James Crossley in The Fraud, by Zadie Smith

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin; Heruitgave edition (6 Jun. 2024)
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0241983096
• RRP : £9.99

Along with William Harrison Ainsworth, the other major character in this fascinating story is Eliza Touchet, who is described by Ainsworth's first biographer, S. M. Ellis, as 'Mrs James Touchet, ... widow of Ainsworth's cousin. She was formerly Mrs Eliza Buckley, of Manchester, her family being merchants of that city.' (Ellis, vol 1, p. 229, and note)  

She is introduced by Ellis when the twenty-six-year-old would-be novelist was pursuing desultory legal studies and writing the occasional article for Fraser's Magazine. En route from London he paused to visit his cousin at Chesterfield, where she was then living. Ellis continues the story in parenthesis:

(However, there was a delay, Mrs Touchet, his hostess, was a talented woman, of brilliant conversational powers, and, although fifteen years older than Ainsworth, had a very considerable influence over him to the end of her life.)

Ainsworth's feelings were hinted at in a letter to James Crossley:

You must excuse me a day or two longer ... I will not fix a day, therefore don't expect me till you receive a positive letter to say so. You are a man of feeling - a man of philosophy, and will overlook my errors, I am sure. Chesterfield has charms for me; that you know, and therefore I throw myself upon your mercy. (Ellis, vol. 1, p. 230)

'Ainsworth found Chesterfield so attractive, and full of imagination for his embryonic romance, that, after visiting Manchester, he returned to the Derbyshire town for several weeks, and there he commenced writing Rookwood [his first successful novel].'

So what was this relationship with Eliza Touchet?  Well, your guess is as good as mine. There are hints and innuendo in the letters to Crossley and Zadie picks them up (of course). We are not sure how Eliza came to be in Chesterfield in the first place, but in 1835, she and her unmarried sister were at Kensal Lodge in the Harrow Road, famous as Ainsworth's residence for the next six years, where he hosted literary soirees with the great and good, including Dickens and Thackeray, but Ellis suggests that the sisters were already there when Ainsworth joined them, after separating from his wife: 'he [Ainsworth] went to reside with his connections, Mrs James Touchet and her sister, Miss Buckley.' (Ellis, vol. 1, p.270).

Zadie Smith really has fun with Eliza though, making her a Scottish Catholic, lover of Ainsworth; a bisexual dominatrix who eventually became his housekeeper, adviser and muse, as well as a passionate abolitionist and impartial observer of the Tichborne trials. This is truly a virtuoso performance of the author's imagination. 

But where is James Crossley in all of this? Sadly, he is relegated to a minor role; an extra, without a speaking part. He is imaginatively described in Book 1, chapter 17 as follows:

 For the next few years, whenever he returned to Manchester, William made a secret detour to see Mrs Touchet in Chesterfield. His Manchester alibi, always partially true, was that of his visits to an old schoolfriend, James Crossley, he of the ‘finest library in England.’ This Crossley person was in Eliza’s view as responsible for William's graphomania as distilleries are for the drunkards, as sweet tooths for the continued existence of the slaves. Crossley it was who supplied William with his research materials: Defoe’s accounts of the old city, the original transcripts of the Lancaster Witches trial, the architectural layout of the Tower of London, the Newgate Calendar. He found all the old letters and old books of costume re-enarmor as suggested topics, prompting and pushing until William took them up. Much later in life, Mrs Touchet seriously considered the possibility that her cousin was a fraud, and James Crossley the true author of all those thousands upon thousands of words. The reality was less exciting. Crossley was a big man, with gout, a terrific collection of books, and only one friend: William. He was the kind of fellow who always promised to come to London, but never actually did, nor did he trust the mail coach with his rare editions,  so William was obliged to go to Crossley, and on the way, though it was not really on the way, he stopped at Chesterfield. He transcribed his notes naked in bed in the morning; in the afternoon sat across from her, and wrote. She saw for herself how much pleasure writing brought him. He dipped his nib with a smile on his face …

It seems almost churlish to add that:

1) There is no evidence that Crossley ever suffered from gout.

2) Crossley was an extremely sociable and even clubbable person with many friends and in fact was a well-known figure about Manchester.

3) He frequently went to London, and in fact he died, at the age of 83, shortly after a fall sustained when alighting from the train at Euston Station. 

But why spoil a good story? 

Here's the Guardian review of the hardback version of the book, which published last year:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/aug/27/the-by-zadie-smith-review-a-trial-and-no-errors

 

  

 

William Harrison Ainsworth: The Author Who Outsold Dickens

 

Stephen Carver, The Author who outsold Dickens The Life and Works of W. H. Ainsworth (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2020), ISBN 9781526720696, pp. 255, hardback, £25.

 

‘In the history of English literature, William Harrison Ainsworth is the national treasure that most people haven’t heard of’. So states Stephen Carver in the prologue to this fascinating book. The reader can gather from the first sentence that the style is somewhat informal, and none the worse for that, as it is aimed at a broad readership, rather than an academic library, which was also true of his subject’s writings. 

