A Protest against the Extension of Railways in the Lake District/Mr. Ruskin and Wakefield
MR. RUSKIN AND WAKEFIELD.
Reprinted by permission from the 'Saturday Review' of 4th March, 1876.
Mr. Ruskin is the Don Quixote of the nineteenth century, who makes war against chimneys and manufactories instead of windmills. In the Fors Clavigera of last September and in several succeeding numbers the town of Wakefield has been the subject of unfavourable comment, and a correspondent goes so far as to hint that an accession of trade has its drawbacks as well as its, advantages. In looking back to the old account of the town—unless, indeed, we are to suppose that each historian merely copied the words of his predecessor—Wakefield seems to have given the impression that it was a pleasant place to live in. 'There be few towns in the inward parts of Yorkshire that hath a fairer site or soil about it.' says Leland, and he adds that a right honest man shall fare well there for twopence a meal. Two hundred years passed over it, and left it very much the same. There is an engraving of it in Thoresby's Leeds, about 1715, 'as it appears from London road.' The chief features are, in the foreground, the river Calder with its weir and rushing waters, the long line of arches supporting the well-known Memorial Chapel on the bridge, and in the background the parish church with its lofty spire, around which are grouped clusters of houses and cottages, which cover the sides of the hill down to the river banks. Commerce is unrepresented; no one seems in a hurry; wood-cutting is going on in one corner, sheep-washing in another; two magnificently dressed gentlemen in Cavalier hats with fowling-pieces, a spaniel, and game-bag, are standing in the middle of the road, while a fisherman is wading across the river just above the weir. This is the spot which Mr. Ruskin speaks of as being now one of the two most frightful things he has ever yet seen. In 1770 the chapel was used as a warehouse for goods, and its 'beautiful carving much defaced.' Arthur Young, who was in Wakefield about that time on his Northern tour, gives an encouraging account of the town from an æsthetic point of view. Mutton and beef were 312d. per lb., wages from 6s. to 14s. a week, manufacturer's house-rent from 40s. to 50s.; the trade of the place was very dull, and had been so ever since the peace. In 1801, the population was about 8000; in 1811, 8,593; in 1821, nearly 11,000; and in 1838, Dibdin became eloquent and prophetical on its future:—'It is the most opulent as well as trade-stirring town in the West Riding of York, and contains a population of upwards of 15,000 souls. By this time thirty years to come, it will have quadrupled that number.' Thirty-eight years have gone by, and Wakefield has only doubled the number. The chimneys have, however, more than kept pace with the population, nor is Dibdin's account out of place now of the 'curling columns of dense and slowly moving smoke which seem to involve everything within its immediate neighbourhood in impenetrable obscurity.' Had Wakefield but increased in the same proportion as its neighbours, the loss of the advantages given to it by nature would have been less felt. In all the great West Riding towns, Leeds or Sheffield or Bradford, there is a certain sense of power, of concentrated energy, which, though the sky is darkened and the air poisoned, strikes and impresses the mind. The shops are large, the streets are thronged, and the traveller will feel himself as much a mere unit as if he were in London or Manchester. But Wakefield is neither a commercial centre nor is it the county town. It has an historic past, and once had buildings of architectural merit. It possesses a lovely natural site, and broad streets, which the competition of its rivals would have made as grass-grown as those of Ferrara if grass were a possible product. This useful herb will soon be a luxury in many parts of the West Riding.
