I think I am a dedicated man. I won’t have financial trouble—I mean, to hell with it! I won’t have life all spoilt by money. I don’t worry about dying, although I am mid-way through, but I dread being old and unable to work. We are all living in the rat-race, however far out in the wilds we are. The village is so quiet now. Nobody walks about in it. You don’t say you saw your neighbour, you say you passed his car. People wave and toot where they used to talk. They’re all out for what they can get. Nobody goes to look at what somebody else has done and have a chat about it. If you saw somebody ploughing or clearing the marsh, you used to meet up with a neighbour and say, “Let’s go and see what he’s up to.”
I talk to the boys. I train them in “steps.” The oldest is twenty-two now and doesn’t want much supervising. But the others are fifteen and seventeen and you have to watch them. I treat them as individuals. There’s young Den, if you said something amiss to him it would upset him so much you wouldn’t do nothing with him for a week. Big as an ox and soft as a girl. He is a great tradesman already. But Robin, you have to swear at him regular once a month, or you wouldn’t do anything with him. If those two boys had been apprenticed together, you would have made a man of one and offended the other—or vice versa. You must never offend a boy. I always look at the parents before I take an apprentice. If you know the home, you already know the son.
I’m against sport. I hate it. If work and sport changed places, this country wouldn’t be in a muddle. Sport and holidays have become a mania, an insanity. If anybody wanted a holiday, I wouldn’t stop them from taking one, but I hate holidays as much as I hate sport, and that’s saying something. These boys won’t be like me; they’ll never work as I have worked—and perhaps they shouldn’t have to. I’ve been working two pieces of metal together on the anvil with the sledge-hammer, when my vest caught fire and I daren’t pause to put it out! When two men were working, hitting the anvil in turn, they would get each other’s sparks. You would be open right down the front and they flew against your nakedness. A blacksmith always rolls his shirtsleeves under, so the sparks don’t lodge in the folds. Now, with the emery sparks, we have to watch out for eye-trouble.
I am worried about everything getting too big. I have been learning how to pack things up to go to America—when only ten years ago, if an order had been finished it lay in the corner of the shop until somebody in the village felt like picking it up. I sometimes want to be alone again. I’m fond of the boys, and they work well, but they take the private spell out of my shop. They are not to blame. It is because everything is rushing so. I am still young myself, and yet I worked here for years with just a pair of tongs, a couple of hammers and a four-and-a-half-gallon cask of beer under the bench. And an old drinking horn which had never been washed up. Now I am packing these things for the United States. I think life would be fuller if I wasn’t, and that’s a fact.
Francis Lambert · aged twenty-five · forge-worker
Francis works for Gregory and is disciple as well as employee. He is a great craftsman, a “natural.” Exhibitions and contact with artists are beginning to bring him fame. He is both pleased and distrustful. He is “glad that things are going well” but he doesn’t want to “stick out.” He is entirely uncreative in the imaginative sense—a pair of hands to shape metals to another’s requirements. No design is too sophisticated for him to realize in iron, brass or copper. Recent commissions for fifty huge lamps for a cathedral, for instance, can make little aesthetic sense to him and their magnificence reveals his absolute submittance to the artist’s will. There is a Henry Moore sited on the river bank near Benjamin Britten’s new opera house at Snape (twelve miles)—has he seen it? No, it is not his business. To attempt taking an interest in metal from this angle seems a kind of threat. Two people work as one in order to get the best results, he finds—the artist and the artificer. All the same, Francis has all the ruthlessness of the artist. Work time is holy time for him. Nothing and nobody is allowed to break it up. So far there hasn’t even been a girl, although he is handsome enough. He takes exercise, drinks Lucozade, breathes deeply—and all for “work.” An austere young man.
He lives with his parents and brothers in a fine Tudor house on a hill. Inside, the heavy, stately rooms refuse to hide under cheerful wallpapers and tiled grates. Outside, the view is tremendous—a flood of corn and peas all the way to Framlingham with, here and there, turquoise streaks of the Deben glinting through the valley pastures. “You don’t have to go far to see a long way,” says Francis.
The village says that Francis is “all right,” meaning that he isn’t like anybody else but it doesn’t matter.
* * *
I won the apprentice-class championship of the British Isles at the Suffolk Show and was sent to Germany to represent the country at an international craft festival. The festival was wonderful. My trip was sponsored by the Metal Box Company. Eventually, I took first prize three consecutive years running with a log basket, a firescreen and a flower stand. Mrs. Gladwell designed all these and I owe her fifty per cent of the praise. Mr. Gladwell was pleased with me winning and gave me all the materials I had used. There is a lot of labour in show-work. Too much really. But as I went to Germany, it was worth it. My life has been very different to what I thought it would be. I’m not blowing my own trumpet, but I do all the top jobs. This is what it amounts to. The new altar-cross was passed to me and I finished it. Sixty working hours went into making it—although the trouble is we don’t often get nice straight runs like this on an important job. It is on and off. It is start and pack up, start and pack up. Every man needs to start and work right through . . .
