A Month in Yorkshire

The making of the crucibles is a much more important part of the operation than would be imagined. They must be of uniform dimensions and quality, or the steel is deteriorated, and they fail in the fire. They are made on the premises, for every melting requires new crucibles. In an underground chamber I saw men at work, treading a large flat heap of fire-clay into proper consistency, weighing it into lumps of a given weight; placing these lumps one after the other in a circular mould, and driving in upon them, with a ponderous mallet, a circular block of the same form and height as the mould, but smaller. As the block sinks under the heavy blows, the clay is forced against the sides of the mould; and when the block can descend no further, there appears all round it a dense ring of clay, and the mould is full. Now, with a dexterous turn, the block is drawn out; the crucible is separated from the mould, and shows itself as a smooth vase, nearly two feet in height. The mouth is carefully finished, and a lid of the same clay fitted, and the crucible is ready for its further treatment. When placed in the furnace, the lids are sealed on with soft clay. The man who treads the clay needs a good stock of patience, for lumps, however small, are fatal to the crucibles.

When the moment arrived, I was summoned to witness the casting. The men had tied round their shins pieces of old sacking, as protection from the heat; they opened the holes in the floor, knocked off the lid of the crucible, and two of them, each with tongs, lifted the crucible from the intensely heated furnace. How it quivered, and glowed, and threw off sparks, and diffused around a scorching temperature! It amazed me that the men could bear it. When two crucibles are lifted out, they are emptied at the same time into the mould; not hap-hazard, but with care that the streams shall unite, and not touch the sides of the mould as they fall. Neglect of this precaution injures the quality. Another precaution is to shut out cold draughts of air during the casting. To judge by the ear, you would fancy the men were pouring out gallons of cream.

The contents of two crucibles form an ingot, short, thick, and heavy. I saw a number of such ingots in the yard. The next process is to heat them, and to pass them while hot between the rollers which convert them into bars of any required form. I was content to forego a visit to the rolling-mill—somewhere in the suburbs—being already familiar with the operation of rolling iron.

We have now the steel in a form ready for the file-makers. Two forgers, one of whom wields a heavy two-handed hammer, cut the bars into lengths, and after a few minutes of fire and anvil, the future file is formed, one end at a time, from tang to point, and stamped. For the half-round files, a suitable depression is made at one side of the anvil. Then comes a softening process to prepare the files for the men who grind or file them to a true form, and for toothing. To cut the teeth, the man or boy lays the file on a proper bed, takes a short, hard chisel between the thumb and finger of his left hand, holds it leaning from him at the required angle, and strikes a blow with the hammer. The blow produces a nick with a slight ridge by its side; against this ridge the chisel is placed for the next stroke, and so on to the next, until, by multiplied blows, the file is fully toothed. The process takes long to describe, but is, in reality, expeditious, as testified by the rapid clatter. Some of the largest files require two men—one to hold the chisel, the other to strike. For the teeth of rasps, a pyramidal punch is used. The different kinds of files are described as roughs, bastard cut, second cut, smooth, and dead smooth; besides an extraordinary heavy sort, known as rubbers. According to the cut, so is the weight of the hammer employed. Many attempts have been made to cut files by machinery; but they have all failed. There is something in the varying touch of human fingers imparting a keenness to the bite of the file, which the machine with its precise movements cannot produce—even as thistle spines excel all metallic contrivances for the dressing of cloth. And very fortunate it is that machinery can’t do everything.

After the toothing, follows the hardening. The hardener lays a few files in a fire of cinders; blows the bellows till a cherry-red heat is produced; then he thrusts the file into a stratum of charcoal, and from that plunges it into a large bath of cold water, the cleaner and colder the better. The plunge is not made anyhow, but in a given direction, and with a varying movement from side to side, according to the shape of the file. The metal, as it enters the water, and for some seconds afterwards, frets and moans piteously; and I expected to see it fly to pieces with the sudden shock. But good steel is true; the man draws the file out, squints along its edge, and if he sees it too much warped, gives it a strain upon a fulcrum, sprinkling it at the same time with cold water. He then lays it aside, takes another from the fire, and treats it in a similar way.

