BOOKS.
CROSSLEY OF ANCOATS.*
JUST two years and a half have passed since the death of Francis William Crossley, so that no charge of undue haste emu be brought against the editor of this concise but intensely interesting memoir of one of the noblest and most saintly men of the century. The name of Crossley in connection with the great firm of gas-engine manufacturers has been a
household word, in a sense, for the last twenty years. But outside Manchester comparatively few people knew that the senior partner in that firm was not only a great and pros- perous captain of industry, but a philanthropist who carried his benevolence to ultra-Quixotic lengths. It was the
good fortune of the present writer some fifteen or six- teen years ago to meet Mr. Crossley several times, and although the occasions were only those of ordinary social intercourse, the impression left by his personality was in- effaceable. His fine countenance, dignified bearing, and charming gentleness of manner put every one at their ease. There was nothing oppressive about his goodness, nor had he the slightest affinity with that modern type of philanthropist in whom an overflowing enthusiasm for Humanity is com- patible with a chill neglect for those nearest, and presumably dearest. Frank Crossley was as fortunate as he deserved to be in his marriage, and never failed to admit how much he owed to the unflinching devotion of his wife. The strength of his domestic affections may be illustrated by one example. His eldest son. Richard, died in 1884 at the age of eleven, and the vacant place was never wholly filled. In his father's daily text-book "there stands a note against October 18th, 1893, to the effect that it was Richie's birthday, and that he was twenty years old." This curious and affecting entry explains what he meant by saying in a letter to a friend, just after the boy's death, "It has been the cutting of a cord that was instantly and for ever knotted again inextricably."
Frank Crossley, who was born in 1839, came of a militant Puritan stock on his father's side, while his maternal ancestry sprang from the Huguenot family of De la Cherois- Crommelin. Louis Crommelin, a Picardy weaver, who had fled to Holland in 1685, was in 1698 invited over from Amsterdam to the North of Ireland, and was the founder of the great linen industry in Antrim. The Crommelins and De la Cherois were closely connected by intermarriage, and when the male line of the Crommelins became extinct the heirs were found in the De la 0herois, two of whom had fought in William's army at the battle of the Boyne. The Crossleys, of old Norman Lancashire stock, had been residents in Ireland since 1689, and Major Crossley, father of the subject of this memoir, went out to India in 1805 in the service of the Honourable East India Company, held many Staff appoint- ments, was Governor of the Banda Spice Islands in 1815, and retired in middle life to his estate at Glenburn, near Lisburn. In many ways his character foreshadowed that of his eldest son; he was an accomplished artist, a collector of beautiful things; at the same time deeply interested in theological problems— a remarkable letter of his on the nature of inspiration is quoted on pp. 15-17—and sincerely concerned in the spiritual welfare of his poorer neighbours and dependents. He died almost exactly at the same age as his eldest son, and his last words are too memorable to be omitted here : "Is this death ? Why, this is nothing 1" We are not surprised, therefore, at the insistence with which the influence of heredity is dwelt upon in this biography, especially in regard to the combina- tion of business capacity, mechanical skill, and religious fervour which marked Frank Crossley as a true descendant of the Huguenots of the seventeenth century. As a boy he was high-spirited, passionate, dictatorial, and rather insubordinate; fonder of his pony, rod, and gun than of his books. He was in all at four schools, in the Isle of Man, England, and Ireland, but achieved no distinction except in field sports; left Dungannon ..then under the rule of Ringwood, the editor of Theocritus, immortalised by Orelli's reference to him as doctissimus Ringwoodius—at sixteen:; served a year or so in a Militia regiment (the Tyrone Fusiliers), and, after spending a short time at Bonn with his mother and sister, entered Stephenson's • The Life of Francis William Crossley. Edited by J. Bendel Harris. London : James Nisbet and Co, [Sa] works at Newcastle as a mechanical engineer at eighteen. Here he at once developed marked practical ability, though the surroundings were uncongenial, and after four years' training obtained work in a Liverpool office. There be remained for a few years until, through the instrumentality of an uncle, an arrangement was made by which he and his brother Wil. ham purchased a business in Manchester, where they set up in August, 1867. It was for some time a hard up-hill fight, for the business was hampered by bad debts, but in 1876, at the second time of asking, they purchased the patent of the Otto gas engine, the invention of a German doctor, and thanks to the improvements introduced by Frank Crossley, soon built up the enormous business which "revolutionised the trade in small motors and expelled the use of steam for all low horse-powers." As a designer and inventor Frank Crossley's abilities were remarkable; he was also the expert of the firm, and as they were bound by agreement to defend the rights they had purchased from Dr. Otto, the defence of all the patents was his peculiar province, an irksome duty which he carried out, nevertheless, with con- spicuous skill, fairness, and success. He married in 1871, lived in Bowdon—the Wimbledon, so to speak, of Manchester —in a comfortable, unpretending villa until the end of 1889, when he migrated with his wife and daughter to the heart of one of the worst slums of Manchester. In 1896 he paid a short visit in connection with missionary work to India ; on March 25th, 1897, he passed away in his fifty-eighth year.
