Produced by John Parkinson
Ben o' Bill's, THE LUDDITE: A Yorkshire Tale, by D. F. E. Sykes, LL.B.
Ben o' Bill's,
the Luddite:
A Yorkshire Tale.
By
D. F. E. Sykes, LL.B.
And
Geo. Henry Walker
LONDON.
Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, & Co. Ltd.
HUDDERSFIELD.
The Advertiser Press, Ltd
About the author.
D F E Sykes was a gifted scholar, solicitor, local politician, and
newspaper proprietor. He listed his own patrimony as 'Fred o' Ned's o'
Ben o' Billy's o' the Knowle' a reference to Holme village above
Slaithwaite in the Colne Valley where many of the events in the novel
take place. As the grandson of a clothier, his association with the
woollen trade would be a valuable source of material for his novels, but
also the cause of his downfall when, in 1883, he became involved in a
bitter dispute between the weavers and the mill owners.
When he was declared bankrupt in 1885 and no longer able to practise as
a solicitor he left the area and travelled abroad to Ireland and Canada.
On his return to England he struggled with alcoholism and was prosecuted
by the NSPCC for child neglect. Eventually he was drawn back to
Huddersfield and became an active member of the Temperance Movement. He
took to researching local history and writing, at first in a local
newspaper, then books such as 'The History of Huddersfield and its
Vicinity'. He also wrote four novels. It was not until the 1911 Census,
after some 20 years as a writer, that he finally states his profession
as 'author'.
In later life he lived with his wife, the daughter of a Lincolnshire
vicar, at Ainsley House, Marsden. He died of a heart attack following an
operation at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary on 5th June 1920 and was
buried in the graveyard of St Bartholomew's in Marsden.
Introduction.
Although the book was initially credited to D. F. E. Sykes and G. H.
Walker, G. H. Walker's name is missing from the third edition, and it is
essentially Sykes' work.
First published in 1898, it is a novel which deserves wider recognition,
as it deals with surprisingly contemporary issues, but it is as a social
history of the period that it stands out. Sykes' use of the local
dialect, the entertaining asides that he includes and his skill at
sketching characters and their lives, at a period of such turmoil in the
Colne Valley, add to its value.
It is interesting that, as a historian, Sykes chose to embellish the
facts, that were available to him at the time, with fiction, and his
purpose must have been literary. Historians rightly take issue in this
matter, but he is clear on his sympathy for their cause and the
background and reasoning behind these events, though he draws back on
the murder of Horsfall. The Luddites were not mindless machine breakers
but desperate men, in poverty and despair, fighting for a voice to be
heard against uncaring mill owners and a corrupt government.
This is undoubtedly Sykes' best novel, a sound history of the Luddites
and a good read.
PREFACE
AT the York Special Commission in 1812, sixty-six persons were tried for
various offences in connection with the Luddite rising against the
introduction of machinery. Of these sixty six seventeen were executed,
one reprieved, six transported for seven years, seven were acquitted,
seventeen were discharged on bail, fifteen by proclamation, and one
stood over but was not called on.
The story, Ben o' Bill's, is mostly true, and the authors have not felt
called upon to vary in any material respects the story as it was gleaned
in part from the lips and in part from the papers of the narrator.
It is proper to say that the Ben Walker of the narrative was of kin to
neither of the writers.
The thanks of the authors are tendered to Dr. Edwin Dean, of
Slaithwaite, and to the Justices of the West Riding for permission to
reproduce the portraits of Dr. Dean and of Sir Joseph Radcliffe.
DEDICATED
(Without Permission)
TO
MARY LOUISA SYKES,
THE FRIEND OF BOTH,
AND
WIFE OF ONE OF
THE AUTHORS
CHAPTER I.