The eye-catching title is true and refers particularly to Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard, published in 1839, which for a time was more popular than Dickens’s Oliver Twist. The eponymous hero is portrayed as a colourful rogue who effected some notorious escapes from confinement in Newgate Prison. Indeed, the real Sheppard became an early celebrity, with distinguished artists being admitted to his cell to capture his likeness. Ainsworth’s novel was also adapted for stage performance with the addition of song and dance numbers. The success of Jack Sheppard provoked a feeding frenzy among the critical fraternity, who, led by Dickens’s friend and biographer, John Forster, were queuing up to take the moral high ground and heap opprobrium upon the author. Dickens himself escaped comparatively unscathed, distancing himself, at least publicly, from the controversy. As carver puts it, Boz ‘meanwhile kept his head down and his powder dry’, eventually emerging, not to castigate Ainsworth but to defend his own work as social realism, rather than criminal romance. Carver compares and contrasts the two rival authors throughout the book, but is particularly effective in the early chapters, covering the Manchester author at the height of his popularity.

There have been two major biographies of Ainsworth, almost a century apart, one By S. M. Ellis (1911) and the other in 2003, by the author of the present book. Carver does draw quite heavily upon his earlier work, but with a number of significant differences. One thing the two works have in common, though, is a persistent reference to R. H. Horne, a fairly insignificant literary character and adventurer, who produced a pocket-sized squib in 1844, in which he characterised Ainsworth’s novels as ‘generally dull, except when they are revolting’, which Carver quotes, among others in the same vein, to support his argument. Ellis, Ainsworth’s original biographer, Edwardian gentleman that he was, declined to comment, merely to say that Ainsworth’s work was ‘most unfairly criticized’ (William Harrison Ainsworth and his Friends vol. ii, p. 69) The central thesis of the present book can be taken from a blog written by the author in February, 2020 entitled ‘How the “Newgate Controversy” destroyed Dickens’ Greatest Rival’, which argues the point very concisely.

Ainsworth’s enormous early popularity was due in large measure to two memorable characters: Dick Turpin who appears in the earlier Rookwood, with the section on Turpin’s (fictitious) ride to York being so popular it was also published separately, and Jack Sheppard. In between these two, the more scholarly and thoroughly-researched Crichton was published to a lukewarm reception. Carver opines; ‘Crichton himself was too remote, clean-cut, perfect and invulnerable to appeal to fans of Dick Turpin. The novel therefore ultimately failed to achieve the popular appeal of its predecessor, largely by being too clever for its own good’

When Ainsworth was working on Jack Sheppard, his (by then estranged) wife Fanny died, aged only 34, after 12 years of marriage. In an astute piece of literary observation, Carver points out that the passage Ainsworth was working on when he received the news, could be read as a rueful piece of autobiography: he begins Epoch 2 of Jack Sheppard, which is set twelve years after the first, as follows:

Twelve years ago! It is an awful retrospect. Dare we look back upon the darkened vista and in imagination, retrace the path we have trod … has not the loved one been estranged by doubt, or snatched from us by the cold hand of death?

He continues in this vein for several paragraphs. The point is well made.

In Chapter 9, we meet the bold statement, that  ‘Jack Sheppard showed its author at the top of his game: The scholarship of Crichton was still there, in the vivid evocation of Georgian London, but now in balance with a crisply paced and tightly plotted adventure; more realistic and emotionally deep than Rookwood, while retaining some sensational Gothic features.’ Carver’s style is similarly fast moving and he is not afraid of using down-to-earth language to make his points. This is fine, except they can sometimes be confusing or ambiguous. For example, the use of the word ‘flogging’, in its modern sense of selling, crops up here and there, though in its original meaning it would not be out of place in the grisly world of Ainsworth’s imagination. This style can occasionally be confusing, for example: ‘Ainsworth loved her back’, but the book is immaculately researched beneath this sometimes-casual throwaway style.

Carver correctly classifies the Negate novels as ‘popular as opposed to literary culture … dandy highwaymen rode on in penny magazines and cheap theatres until revived by other means as pirates in Stevenson’s Treasure Island, suggesting, perhaps, that if only Jack Sheppard had been written earlier or later than it was, then it would not have attracted the high Victorian moral censure.’ This dichotomy between popular culture and the ‘serious’ social commentary which Dickens claimed as his moral high ground surely is the nub of the problem, and the critics of the time created a lot of heat by failing to recognise a harmless piece of entertainment for what it undoubtedly was. His place in literary history is as the creator of popular Picaresque heroes, as had Fielding and Smollett before him, and countless others after. He was eventually hailed as the English Victor Hugo, which Carver explains as ‘an indication of the vacuum left by Scott’.

 

However, the extent to which Ainsworth’s career suffered from the critical onslaught is debatable. Carver notes that work continued at a blistering pace:

… despite the Jack Sheppard furore, Ainsworth was now at his creative zenith. January 1840 saw the commencement of two original serials. Guy Fawkes and the Tower of London, which were to be written and run concurrently throughout the year while he continued to edit Bentley’s Miscellany.

 The following year Ainsworth resigned from the Miscellany, after a dispute with the publisher over fees and writing commitments, and began his own journal, Ainsworth’s Magazine in 1842. Ainsworth’s restraint in the face of the public lambasting of his work was admirable. His reaction was muted to say the least, except for a deserved take-down of Horne in Ainsworth’s Magazine. Carver notes that ‘Ainsworth had by now learned the hard way that the best way to profit by his writing was to sell it himself’. It is important to consider Ainsworth’s activity as a writer and editor of magazines, in addition to his work as a novelist, because often the two were inextricably linked, the one serialising the other. Dickens of course did something similar in his Household Words and All the Year Round journals. We get a good account here of Ainsworth’s speculation in the magazine publishing business, for example, his rather careless acquisition of Bentley’s Miscellany, which he ran alongside his New Monthly Magazine, quietly seeing off his eponymous publication.