Such are the bare outlines of the life of one whom Dr. McLaren in his preface does not err in calling "a nineteenth-century saint,whom Francis of Assisi might have recognised ass brother
in faith and spirit whose life was one long endeavour to make Christian principles realities, and to follow them, and the Christ who is assumed to be our pattern, wherever they led, no matter how t` odd ' or how hard the resulting course might be." For tere was a man of great natural refinement, artistic instincts—he was an excellent amateur painter as well as a superlative designer—a lover of pas. time and in his youth of sport, who for at least twenty years had a princely income at his command. He might have amassed a magnificent collection of pictures; he might have built himself a palace, kept a great yacht, rented a deer forest, or maintained a private orchestra. As a matter of fact, once he became rich, we doubt if he ever spent more than a tenth of his income on himself and his establishment. But the magnitude of his benefactiono, the least memorable part of his life work, must not be estimated by the crude test of figures, remarkable as the results would prove. His benevo- lence was exalted by the conception of his duty in giving. "Don't be afraid," he once said to Dr. Mackennal, "of bleeding me. I am the possessor of a patent. I may, any morning, find that a new invention has been registered which may render mine worthless. While I am making money, I ought to give it away." On this Dr. Mackennal well remarks.: "The lofty purpose and faith of this last sentence were in striking contrast to the usual habit of even the Christian business man, who makes of the uncertainties of business a reason for saving, while he made of them a reason for giving away." Instances of his delicacy and generosity to individuals might easily be multiplied—there is one charming story of the gift of a new gas-engine to a small manufacturer on the eve of bankruptcy on pp. 100-102—since he "gave away his money almost as fast as he got it, dispensing it with both hands, neither of which knew what the other was doing." This eleemosynary instinct, however, was happily controlled by a good deal of practical prudence. "It is not hard to give," he once said, "it is very hard to be sure you are not doing harm rather than good by giving "; and this thought, we learn, was one of the reasons for his going to live in Ancoats " he wanted to direct the beneficence he was determined to originate." He had long thrown himself heart and soul into. evangelistic efforts for the reclamation of the masses, and in company with his brother had for several years been en- gaged in the mission attached to their own works at Openshaw. This he now decided to leave in his brother's hands, and break fresh ground in another quarter. Accord- ingly he purchased the old music-hall known as the "Star," the worst place of the kind in Manchester, pulled down the whole block of buildings, and erected, at a cost of £20,000, a mission-hall, with residences for workers, bath-rooms and
coffee-rooms, and other amenities for the need of the popula- tion around. At first he thought of entrusting the manage- ment to the Salvation Army—an organisation of which he was at once a loyal and munificent supporter and a candid critic—but soon resolved to live there himself "with the poor and for the poor." And there for the rest of his days he laboured and preached "with inexhaustible pecuniary gene- rosity and as inexhaustible spiritual fervour, and at last died, leaving Manchester the poorer for his loss, and the richer for the example of a life utterly given to and for Jesus Christ." Though naturally a fastidiously refined and sensitive man, he shrank from no labour, no matter how repulsive or un- popular, in his search after lost souls. Mitch of his energy was devoted to "fighting God's hardest battle in this world, —the battle to deliver a degraded and downtrodden woman- kind from the lusts of wicked men." He and his wife estab- lished preventive and rescue homes built at his own cost, and the manner of his dealing with this difficult problem, as shown in an address delivered at Leamington, was at once sagacious and tender-hearted. He had long given up society, and after his removal to Ancoats hardly found space even for the most necessary relaxation. As his brother, Professor Hastings Crossley, remarks in an admirably written memorial chapter, "it was as if the deep sighing of the poor, at whose door he had come to live, sounded all day in his ears so as to deaden all other voices. And not only the poor at his doors. In China, in Africa, in India, above all in Armenia, his heart, his love, and his unflagging sympathy, aided by gifts such as few have it in their power to bestow, were
poured out on all he could in anywise reach He had the joy of doing good, and ever sought out occasions of doing it." We have purposely abstained from dwelling, interesting though the subject is, on the vicissitudes and evolution of his religions beliefs. , Theological peculiarities and inconsistencies are of little mdment in a man who walked so faithfully in the steps of Christ as Frank Crossley. Doubt and depression alternated in him with periods of mystical ecstasy, but when he had spent himself in the service of the poor and oppressed and lay peacefully awaiting his end, he was overheard to say to himself that he had "come to the River and there was no River."
We have only to add that Mr. Bendel Harris has edited this volume with rare sympathy, delicacy, and literary skill. It can hardly fail to realise the hope expressed in the preface, that it may help to perpetuate the impression made by Frank Crossley on all who came in contact with him, and carry to a wider public something of the influence which a narrower one so strongly felt. As for the abiding result of his work, we can only echo the editor's words: "It is idle to speculate whether Manchester is the better for his sacrificial spirit ; it must be better, or heaven and earth are rottenness and stubble. Such men revitalise the Christian creed and prevent its leading formulw from falling into disuse or decay."
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