IT HURTS me sore that folk in these days should so little understand the
doings of us Luddites. To hear young people talk, the Luddites were
miscreants that well, deserved the hanging they got--a set of idle,
dissolute knaves and cut-throats the country was well rid of. Nay,
worse, many young lads with a college learning seem to know next to
nothing about them, and talk as though all great deeds were done in
far-of parts, and as though of heroes and martyrs England has none to
show. I am little apt at writing, and my hand is stiff and cramped with
years. But my memory is good still, and I can remember better the things
of fifty years ago than those of yesterday. So, before hand and mind
fail me altogether, I will set on record all I call mind of those
memorable days that closed so black after that bloody York Assize. And
if to any reader I should seem garrulous or egotistical, be it
remembered in excuse that I can only tell the tale as I now recall it,
and that I write of things I saw and things I knew, and of doings I took
part in. I risked my own neck, and had the good fortune to escape with
my life, and with honour, too, which not all who escaped whole and safe
could say. When I was a boy, in the last days of the past century, our
folk lived at Lower Holme, above Slaithwaite, in the old homestead in
which my father's father and his father before him had lived. We were
tenants of my Lord Dartmouth. The house is still there, and when I close
my eyes of an evening, before the fire and my pipe goes out as I sit
thinking, I can see the old place yet, as I knew it in my boyhood's
days. My father, William Bamforth--Bill o' Ben's--was a manufacturer,
a small manufacturer we should say now; but no one thought of calling
him a small manufacturer in those days. He was as big as most men
thereabouts. He bought his wool of the stapler at Huddersfield--old Abe
Hirst;--it was scoured and dyed in the vats in the farmyard; my mother
and my cousin Mary, and Martha, the servant lass, that cleaned the house
and milked the cows, and kept my mother's mind on the rack and her
tongue on the clack from morning till night, helped with the spinning.
The warping and the weaving we did at home in the long upper chamber. We
had four looms at home, and, moreover, we put our work out to the
neighbours. It was a busy house you may be sure, what with the milking
and the churning, and the calves, and the pigs, and the poultry, and the
people coming for milk, and the men coming for their warps, and the
constant work at the old hand-looms in the long, low chamber above, with
its windows stretched right across the front to catch the precious
light. What stir, too, there used to be when father and I set off for
the fairs at Nottingham and Macclesfield and Newcastle, for all those
markets did Bill o' Ben's attend regular as the almanac itself. There
was the loading, overnight, of the great covered waggon with the pieces
of good linsey, and here and there a piece of broadcloth for the clergy
and the better classes, and the grooming and shoeing of "Old Bess," the
stout grey mare. Then the start at early dawn, with the first lark in
summer, in the starlight of the winter mornings. Oh! it was grand in the
summer across the moors, when the roads were plain to see, and only the
crusted ruts to jolt our bones; but in the dark mornings of November,
when the wind howled about the waggon's arch, and the rain beat like
pellets about the tarpaulin, and the waggon wheels sunk deep in slush,
and in the set winter-time, when the roads were lost in snow, it was
cruel work for man and beast. It was gamesome, too, at the slimmer
statutes at Nottingham and Macclesfield, when I had nothing to do but
stand at the stall in the market-place and cut the suit-lengths for the
customers, or carry their parcels to their inns. And grand it was to see
the men servants and the buxom country lasses at the hiring, making
their half-yearly holiday, and spending their money right cheerfully. My
father had an old connection, and scarce ever had to return with pieces
unsold. Then, when the fair was over, and he sat in the parlour of the
Angel at Nottingham, or the Swan at Macclesfield, smoking his long,
"churchwarden" and drinking gin and water, I would off into the town to
see the booths, and the actors, and the giants, and the fat women, and
the dwarfs and two-headed monsters, and many other curiosities that may
not now be seen. I used to sit for hours in the winter nights at home
telling Mary of the bearded woman, and the hen with five legs, and the
learned pig, but of the country lasses, whose cheeks were so rosy and
lips so ripe, she cared not to hear.