 

Following the trajectory of Ainsworth’s career, Carver notes that The Lancashire Witches (1849, a full 10 years after Jack Sheppard) was ‘his last major national success and marks the end of his literary celebrity’. In a short but well-argued chapter, this novel is analysed and seeds of ‘Victorian feminism’, and, surprisingly, modernism are found, alongside the more familiar gothic and historical traits. Furthermore: ‘his own position as a literary outsider might also be read allegorically in the pages of this book’. But towards the end of this chapter, the real reason for Ainsworth’s fall from favour and eventual decline, rather than critical excoriation, becomes apparent.

Ainsworth, like his beloved highwaymen, seems suddenly out of time and place; the last of a line, a fantasist in an age of fact and the last of the original English Gothic novelists, soon to be pensioned off by Palmerston … The Lancashire Witches was to be Ainsworth’s last major national success and marks the end of his literary celebrity, at least in the south of England.

The reference to Palmerston was to the fact that in 1856, the prime minister awarded a Civil List Pension of £100 per annum to the struggling novelist.

 

The chapter entitled ‘The End of an Era’ charts Ainsworth’s decline in popularity, in the face of changing tastes. The later novels by the indefatigable author are romped through at a brisk pace, taking in that group of ‘Lancashire novels’ set in that county, including the semi-autobiographical Mervyn Clitheroe, (described here as ‘Ainsworth’s David Copperfield’) which in 1851, failed to excite the public. This was, as Carver puts it: ‘in commercial if not critical terms, his first real flop’, which ‘pulled Ainsworth back into the clutches of the historical romance, at a time when he appeared, along with his contemporaries, to be breaking into a new creative area’. The final chapter, The Lancashire Novelist, covers the time when Ainsworth had fallen into relative obscurity and was honoured by his native city in the form of  a civic dinner, hosted by Thomas Baker, the Mayor of Manchester. This took place in 1881, at the Town Hall, with ‘the great and good of Manchester, old friends, writers and journalists’, most importantly including James Crossley, his lifelong friend and provider of source material for many if not most of the novels. As Carver succinctly states, ‘Crossley did the history, Ainsworth the creative writing’

 

The following year, the novelist died. The concluding chapter: ‘L’envoi’ opens thus: ‘Failure is, of course always more interesting than success’, though Ainsworth had a good share of both. He was not a wealthy man when he died, but there were a number of factors involved in his decline. He was a victim of changes in literary fashion, ‘as public tastes moved on’ and many other novelists have suffered the same fate: who now reads G.P.R. James, or Edward Bulwer-Lytton? However, Carver tends to emphasise the Newgate Controversy over all other factors in Ainsworth’s declining career. He summarises his argument as follows:

Throughout his life, the memory of the Newgate Controversy allowed increasingly stiff Victorian Critics to exclude Ainsworth from a literary history that he helped to build. True, his novels were not great literature, but they commanded a massive influence on popular and literary narratives, both in fiction and more importantly in legend. And at his best, Ainsworth’s storytelling could be magical; at his worst, he was usually fun to read.   

This is a fitting epitaph and a good summary of Ainsworth’s literary and historical value. Many critics, both contemporary and more recent have fallen into the trap of over-estimating the author’s seriousness and moral intent. Ainsworth himself pointed out this misunderstanding when he said in his Town Hall speech: ‘I will freely confess [I] had, throughout, an eye rather to the reader’s amusement than to his edification.’

The publishers (Pen & Sword) have done their author proud in the quality of production, with a fine set of illustrations taking up 14 pages in the centre of the book. A selection of portraits (many by Ainsworth’s friend Daniel Maclise), plates from some of the novels (mostly by Cruikshank) plus photographs, portraits and line drawings of Ainsworth and his associates. There is no doubt that the book is academically sound, and there is no doubt that Stephen Carver, like Ainsworth, has one eye on a wider readership. And why not? Carver is to be thanked for keeping his author in the public consciousness, and pointing out that William Harrison Ainsworth despite the vicissitudes of his career, played a singular role in the development of English literature in the nineteenth century.

 

STEVE COLLINS

 

This review was first published in the Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, Vol. 114, 2021.

 

         The Lancashire Witches (1848) - Ainsworth

One of Ainsworth's best-known novels, set in the North of England, is based on Potts's Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster (1613), which was loaned to the author by Crossley, and it's one of the fundamental texts which began the still-thriving 'witch industry' in the Pendle area. The novelist transformed Potts’s factual and rather dry account into a gothic tale of huge proportions, with chilling accounts of  midnight meetings in desolate ruins of Whalley Abbey and Hoghton Tower There are curses, spells, charms and diabolical incantations to be found, and Potts himself puts in an appearance as a scheming and self-serving lawyer of  a type which might have been familiar to both Crossley and Ainsworth.  The historical background is outlined at the beginning of the book, recalling the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536-7 when there arose ‘a formidable rebellion in the Northern counties of England’ in protest against the dissolution of the monasteries, and subsequent land enclosures. The Lancashire Witches is the only one of Ainsworth’s novels still in print, and copies can be obtained at various points on the ‘witch trail’, which tourists can take across Pendle to Lancaster.