It is sad to watch a district as it becomes a seat of manufacture. The little villages on the hill-sides soon encroach on one another, year by year demanding from the State fresh machinery to supply their social wants. The face of the land is changed. Refuse from the mill or colliery is plastered up into great unsightly masses. There is neither earth, nor air, nor water. Chemical constituents and filth of every description take their place, and the train must be made use of to obtain an illustration from natural history. First the rivers, then the trees are poisoned. Neither can be replaced. In twelve years a plantation will not have grown as many feet; everything is either dead or dying. Long lines of rotten hedges, mended with disused wire ropes from the nearest colliery, separate the fields, while here and there dead trees fling their black arms to the sky. It is not worth while to fell them, so there they stand giving evidence of the past existence of life in the district. If a Hercules is required to clean the rivers, the roads might tax the powers of General Wade. It is nearly as dangerous to venture out upon the highways as it was in 1685, or in the days when Mary Wollstonecraft was upset four times on her journey from Havre to Paris. The roads are full of holes and pitfalls, caused partly by the heavy traffic, partly by the fact that they are never mended, as it is the business of no one to attend to them. It is a sad irony to read now of such or such a town or village being pleasantly situated on the banks of its river. It is hardly possible to walk along the side of the stream. The blue scum which floats sullenly by has killed everything with which it has come into contact. There is no boat on the river, only here and there barges sank at the back-waters and in the creeks, with their lines just above the water, telling of work done and homes lived in, but now gradually rotting away in filth. Further on a drain or beck discharges its contents, steaming with vapour, but the river is too foul to be coloured by the accession of any tributary, however filthy. Here is the evidence of a witness in the employment of the Aire and Calder Company:—'He saw a quantity of water containing hair and other sediment flowing from some tanks in the defendant's works over a large sump, and thence into Sheepscar beck. The sump was almost filled with a pulpy sediment. In the vicinity of the point where this discharge entered the beck there were several cart-loads of sediment in the bed of the stream. The sediment looked like lime and hair mixed. The water in the beck was white as far down as he could see.' Not a bird is to be heard or seen; not that this is a matter to regret, as an ill-looking lad sneaks by with a single-barrelled gun. No animal life cheers the naturalist. No hare or partridge ventures near a population which would sally forth with every known implement of warfare to destroy it. The attested neighbourhood of a rabbit would empty a colliery for a week. Everything in your walks in such a country calls up some unpleasant association. The landscape reminds you of the illustrations in Dickens's novels; the ponds are those in which Bill Sykes tried to drown his dog. It is neither town nor country. Miserable cottages are being built in rows to arrive at which you must plunge through a slough of black mud. Damp, ill-built, and ill-drained, disease clings to them, and family after family is compelled to leave. It is impossible to build houses with profit, and the result is overcrowding. Sanitary inspection is in many places unknown or useless. The Inspector is appointed as a matter of form, but is not called upon to furnish the Board with a report. The Barnsley Times gives an account of the village of Ardsley which is probably true of many others. The cesspools overflow the highways; an open field is used as a slaughter-house; so many people live in the same building that they have to go to bed in turns; while in one case fourteen people slept in one great round bed with their feet to the centre. Water is a necessity of life, but it does not exist. The river we have already described is the substitute discovered for it by the nineteenth century. The historian of the University of Lagado, when he represented one of its professors as endeavouring to produce food by a process which we had rather not specify, little thought that the day would come when his description would be far from a satire. The town of Wakefield has solved the problem, and derives much of its sustenance from the source referred to. Paracelsus is said to have invented a perfume of the same material, and, were not the West Riding already so well supplied, enterprising tradesmen might turn their attention to a new means of profit. The time will come when a water merchant's trade will be a very important one, and when the manufacturer will set before his guests as a princely treat a bottle of some celebrated year, ascertained by analysis to be free from organic matter.