The times were bad for most people, but at home we did not feel the
pinch very much. We had the cows and the poultry and the pigs, and
though oatmeal was terribly dear, twenty shillings the hoop, I never
knew what it was to miss the oatmeal porridge and the abundant milk for
breakfast and bacon and potatoes for dinner. On Sundays we nearly always
had beef or mutton and Yorkshire pudding, and my mother's home-brewed
was famous throughout all the country side. Mr. Wilson, the parson of
the church, always called when he came to Holme, though my father had
grieved him sore by taking a pew at Powle Moor Chapel, and sitting under
that godly man, Abraham Webster; and Mr. Wilson always declared to my
mother's own face that her home-brewed was better drinking than any to
be got even at the Black Bull Inn, at Kitchen Fold, which boasted the
best "tap" outside Huddersfield itself. Sometimes on Sundays, too, my
mother had a guests' tea-drinking, and then we had buttered tea-cakes
and eggs, and salad, and tea, and out were brought the silver cream jug
and silver sugar tongs and spoons and the little fluted china cups and
saucers, with little, pink primroses on them, that belonged to my great
aunt, Betty Garside. The women-folk drank tea, but not so much, I think,
that they liked it, for they had not the chance of getting used to it,
but because the quality drank it, and it served to establish their rank
and dignity. My father would never touch it, and I can't say I was ever
partial to it myself. So you see we were not so badly-off at home. My
father's custom lay mainly in the country market towns, and the high
price of corn caused by the ceaseless wars kept squire and farmer in
rich content, and they paid for their cloth like men. It was the
manufacturers who had made and relied on a foreign market for their
goods, who cursed Napoleon, and cursed, too, our own Government, that
was ever at daggers drawn with him. Why could we not let the French rule
their country their own way they said. What was it to us whether king or
Directory or Emperor ruled in France? My father was a Whig, and swore by
Mr. Fox; yet I think at first he was not sorry to see our corn so high,
prices so good, and money so plentiful among the farmers. But in time
the war told on all of us, our ships could not sail the seas, the mills
and warehouses groaned with piled-up merchandise, and the pieces fetched
so little, it was scarce worth while to cart our goods from town to
town. Then every manufacturer in the West Riding called for peace, and,
in time, peace at any price.
I think it was at Nottingham, in the back-end of 1811, I first saw any
signs of a stir because of the new machinery. A man was shot at
Bullwell, near that town, when trying to get at some new
stocking-frames, I saw his body brought into the town on a stretcher by
two constables I can see his eyes and open mouth, with the yellow teeth,
and the tongue thrust out between them, and blood trickling down the
sides of his chin and his hands, the fingers of one wide outspread, the
other gripping tight some grass and sand he had clutched, and his right
knee drawn up so rigid they could not stretch the body, and he was
buried in a chest. They laid him on a table in the tap-room of the first
inn they came to, and I saw him through the window. When we rode home to
Slaithwaite, I remember my father was very silent, and would not talk
about the new machinery, but I was soon to hear enough of it.
I remember, as tho' it were yesterday, one winter's night about that
time, my father was sat by the fire-side, smoking his pipe and taking a
thoughtful pull at times at the yellow pewter pot from which he drank
his ale; my mother in her rocking-chair knitting a pair of long, grey
stockings for myself. I was reading by the candle-light a copy of Mr.
Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man," which I had bought at Nottingham, and
which, despite the groanings of Mr. Webster, our pastor at Powle Moor, I
found a very sound and proper book, as, indeed, I still maintain it to
be; and Mary was looking at the prints in Mr. Miller's Scripture
History, with lives of the most celebrated Apostles, and wondering for
the hundredth time how it came about that the frontispiece exhibits
Father Adam with a full beard, whilst the very next print depicts him,
after the fall, with a chin as smooth as an egg: for there is no mention
of razors in the Garden of Eden. Martha was down in the village at a
prayer-meeting; and Siah, the teamer, had had his porridge and his pint
and had gone to bed. We could hear him, through the rafters, snoring in
the room above. It must have been a Tuesday, for father had been to
Huddersfield to market, and had come home, as he always did on
market-days, more talkative than his wont.
"Aw rode as far as th' Warrener, wi' Horsfall, o' Ottiwell," I heard my
father say. "He could talk o' nowt but th' new machines 'at he's bahn to
put i' Ottiwells. He's bahn, to ha' all his wark done under his own
roof, he says. He's sick o' croppers an' their ways. An', he says, too,
'at it 'll noan be long afore there 'll be a new kind o' loom 'at 'll
run ommost by itsen, an' pieces 'll come dahn to next to nowt. He says
time's noan so far off when th' old hand-loom weavers 'll go dahn their
own slot."
"How long did you stop at th' Warrener?" asked my mother, who had her
own way of putting a point.
"Tha' means it wor th' ale were talking; but tha's mista'en. He meant it
every word. An' he said, 'at them 'at lagged behind mun go to th' wall,
an' he, for one, meant movin' wi' th' times. Him an' Enoch Taylor's
mighty thick, an' Taylor's putting th' new machinery into Bradley Mills,
and Vickerman's. All th' market's talkin' on it. Aw called at th' Pack
Horse----".
