Bentley: Manhold: 1 Setting

Manhold , London, Gollancz,1941 (Second edition)

Read swiftly Manhold looks like a typical Bentley family saga, albeit a distinctive one, chiefly because it has a death-rate as high as a Victorian Sensation novel.   When studied more deeply it emerges as one of the most intense of all Bentley’s textile novels in its engagement with Freud, its depiction of the father/daughter relationship, its portrayal of local industry and its engagement with canonical Yorkshire texts.    This last theme is subtly concealed by the changing of place and family names and the construction of a Yorkshire that is as much a state of mind as it is a geographical location.   This Yorkshire is one which is simultaneously natural and unnatural from the opening snowstorm in August, a Yorkshire that allows Bentley to blend Gothicism, Realism and Freudianism more successfully than in other novels. 

Geography 1

Bentley and Defoe

This Yorkshire is not easy to enter or explore.      Manhold opens with a teasing geography.   The historical figures of John Collier and Daniel Defoe travel from Lancashire into Yorkshire.  As they do so place names and geography distort.  They leave Rochdale on a ‘calm clear August morning’ (I.1.3) and ascend ‘Hellstone Edge’ only to be lost in snow as they scale the Pennines: ‘A pure white landscape lay before them, in which no track was visible,’ (I.1.7).   Eventually they find themselves in ‘Hoyland’ where a house called ‘Manhold’ is being constructed.   ‘Hoyland’ is a place name attached to several locations north of Sheffield, so the travellers appear to have swung far too far south.    It is the readers’ first intimation that the encoding of names and places is going to be less predictable than it was in Inheritance. 

In part this occurs because Bentley is literally following Daniel Defoe’s description of crossing from Lancashire into Yorkshire in a snowstorm in August around 1726:

   It is not easy to express the consternation we were in when we came up near the top of the    

  mountain; the wind blew exceeding hard, and blew the snow so directly in our faces, and that so   

   thick, that it was impossible to keep our eyes open to see our way. The ground also was so covered

  with snow, that we could see no track, or when we were in the way, or when out; except when we   

  were shewed it by a frightful precipice on one hand, and uneven ground on the other;

http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Defoe/31 (London, Dent, 1928, Vol 2 [Vol3] Letter VIII, p 190)

   one might guess it to be a precipitous slope which slid away far down to a stream in the bottom on     

   the one side, and some uncomfortable uneven rising ground on the other.  (Manhold, I.1.7)

Both texts show Defoe’s dog to be scared; Defoe’s passage continues:

   even our horses discovered their uneasiness at it; and a poor spaniel dog that was my fellow    

    traveller, and usually diverted us with giving us a mark for our gun, turn'd tail to it and cry'd.

  http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Defoe/31(London, Dent, 1928, Vol 2 [Vol3] Letter VIII, 190)

Bentley’s goes on:

      Floss, nosing through the snow, advanced a few steps, then turned and looked back at her

     master with uplifted paw; seeing no reassurance in his face she shivered and began to whimper.  (Manhold, I.1.7)

Both then mention a ‘surprising’ phenomena; a ‘thunderclap’ during snow.

   In the middle of this difficulty, and as we began to call to one another to turn back again, not     

   knowing what dangers might still be before us, came a surprizing clap of thunder, the first that

   ever I heard in a storm of snow, or, I believe, ever shall; nor did we perceive any lightning to

   precede the thunder, as must naturally be the case; but we supposed the thick falling of the snow  

   might prevent our sight.

  I must confess I was very much surprized at this blow; and one of our company would not be

  persuaded that it was thunder, but that it was some blast of a coal-pit, things which do sometimes

  happen in the country, where there are many coal mines. But we were all against him in that, and

  were fully satisfied that it was thunder, and, as we fancy'd, at last we were confirmed in it, by

   hearing more of it at a distance from us.  http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Defoe/31(London, Dent, 1928, Vol 2 [Vol 3] Letter VIII, p 190)

Bentley deftly translates this account into the conventions of a 20th century novel; the companion is named and his scepticism is played off against the wonder of Defoe and Collier:

    “I never heard thunder in a storm of snow before,” observed Defoe, looking about him.

    “I fancy it’s not thunder, but some blast from a coal-pit,” objected Mr Kay prosaically.

     It was like him, thought Collier, to prefer the less romantic explanation; he liked life to be

     respectably subdued, muted to a moderate pitch of emotion. (Manhold, I.1.7)

It is the readers’ first hint that the travellers are heading for a region where, as in Wuthering Heights, emotions will be stormy, not ‘muted’.  To emphasise the point Bentley throws in ‘A flash in the sky, and a long rolling peal’ to ‘belie’ Mr Kay (Manhold, I.1.7).

