THE LUDDITE NOVELS 9: BENTLEY, INHERITANCE

 The Centres of Yorkshire Luddism

1] Almondbury & Castle Hill 2] Milnsbridge 3] Warren House 4] Rawfolds 5] Hartshead 6] Dumb Steeple 7 Three Nuns 7] The Shears 8] The Yew Tree 9] The Star 10] Brighouse and Raistrick 11] Bradley Woods 

Inheritance, Phillis Bentley, 1931 (London, Gollanz, 1979)

Geography/nomenclature

Apart from changing the River Colne to the ‘Ire’ and calling the valley ‘Ire Valley’, place names are mildly encoded by changing the first part of the actual name.  Consequently   ‘Huddersfield’ becomes ‘Annotsfield’ and  ‘Milsnbridge’ becomes ‘Irebridge’.  Similarly Sir Joseph Radcliffe becomes ‘Sir Archibald Stancliffe’ and the inventor Enoch Taylor is named after his original trade ‘Enoch Smith’ , though other personal names are more completely transformed; William Horsfall becomes ‘William Oldroyd’.  He is part of the Oldroyd dynasty that dominate Marthwaite until the Great Depression.  The fictional ‘Marthwaite’ is a more complex fusion of ‘Marsden’ and ‘Slaithwaite’, mill towns to the west of Huddersfield in the Colne valley on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal.  Conversely the names of actual Luddites, like George Mellor and Joe Booth are left intact or hardly changed and the Radical Tory factory campaigner Richard Oastler enters the narrative under his own name. 

The least contrived part of the book are the various landscapes that depict how the valley is changing during the spread of industrialisation.  

The landscape of the Colne Valley (the 'Ire Valley')

A view that shows the typical constituents of the landscape that inspired Bentley.   The valley is dominated by mills, in this case the tower of Titanic Mills.  Housing reaches half-way up the hills.  Above the houses are isolated farms (top right) and fields.  Above the fields are rough grazing.  Note the heavy stone gate post on the left.  Shaping such a stone would take many man-hours but they are typical of the field entrances constructed from the 17th to the 19th century. 

The book opens with a typical conflation of fact and invention.   Book 1 Chapter 3 is set in 'Marthwaite' but mentions two actual inns.  The first, The Red Lion, was in the centre of Marsden and used for billeting troops, the other, The Moorcock was a meeting place for Luddites and was  about a mile south west of the village on Mount Road.   http://www.marsdenhistory.co.uk/leisure/public-houses/  They epitomise the conflict between the forces of protest and enforcement that runs through Book 1.    Neither inn survived into the 21st century.

The Red Lion was in Market Place, Marsden on the site of what is now a solictors.

A few stones in a field and a levelled area mark the site of The Moorcock Inn. 

Symbolism and Psychology

The name ‘Ire’ is cut down from river that flows through Leeds: the Aire, but the name functions allusively as it suggests a dale full of anger.   Each part of the narrative is divided into books based on violent economic confrontations between master and operative and the equally violent transformation of Huddersfield from a small medieval town to an expanding centre of industry.

As the main focus of the book is the passion and personalities of the Oldroyds and related families, much of the economic development of the valley takes place off-stage.  The Olydroyds are involved in installing the first textile machines in the valley but not in the construction of canals or railways.   Objects or events only come into focus when they obtrude on the Oldroyds.    The ‘Physical Force’ Chartists (simply called ‘Chartists’ by Bentley ) who sabotage Syke Mill, literally march into view in Book III, Chapter III, draw the boiler plug and march out of the narrative.   In this narrative that mixes Romantic with Post-Freudian symbolism, the mechanical energies of steam and water stand for the submerged passions running through the leading characters.  When Will Oldroyd’s mill is invaded by Chartists, the language describing his feelings is charged with sexual terms: ‘His heart sank and he had a moment’s anguish at his own impotence’, ‘his heart felt swollen and enormous’, [emphasis added ] (Bk II, Chp II.2, p 291).  After this violation, he suffers a fatal heart attack; his heart has been part of the mill.

