Walks in the Black Country and its Green Border-Land/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
VISITS TO IRON MANUFACTORIES—THE BRADES WORKS, AND THEIR PRODUCTIONS—THE WREKIN—WILLENHALL.
IN visiting some of the leading manufacturing establishments of the district. I selected those which have a reputation abroad, especially in the United States. There are certain English names inscribed on articles of common use which may be truly called household words in America Barlow, Butcher, and Rodgers are names familiar to every American boy sporting a pocket knife of any size or price. But there is still another name more exclusively connected with an implement of wide use with us. That is the Brades trowel. This brand rules the market, and probably it is borne by ninety-nine in a hundred of those wielded by the American masons. For this reason I had a particular desire to see the establishment in operation, and felt amply repaid for my visit. The Brades Iron and Steel Works are situated in Oldbury, between Birmingham and Dudley, and are the growth of a century or more of accretion, each decade of the century seemingly adding its independent structure, so that the whole looks like a small village of buildings annexed to each other by narrower roads between them than the public streets of a town. It is truly a representative establishment, embracing in itself nearly all the industries and productions of the district. I doubt if such another can be found in England or the world for this remarkable variety of enterprise. In the first place, the company have sunk seven pairs of coal mines around their works. Most of the good coal they sell, using themselves the refuse for their furnaces and forges. They also own and work their own iron ore. Then from the furnace to the forge, from pig to bar, goes this raw material of their manufactures. The iron, now ready for its hundred uses, parts company for several stages of manipulation, then unites again in infinite shapes and relations. A portion is selected with great care for the carbonating kilns or ovens in which it is, as it were, seethed and saturated with the fire and fumes of charcoal. It now comes out blistered steel, fit for working up into tools that do not require a cutting edge; and a considerable quantity is used at this stage for such purposes. But most of it is now broken up into short pieces for the terrible crucibles or melting-pots of the air furnaces. If any one has a curiosity to know how air may be made to act on combustion, or how the air-draught power has been developed, let him study the simple economy and arrangement of these furnaces. There is a large range of about twenty of them, all under draught if not blast at once. Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, seven times heated, was a kitchen fire compared with one of these for heat. Each is charged with its covered pot full of blistered steel with coal to match. Their lidded mouths dull the roaring sound of the terrible combustion, but the furnace-men show by their looks the intensity of the heat. The pouring-off sight is really thrilling. When the lid is removed from each furnace, and the pot of molten metal lifted out by a pair of long-handled tongs with rounded jaws, even a spectator must have steady nerves to look at it. To speak of white heat, or the heat of molten gold or silver would be like comparing the flame of a yellow tallow candle with the magnesian light. As the stalwart men, naked to their waists, remove the cover from the pot and pour the fluid into flasks for ingots, the brightness is almost blinding even to one standing at the distance of several paces. As the whizzing stream runs into the mould, it emits a sparkling spray dashed with rainbow tints from various ignited gases. When the metal is sufficiently cooled and hardened, it is taken from the moulds in ingots or bars of cast-steel about twenty inches in length, and an inch and a half square. It is then rolled, and hammered into all sizes and shapes, each operation refining and fitting it for the finest uses to which it is converted in the smith-shops of the establishment.
Most of the iron made into cast-steel and shear-steel comes from Sweden, and is the best for that purpose yet found in the world. In fact, no really good edge-tool can be made of any other iron. The English makes good blistered steel for wagon-springs and common tools; but does not combine toughness with hardness sufficiently for axes, cutlery, and even hoes and hammers. Still the quality of steel made of English iron has been so much improved by the new processes lately introduced, that the Swedish has been considerably reduced in price. The Brades Works use themselves most of the steel they make in the manufacture of their agricultural and other tools. They get better prices for the steel they sell than any other house in England except Huntsman, of Sheffield. They supplied the pen trade of Birmingham up to about 1850, at which time the rolled cast-steel was reduced to 38s. per cwt., and Sheffield took the business. They make their own files for economy's sake, as they last so much longer when made of such steel as they manufacture themselves.
First on the list of the Brades manufactory, as a special distinction, are their famous trowels, which in their line of use and excellence arc equal to the celebrated Toledo blades in the implemental machinery of war. They are fully as clastic as any sword-blades, and can be bent double either way without a permanent crook. Plantation hoes rank next to trowels in their celebrity. Vast quantities are sent both to the United States and Brazil; those for the latter country are full twice the weight of the former. As they are for the cultivation of cotton in both countries, this difference in size and weight is rather singular. The union of machine labour in their production has been brought to great perfection. The rolling-mill and trip-hammer do the greatest part of the work. In the first place, the moulds or patterns are formed. The cast-steel is edged, or champered, in the bar, then cut into lengths of three or four inches to correspond with the width of the hoc-pattern. The borax weld is often made complete at one heat, and never more than two are taken. This operation is performed by the common hand-sledge and hammer; and nothing but a firm weld of the steel to the iron is sought for. The pattern or form thus steeled goes next to the great trip-hammer, which brings it out to its required size and thickness. Thence it is taken to the anvil of the smith-shop, where the eye is formed with remarkable tact and celerity, and the blade trimmed into shape with the shears. It may serve to show the facility and fertility of their production, to say that four men will steel fifty dozen, and one man will hammer out twenty dozen a day of these great hoes. The iron is worth from £8. 10s. to £10 per ton, and the steel from 42s. to 45s. per cwt. It takes about three pounds of iron and six ounces of steel per hoe. The small coal, mostly used, costs on delivery about 7s. per ton.