What she cannot do is clarify the geography.  Defoe provides no place names until he mentions ‘Sorby’ (Sowerby Bridge).  Instead he offers a generalised account of 

   But, to cut short the tedious day's work, the case was this; the hill was very high, and, in our  

  opinion, not inferior to the Edge which we came just down from; but the sun being higher, and the

  wind not blowing so hard, what snow fell upon the hill melted as it fell, and so we saw our way

  plainer, and master'd the hill, though with some labour, yet not any terror or apprehensions of

  losing our way, falling down precipices, and the like.

 But our case was still this; that as soon as we were at the top of every hill, we had it to come down

 again on the other side; and as soon as we were down we had another to mount, and that

 immediately; for I do not remember that there was one bottom that had any considerable breadth

 of plain ground in it, but always a brook in the valley running from those gulls and deeps between

 the hills, with this remark, that they always cross'd our way in the bottoms from the right-hand to

 the left, the reason of which you shall see presently.

 http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Defoe/31(London, Dent, 1928, Vol 2 [Vol 3] Letter VIII, 192)

 Bentley cleverly copes with this by having Collier negotiate the landscape in a daze: ‘his crisp hair matted; his head nodded and he drowsed in the saddle,’ (Manhold, I.1.7).  He briefly wakes when they enter what Defoe describes as ‘a Christian country’ only to find themselves at the mercy of the weather again:

  We thought now we were come into a Christian country again, and that our difficulties were over;   

   but we soon found our selves mistaken in the matter; for we had not gone fifty yards beyond the

   brook and houses adjacent, but we found the way began to ascend again, and soon after to go up

   very steep, till in about half a mile we found we had another mountain to ascend, in our

   apprehansion as bad as the first, and before we came to the top of it, we found it began to snow

   too, as it had done before. http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Defoe/31(London, Dent, 1928, Vol 2 [Vol 3] Letter VIII, 192)

Bentley sharpens the incident.   Defoe says ‘”A Christian country at last”’ when they come to a clothier’s house only for Mr Kay to reply ‘”Don’t be too sure,” with ‘a certain grimness in his tone’ Manhold, I.1.9).   Her emphasis is pointed.  The travellers have entered an area which will be dominated by unforgiving will not Christian mercy.  

                                                                                The Southern End of Blackstone Edge   

Geography 2

Re-inscribing A tour Through England And Wales

Some of the names use Bentley’s familiar device of changing the start of the name; ‘Hellstone Edge’ is evidently ‘Blackstone Edge’ given an even more ominous name.   The present A 58 ascends Blackstone Edge on the way from Rochdale out of Lancashire.

The Rochdale Road 

follows the valley, now marked out by pylons.  Without these it would be hard to spot for the heights. 

Moving further down the Ryburn Valley there is a ‘Soyland Town’ north of Ripponden and west of Ripponden Wood.     The village echoes the name of the moor three miles to the west above which is the height called ‘Manshead End’.   ‘Soyland’ has become ‘Hoyland’ and the bleak peak has inspired the name ‘Manhold’ that has a more strikingly Freudian resonance.    

Soyland Town clothiers’ cottages

In Bentley’s interpretation Collier and Defoe seem to have missed the Rochdale Road, an ex-roman road that runs to Halifax on the top of the Ryburn Valley, and floundered across the slopes and valleys of Soyland Moor  where they ‘could see over into Yorkshire’  (I.1.8)  before they negotiate the lower folds Great Manshead Hill, across ‘deep and precipitous’ valleys (I.1.8).    The local name for these clefts is ‘cloughs’.  Ordnance Survey map OL 21 shows ‘Greenwood Clough’ and ‘Horse Hey Clough’ amongst several unnamed streams that run into the Ryburn Valley.  Though Baitings Reservoir now takes advantage of the water draining from Manshead, in Defoe’s day it would be correct to describe this area as ‘a hollow at the right where a Yorkshire river now took its beginning,’ (I.1.8)  for the streams would have  merged to create the River Ryburn.   If ‘Soyland Town’ is ‘Hoyland Town’, it looks as if the travellers stumble from Baitings Great Pasture to Baitings Pasture before escaping from the snow and reaching ‘green hills’ and ‘a level plateau’ where ‘a declivity lay in front of them’ (I.1.9).  They are told they are at ‘Ellershaw Clough’.  This name might be made up from ‘Clough House’ and ‘Shaw Edge’ that stand each side of the stream valley of ‘Sevenhills Clough’.  

Sevenhills Clough

Half a mile east of Shaw Edge is ‘Soyland Town’, one of the small settlements that ran above and in the Ryburn Valley down to Sowerby Bridge before industrialisation expanded the settlements at the valley bottom until they became a near continuous mill town running from Mill Bank to Rishworth.

