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H e ritage and Tourism
in Britain and Ireland
1 Introduction 1
Glenn Hooper
v
vi Contents
Index
279
Contributors
ix
x CONTRIBUTORS
International Society for Metal Music Studies, the Editor of Metal Music
Studies, and a key organiser of the British Sociological Association’s
Alcohol Study Group. His research interests include leisure theory,
communicative leisure, privatisation of leisure spaces, tourist spaces and
tourist performativity, whiteness and masculinity, class, ‘Northernness’,
and national identity. He researches and writes by himself and in collabo-
ration with a range of other people internally and externally. Karl is co-
editor (with Professor Karen Fox of the University of Alberta) of a book
series for Palgrave Macmillan called Leisure Studies in a Global Era. The
first two books in the series include his Whiteness and Leisure (2013),
and, co-edited with Brett Lashua and Steve Wagg, Sounds and the City:
Popular Music, Place and Globalization (2014). This series is set to
have a huge global impact on leisure studies, tourism, events, and related
subject fields.
Simon Thomas is a senior lecturer in Tourism and Events at the
University of South Wales Business School. Prior to commencing his
career in academia Dr Thomas worked in visitor services support for Cadw,
the Welsh government body responsible for the historic environment in
Wales. His research interests include pilgrimage meaning, motivation and
management, heritage and tourism, and religious tourism. Recent publi-
cations focus on the meaning of pilgrimage at the shrine of Lourdes in
southwest France, miracles as a motivator for touristic activity, conflict at
pilgrimage shrines, and Welsh island culture. His teaching encompasses
tourism, heritage, events, and research methods. Simon lives in the Brecon
Beacons National Park.
Simon Woodward is a Principal Lecturer at Leeds Beckett University.
An experienced tourism and heritage industry professional with expertise
in strategy development, policy reviews, market appraisals, feasibility stud-
ies, business planning, and visitor management, he has worked at Leeds
Beckett since 2008, first as a Senior Research Fellow and more recently as
Head of Tourism. He is Chair of the ICOMOS-UK Cultural Tourism
Committee and a Trustee of the Landscape Research Centre, an archaeo-
logical charity based in North Yorkshire.
List of Figures
xvii
List of Tables
xix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Glenn Hooper
G. Hooper (*)
Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK
e-mail: glenn.hooper@gcu.ac.uk
‘international arrivals are expected to reach nearly 1.6 billion by the year
2020. Of these worldwide arrivals in 2020, 1.2 billion will be intraregional
and 378 million will be long-haul travellers’.2 Such economic growth and
development, not to mention the insatiable global appetite for all things
travel-related, suggests that the expansion of the tourist industry shows
no signs of abating any time soon, despite region-specific challenges, criti-
cisms over the pace and direction of development, and ongoing environ-
mental concerns. It is true that in recent years greater emphasis has had
to be placed on the need for more sustainable projects and solutions. For
example, waste management, as well as water and energy usage—right
across the tourism and related sectors—requires better regulation, with
improved staff training a key part of any new initiatives. More also needs
to be done to protect already threatened landscapes, urban and rural both,
while transport networks and the development of further transport facili-
ties require better integration. But despite economic downturns, the chal-
lenges of seasonality, and increasing (though geographically disparate)
terror alerts, global tourism is developing an ever more diverse profile,
and for many economies continues to promise jobs, security and wealth.
While heritage has existed in various guises for centuries—as archaeo-
logical artefact, as a term indicative of museum and country-house culture,
as an expression of regional or national identity—in the last forty years or
so the term has become a more visible, if not always distinct, category,
with a relationship to tourism that has sometimes enhanced but frequently
complicated its development. Indeed, Patrick Wright and others have not
only argued that in the 1980s Britain was awash with heritage attractions,
but they also speculated about the negative effects that have derived from
the heritage-tourism linkage, not to mention its impact upon the inter-
pretation of history and the very idea of heritage itself. In 1957 Freeman
Tilden could confidently state that ‘Thousands of naturalists, historians,
archaeologists and other specialists are engaged in the work of revealing,
to such visitors as desire the service, something of the beauty and won-
der, the inspiration and spiritual meaning that lie behind what the visi-
tor can with his sense perceive’.3 However, within thirty years of Tilden’s
evocative appreciation of the power of heritage, Wright would opine: ‘All
Western Europe is now a museum of superior culture and those citizens
who are not lucky enough to be “curators” of “the collection” shouldn’t
worry […] Their position is to look, to pay taxes, to visit, to care, to pay at
the door (even when entering cathedrals these days), to “appreciate” and
to be educated into an appropriate reverence in the process’.4 For figures
INTRODUCTION 3
like Wright, Robert Hewison and others, the heritage industry was part
of a sick and ideologically complicated set of assertions, a conservative
and nostalgic development that steered political and cultural issues away
from contemporary realities, and replaced them with complacency, eva-
sion and disavowal: ‘National heritage has its sites’, taunted Wright, ‘but
like amulets to believers these sites exist only to provide that momentary
experience of utopian gratification in which the grey torpor of everyday
life in contemporary Britain lifts and the simpler, more radiant measures
of Albion declare themselves again’.5
Despite the criticisms of those years, many now see tourism and
heritage—and indeed the natural relationship that seems to exist between
them—as having come a considerable way since the 1980s, particularly in
terms of addressing matters of environmental, cultural and political concern.