The shooting of the older Will Oldroyd is set in a context that is as much Freudian as economic.  Will irrationally blames himself for his father’s death: ‘His voice broke; an awful poisoned chill, a horror as though he had committed incest, ran through his every vein’. Bk 1, Chp IV.2 ,p 121.  All that has happened is that he has slept with Mary, the sister of Joe who has inadvertently accompanied Will’s father’s killers.  His father has urged a socially advantageous marriage instead: ‘there’s Brigg’s daughter up at Bin Royd … and Brigg’s doing nicely for himself now’ (Bk1, Chp 1.2, 31).  The pattern is repeated in each generation that follows.  Sexual urges pull together young men and women from different classes who otherwise have nothing in common.  Following in the tradition established by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, where Mr Bennet marries the desirable but brainless Mrs Bennet, these marriages usually prove unsatisfactory for the man.  The problem is intensified as the 19th century develops and class barriers become more pronounced.    The younger Will Oldroyd has a reasonably satisfactory second marriage with the illiterate Mary.  His elder son Briggs makes a similar marriage but he is inspired by pragmatism and lust, rather than his father’s mix of love, desire and guilt.   Briggs has little interest in women except in so far as they provide sexual satisfaction and heirs.   He marries the lower-class Polly, who he has got pregnant, though he knows she has no social prestige.  The point is emphasised by his son, the younger Briggs: ‘Her speech was dreadful and her manners worse’ (Bk IV, Chp 1.1, p 353).    Even as late as the Edwardian period  the pattern repeats itself;  the desire of the gentleman Francis for the secretary Carmine ends up in pregnancy, a hurried marriage and subsequent recriminations.  If the book has a feminist theme it is along the lines of Marie Stope’s feminism; every female in the book would be happier if she could control her own fertility.

Inadvertently the book replicates the debate between Freud and his breakaway rivals Adler and Rank over whether the sex drive or the will to power dominates civilisation.     On the first page of the book the Oldroyds are described as ‘determined, wilful men’, (Bk 1 , Chp I.1., p 11) and the father and son of the 1812 generation are both called ‘Will’ , as a contraction of ‘William’.  The shared name places an additional Oedipal burden on the psychology of the son:  ‘ “I’m just like him,” thought Will; “ I’m not soft either” ’, (Bk 1, Chp I.1, p 12).  Young Will’s ‘will’ and his hardness is expressed by his sexual triumph over Mary and his imagining of triumph over the Luddites: ‘fight them to the bitter end’ (Bk 1, Chp I.2, p 25).   Surprisingly the urgency of the Oldroyd males’ lust is matched by a conscience; their seductions end in marriage, though it is hinted that the elder Briggs is not a faithful husband: ‘Brigg had other women he liked quite as well,’ (Bk III, Chp V.6, p 33).  Neither lust nor will is as unscrupulous as might be expected and the two intertwine inextricably throughout the history of the Ire Valley.   In part this reflects the tastes of Bentlley's contemporary public; the 'bonk-buster' has yet to be invented.   More deeply it shows Bentley's interest in the way that the sex drive and the will to power alternate or form supportive partnerships.

 What appears to be a Victorian pattern of the upper class male preying on the lower class is updated by Bentley’s insistence that desire is not one sided.  Though Mary’s desire for Will is described as ‘acceptance’ (Bk I, Chp I.1, p1 5), the highly civilised Janie finds that young Brigg appeals to her ‘animal’ side: ‘He was so rich, so glossy, such a magnificent animal’, (Bk IV, Chp II.3, p 383).       Brigg’s desire, like that of all the male Oldroyds, is described in terms of ‘throbbing’.   The first time Will sees Mary in Book I it makes him ‘throb with ecstasy’, (BkI, Chp I.1, p 15).  This ‘throbbing’ is made visible in the forehead, rather than the penis, but still stands for uncontrollable urges: ‘Brigg felt inclined to burst out into a violent rage; the vein in his forehead throbbed’, (Bk IV, Chp II.1, p 366)  Deprived of Janie, who would have been more than his match in her intellect and will, Brigg makes a society marriage to Charlotte Stancliffe, a marriage that has so little passion in it that sex apparently stops after the birth of Francis.  The restless energy that drives the Oldroyds to build mills and restore their frequently lost fortunes appears to be sexual energy.    What might appear an exception to this rule actually reinforces it.   The illegitimate Jonathan (‘Joth’) rejects a job in  Oldroyds’ factory and marries an intelligent older woman Helena.  Despite this looking like an attempt to find a mother figure, the two are intellectual comrades and evidently experience a strong sexual attraction, judging from the five children they produce.    Will and Brigg remark on the fact with a mixture of jest and envy: ‘Will and Brigg were privately rather tickled by the size of Jonathan’s family; they made ribald jokes about it to each other’, (Bk III, Chp II, p 276).   Consequently, the book implies, Joth is another Oldroyd but the energy left over after sex is channelled into causes of liberation, not domination, fighting for the 10 Hour Act and the rights of Trades Unions amongst other ideals.    With conscious irony the book shows the pursuit of human rights to be part of the illegitimate, not legitimate side of the family.