                              The Lancashire Witches - Crossley

Potts’s Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster (Old Series, 6, 1845), proved to be one of the most important and influential publications of the Chetham Society, transcending purely local interest to become source material for many subsequent works (both fiction and non-fiction) on the subject of witchcraft.

 Thomas Potts was a London court clerk, who was sent to Lancaster, charged with the task of making a record of the witchcraft trials, to serve as a guide to others who might prosecute such cases. The resulting report, originally published in 1613, was chosen by Crossley as his first editorial project for the Chetham Society. When introducing the book to the members, Crossley modestly added: ‘such notes and preliminary observations as seemed to be required, without overstepping the bounds of just and necessary illustration have been appended by the editor.’ In fact, the editorial work comprises an introductory essay of seventy-six pages, plus fifty-one pages of notes at the end of the volume. The scrupulous and painstaking scholarship not only reveals the extent of Crossley's knowledge of the subject, but gives a glimpse of the magnitude of his personal collection of manuscripts and early editions of relevant material. The footnotes to the introduction demonstrate the editor's extraordinarily wide reading in the fields of witchcraft and demonology, and at the same time make it clear that the sources referred to are rare editions and manuscripts in his possession. In one instance, Crossley even provides the name of the previous owner, and the lot number in the sale at which he bought the item, which is described as 'perhaps the rarest of the English tracts relating to witchcraft.' This may seem strange to the present-day reader, but it must be remembered that Crossley was addressing the nineteenth-century antiquarian community, many of whom would be extremely interested in the provenance of his source material.  In an age when many valuable manuscripts were in private hands, one of the functions of the publishing society was to provide information on the whereabouts of interesting and unusual works.

William Harrison Ainsworth

William Harrison Ainsworth – The Lancashire Novelist

 

Most of the readers who enjoy nineteenth century literature today, are not familiar with the novels of William Harrison Ainsworth.  Yet Ainsworth enjoyed a spectacular success in his own time. The son of a Manchester solicitor, he found the glittering prizes of fame and fortune in the Capital at the age of only thirty. But when fashionable London’s ardour cooled, it was his native city that provided him with the ultimate honour and recognition.  Since his death in 1882, his works have fallen almost completely from the favour of the critical and publishing establishment, and from the reading public. 

He was a great friend of Crossley's, and many of the stories for his historical romances were sourced either from Crossley's personal collection or from Chetham Society volumes. 

'An Eminent Bibliophile and Man of Letters'

This is a paper given at a Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society event in 2001, about Crossley's habits as a reader and book collector. Formerly published as a chapter in the book Printing and the Book Trade in Manchester, 1700-1850, it's 15 pages of text plus a photograph, as shown below. The Antiquarian Society are giving away their collection of past papers at a mere £2 each, which just about covers postage costs. They can be found on www.landcas.org.uk under 'Offprints'. There's a Paypal link for those interested. Worth a visit, I think.

Comments after the Chetham Society AGM, 1876

Crossley to Raines, March 28 1876

'The report of our Annual Meeting in the Courier bristled with blunders as usual. The Guardian was briefer but more cruel. How different were the reports in the time of friend Harland [John Harland (1806-68), Guardian reporter and Chetham Society editor], but now there are so many societies and such an inundation of Antiquarians and other intelligentsia that we have no longer the field to ourselves.'

Port

It was well-known that Crossley was extremely fond of Port, which he consumed at the rate of one post-prandial bottle per day. Here is a letter on the subject from Mr R. F. Wood, of Salford Iron Warehouse, on 3rd January, 1861:

'We have received  an 1844 Port for sale at the very moderate price of 50/- doz, including bottles. If you think anything of it I shall be happy to send for a bottle to taste. I understand it is going very quickly - but I can have no doubt I could secure from 10 to 20 doz.'

A Challenge to the Editor: Conclusion and notes

With that the matter was closed, but the episode raises some fundamental questions. Why did Crossley take the situation to such an unnecessary and potentially dangerous extreme? Why did he not deny authorship in the first place, and force Taylor to apologise? Nowadays, the course of action would be to issue a denial and sue for libel, but Crossley belonged to a different age. For a solicitor practising in the first half of the nineteenth century, an era beset with pettyfoggers and mountebanks, a successful practice depended completely upon an unblemished reputation. A threat to his professional respectability might have been enough to persuade Crossley that extreme measures were justifiable. In a way this affair marked the transition between the old order and the new, because a month later the Manchester Law Association was formed, with Crossley as its president, and the profession took an important step to establish its status as a regional body, rather than an adjunct of a Metropolitan elite. Membership of the MLA was henceforth a guarantee of the professional integrity that was an essential requirement of an expanding and increasingly discerning middle-class clientele.

 

We should perhaps also consider the fact that, as I have already mentioned, the morale of the Manchester Tories was at a low ebb at the time of this dispute, so their sensitivity to any perceived injustices, especially those emanating from the Manchester Guardian, would have been acute. Another explanation for Crossley's actions may be more personal. The notion of a duel would appeal to someone whose mind was steeped in the customs and laws of antiquity, who found the age in which he lived 'arrogant and superficial'.¹² It would also fit with the respect for tradition and 'gentlemanly' behaviour which characterised Crossley's well-publicised conservative viewpoint. It may have been to some extent a lawyer's reluctance to admit or deny involvement before the opponent's cards were on the table.