I have dwelt more fully upon trowels and hoes, as the manufacture which has won for the Brades Works their especial reputation abroad. But they turn out a prodigious number of all the implements known to agricultural labour—shovels, spades, forks, garden-hoes, chaff-cutters, steel mould-boards for ploughs, and other articles of almost infinite variety and use. It may suffice to show the variety in design, shape, and size of one class of these articles to say, that the model department of the establishment contains 4,000 different patterns for straw-cutting machines, and nearly 2,000 patterns for cast-steel mould-boards for ploughs! Now, considering that, with the exception of the iron imported from Sweden for making their cast-steel, the Brades Works draw all the material they manufacture into these infinitely-varied implements from the bowels of the earth around and under them, one cannot contemplate their operations and productions without admiration. Indeed they constitute one of the chief lions of The Black Country. I said, under them; which is literally true, for the whole village of buildings comprising the establishment has sunk full eleven feet below their first level. Once their foundations stood higher than the canal that runs by their side. The top of the canal is now nearly as high as their eaves, as it has been watched by rangers who have kept up its first level, while the furnace and forge-buildings with all their chimneys have sunk from being undermined. In returning to the railway station we saw a score of houses sunk up to their knees, and we looked down from the street upon floors once above its level, but now four or five feet below it. This is a characteristic feature of The Black Country. Everywhere you have the signs and presentiment of treacherous foundation. You see buildings that have subsided from their first levels at different angles of deflection, one end often sinking lower than the other, and making a rent in the outer walls. Some go down pretty evenly, like the Brades Works. Right under those terrible furnaces the moles are at work night and day rooting out walks through deep coal-seams. Under the foundations of tall-steepled churches all a-light with the evening lamps and resounding with the voices of devotion, the pickmen are at work grubbing lanes under towns, hills, railways, and canals. Everybody seems to feel that they live, labour, eat, and sleep on a very uncertain and unsteady footing. But the decline is very gentle. A house seldom if ever sinks so deep that its occupants have to escape through the roof. The railways and canals, which require better levels, have to be looked to with some care; but no serious disasters have ever occurred in the district in consequence of this honey-combing of its under-priming.
When I first thought of making walks in The Black Country and its Green Border-Land, I proposed to explore the former pretty thoroughly before I entered upon the latter. But I soon found that one loses the vivid freshness of transition by this process of inspection, so that you do not look at the sceneries of nature or the noisy and busy scenes of human industry with such lively sensation, when seeing only one of these spectacles the same week or day. It matters not which you see first; whether you dip into this district of fire and smoke and artificial thunder and lightning from the greenest and quietest of rural landscapes, or into these from the black forest of forge and furnace chimneys; each produces a sensation of mind from the .contrast, which it would not if seen by itself alone. Thus I would suggest to any one who goes out from Birmingham or other large town to visit The Black Country, to go on, after he has seen its salient features, to the Green Border-Land beyond, and he will find several watch-towers of Nature planted at convenient distances around the iron district, as if on purpose to show the brightest, happiest, heavenliest of her sceneries in contrast with the huge swart industries of man. There are several of these eminences which furnish such points of observation, especially the Clent and Lickey Hills, which look off into vistas of rural life and beauty embellished with all the golden and emerald jewellery of the spring and summer's setting.
But there is a hill more famous still for its height, position, history, and scenery; a kind of Pisgah, which, if it does not overlook a Jordan, yet commands the view of a more picturesque river, or the Severn, with the little meandering Canaan through which it runs. This is "The Wrekin," the centre and cynosure of Shropshire's social life—the Auld Reckie of the county toasts. Never a hill outside of Judea had such a social status and attraction. To "All Friends round the Wrekin" is a toast and a saying full of pleasant associations and suggestions. It sounds like "All the folks at home," and has a kind of common hearth-stone ring to it. I had intended to make this famous hill, which has become such a household and home-meaning word, the starting-point of my walks in the Green Border-Land of The Black Country: so, having challenged the poet Capern to accompany me, we set off on one of the brightest and cheeriest days of an English autumn. Even The Black Country through which we passed looked its very best, though the smoke was all the dunner for lack of cloud or murky mist. Little patches of struggling verdure, dashed with sooty stubble, caught some of the life and glow of the sunlight between the shadows of the towering chimneys. Wolverhampton is the border-town of the district. On its western outskirt the scene changes with surprising and sudden contrast. In a few minutes you are in the Green Border-Land. All is quiet, rural, and peaceful. Everything looks and feels as if it had a safe and permanent foundation. All the houses stand level and strong. You see none tipped over end-ways with one leg sunk to the knee. The cows and sheep feed or ruminate as if they felt at home, and would find all their pasture above-board on the morrow. The trees in hedge-row, copse, and grove seem to thank heaven out of the whispering lips of all their leaves that they can breathe its pure air and drink in the life of its blessed sun, with no black, despotic chimneys to molest or make them afraid. We were as much surprised as delighted at this transition. It was the change of a minute's work by rail on leaving Wolverhampton. We were right in the midst of a highly-cultivated, picturesque country where Nature was in her holiday dress. There was a peep which would have photographed capitally and have made a beautiful picture. It was a straight and even piece of canal running between an avenue of tall and graceful trees a third of a mile in length. The sun in all its mild glory was looking up through this beautiful avenue, and turned the water between as we crossed it, to a long, silver-faced mirror, in which all the trees were looking at their faces, as if doing up their toilet for one of Nature's joy days. It was but a moment's glimpse, but long enough for the mind to photograph it vividly on the memory. We passed through a narrow belt or rather zone of this pleasant land, when we suddenly dashed into another Black Country—or that of Shropshire. A few miles beyond the antique, picturesque little town of Shiffnal we plunged into the sierra negra of Oaken Gates. They might have been oaken in the time of the Druids, but now they may well be taken for the iron gates of some subterranean or Plutonian region. Here are successive ranges of blue-black hills, looking like huge barrows, which have been windlassed up from unknown depths, leaving corresponding spaces in that unseen world larger than any catacombs we read of. Some of these barrows must be full sixty feet in height and a quarter of a mile in length. Should this volume go to another edition perhaps it will present a photograph of a section of these little black mountains sent up to the surface and planted in thick-set rows over it by the coal and iron miners of the district.
