August 14th, 1857 —
Passing by the gateway of the Manchester Cathedral the other morning, on my way to the station, I found a crowd collected, and, high overhead, the bells were chiming for a wedding.
These chimes of bells are exceedingly impressive, so broadly gladsome as they are, filling the whole air, and every nook of one’s heart with sympathy.
They are good for a people to rejoice with, and good also for a marriage, because through all their joy there is something solemn, — a tone of that voice which we have heard so often at funerals.
It is good to see how everybody, up to this old age of the world, takes an interest in weddings, and seems to have a faith that now, at last, a couple have come together to make each other happy. The high, black, rough old cathedral tower sent out its chime of bells as earnestly as for any bridegroom and bride that came to be married five hundred years ago.
I went into the churchyard, but there was such a throng of people on its pavement of flat tombstones, and especially such a cluster along the pathway by which the bride was to depart, that I could only see a white dress waving along, and really do not know whether she was a beauty or a fright.
The happy pair got into a post-chaise that was waiting at the gate, and immediately drew some crimson curtains, and so vanished into their Paradise. There were two other post-chaises and pairs, and all three had postilions in scarlet.
This is the same cathedral where, last May, I saw a dozen couples married in the lump.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
In a railway carriage, two or three days ago, an old merchant made rather a good point of one of the uncomfortable results of the electric telegraph.
He said that formerly a man was safe from bad news, such as intelligence of failure of debtors, except at the hour of opening his letters in the morning; and then he was in some degree prepared for it, since, among (say) fifteen letters, he would be pretty certain to find some “queer” one.
But since the telegraph has come into play, he is never safe, and may be hit with news of failure, shipwreck, fall of stocks, or whatever disaster, at all hours of the day.
Nathaniel HawthorneManchester
I’m not saying that I know Nathaniel Hawthorne’s movements better than he did, but it was in fact April 1856, not May, that he saw a dozen couples married “in the lump”. Neither was it a dozen couples, but a dozen people, who were betrothed at the same time.
April 13th 1857
We took the train for Manchester, [returning from Durham] over pretty much the same route that I travelled last year. Many of the higher hills in Yorkshire were white with snow, which, in our lower region, softened into rain; but as we approached Manchester, the western sky reddened, and gave promise of better weather.We arrived at nearly eight o’clock, and put up at the Palatine Hotel. In the evening I scrawled away at my journal till past ten o’clock; for I have really made it a matter of conscience to keep a tolerably full record of my travels, though conscious that everything good escapes in the process.
In the morning we went out and visited the MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL, a particularly black and grimy edifice, containing some genuine old wood carvings within the choir.
We stayed a good while, in order to see some people married.
One couple, with their groomsman and bride’s-maid, were sitting within the choir; but when the clergyman was robed and ready, there entered five other couples, each attended by groomsman and bride’s-maid. They all were of the lower orders; one or two respectably dressed, but most of them poverty-stricken, — the men in their ordinary loafer’s or laborer’s attire, the women with their poor, shabby shawls drawn closely about them; faded untimely, wrinkled with penury and care; nothing fresh, virgin-like, or hopeful about them; joining themselves to their mates with the idea of making their own misery less intolerable by adding another’s to it.
All the six couple stood up in a row before the altar, with the groomsmen and bride’s-maids in a row behind them; and the clergyman proceeded to marry them in such a way that it almost seemed to make every man and woman the husband and wife of every other. However, there were some small portions of the service directed towards each separate couple; and they appeared to assort themselves in their own fashion afterwards, each one saluting his bride with a kiss.
The clergyman, the sexton, and the clerk all seemed to find something funny in this affair; and the woman who admitted us into the church smiled too, when she told us that a wedding-party was waiting to be married. But I think it was the saddest thing we have seen since leaving home; though funny enough if one likes to look at it from a ludicrous point of view. This mob of poor marriages was caused by the fact that no marriage fee is paid during Easter.
This ended the memorable things of our tour; for my wife and Julian left Manchester for Southport, and I for Liverpool, before noon.
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