side. But this exclusive and romantic watering place cannot originally have been designed for half a million north-country folk—more likely for a few hundred half-pay officers eking out their pensions here where taxes are low.

  I think the man of genius who turned the island into what it is, and saved it from ruin so that it is now financially prosperous, was Governor Loch. He improved the harbours and built the Loch Promenade in the ’sixties and ’seventies. Thereafter Douglas-style boarding-houses appeared in rows wherever there were gaps between the old terraces. They are innocent enough five-storeyed, bay-windowed, gabled buildings, gloomy behind, sea-gazing in front, rows and rows and rows of them so that the distant effect is of white paper folded into a concertina and perched here and there and everywhere along the shore. They are not as disfiguring as the modern bungalows and clumsily arranged electric light poles which ruin so much of the country part of Man. And now what with the T.T., the motor races, the improved harbours, the way everybody is out to be gay, however gloomy you are feeling you cannot be ill-humoured in Douglas. The boats arrive, the aeroplanes come down, young men and old in open shirts, sports coats and grey flannels, young girls and old in cheerful summer dresses, queue for ices, queue for shrimps, crowd round bars for glasses of delicious dry champagne, gaze from horse-trams over municipal flower beds to the Tower of Refuge and the sea, travel in luxury coaches round the island half asleep in one another’s arms till the sun sets behind the boarding-houses of Douglas and all the lights go up and the dance halls begin to fill. It is nine o’clock. There is still light in the sky. Father and mother, basking in one another’s love, are sitting in chairs on the steps of the boarding-house; behind the front door peeps the inevitable castor oil plant in its china pot. Beside them sit the younger children, unnaturally good and quiet for fear they shall be sent up to bed while it is still light and while the moon rises huge and yellow above the purple bay. The elder children, grown up now, are off to the dance halls. Only a few rejected young men sit sadly on the steps among the ancients and the infants. The girls wear white dancing shoes and that is how you know whither they are bound. Two shillings or four-and-six, somewhere round that, is the cost of a ticket to dance. I like the Palace dance hall best. It has a parquet floor of sixteen thousand square feet and room for five thousand people. It is in a gay baroque style, cream and pink inside, and from the graceful roof hang Japanese lanterns out of a dangling forest
of flags. A small and perfect dance band strikes up—ah, the dance bands of the Isle of Man! Soon a thousand couples are moving beautifully, the cotton dresses of the girls like vivid tulips in all this pale cream and pink, the sports coats and dark suits of the men a background to so much airy colour. The rhythmic dance is almost tribal, so that even a middle-aged spectator like me is caught up in mass excitement, pure and thrilling and profound.

  And while the dance bands are playing in Douglas and the yellow moon is rising in its bay, on the western, wilder coast the herring fleet is setting out from Peel. The sun sets behind the rugged outline of the Castle and the ruined Cathedral and Round Tower enclosed within its walls. A stiffish west wind is blowing and the sea beyond the breakwater is dark green and choppy. The herring boats are disappearing into the sunset. Out of the harbour, round the castle island, the dying sun shines gold upon their polished sides. I stand alone upon a rock by Peel Castle. The smell of salt and wet earth is in my nostrils, the dark green slate of those old castle walls is at my side. Inland, the last rays of sun are lighting the winding lanes of Peel, the red sandstone of its church towers, and the soft protecting mountains behind it of the Isle of Man. Here, salt spray, seagulls, wild rocks and cavernous cliffs. Beyond those mountains the dance halls of Douglas and the dance-band leader in his faultless tails. An isle of contrasts! A miniature of all the Western world.