 

As a journalist and 'modern' thinker, his newspaper always in the vanguard of reforming ideas, it was unlikely that Taylor would have seriously considered taking up such a quixotic and anachronistic challenge as Crossley's. The challenger was therefore fairly safe from potential injury, and we could wonder exactly how serious the motivation for it actually was. Perhaps this was merely a joke that would have been enjoyed at John Shaw’s or any of the Tory clubs of which Crossley was a member. More likely, it was a calculated move to jolt Taylor into providing the information and apology that Crossley sought. This was more or less the outcome, as we have seen, but the decision to publish the whole series of letters indicates the strength of feeling on Crossley’s part when he feared his professional reputation was in danger of being impugned. On a purely practical level, the likelihood of Crossley taking the dispute to its violent and irrevocable conclusion was always remote. William Axon wryly noted that:

To those who remember the corpulent figure of Mr. Crossley in his placid and learned old age, there is something grotesque in thinking of him handling duelling pistols and offering to the adversary a target that even the inexperienced could hardly fail to hit.¹³

 

It is also possible that Crossley may have had in mind the duel in 1821 between John Scott, the editor of the London Magazine, and Jonathan Henry Christie, who was the London agent for John Gibson Lockhart of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Scott had attacked Lockhart following criticisms of the so-called ‘Cockney School’ of poets and particularly of Keats, which had appeared in Blackwood’s. Lockhart responded by calling the Londoner a ‘liar and a scoundrel’, and a challenge ensued. Christie and Scott ‘met by moonlight at Chalk Farm, near London’¹⁴ at about nine o’clock in the evening of 27 February. Scott was fatally wounded, and died later that evening at his lodgings. Christie and his second were tried at the Old Bailey for murder and were acquitted. Crossley was a regular contributor to Blackwood’s in 1820-21 and knew Lockhart quite well, so it is quite likely that he would have been acquainted with the facts of this dispute. Whether or not he was hoping for a similar outcome is less certain.

 

In a separate editorial, headed 'The Nuisance' (the usual description of matters relating to incorporation in this newspaper), the Manchester Courier pointed out that the editor of the Chronicle had confessed that he was in fact the author of the offending article, supporting Crossley's position and further embarrassing the hapless editor of the Guardian. The confession had appeared in the Chronicle editorial of the previous Saturday, in the following unequivocal terms:

Who is the "disreputable lawyer" whose ghost has so disturbed the worthy gentleman's bile:- what single article on any subject has any " disreputable lawyer" written for the Chronicle, and, lastly, what nameless iniquity can that be which justifies the Editor of the Guardian in calling the perpetrator of it "disreputable"?... Before these questions are answered, we will give the worthy ex-Commissioner [Taylor] a piece of information which may perhaps be serviceable to him hereafter. The articles which have produced such a wonderful effect upon him were written by the Editor of the Chronicle, without the intervention, direct or indirect, of any lawyer, reputable or disreputable, or of any other individual; and therefore he has most woefully deceived himself if he believed, as he professed to do, that he was contending with any other individual.¹⁵

Crossley was thus vindicated, and Taylor humiliated. But despite small victories like this, the cause Crossley so fervently espoused was doomed to failure. The new government of Manchester rapidly gained strength and acceptance in the borough and its opponents were left to fight an increasingly desperate rearguard action.

The first municipal election took place in December 1838, and, in the absence of any Tory candidates, resulted in a borough council composed mainly of Whigs, with a sprinkling of Radicals. Prominent among the new aldermen were Richard Cobden and William Neild, and the first day's business saw the election of the Mayor, Thomas Potter.

The next meeting of the Police Commissioners, on 10 January 1839, was a stormy affair, resulting in a decision, by a narrow majority, not to allow the Town Hall to be used for meetings of the new Borough Council. Both Crossley and Oswald Milne, legal clerk to the Police Commissioners, spoke at the meeting (as did Thomas Flintoff, Crossley's messenger in the dispute with John Taylor), which was reported very differently by two major local newspapers representing the opposing sides. The Courier, under the heading DEFEAT OF THE CORPORATORS, referred to Crossley in its editorial, saying:

The truth is, as MR. CROSSLEY remarked at the meeting, they find themselves not only legally, but morally weak; every hour sinking lower, and something like a desperate effort was necessary, to give sanction and authority to that which every body (sic.) had begun to find was not based on legal authority.¹⁶

 

 

As might be expected, the Guardian editorial took a very different view of the proceedings, suspecting that a dialogue had been set up, and executed by Crossley and Milne, in order to disrupt the meeting and focus attention on their speeches:

The interruptions to the speakers in support of the application were violent and incessant ... Any man who knew the prominent part taken by MR. CROSSLEY in getting up the opposition to the charter, and who witnessed the scene between him and MR. MILNE, which, apparently, had been previously rehearsed, was pretty sure to draw this inference.¹⁷

 

Despite these skirmishes, it was apparent that the battle had been lost, and the ‘anti-corporators’ gradually withdrew. Crossley gave up politics shortly afterwards, and his influence on the city of Manchester was henceforth evident in cultural rather than political matters. John Edward Taylor continued to edit the Manchester Guardian until his death in 1844.

 

Postscript

The last fatal duel in England took place in 1852 between two French political exiles. The last between Englishmen was in 1845, between two young army officers.

 

 

This paper was given at a conference at the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, on 6 April 2017: ‘Comment is free but facts are sacred’ The Guardian in Local, Regional and Global History.

