ABSTRACT
Conversation was at first difficult. Personally I am not a bubbling fount of gay nothings when I find myself alone with a comparative stranger. My drawbridge goes up as if by magic, my postern is c1osed, and I peer cautiously through the narrow slits of my turret to estimate the chances of peril. Nor was Mr Brindley offensively affable. However, we struggled into a kind of chatter. I had come to the Five Towns, on behalf of the British Museum, to inspect and appraise, with a view to purchase by the nation, some huge slip-decorated dishes, excessively curious according to photographs, which had been discovered in the cellars of the Conservative Club at Bursley. Having shared in the negotiations for my visit, Mr Brindley had invited me to spend the night at his house. We were able to talk about all this. And when we had talked about all this we were able to talk about the singular scenery of coal dust, potsherds, flame and steam, through which the train wound its way. It was squalid ugliness, but it was squalid ugliness on a scale so vast and overpowering that it became sublime. Great fumaces gleamed red in the twilight, and their [rres were reflected in horrible black canals; processions of heavy vapour drifted in all directions across the sky, over what acres of mean and miserable brown architecture! The air was alive with the most extraordinary, weird, gigantic sounds. I do not think the Five Towns will ever be described: Dante lived too soon. As
for the erratic and exquisite genius, Simon Fuge, and his odalisques reclining on silken cushions on the enchanted bosom of a lake - I could no longer conjure them up even faintly in my mind ... We stood at the corner of the side-street and the main road, and down the main road a vast, white rectangular cube of bright light came plunging - its head rising and dipping - at express speed, and with a formidable roar. Mr Brindley imperiously raised his stick; the extraordinary box of light stopped as if by a rniracle, and we jumped into it, having splashed through mud, and it plunged off again - bump, bump, bump - into the town of Bursley. As Mr Brindley passed into the interior of the car, he said laconically to two men who were smoking on the platform-
'How do, Jim? How do, Jo?' And they responded laconically-'How do, Bob?' 'How do, Bob?' We sat down. Mr Brindley pointed to the condition of the floor. 'Cheerful, isn't it?' he observed to me, shouting above the din of
vibrating glass. Our feHow-passengers were few and unromantic, perhaps half-a-dozen
altogether on the long, shiny, yeHow seats of the car, each apparently lost in gloomy reverie.