For example, the need for greater diversity in the industry and for heritage
professionals to be more engaged with the various needs of their visitors
has produced several texts which have reshaped curatorial and museolog-
ical thinking, and produced new practical as well as theoretical models.
Throughout the 1990s text after text engaged with the complexities of
heritage, sometimes on its own, sometimes as an intrinsic element of the
tourism offer. Michael Belcher’s Exhibitions in Museums (1991) and Eilean
Hooper-Greenhill’s Museum and Gallery Education (1991), both of them
affiliated with the University of Leicester’s museum initiatives, explored
new ways of dealing with heritage management and its various offshoots,
while Kevin Walsh’s The Representation of the Past (1992) engaged with the
specificities of conservation and museum spaces. What is most interesting
about the publication of heritage and related matter throughout the 1990s
is how quickly populated the field became by both practitioners and aca-
demics. Ambrose and Paine’s Museum Basics (1993), Pearce’s Interpreting
Objects and Collections (1994) and Fahy’s Collections Management (1995)
all demonstrated a willingness for change and innovation, especially in the
management field.6 Edited collections by MacDonald and Kirshenblatt-
Gimblett, however, both of which were published in 1998, took the debate
into even more adventurous waters by offering analysis of a greater range
of topics, including medical exhibitions, race and anthropology, thereby
introducing an edgier feel to the discussion. All of this arguably benefitted
many heritage and museum professionals, as well as those within academia,
at a time when a real search was under way for the future of heritage stud-
ies, at home and abroad.7
4 G. HOOPER
remain, Donnachie sees this as a thriving industry with a future that will
add greatly to the country’s economy. While the future of Scottish tour-
ism and heritage is also read in positive terms by Mark O’Neill, his chapter
attends to one of the great urban regeneration narratives of recent years:
the story of Glasgow. From the 1960s to the early 1980s the image of
Glasgow was one of steady decline: of status, morale and economic stand-
ing, it was a byword for deprivation and disarray, and an improbable tour-
ism and heritage site. However, the opening of the Burrell Collection in
1983 and the choice of Glasgow as the European City of Culture in 1990
changed everything, transforming the city into an example that would
be emulated throughout Europe. Interestingly, O’Neill chooses to focus
as much on Glasgow’s earlier successes as its more recent ones, and he
discloses a picture of a thriving tourism economy from much earlier years,
showing how the city simply regained in the late twentieth century what it
had once confidently celebrated as its right.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the image of tourism conveyed by the Scottish
agencies is not very different from that of its nearest neighbour; the upbeat
tone of English tourism and heritage institutions conveys just as much
optimism, potential and anticipated prosperity, despite periodic hiccups
and economic uncertainties. A November 2013 report produced by con-
sultants Deloitte, for example, suggests that tourism contributed £48.3
billion to the English economy and directly supported 1.44 million jobs
in 2013. ‘The total contribution of tourism to England is calculated’, it
continues, ‘by including the wage-financed spending of the 2.58 million
people employed directly by the industry or its supply chains’. Divided
between a London and a ‘rest of England’ model of development, tour-
ism ‘contributes £134.1 billion to England’s GDP in 2013, equivalent
to 11.1 % of the nation’s economy. In generating this contribution, 3.14
million jobs are supported in England’.10 VisitEngland, the country’s
national tourist board, is specifically charged not only with overseeing,
but also developing tourism, especially in partnership with industry, and
its Business Plan 2015–16 outlines key areas for development, includ-
ing regional initiatives associated with the north and the south-west.11
Moreover, England—A Strategic Framework for Tourism 2010–2020,
upon which VisitEngland’s policies are partially based, demonstrates an
unfailing faith in the future of English tourism. Amid all the confident and
hopeful statements there is an acknowledgement of recent and significant
challenges, including the growth of budget airlines, fluctuating exchange
INTRODUCTION 7
rates and a perception that England fails to represent value for money for
many overseas visitors, but the impression largely conveyed is of potential,
irrespective of regional differentials and characteristics:
Although a greater part of English heritage in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries was placed on matters of conservation, the increasing
evolution of its role has seen heritage valued as much for its strengthen-
ing of the tourism industry as for its contribution to the various narra-
tives of national and regional identity, or its connection to preservation
principles. For example, a number of organisations have been formed
over the years with the specific intention of protecting England’s built
and natural heritage, including the Society for the Protection of Ancient
Buildings and the National Trust, while more recent developments, such
as the Twentieth Century Society, which campaigns to preserve twentieth-
century architecture, was formed as recently as 1979. Inaugurated in
1983, English Heritage oversees over 400 properties, including some of
the most important in these islands, such as Stonehenge and Hadrian’s
Wall. The growth of the heritage industry and its lively and increasing con-
nection to tourism is explored by all four contributors that take England
as their focus, although as with Scotland the picture is one of growing
diversity, with an emphasis on natural heritage a particular feature. Karl
Spracklen assesses the South Pennines in terms of a number of tourism
attractions, with sometimes quite different tourist constituencies, and
discovers a complicated and still evolving narrative: of urban heritage,
geology, b irdwatching and mill towns, not to mention unsurprising ten-
sions between hosts and guests, and between elite literary tourism and
the ‘authenticity’ of working-class heritage, with its closed factories and
crushing unemployment. Meanwhile Simon Woodward and Sarah Oswald
focus on the industrial landscapes of the North York Moors National Park,
8 G. HOOPER
and consider the role of interpretation in dealing with a site which must
also foster the social and economic well-being of local communities. Here,
too, are kilns, iron mines, railway tracks and other vestiges of industrial
heritage, much of which are still failing to engage the interest of many
locals, whose forebears worked those mines and kilns in the first place but
who remain noticeably under-represented as a tourist constituency. Like
Spracklen, Woodward and Oswald draw attention to the postwar need for
the protection of national assets, legislated for by the 1949 National Parks
and Access to the Countryside Act; like Spracklen they also regard the
future of these sites to lie in greater engagement and inclusion, not just
for tourists but for locals too, and they see the importance of partnerships
as a crucial element in that regard.