Nevertheless, apart from the attraction between Joth and Helena,  sexuality is seen in terms of submission and domination from the earliest pages of the book onward.    Mary appears to expect nothing different: ‘Do with me as you will’, (Bk 1, Chp 1.1, p 18), though Janie refuses to submit to her desire for Briggs.  This does not make her happy.   She marries Charley Mellor, a marriage that makes her intellectually and sexually frustrated and leaves her: ‘a shrewish, naïve, narrow-minded woman’ (BkV, Ch IV .1, p 494).  The implicit feminism of the text’s acknowledgement of the power of female sexual desire is contradicted when Book III falls back on conventions deriving from 19th century novels.  In Book III the expression of female desire proves disastrous.  This is shown when the indulged, sensuous Sophie causes catastrophe in Book III, Chp II when her courtship of the attractive but hapless Frederick results in Frederick forgetting to deliver his warning about the Chartist mob.   Consequently her grandfather’s mill is damaged and old Will suffers his fatal stroke.    The Oedipal pattern of Book I has been repeated; the desire of the younger generation has led to the death of the father, though this time it is a daughter not a son who transgresses.     Sophie’s lust for Frederick leads to a disastrous marriage dominated by wilfulness not will, embodied when her insistence on going riding causes the miscarriage of her child (Bk III, Chp V.3, p 319).  So far this looks like a warning that Trollope might have issued against a life of ‘passionate pleasure’ but Sophie is treated with some sympathy in so far as she is seen to be a victim of her libido.  ‘ She felt a terrible physical subjection’ to a husband she knows is otherwise worthless (Bk III, Cp V.3, p 320).    As in the case of the older Will Oldroyd, Bentley turns to industry to symbolise the danger and recklessness of Sophie’s passions.  Sophie is keen to invest in the new railways that are carving their way through the hills to Annotsfield and keen to catch a train to the excitement of the Chester Races.  She and Frederick are killed in a crash caused by too many excursion trains being packed onto the same line.  At the start of the next book tragedy is repeated as farce as young Briggs wrecks a dog-cart that he’s riding fast to impress a pretty girl.   Characteristically Old Briggs’ response to the emotional and financial ruin left behind by Sophie’s death is a declaration of will with strong Freudian undertones.  Like Enoch Smith he intends to be: ‘Hard as his own iron’, (Bk III, Chp V.5,p 328).

Ecology

In line with the book’s interest in the triumph of the will, the dramatic transformations of the Ire Valley are seen as the imposition of order on intractable material, much like the Oldroyds see the imposition of machinery onto their workforce.   

Though the Colne Valley has nothing as spectacular as the Ribblehead Viaduct, the area was transformed by the construction of 

canals and railways.  In a typical scene a railway viaduct crosses the Huddersfield narrow canal. 