The hardened files are next scrubbed with sand, are dried, the tangs are dipped into molten lead to deprive them of their brittleness; the files are rubbed over with oil, and scratched with a harder piece of metal to test their quality—that is, an attempt is made to scratch them. If the files be good, it ought to fail. They are then taken between the thumb and finger, and rung to test their soundness; and if no treacherous crack betray its presence, they are tied up in parcels for sale.

I shall not soon forget the obliging kindness with which explanations were given and all my questions answered by a member of the firm, who conducted me over the works. When we came to the end, and I had witnessed the care bestowed on the several operations, I no longer wondered that a Bohemian Mechaniker in the heart of the Continent, or artisans in any part of the world, should find reason to glory in English files. Some people are charitable enough to believe that English files are no unapt examples of English character.

Sheffield is somewhat proud of Chantrey and Montgomery, and honours Elliott by a statue, which, tall of stature and unfaithful in likeness, sits on a pedestal in front of the post-office. I thought that to ramble out to one of the Corn-Law Rhymer’s haunts would be an agreeable way of spending the afternoon and of viewing the scenery in the neighbourhood of the town. I paced up the long ascent of Broome Hill—a not unpleasing suburb—to the Glossop road, and when the town was fairly left behind, was well repaid by the sight of wooded hills and romantic valleys. Amidst scenery such as that you may wander on to Wentworth, to Wharncliff, the lair of the Dragon of Wantley, to Stanedge and Shirecliff, and all the sites of which Elliott has sung in pictured phrase or words of fire. We look into the valley of the Rivelin, one of the

“Five rivers, like the fingers of a hand,”

that converge upon Sheffield; and were we to explore the tributary brooks, we should discover grinding wheels kept going by the current in romantic nooks and hollows. What a glorious sylvan country this must have been

“–in times of old,When Locksley o’er the hills of Hallam chas’dThe wide-horn’d stag, or with his bowmen boldWag’d war on kinglings.”

Troops of women and girls were busy on the slopes gathering bilberries, others were washing the stains from their hands and faces at a roadside spring, others—who told me they had been out six miles—were returning with full baskets to the town. How they chattered! About an hour’s walking brings you to a descent; on one side the ground falls away precipitously from the road, on the other rises a rocky cliff, and at the foot you come to a bridge bestriding a lively brook that comes out of a wooded glen and runs swiftly down to the Rivelin. This is the “lone streamlet” so much loved by the poet, to which he addresses one of his poems:

“Here, if a bard may christen thee,I’ll call thee Ribbledin.”

I turned from the road, and explored the little glen to its upper extremity; scrambling now up one bank, now up the other, wading through rank grass and ferns, striding from one big stone to another, as compelled by the frequent windings, rejoiced to find that, except in one particular, it still answered to the poet’s description:

“Wildest and lonest streamlet!Gray oaks, all lichen’d o’er!Rush-bristled isles, ye ivied trunksThat marry shore to shore!And thou, gnarl’d dwarf of centuries,Whose snak’d roots twist above me!Oh, for the tongue or pen of Burns,To tell ye how I love ye!”

The overhanging trees multiply, and the green shade deepens, as you ascend. At last I came to the waterfall—the loneliest nook of all, in which the Rhymer had mused and listened to the brook, as he says:

“Here, where first murmuring from thine urn,Thy voice deep joy expresses;And down the rock, like music, flowsThe wildness of thy tresses.”

It was just the place for a day-dream. I sat for nearly an hour, nothing disturbing my enjoyment but now and then the intrusive thought that my holiday was soon to end. However, there is good promise of summers yet to come. I climbed the hill in the rear of the fall, where, knee-deep in heath and fern, I looked down on the top of the oaken canopy and a broad reach of the valley; and intended to return to the town by another road. But the attractions of the glen drew me back; so I scrambled down it by the way I came, and retraced my outward route.

The one particular in which the glen differs from Elliott’s description is, that an opening has been made for, as it appeared to me, a quarry or gravel-pit, from which a loose slope of refuse extends down to the brook, and encroaches on its bed, creating a deformity that shocks the feelings by what seems a desecration. I thought that Ribbledin, at least, might have been saved from spade and mattock; and the more so as Sheffield, poisoned by smoke, can ill afford to lose any place of recreative resort in the neighbourhood. It may be that I felt vexed; for after my return to London, I addressed a letter on the subject to the editor of the Sheffield Independent, in the hope that by calling public attention thereto, the hand of the spoiler might be stayed.