While the future of the British seaside was set for drastic decline through-
out the 1960s—because of increasing demand for more exotic locales, full
employment and cheaper fares to continental Europe—Philip Larkin’s 1962
poem ‘Sunny Prestatyn’ seemed to sum up the utter tawdriness and bore-
dom of the coastal resort for many: ‘Come to Sunny Prestatyn / Laughed
the girl on the poster / Kneeling up on the sand / In tautened white
satin.’ Thirty years later John Urry was able to describe the British seaside
as being not quite dead, but certainly on its last legs, with only Blackpool
continuing to thrive to any discernible degree. He cited factors such as
piers that were falling into the sea, the featureless architectural forms which
characterised many coastal resorts, and the lack of excitement and exoti-
cism as being instrumental in their demise. Perhaps most damning of all,
Urry pointed to the uniformity of cultural forms across the British and Irish
landscape and the fact that what was once special about the coastal venue
had somehow been lost: ‘Seaside resorts have also become less distinctive
because of the deindustrialisation of many towns and cities so that there
is less need to escape from them to the contrasting seaside […] most sea-
side resorts are no longer extraordinary’.13 Whether our disinclination for
many coastal areas was due to the ever greater levels of choice provided by
regional airports and low-cost carriers, or the benefits of increased political
and social integration with other parts of Europe, or simply an established
appetite for warmer climes and better food, the fact remains that the British
coast as a tourist destination declined greatly from the 1960s to the 1990s.
In Paul Gilchrist’s chapter an analysis is offered of several coastal spaces,
some of which would once have been victim to the coastal decline Urry and
others described, but which are undergoing a curious transformation, of
benefit to locals in terms of place identity and community activism, but also
increasingly appreciated by growing numbers of tourists for the inventive
INTRODUCTION 9
use being now made of such liminal spaces in terms of new technologies
and partnerships (of conservation, local history, marketing and planning).
As with all our contributors, a key term in Gilchrist’s discussion is diver-
sity: of experience, visitor and site, and he reminds us that for heritage
to succeed it must remain flexible, open-ended and adaptable. The need
for heritage to be vigilant to the dangers of predetermined narratives and
routines, to the stasis that can quickly follow from established patterns,
whether of behaviour or thinking, is also at the centre of Graham Black’s
chapter on English tourism and museums. Black begins with an analysis of
the tourism and museum heritage sectors, which he identifies as having a
much improved relationship of late, but one still hamstrung by professional
rivalries and suspicions over issues to do with commodification and profi-
teering, conservation and protection, and all of which need to be speedily
tackled if museums are to survive and the English regions liberated from
subsidising London heritage to the extent that they do. As with all the
contributors to this volume, Gilchrist and Black reveal a sense of heritage
as transient, in process, and although they both acknowledge its rich and
diverse potential, they are also mindful of the challenges that yet lie ahead.
While motives such as job creation and the revitalisation of British post-
industrial cities lies behind a good deal of the promotion of English, Irish
and Scottish tourism, in Wales there is as much emphasis on the ben-
efits of tourism-driven regeneration projects as anywhere else. The Welsh
Government Strategy for Tourism 2013–2020 document, for example,
refers to the tourism potential of the country, but argues that because of
the diverse and expanding nature of the product an increasingly collabora-
tive policy is called for. Since tourism ‘touches many parts of Government
policy, including skills and employment, planning, regeneration, heritage
and culture’, an integrated system that targets the ‘wider influences of
tourism’ is required: one that draws together external stakeholders so that
full advantage can be taken, and risks allayed.
‘The challenges that face the tourism sector in Wales need sustained and
focussed responses over a prolonged period if they are to be overcome but,
as a small country, we have many advantages over our competitors. We can
work with agility, we can form close partnerships and we can measure how
well we are delivering our priorities. Tourism is well placed to benefit from
these competitive advantages and to focus resources where they will drive
successful outcomes for the economy’.14
The opportunities as well as challenges are here clearly laid out. Welsh
tourism can benefit its countryside as much as its cities, and given that
10 G. HOOPER
over 88,000 of all full-time equivalent jobs in Wales are directly supported
by tourism, the opportunity to grow the industry further clearly remains.
