A Month in Yorkshire Part 21

"Eh! that's Maum Cove, is it?" he said, as a turn in the road showed us the head of the valley; "that's what we've heard so much talk about.

Well, it's a grand scar." He seemed to repent of even this morsel of admiration, and helped his neighbour with strong resolutions not to turn aside and look up at the cliff from its base.

We each had a gla.s.s of ale at the public-house in the village. Before I was aware, one of my companions paid for the three, nor would he on any terms be persuaded otherwise.

"Hoot, lad," he rejoined, "say nought about it. I'd pay ten times as much for the pleasure of your talk." And with that he silenced me.

Although Gordale Scar is not more than a mile from Malham, they refused to go and see it. However, when we came to the grazier's house, and they heard that the Scar lay in the way to the pasture where the horse was turned out, they thought they wouldn't mind taking a look just, as they went. The good wife brought out bread, cheese, b.u.t.ter, and a jug of beer, and would have me sit down and partake with the others; regarding my plea that I was a stranger, and had just taken a drink, as worthless.

A few minutes sufficed, and then her son accompanied us, for without him the horse would never be found. We followed a road running along the base of the precipitous hills which cross the head of the valley, to a rustic tenement, dignified with the name of Gordale House; and there turned towards the cliffs by the side of a brook. At first there is nothing to indicate your approach to anything extraordinary: you enter a great chasm, where the crags rise high and singularly rugged, sprinkled here and there with a small fir or graceful ash, where the bright green turf, sloping up into all the ins and outs of the dark gray cliff, and the little brook babbling out towards the suns.h.i.+ne, between great ma.s.ses of rock fallen from above, enliven the otherwise gloomy scene. You might fancy yourself in a great roofless cave; but, ascending to the rear, you find an outlet, a sudden bend in the chasm, narrower, and more rocky and gloomy than the entrance. The cliffs rise higher and overhang fearfully above, appearing to meet indeed at the upper end; and there, from that grim crevice, rushes a waterfall. The water makes a bound, strikes the top of a rock, and, rus.h.i.+ng down on each side, forms an inverted / of splash and foam. And now you feel that Gordale Scar deserves all the admiration lavished upon it.

"Well!" exclaimed one of the Yorks.h.i.+remen, "who'd ha' thought to see anything like this? And we living all our life within twenty mile of it!

'Tis a wonderful place."

"So, you do believe at last," I rejoined, "that scenery is worth looking at, as well as a horse?"

"That I do. I don't wonder now that you come all the way from London to see our hills."

We crossed the fall, climbed up the rock into another bend of the chasm, where the water makes its first plunge, unseen from below, shut in by crags that wear a sterner frown. You look up to the summit and see the water tumbling through a ring of rock, so strangely has the disruptive shock there broken the cliff. The effect both on ear and eye as the torrent breaks into spray and dashes downwards in fantastic channels, is surprisingly impressive.

Only on one side is the pa.s.s accessible, and there so steep that your hands must aid in the ascent. We scrambled to the top and found ourselves on the margin of a table-land sloping gently upwards from the edge of the precipice, so bestrewn with upheaved rocks and lumps of stone, that but for the gra.s.s which grows rich and sweet between, whereof the sheep bite gladly, the aspect would indeed be savage. Along an irregular furrow, as it may be called, which deepens as it nears the precipice, flows the beck--coming, as the boy told us, from Malham Tarn.

There was another small stream, he said, which disappeared in a 'swallow' on his father's pasture; and in that swallow he had many times found large trout, struggling helplessly in their unexpected trap. And, pointing to the highest shoulder of the cliff, he said that a fox, once hard pressed by the hounds, had leaped over, followed by a dog, and both were killed by the fall.

After a few minutes of admiration, the Yorks.h.i.+remen and their guide began to move off across the fell, in search of the horse. One of them hoped we should meet again on the way back. The other said, "Not much hope o' that; for he won't go away from this till he have learnt it all by heart." Then we shook hands, and they promised to set up a pile of stones at a certain gate on their return, as a signal to me that they had pa.s.sed through.

