F. W. Moorman

“ The agony which Job Hesketh was enduring did not make him listless. On the contrary, it seemed to give him new energy. It is true that the old pleasure had gone out of his work and play, but to him work and play meant life, and to life he clung with the energy of one who lived in constant fear lest it should be suddenly snatched from him. It was January when Abe Verity had met with his fatal accident, and all through the next six months Job toiled like a galley-slave. ”

“ When all the slag has been drawn off, there is a moment's pause, and then a new cascade begins. The steel is beginning to flow, not in a daffodil stream like the slag, but in a cascade of exquisite turquoise blue, melting away at the sides into iridescent opal. Sometimes a great cloud of steam from the pit below passes across the mouth of the crucible, and then the torrent of molten steel takes on all the colours of the rainbow, and the great shed, with its alert, swiftly moving figures, is suffused with a radiance of unearthly beauty. ”

“ There Job could indulge to the full in his favourite holiday pastime of swimming, and there he was in close touch with the undulating wold country where his boyhood had been spent. He could renew old acquaintances, lend a hand to the farmers, or wander at will along the chalk beds of the gipsies or dry water-courses which wind their way from the hills to the sea. Years ago he and his wife had given a trial to Scarborough, Blackpool and Morecambe as seaside resorts, but they felt like foreigners there and had come back to Bridlington as to an old home. ”

“ I asked. "Nobody can tell a woman's age. She may even be a solar myth."
Say what I might, I could not induce Halifax to join in "the quest of Throppes wife"; it savoured too much of quixotry for sober-minded Halifax.
I now realised that the quest must be a solitary one, and I consoled myself with the thought that, if the ardours of the pilgrimage were unshared, so would be the glory of the prize. Fired with new enthusiasm, I shouted the name of Throp's wife to the everlasting hills, and the everlasting hills gave back the slogan in reverberating echoes—"Throp's wahfe." ”

“ There was an agonised cry from the vesselmen on their platform, a hissing splash with great gouts of liquid fire flying in all directions, a sickening smell, and then, a few minutes later, a clergyman, hastily summoned from the adjoining church, was reciting the burial service over the calcined body of Abe Verity.
Blank terror gleamed in the eyes of the men who had been witnesses of this grim holocaust. All work was suspended for the day, and Job Hesketh was led home, dazed and trembling in every joint, by his two eldest sons, who worked in another part of the forge. ”

“ Milking in summer-time, when the cows are out at grass, is pleasant enough, but it is different of a winter evening. Then one gropes one's way by the light of the stable lantern through the rain-sodden fields to the cowshed, the reeking atmosphere of which often makes one feel faint as one plunges into it from out of the frosty air. But Lizzie liked the work at all seasons, and was never so much at ease as when she was firmly planted on her stool, her curly head butting into a cow's ribs, and the warm milk swishing rhythmically into her pail. ”

“ But the spirit of the age was at work in them as in so many other families in the dale villages. Peregrine's six sons had long since left him alone in his steading on the moors: some had gone down to the manufacturing towns of the West Riding and had prospered in trade; others had fought, and more than one had fallen, in the Napoleonic wars. Peregrine, therefore, although seventy-six years of age and a widower, had no one to share roof and board with him in his shepherd's cottage a thousand feet above the sea. ”

“ But I am not the man to be put off by feminine elusiveness, so I made a vow that I would give up smoking until I had found Throp's wife and made her mine. My summer holiday was coming on, and I decided that, instead of spending the week in Scarborough, I would make a tour through the towns and villages of the West Riding in search of Throp's wife. I took the matter as much to heart as if I had been a mediaeval knight setting forth to rescue some distressed damsel from the clutches of a wicked magician or monstrous hippogriff, and I called my expedition "the quest of Throppes wife" ”

“ The power of fear has of late been forcibly impressed on my mind by hearing from his own lips the story of my friend, Job Hesketh. Six months ago I should have said that Job was entirely unconscious of fear. I have never known a man so good-humouredly indifferent to public opinion. ”

“ There was dignity in every movement and gesture, and the act of receiving the farmers' flocks was invested by him with ritual solemnity. He gave to each farmer in turn a formal greeting, and then proceeded to count the sheep and lambs that the dogs had been trained to drive slowly past him in single file. He knew every farmer's "stint" or allowance, and stern were his words to the man who tried to exceed his proper number.
"Thou's gotten ower mony yowes to thy stint, Thomas Moon," he would say to a farmer who was trying to get the better of his neighbours. ”

“ Among the shepherds of the eastern slopes of the Pennine Hills few were better known in the early years of the nineteenth century than Peregrine Ibbotson. A shepherd all his life, as his father and grandfather had been before him, he nevertheless belonged to a family that had once owned wide tracts of land in Yorkshire. But the Ibbotsons had fought on the losing side in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and the forfeiture of their lands had reduced them to the rank of farmers or shepherds. ”

“ He was employed as a "vessel-man" at the Leeds Steel Works, working on a twelve-hours' shift, and his duty was to attend to the huge "vessels" or crucibles in which the molten pig-iron is converted by the Bessemer process into steel. The operation is one of enthralling interest and beauty, and Job Hesketh's soul was in his work. The molten iron from the blast furnaces flows along its channel into huge "ladles" or cauldrons, and from there it is conveyed into a still larger reservoir or "mixer," where the greater part of the slag—which floats as a scum on the surface—is drawn off. ”

