Inheritance by Phyllis Bentley

Charlotte Bronte wrote about the Luddite movement in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the time of our John Dixon... the John Dixon who immigrated to Albion, Illinois from Leeds, England in the 1840's. Although Bronte’s book is relatively unknown and underappreciated compared to Jane Eyre, I discovered that it was a surprisingly good book.

Inheritance, by the English "regional" writer Phyllis Bentley, was very popular when it was published in 1932 and when it was made into a TV miniseries by the BBC in the 1970's. I just finished reading Inheritance and highly recommend it. Someday I will find a way to access the BBC movie. I also think we’ll see Hollywood or an independent film producer remake the film... one of those with all of the great English actors taking part. It’s a great story. It reminds me of James Michener’s books like Centennial, where he follows a few interrelated families over several generations in the process of telling the history of a place.

Bentley is known as a regional novelist, but she sold a lot of books. In Florida, she would equate to Carl Hiassen (South Florida wacky mysteries) or Randy Wayne White (Southwest Florida romance/action stories). Who would be a regional novelist of the Albion or Anderson areas?

Whereas Charlotte Bronte was writing in the early Victorian era, Phyllis Bentley was writing at the end of the roaring 20's, and an early romantic scene, complete with a short description of a couple succumbing to their feelings for each other... resulting in the birth of an important second generation character... is not written in the "fainting novel" style of Bronte. Then again, it’s not a 1970's steamy sex scene either. But it’s interesting to compare the treatment of romance and love by authors writing sixty years apart.

I actually intended to read just the first part of the book, knowing that it covered the 1812 Luddite movement. But I couldn’t stop reading. I found that the next period she covered was perhaps also relevant to Dixon history, as it covered the child labor era of the early years of the industrial revolution in the wool industry around Leeds. Was that a reason John Dixon left for America with his wife... and son Joseph Freemont Dixon (Sr.)? The book also covered the fight of working men and children to achieve "The Ten Hour Rule" and the rise of unionism in general.

A side note: I found the book through interlibrary loan from our Alachua County Library branch. The book that arrived was sent by the Upsula College Library in New Jersey. The book was an early edition that had been rebound in 1954, the year of my birth, and had not been checked out since the rebinding. What a shame!

The book follows the fictional mill owning Oldroyd family, as well as several nearby (and eventually interrelated by marriage) families... some richer, but most poorer families. Families of working men and working children.

These families are followed from the opening scenes in 1812 until the postwar generation, when the Oldroyd family businesses are liquidated due to widespread economic fallout from World War I. The action takes place in several small settlements in the fictional Ire River Valley, near Leeds and York. Leeds is only briefly portrayed as the nearest large town, which most of the early characters never experience as they never travel that far from home. York is the nearest government center, and the site of the trial of three Luddites who are hanged for the murder of the original Oldroyd mill owner. The court even decrees that the bodies be turned over to medical colleges for dissection rather than permit return of the bodies to the families for burial!

In this book, there is slight mention of the church or religion, although I’m not sure if there is historical meaning in this fact. Remember that Bronte was very hard on the established church and explored briefly the Quaker and other movements of the time in her book.

One of the men hanged for the murder of William Oldroyd was Joe Bamforth, the mill foreman, who is a tragic figure caught between loyalties to his fellow working men and to the mill owner who has been good to him. The Luddite fight is, of course, about the introduction of new "frames", technology which can increase production and put many working men out of work. The new industrial model ironically also creates a "need" for child labor in large quantities. Children begin in the mill at the age of 7. Joe Bamforth was also the best friend of the young son of the murdered mill owner. This younger Will Oldroyd is also the one who has seduced Joe’s sister Mary in the first scene of the book! (The couple... much later on...marries.)

Much of the dramatic tension of the book is the comparison of the hard driving, but not so bright, and often spineless, mill owning Oldroyds and the dirt poor, but highly ethical, stubborn and smart, Bamforth descendents. This tension works throughout six generations of intermarrying, partly because the Oldroyd men have a tendency to fall for Bamforth women who are a giant step below them on the economic class scales which were and still are important in England.

I highly recommend this book and look forward to hearing what you think of it. It is better than Bronte’s book, which is also a very good book. If your literary tastes are more Michener than Jane Austin, this is definitely the West Yorkshire/Luddite era book for you!
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