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Lady Lufton herself had always been very civil to the prebendaries, and especially to little Dr. Burslem, the meagre little man who had just now paid the debt of nature. She had always been very fond of the chapter, and her original dislike to Bishop Proudie had been chiefly founded on his interference with the cathedral clergy, on his interference, or on that of his wife or chaplain.
Burslem at the grammar school on the hill, the amazing news came one day that Bob Clive, the wild boy who had terrorized the tradespeople, plagued his master, led the school in tremendous fights with the town boys, and suffered more birchings than any scholar of his time Bob Clive, the scapegrace who had been packed off to India as a last resource, had turned out, as his father said, "not such a booby after all" had indeed proved himself to be a military genius.
"I was very discontented then," she said and paused. "I've really only been in London for a few months. It's so different. In Burslem, life seems all business and getting without any reason. One went on and it didn't seem to mean anything. At least anything that mattered.... London seems to be so full of meanings all mixed up together."
My head is not so clear as it used to be in the arrangement of such matters. In the year mentioned there was a merchant established in Liverpool of the name of Wainwright, who was one of the actors in what nearly proved to be a tragedy. At a place called Tunstall, near Burslem, in Staffordshire, resided an earthenware manufacturer named Theophilus Smith.
The whole region comprising Burslem, Hanley, Newcastle, Stoke-on-Trent and many smaller places may be described as a huge, scattered city of about 300,000 inhabitants, nearly all directly or indirectly connected with the manufacture of various grades of china and earthenware. The Castle Hotel, where we stopped, was a very old inn, yet it proved unexpectedly homelike and comfortable.
I went when about twelve years old to a pottery at Burslem. My father told me pretty well what I have told you. I determined to try hard at any rate. I worked in every spare hour to improve myself generally, and I went three evenings a week to the art school. I liked it, and the master told me if I stuck to it I might be a painter some day.
"'Twas a most strange chance, surely," he said, "that brought you to this spot at the very moment when I was shaking the dust of Gheria from my feet. How impossible it is to escape the penalty of one's wrongdoing! Old Horace knew it: Raro antecedentem scelestum you remember the rest. Mr. Burslem drubbed our Latin into us, Mr. Burke.
She had the desolating sense that nothing in the world would ever matter to her again nothing as far as she, Peggy Manningtree, was concerned. Her life was over. Altruism alone gave sanction to continued existence. Hence her present adventure. Paris might have been Burslem for all the interest it afforded.
It didn't in any way join on to my impression of Margaret. In the drawing-room of the matting floor I rejoined her, with Altiora's manifest connivance, and in the interval I had been thinking of our former meeting. "Do you find London," I asked, "give you more opportunity for doing things and learning things than Burslem?" She showed at once she appreciated my allusion to her former confidences.
At present, besides the line formerly called the Grand Junction, until its amalgamation with the London and Birmingham, there is a line from Crewe to Chester and Birkenhead; another to Manchester direct, by Macclesfield, formerly known as the Manchester and Birmingham both are now merged in the London and North Western; and lastly, a short cross branch of fifteen miles, forming a union with Burslem on the North Staffordshire.
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