True enough, I was in no haste to depart, and there was much to admire as well as "to learn." The sight of the innumerable shelves, with their fringe of gra.s.s, the diversity of jagged rocks thrusting their gray heads up into the sunlight, of the rugged and broken slopes, set me longing for a scramble. Hither and thither I went; now to a point where I could see miles of the cliffs, and mark how, in many places, owing to the splitting and s.h.i.+vering, the limestone wall resembles a row of organ pipes. Now into a gap all barren and stony with immemorial screes; where, however, you could hear the faint tinkle of hidden water, and pulling away the stones, discover small ferns and pale blades of gra.s.s along the course of the tiny current. Anon, returning to the Scar, I climbed to the top of the crag that juts midway in the rear of the chasm, surveying the scene below; then selecting a nook by the side of the beck, a little above its leap through the ring, I lay down and watched the water as it ran with innumerable sparkling cascades from the rise of the fell. Here the solitude was complete, and the view limited to a few yards of the hollow water-course patched with green and gray, and the bright blue sky above.

And while I lay, soothed by the murmur of the water, looking up at the great white clouds floating slowly across the blue, certain thoughts that had haunted me for some days shaped themselves in order in my brain; and with your permission, gracious reader, I here produce them:

A cloud of care had come across my mind; Ill-balanced hung the world: here pleasure all; There hopeless toil, and cruel pangs that fall On Poverty, to which but death seemed kind.

And so, with heart perplexed, I left behind The crowd of men, the town with smoky pall, And sought the hills, and breathed the mountain wind.

Hath G.o.d forgotten then the mean and small?

I mused, and gazed o'er purple fells outroll'd; When, lo! beneath an old thatched roof a gleam That kindled soon with sunset's gorgeous gold: Broad panes, nor fretted oriel brighter beam.

If glories thus on lattice rude unfold, Of life unlit by Heaven we may not deem.

The sun was beginning to drop towards the west before I left the pleasant hollow; and then with reluctance, for my holiday was near its close, and months would elapse before I should again hear the voice of a mountain brook, and slake myself in suns.h.i.+ne. Having returned to the village, I kept along the river bank to the head of the valley, where copse and enormous boulders, scattered about the narrow gra.s.sy level and in the bed of the stream, make a fine foreground to the magnificent limestone cliff of Malham Cove. Rising sheer to a height of nearly three hundred feet, the precipice curving inwards, b.u.t.tressed on each side by woody slopes, realizes Wordsworth's description--"semicirque profound;"

and while you look up at its pale marble-like surface, broken only by a narrow shelf--a stripe of green--accessible to goats and adventurous boys, you will be ready to say with the bard,

"Oh, had this vast theatric structure wound With finished sweep into a perfect round, No mightier work had gained the plausive smile Of all-beholding Phoebus!"

At a distance you might well imagine it to be a towering ruin, from which Time has not yet gnawed the traces of fallen chambers and colonnades. And perhaps yet more will you desire to see the cataract which once came rus.h.i.+ng down in one tremendous plunge from the summit, as is said, owing to some temporary stoppage of the underground channels. What a glorious fall that must have been! more than twice the height of Niagara.

From a low flat arch at the base of the cliff, about twenty feet in width, the river Aire rushes out, copiously fed by a subterranean source. The water sparkles as it flows forth into the light of day, and begins its course clear and bright as truth, yet fated to receive many a defilement ere it pours into the Ouse. Could the Naiads forsee what is to befall, how piteous would be their lamentations! The stream is at once of considerable volume, inhabited by trout, and you may fish at the very mouth of the arch.

Here, too, I scrambled up and down, crossed and recrossed the stream, to find all the points of view; then ascending to the hill-top I traced the line of cliff from the Cove to Gordale. It is a continuation of that great geological phenomenon already mentioned--the Craven fault--which, extending yet farther, terminates near Threshfield, the village by which we pa.s.sed last Sunday on our way to Kettlewell.