As I walked down to the railway-station the next morning in time for the first train, many of the chimneys had just began to vent their murky clouds, and the smoke falling into the streets darkened the early sunlight; and Labour, preparing to “bend o’er thousand anvils,” went with unsmiling face to his daily task.

Away sped the train for Manchester; and just as the Art Treasures Exhibition was opening for the day, I alighted at the door.

Less than half an hour spent in the building sufficed to show that it was a work of the north, not of the south. There was a manifest want of attention to the fitness of things, naturally to be looked for in a county where the bulk of the population have yet so much to learn; where manufacturers, with a yearly income numbered by thousands, can find no better evening resort than the public-house; where so much of the thinking is done by machinery, and where steam-engines are built with an excellence of workmanship and splendour of finish well-nigh incredible.

For seven hours did I saunter up and down and linger here and there, as my heart inclined—longest before the old engravings. And while my eye roved from one beautiful object to another, I wondered more and more that the Times and some other newspapers had often expressed surprise that so few comparatively of the working-classes visited the Manchester Exhibition. Those best acquainted with the working-classes, as a mass, know full well how little such an exhibition as that appeals to their taste and feelings. To appreciate even slightly such paintings and curiosities of art as were there displayed, requires an amount of previous cultivation rare in any class, and especially so in the working-classes. For the cream of Manchester society, the Exhibition was a fashionable exchange, where they came to parade from three to five in the afternoon—the ladies exhibiting a circumference of crinoline far more ample than I have ever seen elsewhere; and of them and their compeers it would be safe to argue that those attracted by real love of art were but tens among the thousands who went for pastime and fashion.

To me it seems, that of late, we have had rather too much talk about art; by far too much flattery of the artist and artificer, whereby the one with genius and the one with handicraft feel themselves alike ill-used if they are not always before the eyes of the world held up to admiration. And so, instead of a heart working inspired by love, we have a hand working inspired by hopes of praise. The masons who carved those quaint carvings at Patrington worked out the thought that was in them lovingly, because they had the thought, and not the mere ambitious shadow of a thought. And their work remains admirable for all time, for their hearts were engaged therein as well as heads and hands. But now education and division of labour are to do everything; that is, if flattery fail not; and in wood-engraving we have come to the pass that one man cuts the clouds, another the trees, another the buildings, and another the animal figures; while on steel plates the clouds are “executed” by machinery. For my part, I would be willing to barter a good deal of modern art for the conscience and common honesty which it has helped to obscure.

We are too apt to forget certain conclusions which ought to be remembered; and these are, according to Mr. Penrose, that “No government, however imperial, can create true taste, or combine excellence with precipitation; that money is lavished in vain where good sense guides neither the design nor the execution; and that art with freedom, of which she is one manifestation, will not condescend to visit the land where she is not invited by the spontaneous instincts, and sustained by the unfettered efforts of the people.”

CHAPTER XXIX.

A SHORT CHAPTER TO END WITH

Here, reader, we part company. The last day of July has come, and whatever may be my inclinations or yours, I must return to London, and report myself to-morrow morning at head-quarters. There will be time while on the way for a few parting words.

If the reading of my book stir you up to go and see Yorkshire with your own eyes and on your own legs, you will, I hope, be able to choose a centre of exploration. For the coast, Flamborough and Whitby would be convenient; for Teesdale, Barnard Castle; for Craven, with its mountains, caves, and scars, Settle; and for the dales, Kettlewell and Aysgarth. Ripon is a good starting-point for Wensleydale; and York, situate where the three Ridings meet, offers railway routes in all directions. My own route, as you have seen, was somewhat erratic, more so than you will perhaps approve; but it pleased me, and if a man cannot please himself while enjoying a holiday, when shall he?