The document considers the realities that presently exist, but while it
admits that tourism will not resolve all of the economic and social prob-
lems currently faced, it suggests that a mixed, diverse and sustainable
economy can certainly contribute to local culture and create jobs, as well
as inspire pride and identity among Welsh communities. The document
is open about the challenges that remain—low visibility in continental
Europe, limited connectivity and flight capacity—but it argues that there
are opportunities for Welsh tourism nonetheless, and that such poten-
tial can best be harnessed through collaborative and inclusive engage-
ment. Indeed, the 2007 document Sustainable Tourism: A Framework
for Wales produced by the Welsh Assembly specifically endorses the idea
of a sustainable future for Welsh tourism, and does so within a context
of enlightened social inclusion. Amidst the usual economic objectives
common to many policy and strategy documents offered by the various
British and Irish tourism authorities, there is a distinctly nuanced effort
made by the Welsh to ensure widespread acceptance, and the calls for
‘local control’, ‘community well-being’, ‘social equity’ and a ‘just soci-
ety’ reveal a genuine commitment to ensuring that tourism benefits are
equally distributed.15
While the National Trust also protects and maintains natural and built
heritage in Wales, including sections of coast, Roman forts and woodland,
the Welsh government’s historic environment service, Cadw, is respon-
sible for a number of historic parks and gardens as well as fifty-eight his-
toric landscapes. But it is not just the traditional heritage venue—the park,
woodland, big house or castle—that the Welsh government is interested
in developing, for in Catherine Flynn’s chapter on heritage as an urban
regeneration tool within the Lower Swansea Valley we also hear of efforts
to use industrial heritage to improve the socio-economic and environmen-
tal quality of people’s lives. The government’s Heritage Tourism Project
and Cadw’s Pan-Wales Heritage Interpretation Plan place heritage at
the very heart of tourism and economic development, an acknowledge-
ment of the contribution heavy industry once made to the area as well
as an acceptance of the continuing importance of industrial heritage for
local communities. Indeed, Welsh government support for a number of
new ventures, including the 2013 Faith Tourism Action Plan discussed
by Simon Thomas in this volume, identifies several heritage and tourism
initiatives that could be profitably developed right across the country, and
INTRODUCTION 11
‘NITB will exploit its relationships with Fáilte Ireland, Tourism Ireland and
VisitBritain to maximise the benefits of joint promotion and CRM [cus-
tomer relationship management] and minimise ongoing costs by utilising
any technology, process or other economy of scale saving opportunities’.19
As the region across Britain and Ireland most affected by the 2008 finan-
cial crash, it comes perhaps as no surprise to see the Republic of Ireland’s
People, Place and Policy—Growing Tourism to 2025 document, produced by
the government’s Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport in 2015,
regard tourism as a major tool of economic regeneration and employment.
Not unlike the English and Welsh objectives, the overall goal of the Irish
government is to see the number of tourism-related jobs rise, in Ireland’s
INTRODUCTION 13
"I puzzle a good deal upon the subject, and life often flings it
uppermost," answered Bullstone. "In fact so are we built, through education
of conscience, that it's impossible to go very far without being brought up
against God. How often in my secret times of pain do I catch the Name on
my tongue? How often do I say 'My God, my God, what have I done?' I ask
Him that question by night and day. A silly question, too, for I know what
I've done as well as God can. But I know what I've suffered far better than
He can. I went on hoping and hoping, as you bade me, last year. I went
hoping, with one eye on God, like a rat that creeps out of his hole with one
eye on the dog hard by. But the game had to be played out by inches. He
knew that Margery was dying, a few miles away, and He kept it secret from
me and didn't let me hear till it was too late. He planned it, so that I should
just be there after the very last breath was breathed, should touch her before
she was cold, should miss her by seconds. And she longing—longing to
come back to me—to save me. What should we call that if a man had done
it—eh, William?"
"Come and look at my bees, Jacob. A brave swarm yesterday, and poor
Sammy Winter took 'em for me with all the cleverness of a sane man."
"Don't you fret your wits with such stuff, for it won't help you to
patience or wisdom."
"No, it won't bring the dead to life, or lift the brand from me. But I
thresh it out by night and see great things heave up in my mind. Then, when
I jump to put them into words, they fade and I lose them. Reason may be
the work of the devil—his master-stroke to turn us from salvation. You can't
be damned without it; but you can be saved without it. Or would you say a
man can't have a soul to be saved, until he is a reasonable creature, built to
separate good from evil and choose the right? No doubt it's well understood
by deep men. My mind turns in and feeds on itself, William, because there's
nothing left outside to feed on."
"You must come back to your appointed task. You must keep doing
good things. You must do more and think less."
"I'm going up to Huntingdon with Auna this afternoon."
"And let her talk to you. Don't think her words are worthless. You've got
a nice bit of your wife left in Auna. Always remember that."
"I do. I shall live on for Auna. There's one beautiful thing left for me—
beautiful, and yet a living wound, that grows painfuller every day I live.
And that's Auna—Auna growing more and more and more like Margery—
bringing her back, even to the toss of her head and the twinkle of her eye.