This gives a translation of the landscape as follows:

Actual names                                                                                            Manhold names                  

Clough House/Shaw Edge                                                                      Ellershaw Clough

Kebroyd                                                                                                     Kelroyd

Manhead                                                                                                   Manhold

Ripponden                                                                                                 Wyburn Bridge

Ryburn                                                                                                        Wyburn

Soyland Town                                                                                             Hoyland Town

The identification of ‘Rippenden’ as ‘Wyburn Bridge’ rests on the fact that Ripponden suffered a disastrous flood in 1722 when a third of the church was washed away.    ‘Wyburn’ suffers a similar disaster:

   the sudden flood pouring down from every beck on Hellstone, had swept away the river bank by      

   Wyburn church and half the church tower had fallen; (I.5.65)

 Ripponden Church, the fourth on the site, built in 1868.  

The historical Sam Hill, like the fictional Horsfall, ‘was responsible for the yew trees planted around the perimeter of the church in 1751’ in each case, ‘under the superintendence of Tim Bobbin ’ [John Collier].

http://www.fustianopolis.co.uk/page.php?id=23

 Sam, with a grin on his face came out to meet him [Collier].

 “Now then,”  he said: “Here’s your yews.  Get ‘em put in.”  He addressed the men. “Take your

  instructions from Mester Collier here; he has the whole plan in his head.”’ (III.4. 187)

Ripponden Churchyard

Oddly most of graves seem to be for women.

Charles Dickens Bleak House, 1853, Little Dorrit, 1857

The resemblance of Manhold to these novels is less specific than to Wuthering Heights.  Richard Horsfall, like Richard Carstone, wastes his life awaiting the outcome of a legal battle.  Like the Dorrit family he is imprisoned for debt.  In Part III he is mentioned as being imprisoned ‘In York Castle’ (III.2.256).    He would have been imprisoned in the relatively recent Debtors’ Prison, built between 1701 and 1705.  It was praised by no other than Daniel Defoe: ‘the most stately and complete of any in the kingdom, if not in Europe’, http://www.historyofyork.org.uk/themes/york-castle/the-debtors-prison

Defoe is probably referring to the exterior rather than to the cells of the Debtors’ Prison

Some of the cells on the lower floor of the prison have no windows communicating with the outside world.  

George Eliot Middlemarch, 1871-2

Manhold takes from Middlemarch the idea of the Will that is intended to control dependents in the future as well after the death of the testator.   In Middlemarch Mr Featherstone’s Will is intended to control the economic future of his heir.   By contrast Mr Casuabon’s Will is chiefly intended to control the sexual behaviour of his wife after his death.  The Will left behind by Sam Horsfall combines the intentions of both of these notorious Wills.    Sam’s Will is intended to curtail his son Richard’s sexual choices and economic freedom.  Primarily it is designed to stop any child that shares Ann’s blood inheriting Sam’s assets.  In practice it proves almost super-humanly complex and survives not only the death of Ann but also the death of father and son.   In each novel the author has mobilised the unspoken pun embodied by ‘will’.  The legal Will is the instrument by which powerful or malicious men try to make sure the motivation and determination that dominated their lives will survive their deaths.  This becomes extremely important in Manhold through Bentley’s interest in conscious will vs. unconscious drives.

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, 1847

Like Thrushcross Grange, Manhold burns at the end of the book.  In each case the fire is started by a madwoman who perishes in the blaze.  In the case of Manhold the woman is Aunt Leah, described, understatedly by one of the villagers as: ‘a bit touched like, lately.” (IV.12. 405).   Roger Kay goes into the blaze, like Rochester, to try to rescue a madwoman.   Unlike Rochester he does not survive: ‘’Red sparks flew out thickly in a curtain of smoke, and the flames towered up suddenly into the sky, pointed and leaping.  The roof of Manhold had fallen,’ (IV.12.406).

The Pennines have many examples of ruined houses.  This is in Hollin's Lane near Marsden

Dates and local Inspirations

Literary influence never exists at the expense of regional history, though Manhold adds a complex twist; there appear to be two time-zones in operation in the book.  In Lancashire Bentley shows the historical figure, John Collier, a self-taught poet and caricaturist, create the alter ego ‘Tim Bobbin’ to engage with historical events.  Tim Bobbin satirises a government that tries to suppress America (IV.9.365) and allows hunger riots to take place in Manchester (IV.5.335).    Sam Horsfall is similarly based on a local entrepreneur called ‘Samuel Hill’, though Hill’s success story has been turned into an ironic if not tragic tale.    Horsfall, like his historical inspiration Hill, wants to replace basic local cloth with more sophisticated products, ‘shalloon’ for ‘kersey’:

  Samuel Hill, who organised his manufacturing from the aptly named Making Place in Soyland is a   

  remarkable example of the age of the merchant-manufacturer. His documents reveal that his

   annual income in the 1730s and 1740s was over £30,000; a fortune by the standards of the day.