A glance at the map will show you how large a portion of the county is here unnoticed; a portion large enough for another volume. The omissions are more obvious to you than to me, because I can fill them up mentally by recollections of what I saw during my first sojourn in Yorkshire. A month might be well spent in rambles and explorations in the north-west alone, along the border of Westmoreland; Knaresborough and the valley of the Nidd will generously repay a travel; Hallamshire, though soiled by Sheffield smoke, is full of delightful scenery; and if it will gratify you to see one of the prettiest country towns in England, go to Doncaster. And should you desire further information, as doubtless you will, read Professor Phillips’s Rivers, Mountains, and Sea Coast of Yorkshire—a book that takes you all through the length and breadth of the county. It tells you where to look for rare plants, where for fossils; reveals the geological history; glances lovingly at all the antiquities; and imparts all the information you are likely to want concerning the inhabitants, from the earliest times, the climate, and even the terrestrial magnetism. I am under great obligations to it, not only for its science and scholarship, but for the means it afforded me, combined with previous knowledge, of choosing a route.

As regards distances, my longest walk, as mentioned at the outset, was twenty-six miles; the next longest, from Brough to Hawes, twenty-two; and all the rest from fourteen to eighteen miles. Hence, in all the rambles, there is no risk of over-fatigue. I would insert a table of distances, were it not best that you should inquire for yourself when on the spot, and have a motive for talking to the folk on the way. As for the railways, buy your time-table in Yorkshire; it will enlighten you on some of the local peculiarities, and prove far more useful than the lumbering, much-perplexed Bradshaw.

Of course the Ordnance maps are the best and most complete; but considering that the sheets on the large scale, for Yorkshire alone, would far outweigh your knapsack, they are out of the question for a pedestrian. Failing these, you will find Walker’s maps—one for each Riding—sufficiently trustworthy, with the distances from town to town laid down along the lines of road, and convenient for the pocket withal.

Much has been said and written concerning the high cost of travelling in England as compared with the Continent, but is it really so? Experience has taught me that the reverse is the fact, and for an obvious reason—the much shorter distance to be travelled to the scene of your wanderings. In going to Switzerland, for example, there are seven hundred and fifty miles to Basel, before you begin to walk, and the outlay required for such a journey as that is not compensated by any trifling subsequent advantage, if such there be. Some folk travel as if they were always familiar with turtle and champagne at home, and therefore should not complain if they are made to pay for the distinction. But if you are content to go simply on your own merits, wishing nothing better than to enjoy a holiday, it is perfectly possible, while on foot, to travel for four-and-sixpence a day, sometimes even less. And think not that because you choose the public-house instead of the hotel you will suffer in regard to diet, or find any lack of comfort and cleanliness. The advantage in all these respects, as I know full well, is not unfrequently with the house of least pretension. Moreover, you are not looked on as a mere biped, come in to eat, drink, and sleep, by a waiter who claims his fee as a right; but a show of kindly feeling awaits you, and the lassie who ministers to your wants accepts your gift of a coin with demonstrations of thankfulness. And, again, the public-house shows you far more variety of unsophisticated life and character than you could ever hope to witness in an hotel. Certain friends of mine, newly-wedded, passed a portion of their honeymoon at the Jolly Herring at Penmaenmawr, with much more contentment to themselves than at the large hotels they afterwards visited in the Principality, and at one-half the cost.

The sum total of my walking amounts to three hundred and seventy-five miles. If you go down to Yorkshire, trusting, as I hope, to your own legs for most of your pleasure, you will perhaps outstrip me. At any rate, you will discover that travelling in England is not less enjoyable than on the Continent; maybe you will think it more so, especially if, instead of merely visiting one place after another, you really do travel. You require no ticket-of-leave in the shape of a passport from cowardly emperor or priest-ridden king, and may journey at will from county to county and parish to parish, finding something fresh and characteristic in each, and all the while with the consciousness that it is your own country:

“Our Birth-land this! around her shores roll ocean’s sounding waves;Within her breast our fathers sleep in old heroic graves;Our Heritage! with all her fame, her honour, heart, and pow’rs,God’s gift to us—we love her well—she shall be ever ours.”

1

Spelling Book.

2

Old-fashioned.

3

Lasting.

4

Steep.

5

This stone, as stated in the newspapers, has since been replaced by a larger one, with sculptured ornaments.