What do you think our bread-and-butter is?—weather-vanes! Weather-vanes are good for bread-and-butter, especially when they have horses on them. Door-stops are very good too. And gates. And, at Christmas, firescreens.
I like working in brass; it is the best metal of all. We normally use the brittle type. You can make a good clean cut; nothing binds in it. The old kind of brass used for the twisted candlesticks was inclined to be soft. They will sell brass to you any length you want, but it’s sure to be dear—18s. a square foot! My mother loves copper. She wants me to make her this and make her that—she doesn’t realize how much it all costs. But if I’d got the time and a little more money put aside I would make her everything she asked for.
I used to work a ten-hour day, Monday to Friday. I worked from eight to eight with two hours for meals. This was my ordinary work but on top of this I would do two extra hours each day on my show-work. So I used to work eighty hours a week. This was when I was seventeen, eighteen and nineteen. But it gets you down in the end.
My father said, “Go and work for Mr. Gladwell at the forge.” He said, “I’m not forcing you—you won’t be able to say that I forced you—but go and work for Mr. Gladwell.” (Gregory, we call him but I will call him Mr. Gladwell to you.) So I went and I have never regretted it. I was fifteen and I always thought I would work here. I was as green as they come. I knew nothing. But I had only been here a month when Mr. Gladwell was saying that he would like me to go in for show-work. I was very nervous and didn’t think that I could do it. I haven’t got a lot of faith in myself. I am a shy sort of person really. But I began to pick the work up and after three years I had conquered it. I couldn’t hide this fact from myself. There was no proper apprenticeship. I haven’t any papers to say that I have been trained—neither has Mr. Gladwell himself. He is self-taught and I just learned. And this is how I like to go on. If people just stand and tell me this and tell me that it doesn’t mean a thing. I have to find everything out for myself after seeing it done. I can do it eventually.
I’ll be quite honest with you; I haven’t any faith in myself. I don’t expect to be able to do anything. When it is done, I am pleased and surprised. But the faith is beginning to come now, as you might say. Gregory—Mr. Gladwell—has brought this faith to me. He tells us all, when we start at the forge, that he will make men of us. I believe he has d
one so with me. Although he has an extraordinary way of putting it over, it gets there. The one we call the “middle boy” was always fooling about; he’d got brains but wouldn’t use them. But now Mr. Gladwell has altered him and he’s a damn useful bloke. Mr. Gladwell is really a teacher. He likes to think and work things out. He is the best talker in the village—at least, I think so. The business would have closed up if it hadn’t been for him. He believed in it. He won’t alter the front of the shop because he says that this is the way his family saw it for 300 years. He likes to leave everything just as it was.
I now work fifty-four hours a week. It is no good doing more than this because of the tax, you see. I found this out during the summer when, because I had to visit my father in hospital, I had to give up overtime. When I opened my wage-packet I found that I had more money when I was working ordinary hours than when I was working all hours. I love work. It would be work all the time if I had my way. I have nothing against work. Young men should always look for work which interests them, no matter how long it takes them to find it. No man should go in at morning to wait for the clock at night. And people who want the money without the work spoil everything.
Outside work, I like shooting. In January, my brother and I go ferreting. I call this a hobby. We are the only men in the village who still have ferrets. My father used to trap—he’d be up early in the morning to find rabbits. It was handy money for him and the farmer was glad that he had set the traps. Rabbits were poor man’s food. Our family isn’t poor any more but we still like a nice rabbit. Only the farmers have spread the myxy about, so you don’t always fancy them. It is a pity. There aren’t many boys on the ferreting side these days; they’re all for football. They are crazy about football, they talk of nothing else. They don’t worry much about drinking and neither do I. The big beer-drinking days are gone. They drank because there wasn’t any television. Their houses were so boring, they were glad to get to the pub. The boys drink very little—they might have a couple of small bottles and then they’ll go on to minerals. Our fathers had to drink to be men. They thought the beer made them strong and fit. But this is wrong. They were rum old boys. We like playing cards in this village—we always have. It is a card-playing place—although you can go to some villages and never see a deck. We’ll play for the odd bob—nothing much more. We don’t go in for dancing; the boys don’t bother with it—they’d much sooner go to the pictures. Myself, I’d sooner walk than do any of these things. I differ from the rest because I haven’t got a car. So I walk over the land, or I might fish a pike. The other boys sit in their cars and won’t walk a step. If there is another boy walking, I haven’t met him. Of course, you want a lot of money to run a car and I know plenty of boys of my age who are nipping and screwing to run theirs. I earn a little more than most people and I couldn’t run a car comfortable—so how can they? They smoke, they don’t drink much, as I say, but a few of them buy plenty of clothes. So how do they do it?
Most of the boys have long hair. I don’t like to see it. It doesn’t look very nice in my opinion. Take my brother, for instance, he’s terrible. I’ve never seen anything like my brother’s hair, it is all over the place. The more you get on to him about it, the more he lets it grow. So it is best not to say anything—to just ignore it. But it’s hard to ignore your brother’s hair when it is as long as a girl’s. He thinks it is wonderful. His girl thinks it is wonderful. All the village girls like their boys to have long hair.