She laughs like her mother, William; she cries like her mother; she thinks
like her mother. So my only good will be my first grief. The things still left
to care about will torture me more than all the hate of the world can torture
me. They'll keep memory awake—stinging, burning, till I scream to Auna
to get out of my sight presently, and leave me with the foxes and the carrion
crows."
During the later part of this day he ascended the moors with Auna and
walked to the empty Warren House. They talked of those who had dwelt
there, for that morning a letter had come from Mrs. Veale for Margery,
giving her news of the Veale family—Benny and the children.
"You must answer it, Auna, and tell the woman that your mother passed
away last winter," said Jacob. "If I was a younger man, I might go out to
Canada myself and take you with me; but we'll stop here. You'll like
Huntingdon, won't you?"
"Yes, father."
"All the things she specially cared about you'll have round you, father."
"I know them all," he answered, "because, so long as I felt hope that she
might come back, I was specially careful for them and set them aside out of
harm's way. She had a great liking for little things that she coupled with the
thoughts of friends."
He spoke the truth, for many trifles that had sustained some faint
fragrance of hope while Margery lived—trifles that her heart had valued
and her hands had held—were now subject to a different reverence, set
apart and sanctified for ever.
"We might take a few of her favourite flowers too," suggested Auna,
"but I doubt they would live up there in winter. You can always come down
and see them at the right time, father."
"Everything shall be just as you will, Auna. You'll be mistress and I'll be
man."
She laughed and they tramped forward. Jacob could now walk all day
without suffering for it, but he was lame and his pace slower than of old.
He brought the key with him and opened the silent house. A week rarely
passed without a visit, and Jacob always awoke to animation and interest
when he came. The melancholy spot and mean chambers, though they had
chilled not a few human hearts in the past, always cheered him. To a
dwelling whence others had thankfully departed for the last time, he now
looked forward with satisfaction; and Auna, seeing that only here came any
peace to her father, welcomed Huntingdon already as her future home. Not
a shadow clouded her eyes as she regarded it, and not one regret before the
receding vision of Red House and her own life therein. For her father was
her world, as he had always been, and when he turned against his home, she
echoed him and loved Red House no more. She knew that for Jacob the
death of her mother had destroyed Red House; she understood that he
desired to begin again and she felt well content to begin again with him. His
influence had come between her and normal development in certain
directions. She was old for her age, but also young. No instinct of sex had
intruded upon her life, and little interest in any being outside her own home
circle. Even within it her sister and brothers were nothing compared to her
father, and impulses, fears, suspicions that might have chilled a girl's
forward glance under the walls of forlorn Huntingdon, never rose in Auna's
mind to darken the future. Her father willed there to dwell and her welfare
and happiness as yet took no flight beyond him.
"I'll have this room," he said, "because the sun sets upon it; and you will
bide here, Auna, because it's fitting the sun shall rise where you wake."
"My sun set, when mother died," continued Jacob. "What's left is
twilight; but you'll be the evening star, Auna, as it says in mother's little
book. You can read it if you want to. I'll let it touch no other hand but yours.
I've read every word many times, because I know her eyes rested on every
word once."
The desolation of the warren house soothed Jacob, and having wandered
through it he sat for a time outside the enclosures before starting to return
home. He rolled his melancholy eyes over the great spaces to a free horizon
of the hills folding in upon each other.
"I hope it will, father," she answered, "but the days will be very like
each other."
"Days too like each other drag," he told her. "We must change the
pattern of the days. It shan't be all work for you. We'll do no work
sometimes, and now and then you'll go for a holiday down to the 'in
country,' and I shall be alone till you come back."
"I'm never going to leave you alone," she said. "If you think upon a
holiday for me, you've got to come too, or have Peter up here for a bit."
"There's only one other thing beside the moor that's good to me; and
that's the sea; and you well love to be on the sea, so we might go to it now
and again."
"To know the sea better may be a wise deed for me," he said. "Some it
hurts and cannot comfort—so I've heard. Not that it could ever be a friend
to me, like the hills."
"You'd love it better and better, specially if you'd sail out on to it, same
as I did with Uncle Lawrence."
Her father nodded and this allusion did not banish his placid mood. The
sun rays were growing slant and rich as they set out for home. Auna
laughed at their shadows flung hugely before them. Then they descended
and she walked silently for a long way with her hand in her father's hand.
But she was content despite their silence, for she knew that his mind had
passed into a little peace. She often wondered why the desert solitudes
cheered him, for they cast her down. She liked to leave it behind her—that
great, lonely thing—and descend into the kindly arms of the Red House
trees and the welcome of the river. For the river itself, in Auna's ear, sang a
different song beside her home, than aloft, in its white nakedness, and
loneliness. There it was elfin and cold and silvery, but it did not seem to
sing for her; while beneath, at the feet of the pines, under the bridge of logs,
in the pools and stickles she knew to the last mossy boulder—there her
name river had music for her alone and she understood it. It was a dear
friend who would never pass away out of her life, or die and leave her to
mourn. A time was coming when she would know it better still, see it aloft
nigh its cradle, learn its other voices, that yet were strange to her. In the
valley the river was old and wise; perhaps aloft, where it ran nigh
Huntingdon, it was not so wise or tender, but younger and more joyous.
