Saving Elkanah Merrell

By Philip Lister

Winters were bleak in Brontes Haworth, In Victorian Madeira there were no Winters. "Last night, I dreamt that I could smell the Jaquranada again,I walked through their purple petals, sprinkled like soft frosted snow on moonlit pavements, with the warm breeze from the ocean upon my face" After breakfast, the family had all gone and the house was quiet again, but the images remained, and I found myself in one of the upstairs rooms at the back of the house, a place I had not been for years;looking through old trunks, and storage boxes. then I saw it, dusty and neglected in a corner. One of the two domed toped, pine and cast iron sailing trunks, loaned to me by uncle Hartley over fifty years ago, its once gleaming fittings now green with verdigris. With no definite purpose at first, I knelt down and clicked open the catches. As I opened the lid I thought for an instant that I smelt the faintest aroma of Lavender

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Lister
• Release date: Oct 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301457175

Philip Lister

For the past twelve years I have lived my dream working in the amazing Yorkshire village of Haworth, former home of the Bronte sisters. I have worked here as a guide with groups from all over the world. One of my most popular guided walks was a 'Lantern light Graveyard Tour' around the village's 700 year old graveyard. Recently I started to live a new dream. I retired from working with most of my groups to concentrate on my writing. My partner Jenny, and I now divide our time between our home in England (in the summertime) and the beautiful island of Madeira (in the wintertime). Since I retired my keyboards been smoking!. At last I have the time to write, to create, to dream some new dreams, with Jenny by my side. I plan to publish on Kindle later this year the first of a three part travel story about a man by the name of Elkanah Merrell. I suppose that it would be true to say that I've known him for twelve years now. The thing is he left the village around 153 years ago....

Book preview

Saving Elkanah Merrell

Journal 1

By Philip Lister

Copyright 2012 Philip Lister

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Prologue .

Chapter 1. Leaving Haworth

Chapter 2. February –My Journey and arrangements

Chapter 3. Marco – First impressions of Funchal

Chapter 4. Abri – Exploring the city

Chapter 5. Maio – Life in the sunshine

Bibliography .

Dedication .

Contact – Elkanah Merrell

Prologue

Carved on a gravestone in Haworth cemetery......

SACRED

TO

THE MEMORY OF

JAMES AQUILA MERRELL

WHO DIED AT CLIFFE COTTAGE, LEES

DEC 1858 IN THE 6TH YEAR

OF HIS AGE

ALSO OF ELKANAH MERRELL,

WHO DIED IN THE SHIP COMET AT SEA

LAT 48°N LON 8°W

ON A VOYAGE TO MADEIRA

FOR THE BENEFIT OF HIS HEALTH

FEB 12TH 1859, IN THE 26TH YEAR

OF HIS AGE.

ALSO OF HARTLEY MERRELL

OF CLIFF COTTAGE, ABOVE SAID

WHO FELL ASLEEP IN JESUS

APRIL 5TH 1859 IN THE 28TH YEAR

OF HIS AGE

I suppose that it would be true to say that I’ve known Elkanah Merrell for twelve years now. He used to live in the same village as I do. The thing is he left around 153 years ago.

Someone once told me that life is a journey which is all about beginnings and endings. For me a new beginning was when I arrived in Haworth twelve years ago searching for a better life working as a tour guide. It was then that I first became aware of Elkanah Merrell and his story. For him leaving Haworth in search of a better life was to be the first step towards the ending of his journey.

To be honest the very gravestone informing the world of the extremely precise location of his death, I had gently mocked before hundreds of people every year for the past twelve years, as I presented my popular ‘Lantern-light Graveyard Tour’ around the village’s most atmospheric graveyard.

The Merrell grave (located in zone D, at grave plot 584) in Haworth Cemetery, Yorkshire, England, is one of the largest grave plots in the whole graveyard. A graveyard spanning over seven hundred years, and believed to house the remains of almost 40,000 souls.

The grave features two large stone obelisks, and a low wall surrounds the plot, all built above an underground crypt with a concealed entrance, and steps down into the burial chamber below. The gravestone is a fine example of the stone-carving skills of former village sexton and stonemason, John Brown, and is one of a number of large plots in the graveyard, each owned by the wealthy, former mill-owning, Merrell family.

They were destined to become one of the most influential families in the area, and were fine upstanding members of the congregation in Haworth, often contributing generously to the funds of the church of St Michael and all Angels; the church where Patrick Brontë, father of the world famous Brontë sisters would serve as perpetual curate for a record forty one years.

Indeed young Elkanah grew up in Haworth, where he attended the village school. He knew as a child, the Brontë family, as they lived out their brief lives in the bleak Pennine village destined to become one of the most visited in the whole of Yorkshire.

Looking at the epitaphs of the Merrell family, you may notice in several entries reference to the exact place in which they lived. Certainly an unusual idea to provide the world with your address upon your gravestone! Perhaps this was something to do with status? to let the world know that you had lived in a large and important house, in an exclusive area.

However, when Elkanah Merrell died on 12th February 1859, he did not have an address. Instead we are provided with the next best thing – the latitude and longitude of the exact place in which he died. As you may read on his gravestone, poor Elkanah was ‘on a voyage to Madeira for the benefit of his health’ when he sadly expired on board the ship Comet, aged just twenty-six years of age.

It was the story of this wealthy local family and their efforts to improve the health of their beloved son Elkanah by sending him all the way to this tiny Atlantic island, which first aroused my interest in Madeira. Reading and researching more, I discovered it was a favourite destination of wealthy Victorians, keen to exchange the bitter chill of England's winters, for the mild spring like climate of this beautiful island.

