Page:The Story of the Cheeryble Grants.djvu/30

10 that some of them are not prepared to allow the statement to be disputed without challenge. In John Evans’s edition of Canon Parkinson’s “Old Church Clock” is a very important footnote dealing with the question. On page xxxiii. we read: During the winter of 1838(-9) two comparatively young men came on a visit to Manchester, with letters of introduction from Mr. W. Harrison Ainsworth to Mr. Gilbert Winter and Mr. James Crossley; the one was Mr. Charles Dickens, the other Mr. John Forster. Mr. Gilbert Winter, with his usual hospitality, gave a dinner party at The Stocks, Cheetham Hill Road, in honour of the two visitors. Among the company were Messrs. Daniel and William Grant (whom Mr. Dickens then met for the first time and afterwards immortalised as the ‘Cheeryble Brothers’), Mr. J. C. Harter, Mr. James Crossley, and Canon Parkinson. One of the party — the only one left — informs the writer that there was quite a passage of arms between Mr. Forster and the Canon, in which the somewhat ‘confident cockney’ wit of the former was completely extinguished by the strong powers of repartee exhibited by his more acute and ready Northern antagonist. This statement was evidently inspired by the surviving member of the party, Mr. Crossley. How does Mr. Elliot dispose of