  From his surviving sample and letter books we can see that Hill had accounts with British, Dutch  

  and other European merchants. He diversified from making kersey's into shalloons and other

  worsted goods. From his base in Soyland, Hill eventually developed an impressive range of woollen

   and worsted cloths which he exported widely in Northern Europe, Spain, Portugal and Italy.

 Some of his cloth found its way to the markets of St. Petersburg in Russia and the bazaars of Persia.

https://www.calderdale.gov.uk/wtw/timeline/1700-1800/1700-1800-4.html

Like Horsfall, Hill leaves instructions to build a bridge in his will:

   Sam directed his trustees to erect a substantial stone bridge at the ford at Kebroyd. It was to have

   two arches 60’ wide, and be built in such a way that it would not be damaged by even great floods.

  ‘To erect and finish in good substantial and workmanlike manner at Kebroyd ford a stone bridge of

  two arches of 60’ wide between the springers, and five yards in breadth within the battlement on

  the top part of the bridge, one arch whereof to be set or fixed over against Mayor Holme End for the

  better passage of the water in great floods’.

However, Sam’s wishes were never carried out. http://www.fustianopolis.co.uk/page.php?id=23

Manhold echoes the first part of the will almost word for word:

  ‘erect and finish in good substantial and workmanlike manner at Kelroyd ford a Stone Bridge of

  two equal arches sixty feet wide and five yards in breadth’ (III.14.273)

However Hill seems to have intended a bridge across the Ryburn not across a beck. The main reason the bridge was never built is probably because there were no substantial buildings or settlements on the east bank of the Ryburn apart from Greetland which was already served by the Greetland Road (B 6113) that crossed the Ryburn via the bridge in Ripponden.

Road bridge over Sevenhills Beck by Kebroyd  from an old photograph

Hill also had a son called ‘Richard’, but their relationship had none of the disastrous tensions that eventually destroy the dynasty of Horsfall.    

These tensions are exposed by the way Yorkshire appears to stand outside time.  Bonny Prince  Charlie reaches Derby (III.2.168), the Second Hundred Years War waxes and wanes but Sam and Richard Horsfall can trade overseas as if this was an era of peace and Richard can easily slip abroad to avoid his creditors.    Yorkshire operates according to mythic time.  In this area the workings of unconscious tensions and desires can become visible untrammelled by the forces of history.  In Wuthering Heights a similar area is created.  Heathcliff has to move outside the pages of the text in order to make a fortune.  Manhold is not as extreme.    The fortune of the Horsfall family, in both senses, is bound into the success of their economic enterprises.  As one would expect in Bentley, these enterprises reflect the history of the West Riding.

Small Mill at Kebroyd

Bentley does not comment on how completely Samuel Hill has been transformed to become ‘Sam Horsfall’ but she  mentions the changes to  ‘Tim Bobbin’ surprisingly casually: ‘I apologise to Tim Bobbin, that founder of the northern comedian, that lover of the northern speech, for some liberties I have taken here with his life’ (NOTE).   Unsuspecting readers will assume this means only minor changes but the John Collier of history was a married man with nine children and an urgent need for income. 

John Collier's self-caricature of himself in his persona of 'Tim Bobbin'.

Bentley concentrates on Collier the school master, the man interested enough in Lancashire dialect to produce a study of it, and ignores 'Tim Bobbin' the man who lived by producing caricatures in verse and paint and liked to think he had achieved fame as 'The Lancashire Hogarth'.   He worked in the Rochdale pubs drawing those who commissioned him but eventually his caricatures were famous enough to get put on a set of plates.

 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Collier_(caricaturist)]. 

https://museumcrush.org/the-wonderful-georgian-grotesques-of-tim-bobbin-the-lancashire-hogarth/

https://folkcustoms.co.uk/a-short-history-of-tim-bobbin-lancashire-author-poet-artist/

 Bentley does not give readers this energetic, provocative creator of jeering yet extrovert art.   In Bentley’s work he is introspective, a man hopelessly in love with Ann Gildersome from the first glimpse he has of her as a child: ‘It was the loveliest little face, Collier thought, he had ever seen on girl or woman; ‘ (I.1.11).  The intention has been to turn him into a more restrained and civilised version of Heathcliff.  Both he and Heathcliff fall in love with a woman during her girl hood but where Heathcliff is transgressive and violent, Collier is melancholy and ironic.   Bentley’s Collier is not a figure calculated to alarm the readers of the 1940s.   Apart from his obsession with Ann, he is the voice of reason speaking out against the politics of unreason, as his real life counterpart did, and trying to tame the destructive passions of his fictional contemporaries. 

John Collier’s grave at Rochdale Parish Church