Clouds of Blacks--What Sheffield was and is--A detestable Town
--Razors and knives--Perfect Work, Imperfect Workmen--Foul Talk
--How Files are Made--Good Iron, Good Steel--Breaking-up and
Melting--Making the Crucibles--Casting--Ingots--File Forgers--
Machinery Baffled--Cutting the Teeth--Hardening--Cleaning and
Testing--Elliott's Statue--A Ramble to the Corn-law Rhymer's
Haunt--Rivelin--Bilberry-gatherers--Ribbledin--The Poet's Words
--A Desecration--To Manchester--A few Words on the Exhibition.
When I woke in the morning and saw what a stratum of 'blacks' had come
in at the window during the night, I admired still more the persevering
virtue which maintains cleanliness under such very adverse
circumstances. We commonly think the London atmosphere bad; but it is
purity compared with Sheffield. The town, too, is full of strange,
uncouth noises, by night as well as by day, that send their echo far. I
had been woke more than once by ponderous thumps and sounding shocks,
which made me fancy the Cyclops themselves were taking a turn at the
hammers. Sheffield raised a regiment to march against the Sepoys; why
not raise a company to put down its own pestiferous blacks?
Who would think that here grew the many-leagued oak forests in which
Gurth and Wamba roamed; that in a later day, when the Talbots were lords
of the domain, there were trees in the park under which a hundred horses
might find shelter? Here lived that famous Talbot, the terror of the
French; here George, the fourth Earl, built a mansion in which Wolsey
lodged while on his way to die at Leicester; here the Queen of Scots was
kept for a season in durance; here, as appears by a Court Roll, dated
1590, the Right Honorable George Earl of Shrewsbury assented to the
trade regulations of "the Fellowship and Company of Cutlers and Makers
of Knives," whose handicraft was even then an ancient one, for Chaucer
mentions the "Shefeld thwitel." Now, what with furnaces and forges,
rolling mills, and the many contrivances used by the men of iron and
steel, the landscape is spoiled of its loveliness, and Silence is driven
to remoter haunts.
On the other hand, Sheffield is renowned for its knives and files all
over the world. It boasts a People's College and a Philosophical
Society. With it are associated the names of Chantrey, Montgomery, and
Ebenezer Elliott. When you see the place, you will not wonder that
Elliott's poetry is what it is; for how could a man be expected to write
amiable things in such a detestable town?
Ever since my conversation with the _Mechaniker_, while on the way to
Prague, when he spoke so earnestly in praise of English files, my desire
to see how files were made became impatiently strong. Sheffield is
famous also for razors; so there was a sight of two interesting
manufactures to be hoped for when I set out after breakfast to test my
credentials. Fortune favoured me; and, in the works of Messrs. Rodgers,
I saw the men take flat bars of steel and shape them by the aid of fire
and hammer into razor-blades with remarkable expedition and accuracy. So
expert have they become by long practice, that with the hammer only they
form the blade and tang so nicely, as to leave but little for the
grinders to waste. I saw also the forging of knife-blades, the making of
the handles, the sawing of the buckhorn and ivory by circular saws, and
the heap of ivory-dust which is sold to knowing cooks, and by them
converted into gelatine. I saw how the knives are fitted together with
temporary rivets to ensure perfect action and finish, before the final
touches are given. And as we went from room to room, and I thought that
each man had been working for years at the same thing, repeating the
same movements over and over again, I could not help pitying them; for
it seemed to me that they were a sacrifice to the high reputation of
English cutlery. Something more than a People's College and Mechanics'
Institute would be needed to counteract the deadening effect of
unvarying mechanical occupation; and where there is no relish for
out-door recreation in the woods and on the hills, hurtful excitements
are the natural consequence.
I had often heard that Sheffield is the most foul-mouthed town in the
kingdom, and my experience unfortunately adds confirmation. While in
the train coming from Barnsley, and in my walks about the town, I heard
more filthy and obscene talk than could be heard in Wapping in a year.