My return walk was quiet enough, and favourable to meditation. The Yorks.h.i.+remen had set up the preconcerted signal by the gate. I hope the horse did not drive the Scar quite out of their memory. Perhaps a lasting impression was made; for "Gordale-chasm" is, as Wordsworth says,

"----terrific as the lair Where the young lions couch."

I left Settle by the last evening train, journeying for the third time over the same ground, and came to the _Devons.h.i.+re Arms_ at Keighley just before the doors were locked for the night.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Keighley--Men in Pinafores--Walk to Haworth--Charlotte Bronte's Birthplace--The Church--The Pew--The Tombstone--The Marriage Register--s.h.i.+pley--Saltaire--A Model Town--Household Arrangements--I isn't the Gaffer--A Model Factory--Acres of Floors--Miles of Shafting--Weaving Shed--Thirty Thousand Yards a Day--Cunning Machinery--First Fleeces--s.h.i.+pley Feast--Sc.r.a.ps of Dialect--To Bradford--Rival Towns--Yorks.h.i.+re Sleuth-hounds-- Die like a Britoner.

Keighley is not p.r.o.nounced Kayley, as you might suppose, but Keatley, or Keithley, as some of the natives have it, flinging in a touch of the guttural. Like Skipton, it is a stony town; and, as the tall chimneys indicate, gets its living by converting wool into wearing apparel of sundry kinds. You meet numbers of men clad in long blue pinafores, from throat to instep; wool-sorters, who thus protect themselves from fluff.

The factory people were going to work next morning--the youngsters clattering over the pavement in their wooden clogs--as I left the town by the Halifax road, for Haworth, a walk of four miles, and all the way up-hill. The road runs along one side of a valley, which, when the houses are left behind, looks pretty with numerous trees and fields of gra.s.s and wheat, and a winding brook, and makes a pleasing foreground to the view of the town. The road itself is neither town nor country; the footpaths, as is not uncommon in Yorks.h.i.+re, are paved nearly all the way; and houses are frequent, tenanted by weavers, with here and there a little shop displaying oaten bread. An hour of ascent and you come to a cross-road, where, turning to the right for about a furlong, you see Haworth, piled from base to summit of a steep hill, the highest point crowned by the church. The road makes a long bend in approaching the acclivity, which, if you choose, may be avoided by a cut-off; but coming as a pilgrim you will perhaps at first desire to see all. You pa.s.s a board which notifies _Haworth Town_, and then begins the ascent painfully steep, bounded on one side by houses, on the other--where you look into the valley--by little gardens and a line of ragged little sheds and hutches. What a wearisome hill; you will half doubt whether horses can draw a load up it. Presently we have houses on both sides, and shops with plate-gla.s.s and mahogany mouldings, contrasting strongly with the general rustic aspect, and the primitive shop of the _Clogger_.

Some of the windows denote an expectation of visitors; the apothecary exhibits photographs of the church, the parsonage, and Mr. Bronte; and no one seems surprised at your arrival.

The _Black Bull_ stands invitingly on the hill-top. I was ready for breakfast, and the hostess quite ready to serve; and while I ate she talked of the family who made Haworth famous. She knew them all, brother and sisters: Mr. Nicholls had preached the day before in the morning; Mr. Bronte in the afternoon. It was mostly in the afternoon that the old gentleman preached, and he delivered his sermon without a book. The people felt sorry for his bereavements; and they all liked Mr. Nicholls.

She had had a good many visitors, but expected "a vast" before the summer was over.