"I warrant yo' did," observed my mother.
"At th' Pack Horse," proceeded my father, superior to innuendo, "an'
Horsfall wor there, an' he said 'at th' era o' manual labour wor over,
an' th' triumph o' mechanic art had come. These were his very words. Aw
thowt aw'd remember them to tell, yo'."
"An' little aw thank yo' for yo'r trouble, William Bamforth," observed
my mother, "for that nor any other o' your fine tales from th' Pack
Horse. Little it seems yo', or Horsfall either, dandering about th' Pack
Horse after th' market's done, an' me toiling my blood to water to make
both ends tie. Th' triumph o' mechanic art, indeed! Triumph o'
fiddlesticks. Th' hand-loom's done well enough for thee, an' for thi
father afore thee, an' where would you put yo' new machines if yo' got
'em, I'd like to know."
"Ther's that bit o' money lying idle at Ingham's, an' we could build on
th' Intack, an' ther's a fine run o' water, as Horsfall says it's a sin
an' a shame to see running to waste, an' ther's that fortune of your
Aunt Betty's, at's out at mortgage wi' Lawyer Blackburn."
"Aye, an' there it 'll stop for me," cried my mother, "let well alone,
says I. Wasn't tha tellin' me only th' other neet' o' that poor man at
Nottingham, 'at our Ben couldn't sleep o' neets for seein' him starin'
'at him? Dost tha want bringing home on a shutter, an' me lonely enough
as it is, what wi' thee an' Ben settin' off nearly every week, an' when
yo'r back stopping at th' Pack Horse every Tuesday till it's a wonder a
decent man an' a deacon isn't ashamed to be seen coming up th' broo.
I'll ha' na building wi' my brass. There's enough to follow as it is,
an' that girl, Martha, that soft as she thinks every man as says 'It's a
fine day,' means puttin' t' spurrins in, and na, nowt 'll do but havin'
th' masons and th' joiners all ovver th' place, an' them so fond o'
drink too. Aw'm moithered to death as it is, an' 'll ha' none on't, so
tha' may put that maggot aat o' thi yed, William Bamforth."
"But Mr. Chew says"....
Now Mr. Chew was our new vicar, Mr. Wilson being not long dead.
"Oh, Mr. Chew. It 'ad seem him better if he washed th' powder out o' his
own yed i'stead o' puttin' stuff an' nonsense into other folks!"
"If yo mun talk your own business ovver wi' all th' countryside why
can't you go to Mr. Webster, as is well known to ha' more o' th' root o'
th' matter in him than all th' clergy, an him a weaver hissen, too."
"Why, and so I will," exclaimed my father, rising to wind up the clock,
a solemn act that, in our house, served, except on Sundays, instead of
family prayers, and sent us all to bed.
The very next Lord's Day my father and mother, Mary, and myself, with
Martha and 'Siah, must go to Powle Moor in the afternoon to hear a
discourse by Mr. Webster, my father and I walking side by side, a thing
which I liked not so much as to walk with Mary. But it chanced that on
this very Sabbath my father explained to me what I had often pondered
upon, why we should trudge a good two miles across the moor by a rude
footpath to the Baptist Meeting House, when the Church lay on a broad
and good road almost at our feet, and we had there a large pew, our own
freehold, which had been used aforetime by my grandfather and my
great-grandfather. Whatever the reason was it had not been apprehended
by our old collie, for such is the sway of long habit, that every Sunday
when the cracked bell chimed for morning service at the church, it would
rise from the hearth, yawn, and stretch itself, look about it as though
enquiringly and reproachfully, and then sedately descending the hill,
would enter the church, walk decorously to the old pew, now generally
empty, and stretch itself by the door, in the aisle. Nor, I confess, was
I much wiser than the old dog, for my father's explanation of our
desertion of the church of our fathers. "You see, Ben," he said to me,
when pressed on the point, speaking slowly, for he breathed with some
difficulty in our way up the hill,--"you see, blood is thicker than
water."
Now this is a truth there is no gainsaying.