We left the train at Wellington, the station nearest to the Wrekin. I never knew before which of the Wellingtons the great English field-marshal associated to his title. I had always thought it must have been the Somersetshire Wellington; but, on seeing this Shropshire town and Oaken Gates, I am persuaded his title should have been taken here if it were not. No locality could have more appropriately given him the name of "Iron Duke." Wellington is a considerable town, built in the old English fashion, as if to make the utmost of its space. This in early times was a pressing necessity when a town was built and walled for defence as well as for commercial and social life. But this habit became a second nature to the town-builders of old when the villages were sparsely scattered over the country, and there was all the space they could covet for wide streets and deep door-yards. Even on such sites they built as if closely compressed within relentless walls. Wellington has much of the aspect of this mediæval economy, and some of its streets are crooked and narrow enough to please any antiquarian tourist. We noticed one in the centre of the town called Dun Cow Lane. Then some of the inns have all the quaint nomenclature of the olden times, which always give such zest and relish to their entertainment. At one of these we lunched on bread and cheese in the old tap-room fashion, then set forth on our small Alpine expedition. We came very near mounting the wrong hill, for there are several grouped together near the town. The Wrekin, however, cannot be mistaken when seen in comparison with the others. Indeed some derive its name from wre and ken, two British words which they say mean the "chief hill." Being set aright by a lad we met, we proceeded by a winding road between the two heights. The one on our left as we ascended presented a remarkable form and appearance. Several hundred feet of its flank showed a geological formation worth studying, and which I will not undertake to describe in the usual stiff and technical phraseology. To the common reader, who rather tires of such terms, I would only say: Imagine a small, precipitous mountain with all its bare, steep rocks on fire, and all its alternate currents of red flame and blue smoke blown and twisted about by the wind. When you have this sight fresh and distinct in your imagination, just fancy the frigid zone let in upon the huge conflagration, and all that twisted flame and smoke congealed in an instant to solid rock, and you have the best idea I can give of the appearance of this remarkable geological formation. As we continued our way upward, this little mountain on the left, which we at first mistook for the Wrekin, assumed an animal form, something like Arthur's Seat at Edinburgh, but not so lion-like as that celebrated height. It took the shape of a huge elephant crouching on its haunches. From the shoulders backward it was covered with a tawny hide of frostbitten and russet fern. At every rod of our ascent the shape showed some new feature of resemblance, until the elephant was fully developed in all his good-natured strength and stature, as if looking off into the great valley northward like a huge beast of burden that had brought it a splendid load of good weather.
For about a third of the ascent we had a very good roadway, when at this point we left it by a path at a right angle and mounted to the "Halfway House," where we rested for a few minutes. It is a large cottage planted at a good point of view, and fitted up very comfortably for companies of visiters, even of the usual pic nic size. The waiting and refreshment room is a large apartment, chaired for forty or fifty persons, with a bay window for the northern aspect, embracing the whole end of the building. Although only a third of the way up the height, this out-look commands a prospect worth the ascent to the cottage to see. We were most agreeably surprised at the ease and comfort of the rest of the journey. We had fancied a rough, steep, and broken ascent over crags and precipices without a beaten track. But instead of this there was what might be called an inclined lawn all the way from the cottage to the summit, and thence down on the other side for a long distance. It was a lawn carpeted with that short, elastic moss which seems to quicken and delight one's footsteps. On each side was a thick growth of firs, birches, and other trees, with here and there an opening to give you a peep into the wide world beyond. We preferred, however, to pass these side glances without much notice, that the whole panorama might burst upon us at once at the top. And this fully realized our imaginations thus excited. We purposely restricted our eyes until we reached the summit, crowned by a small mound, with a short post or stake stuck in the centre of it, like the spike in the helmet of a Prussian soldier. This was "Heaven Gate;" and it opened upon a view of heaven and earth at that moment beautiful and glorious, beyond the genius of poet or painter to picture to a distant eye. It was the best possible light that could be thrown upon it, to bring out all its best features to vivid, breathing life. The mellowest sun of an English autumn was descending the western horizon, and no other autumn sun the wide world round equals it, even at noon. In the first place, it seems to come down twice as near the earth as in America, as if it had closer social relation to it; or, for a few weeks in the year, delighted to spread its golden wings nearer to the glad and beautiful sceneries which it had created before they took the white veil of winter's frosts and snow. Then, at this season, it fills the whole heavens with a humid but not damp mist of light, unlike the dry, crimson suffusion of our American Indian summer's sky—a mist not golden of decided nuance, but like the weak dilution of the atmosphere of some vast orb of molten gold more distant than the sun. In such a light we looked off into the great valley, north, south, and west. It was a vast basin filled with autumnal glory that ran over the brim on all sides. From the height on which we stood, a hundred smaller hills sank almost to the levels of the common fields that floored the great amphitheatre with their living mosaic. The tall-timbered woods and groves interspersed looked like trunkless shrubs that spread their tinted foliage on the ground like rich carpets of leaves stemmed living in the earth. Truly, beyond other distance, height lends enchantment to the view. It exalts every valley, brings high places low, makes rough places smooth, and forms a little world and walls it in with an horizon to fit and grace its own altitude. Far beyond the Severn sloped up the successive ranges of Welsh hills and mountains, as if they were the folds of the same azure cloud, that dipped its upper edge in the sun's nearer glory. Tops and ridges a dozen leagues apart seemed in the distance like the eyebrows and forehead-locks of the same face. The sun was just at the line whence it could pour aslant its best flood adown these crescent slopes into the great valley below, which the meandering Severn jewelled here and there with gold and silver brooches set in emerald. It was a scenery to be drunk in by reverent and thoughtful eyes; to take into the mind and treasure for the reflections of future days; to put with landscapes that live most vividly in memory. The view embraced something more than landscapes, however varied and beautiful. The blue lines of the Snowdonian range were a long way from the top of the nearest hill on the other side of the Severn, but the