 

 

Notes

1  Geoffrey Taylor, ODNB (Oxford: OUP, 2004).

2  Manchester Guardian, 14 Nov 1838.

 

3  Manchester Guardian and Manchester Courier, 24 Nov, 1838. Letter from Crossley to Taylor, 14 Nov 1838.

 

4  Ibid., letter, Taylor to Crossley, 15 Nov 1838.

 

5  Ibid., letter, Crossley to Taylor, 16 Nov 1838.

 

6  Ibid., letter, Taylor to Crossley, 16 Nov 1838.

 

7  Ibid., Taylor's description of events.

 

8  Ibid., letter, Crossley to Taylor, 17 Nov 1838.

 

9  Ibid., letter, Taylor to Crossley, 17 Nov 1838.

 

10  Manchester Courier, 24 Nov 1838.

 

11  Manchester Guardian and Manchester Courier, 24 Nov 1838.

 

12  James Crossley, 'The Retrospective Review', Blackwood's Magazine, x (Dec, 1821), 701-712, at p. 708. Crossley may have had in mind the notorious duel between The Duke of Wellington and the Earl of Winchelsea in 1829, when both protagonists declined to hit their targets.

 

13  Axon, Cobden as a Citizen, p. 113n.

 

14  R. M. Healey, ‘John Scott (1784-1821)’ in ODNB.

 

15  Wheeler's Manchester Chronicle, 17 Nov 1838.

 

16  Manchester Courier, Saturday 12 Jan 1839.

 

17  Manchester Guardian, Saturday 12 Jan 1839.

 

A Challenge to the Editor, Part 3

From this point, the story takes on the characteristics of a comic opera. It is now the evening of Saturday 17 November, and Taylor is again visited by Gibson. According to Taylor, the dialogue proceeds as follows:

Taylor: 'If you have any letter from Mr. Crossley, I am ready to receive it.'

Gibson: 'I have not one to give you, but I have one to read to you.'

Taylor's account continues:

He was then invited into the house, but, finding he had not his glasses with him, he put the letter into the hands of Mr.Taylor, saying 'I believe I must allow you to read it yourself, but you must restore it to me.' ⁷

Gibson feared that, if Taylor had possession of the letter, he might apply to the magistrates for protection against Crossley, for the message that Gibson eventually handed over was nothing less than 'a polite invitation from Mr. Crossley to fight a duel'. After a demand for an apology, Crossley invokes the notion of an ancient code of conduct:

I am sure you do not wish to exempt yourself from the laws which regulate the reparation of injuries amongst gentlemen, that you will name a friend who may arrange with the bearer, on my part, the time and circumstances of a meeting between us with as little delay as possible. ⁸

 

Taylor exempted himself from such laws with great speed, and declined the invitation, pleading that he was a family man and had recently taken out life insurance. He did, however, write out a reply, in Gibson's presence, which went some way towards making the apology sought by Crossley. In a careful statement, bristling with caveats, Taylor pointed out that his remark 'worthy of a disreputable lawyer' was not the same as accusing the writer of being a disreputable lawyer, and that:

Even supposing for a minute that Mr. Crossley was the person he had alluded to, he had no hesitation in saying that he did not consider Mr. Crossley a disreputable lawyer, and had never heard of any disreputable practice on his part. ⁹

 

The correspondence was also printed in the Courier on the same date as it appeared in the Guardian (Saturday 24 November), at the express request of Crossley. Assuming the mantle of the victor, Crossley adopted a high moral tone in his reply, which was copied to Taylor, but only partly reprinted in the Guardian. After requesting that the editor(s) insert the series of letters on the specified date, he continues:

Little interesting to the public at large as may be the circumstances of private disputes, yet to every man the vindication of his own character is important ...To the documents thus placed before the public, I deem it unnecessary to add any further comments of my own; nor shall I now or hereafter bestow the slightest further attention upon the individual to who they refer ... who, refusing either an acknowledgement with an adequate apology or a disclaimer, has not the manhood to justify the course he has adopted by conforming to the only remaining request which can be tendered to him by an honourable man, is surely unworthy of any further notice, as he has forfeited every title to be considered as a respectable editor or a gentleman. ¹⁰

 

This passage appeared only in the Courier, while the concluding sentence was printed in both newspapers: ‘It only remains for me to state in the most distinct and unequivocal terms that I never wrote one word of the articles in the Manchester Chronicle.’ ¹¹

 

A Challenge to the Editor, Part 2

It was clear that Taylor suspected that the article had been written by Crossley, who in turn evidently felt that this was the latest in a series of attacks on him in the Guardian. On the same day the article was published (14 November 1838), a letter from Crossley was delivered to Taylor by Captain William Gibson. Crossley refers particularly to the phrase 'worthy of a disreputable lawyer' and quotes from an earlier article which contains a description of ‘a certain lawyer’, before putting the fundamental question of identification to Taylor. He begins:

someone... who in the Guardian of Wednesday the 31st ult. is described as ‘one connected in no enviable way with the far more important frauds and falsehoods by which it was attempted to bolster up the case of the enemies of incorporation.’ [Crossley goes on …] Viewing these passages ... with the further knowledge that no-one in the profession of the law has been so extensively engaged in the opposition to the charter of incorporation as myself, I consider that I am entitled to inquire from you, as the editor of the Guardian, whether the terms scored under were made use of with any personal reference or application to myself. I trust you are too much a man of honour to insinuate, by innuendo, what you are unwilling to acknowledge or explain. I beg to request an immediate answer. ³