"And I shall allus hold," continued my father, "I shall allus hold 'at
Parson Wilson had no reight to stir th' magistrates up to refuse th'
license to th' 'Silent Woman' because some o' th' Baptists 'at belonged
to th' Nook Chapel used to go theer o' wet neets to sing an' pray an'
expound for mutual edification, an' if one or two on 'em did happen tak'
too mich ale at times, it's well known talkin's dry wark. Then about
them hens o' your mother's half-cousin, Sammy Sutcliffe, Sam-o'-Sall's.
Tha' knows it were agin all natur' for Parson Wilson to gi' it in as he
did, an' it were but nateral we should side wi' our own kin."
Now it was about these hens I wished to learn, for it was because of
them that it has ever been said that schism was hatched in
Slaithwaite--that th' dissenters layed away like Hannah Garside's hens,
and had laid away ever since.
"Yo' see it wor this way," explained my father, "Hannah were allus a
very fractious woman, more particular as, do what she would, could never
get wed, an' such drop o' th'milk o' human kindness as God had ge'en her
to start wi' seemed to ha' soured on her. Her an' Sam-o'-Sall's lived
neighbour, an' it were like enough 'at her hens strayed into Sammy's
fowd, and into th' shippon too. Hens is like other folk, they'll go'
wheer they're best off, an' if Hannah threw th' fowls nowt but bacon
swards yo' needn't blame 'em if they went wheer they could get out o'
th' reach o' her tongue an' a grain of meal an' corn as weel. Onyway she
pulled Sammy up afore Parson Wilson for th' eggs, an' Parson Wilson gave
it agen yor' mother's cousin. An' what I say is," said my father,
pausing to' get his breath, and striking his stick into the ground by
way of emphasis, "What I say is, there's no swearin' to eggs. Moreovver
Hannah gloried ovver th' decision to that extent it wer' more nor flesh
an' blood could bear, an' when she cam' an' set i' church, reight i' th'
front o' yor' aunt, wi' a Easter egg fastened i' her bonnet, Sammy saw
no way for peace but to join th' Baptists. An', as I said afore, blood's
thicker nor water, an' yor' mother an' me havin' prayed on it, and yor'
aunt sayin' beside 'at no money o' hers, an' it's well known she's tidy
well off, should ever go to th' Erastian idolators, our duty seemed
clear both to yo'r mother an' misen. Not but what aw liked th' owd
Parson well enough, tho' he wer' a Tory, an me a Whig."
We were by this time in the road that strikes across the top of the hill
towards Salendine Nook, and by the side of which the Powle Moor Chapel
was built, with the house and outbuildings for the minister. We could
see the men quitting the burial ground and the little public-house
hard by, and, all in their Sunday clothes, folk were coming from every
part for the afternoon service, not hurrying, and with no air of
business, but solemnly and seriously, talking little, and with thoughts,
like their faces, set Zion-wards. When we exchanged greetings, as we did
with most, it was in grave tones, for it was not counted decent in my
young days to be over cheerful on the Sabbath Day. And tho' as I have
said, we at home had not felt the pinch of the hard times more than we
could bear, there were few there so well off. Most that went to th'
Powle were hand-loom weavers, with here an' there a little shop-keeper,
and tho' meal was neither so bad nor so dear as it had been in Barley
time, nor work so scarce as it became later, yet most knew the pressure
of want, and the shadow of worse things still to come seemed to brood
over us all.
It was a sight to see Powle Chapel at an afternoon service. Every pew
was filled, and every eye was fixed on Parson Webster as he gave out the
hymns line by line, verse by verse, for few of us could read, tho' most
made a point of having a hymn book. Up in the loft was the music, the
double bass, the viol, and the clarionet. Between Jim Wood--Jim o'
Slack--who played the double bass, and his colleagues of the viol and
clarionet contention had raged from the very foundation of the church at
Powle. Jim o' Slack maintained that in every true view of harmony wedded
to divinity, the notes of the double bass stood for the wrath of
Jehovah, and were designed to inspire awe and inward quaking. The feeble
and futile utterances of the viol and the clarionet, he conceded, might
represent the tender qualities of mercy and compassion, and, as such,
might be worthy of some consideration among the Methodies, whose
spiritual food was as milk for babies, but in High Calvinism, Jim
maintained, nought but the bulky instrument his soul loved could convey
adequate conception of the majesty of God and the terrors of hell. It
was grand to hear the singing. We all sang for our lives, and we all had
a notion of singing in tune. Then the praying! oh! it was fine to hear
little Parson Webster. How he rejoiced over the elect! How he lamented
over the unregenerate! It was very comforting to hear, for we were the
elect, the Erastians of the Church and the Arminians of the chapel in
the valley we well understood to be those in outer darkness. With what a
solid satisfaction, too, did the elders settle down to the discourse of
an hour and forty minutes by the hour glass, which was the least we
expected from Mr. Webster. I remember still his text of that very day,
"Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me."