The text shares the interest in dissent shown by the 19th century novels but the trope has been transformed.  Dissent is what directs Joth’s discontent and rebellion into constructive channels.  His experience is neatly aligned with young Will’s in a Book called ‘Divergence’ to indicate  that the half-brothers are embarking on different and parallel courses.  Both get lost in storms on the fringes of York, from which they emerge with a new determination.  These storms are as much subjective as objective phenomena.    The rain and wind-swept night which Joth negotiates after the Racecourse meeting  is seen through the perspective of his illness and fatigue ’The darkness began to heave and sway about him as he toiled along,’  (Bk III, Chp II, p 258)  When Joth wakes however, he wakes to the light of reason and he is being cared for by the people who will guide his political and emotional life in the future, Richard Oastler and Helena Singleton.  In another parallelism both salute him with similar words: ‘Poor lad! Poor lad!’ (Oastler), ‘Poor boy!  Poor boy!’ (Helena) (Bk III, Chp II, p 260/1)    As a supporter of Richard Oastler he becomes part of a ‘loyal opposition’ with practical and ameliorative not destructive and Millennial objectives.  Dissent, in the Ire Valley, tames not encourages violent protest.

 Knavesmire rain 2017. 

 It is one of the Strays of York, belonging to the Freemen of the city.   It is a surprisingly large and empty space on the outskirts of 

town.  In these conditions the modern racecourse is hardly noticeable.   It was here that Richard Oastler, campaigning for the Ten Hour Bill with a mass demonstration; the   'Pilgrimage to York'; paused during a thunderstorm. 

thehttps://www.theguardian.com/uk/the-northerner/2013/jan/16/york-heritage-radical-history-walks-luddites-gay-rights-communist-karl-marx 

It would be apt if readers are to imagine that it is on Knavesmire that Will experiences his crisis of confidence after the hanging of Joe.  Lost in a blinding snowstorm of ‘whirling flakes’ he feels ‘how agreeable it would be to just give up, ‘ (Bk I, Chp V.3, p 145).  

Politics

Inheritance offers a dialectic of genetics rather than economics.   Every generation repeats the conflict between class and desire without achieving synthesis.  This pattern of sexual passion, leading to submission or resistance seems to be equated with the struggle between capitalism and labour.   At the end of the book David, the product of the upper-class Oldroyds and the working-class Mellors, explores the Ire Valley to rediscover his heritage.  His conclusion about the class-struggle is, yet again, the same as that offered by Mrs Gaskell’s Mary Barton published 84 years previously.  Any difference lies in tone not content.   Mrs Gaskell is earnest and evangelical: ‘No one thought of treating the workmen as brethren and friends, and openly, clearly, as appealing to reasonable men, stating the exact and full circumstances which led the masters to think it was the wise policy of the time to make sacrifices themselves, and to hope for them from the operatives’.  (Ch  p2 13).  Bentley’s tone, filtered through David's youth, is naïve and direct: ‘It seems a pity that they [management and workers] can’t put their heads together instead of … banging them together’, (Bk VI, Ch IV.1, p 564).  

The nearest equivalent in Marsden to the replacement of Old Syke Mill by Syke Mill is the replacement of Top Bank Mill by Bank Bottom Mill, though Top Bank Mill no longer exists.  It was demolished in 1891.

Butterley Reservoir from Standedge.

Top Bank Mill, like Old Syke Mill was sited at the head of a small valley.   There is no trace of it left.

             It was situated where the present banking for the Butterley Reservoir is, centre left in the picture above.    

http://www.marsdenhistory.co.uk/work/mills.html

Despite the text’s determination to find resolution and compromise, the logic of the narrative pushes in a different direction.  As David explores the Ire Valley at the end of Book VI he finds the ruins of Dean Head House and Old Syke Mill.   Capitalism has no sentimental reverence for history.   Capitalism in the Ire Valley follows its inexorable laws of profit and loss with the same inexorability as the train that carries David and his family out of the Ire Valley.  David’s father Francis has used the ‘new money’ of the mills to create for himself a life of a feudal squire, in Emsley Hall.  Once Syke Mill stops producing profit his bank, uninfluenced by his social prestige, forecloses.  First the hall is sold, then the mill.  It is clear that the family has no future in the Ire Valley, indeed even the cloth trade seems doomed, but against the logic of defeat and the symbolic movement of the train out of the valley, Bentley allows David to leap off the train, determined that an Oldroyd should remain in the Ire Valley and leave open the possibility for sequels.   

Bank Bottom Mill from the dam of Butterley Reservoir.  The equivalent of the Oldroyd view from the old mill to the new where 

the old power of water has been replaced by the new power of steam.  Note the prominent chimney.  