"It'll have to be my friend," thought Auna, "for there won't be no others
up there but father."
An incident clouded the return journey, and though neither Jacob nor his
daughter was sentimental, death confronted them and made them sorry. An
old goat, one of the parents of the Red House flock, had disappeared during
the previous winter, and they had fancied that he must have fallen into the
stream and been swept away in a freshet that happened when he vanished.
But now, in a little green hollow rimmed with heath and granite, they found
all that was left of the creature—wisps of iron-grey hair, horns attached to
his skull, a few scattered bones picked clean by the carrion crows and the
hollow skeleton of his ribs with young grasses sprouting through it.
"So it is then. And I'm glad we found him. A very dignified thing, the
way the creatures, when they know they're going to die, leave their friends
and go away all alone. A fine thing in them; and there's many humans
would do the same if they had the strength I dare say."
"Peter will like to have them for a decoration," she said. "I hope he
didn't suffer much, poor old dear."
"And I hope the carrion crows didn't dare to touch him till he was gone,
father."
"No, no. There's unwritten laws among the wild things. I expect they
waited."
"We don't know. They can't tell us. Perhaps they wondered a bit. More
likely they knew he'd gone up to die and wouldn't come back. They know
deeper than we think they know among themselves, Auna."
"I've often been sorry for that poor Scape-goat in the Bible, father. I
read about him to grandmother long ago, one Sunday, and never forgot
him."
"I won't hear you say things like that, father. I won't live with you if you
say things like that."
"Bear with me, bear with me. It comes in great waves, and I'm a
drowning man till they roll over and pass. You'll sweeten me presently. Who
could live with you and not grow sweeter, you innocent?"
He broke off.
Venus throbbed upon the golden green of the west, and as they
descended, the valley was already draped with a thin veil of mist under
which the river purred. From the kennels came yapping of the dogs; and
when they reached home and entered the yard, half a dozen red terriers
leapt round Auna and nosed with excitement at "Beardy's" horns.
CHAPTER V
On a rough day of autumn, when the river ran high and leaves already
flew upon half a gale of wind, a little crowd of men gathered up the valley
beyond Red House, and with crow-bars and picks sought to lift up the block
of granite whereon aforetime Margery Bullstone so often sat. Jacob had
long ago dug down to the foundation, that he might satisfy himself to its
size; and it had proved too great beneath the soil, where twice the bulk of
the visible part was bedded. Now, therefore, having heaved it from the
ground, they were busy to drive four holes in it, where the cleft must take
place. Then they inserted four cartridges, set the slow match, lighted it and
retreated beside a cart that already stood out of harm's reach.
There had come Peter and Auna, Adam and Samuel Winter and Jacob
Bullstone; and Adam had lent his pig-cart to convey the stone to the
churchyard.
The block had split true and a mass accordant with its memorial purpose
was presently started upon the way. Jacob directed great care, and helped to
lift the stone, that none of the native moss in its scooped crown should be
injured.
"Whether it will live down in the churchyard air I don't know," he said,
"but the grave lies in shade most times and we can water it."
They went slowly away under the rioting wind, and near Red House
Peter and his sister left them, while at Shipley Bridge Samuel also returned
home.
Jacob walked beside Adam at the horse's head. It was a bad day with
him and the passion of the weather had found an echo in his spirit. The rain
began to fall and Winter drew a sack from the cart and swung it over his
shoulders.
"You'd best to run into Billy Marydrew's till the scat's passed, else you'll
get wet," he said.
"A pity it isn't my coffin instead of her stone you've got here," he said.
"I'm very wishful to creep beside her. No harm in that—eh?"
"There's every harm in wishing to be dead afore your time, Jacob; but
none I reckon in sharing her grave when the day's work is ended."
"Truth's truth and time can't hide truth, whatever else it hides. I killed
her, Adam, I killed her as stone-dead as if I'd taken down my gun and shot
her."
"No, no, Bullstone, you mustn't say anything like that. You well know
it's wrong. In one way we all help to kill our fellow-creatures I reckon; and
they help to kill us. 'Tis a mystery of nature. We wear away at each other,
like the stone on the sea-shore; we be thrown to grind and drive at each
other, not for evil intent, but because we can't help it. We don't know what
we're doing, or who we're hurting half our time—no more than frightened
sheep jumping on each other's backs, for fear of the dog behind them."
"That's all wind in the trees to me. I wasn't blind: I knew what I was
doing. I don't forget how I hurt you neither, and took good years off your
life."
"Leave it—leave it and work. Think twice before you give up work and
go to Huntingdon."
"My work's done, and badly done. Don't you tell me not to get away to
peace if I'm to live."
"Peace, for the likes of us, without learning, only offers through work."
They had reached Marydrew's and Adam made the other go in.
"I'll stop under the lew of the hedge till this storm's over," he said. "Tell
Billy I'd like to see him to-night if he can drop in. The wind's turning a
thought north and will go down with the sun no doubt."
He went forward, where a deep bank broke the weather, and Jacob
entered William's cottage. Mr. Marydrew had seen them from the window
and now came to the door.