From the inn to the churchyard is but a few paces. The church is ugly enough to have had a Puritan for architect; and there, just beyond the crowded graves, stands the parsonage, as unsmiling as the church. After I had looked at it from a distance, and around on the landscape, which, in summer dress, is not dreary, though bounded by dark moors, the s.e.xton came and admitted me to the church. He points to the low roof, and quotes Milton, and leads you to the family pew, and shows you the corner where _she_--that is, Charlotte--used to sit; and against the wall, but a few feet from this corner, you see the long plain memorial stone, with its melancholy list of names. As they descend, the inscriptions crowd close together; and beneath the lowest, that which records the decease of her who wrote _Jane Eyre_, there remains but a narrow blank for those which are to follow.[E]

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

Then the s.e.xton, turning away to the vestry, showed me in the marriage register the signatures of Charlotte Bronte, her husband, and father; and next, his collection of photographs, with an intimation that they were for sale. When he saw that I had not the slightest inclination to become a purchaser, to have seen the place was quite enough; he said, that if I had a card to send in the old gentleman would see me. It seemed to me, I replied, that the greatest kindness a stranger could show to the venerable pastor, would be, not to intrude upon him.

On some of the pews I noticed small plates affixed, notifying that Mr.

Mudbeck of Windytop Farm, or some other paris.h.i.+oner of somewhere else, "hath" three sittings, or four and a quarter, and so forth; and this invasion by 'vested rights' of the house of prayer and thanksgiving, appeared to me as the finis.h.i.+ng touch of its unattractive features.

The s.e.xton invited me to ascend the tower, but discovered that the key was missing; so, as I could not delay, I made a brief excursion on the moor behind the house, where heather-bloom masked the sombre hue; and then walked back to Keighley, and took the train for s.h.i.+pley, the nearest station to Saltaire.

It was the day of s.h.i.+pley feast, and the place was all in a hubbub, and numbers of factory people, leaving for a while their habitual manufacture of woollen goods out of a mixture of woollen and cotton, had come together to enjoy themselves. But no one seemed happy except the children; the men and women looked as if they did not know what to do with themselves. I took the opportunity to scan faces, and could not fail to be struck by the general ill-favoured expression. Whatever approach towards good looks that there was, clearly lay with the men; the women were positively ugly, and numbers of them remarkable for that protruding lower jaw which so characterizes many of the Irish peasantry.

Saltaire is about a mile from s.h.i.+pley. It is a new settlement in an old country; a most noteworthy example of what enterprise can and will accomplish where trade confides in political and social security. Here, in an agreeable district of the valley of the Aire--wooded hills on both sides--a magnificent factory and dependent town have been built, and with so much judgment as to mitigate or overcome the evils to which towns and factories have so long been obnoxious. The factory is built of stone in pure Italian style, and has a truly palatial appearance. What would the Plantagenets say, could they come back to life, and see trade inhabiting palaces far more stately than those of kings? The main building, of six stories, is seventy-two feet in height, and five hundred and fifty feet in length. In front, at some distance, standing quite apart, rises the great chimney, to an elevation of two hundred and fifty feet; a fine ornamental object, built to resemble a campanile.

The site is well chosen on the right bank of the Aire, between the Leeds and Liverpool ca.n.a.l, and the Leeds and Lancaster railway. Hence the readiest means are available for the reception and despatch of merchandise. A little apart, extending up the gentle slope, the young town of Saltaire is built, and in such a way as to realize the aspirations of a sanitary reformer. The houses are ranged in parallelograms, of which I counted sixteen, the fronts looking into a s.p.a.cious street; the backs into a lane about seven feet in width, which facilitates ventilation, admits the scavenger's cart, and serves as drying-ground. Streets and lanes are completely paved, the footways are excellent; there is a pillar post-office, and no lack of gas-lamps. The number of shopkeepers is regulated by Messrs. Salt, the owners of the property; and while one baker and grocer suffices to supply the wants of the town others will not be allowed to come in. A congregational chapel affords place for religious wors.h.i.+p, and a concert-hall for musical recreation, or lectures, The men who wish to tipple must go down to s.h.i.+pley, for Saltaire, as yet, has no public-house. If I mistake not, the owners are unwilling that there shall be one.

