Yorkshire Almanac Samuel Hick, blacksmith and Methodist preacher of Micklefield (Leeds), writes to his “dear bosom frend and beloved wife” and daughter Jan

24 January 1826: Samuel Hick, blacksmith and Methodist preacher of Micklefield (Leeds), writes to his “dear bosom frend and beloved wife” and daughter Jan

Samuel Hick’s anvil and window at St. Ricarius church, Aberford – he is buried outside (Storye book 2016/11/10).

C. Clough Robinson. 1862. The Dialect of Leeds and Its Neighbourhood. London: John Russell Smith. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

Denby dal

My dear bosom frend and beloved wife,

I tak hoap my pen this morning to enform you and my Crestion frends that I am verey hapey in my sowl and I engoy a good stat of helth and I want for no maner of thing that is good. My dear frend Mr. Brook hes bowt me cloth for a toop cot to keep my bodey from the cowld storms for thear is a deall of snow folen in thes contrey, bot the Lord be blest! we have plentey of coils and we keep good firs, and I believe the Lord hes sent me hear. I have plentey of wark hear for thear is a deal of por sofrin Crestions, and my frends gos with me to veset the sik and por, and I feel my sowl verey hapey in my wark; and the best of holl, the Lord is caring on his wark and sowls is saved and believers are santefyed, and baksliders are coming hom to thor father’s hows, and the Lord is poting rens on thur hand and shows on thur feet, and thear is regoising hover the por prodegal. This week I hav been begen for a chapell, and my howld frend the quaker, Mr. Deleson of Hyflats, Mr. Hontres’ father, gav me the grownd, and we shall get a chapell, for it is greatly wanted; and if I am spared till the next week, I am bown to asist them for a chapell at Peneston, so I fole belev I ham in the plas wear the Lord wowld have me be. If I am spared till to morow, Mr. Brook and me is bown to preach at Denby dall.

This morning wen I ros from my bed I found my sowl verey hapey, and my prospects of heven and glorey grows brighter and brighter to the porfect day, and my sowl is kept in porfect peas. I think the Lord is feting me hop hather for som triall or hels for my glores eneretans, bot I ham quit resind to his will. If I hav don my work I shall fall asleep and go to my dear frends that hes gon befor, and sin of redeeming lov for ever and for ever, and tak the kindom and poset for ever, wear storms shall never com.

My dear Jan [his daughter], I hop you will do all in your powr to mak your dear mother comfortobell; keep hor well haped both by day and night for it is verey stormey, and let hor hav som win or rom to noresh hor por bodey with, and I will tak car you shall be recompensed for all you do for your dear mother, and I will asur you it is not howt of sit howt of mind, for I rember you all at a thron of grace, both poblek and privat, and I well know that God that I sarv and loov, is a God that both hears and ansers prayer. Wen I hav don my work for theas two chapels I will com hover to see you and I hop to find you all in god helth both in bodey and sowl. Be sur you if anetheng showld hapen befor I com, right emeadeley and I will com emeadelety; and I cowld lik to hear from you: send me a lon leter, and let me now how your going hon in the best thengs. And wen I hav don my work I hentend to go to my dear frends at Polleton and the hoder cirket. I bless the Lord I hav plentey of work, and you know it is the work that I lov and it afords good wages – peas, goy, and lov. This morning I have been releving a por woman: she towld me she had seven cheldren, and thay had won pond of meat sins Kesomas day, and she mad a potatey py on the pond of meat and they had a feas, and I gav hor a shilling to by hor another pond of meeat with for to morow, and I never so a mor thenkfull creater in my lif: I would hav the por in Melkeldfeld [Micklefield] to be thenkfull, for thear is no sich sofers in Melkelfeld. I will asur you it leons me a leson of gratetude, – will we hav fod to heat wil hoders beg from dor to dor – Pras the Lord ho my sowl! for is marses endurs for ever and for ever. Bot I must conclud with my kind loov to all frends, and desirs a entrost in thar prayrs. Pleas to send me word if Mrs. Porter is ded, and let me now how my dear gronchild his, and if she can run with hor boney letell hand.
Samuel Hicks, Denby dall

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

This book quotes two letters, and there is mention of them in Everett’s memoir, but whatever happened to the rest? Where’s Polleton?

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Comment

This book quotes two letters, and there is mention of them in Everett’s memoir, but whatever happened to the rest? Where’s Polleton?

Something to say? Get in touch

2 February 1806: John Yeadon helps a desperate sinner at a Methodist love-feast during the Great Revival at Yeadon

20 June 1817: Lines spoken by the actor Alexander Cummins at the Leeds Theatre are enacted sooner than he might have wished

16 November 1814: Blacksmith Samuel Hick pantomimes for Selby Wesleyans a dream in which he sails to the West Indies to liberate the slaves

30 April 1704: Whitby’s Church of England parish register records a wedding celebrated, perhaps illegally, at the Quakers Meeting

7 April 1687: James II’s declaration of freedom of conscience arrives in Yorkshire, but fails in its alleged underlying intention – to drive people into the arms of the Catholic church

15 December 1888: Frank Kidson longs for Leeds’s musical Christmasses past

23 May 1889: The poet Edward Carpenter recalls walking into the polluted hell that is Sheffield and finding steel producer Charles Wardlow curiously engaged

13 March 1853: Army veteran John Sykes takes a blunderbuss to Hiram Yeadon during a feud between Wesleyan and Reformer Methodists at Yeadon

19 May 1812: An Anglican Whit walk encounters a Nonconformist one at “Briarfield” (Birstall), amid Luddites and wars with France and the US, in the imagination of Charlotte Brontë

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Comment

Shirley is set in 1811 and 1812, and Luddism became a serious threat in the West Riding in early 1812. Easter Sunday was 29 March that year, so Whit Tuesday was 19 May – although Charlotte Brontë’s imagination, perhaps inspired by weather reports in the Leeds Mercury, which she consulted extensively, locates it in the last week of May. John Lock and Canon W.T. Dixon say (p.63) that the scene reworks a confrontation between Patrick Brontë and a drunk when he led the Whitsun procession in Dewsbury in 1810 (Lock 1965), but Herbert Wroot (p.78) has found in the Dewsbury Reporter of 12 December 1896 the report of an interview conducted by P.F. Lee in which the Rev. James Chesterton Bradley, the original of “Mr. Sweeting,” says that Charlotte Brontë reused more or less literally an actual episode:

At the head of the steep main street of Haworth is a narrow lane, which on a certain Whitsuntide was the scene of a similar event to the one related in this seventeenth chapter of ‘Shirley.’ The Church School procession had defiled into the lane, ‘had gained the middle of it,’ when ‘lo and behold! another – an opposition procession’ – was entering the other end of the lane at the same time, ‘headed also by men in black.’

It was interesting, Mr. Lee went on to say, “to hear from Mr. Bradley how Patrick Bronté, seeing the situation, at once assumed the offensive, and charging the enemy with his forces soon cleared the way.”

Wroot also says that “immediately upon the publication of the novel, Briarfield was identified, by all acquainted with the district, as Birstall” (Wroot 1966).

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