My interest grew. For a number of years my partner Jenny and I, had escaped Haworth's winter chills by over-wintering in warmer climes, and the more we discovered about Madeira, the more we became drawn to the island and its people. It was eventually to become our preferred winter destination, and the more that I became interested in the history of the island that young Elkanah had set sail for all those years ago, the more I began to wonder what this young Yorkshire man’s impressions would have been had he survived his journey on the Comet and made landfall in Funchal, Madeira early in 1859.

What if he had survived, what if he could have been saved? What if he had survived at least long enough to complete his journey on board the Comet and experience the wonders of life in Victorian Madeira?

One day, not too long ago, I set about the task of saving Elkanah Merrell........

Elkanahs story

Last night, I dreamt that I could smell the Jaquranada again. I walked through their purple petals, sprinkled like soft frosted snow on moonlit pavements, with the warm breeze from the ocean upon my face

After breakfast, the family had all gone and the house was quiet once again, but the image remained, and a strong feeling of nostalgia filled my head. I found myself in one of the upstairs rooms at the back of the house, a place I had not been for years; looking through old trunks, and storage boxes. Then I saw it, dusty and neglected in a corner. One of the two domed toped, pine and cast iron sailing trunks, loaned to me by uncle Hartley over fifty years ago, its once gleaming fittings now green with verdigris.

With no definite purpose at first, I knelt down and clicked open the catches. As I opened the lid I thought for an instant that I smelt the faintest aroma of lavender, and it reminded me of Rebecca, and how she had once helped me pack the trunk.

As I carefully examined the contents, I thought that I may be able to find some of the watercolours which I had brought home for her all those years ago. I had almost abandoned my search, when at the bottom of a trunk, underneath some old newspapers I saw the brown paper package with the old journals inside. I sat back on the bed and unwrapped the brittle crumpled paper. The three diaries, the account of my adventures, black covers a little fade now, spilled out onto the bed beside me. I picked up the one at the top of the pile.

In faded in the words ‘Elkanah Merrell Madeira 1859 – Journal 1’ stared back at me across fifty three years. With trembling hand I opened it and began the journey back towards myself as a young man............................

Introduction to this Journal

There follows my Journal in the form of a diary recording the events as they happened on my journey from Haworth, Yorkshire, England to the city of Funchal on the island of Madeira in the year of our lord 1859, and my stay there into 1860.

I have set it out in the form of a description of my journey to the island, followed by my impressions of life there, and my descriptions of the places which I visited and the various people I met. My stay lasted for one year so the diary is set out in chapters each of one month, and describes my experiences as the months unfolded.

During my stay I did attempt to learn something of the local language, so where I have used local words in Portuguese, wherever possible, there follows in brackets the English meaning, as I understand it.

At the start of each chapter is a brief list of the main contents as they appear.

Elkanah Merrell.

Chapter 1

Leaving Haworth

My Journey begins – The Black Bull Inn – Funeral Bidding – The Arvil – Branwell remembered –Brontë connections –A Weavers tale –The Stagecoach – Cockeyed Charlie –My Adventure begins.

In the short journey by pony and trap from our home in Lees, down Bunkers Hill and back up Brigg Lane to the Black Bull Inn at the very top of Haworth’s Main Street, my face already was sliced by the bitter cold winds, and despite my beaver hat and woollen scarf my head hurt with the cold. This morning I had been up by candlelight, to say my farewells to my beloved family before my short journey to the Black Bull to board the Bluebell Stage to Bradford which ran from Heaton in Bradford to the Blue Bell Inn in Two Laws near Colne, over the border in Lancashire. Our pony struggled as it climbed up the steep hill, gasping out dragon’s breath from its heaving nostrils, as it stumbled and slipped over the rugged stone setts.

The stone which built the hill had been cut from the nearby Penistone Hill quarries one hundred and fifty years ago. Now where the quarries stood, on the hill, great unbroken spaces of peat bog, punctuated by vast spoil heaps which marked the spot where the land had been plundered of the great ashlar blocks, and flagstones. Torn from the land, by generations of hard Haworth men, to build the nearby villages. We passed the soot-blackened stone buildings, polished by the relentless Pennine rain. The ginnels and alleyways, filled with overcrowded candlelit cottages, wool combers, weavers, clogs, poverty and pride.

Down the sides of the street were draped ribbons of crisp snow and ice. Doors yet to be opened were filled by the previous night’s snow drifts. But even the pure white snow was discoloured by the filth, as down the roadside trickled the ever present streams of effluent from the steaming, rotting midden-steads; where night soil from scores of privies was added each day. On either side of the street the weavers cottages and old coaching inns clung stubbornly to the hillside, huddled closely together, braced against the bitter east winds which blew in from the bleak moors which surrounded the village.

At the top of the hill just past the Black Bull, the main road separated into two, running off at an acute angle. One was West Lane which joined the Colne road, and continued on to the Bluebell Turnpike, coasting the brow of the hill and skirted the edge of Penistone hill. This turnpike road connected the towns of Colne in the county of Lancashire, to Bradford (the centre of the woollen trade) in the county of Yorkshire. The other road was known as the Ginnel or sometimes called Lords Lane, and this ran again down the hill. A lane called Back Lane cut off a triangle from these two roads, and around this area the greater numbers of houses in the hamlet of Haworth were situated. There were an estimated six hundred dwellings in the village and a population of around three thousand souls. Thus the village may have been looked upon as a small triangular plot of dwellings, high up upon a hill, with a long straggling main street dropping steeply down from one angle of it. From this main street, the ground fell to the North-east towards a small stream in the bottom of the valley called the River Worth or sometimes known as Bridgehouse beck, where as a boy I used to fish for trout. This ran into the River Aire, eventually joining the River Ouse and flowing on to the North Sea.

As soon as the pony and trap came to a slippery halt by the door of