one looked to the eye like the foot and the other the crown of the same mountain. But what were these intervening distances compared with the historic intervals spread out before us! Here, but a little way before us, hidden among the green growths of a modern civilization, lies buried the old Roman Uriconium, once a goodly city under several Roman emperors. No promiscuous huddle of wattled cottages and clay cabins was it in those days of Roman power and dominion. For twice the life's length of civilization in the Western Hemisphere the all-conquering eagle outstretched its silken wings over the walls of that busy city, now so dead and deeply buried. Pieces of its skeleton have been exhumed, such as carved columns and capitals, ornaments, coins, and all the ordinary articles of a civilized people, proving that it was a permanent city of homes and families. How mysterious the evaporation of that mighty empire—of such unparalleled solidities of human character! The Romans cane to this island to subdue its soil and climate as well as its wild population. Doubtless they felt more pride in making the conquest than in the overthrow of Carthage and the extinction of the Punic nation; for this was the Ultima Thule, this was the extreme western wall of the known world which Alexander never reached, and on this Rome should plant her eagles as the conterminous boundary of the earth and of her own empire. All their lines of march, all the roads they made, the walled cities they built, and the military posts they planted, proved this intent and ambition. It was not to extirpate or enslave, but to subdue a savage people to the conditions of civilization that they invaded and occupied the country. This little walled town thus buried for centuries was one of their centres and sources of civilized population. What has been already exhumed shows that it was built for a permanent and enlightened community, like all the other Roman cities in Britain that the Roman soldiers were only its garrison, to defend a civilian population of all ages, of mostly husbands and wives and children. For twice the space of time that our American Boston has lived as a civilized community, this Uriconium had a consecutive population, increasing through a dozen successive generations. No history is extant to tell us how many women from Italy were brought into the country; but we know that the highest officers of the Roman army married British wives, and, doubtless, all the private soldiers allowed to marry did the same. Thus Uriconium, though in the first decade may have been only a fortified camp of soldiers, in the next would have become the residence of families, even if no Roman-born woman had ever been introduced within its walls. This Latinized community must have increased without any accessions from Italy, probably by the same ratio of augmentation as any other city population multiplying itself without immigration from abroad. What kind of language its succcessive generations spoke—whether a Latin patois, or a partially Latinized Celt—is a question that philological antiquaries might discuss with interest. It is probable that all the other Roman cities in England became just such self-increasing populations of what may be called the Latin race in blood and language, and that they had advanced a long way in the arts, habits, tastes, and occupations of civilized life when the Roman soldiery was withdrawn to defend the great metropolis of the world. The Roman empire died suddenly of heart disease. A man may be a Titan in size, with legs and arms of immense length and strength; but he may collapse and fall lifeless to the earth from paralysis as easily as a pigmy. So Rome fell, from no want of vigour in its limbs, but from a disease of the heart that had been generating for centuries. What became of all those Latinized populations in Britain, when the Roman soldiers left it? They certainly must have numbered half a million. They ought to have been double that figure. There were not vessels enough floating on the seas of the world to transport these numerous and populous communities, even if Italy could have given them house-room within its borders. They must have remained here and blended with the Saxons, through them with the Danes, and through both with the Normans.
The hill-top of the Wrekin overlooking this buried Roman city, and elevated 1,300 feet above the sea, is not only a grand point of observation but of reflection, commanding landscapes of wonderful extent and variety and scenes of historical interest dotting, like diversely-tinted fields, the checkered expanse of eighteen centuries. As the eye passes from one feature to another of the great valley, so the mind passes from scene to scene and fact to fact in the histories of the land that have been enacted in that space. It does not require an exuberant imagination for the thought to pass from the Roman, sentinel pacing the wall of Uriconium in the moonlight, to Falstaff swaggering from the battle-field at Shrewsbury into the tent of Prince "Hal" with the dead Hotspur on his back. You need not think of common sense or its hum-drum dictates, if you really listen with attentive and expectant faculties for "Shrewsbury clock" striking Falstaff's "long hour." There is that famous old city itself standing with its brave, tall steeples half-melted in the mist, with the Severn folding it clear around the waste with its arm, as if it were the very bride of its love. All the space between, and up and down the valley is dotted with centres of historical and industrial interest interspersed with the varied aspects of the landscape. It would be almost irreverent to blend them promiscuously. But they have done it themselves. Yonder is the little village of Acton Burnell where Edward I held his parliament in quarters which might reconcile the present one to their cramped space. On this occasion the Commons held their sessions in a barn, and probably had bundles of straw for their "ministerial benches."
The speaker's chair may have been a perch on the bay-beam. The peers temporal and spiritual probably met in the knights' hall, well garnished with boars' heads and deers' horns. Here, in speeches of Norman French, they discussed the public affairs of the kingdom. There is Broseley, well known in the tap-rooms of this and half-a-dozen other kingdoms for its tobacco-pipes. Sir Walter Raleigh was the making of that village and its business when he introduced the Indian weed from America. The Broseley clay was the best fitted for this tubular pottery, and its potters worked out a marvellous variety of patterns for burning the narcotic incense to an evil habit. One of the local archæologists has collected one hundred and thirty specimens, all of different design and make. Between these two points of historical and industrial interest is Wenlock and its old abbey ruin with its ranks of pillars and arches marked with all the genius of the religious sculptors of the Middle Ages. It is a structure ruined picturesquely by the old abbey-mauler of Henry VIII. Oliver's predecessor and teacher in the tactics of demolition. Then in the mosaic of all these heterogenous associations, you have Coalbrookdale with its kitchen-souvenirs. Who ever heard its name pronounced without thinking of a sad-iron or an iron porridge-pot? What village or hamlet in the United States has not some memento of Coalbrookdale in suites of its hollow-ware? From the Wrekin the eye runs up and down the slopes of this great basined expanse, and takes in all this checker-work of nature, art, labour, and history in a glance.