The second to last sentence says ‘It seemed to him a good omen that he should find himself in the grass-grown lane a few yards below Dean Head House,’ (Bk VI, Ch IV, p 592).  Though the word ‘cheerfully’ is inserted into the last sentence, readers might be justified in wondering how a lone, moneyless schoolboy is going to resolve the Great Depression, reconcile Management and Labour and avoid getting trapped by the cycle of lust, domination and submission that have dominated the Valley’s industrial history.   Both the last book and the final chapter are called ‘End or Beginning’.  There is no question mark.  There needs to be a large one…

Bentley does not return to David and his fate until part V of the 1946 novel The Rise of Henry Morcar.  As the title implies the Oldroyds are no longer a dominant force in  the valley. 

History

Despite its apolitical, determinist strain the book frequently produces intelligent, informed and imaginative transpositions of local history. 

In Book III Chapter 2 Jonathan  is converted to radicalism during Richard Oastler’s ‘Pilgrimage of Mercy’.  This was Radical march to York and a rally on York Racecourse, on 24 April 1832 in favour of the Ten Hour Factory Bill (http://www.victorianweb.org/history/poorlaw/oastler.html ). The Racecourse is otherwise known as ‘Knavesmire’. (see above).

It is not any rail-crash that kills Sophie but the Sutton Tunnel Railway Accident of April 30th 1851 

http://www.cc-publishing.co.uk/Archives/traincrash.html.  

Designed in 1846 this 'Copper Nob' engine was a reliable workshop of many lines, not being phased out until the 1880.

This example is in the National Railway Museum York and gives the idea of the kind of engine likely to be involved in the  Sutton Tunnel accident.   It has been restored to look as if it had never worked. 

An 1851 First Class carriage.

Even the first railways embodied what Marx diagnosed as the new social grouping of  19th Century Britain.

Passengers were placed in 'First Class', 'Second Class' or 'Third Class' according to what they paid.  

A society defined by economic resource and consumption was displacing one of rank.

However the prestige associated with rank was appropriated by the rising class of mill owners and technicians.  Frederick introduces himself as a 'gentleman' because his father, James Smith one of the mechanisers of the Ire Valley,  'doesn't do anything' (Bk III, Chp III, p 284) .

The status-hungry Sophia and Frederick would have ensured they traveled first class and would have died in a carriage like the one above.

Ironically, as the Railway Museum has conserved rather than restored this carriage, it looks as if it has been in an accident.  

At the end of the book the cycle of industrialisation that began at the end of 18th century seems to have come to an end: ‘it seemed to him that in 1812 a certain conflict had begun, and that conflict had worked itself out until it reached the ruin of today,’ (Bk VI, Ch IV, p 585).   At the time the book was written,  this would seem an unnecessarily pessimistic prognosis, for many mills managed to keep operating until after the Second World War.    Marsden’s mill history is typical.   Warehouse Hill Mill was demolished in the 1930s, which appears to be the fate awaiting New Syke Mill in Inheritance  but Holme Mill kept running until the 1950s, whilst Robinson’s Mill was kept going by a Belgium company into the 1990s. http://www.marsdenhistory.co.uk/work/mills.html 

It is unclear if Bentley endorses David’s final act of optimism or if it is to be seen as naively misdirected.  Certainly from the perspective of the 21st century it is hard to read Inheritance as other than a text predicting a Post-Industrial Britain in which the Industrial Revolution will be represented by ruins and reused buildings; precisely the landscape David discovers as he researches the past in the book’s final chapter.   Though the book has tried to balance the views of the Ire Valley from above with the view from below, the final perspective is that of a leader who thinks he should lead: ‘then I should be different and the Ire Valley would be different, and the West Riding might not be going down in ruin’, (Bk 6, Ch IV.7, p 588).