Not to trust to the impressions of the day, I inquired of a resident
banker, and he testified that the foul talk that assailed his ears, was
to him, a continual affliction.
On the wall of the grinding-shop a tablet, set up at the cost of the
men, preserves the name of a grinder, who by excellence of workmanship
and long and faithful service, achieved merit for himself and the trade.
At their work the men sit astride on a low seat in rows of four, one
behind the other, leaning over their stones and wheels. For razors, the
grindstones are small, so as to produce the hollow surface which favours
fineness of edge. From the first a vivid stream of sparks flies off; but
the second is a leaden wheel; the third is leather touched with crocus,
to give the polish to the steel; and after that comes the whet. To carry
off the dust, each man has a fan-box in front of his wheel, through
which all the noxious floating particles are drawn by the rapid current
of air therein produced. To this fan the grinders of the present
generation owe more years of health and life than fell to the lot of
their fathers, who inhaled the dust, earned high wages, and died soon of
disease of the lungs. I was surprised by the men's dexterity; by a
series of quick movements, they finished every part of the blade on the
stone and wheels.
From the razors I went to the files, at Moss and Gamble's manufactory,
in another part of the town. There is scarcely a street from which you
cannot see the hills crowned by wood which environ the town--that is, at
intervals only, through the thinnest streams of smoke. The town itself
is hilly, and the more you see of the neighbourhood, the more will you
agree with those who say, "What a beautiful place Sheffield would be, if
Sheffield were not there!"
My first impression of the file-works, combined stacks of Swedish iron
in bars; ranges of steel bars of various shape, square, flat,
three-cornered, round, and half-round; heaps of broken steel, the fresh
edges glittering in the sun; heaps of broken crucibles, and the roar of
furnaces, noise of bellows, hammer-strokes innumerable, and dust and
smoke, and other things, that to a stranger had very much the appearance
of rubbish and confusion.
However, there is no confusion; every man is diligent at his task; so if
you please, reader, we will try and get a notion of the way in which
those bars of Swedish iron are converted into excellent files. Swedish
iron is chosen because it is the best; no iron hitherto discovered
equals it for purity and strength, and of this the most esteemed is
known as 'Hoop L,' from its brand being an =L= within a hoop. "If you
want good steel to come out of the furnace," say the knowing ones, "you
must put good iron in;" and some of them hold that, "when the devil is
put into the crucible, nothing but the devil will come out:" hence we
may believe their moral code to be sufficient for its purpose. The bars,
at a guess, are about eight feet long, three inches broad, and one inch
thick. To begin the process, they are piled in a furnace between
alternate layers of charcoal, the surfaces kept carefully from contact,
and are there subjected to fire for eight or nine days. To enable the
workmen to watch the process, small trial pieces are so placed that they
can be drawn out for examination through a small hole in the front of
the furnace. In large furnaces, twelve tons of iron are converted at
once. The long-continued heat, which is kept below the melting-point,
drives off the impurities; the bars, from contact with the charcoal,
become carbonized and hardened; and when the fiery ordeal is over, they
appear thickly bossed with bubbles or blisters, in which condition they
are described as 'blistered steel.'
Now come the operations which convert these blistered bars into the
finished bars of steel above-mentioned, smooth and uniform of surface,
and well-nigh hard as diamond. The blistered bars are taken from the
furnace and broken up into small pieces; the fresh edges show
innumerable crystals of different dimensions, according to the quality
of the iron, and have much the appearance of frosted silver. The pieces
are carefully assorted and weighed. The weighers judge of the quality at
a glance, and mix the sorts in due proportion in the scales in readiness
for the melters, who put each parcel into its proper crucible, and drop
the crucibles through holes in a floor into a glowing furnace, where
they are left for about half a day.
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'd
The wide-horn'd stag, or with his bowmen bold
Wag'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 trunks
That 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, flows
The 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."