We could not have selected a more favourable time or have had a better day for our view from the Wrekin. We not only had a splendid vista of landscapes grouped picturesquely in the best lights, but we saw a whole season in its most beautiful aspects; and the best season in the English year. The plane scenery in England in autumn cannot be equalled by that of any other country, nor by the view in this at any other time of the year. Our American skies, mountains, and trees in the Indian summer are more brilliant in their tinting than those of Eng- land; but the surface or landscape picture here in the same month excels ours in finish and beauty, and also surpasses the English scenery in spring or summer. In spring there is a monotony of tinting in the general landscape after all that the flowers can do to vary the aspect. The green shows all its resources of colouring; but green is the ground of every shade, and it absorbs and governs all. But in an English autumn you have all the colours on an equal footing, and no one has an absorbing place or power in the landscape, although its own is retained to all its life. You see a green in the middle of November which the grass or grain-fields never show in spring. For nothing in May or June can equal the green of a field of Swede turnips, or the vivid hue of mangel-wurzel. These crops come out rich in the autumn landscape here; and when alternated with the bright stubble of recently-harvested wheat and barley-fields, and fields of lake-coloured soil harrowed and smoothed to a garden's surface for the harvests of another year, you have the ground-work of a picture which the English May does not present, and which our American autumn cannot equal, because these root-crops do not make a feature of our landscape. Then the English hedges that, like gilded frames, enclose these various fields, give to the whole vista an aspect which no other season or country can equal. Indeed, in green itself the October of England outdoes its June in distinctness, diversity, and grouping of the shades of that maidenhood colour of vegetable life. For, besides these luxuriant crops then in full verdure, there are pasture lands and twice-mown meadows showing, between long files of hedge-row trees, as vividly green as any our landscape presents on the summer edge of May. Then there are other qualities that not only compensate the season for all its early frosts have abstracted, but give it more than the virgin month of summer can offer to the senses. The bloom and breath of flowers in May delight the eye and that sense which needs not sight for its enjoyment. But October's flowers, which she hangs in the sun from a thousand orchards, are beautifully tinted, too, and the breath of her ripe pears and apples is more delicious still, nor will it pall so soon as that of roses upon the delicate sense that drinks in the odours of the three life-bearing seasons of the year. Over and above this universal savour of ripened fruits and harvested corn, there is a sense of plenty which even a blind man may enjoy in autumn, as if the earth were offering up her thanksgiving incense to the soft bending skies above, so full of the sun's best smile that they look like humid eyes moistened and glistening with tears of joy.
When standing on the Wrekin's crown. I felt it were worth the journey and the ascent merely to see from it the English autumn in its full glory. But blending this vista with all the other features of the view, it was a grand standpoint for observation and reflection for the eye and mind to roam in thoughtful silence over that wide scene of the industries and histories of England and all its motley races back to the dawn of Christianity. And there was stillness, as if the height were hushed in the clearer view or quickened sense of holy sublimities which the loud and noisy levels of earth's daily bustle, toil, and turmoil cannot feel. No wonder that, in the days of old when religious men essayed to get nearer to God and His fellowship by climbing the silent mountains for prayer, some long-bearded devotee of sequestered meditation should have pitched his sanctum on this lofty and solemn hill. Such a recluse was Nicholas de Denton, who in the reign of Henry III fixed his abode here; and that sovereign was so impressed with the spiritual influence which the hermit would imbibe and diffuse at this great altitude, that, in order to afford him "greater leisure for holy exercise, and to support him during his life, so long as he should be a hermit on the aforesaid mountain," the sheriff of Shropshire was ordered to supply him with six quarters of corn from the Pendleston Mill, near Bridgnorth. Doubtless it was the understanding that the hermit should pay toll on this corn in daily supplication for his sovereign.
The Wrekin is not only a remarkable eminence for the eye but also for the ear; especially just as the sun is sinking to the rim of the horizon. From all hills, both great and small, voices, that would not be heard at noon, come up to you as if the lower skies exhaled them, as they do the earth's invisible vapours. But we listened to them from this serene height with wonder that sounds of such small projectile force could ascend so high. The rippling, rollicking voices of children in far-off villages blended and floated up to us in that cheery music of young human life that is so delightful. Then we heard the silvery murmur of church bells striking the hour but could not tell whence it came or whither it went. It came like a pulse of sound that had touched every golden ray of the sun's setting light in heaven, and set it agoing like a harp-string. Then listening to this and that, as to the happy music of human spheres, a gander full five miles away spoke up in a brassy, peevish ejaculation, as if jealous for his order and determined to let the upper world know that other bipeds than man walked the earth and looked erect on heaven. Indeed. I think some of the tongues we heard must have uttered their voices in Shrewsbury, or in villages ten miles distant.
The point which we found most favourable for observation was not the very crown of the hill, but a little lower down on the western side, or the "Bladder Stone," a term which must have been intended to convey the German idea of a sausage, or of one made of turnip and liver. The rock presents not only these colours, but the chopped--up materials of a sausage. One can easily see, when standing on this brassy-looking crown of the Wrekin, or when looking at the contour of the hill from a distance, that the name it bears is not Celtic but Latin, Saxonized in that queer, quaint way in which our common and remote ancestors served even classical words of Italian origin. I have already noticed the marked resemblance of the sister hill to an elephant couchant The Roman soldiers, as they penetrated up into the country on the Severn, then its only broken road, must have been equally struck with the resemblance of this little mountain to the head of a wild bull, or of the urus, surmounted by a helmet. When they came to pitch their camp upon it, and see what manner of brazen-looking helmet it wore in the Bladder Stone, and to plant their flag-staff upon it, the fancy was strikingly realized, and it would have been the most natural thing in the world for them to call the hill Uriconus. The rank and file of the soldiery would have shortened the word by a syllable in pronunciation, and called it Uricon, and the half-Latinized population of the district would have adopted the same appellation. As the Romans probably had neither an English w or i in their alphabet, they would have spelt and pronounced the word Urecon, and that has done better than a hundred other Latin words in coming down to the present day through such a medley of various races and tongues, in escaping with so little change as that from Uricon to Wrekin. It would be natural for the Romans to call the permanent city which they built afterwards almost at the foot of this hill, Uriconium.
