John Rylands of Manchester

JoHuN RyLANDS made his own way in the world with a success which culminated in a personalty getting well on towards three millions sterling. His name is to be perpetuated in Manchester by a memorial to be known as the John Rylands Library, a memorial which will probably represent an outlay of half a million, especially as nearly one-half of that sum has been paid for the purchase of the Althorp Library, which has been secured as the chief corner-stone of the Rylands’ monument. In the presence of figures which are almost astronomical, and in view of a memorial which will be one of the finest of the kind in the world, it may be interesting to run over a few particulars respecting a character of more than usual depth and force. Did the immense personalty represent the vulgarity of sordidness, or the energy of a statesman-like handling of commercial opportunities?

If a preliminary question arise as to my title to portray even an outline of such a personality, I can only reply that for eleven years Mr. and Mrs, Rylands were members of my Manchester congregation, and that for most of that period they were accompanied by Miss Tennant, a lady who will necessarily reappear in the sequel. I have happily no need to go upon mere hearsay, for, as pastor, friend, and guest, I knew Mr. Rylands most intimately, and often most sympathetically. On the Manchester Exchange, the last man to have been picked out as John Rylands would have been John Rylands himself. About the medium height, under rather than over, with the mere outline of a body, with face simple rather than plain, and with eyes absolutely destitute of fire when in repose, how could such a figure represent with adequate clearness the sum of three millions sterling? Nor was the explanation in a military and dominant voice. On the contrary, the voice in its ordinary tones was humble and deferential, without the faintest accent of authority or consciousness of the three millions sterling. In his own warehouse, also, Mr. Rylands would have been the last man to have been fixed upon as the owner and master. Many of the buyers had larger watch-chains. Several heads of departments outshone him in shirt-studs, as diamonds outshine pearlbuttons. And many a young clerk simply reduced him to humiliation in

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the matter of conspicuous neckties. Yet there he was — the first to come, the last to go; simple, prompt, settling everything with a bare Yes and No. It was, indeed, often wonderful to notice how so vast a work could be done with words so few and simple. Words of one syllable often stood Mr. Rylands in good stead. He was his own partner. He took the chair, and carried all the resolutions without putting them. ‘The masterfulness was seen everywhere; the master nowhere. All the while the business was growing apace. To the warehouses in Manchester were added the factories at Wigan; to the factories were added collieries; to Manchester was added London; and the great money-temple was built without thud of hammer or clink of trowel. No hatter knew that Rylands was a thousand richer. No goldsmith was aware that business was thriving in High Street. As the master played his summer evening game of bowls on the lawn of Longford Hall, or his winter evening game of billiards, no guest was made aware that another fifty thousand had been lodged at the bank. The snugness of the method was part of the simplicity of the man. The word simplicity seems to fit Mr. Rylands better than any other. It certainly fitted his household life as I knew it twenty-five years ago. Probably his head gardener — he was then reported to have nineteen gardeners at Longford — kept a better table than

Mr. Rylands kept. The head gardener might not have the champagne, but Mr. Rylands had only one bottle of it, and that one bottle he kept on the floor at his right hand, some of his guests often wondering whether he had forgotten it was there. No man-servant was then seen at Longford Hall. Mr. Rylands needed no liquor-stand. Nor did Mr. Rylands require cigars and tapers. Nor did the millionaire train hounds and horses. As to his whole household life and management, it was rustic in its healthy simplicity.

The simplicity of his life had its occasional drawbacks, not, indeed, very serious, yet not without comical significance. I well remember two public men dining with him, who really did know the difference between real champagne and even the best sorts of nettle beer. As they were both. eminent ministers, I will not credit them with a finer discrimination; it is enough that their palates were not absolutely paralysed. Would they take sherry. Yes. Hach took a critical sip, and looked at the other. The look had meaning in it. Would they take claret? Yes. One mouthful was enough. Would they taste the Madeira? Thanks. No. They were not dyspeptic; they were only sensible. All wines were alike to the abstemious host. Had it been otherwise, the John Rylands’ Library might never have been heard of. The world owes nothing to wine-bibbers. The two ministers have left nothing behind them; John Rylands has left an honoured name. Though John Rylands knew little about his wines, of which at one time he told me he had a hundred and twenty dozen in his cellar, yet he followed the detail of his household with amusing closeness. In walking round his Longford garden we came upon a book-keeper, from whom Mr. Rylands ascertained precisely how much garden stuff had been credited that morning to Mrs. Rylands. There was the account in black and white. Every cauliflower was charged. Every melon was set down in silver. ‘This is the only way,” said the millionaire, “by which you can really tell whether a garden pays or not.” Out of such sentiment and practice came two issues of a remarkable character. One of them was an attempt to collect the hymnology of the world. I remember Mr. Rylands telling me that he had collected twenty thousand metrical pieces. The blank books into which the hymns were pasted became quite a little library. Hach series was in order, reference being simplified by copious indices. The other issue was more remarkable still. On one occasion Mr. Rylands said to me, “Just as I can tell almost at a glance how many pieces of cloth and how many yards of ribbon are in the warehouse, so I want to be able to show in the easiest possible way exactly and completely what the Bible says upon any one of its own subjects.” This idea he carried out at great expense. His plan was to take the authorised version just as it stands, and number its paragraphs from one up to hundreds. The numbers were in large type. The margin of the Bible was very wide, and the numbers were set boldly upon it. He then published a book of subjects, such as Atonement, Baptism, Consecration, Festivals, Sacrifices, and the like, and under each of these subjects were printed all the numbers of paragraphs referring to it. By turning up these references the reader could at once see everything in the Bible upon any particular topic. This was a new form of a concordance of subjects, in contradistinction from a concordance of words.