Who could deny, he asked, the utter and natural depravity of man? Why
only he who by the very denial stood confessed of the sins of arrogancy
and self-sufficiency. Was not the natural man, since the Fall, prone to
murder, lust, evil imaginings, covetousness, hardness of heart, vain
glory, malice, and all unworthiness, all being, by nature, the children
of wrath, and only that small handful of the dust of Zion, of all that
great valley, called forth and justified before the foundation of the
world that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. How
awful, too, was the lot of those that went down quick into hell, whose
steps took hold on the eternal fire whose flames were never quenched.
But we were not of these, tho' on this we must not plume ourselves, for
salvation was not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of
God that sheweth mercy, for the potter had power over the clay, of the
same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour. I
was very glad for my part to have been made a vessel unto honour, and of
this there could be no reasonable doubt, for when my father, moved
thereto by my mother, after the split about Hannah Garside's eggs,
finally asked for admission to the community of the Powle and was
dipped, cousin Mary and I were required to state on which side we
elected to stand. Mr. Webster, in a long and earnest discourse in the
parlour at home, and with much praying, set before us, as he said, life
and good, death and evil, blessing and cursing. I waited to hear what
Mary had to say, being for my part little troubled in my mind at that
time about religion and not rightly understanding on what points of
doctrine Mr. Chew differed from Mr. Webster, and liking the chapel the
better because the singing was heartier, and the Church the rather
because the sermons were shorter, and it seemed to me your soul might be
saved there with less pother. Now Mary, I know not why, said she should
go with her aunt, and was commended for a good girl by Mr. Webster, and
I, not wishful on the Sunday to turn down the broo' to Church whilst
Mary toiled up the hill to the Powle, announced my resolve to walk in my
father's steps. So Mr. Webster, much pleased, praised my filial
obedience, and he being well content to take this as a sign of grace and
effectual calling, I e'en took his word for it and joined the Baptists.
I say I remember well the text of that afternoon, and by this reason.
My father and mother and Mary were set in the one pew whilst 'Siah and
Martha and myself were set behind them. Now as I looked upon Mary that
afternoon it came into my mind very strongly that it was strange so fair
and dainty a specimen of the potter's craft should be shapen in
iniquity, and I was marvelling greatly to myself that out of the same
lump of clay two vessels so unlike as Cousin Mary, and Martha, our
serving wench, should be fashioned by the potter's hands. For Martha was
broad shouldered and squat, and had coarse towzelled hair, very red, and
her mouth was large and her lips thick, and her arms were rough of skin
and red, and she waddled in her walk, and her breathing was heavy, and
her eye dull, and her voice was not tuneful, tho' she would sing in the
hymns, albeit my mother frowned at her and would have had her hold her
peace, for my mother did not think it quite proper for the serving man
and maid to sing with their betters: but as my father said "If you go to
chapel, you must do as chapel does."
But Mary, oh! my children, you will never know what my cousin Mary was
like in those days, with her brown eyes, so warm and soft, and her brown
hair all wavy, and with little love ringlets about the neck and her
little hands not white but creamy brown, and her rosebud mouth, and her
voice so musical, and her smile so sweet. And so, I say, thinking,
perhaps, too much of these things, and wondering, too, at the marvellous
skill of the potter, and opining, belike, that there must be a
difference in the clay, but quite certain that Mary was not fashioned in
iniquity, and the day being hot and the air very heavy, and two suet
dumplings I had eaten for dinner sitting heavy on me, I fell into a sort
of doze as Mr. Webster reached his twelfthly. Now, Mary, seeing this,
and being ever full of mischief, having looked to see that my father was
intent on the discourse, and that my mother's eyes were closed--in
thought--did lean over the pew and put into my mouth a lump of
good-stuff and, I chancing at the moment to throw back my head, the
sweet rolled into my gullet and had gone nigh to choke me. I had much
ado to stifle my coughing, and all the congregation did look hard at me,
save only Mary herself, who listened with sweet gravity as Mr. Webster
proceeded with his twelfthly.
