But there I was, a very junior barrister, with a very junior wife and a still more junior daughter, all desirous of being comfortably provided for; and to my eternal gratitude and surprise, Manchester rose to the occasion and not only――to use the slang of the tables――“saw me,” but “went one better” than my best hopes in contributing to my career.
What little accidents determine the course of a man’s life! We start like streams from the mountain source, intending to fight our way down into the valleys where our fathers have preceded us. But on the upper slopes at the outset of our career we meet some boulder or bank of earth and are turned west instead of east, and so away into quite other valleys and along towards another sea. If anyone had told me when I was eighteen that I should be County Court Judge of Manchester within fifteen years I should have put a sovereign on the other way or given the long odds in a hopeful spirit.
For there was nothing of Manchester in my thoughts when, after my father’s death, I left King’s College School and gave up for ever those pleasant journeys in the old underground railway, where we learned our lessons by inferior gas-light in an atmosphere of sulphur. Honestly, looking back on that school in the underworld of Somerset House, I have an uneasy feeling that there was no health in it. But there were pleasant companions, and, if you cared for such things, much classical learning and Church doctrine. It did not occur to the boy mind that light and air were necessary to healthy life, and of course it had never entered the thoughts of the pastors and masters responsible for that scholastic warren. Whilst I was there I carried away with me a few prizes and a broken nose, and a knowledge of those portions of the Church Catechism which fitted in with the place in class where I sat of a Monday morning. I was sixteen when I left school, and for the first time in my life began to seriously consider the desirability of studying things. I have been some sort of a student ever since.
My first idea was to study mathematics with a view to trying for a scholarship at Cambridge. I wonder if I had followed that stream into what dead sea it would have carried me. I know as a fact that I was accounted fairly good at the subject, but that is difficult for me to believe to-day, for anything more complicated than very simple addition I always refer in a thankful spirit to the Registrar. Afterwards I fancied I would be an artist, and joined the Slade School and drew in the “Antique” for a few months. I got very little encouragement there. Legros once looked at one of my drawings, and took up a piece of charcoal as if to show me some of the errors of line in my work; but his heart failed him. He sighed, shook his head, grunted a guttural French grunt of despair, and turned on his heel. However, I can boast that I am a pupil of Legros, and if he treasured my piece of charcoal it may yet be a valuable lot at Christie’s――who knows?