"A proper tantara 'tis blowing to-day," he said. "My loose slates be
chattering, like a woman's tongue, and I'm feared of my life they'll be
blowed off. The stone's started then? That's good."
Jacob, according to his habit, pursued his own thoughts and spoke on, as
though Adam still stood beside him.
"To talk of peace—to say there's any peace for a red-handed man. Peace
is the reward of work and good living and faithful service. Red hands can't
earn peace."
"Now don't you begin that noise. Let the wind blow if it must. No call
for you to blow. Take my tarpaulin coat for the journey. A thought small,
but it will keep your niddick dry."
Mr. Marydrew brought his spirit from a cupboard while the other
rambled on.
"We've just hacked the stone for her grave out of the earth. Torn up by
the roots, like she was herself. She dies and her children lose a father as
well as a mother, because they know the stroke was mine; and what honest
child shall love a father that killed a mother? That's not all. Think of that
man now helping me to get the stone to her grave. Think of the suffering
poured on Winter's head. A very good, steadfast sort of man—and yet my
hand robbed him of much he can never have again. Three out of four
children lost, and that saint underground. And all allowed by the good-will
of a watchful God."
He nodded, emptied the glass his friend offered him and looked out at
the rain.
"You're dark to-day and don't see very clear, my dear," said Billy. "You
put this from your own point of view, and so 'tis very ugly I grant; but every
thing that haps has two sides. You've bitched up your show here, Jacob, and
I'm not going to pretend you have not. You've done and you've suffered a
lot, along of your bad judgment; and you was kindiddled into this affair by
the powers of darkness. But 'tis the way of God to use men as signposts for
their fellow-men. He sees the end of the road from the beginning, and He
knows that the next scene of your life, when you meet Margery, will belike
be full of joy and gladness."
"It's your heart, not your head, that speaks that trash, William,"
answered the younger. "Can future joy and gladness undo the past? Can the
sunshine bring to life what the lightning killed an hour afore? How shall
understanding in Heaven blot out the happenings on earth? Things—awful
things—that God's self can't undo? And answer me this: if some live happy
in this world and go happy to the next, as well we know some do; then why
should not all? If some are born to live with their minds clear, their tempers
pure, their passions under control, why should such as I am blot the earth?
Would a man make maimed things? Would a decent man bring living
creatures to the birth short of legs or eyes, when he could fashion them
perfect? Where's the boasted mercy of your God, William? Where's His
eternal plan, and what's the sense of talking about a happy eternity if a man
comes to it poisoned by time? I'm calm, you see—a reasoning creature and
honest with myself. My everlasting inheritance would be nothing but one
undying shame and torture at the ruin I have made; and I know that I cannot
stand up in the next world among those I have spoiled and wronged and feel
a right to do so. And if my Creator has built me to gnaw my heart out in
agony through a life without end—what is He? No, the only poor mercy left
for me is eternal night—endless sleep is what I'd pray for if I could pray;
because another life must be hell wherever it is spent. Let Him that made us
unmake us. 'Tis the least and best that He can do for nine men out of ten."
The storm had swept past and a weather gleam flashed upon the rain.
The red beech trees before William's home shone fiery through the falling
drops and shook off little, flying flakes of flame, as the leaves whirled in the
wind.
Mr. Marydrew did not answer, but followed Jacob to the wicket gate
and watched him as he rejoined Winter. William waited until the cart had
disappeared and was turning to go in, when a neighbour came up the
shining road from Shipley.
"Did Adam tell you he's wishful to see you to-night?" she asked and
Billy answered that he had not.
"Well he is," she said, and put down the big umbrella under which she
had come. "He's lending a hand with a heathen lump of stone just now. That
forgotten man up the valley be going to put it on poor Margery Bullstone's
grave; and for my part I'm a good deal surprised that parson will suffer such
a thing in a Christian burial ground."
"They've just gone round the corner—Adam and him and the cart. He
was in here storming against his fate a minute agone."
"I live with Adam Winter," she answered and went her way.
CHAPTER VI
THE CHILDREN
"There's nothing so cold as the chill of your own flesh," he said. "A
child's a fearful thing, Adam, if it turns against a parent, especially when
you've kept your share of the bargain, as I have."
"Yes, thoughtful for themselves. Young and green they are, yet not too
young to do man and woman's work, not too young to know the value of
money. Something's left out of them, and that is the natural feeling there
should be for their father. Hard, hard and ownself they are."
"Your eldest is born to command, and that sort play for their own hand
by reason of the force that's in 'em. Time will mellow John Henry's heart,
and experience of men will show him the manner of man his father is."
"He loved his mother more than he loved anything, and it may be out of
reason to ask them, who loved her, to spare much regard for me. That I
grant and have always granted. Yet I've striven to show him now, with all
my awful faults, I'm a good father."
"John Henry comes of age in a minute and I've made over Bullstone
Farm to him. A great position for one so young—eh, Winter?"
"A wondrous fine thing, and what makes it finer is that he's a born
farmer and will be worthy of it."
"Kingwell's lease is up ere long, and then my son will reign and be the
head of the family in the eye of the nation."
"You mustn't say that. You're the head of the family, not your son."