I walked home that evening with 'Siah, for Mary dallied behind with
Martha, and father and mother had gone on before with Mr. Webster, who
was to take his supper at our house, as was now his almost weekly custom
of a Sunday. 'Siah was a silent man, and was a good servant, loving his
beasts and careful for them, but over fond of ale, and much to be feared
when overtaken with drink, and noted that he had fought a great fight at
the Feast with one arm tied behind his back.
"Aw believe awn getten it, Ben," said 'Siah, as we went across the
fields in the wintry gloom, homewards.
"What's ta getten, 'Si?" I asked.
"Th' conviction," said 'Siah.
"Conviction, what conviction?"
"Why, th' conviction o' sin to be sure. How many convictions does ta'
think there are?" said 'Siah, in a pet.
"Why, 'Siah, th' last conviction tha' had were afore Justice Ratcliffe
at th' Brigg, and more by token if my father hadn't sent me wi' th'
fine, in th' stocks tha'd ha sat for six mortal hours by Huddersfield
Church clock."
"That were a different sort o' conviction all together, Ben, that were
for feightin', and this aw mean naa is th' conviction o' sin."
"Well, fighting's a sin," I said.
"Aw dooan't know as it is--not if it be for feightin' such a thing as
th' ostler at th' Pack Horse for sayin' Martha's bow-legged, when aw
know better, but aw do believe at aw gat my conviction o' sin much i'
t' same way."
"How does ta' mean, 'Siah," I asked, for I saw our teamer was in deadly
earnest.
"Why, bi wrastlin', to be sure. So th' missis munnot tell me agean
there's no gooid i' wrastlin'. It were after aw came back fra th'
village last neet. Aw leets o' Martha an 'oo gav' me a bit o' her tongue
for makkin' a swill tub o' mysen an' for lettin' a little chap like th'
ostler at th' Pack Horse ha' th' law on me, an' so aw went into th'
shippon an' set by mi' sen for happen two hours i' th' hay at aw'd
pulled for th' beasts. An' aw said to mi' sen 'at it were no use tryin'
to be good for aw were clear born to be damned. Aw could ha' ta'en that
hop o' mi thumb at th' Pack Horse awmost atween mi finger an' thumb an'
pinched him i' two if it hadn't been at aw were mazed i' drink. An' so
th' text com' into mi head at aw wer reight served for mi fuddlin' an'
'auv made up mi mind to just pay him aat next time aw goa to market, an'
then awst turn religious an' happen gi' up drinking, except at th' Feast
an' Christmas time, an' mebbe when aw get treated an' at a chersenin' or
a weddin' or a wake, an' mebbe occasional o' a Saterday, not to lose th'
taste an' feel on it, an' i' th' way o' dooty as yo' may say."
This was the longest speech I ever heard 'Siah deliver. I thought his
resolution a good one, only advising him when he brought the matter off
with the man at the Pack Horse to be sure to make his opponent touch a
button so as to have law on his side, and if possible to have witnesses
that could be relied on to speak the truth, I mean, so as to make it a
case of what lawyer Blackburn called provocation.
It was after supper that the momentous consultation about the machines
began. Full justice had been done to that evening meal. There had been
cold beef and a chine, oatcakes that had been dried on the creel over
the big fireplace before which a bullock might have been roasted whole,
cheese and apple pie, and, to drink, a quart or more of my mother's
famous home brewed. Mr. Webster, by grace of his office, was privileged
to drink his ale out of the large two-handled silver flagon, a hundred
years old at the least, that no common lips had ever touched. I do not
think the supper was the worse for that we took it in the house instead
of the parlour. There was the sanded floor to our feet and the smoked
rafters above, and in the sill of the long diamond paned windows were
red earth pots of geranium and musk and fuschia, that made the room
smell sweet as a nosegay. The spinning wheels were away in the corner, a
list hearthrug made by my mother's own hands stretched before the grate,
a cushion whose covering worked by the same tireless fingers imaged the
meeting of Jacob and Rebecca at the well, adorned the long oak settle
under the window. The walls, washed yellow, were relieved by the framed
funeral cards of departed relatives; the calf bound family Bible
containing entries of births, marriages and deaths for many generations
back, my own birth being at that time last entry of all, tho' there have
been added a goodly list since then, reposed on the chest; a celery
glass, highly cut, on the one side and a decanter on the other. A
beautiful enamelled tray, with hand-painted roses, was reared behind,
and best pictures of all, my father always vowed, and richest ornaments
of any room, a prime flitch of bacon and two sturdy hams hung on the
hooks near the door, so as to catch the air to keep them sweet. I have
been in many a fine room since then, notably when I went to Woodsome
Hall to see my Lord Dartmouth and give the tenants' greeting to his
bonnie bride; but for real home feeling and snug comfort never have I
seen ought to compare with the old house at Holme when it was tidied up
for Sunday.