Having luxuriated for an hour or two on the helmet of this famous hill in the scenery it commanded, we descended, with the descending sun, the western side, and made our way back to Wellington along the wooded skirt of the eminence. Following footpaths which were faintly marked among the leaves and across brooks, we reached the main road to the town. Midway we over-took a regular Saxon—a fair-haired broad-shouldered man of about thirty, wearing the hereditary livery and untaxed powder of a miller. We fell immediately into conversation with him, with the wish to elicit from him some additional facts or ideas to add to our impressions already obtained We found that he was a contented, happy wight walking upon the green border-land that divides between the early dreams and mild realities of married life, and that both were blending pleasantly in his present experience. For, on asking if he had been often on the Wrekin, and knew the people who lived in the half-way cottage, he said he knew both well and had often visited them. Indeed, he added, with a deeper colour to his honest face and half-timidly, he had married his wife at the cottage about three years ago. Here was a spice of romance to season our walk; so we drew him out gently on various points of his history. His name was William, and his mountain bride was Mary Ann, and he spoke of her as fondly and as proudly as if she were his queen as well as his wife, and we honestly, not quizzingly, admired this sentiment. We believed it was sincere and deep within him, and the face he put upon it was a true and honest reflection of it. Indeed, my friend Capern felt his muse stirred by it, and on the spot, without two minutes' reflection, treated the blushing miller to this verse, purporting to come from the young wife:
"Your passion is strong, but the Wrekin is steep,
And the journey is double, my dear;
So, as your affection I am willing to keep,
I will now save you trouble, my dear."
The rustic husband seemed so pleased at this poetical idea of his Mary Ann's feelings towards him ere she descended from her elevated height to be his wife, that I regretted being unable to add to his satisfaction by a verse of my own. But as I could do nothing in the rhyming line. I gave him a tit-bit from Dryden's "Ode" in the two lines, slightly modified:
It proved a good hit, for he evidently gave me"She raised a mortal to the skies,
He drew an angel down."
the credit of composing the lines as well as of understanding how the matter really stood between him and the girl he wooed and won on the Wrekin. Indeed, as we walked along under the brows of the two hills, we could see his lips move now and then as if whispering over to himself the lines we had devoted to his domestic felicity. He was evidently bent carrying then to his young wife. Capern was delighted at the impression upon him in this direction, so, on the spur of the impulse, he gave him a practical suggestion in a homely verse to be remembered in pursuing his daily occupation:
"The poor man carries his grist to the mill.
The miller a merciful wight is he.
The poor man has many mouths to fill.
So he lets the toll of the poor man be;
The farmer sends a two-bushel bag
of the very best wheat his barn doth hold.
And the miller, a jolly-faced, merry wag.
Says, a moderate dish when the corn is tolled.
The rich man sends a well-filled sack.
For the rich man hath plenty in store.
And the burden sore bendeth the miller's back.
So he lightens the weight for himself and the poor."
This was well meant on the poet's part, but not seemingly so well taken on the part of the miller, who was busy storing away in his mind the verse about his wife and their first love and joint happiness. He did not understand Capern's ethics in regard to toll quite so clearly; doubtless thinking it would have been an unsatisfactory policy in the estimation of his most profitable customers. Our ways diverging at the edge of the town, we exchanged a hearty "Good evening" with him, and both of us voted unanimously that our meeting such a good specimen of everyday human nature was a pleasant incident, bringing us down from rather visionary heights of observation and musing to the common levels of working life.
We found the little inn where we had lunched swept and garnished for our reception. The landlady, a smart, bright young woman, had somehow or other conceived the notion at our first call, that we were not exactly of the common run of her tap-room guests; so, on our return, she ushered us into her little back parlour, which was full ten feet square, and as comfortable and genial a little room as could be. There were no rigid right angles about it, but its walls were wavy and rounded and softened at the corners; and the ceiling was so delightfully low that I could not stand upright with my hat on under the large beam overhead. The best furniture of the house was tastefully arrayed in this cosy little room, and florid saints and soldiers stood on the mantle-piece in rich robes of porcelain velvet. And there was the genuine English tea-kettle on the bright hob singing a welcome to us. And the young landlady had set another musical instrument a-going opposite, or a large music box, which, as we entered, struck up, "Over the water to Charlie," and played it with caroling fervour; and it seemed to animate the bright-faced kettle, as the two, though singing different tunes, made a cheery concert for us. Then the mistress had tidied herself up neatly and smartly, with the evident intent to do her best to make us at home, and she did it thoroughly. Beyond our expectations, she could supply us with slippers, so that we could pull off our damp shoes and sit by the bright fire with a delicious sense of rest and comfort. The copper face of the singing kettle was all aglow with its warm radiance; and, forgetting the Wrekin and its great surroundings and suggestions, we fell into a discussion of the domestic music of this harp of the hearth; how its little twittering melodies had cheered the homes of the poor for long generations back; what songs it had sung to peeled and rough-handed labour at the close of the day's toil; what it had been to sick-rooms, and tents of wounded men on the fought battle-field; what inspiration it had breathed into social life and the companionship of the morning and evening meals. Really, our thoughts radiated outward from the burnished and palpitating lid further than they did from the helmet of the Wrekin; and I pressed Capern to make them the subject of a poem, under the title of "THE SONG OF THE TEA-KETTLE." This he promised to do; and I have no doubt will bring out the music and mission of that hot-water piano of the poor man's home fully; so I will say nothing more about it here.