"He had scarce a word to answer when I told him how I'd been to
Lawyer Dawes and turned it over. As for Dawes himself, he feels a thought
doubtful whether I should part with my own so freely; but 'no,' I said, 'I
understand what I'm doing.' A bit of bread and a cup of water is all I shall
ever ask from my children. Let them do what I've failed to do and carry on
the name in a proper way. I want to be forgot, Adam; and yet, because
they're quite agreeable to take all and let me be forgot, I smart. Such is
man."
"They care not for my good—why should they? They don't want my
wisdom, for well they know my wisdom is foolishness. Who'd seek me
now? Who'd listen to me now, but a few such as you and William, who
have the patience of those who grow old and can still forgive all and laugh
kindly? No: they are children, and wisdom they need and experience they
lack—the more so because the world has run smooth for them. But they
don't look to me and they never did. All but Auna were set against me from
their short coats. They began to doubt as soon as they could walk. Their
grandmother was their god, and they'll live to find she was a false god.
They didn't get their hard hearts from Margery, or me."
"Trust to that then," urged the other. "Be patient and wait and watch,
and you'll see yourself in them yet, and your wife also."
"You have a great trust in your fellow-creatures, Adam Winter."
"You must trust 'em if you're going to get any peace. What's life worth if
you can't trust? 'Tis to people the world with enemies and make yourself a
hunted creature."
"'Hunted' is a very good word," answered Jacob, "that's the state of most
of us. As to my children," he continued, "Peter will carry on here with
Middleweek, and he's very well able to do it—better already at a bargain
than ever I was, and likely to be more popular with customers than I. But
my sons have got to make me payments. That's fair—eh?"
"Certainly it is."
"And Auna must be thought upon also. She's first in my mind, and
always will be, and she needn't fear, when I go, that she'll be forgot. I've
managed pretty cleverly for her, well knowing that she'd not think of such
things when she grows up."
"Don't you force her to grow up too quick, however," urged Adam.
"Such a far-seeing man as you must not come between her and her own
generation, and keep her too close pent if you really go to the moor. Youth
cleaves to youth, Jacob; youth be the natural food of youth."
Adam argued against this opinion and indeed blamed Bullstone heartily.
John Henry drove his sister in a little market cart from Bullstone Farm
and they surprised their father walking by the river. Auna accompanied him
and they were exercising some puppies. He had just pointed out to the flat
rock by the river where Margery was wont to sit, when she took vanished
generations of puppies for their rambles; then Auna cried out and the cart
stopped beside them.
John Henry alighted to shake hands with his father and Avis descended
and kissed him. He was astonished and asked the meaning of their visit.
"We're not playing about," answered John Henry, "we've come on a very
important, family matter—our affair and not grandmother's at all. And we
thought we might stop for dinner and tea."
"Come and welcome; but I've done all I'm going to do, John Henry—all
for you and all for Avis. You're not going to squeeze me any more."
"Leave it till after dinner," directed the young man. "I heard you were
fixed beyond power of changing on Huntingdon; but I do hope that's not so,
father; because I think there's a good few reasons against."
"I don't see no use in that copse up the valley," he said. "'Tis good
ground wasted—only a place for badgers to breed, and we don't want them
killing the poultry. But if it was cleared to the dry-built wall—cleared
slowly and gradual in winter—it would give a bit of work and some useful
wood, and then offer three good acres for potatoes and rotation after. It's
well drained by nature and worth fifty pounds a year presently if not more."
Jacob was in an abstracted mood and the sight of all his children met
together gave him pain rather than pleasure. They accentuated the empty
place and their spirits jarred upon him, for they were cheerful and noisy. He
thought that Auna was the brighter for their coming and resented it in a dim,
subconscious fashion.
"Light your pipe and listen, father. You must wake up and listen. I've
got a very big idea and I'm very wishful you'll think of it, and so is Avis."
"What big idea could you have that I come into?" he asked.
"Who's put you up to thinking about me at all? You weren't used to."
"God's my judge nobody put me up to it; did they, Avis?"
"Nobody," answered Avis. "It was your own thought, and you asked me,
and I said it was a very fine thought."
"No, father. It's just this. I know you don't want to stop here. That's
natural. But there's other places beside the moor. And I'm very wishful
indeed for you to come and live with me at Bullstone—you and Auna. Then
you'd be near Peter, and Avis too; and she could come and go and look after
you."
Jacob took it ill. He believed that selfish motives had prompted John
Henry, nor did he even give him credit for mixed motives. Then, as he
remained silent, another aspect of the proposal troubled him. This woke
actual anger.
"To 'look after me'? To 'look after me'? God's light! what do you take
me for? D'you think my wits are gone and my children must look after me?
Perhaps you'd like to shut me up altogether, now you've got your farms?"
They did not speak and he took their silence for guilt, whereas it only
meant their astonishment.
"Where the hell did you scheming devils come from?" he shouted.
"Where's your mother in you? Are you all your blasted grandmother?"
Avis flushed and John Henry's face also grew hot. Auna put her arms
round her father's neck.
"Don't, don't say such awful things," she begged him; "you know better,
dear father."
"You wrong us badly when you say that, father. We meant no such thing
and was only thinking of you and Auna. You must have stuff to fill your
mind. You're not a very old man yet, and you're strong and active. And I