Supper was over. Mr. Webster was sat in my father's arm chair, his
little legs, with their worsted stockings, hardly reaching the ground,
and I make no doubt he would have been more comfortable on the settle,
which was lower; but it was a point of civility with my father to
surrender the master's chair to an honoured guest. A long churchwarden
sent its reek up the broad chimney, and a little glass of weak gin and
water stood by the parson's right hand convenient on the table. Not that
Mr. Webster took much of either ale or strong waters; but this was
Sunday, and it is well known that when a minister has preached two
sermons, with many a long prayer thrown in, to say nothing of hymns,
sing he never so badly, his throat must needs be dry. My father sat
opposite Mr. Webster on the other side of the hearth, my mother, in her
low rocking chair with the iron rockers, swaying gently to and fro, and
fingering her handkerchief for lack of her knitting needles, which must
not be used on Sundays. The case reserved, as a lawyer might say, had
been put by my father with much aiding and commentary from the mother,
who justified her interruption, under a look of remonstrance from both
pastor and lord, by saying that a woman could jump over a wall while a
man was going round and round seeking for the gate.
"It is no small matter, friend Bamforth," at length said Mr. Webster,
"and one that I doubt not you have taken to the Lord in prayer. Well
pleased too am I that you have seen fit to take counsel with me in this
weighty business. For it is laid upon me to feed the sheep of our
Master's fold, and tho' you would not look to me for the bread that
perisheth, but rather I to you, for it is written that the labourer is
worthy of his hire, and ye may not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the
corn, yet perchance in doubtful and perplexing times a pastor's counsel
may be the more needful nourishment. Now I would have you take heed
against the besetting sin of this latter-day and corrupt generation,
which I take to be that very making haste to be rich against which the
Book doth expressly warn us. You speak of building a mill for these new
methods. Hast thou not thought within thyself, like the man in the
parable, saying 'What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow
my fruits? This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater;
and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.' And mark what to
that man God said: 'Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of
thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is
he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.' And
now I ask you, brother Bamforth, can you be rich toward God, if you
build up your fortune on the ruin of your fellow men. You say one o'
these new finishing frames will do the work of four, may be of six men.
Aye, also is there talk of looms that shall need neither skill nor care.
It may be true, I know not. But oh! it will be a sore day for this
hillside, and all the country round when that day shall be. What is to
become of those who now keep a decent roof over their heads, and tho'
times be bad can still give bit and sup to wife and bairns. You may make
new machines but you cannot make new men to order. And see to it that it
be not now with thee as in the days of Pharaoh of old, when Aaron's rod
swallowed up the rods of the wise men and the sorcerers, and thy rod too
be swallowed up. If that came to pass of which I have read and heard,
there will be no room in this valley for men of but moderate means. Yo'
may build a mill, but bigger men will build bigger mills, and the bigger
mills will swallow up the less, and thou and thy son, and even Mary
yonder may be fain, thou in thy old age and they in their prime, to take
wage at another's hand, and to do a hireling's task in another's mill."
"If I do may I be--"
"William," said my mother, before my father could conclude, and we could
only guess what awful doom my father was about to invoke upon himself.
But enough had been said. Whether the mind of our household's head were
the more moved by the picture of his friends and neighbours reduced to
want, or by the picture of himself and his working for others, who had
always puts out work ourselves, I know not; but from that day forth
there was no more thought for many a long day of any change in the ways
we had used of old, and, for the new machines, my mother died in the
belief that the curse of Scripture was upon them.