Issues of this nature clearly show that on the entire scale of his operations Mr. Rylands was systematic, comprehensive, and thorough. Of course the term comprehensive includes the element of largeness, yet in the case of Mr. Rylands the term largeness had special applications. For example, he never cared to subscribe to anything that was little or peddling. He seldom gave away silver. He probably never answered a begging letter, and many a time he brought upon himself the impromptu malediction of men begging for the removal of chapel debts. If they had asked for twenty thousand pounds they might have got the money, whereas he was impatient with men who were collecting postage stamps and arranging for bazaars. Along this line many men do immense good, yet it was not the way which Mr. Rylands adopted. When a man’s ledger is written all over in four and five figures, it may be difficult for him at a moment’s notice to consider the exact value to some other man of three and ninepence. In the matter of money Mr. Rylands did certainly talk in polysyllables. I well remember his late return to dinner at Longford Hall one night, when he excused his delay on the ground that in stock-taking they had been unable to make their figures come right until they discovered that they omitted one credit line of thirty thousand pounds. Such familiarity with astronomical finance made Mr. Rylands somewhat irritable with ecclesiastics who desired him to assist in getting up parochial illuminations or county bonfires. I remember dining one night in a semi-public way where the business was to create a large chapel-building fund. Man after man gave in his name for a thousand pounds. When it came to his turn, Mr. Rylands whispered to me, “I suppose I had better give fifteen hundred!” and for that amount he entered his name. He had no great heart in the matter; yet even Mr. Rylands, with all his characteristic individuality, was not beyond the reach of kindly and useful rivalry.

Mr. Rylands often treated men in a peculiar way. Peculiarity was, indeed, the prevailing characteristic of the man. I know more than one man whom he told how he was to fare when the will of the millionaire was read. ‘Between you and me and the post,” said he, in one memorable gloaming, “I will tell you what I mean to do.” It was a most benevolent and practical purpose, the disclosure of which would be honourable to his memory. Another instance of his method occurred in connection with the preparation of his Bible. One of the men to whom a large share of the work was assigned, discovered that the washing of the feet’ of saints was a Biblical duty and practice. He himself being far from the least of the saints, fell into the habit of having his own feet washed periodically by two or three deluded women whom he described as “sisters.” When Mr. Rylands heard of this, the missing fire came into his eyes, the missing tone into his voice, and Chadband fled away from his wrath. That impostor never reappeared in the Rylands scene. Any such action was unspeakably repugnant to Mr. Rylands, whose mind was singularly pure and elevated. A third instance will disclose another aspect of his way of estimating and treating men, Walking with him through his warehouse one day, he suddenly stopped at a door, and before opening it said, ““I want you to take notice of the man in this room. ‘Tell me what you think of him.” I told him afterwards that the man did not at all impress me beyond the fact that his mouth seemed to be very loosely made. Mr. Rylands replied, ‘That man has a better knowledge of cotton-spinning than any man of my acquaintance. He has dined with princes and statesmen. I am now giving him a pound a week for pasting papers into a blank book. I would give him a thousand a year to begin to-morrow, if he could do one thing.” I wondered what that one thing was, and said so. Mr. Rylands quickly answered, “Hold his tongue. If I were to take him into my confidence, and put him into the position in this concern for which he is qualified, in less than a month he would spend his evenings in a taproom, with a long clay pipe in his mouth, and tell everybody who came in what they were doing at Rylands’s.” So the flabby mouth accounted for the empty pocket, and doomed many aptitudes to wastefulness and disappointment. Mr. Rylands believed in the training which began at a very early period in life. In this direction he made a practical experiment with some fifty or sixty little orphan children. Not far from the Congregational chapel which he attended, there was a house which was known in the neighbourhood as the Rylands’ Orphanage. I remember spending an afternoon there with Mr. Rylands, Mrs. Rylands, and Miss Tennant. The patrons and their dependants constituted for the time being one happy family. Miss Tennant took the lead in the simple engagements. She seemed to know all the children by name, and to be able to. make Mr. Rylands himself into a little child for the nonce. Without Miss Tennant that particular knife would have had no handle. I noticed how very wisely she adapted the very style of her dress to the simplicity of the occasion. Even in so small a matter she gave promise of aptitudes yet to be remarkably developed. Mrs. Rylands probably saw nothing, but I will answer for it that not a child in all the little crowd escaped the attention of her husband.