After an appetising tea-supper on the little round table before the pleasant fire, we bade our hostess "Good night," and returned by an early evening train to Birmingham, with most enjoyable recollections of the day's excursion and incidents.
As the largest manufactory of door locks and fittings in America is that of my old neighbours in New Britain, Connecticut, Russell, Erwin, & Co., I had a particular desire to see what may be called a rival establishment in Willenhall, about ten miles north of Birmingham. This is one of the oldest and most extensive lock factories in the kingdom, and is called The Summerford Works; Messrs. Carpenter & Tildesley are the proprietors, and the father of the former was the founder in 1795. Mr. J. C. Tildesley[1] is perhaps the best authority on locks to be found anywhere, having written up their history through four thousand years of record. In the valuable paper he contributed to that coöperative work of literature, "Birmingham and the Midland Hardware District," he has quoted Aratus, Ariston, Eustathius, Callimachus, Homer, and other Greek poets and writers from their days down to this on the subject of keys and their infinite variety of construction. In the Middle Ages locks and keys exercised and disciplined the finest mechanical skill and artistic taste of various ingenious communities. They were not only elaborated for security but for ornament, and nothing made in these modern days can approach those unique productions. Indeed, the artist in iron, steel, and brass set to work upon the lock and key for a city gate, cathedral, or palace door to connect the memory of his name with the edifice for ever; or as a Raphael would sit down to a Madonna which should attract the reverent admiration of ages to come. The artist-mechanic was moved by the same impulse and in the same direction. The religious enthusiasm of the age inspired him with the same devotion to his work, and he threw his whole heart, mind, body, and soul into it. If the great Italian painter presented to the world, his "Assumption of the Virgin," he fixed his eye and heart upward in the wake of the same glory. He with his steel pencils, chisels, and drills would do something in the same line. And he did it. His idea was rude and material, but his sentiment was honest and clear; and let no one of this later age of light blame him for his conception. Such was the thought of a mechanic of Gaul in the dawning light of Christianity in that country, soon after the name of France was born. The sketch of his Serrure de Tabernacle is still preserved. On the escutcheon surrounding the key-hole are figures of our Saviour on one side and two angels on the other—angels of mercy doubtless meant, posted at the portal of the blest to salute the incoming saint receiving the welcome, "Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of thy Lord." The work of a life apparently was devoted to the elaborate and delicate engraving of images, symbols, and scrolls, and inworking of beads around the edges.
As we come down to the utilitarian centuries, locks and keys began to be made more for practical use than fanciful ornament. The Chinese, as in many other departments of mechanical skill, seem to have led the way in the manufacture of unpickable locks. They introduced the lever, or tumbler principle. The Dutch get the credit of the combination or letter-lock: It was so constructed that the letters of the alphabet, which are engraved on four revolving rings, may be required, by pre-arrangement, to spell a certain word, or number of words, before it can be opened. One of these locks was made to open only with A. M. E. N. The poet Carew, in verses written in 1620, thus describes this complex contrivance:
English ingenuity in inventing new defences for locks was largely developed in the reign of Elizabeth, when one skilful smith is said to have made a lock consisting of eleven pieces of iron, steel, and brass, all of which, with a pipe-key, weighed only two grains of gold. The Marquis of Worcester describes a lock invented in 1640 so constructed that "if a stranger attempt to open it, it catches his hand as a trap catches a fox, though so far from maiming him for life, yet so far marketh him that if suspected he might easily be detected." The first patent for a lock in England was granted in 1774; from that date to this inventors and improvers have made a vigorous race of competition. The list of successful runners numbers about 120 patentees; and as every one of them must have introduced some new principle or application, one can easily imagine what varieties have been introduced. The Napoleon of locks, who reigned with undisputed or undeposed sway for half a century, was Joseph Bramah, of London. He patented his famous lock in 1784, and not only he, but the whole out-door and in-door world had perfect faith in its impregnable defence and security. He threw down his glove to all comers in the following notice in his shop window: "The artist who can make an instrument that will pick or open this lock will receive two hundred guineas the moment it is produced." For many years this challenge was kept standing in his window. The very confidence it expressed seemed to repress all attempts to undermine it. In fact, the confidence was mutual in the challenged and challenger. But 1851 came with its great Exhibition in London, and its assemblage of skill and art from other countries. Our American Hobbs came with others of his ingenious countrymen, and one day, passing Bramah's window, noticed this challenge, and took up the glove. He set to work to test the inviolability of the lock, and, to the surprise of everybody, opened it after a few days of persevering labour. The sensation produced by this feat was almost national. Indeed it seemed as if one of the bulwarks of the nation's faith in its safety was broken down. But, as Corporal Trim would say, it was "worth a regiment of horse" to the lock-makers in England. It gave a great stimulus to the trade by bringing into it new science, skill, and genius. Bramah had virtually stopped the way against further improvement. He was supposed to have reached the outer line of perfection, and his lock was regarded as a finality. But Hobbs cleared the track of this heavy and obstructive notion, and the lock trade of the kingdom was greatly benefited by his skill and its feat."As doth a lock
That goes with letters, for till every one be known.
The lock's as fast as if you had found none."
Chubb is another great name connected with the manufacture of locks. Two or three generations of the family have introduced various improvements; the most distinctive of which is their celebrated detector, which acts when any false key is introduced into the lock, and bars the burglar's further progress. So extensive are the combinations invented by them, that the present Mr. Chubb affirms that it would be quite practicable to make locks for all the doors of all the houses in London, with a distinct, different key to each lock, and yet there should be one master-key to pass the whole. The Chubb's patent was granted in 1818. Mr. J. Carpenter, of Willenhall, and Mr. John Young, of Wolverhampton, jointly obtained a patent in 1830 for a lock in which the action of the catch bolt was perpendicular instead of horizontal. This invention resulted in great success; and "Carpenter's Locks" became literally a household word in every market at home and abroad. The few noticed are some of the 120 varieties patented in Great Britain, many of which came into extensive use.