 

The following day, Taylor sent a letter listing three articles which had appeared in the Chronicle in the preceding three weeks, and asking whether or not Crossley was the author of any or all of them, or whether he had any connection with their authorship. Taylor continues as follows, repeating Crossley's emphasis upon honour:

These are questions to which I consider myself clearly entitled to expect full and specific answers, before I make any reply to the inquiry you have made to me ... I trust you are too much a man of honour to write calumnious and offensive articles in newspapers under the idea that, by assuming an anonymous guise, you will be able to divest yourself of that moral responsibility to public opinion, to which I, in common with every other avowed editor of such a periodical, am unavoidably subject. ⁴

 

The reply to this was delivered on 16 November, by Thomas Flintoff, a close friend of Crossley's. The substance was that Crossley objected to Taylor's answering inquiries with questions, and asserted that Taylor should have made some attempt to discover the authorship of the contentious pieces before publishing his Guardian article. Had Taylor made such an inquiry prior to publication, it 'would have found a prompt and explicit reply.' ⁵

 

Taylor responded that same evening, sending his letter to Flintoff, saying:

I adhere to the opinion expressed in my former letter... that your reply to the questions I have put to you ought to be an indispensable preliminary to my reply to the inquiry you have addressed to me. ⁶

Taylor goes on to put the hypothetical case that, if Crossley were not the writer of the offending article, then Taylor would provide not only an explanation, but also an apology. Clearly, events had reached a deadlock with neither of the protagonists willing to take the lead in providing the information that might have eased the situation.

 

A Challenge to the Editor, Part 1

The Manchester Guardian, 1838:

Manchester was the scene of great constitutional change during the 1830s. The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 allowed householders to petition the monarch for a charter of incorporation to be granted, which would enable them to appoint their own local government administration. Incorporation presented for the first time the possibility that administrative power might be removed from those who felt they had the right to it by virtue of property, position and tradition, and given to elected representatives. Manchester Tories were vehemently opposed to this proposal and any suggestion of reform. Their morale was low at this time, following repeated defeats at the polls, but the move in 1838 to incorporate the borough provided a rallying point and a cause to unify the ailing party.

 

James Crossley was a prominent solicitor, with literary and antiquarian interests, who is probably best remembered for his part in forming the Chetham Society. He was also active in the Conservative cause and towards the end of 1838, when the incorporation debate was at its height and tempers were running high on both sides, a dispute developed between Crossley and the editor of the Manchester Guardian, which culminated in a melodramatic challenge to a duel: A bizarre and anachronistic proposal in the first industrial city.

Among the local newspapers, the Manchester Guardian championed the cause of reform, while most others, including the Manchester Courier, under its proprietor Thomas Sowler (a friend of Crossley’s), and the Chronicle, took the opposite view. Since its inception, in 1821, the Manchester Guardian had reflected the personality and politics of its editor, John Edward Taylor, who was on the Liberal/Unitarian side of the schism which divided Manchester at the time (Crossley was of course a dyed-in-the-wool ‘Church and King’ Tory). Taylor had long interested himself in liberal politics, and had contributed articles to the Liberal-leaning Manchester Gazette since around 1812. He had also been accused of pamphleteering in anti-government causes. When, for example, the Royal Exchange was burned down during a riot protesting against Lord Sidmouth’s appointment as Home Secretary, Taylor was said to have been the author of a handbill ‘which was posted in the town and was held to have provoked the arson.’ In the course of vehemently denying this, he was accused of criminal libel, a charge of which he was acquitted by a jury under the foremanship of – appropriately enough – John Rylands. A little later, in 1819, Taylor again produced an influential pamphlet, this time to counterbalance Sidmouth’s anodyne account of the Peterloo massacre to government.  These early examples show something of the personality of the editor. He has been described as: ‘a small man of louring mien and a priggish temperament “moral indignation came easily to him and he could be infuriatingly patronising”’ ¹

 

 

 

 

 

 

James Crossley (Chetham’s Library) and John Edward Taylor (John Rylands Library).

A series of articles which appeared in Wheeler’s Manchester Chronicle were extremely critical of Taylor, and he published a trenchant reply in his editorial, accusing the 'amateur writer' of falsifying a charge of corruption against himself in the election of Commissioners of Police, and deliberately misquoting an article that had previously appeared in the Guardian. Without actually naming the author, Taylor continued:

These tricks, worthy only of a disreputable lawyer, disentitle the man who is guilty of them from being recognised by us as a controversialist upon whom we can bestow any further notice in the matter. ²

Recent Conference: ‘Comment is free, but facts are sacred’

‘Comment is free, but facts are sacred’:

The Guardian in Local, National, and Global History

 

Thursday 6 April 2017, The John Rylands Library,

 The University of Manchester

 

Keynote speaker: Alan Rusbridger, Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and former Editor-in-Chief of the Guardian.

 

The University of Manchester Library and the John Rylands Research Institute present a one-day interdisciplinary conference on the history of the Guardian newspaper.

 

Abstract of one of the papers to be read:

 

                                  A Challenge to the Editor

 

Manchester was the scene of great constitutional change during the 1830s. Following repeated defeats at the polls, Tory morale was low at this time, but the proposal in 1838 to incorporate the borough, under the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, provided a rallying point and a cause to unify the ailing party in opposition to the plan. Incorporation presented for the first time the possibility that administrative power might be removed from those who felt they had the right to it by virtue of property, position and tradition, and given to elected representatives.