My request for leave to look in-doors was readily granted. The ordinary cla.s.s of houses have a kitchen with oven and boiler, a sink and copper; a parlour, or 'house' in the vernacular, two bedrooms, and a small back-yard, with out-offices. The floors, mantlepiece, and stairs, are of stone. The rent is 3s. 1d. a week. Gas is laid on at an extra charge, and the tenant finds burners. The supply of water is ample, but the water is hard, and has a smack of peat-bog in its flavour. A woman whom I saw was.h.i.+ng, told me the water lost much of its hardness if left to stand awhile. Each house has a back-door opening into the lane; and every stercorarium voids into the ash-pit, which is cleared out once a week at the landlord's cost. The pits are all accessible by a small trap-door from the lane; hence there is no intrusion on the premises in the work of cleansing. The drainage in other respects is well cared for; and the whole place is so clean and substantial, with handsome fronts to the princ.i.p.al rows, that you feel pleasure in observing it.

The central and corner houses are a story higher than the rest, and what with these and the handsome rows above referred to, there is accommodation for all cla.s.ses of the employed--spinners, overlookers, and clerks. After building two or three of the parallelograms, it was discovered that cellars were desirable, and since then every house has its cellar, in which, as the woman said, "we can keep our meat and milk sweet in hot weather." What a contrast, I thought, to the one closet in a lodging in some large town, where the food is kept side by side with soap and candles, the duster, and scrubbing-brus.h.!.+ And though the stone floors look chilly, coal is only fivepence-halfpenny a hundred-weight.

No one is allowed to live in the town who is not in some way employed by the firm. Most of the tenants to whom I spoke, expressed themselves well satisfied with their quarters, but two or three thought the houses dear; they could get a place down at s.h.i.+pley, or s.h.i.+pla, as they p.r.o.nounced it, for two-and-sixpence a week. I put a question to the baker: "I isn't the gaffer," he answered.

"Never mind," I replied; "if you are not the master, we can talk all the same."

He thought we could; and he too was one of those who did not like the new town. 'Twas too dear. He lived at s.h.i.+pla, and paid but four pounds a year for a house with a cellar under it, and a garden behind; and there he kept a pig, which was not permitted at Saltaire. There was "a vast"

worked in the mill who did not live under Mr. Salt; they came from Bradford, and a train, called the Saltaire train, "brought 'em in the morning, and fetched 'em home at night."

The railway runs between the town and the factory. You cross by a handsome stone bridge, quite in keeping with the prevalent style of architecture. The hands were returning from dinner as I approached after my survey of the colony, and the prodigious clatter of clogs was well-nigh deafening. My letter of introduction procured me the favour of Mr. George Salt's guidance. First, he showed me a model of the premises, by which I saw that a six-story wing, if such it may be called, comprising the warehouses, projects at a right angle from the rear of the main building, with the combing-shed on one side, the weaving-shed on the other. In that combing-shed 3500 persons sat down in perfect comfort to a house-warming dinner. The weaving-shed is twice as large.

Then there are the workshops of the smiths, machinists, and other artisans; packing, was.h.i.+ng, and drying-rooms, and a gasometer to maintain five thousand lights; so that in all the buildings cover six acres and a half. Include the whole of the floors, and the s.p.a.ce is twelve acres. Rails are laid from the line in front into the ground-floor of the building; hence there is no porterage, no loading and unloading except by machinery; and the ca.n.a.l at the back is equally convenient for water-carriage. In front the ground is laid out as an ornamental shrubbery, terminated at one corner by the graceful campanile.

Then I was conducted to the boilers, a row of ten, sunk underground in the solid rock, below the level of the shrubbery. They devour one hundred and twenty tons of coal in a week; but with economy, for the tall chimney pours out no clouds of dense black smoke. The prevention is accomplished by careful feeding, and leaving the furnace-door open half an inch, to admit a full stream of air. I was amazed at the sight of such a range of boilers, and yet they were not enough, and an excavation was making to receive others.