Bentley seems to have felt the end of Inheritance was too indecisive.  It became the first part of a trilogy, though the sequels were published many years after the original; The Rise of Henry Morcar in 1946 and A Man of his Time in 1966.  The trilogy became a tetralogy with the publication of  Ring in the New, 1969, by which time the Oldroyd saga was embedded within further works exploring the problems of the West Riding textile industry including Carr, 1929, A Modern Tragedy, 1934, Sleep in Peace, 1938, Take Courage, 1940, and Manhold, 1941, 

The periods covered are:

Take Courage [1625-1672], Manhold [1720-1805], Inheritance [1812-1931], Carr [1857-1927], A Modern Tragedy [1928-1932], Sleep in Peace [1894-1936]

http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~calderdalecompanion/ww_23.html

In 1967 she returned to the subject of Luddism, this time including the attack on Rawfolds Mill, in the children's story Ned Carver in Danger.

York and the Trial

As Inheritance begins rather than ends with the Luddites, the trial in York is not the decisive culmination it is in Bond Slaves or Ben O’ Bills.   The text  repeats the idea that the trial is a turning point in public opinion : when the three prisoners were carried off to York by coach from the Pack horse In, though the street was crowded from end to end, not one man raised his voice to pity them,’ ( Bk I, Chp V.1, p 124).  However, where Bond Slaves and Ben O’ Bills show an awe-ful and awful union between the edifices of Church and State, represented by Minster and Castle, the tone in Inheritance is downbeat.  The emphasis is on the psychology of Will and the castle merely forms a back-drop: ‘grim enough this dreary morning for anything – grim enough even for his revenge, thought Will with fierce satisfaction,’  (Bk I, Chp V.1, p 124).  

Clifford's Tower, the keep of York Castle, on a day when it looks anything but 'grim'...

Despite this mood, watching the hanging of Joe makes Will feel ‘violently sick,’ (Bk I, Chp V.3, p 142).  Far from the Minster providing guidance: ‘the unacknowledged thought that a sight of the Minster Towers would be comforting,’ (Bk I, Chp V.3, p 142), he loses sight of them in a storm that is as much mental as physical: ‘They were gone, blotted out by whirling flakes,’ (Bk I, Chp V.3, p 145).    It leads to what would now be called an existential crisis: ‘how agreeable it would be just to give up and let everything go, to lie down in the snow and let it finish him,’ (Bk I, Chp V.3, p 145).    What saves him is an act of will: ‘No!  Go on!’, (Bk I, Chp V.3, p 145).   He sees the Minster towers; ‘slowly emerged from behind their white veil’; (Bk I, Chp V.3, p 145) but they seem more like symbols of his regained virility; ‘He struck out manfully,’ (Bk I, Chp V.3, p 145), rather than embodiments of God and divine law.   Readers are not told that it is Knavesmire that he is struggling across but Will finds himself beside a ‘main road’ (Bk I, Chp V.3, p 145) down which Mr Brigg’s coach is travelling to the Ire Valley.    This must be the Tadcaster road, now the A64, running west out of York.   Will finds himself between Briggs and his daughter Betty and decides she will become his wife.  The scene forms the template for the later scene in which Joth will struggle through a storm on the Knavesmire (Racecourse) and find the woman who will become his wife.        The politics of brotherhood have been dissolved into family dispute and the novel’s over-arching paradigm of will vs. fate.

Knavesmire February 28 2018.   Knavesmire Wood blurred by blown snow.  In the middle ground are the railings of the modern racecourse.  There has been a racecourse here since at least 1731.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Racecourse

Knavesmire February 28 2018.   The sun comes out.   The Tadcaster Road, the road to Leeds and the West Riding runs along the ridge beyond the trees on the right.

Nevertheless Knavesmire is a disconcerting place that defies predictable perspective.  The human eye wishes to resolve the space as  a neatly symmetrical oblong, whereas it is more like a truncated triangle with Knavesmire Wood, in the centre distance,  displacing the point.   

Knavesmire plays an important part in the novel.  Its function as a place of entertainment (a racecourse) is never shown.  Instead it is used to illustrate the ideological emptiness of Will's life and the ideological aspiration of Joth's.  Will stumbles onto Knavesmire  by chance and gets lost; Joth goes there to hear Richard Oastler speak and sets in motion the events where he will become one of Oastler's most committed supporters.  

Richard Oastler statue, Northgate Square Bradford.