No sense escapes in the new order of things, and the shrill scream of the 'buzzer' can be heard at a distance of miles. Thicker and more deadly smoke is vomited forth each year, and no attempt is made to deal with the evil. Lord Winmarleigh presented a petition the other day for an amendment of the Acts relating to noxious vapours, and said that he knew a property which had been all but destroyed by them. 'The trees in it were like a forest of masts even at midsummer, and whereas there were formerly on it oaks worth £100, it would be difficult now to find in or anywhere near it an oak or other tree worth a hundred shillings. The Duke of Richmond, in reply, assured their Lordships that the Government felt the importance of the subject. If Goodwood were only between Leeds and Bradford, the Duke's assurance would be far more valuable. In those parts of Lancashire which lie around Wigan and Bolton and southwards to Manchester, the country is permanently disfigured, and we cannot believe that the Inspectors of Nuisances have ever put into execution the powers they possess. In the West Riding towns something has been done, though to a very small extent. In Huddersfield orders to abate the nuisance in a few cases have been issued, but with little or no effect. In Barnsley some of the principal manufacturers and colliery owners have been compelled to erect new chimneys. In Bradford over seven hundred informations have been laid against offenders, and penalties were inflicted and orders to abate by the borough justices were made in all cases, the number of chimneys coming under the Act being about four hundred and seventy-six. In Halifax, owing to the measures enforced, there is a great improvement in the consumption of smoke. In Leeds a local Act of Parliament has been enforced. In Wakefield Mr. Ruskin will be interested in hearing that nothing has been done, and it is said that a meeting which was held many years ago to protest against the non-consumption of smoke resulted in a vote of thanks to the manufacturers who made it and brought trade to the town. Charles Lamb was heard to declare that his love of natural scenery would be abundantly satisfied by the patches of long waving grass and the stunted trees that blacken in the old churchyard nooks which you may yet find bordering on Thames Street. Wakefield, though not entirely consisting of Charles Lambs, shares the same opinion.
It may be asked, What is to be the end of all this desolation and destruction of life? Those who can undoubtedly will migrate in search of pure air and water, and evidences of refinement will become gradually scarcer. Houses descend very fast in the social scale in the neighbourhood of towns. In the agricultural counties the downward progress of the old manor-house is often slow. It has probably but one tenant, and when his farm-servants are dining together at the long oaken table in the central hall he is conforming more nearly than he is aware to the habits of those who lived there three hundred years ago. Occasionally the landlord comes there for a week's shooting, and the best bedroom, with its wainscoted panels and carved cornice, its Jacobean chests and faded Turkey carpet, is preserved from being the apple or the onion chamber. In the garden the yew trees and the walnuts are in their full glory, and the red brick walls that enclose them have all the delightful depth of colour which belongs to their age. A colliery, however, is not a helpful neighbour to the gabled hall. The lane that leads to it is dirtier than the dirtiest of those that lead to the Porta Salara at Rome. The porch is blocked up with bricks, and an open drain trickles along the slope in front of the house. The wall has fallen down which once inclosed the neglected garden, and half buried in the soil lies the stone escutcheon which bears the arms of the family that owned the property in the seventeenth century. There, is no particular road anywhere; paths lie in every direction, for the collier is the typical crow that flies straight from point to point. In Lord John Manners's well-known poem, 'England's Trust,' the claims of our 'old nobility' are advocated in preference to those of wealth, commerce, learning, and laws. Had his sentiment been expended upon the Tudor and Elizabethan manor-houses of the country, we should have been more inclined to sympathize with him. There is very little old nobility, and that little is not easy to discover. In Yorkshire, and especially in the manufacturing parts of the county, property has changed owners very often. Two hundred years ago hardly a country house was in the hands of the ancestors of those who now hold it. The ordinary Yorkshire family dates back about two centuries, at which time it struggled out of some town to invest a little capital in land. The West Riding is very deficient in great houses built before the beginning of last century. Hardly a fragment is left of Howley, the old home of the Saviles; and Temple Newsam, the only Elizabethan palace in the West Riding, will soon become lost in the smoke that surrounds it. If Mr. Ruskin can save a single tree or stream, he will have done a great deal of good, and if he can purify and educate Wakefield, nothing need appear hopeless to him. It is not given to every town to have a lunatic asylum with 1,400 patients and a goal with 1,300 criminals. Lunacy, as is well known, is spreading out of all proportion to the increase of population, and in the event of the establishment of electoral districts Wakefield might hope for a second member. What might not then be expected from a town whose political history for the last forty years has been so bright, and has justified so well the hopes of those who extended the franchise? We can conceive of a millennium of universal happiness, when no man's house shall be without a buzzer, beer shall be the only available drink, and twenty persons shall sleep in the same round bed.
WINDERMERE: PRINTED BY J. GARNETT.