Willenhall is the chief town of the district in the lock trade. There are about 275 employers and 3,000 hands engaged in the manufacture. The earnings of the men and boys vary from 18s, to 30s, per week. The production of the whole district, including padlocks and every other thing that goes by a key, is estimated at 31,500 dozens per week, 450 employers and about 5,000 hands being engaged in the trade. Nearly all countries of the world supply a market; Australia and New Zealand being the most important customers for door-locks. The American demand has been small comparatively of late years, and is rather decreasing still in consequence of the perfection and extent to which the manufacture has been brought in the United States. Thirty years ago it was estimated that half the locks made in the district went to America. For the last few years the demand from that side was confined mostly to till and padlocks; but these articles are now being made extensively with us; so few of any description are now imported.
The factory of Messrs. Carpenter and Tildesley is one of the oldest and most extensive establishments in England, and turns out a remarkable variety of locks in form, size, and price. They make about 200 different kinds, and six sizes to each kind, or 1,200 different locks in pattern or size. They produce about 200 dozen a week; the price varying from 7d, to £1 per lock. But if the American market is virtually closed against these articles, it is still open widely to another which yet holds its own against any protected competition on our side. That is, the currycomb. The cheapness and facility with which this is produced here are truly remarkable, and not easily to be matched by American ingenuity. The factory makes about 1,100 dozens a week, most of which go to America. They are purchased from one halſpenny, or one cent, to one shilling apiece. Think of a currycomb made for actual service, with teeth and handle complete, for one cent! There are also nearly a hundred different styles or patterns of the article. The locksmiths of America. France, and Germany are energetic rivals of the English manufacturers. The Americans have a great advantage not only in their application of labour-saving machinery to the process, but from the superiority of their moulding sand over that used in this country. Their brass and iron castings consequently are much smoother, and need much less work in finishing the different parts. An artisan who had gone to the States recently wrote to his friend here, that he could make 150 door-locks in a day, whereas twelve were about the average rate for a workman in England. Of course, improved machinery and processes of manipulation as well as superiority of moulding sand and castings made up a part of this difference.
The hands employed in this branch of manufacture embrace both sexes and all ages capable of manual labour. And as many of the operations are light, they furnish labour for a large number of children. Perhaps no trade of equal production ever adopted the apprentice system more extensively. In 1841 the number of apprentices was 651, and most of these were brought from the workhouses of the immediate neighbourhood. This and other circumstances connected with the character and habits of the hands generally produced a rather low morale. But from that time this kind of apprentice system has supplied a smaller proportion of the operatives, and they have much improved in their general character. While at Willenhall I went to see one of the numerous coal-mines in the neighbourhood, which have erected many parallels of high, black bulwarks, which no army could scale without tall ladders. The men were just ascending from the pit, so I only ventured to look over into its dark mouth, and to wonder if the apostle of the Apocalypse ever saw anything of the kind before he had the sublime vision which he described with such splendid diction and imagery. How wonderful is the industrial economy of human necessities! What infinite and mysterious provisions to meet and satisfy their demands! The greatest mystery of all is this, that the demands of these necessities should not only produce occupations but tastes of endless variety. I have not the slightest doubt that every mother's son of these subterranean toilers would prefer, at the same price, to grub on his back or knees by lamp-light down in the coal seams fifty fathoms under ground, rather than to plough, reap, or mow in the sunniest fields in England, with its sweetest singing-birds piping to him from the hedge.
I was struck with the vast amount of coal wasted in these immense barrows of the refuse of the pits. Mr. Tildeslcy, who was with me, admitted that one-sixth of the whole mass would burn well in the grate; and I thought much of the severe frost and of the cold hearths of the poor in Birmingham last winter, who were out of work and out of bread. I am sure there was coal enough in the long, narrow hill on which I stood to warm the house of every such man and woman in the town if it had been riddled out. I wish the authorities would try the experiment next winter, and set one hundred men, begging for work, at this employment to furnish coal for the destitute. I am confident that all these coal-pit hills of refuse will be utilized some day for agricultural or other purposes; that they will be pulverized and conveyed by canals to distant parts of the country to supply an element that certain soils require for fertile production.
Willenhall has a good Saxon accent and meaning to its name; and its history is rich with the legacy of centuries. Here the Saxons and Danes had one of their sanguinary battles for the mastery of England, and the latter were defeated here with the loss, it is chronicled, of two kings and many nobles. In later times it was the scene of one of the most romantic passages in English history. Charles II, after his defeat at Worcester, found one of his most secure and trusted hiding-places at Bentley Hall, belonging to a fine old English gentleman by the name of Lane, and now occupied by the incumbent of Willenhall. Here he remained for several days, an honoured and welcome guest. But when he saw the notice of a thousand pounds reward to any man "who should discover and deliver up the person of Charles Stewart," and the penalty of high treason declared against those "who presumed to harbour or conceal him," he felt it was time to make his way to a country where such offers and denunciations would not hold against him. His host devised the mode of escape, which has become such a subject for the painter. He mounted his outlawed sovereign upon a horse and put his daughter. Jane Lane, behind him, and despatched them to a friend in Bristol, a port whence he hoped to reach France. He was to act the invalid son of a neighbour, who desired to try the merits of the sea air, and was willing to work his passage to it by holding the reins for Jane Lane. Her brother, the famous Col. Lane, managed to overtake them accidentally at each stopping-place for the night, and between them they were able to secure comfortable quarters for the son of their neighbour, who felt more poorly than he looked. In this way they reached Bristol, and "Over the Water to Charlie" the tune that the music-box played to us in the little inn at the foot of the Wrekin.
- ↑ In The Resources, Products and Industrial History of Birmingham and the Midland Hardware District, a Series of Reports, collected by the Local Industries Committee of the British Association at Birmingham, in 1865, Tildesley is credited variously as "J. C. Tildesley" and "J. E. Tildesley". (Wikisource contributor note)