James Crossley, a prominent solicitor with literary and antiquarian interests, played an important part in defending the Tory viewpoint, and resisting any attempts to bring about reform. The Manchester Guardian championed the cause of incorporation, while the Manchester Courier and Wheeler's Manchester Chronicle took the opposite view. When the debate was at its height and tempers were running high on both sides, a dispute developed between Crossley and the founder and first editor of the Manchester Guardian, John Edward Taylor, who has been described as ‘a small man of louring mien and priggish temperament’. Taylor described Crossley, by implication, as a ‘disreputable lawyer … guilty not merely of wilful misrepresentation, but of actual falsehood’ which resulted in Crossley challenging Taylor to a duel. This paper will tell the story of the events leading up to this challenge, and examine its consequences.

Steve Collins

 

                                                     John Edward Taylor

The elusive Mr Mercier

A recent post on the Chetham Society Facebook was about a portrait of our friend Francis Raines. The painting was described as by 'an unknown artist'. The artist was almost certainly Charles Mercier (1834-1901), who has cropped up in my researches as having painted Crossley, and Canons Parkinson and Raines of the Chetham Society.  Mercier was a London-born portraitist who lived and worked in Manchester from the 1850s to around 1877, when he is thought to have died. He exhibited at the Royal Academy1863, and numbered among his more distinguished sitters Disraeli, Lord Napier and the king of Belgium. However the majority of his patrons were army officers (hence his use of the title 'Major') and worthy citizens of Manchester and Liverpool, including Chetham Society notables such as James Crossley and Canons Richard Parkinson and Francis Raines, in addition to a dramatic picture of the prison philanthropist Thomas Wright ministering to a convict, entitled 'The Condemned Cell' (see Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, vol. 109, 2016).

My problem with Mr (also known as 'Major') Mercier concerns his portrait of James Crossley. Here's my account of this, from James Crossley: A Manchester Man of Letters (pp.193-5)

A portrait of Crossley was commissioned which, it was hoped, would hang in the Free Library, chosen as the most appropriate place in view of Crossley’s contribution to its formation. As treasurer of the subscription fund, Peel approached the Free Library Committee offering to present the portrait to that institution. The chosen artist was Charles Mercier, a London-born portraitist who lived and worked in Manchester, from the 1850s to around 1877, when he is thought to have died. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1863, and numbered among his more distinguished sitters Disraeli, Lord Napier and the king of Belgium.  However, the majority of his patrons were army officers (he is sometimes titled Major Charles Mercier) and worthy citizens of Manchester and Liverpool, including two of Crossley’s closest friends and members of the Chetham Society council. After Crossley’s portrait was painted, Parkinson expressed an interest, and in June 1857, Raines reported that Mercier was to visit St. Bee’s to preserve the reverend gentleman’s image in oils. Exactly two years later, Raines was himself approached by the artist, with Crossley’s approval, as he wrote to Raines: ‘I hope you have acceded to Mr. Mercier’s request. He seems so happy in his likenesses.’ The Raines portrait is now stored at Chetham’s Library, and that of Parkinson can be found at St. Bee’s College, Cumbria.

Mercier’s representation of Crossley received universal approbation, and was described in detail by the local press:

The portrait, which is of the proportions technically called “to the knees” represents Mr.Crossley standing by a table, on which are piles of books. His left hand rests on a book, the right is slightly raised, and he looks as if speaking. The portrait is an admirable and characteristic likeness, not only in features, but in expression; while the accessories are few, and the tone of the picture quiet. It is a very satisfactory work, and reflects great credit to the artist. 

The Free Library Committee immediately accepted Peel’s gift of the painting, and the Town Clerk, Joseph Heron, conveyed their gratification and thanks to the subscribers, promising to place the portrait in a prominent position in the Camp Field Library. Before its removal to the Free Library, the painting was placed on view at the Town Hall, where, at the next meeting of the Manchester Council, John Potter added his own words of approval and his acknowledgements of Crossley’s achievements. Moving the adoption of the Free Library Committee’s proposals, he is reported to have added that: ‘everyone connected with the Free Library felt deeply indebted to Mr.Crossley for his labours in favour of what was, and he [Potter] hoped ever would be, a useful and benevolent institution.’ The portrait was eventually hung over the main entrance to the Free Library, where it remained until the Camp Field site was vacated. Its subsequent whereabouts have not been fully documented, but there is evidence that the work was removed to the Central Library where it appeared on a 1941 inventory of the library’s possessions.

Since then, not a trace has been found of the portrait. There is a picture listed in the Manchester Central Library archive as Sir James Crossley (artist: Mercier). Here it is:

Apart from the obvious fact that this does not look like the Crossley we know and love from photographs and the Walker portrait, which hangs in Chetham's Library, this portrait does not seem to be in Mercier's style. Furthermore, it doesn't correspond with the description above, nor with the report of the Manchester Courier on 10 April 1858:

The pleasant expression of Mr. Crossley has been happily caught, and fixed on the canvas, and the accessories of books and writing materials on the table, by the side of which Mr. Crossley is represented as standing, are well introduced.

Books and writing materials? Standing? To the knees? Left hand resting on a book? Looks as if speaking? etc., etc., I don't think so. So the search goes on. My dream is that the portrait is in storage, or in one of the many 'committee rooms' in the Central Library, and that one day I will get to see it.