“ As he uttered these words, Peregrine drew himself up to his full height, and his flashing eyes and animated gestures gave to what he said something of the weight of a sibylline prophecy. Then, calling his dog to heel, he moved slowly away.
By the end of August the walls had reached the top of the fells and there had joined up with those which had mounted the other slope of the moors from the next valley. And now began the final stage in the process of enclosure—the building of the cross-walls and the division of the whole area into irregular fields. ”

“ No man can, in the full sense, be a teacher unless, in some way or other, he throws himself into the life and interests of his students. And it was among the secrets—perhaps the chief secret—of Moorman's influence as a teacher that, so far from being mere names in a register, his students were to him always young people of flesh and blood, in whose interests he could share, whose companion he delighted to be, and who felt that they could turn to him for advice and sympathy as often as they were in need. ”

“ Except when wrapped in snow, the high moors of the Pennine range present for eight months of the year a harmony of sober colours, in which the grey of the rocks, the bleached purple of the heather blossom and the faded yellows and browns of bent and bracken overpower the patches of green herbage. But twice in the course of the short summer the moors burst into flower and array themselves with a bravery with which no lowland meadow can compare. ”

“ This work started simultaneously in the dale-bottoms and on the crests, so that Peregrine's cottage, which was situated midway between the valley and the mountain-tops, would be enclosed last of all. The agony which the shepherd endured, therefore, during these weeks of early autumn was long-drawn-out. He still pursued his calling, leading the sheep, when the hot sun had burnt the short wiry grass of the hill-slopes, down to the boggy ground where runnels of water furrowed their courses through the peat and kept the herbage green. ”

“ I had heard it said that all that was brightest in a man's past life rises like a vision before his eyes when, in the act of drowning, his body sinks once, and then again, beneath the water, but I had never before confronted a man who could relate in detail what had happened to him. ”

“ All hands were therefore summoned to the task, and the farmers themselves would often join the bands of wallers. Peregrine kept out of their way as far as possible, hating nothing so much as the sound of their hammers dressing the stone. But one day, as he rounded a rocky spur, he came upon the chief farmer of the district, as he was having dinner with his men under the lee of the wall he was building. Seeing that an encounter was unavoidable, the shepherd advanced boldly to meet his adversary. ”

“ But go where he might, he could not escape from the sound of the wallers' tools. It was a daily crucifixion of his proud spirit, and every blow of the hammer on the stones was like a piercing of his flesh by the crucifiers' nails.
October brought frost, followed by heavy rains, and the moors were enshrouded in mist. But the farmers, eager that the enwalling should be finished before the first snows came, allowed their men no respite. ”

“ The inner voice is the voice of truth." And I read aloud the verses in which Paracelsus, that eager quest after truth, speaks his mind to his friend Festus:
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe. ”

“ To some, indeed, the enclosure of the open fields may appear as the outward symbol of that enwalling of the nation's economic freedom which transformed the artisan from an independent craftsman to a wage-earner, and made of him a link in the chain of our modern factory system. To those economists who estimate the wealth of nations solely by a ledger-standard, the enclosure of the common fields has seemed a wise procedure ”

“ The smoke cannot escape in the windless air, but hangs like a pall over the houses. The sun grows chill, coppery and rayless, and soon a fog, creeping along the river, silently encloses each particle of smoke within a watery shroud, and a mantle of murky gloom invests the city. ”

“ When all the sheep had been counted and driven into the pens which they were to occupy for the night the shepherd would invite the farmers to his house and entertain them with oatcakes, Wensleydale cheese and home-brewed beer; meanwhile, the conversation turned upon the past lambing season and the prospects for the next hay harvest. When the farmers had taken their leave Peregrine would pay a visit to the pens to see that all the sheep were properly marked and in a fit condition for a moorland life. Next morning he opened the pens and took the ewes and lambs on to the moors. ”

“ When the vessels have discharged all their precious liquid, the cauldron into which the metal has been poured is swung in mid-air by that unseen, effortless power which we know as hydraulic pressure, through the arc of a wide circle, until it reaches the point where the great ingot-moulds stand ready to receive the molten steel. ”

“ The fields had been enclosed by private commission; the farmers had agreed to refer the matter to expert arbitrators and their decisions had been accepted without much grumbling. The dalesmen were proud of their freehold property and were now casting their eyes upon the moorland pastures above. They agreed that the sheep would crop the grass more closely if confined by walls within a certain space, and the fees paid to the shepherd for his labour would be saved; for each farmer would be able to look after his own sheep. ”

“ I'm boun' to do nowt for iver an' iver.'"
"Ay, lass," Job replied, "that's reight enif for thee. Breedin' barns taks it out o' a woman. But it'll noan suit me so weel."
I did my best to reason with Job and to enlarge his conception of the life to come and of the progress of the soul after death, but I made little impression on his mind. A heaven without forges, fox-hunting and hen-coops offered him no possible attraction.
"What thou says may be true," he would answer, "but it'll noan be Job Hesketh that's sittin' theer. It'll be somebody else o' t' same name." ”

“ The latter, to which he turned with the more zest because it led him back to the familiar setting of his native county—to its moors and rills and flowers, and the fairy figures that haunted them—is a delightful study of one of the most unique of English poets (4) ; a study, however, which could only have been written by one who, among many other things, was a thorough-paced scholar. Many qualities—knowledge, scholarship, love of nature, a discerning eye for poetic beauty—go to the making of such a book. ”