Beyond being a convinced Nonconformist, Mr. Rylands took very little interest in matters purely ecclesiastical. He distrusted all officialism and despised all ostentation. A strong Liberal in politics, his vestibule at Longford Hall used to be filled with busts and pictures of such men as Bright, Cobden, and George Thompson. As to churches of every name, he believed they must all be broken up, and that a natural process of rearrangement must bring into line and service men whose souls were akin. For notional orthodoxy — that frightfullest bogey of all — Mr. Rylands cared nothing. To him it was so much superstition and vanity, and nothing more. He believed in living men rather than in timber creeds and wooden heads. Find an honest man doing honest work for the good of the world, and you found a man whom Mr. Rylands recognised as “a teacher sent from God.” The largeness of his nature was shown in this recognition. Not on the petty side of a denominational preference, but on the broad human side of practical sympathy and action, Mr. Rylands found all he needed as a test of reality and worth.

It may well be asked whether Mr. Rylands was uniformly correct in judgment and successful in practice? It would seem as if he lived and worked in constant sunshine, and as if harvests grew round his feet begging to be reaped and garnered. I well remember him telling me the contrary. ‘No man in Manchester,” said he, “has made so many mistakes as myself.” I then pointed to his successes. ‘The curious thing is,” he continued, “that I can trace many of those successes to the very blunders I have made.” The vastness of his operations brought its own perils. It was no bicycle on which he was - mounted: he was driving and stoking the fastest express that ever travelled. A recognition of all the elements and forces continually in operation in his unique career led me long ago to credit Mr. Rylands with very large and vital imagination. He was no mere shopkeeper or lucky bagman. He developed the poetry of business. If the term science be preferred, so be it; I am satisfied with any term that recognises the largeness of operations which finely escaped mere adventure on the one side and mere grubbing on the other. Mr. Rylands always provided for the unknown and the uncertain. His margin was his safety. What without the margin would have been recklessness, became with it the valiant audacity which timid men often mistake for imprudence. If he had fished in a pond, Mr. Rylands might have escaped the workhouse; he fished in the sea, and left, say, three millions sterling.

Miss Tennant was to reappear in the sequel. How to effect this reappearance without trespass is a task which has been simplified by the lady herself. Mr. Rylands, Mrs. Rylands, and Miss Tennant, were names which always went together in the congregation connected with my ministry. I am not aware that for years I ever knew them separated on any public occasion. Mr. Rylands, mature, stooping, self-suppressing; Mrs. Rylands, elderly, pale, short-sighted, and absolutely sure as to her name and station; Miss Tennant, young,

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vivacious, accomplished, never holding herself aloof from poverty and helplessness; these were the three familiar personalities memorable in many ways not to be described. On more than one occasion Mr. Rylands related to me the story of Miss Tennant’s life, dwelling with something like rapture upon her splendid fortitude under circumstances which test human quality and strength. “I wish,” said he to me on one occasion, “if the expression may be allowed, that she may live with us until she dies.” She has outlived them both. Mrs. Rylands was the first to die. In due time Miss Tennant became the third wife of John Rylands, and to her the nation owes the splendid and useful memorial of her husband, to be known throughout all time as the John Rylands’ Library. A lady who has acted thus patriotically — for the gift is more than local — can hardly be surprised if the world should wonder who and what manner of woman she is. A gift so immense, and destined to such generous uses, would be appropriately followed by royal distinctions, yet I venture to say that no titular honour will either pervert or disguise her unaffected and consistent simplicity. The world will delight to remember what a marvellous transformation she has effected in writing the name of an unassuming Manchester merchant above caskets and shelves

containing some of the richest literary treasures O in the world. John Rylands claims no romantic descent, he passed through no university, he held no public position of special prominence, yet the superbest of literary monuments, reared by his own industry, will preserve the simple name of John Rylands — honest, able, unique, successful John Rylands of Manchester.

Of Manchester. It might have been of London, or even of Rome, for in both cities Mr. Rylands had created a standing place for himself. In some respects, indeed, he was better known in Italy than in England. Yet he was pre-eminently John Rylands of Manchester. He loved the urgent and healthy life of the city — the city of Watts and Armitage, Kershaw and Potter, Carver and Sidebottom, and a hundred other commercial princes. The boom and the roar of countless mills and factories satisfied and soothed him. Such thunder was an element in his very quietness. What drove the student mad soothed and strengthened the merchant. The human mind soon becomes placid under any noise which is associated with the fast coming in of money. In the case of Mr. Rylands the noise of the factory created the hush of the library. The library is the literary side of the cotton mill. It is exactly such a monument as he himself would have chosen. He believed in education. He foresaw its highest political uses. To him it was at once the parent and the guardian of liberty. No man saw more clearly than Mr. Rylands that democracy without education means violence and selfishness, and that with education it means self-control and social unity. A library, therefore, and especially such a library, vast, historical, a very mine of the best wealth, is a fit pedestal on which to place the effigy and the fame of John Rylands of Manchester.