The Street Philosopher. Matthew Plampin
avoiding the man he had saved, as if he had some personal objection to him. Jemima could not account for it.
Bill walked Jemima and Mr Kitson back to the office, leaving them with the desk clerk. They sat before the window, Mr Kitson moving a chair next to the one Jemima had occupied earlier. The clerk, watching their bloodstained guest very closely, poured a tumbler of brandy and brought it over, setting it on the wide sill. Mr Kitson picked up the glass, hesitating when it was close to his lips. It was clear that he still found something about his hand profoundly distasteful. He had washed both quite thoroughly at the pump, but had evidently not managed to clean them to his satisfaction. Swallowing the liquor in one swift gulp, he put the glass back down and muttered an apology for his hastiness.
Jemima knew little of the Evening Star, but she felt that this man could not be a representative example of its staff. He had no real accent, for example–one would surely expect a correspondent from so modest a publication to be a Lancashire man from the lower middle classes, with the speech to match. I’d stake my library, she mused, on Mr Kitson being a recent arrival in our city. Adopting a cordial tone, she began to inquire politely about his situation.
He proved an agreeable if somewhat opaque conversationalist. He’d been in Manchester only since the end of the previous year, as she’d guessed. Other things about him, however, were more surprising.
‘I am the Star’s society writer,’ he revealed. ‘A street philosopher, I believe it is called in these parts.’
‘A street philosopher?’ Jemima didn’t try to hide her amazement. ‘A professional gossip, you mean? The spy who lurks on the margins of our parks and theatres, labelling everyone who passes him with some acidic, facetious sobriquet? Surely not! I mean–you must excuse me, Mr Kitson, but you hardly seem the type.’ As a rule, Jemima tried to keep well clear of any publication that vaunted such writing as part of its appeal. It tended to be facile in the extreme, tawdry and vacuous, concerned only with fashion, scandal and money. And it was proving increasingly hard to avoid.
He appeared unperturbed by her reaction; there might even have been amusement in his eyes. ‘You flatter me with your doubt, Mrs James, but it takes more expertise than you might realise. There are important lessons to be learned, you know, from the living panorama of the modern city–lessons in the ever-shifting chances and changes of life.’ He turned his face away from the window as the major’s dray rolled past, a chattering crowd trailing behind it. ‘Besides, I was in urgent need of a position, and it was the only one available.’
Was this a mordant joke, or in earnest? Jemima found that she could not tell. ‘Are you working now, Mr Kitson? Can I expect to feature in the next edition of the Star?’
The smile was a brief one, and obviously infrequent. ‘No, madam, I’m afraid that I have other responsibilities at present. My paper has no dedicated art correspondent, you see, so they have assigned me to cover the Exhibition.’
This disclosure made Jemima immediately impatient. The Art Treasures Exhibition was widely held to be the finest undertaking ever to be staged in Manchester, the city’s answer to the Great Exhibition of 1851. A vast display had been gathered from the private picture collections of the country, and then assembled in a modish iron-and-glass structure at Old Trafford, on the outskirts of town–well away from the grime of the factories. Charles Norton, Jemima’s father, was on the ninety-strong committee of local luminaries who had brought this thing into existence, and she had been made to listen to his boasting and self-aggrandising on the subject for the better part of a year. The building was to be opened in three days’ time, with all the pomp and splendour that the rich men of the city could procure. The trip to town for new clothes had been Jemima’s final trial before the occasion itself.
‘The Exhibition,’ she intoned heavily, dragging the word out to its constituent syllables. ‘Do you concur with the general chorus of opinion, then, Mr Kitson, and believe that it will be a magnificent triumph?’
‘I do, Mrs James, very much so.’ He paused. ‘But you, I think, do not.’
Jemima sat up in her chair. ‘I simply look around me, sir,’ she responded with some energy, ‘at the slums of Salford, and Ancoats, and elsewhere, and then at the glorious Art Treasures Exhibition, and the many thousands of guineas that have vanished into it, and I cannot help but think that if the masters of the Cottonopolis were really interested in the benefit of all, as they so frequently say, they would realise that an art exhibition is a long way down the list of things that our urban poor require.’
‘I must say, madam,’ Mr Kitson murmured, ‘that for the daughter of a labour-lord, you are quite the radical.’
This was the first indication he had given that he knew who she was, and in whose premises he sat. ‘So I am told. Often by the labour-lord himself.’
He smiled again. Mr Kitson and I are forming quite an acquaintance, Jemima thought. She willed further delay upon her coach, thinking that she could happily sit exchanging views with this man for the rest of the evening. Something, at least, had been salvaged from a tiresome day. Across the room, the clerk cleared his throat loudly and turned over a page in his ledger.
The Star’s street philosopher began to offer his own opinions on the Exhibition. As he spoke, his ironic nuance fell away and was replaced with warm conviction, making Jemima feel frostily cynical by comparison. For him, the Exhibition was the first in a tradition, the harbinger of a new age: a popular art exhibition, staged for the country at large. Gone would be the days of art being solely an attribute of privilege. With this exemplar, he claimed, the exclusive galleries of old would have an egalitarian counterpoint, and the fruits of mankind’s finest endeavours would be available to all.
Jemima was familiar with this position, and frankly thought it a little idealistic; but had never heard it outlined with such eloquent sincerity. ‘You feel strongly on this subject, Mr Kitson,’ she observed. ‘One might reasonably infer that you had been forced to spend time in these exclusive galleries you so despise.’
This dispelled Mr Kitson’s enthusiasm completely. He stared down at the office’s elaborately tiled floor. ‘I was an art correspondent on a London paper before I came to Manchester,’ he admitted. ‘I attended countless exhibitions–every one closed to the broad mass of society.’
‘A London paper? Which one?’
Mr Kitson did not look up. ‘The Courier.’
Now Jemima was intrigued. This man had left one of Britain’s most prestigious journals, famous for the global scope of its correspondence, to write for the Manchester Evening Star, which was barely known even in the next county. ‘Why, I take the Courier myself! I have probably read your work, Mr Kitson. I shall have to search through my old issues as soon as I arrive home. May I ask why you left?’
He became evasive, volunteering only that he had become fatigued with life in the capital and the vagaries of the London art world. There was something in his manner that made Jemima realise that this man had fled to Manchester. But what could be so bad as to make one look for refuge in the nation’s workshop, writing street philosophy for a penny paper? There was an explanation here well beyond the fatigue that Mr Kitson claimed–although he was certainly a man on whom fatigue had preyed.
Jemima peered back into the room, at a row of framed prints on its far wall. ‘Do you know, I believe there are some illustrations from the Courier in this very office. From the Russian War–the opening stages of the campaign, before the paper’s coverage became so controversial, and—’
Mr Kitson sprung to his feet, startling Jemima and the desk clerk and almost knocking over his chair. He strode over to the prints and made a rapid survey of them, stopping before one that depicted the battlefield of the Alma.
‘Mrs James, why on earth does your father decorate his sales office with such images?’ The question was almost accusatory. He did not turn from the picture as he asked it; his earlier curtness had returned with his distraction.
Jemima remained quite calm. She directed a restraining glance