I don’t do a lot of reading but my brother is just the opposite. He lolls upside down on the armchair with his hair all over a book. He loves reading war stories. He likes to know all about the old-fashioned planes they used in 1940. I read the newspaper—that is the most I read. And I’ll read any book there happens to be on ornamental metal work and I buy books about wrought iron. But I’d rather do a job than read any day.
My brother is twenty-one and works on the farm. He puts lots of hours in. He does more hours than I do. He ups and out by half past five in the morning, and like as not he won’t be back for good until half past seven at night. Saturday is his half-day, when he works from five-thirty on to twelve o’clock. He’ll relief milk on the neighbour’s farm on a Sunday morning and he never complains. He’s got a car but I’ve never heard him worry about any other kind of luxury. He laughs a lot. My mother, my father and me, we say, “Look at your hair!” and he smiles and reads, smiles and reads. So what is the use? When he was sixteen, he and another boy about his age cut the entire farm with a combine. Two boys got the whole of the harvest in. He is a good shot. He is a very good brother. We love him. But this hair! And now he is growing a moustache. His name is Robin.
The young men don’t hate the land any more—they used to but they don’t now. They can do plenty of mechanical things on the farm, a bit of welding—things like that. They used to call you dumb if you worked on a farm but it won’t do to be dumb today! The wages are much too low. Farm men aren’t paid properly at all. My brother isn’t exceptional; there are plenty of youngsters like him who’ll damn-near run a farm—but they’ll still get this little wage.
We’re pretty interested in politics in the village but we don’t really understand it. We argue but we’re none too sure what we’re arguing about. We hear what is going on but we haven’t got the brain to stand it—but we’ll argue! A dance is the easiest way to sort out who’s Labour and who’s Tory. Nobody who wasn’t a Conservative would think of going to a Conservative dance, and the same with Labour. The young men worry about the Vietnam war to a certain extent. They don’t see the point of it and they would stop it if they could. They don’t believe in war but they like to read about old wars in stories. Some of them have some very funny ideas about war, I can tell you! The older men believe in war. They say, “We went all through the last one and we don’t want to see another,” but they still believe in them. I think that being in a war, however awful, makes you believe in war. We all watch the telly news—everybody does. Television has changed the village people. I like the plays. I am always on the look-out for scenes showing ornamental ironwork. You may not have noticed, but telly plays are full of wonderful ornamental ironwork. There was this programme the other day about the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution which showed a pair of gates. Marvellous, they were. [The gates of the Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, in Eisenstein’s film, Battleship Potemkin.] It is one of my great ambitions to make a tremendous pair of gates, with all their fine railings. But who would buy them now?
I look at everything. I don’t open a church door without looking at the hinges. Occasionally, when I’ve been to London, I’ll be walking down a street and see interesting railings, gates and things, and I’ll look and think. There are some fine railings in Westminster Abbey, I hear. They stand round a king. I’ll give them a look one of these days. I always look to see how the old men did their work. The metal is all perfect still under the paint—as good as the day it was cast. I don’t know how they did it. Of course, in those days time was nothing. Now it is everything. Mrs. Gladwell can forget time. She can get so carried away making the designs that she forgets to put the dinner on. I am no good at drawing, I’m afraid. I was hit every Monday morning at school because I couldn’t draw. The strange thing is that this teacher who hit me came to see me after I had won all the wrought-iron prizes and said, “I wish I were in your job. . . .” But why did he hit me every week, month in, month out, because I couldn’t draw? There wasn’t all that much hitting when I was there, I must be fair. And I was only hit by hand—I never had the stick once. I kept out of trouble as best I could but I’m left-handed and teachers don’t like that. My mother is left-handed too, and she had no end of trouble at school because of it. They’d hit her hand, they’d tie it up behind her, they’d watch it, they’d force the pen into her right hand, but she couldn’t work it. She was done for. Her schooling was a nightmare. But you take my little brother. He is twelve and he loves school. He has all the brains. He is never frightened by school. Th
e school is different now. As for my dad—when he went to school—he could tell you something! But he won’t. Best forget it, he says. It’s water under the bridge, boy. Other days, other ways, he says. He talks like that.
I enjoyed going to France and Germany but I didn’t go much on their food. It’s too fancy. I like good plain food, that is how we live. Everybody in Germany eats twice as much as we do in England and the men walk around with great bottoms on them like women. The Germans gave us each a bottle of white wine every day. It was very good. When the English boys drank beer it was so strong that they were soon well away. They weren’t drinking any more beer than they did in England but soon they were all laughing—they couldn’t stop. I laugh nearly as much now just to think about it. I’ve never met any of these young blacksmiths since. None of us seem to worry about writing or anything like that. But they were good mates, as the saying goes.
I haven’t got any really close friends. I get on with everybody, none is closer than another. I spend most of my time at home, with my family. We get on well. We don’t row. You hear of families which row, well here it is just the opposite. We might shout at my brother about his hair but as he just smiles we soon have to stop. There is a family which rows all the time in this village; you can hear them a hundred yards away. They lift the roof. But I think they’re quite good friends. They are a family which rows, and that is that.
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